Beasts of No Nation-A Movie Review

Follows the journey of a young boy, Agu, who is forced to join a group of soldiers in an unnamed West African country. While Agu fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country. We heard about this movie being on Netflix after hearing an interview with Cary Fukunaga on NPR’s Fresh Air. We started a little late last evening, and I didn’t expect to finish watching it before going to bed, but I couldn’t stop watching. While based on a novel, it was, from all I’ve read, a realistic portrayal of the life of child soldiers, and it is a sad life. This is an outstanding movie, but it is very difficult to watch.

Read more

Spotlight – A Movie Review

Starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Brian d’Arcy James and Stanley Tucci, SPOTLIGHT tells the riveting true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that would rock the city and cause a crisis in one of the world’s oldest and most trusted institutions. When the newspaper’s tenacious “Spotlight” team of reporters delves into allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, their year-long investigation uncovers a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of Boston’s religious, legal, and government establishment, touching off a wave of revelations around the world. Directed by Academy Award-nominee Tom McCarthy, SPOTLIGHT is a tense investigative dramatic-thriller, tracing the steps to one of the biggest cover-ups in modern times.

Read more

Big Talk About Terrorists

Suddenly, everyone’s a warrior in the war against terror. That is of course only the terrorists attacks that 1. Don’t involve white male American terrorists, and/or 2. Aren’t likely to actually happen in the first place. Take inspiration for the protection of the homeland from some Facebook posts from early this morning. Here you’ll see the batshittery we’ve devolved into in this country. It started with this fairly incoherent post, which I mostly just ignored after assuming the person who wrote it was either high, drunk, or both.

Read more

Christmas Cup Craziness

By now you’ve likely heard the craziness of some conservatives about Starbuck’s holiday cup design. You’ve probably heard about it because of one idiotic attention whore, who claims to be a pastor, Josh Feurerstein. He apparently managed to finally have a video go viral (trust me, he’s produced some doozies in his efforts to get attention), where he raises a stink about Starbucks, because of their holiday cup design…plain red with their green logo.

Read more

Evangelical Ugliness Directed at the Pope

Unless you live under a rock, you know the Pope visited the US last week. There was much hope that this Pope might further soften the exclusive tone of Catholic doctrine as espoused by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and while never moving to change doctrine, he did give several speeches indicating that he believed the Church’s emphasis needs to move away from culture war issues to caring for the poor and taking care of our planet. This, of course, set the hair on fire of many of America’s evangelical wing. When Ratzinger was Pope, they had a friend in Rome, but now the two branches of Christianity seem to be, once again, going their separate ways.

Read more

Tony Perkins’ Mouth is Moving, So He’s Lying

It pretty much goes without saying that, if Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council (FRC) is talking, he is mostly likely telling a lie. There may be no other group that spends more time perfecting the art of lying for Jesus than the FRC. Having lost the marriage-equality fight, they need a new demon to keep the dollars flowing in (grifters gotta grift), and lying for Jesus pays so well, so Perkins is now after Muslims.

Read more

The Home of the Brave?

We’ve pretty much that line in the National Anthem a joke, haven’t we. A few years ago, as part of a publicity stunt, some LED boards were put up in cities around the country, and we all freaked. Most recently, we have let a child’s engineering project scare the crap out of us. We’ve become a nation of nasty, sniffling cowards. Let’s just be honest about it. Anyone that doesn’t look like us or believe exactly as we do is automatically a threat. And now, to cover our own embarrassment, we double down on the ugliness towards the kid. What a bunch of brave people.

Read more

Is Huckabee the Biggest Jerk in America?

So Mike Huckabee’s latest rant against the Black Man in the White House. President Obama has nominated Eric K. Fanning as the Secretary of Army. What has the Huckster’s knickers all in a wad? The fact that Under Secretary Fanning happens to be gay…because, clearly, Rev. Asshole doesn’t think gay people should have jobs.

Read more

Dark Ages in America: Now?

In the previous century, America, through public and private cooperation and investment built an unrivaled infrastructure. We became the country that invented the things of a new and exciting world, and we built those things. We put in place a social safety net. We weren’t perfect, but we tried, and We looked to the future with excitement and anticipation, but today, we seem to be in a rush to go backwards as far and fast as possible. We fear everything, and demand absolute security, and think it can be found in some nostalgic past.

Read more

Scott Lively Loves Him Some Nazis

Scott Lively is an attorney who heads up something called the “Abiding Truth Ministries.” He’s risen to some prominence lately by taking his message of hate and bigotry towards LGBT people international. He found an especially receptive audience in Ugandan government officials, and helped pass anti-gay legislation which called for the death penalty for homosexual acts. His latest screed on World Nut Daily uses the same tired claims.

Read more

Science vs Jindal

Well, Bobby Jindal succeeds, yet again, in making an idiot of himself. He apparently decided that he should tell President Obama what the President should and shouldn’t say during his visit to New Orleans. An article on Think Progress discusses Jindal’s fear that actual facts and science might be discussed in Louisiana this week.

Read more