Cranky T-Rex's Blog

I could write a long and philosophical post about religion or the true meaning of Christmas or keeping spirits up even in these gloomy times, but it's been done by better folks than I far too many times. So, I'll just wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and here's hoping you get all the gifts worth getting.

One thing I've been meaning to do for a long time with this blog is to talk about movies because this dinosaur has always been a big fan of them. Tonight I have the time to post and the memory of a new movie fresh in my mind in the form of James Cameron's Avatar . If you'd like to skip my full discussion below, my entire review can be boiled down into the word "meh." Otherwise, go ahead and click the link to see the full post. So let's get the basics out of the way first. Avatar is about a human corporation that is working to mine the moon of an alien gas giant approximately six cryo-sleep years away for a mineral the movie calls "unobtanium", which is apparently very valuable for reasons never discussed. (Since that's what they call the substance that allows heat and pressure to be converted into electricity in the abysmal movie The Core , I guess that's what it does here too.) Unfortunately for the humans, there is a race of sentient 10...

Attorney General Eric Holder has decided that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and several other terrorists captured by the United States, will now be tried in criminal court in New York City. This decision is appalling on many levels, but none more so than the fact that this will tear apart the very fabric of the United States criminal justice system. This trial will be little more than a farce, a show trial designed to have the appearance of justice but with the verdict signed, sealed, and delivered before the proceedings even begin. There is no way on this Earth that the Obama Administration would ever allow KSM or his co-defendants to go free, regardless of any criminal court giving them their freedom based on legal technicality or acquittal. As such, this trial will mean nothing, and true justice shall not be served, as the defendants never had a chance to go free. Even if that were not the case, if they are tried in civilian court, it must respect all the rights and privileges that be...

Much has been made of Roman Polanski this past week as his wandering into Switzerland gave law enforcement the opportunity to finally drag him back to the US to be sentenced for drugging and raping a 13 year old girl when he was already a dirty old man some 30 years ago. Naturally, the response from Hollywood has been mostly in Polanski's favor, with some even going so far as to suggest that Hollywood has superior moral bearings because it "has compassion", and thus its judgment should be trusted. One assumes they're referring to the fact that movie stars and directors give tons of money to charity and champion various charitable pet projects the world over. But the thing is, Hollywood doesn't support charity out of some moral clarity given to them through their observance and interpretation of the human condition. Hollywood supports charity because they collectively have survivor's guilt. Consider the millions of actors, directors, and writers who descend ...

Here's a little something I did up today. If you're not familiar with the reference, back in February there were a few schools that decided to have their children sing songs of praise to President Obama as a part of Black History Month. It's creepy in its own right, but the rhythmic chorus of "Mmm mm mm, Barack Hussein Obama" was just too good to pass up. Parents and other citizens alike are naturally outraged, and the school's defense was that the whole thing wasn't supposed to be taped, as if that somehow makes it ok that we have young children singing songs of praise to Dear Leader. Getting kids to effusively praise their head of state through song and dance is a hallmark of almost every dictatorship in human history and a critical step in convincing the population that the dictator is something more than human. Then again, if the people running that school went through the public education system, it's highly likely they never learned about anythi...

Sarjex serves up another illustration for us this week. This time she tackles two topics in one. Recently, audio has surfaced of a meeting between a representative of the Obama White House and the National Endowment for the Arts or NEA for short. In that meeting, the White House pushed for the NEA to do projects in support of the various causes the administration has been working on, such as health care and environmentalism. Since the NEA is funded with our tax dollars, this is almost as egregious as ACORN getting tax money to help prostitutes evade paying taxes and bring in child sex slaves. Meanwhile, everyone who disagrees with the administration has been getting slapped with the ye ole "racist!!!!!!" label, although the Obama Administration continues to disavow those who put that out there. Obama has played that card before though, so one is left to wonder if they're just looking for plausible deniability...

This powerful image from a friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous via her online alias of "Sarjex" illustrates the sad irony of African-American women at ACORN assisting the white undercover reporters from BigGovernment.com in purchasing a house and evading taxes for a business that they flat-out say will be used in the trafficking of underage sex "workers" from El Salvador. The ACORN employees not only fail to throw the two out or call the police, they actually tell the "prostitute" that she should re-classify herself as a "performing artist" to avoid suspicion. They even go so far as telling the two to claim the underage sex slaves...er..."workers" as dependents and to teach them to keep silent! Thus, she and I are forced to wonder, if a man came in looking for a mortgage for his plantation, what would they say?

For those who have not heard, during President Obama's address to Congress this week, at one point Republican Joe Wilson shouted out "You lie!" in response to the President's assertion that illegal immigrants would not be covered under his health care plan. He quickly apologized after the address, and the President accepted that apology. In response, the pundits and the progressive bloggers have demonstrated all kinds of outrage at the breach of decorum. Not only that, they claim the outburst was motivated by some kind of latent racism in Wilson. On CNN, I watched as a host and his guest bantered back and forth the idea that if Obama had looked more like his mother, Wilson would never have had the temerity to speak out like that. Thanks to a conversation with a friend of mine, I have come to the conclusion that these people simply do not know what a racist breaking decorum looks like. I, fortunately, have an image for them. It looks like this: ... That is a depiction ...

On a day like today, it bears repeating: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustom...

The incomplete House version of the health care bill is already over 1000 pages. It's not done, the amendments haven't all been tacked on yet, and it's already over 1000 pages. If it were a work of fiction (no jokes please), it would rank up there with War and Peace as one of the longest novels ever written. It is also written in legalese, so to read it, a person needs to speak that language. Translating it into English would probably triple the page count. It is also not the first bill to fit this criterion. The Stimulus bill passed several months ago was also this way. The same was true of Cap 'n Trade. This means that the average citizen has no hope of reading, understanding, and having productive dialogue about the legislation. Since this administration complains constantly about its opponents not putting forth solutions, here is a solution to this problem: The Term Paper Act of 2009. The TPA is inspired by requirements for term papers and other major written projec...

Palin did not say Obama would be euthanizing old people. She pointed out quite simply that rationing is an inevitability with government health care, and that somebody in the government will have to decide who gets what. That's it. Get over it.

President Obama said: Our reform will prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of your medical history. Nor will they be allowed to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick. It seems that the President does not understand what insurance is. Insurance is, at its core, essentially gambling. The insured gamble that they will need more money at some point than they will have given the insurance company. The insurers gamble that the insured will never need the money back. It is no different than going to a casino in Vegas and playing every month, hoping to eventually hit the jackpot. The casinos naturally attempt to minimize their losses ...

The Godzilla Award was founded in honor of my cousin from Japan, who unfortunately took his own life in 1998 after he was tricked into starring alongside Matthew Broderick in one of the worst American films ever made. One of Godzilla's most famous traits was his ability to do massive damage with just the power of his breath, and so we dinosaurs have created an award that recognizes the biggest blowhards we can find. This week's winner is... Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA)! Senator Specter wins for complaining about having to use his precious time to answer to his constituents, especially since they've been foaming at the mouth as a result of the health care debate. Senator Specter said: "I’m encouraging constitutional rights. I’m encouraging constitutional rights by coming to Lebanon to talk to my constituents. I could be somewhere else. I don’t get any extra pay — I don’t have any requirement to be here. But for somebody –" Naturally, Senator Specter is cut off by ...

Medical treatment has had a long history of evolution, and for quite a bit of it, going to a doctor was often worse than simply dying. With little to no understanding of how the body worked or the microscopic organisms that could poison it, doctors often relied on religion and superstition to discern treatment. Consider the Dark Ages, wherein disease was considered caused by evil spirits. The Cure? Prayer. Blood-letting. Drilling holes in the skull to let the demon out. That kind of thought persisted well into the 19th century. Even by the American Civil War, doctors were still often little more than butchers and charlatans. A soldier who took a bullet in a limb could reasonably expect to have his limb hacked off with a dull blade that just came out of the leg of someone with gangrene and no anesthesia to speak of. The lucky ones got a sip of tequila or some other hard liquor. Many so-called doctors even traveled the country prescribing a variety of chemicals for ailments that ranged ...

The phrase "American Exceptionalism" is often used to describe the United States' meteoric rise to military and economic superstardom. Within 200 years, the USA had evolved from a loose collection of colonial states to the preeminent superpower on the planet, and historians will no doubt spend years attempting to discern just what collection of properties and events came together to cause this to occur. Perhaps it was due to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans insulating America from most direct attacks. Perhaps it was due to the wide variety of resources and climates spanned by the United States. Yet, Canada and Mexico both shared these advantages and neither went on to become as economically or militarily powerful. Certainly these things helped the Soviet Union emerge from the ashes of World War II into a superpower of its own and yet its power waned as rapidly as America's grew. Ultimately, there is one thing that separated the United States from the rest of the world...

The Godzilla Award was founded in honor of my cousin from Japan, who unfortunately took his own life in 1998 after he was tricked into starring alongside Matthew Broderick in one of the worst American films ever made. One of Godzilla's most famous traits was his ability to do massive damage with just the power of his breath, and so we dinosaurs have created an award that recognizes the biggest blowhards we can find. With all of the Congress critters running around calling protestors angry mobs and nazis, it was a tough pick this week and a very close vote. But, in the end, one nomination stood above the rest. This week's winner is... Linda Douglass! Ms. Douglass wins for telling everyone not to believe their lying eyes. “Hi. I’m Linda Douglass. I’m the communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, and one of my jobs is to keep track of all the disinformation that’s out there about health-insurance reform. And there are a lot of very deceiving headlines o...

Is anyone else tired of hearing how their opinion doesn't matter because Bush did something similar to something Obama is doing? As if that somehow enters the equation? Here's a typical exchange: "Obama's defecit spending is ridiculous. He's going to bankrupt our country this way!" "Well, where were you when Bush was spending?" First of all, what does that matter? Do I have to complain about Andrew Jackson every time somebody assaults a Native American to have a valid opinion of that being wrong? Further, how does anyone know whether or not somebody complained about Bush? Second, with regard to spending specifically, Obama's spending in the last six months is more than Bush's entire term. So it's not even comparable. And third, if Bush was a fool/jackass/evil for spending a whole bunch of money or any of the other ridiculous things he did, should that not make Obama equal if not worse in that regard? Should not all these people answer...

Having been a big movie and television star, it comes as no shock to this giant lizard that movies and television shows often serve as fantastic metaphors for current events. In the classic movie, The Untouchables , Sean Connery's character Jim Malone catches a member of the Italian mob sneaking up on him with a knife in an assassination attempt. Malone, being a smart Irish beat cop, pulls a gun on him and remarks, "Isn't that just like a wop? Brings a knife to a gun fight. " Unfortunately for Malone, the knife is a setup and the assassin just a lure. He is tempted outside where one of Capone's men opens up on him with a tommy gun. This classic movie moment is the perfect metaphor for what has happened across the country for the last two weeks. President Obama and the Congress pulled out their knives to carve up the health care system, and the American people said, "wait just a minute there." They have showed up in droves to tell their local representati...

Tonight, this T-Rex was watching a classic movie on AMC as he often does. In that movie, Kevin Costner's character of John Dunbar became known by the Sioux Indians as "Dances With Wolves", thus giving the film its title. There are many things to be said of this film, be it the many Oscars it won or the stirring epic of a loaner on the prairie adapting and making friends with the local tribe, but rather than drone on about some of the more philosophical aspects of this movie that I have been dwelling on this evening, I thought it would be more interesting to create a contest of sorts instead. As "Cranky T-Rex", I essentially already have an Indian name, but what Indian names would some of our politicians have? Here are a few I thought of while I was watching Dances With Wolves: Barack Obama: "SpendsBigMoney" Joe Biden: "DropsWordsfromMouth" Nancy Pelosi: "EyesThatBlinkOften" John Kerry: "ThreePurpleHearts" Robert Gibbs: ...

It seems someone with an interesting sense of humor has been running around LA putting up these pictures, in a parody of the recent smash hit (yet highly overrated in this dino's opinion) The Dark Knight. Remember the days when it was "patriotic" to make fun of the President? Back when it was one's duty to talk about ChimpyMcBushHitler's quest to conquer the world for oil, carried out by drowning blacks in New Orleans and creating a massive conspiracy to execute 9/11? When Dick Cheney was Darth Vader? Apparently, that is no longer the case now that America is the land of Hype and Chains ...excuse me, I meant Hope and Change, as several news outlets such as LA Weekly and MSNBC have decided this crosses the line. Now, I could discuss how incredibly hypocritical it is, but Allahpundit and Ace do the job well enough. The issue I want to address is... ...with the poster itself. The problem with this poster is that it is entirely contradictory. Socialism is on the e...

The Godzilla Award was founded in honor of my cousin from Japan, who unfortunately took his own life in 1998 after he was tricked into starring alongside Matthew Broderick in one of the worst American films ever made. One of Godzilla's most famous traits was his ability to do massive damage with just the power of his breath, and so we dinosaurs have created an award that recognizes the biggest blowhards we can find. This week's winner is... Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi! The Speaker wins for this impressive rant against insurance companies brought to us by The Hill : “They are the villains in this,” Pelosi said of private insurers. “They havebeen part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening. And the public has to know that. They can disguise their arguments any way they want, but the fact is that they don’t want the competition.”… “It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” added Pelosi, who stood outsid...

"That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper." -Barack Obama Apparently, that does not include helping an old man down the steps of your house.

Look at this picture. Don't these three look relaxed? You'd never guess that one of them arrested one of them, one of them called the one doing the arresting a racist, and the other one called the arresting officer stupid and racist. Now, I could get into the stuff that people have gone over all day long about what this means in terms of race or how this is getting too much coverage etc., but my question is... ...where's the urgency? After all, President Obama has declared that health care must be passed immediately or Americans will die from lack of health care and other Americans will go bankrupt from the cost. The President has already gone so far as to say the time for debate was over. If that's the case, why does the President have time to sit around enjoying a beer with a couple of guys he doesn't know just because he needs to do a little ass-covering? His health care bill is imploding in both the House and the Senate as Democrats tear viscious chunks out of ...

For the last six months, massive spending programs have gotten fast-tracked through Congress despite massive opposition from the average American. These bills have been thousands of loose pages paper-clipped together at 3:00 AM and voted on by the afternoon. In the case of the Cap and Trade bill, one 300 page amendment did not even have a hard copy ready in time for voting. The Congress literally voted on an unfinished bill. But, as outrageous as that is, the Congress at least had the common decency to continue the charade that they actually do real work in Washington. It's been a game for years. Those elected to political office smile and wave at the camera, nod their heads understandingly, and tell us how they really do care about our problems. They shake our claws firmly and promise to head back to Washington and get that done for us... ...and then they get into a private jet, smoke a cigar, and fly to their summer home on Martha's Vineyard. But no, now that facade is gone ...

Again today I heard a commentator on the news use the phrase "blood and treasure" to describe what we have spent/lost in Iraq. I, for one, cannot stand this euphemism. It's "blood and money." "Treasure" is something for which you go hunting. "Treasure" is something you find in a sunken ship or an Egyptian burial vault. Seriously, do American Navy captains hoist the black flag and sail about looting and plundering every merchant vessel they see? Did the Coast Guard run across one of those sunken Nazi subs full of gold meant for the Japanese? Did a subway engineer blast through the rock into the Founding Fathers' secret stash under Wall St.? Did an American soldier dig up a bunch of doubloons in the Iraqi desert? Where did all this "treasure" we spent come from? Money does not become treasure until it's been loaded onto a Spanish Galleon and hidden away in a cave by a one-eyed pirate for a ragtag bunch of kids to find. So ple...

Hope and change: two words that came to embody the campaign of Barack Obama. It was believed that Mr. Obama would bring hope to the needy and the downtrodden, and change to the marginalized, the poor, and the pained. Of course, at the time many of us wondered if the promise of these things was quite simply: too good to be true. Though we are only six months into his administration, it seems that our apprehensions were entirely too correct. Instead it appears that all of the talk about Obama being some sort of post-racial Messiah sent to save us from our own short-sightedness is merely an awful lot of hype. And the change promised by Obama? It weighs down the future of every man, woman, child, or business that ever believed they could become something more like a ball and chain clamped to their ankle. The Obama Administration speaks of restoring relations with the world, and yet they continue to bungle diplomatic events with wrongly-encoded DVDs and mistranslated buttons. Obama...

Welcome one and all to my domain. Don't let the mouth full of steak knives bother you, I have established this place for us to get to know one another and for me to vent my frustrations upon something. I hope that you shall find my wisdom as the local King Lizard useful, enlightening, and amusing, and I look forward to devouring your...comments. I expect to begin posting in earnest soon, so please return shortly to see more the of the meat and potatoes of what this blog will offer. Well...the potatoes anyway, I'm liable to eat the meat before you get here.