From the monthly archives:

July 2008

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Trailer Released

July 31, 2008

Released yesterday, it’s only the teaser trailer, but it looks really good.  I like the darkening tone and somber mood, plus the actor playing the young Tom Riddle seems like a really good fit (I believe it is actually Ralph Fiennes’ nephew).

The HBP is one of my favorite books in the series (I like Four and [...]

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Olmert to Resign

July 30, 2008

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today that he is not going to run again as leader of the Kadima Party after the September 17 primary elections.  He’s leaving it for his Kadima successor to try and put together a governing coalition. 
I’m not an Olmert fan — two summers ago, shelling an border fighting caused two Israelis to be taken [...]

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Ted Stevens Indicted

July 29, 2008

Former Senate Pro-Temp Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (R) was indicted today on seven counts of making false statements about gifts he received from an oil contractor seeking Washington’s help.  It’s evident that from 1999-2006 Stevens was making false statements about this relationship.  The issue is not bribery, however, just an 84 year old forgetting about gifts [...]

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State-Run Health Care in Oregon Can Kill

July 28, 2008

…if you want it to! 
A major problem with having state-controlled health care as a “right” is that they can deny you access or care if your situation is not in the state’s economic best-interest.  We’ll see loving ol’ grandmas and thirty something drunks fighting over access to livers — maybe grandma or the lush will die waiting [...]

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Is Bush Batman?

July 28, 2008

Apparently, a number of op-ed articles have hit the Internet regarding Christopher Nolan’s new film, the box-office shattering The Dark Knight, and how Batman allegorically plays the role of George W. Bush (some say Batman is Dick Cheney or a generic conservative hero)! 
A friend tipped me off to this concept last night and I looked [...]

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What to do with Manny Ramirez?

July 27, 2008

The Boston Red Sox have a problem:  Manny Ramirez is a great player, just not a great team player.  Lately he’s been verbally and physically confrontational with his team and staff and the management have been equally vocal about Ramirez’s behavior.  He even missed Game 1 in their latest series against the New York Yankees, showing up to [...]

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Favre’s Impending Return

July 26, 2008

Is anyone else getting sick of all this?  I remember at the end the last NFL season, the great Brett Favre finally retired.  Everyone was nostalgic, some even perplexed since he obviously still had talent, even I here at AOR provided a glowing post as a career epitaph for a man who always looked like he was [...]

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“He Ventured Forth…”

July 25, 2008

The latest piece from Times Online editor, American Gerard Baker, first came to my attention about an hour ago and it’s a doozy! 
His latest op-ed is absolutely awesome.  Baker takes the media’s open desire to make Barack Obama the Savior/Messiah and completely pokes fun at those who have this view (he also calls Gordon Brown, Gordon the Leper!) [...]

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Heil Obama!

July 24, 2008

As we know, Our Savior Barack Obama will be giving a much anticipated campaign speech today at 7pm local time in Berlin, Germany.  Not only will the locals be flipping a $786,000 tab for the non-President’s visit (how nice of him to let the Germans pay for his campaign bills), Hot Air picked up that the campaign’s chosen site [...]

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Too Soon for McCain’s Veep Pick?

July 23, 2008

Word leaked out the other day from Robert Novak, that McCain may make public his selection for his Vice Presidential candidate this week. 
I believe this would be a bad idea if McCain goes through with it:  he wants to make a choice which counters Obama’s pick to ensure the strongest Republican ticket; with Obama overseas [...]

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We’re Not an Obama Nation Yet, But Try Telling That to His Campaign!

July 22, 2008

One of the major themes of Obama’s trip abroad has been trying to make him look Presidential.  In all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the trip, Obama’s people sometimes forget that he, in fact, is not yet President.  Also, sometimes they have to be reminded of that little detail a second time on the same [...]

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Movie Review: The Dark Knight

July 20, 2008

WARNING: No true spoilers, just a lot of “insider baseball” in regards to the fantasy genre. 
Thus far, Christopher Nolan’s take on Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One series is leaps and bounds better than any of those goofy Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney movies, which all seemed too comic-like to be [...]

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Elisabeth and Whoopi Discuss the “N-word”

July 19, 2008

On an episode of this week’s “The View” the ladies were discussing Jesse Jackson’s hypocritical use of the “n-word” in the same interview where Jackson voiced his desire to castrate Barack Obama.  For some reason Fox News didn’t release the part of the film in question to the public, but it leaked anyway. 
Either way, this exchange broke out [...]

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Obama’s Media Darlings to Follow Him on Trip

July 18, 2008

As if there was any doubt about the MSM’s Big Three network’s bias towards Barack Obama, this removes all suggestion to the contrary.  Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams, and Katie Couric are all going along on the trip!  John McCain’s been to Iraq three times since campaigning began last year (that sound you hear is crickets), and eight [...]

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Finishing the “Real War” in Iraq

July 17, 2008

There’s this story going around the AP this morning which indicates that some soldiers are longing to go to the “real war” in Afghanistan, as Iraq is becoming the more quiet of the two battlefields lately.  With violence against Coalition troops in Iraq on pace to be the lowest in years and the Dems even [...]

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Romney Veepstakes Buzz

July 16, 2008

Although Mitt Romney is refusing to speak about whether or not current talks with McCain’s camp are taking place or that background info has changed hands, his stock in the Republican Veepstakes is rising as the press needs a new political face to obsess over nowadays.  We all know how the press influences McCain, so their buzz [...]

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Obama Rewrites Iraq and Gets Stuck

July 15, 2008

On the same day that Barack Obama wants to rewrite his Iraq War position while continuing to insist that his position has never fundamentally changed, the McCain campaign seized on the recurrent flip-flop issue by noticing Obama’s changing website, which has suddenly brightened up the picture in Iraq! 
Well, updating one’s website is normal, but updating the basic [...]

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Bush Push on Oil Drilling

July 14, 2008

President Bush announced today that he is rescinding his father’s Executive Order which banned off-shore oil drilling.  And it’s about time in my opinion!  What’s interesting about this development is that Congress imposed it’s own separate ban, meaning that if off-shore drilling were to take place, both branches would have to agree.  Now, it’s solely in [...]

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InBev to Buy Anheuser-Busch

July 14, 2008

The Belgian brewing company InBev is going to buy Anheuser-Busch for $52 million.  While many details are still being negotiated, the deal will probably become reality.  If that is the case then, in my opinion there are two different ways of looking at this:
1.  This is a dark day for America.  As the Belgians buy-out the largest beer producer [...]

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I Knew Theodore Roosevelt and Senator, You’re No TR!

July 13, 2008

Well, the first part of that isn’t entirely true, but I did spend fifteen months writing a rather long historiographical thesis on Theodore Roosevelt back in college.  In that work I used some of John McCain’s campaign rhetoric from early 2000 as evidence of TR’s increasing influence amongst politicians of both parties today (I also quoted [...]

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You Stay Classy MSM

July 12, 2008

All decent human beings are saddened by Tony Snow’s death. Which brings me to the AP and the New York Slimes. On the very day Tony Snow passes away, the AP projected their own failures on to the brilliant and decent man:
With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster’s good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook [...]

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Tony Snow Dies at 53

July 12, 2008

Former White House Press Secretary, radio talk-show host, moderator of “Fox News Sunday,” and former speechwriter for Bush 41, Tony Snow finally succumbed to the colon cancer he had been battling for a few years now when he died at about 2am Saturday morning at Georgetown University Hospital.  Although they had removed his colon a [...]

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Phil Gramm’s Nation of Whiners

July 11, 2008

Wednesday, Phil Gramm, former Senator from Texas and Presidential candidate back in 1996, said the following in an interview with the Washington Times:
“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal [...]

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Jesse Jackson’s Very Loud Whisper

July 10, 2008

Here’s a clip of an off-the-air comment uttered by Jesse Jackson the other day about Barack Obama’s faith-based initiative:

Jackson, of course, apologized for the remarks, but nonetheless he still said it in an unscripted moment when he thought the cameras were no longer recording.  Obama’s done the same thing when he talked about bitter small town [...]

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Obama’s FISA Flip-Flop

July 9, 2008

It’s been really entertaining lately watching Barack Obama pretend that he’s a moderate and hasn’t changed any of his positions despite all the YouTube and print-media evidence to the contrary.  Today’s FISA reauthorization/clarification bill is a great example:
Here’s an Obama spokesman’s remarks from a talking-points memo from October 2007 on the issue of the FISA bill [...]

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Death of Competition in Health Care

July 9, 2008

For years, Conservatives have been sounding the alarm on the dangers of socialized medicine, pointing to the problems that socialized medicine has brought to Britain, Canada, and more recently, Austrailia.  Back in 2006, the People’s Republic of Massachusetts (of which I am a resident) took the first step towards socialized medicine by mandating full-care health [...]

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Terror in Turkey Kills Six

July 9, 2008

The US Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, was attacked today by four men in what the American and Turkish authorities are calling an act of terrorism.  Three of the attackers were killed, but not before taking out three policemen, one point blank to the head.  The fourth attacker unfortunately got away in a speeding car, as [...]

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New Poll: The Democrat Congress Sucks More Than Ever

July 8, 2008

For the first time in the history of scientific polling, Congress, which happens to be controlled at present by Democrats, has reached a new all-time low of a 9% positive approval rating in the latest Rasmussen poll!  Splitting it up, that’s 2% excellent and 7% good, 36% fair, and 52% poor. 
Yet, for some reason on a generic [...]

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Nadal Defeats Federer: A Wimbledon Classic

July 7, 2008

Roger Federer is the best male tennis player in the world in my opinion.  Watching him play is like watching an artist paint a great work.  He has recently won five consecutive Wimbledon Championships before being defeated in a dramatic fashion by the young clay wizard, Rafael Nadal yesterday [6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5-7), 6-7 (8-10), 9-7]. 
Some believe [...]

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Jesse Helms Remembered

July 7, 2008

It was very difficult writing any post that would push down Catherine Bell from front-and-center, but Marc Thiessen writes an informative piece today putting the late Conservative icon, North Carolinian Senator Jesse Helms (1921-2008), into a meaningful and positive historical context.  He was a Conservative before it was popular even amongst Republicans, and was sometimes the only [...]

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