Royals Review

hunter s. royal - January 23, 2012 reply

Chris Getz has a role model!

Eckstein's Throws To

1B from SS look like monumental efforts.

Blatant oversight...

How’d they miss “foam plus hands” for another Yuni Kauffman promotion?

Nighthawk at the Diner - January 23, 2012 reply

Sorry if I'm being daft, but is there a particular origin to the 'plus hands' thing?

Yodazilla - January 23, 2012 reply

There was an article in the KC Star (which seems no longer online) with this quote on Yuni:

“I see plus hands, good agility and range, and plus hands,” says an American League scout.

Jeff Zimmerman - January 23, 2012 reply

a meme that cropped up in every single game chat during the 2010 season

along with Phil’s love of the filmic masterpiece “Taken”

It's Like Everyone

Else saw a completely different movie. Unbelievably bad on every level.

But it has one really bad ass line in it though

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

averagegatsby - January 23, 2012 reply

Meh.

Guess you gotta have Liam Neeson growling it for it to work. This could be a line in every revenge/kidnapping movie ever.

OnixConcepcion - January 23, 2012 reply

You know

I quite liked that movie. It’s refreshing to see a protagonist who isn’t a “good guy”. If that makes sense.

Yodazilla - January 23, 2012 reply

I agree...

It seemed like Liam Neeson became Bourne Identity 2.0, with nothing really to add to the genre. But like Hit Girl in Kick-Ass, it became completely enjoyable to see what he’d do next.

I liked it from the standpoint

of if somebody kidnapped my daughter, I’d kill every motherfu^&er that got in my way of finding her.

johnny4 - January 23, 2012 reply

They Forgot The

Script, plot, character development, and avoidance of cliches. That kills it before the blatant xenophobia. There is not one genuine, believable moment in this film.

Good thing it's not a documentary then

There are however, these new things called “fictional stories” they’re quite amazing. apparently the point is to make up something that didn’t really happen, and in some cases, could never happen. It’s quite revolutionary. I highly recommend trying it.

DanielH123 - January 23, 2012 reply

This Was Just

An egregiously poor effort at making up a story. I watched this trainwreck with a video editor straight out of Hollywood. She was equally appalled. We walked out around the 50 minute mark. I’ve seen the rest of it. It is a travesty and a stain on Luc Besson’s reputation.
http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2009/2/5/taken-challenges-worst-movie-all-time/

But is “Taken” part of the exclusive “WMOAT” club? A WMOAT must rise above the level of just plain awfulness and take bad filmmaking to breathtaking, previously unseen heights. It must feature horrible casting, shoddy editing, cringe-inducing dialogue, no obvious logic driving its events, complete amorality, implausible happenings, stunts and advancement of time and be completely out of touch.

It’s by adhering to these guidelines that “Taken” not only knocks on, but kicks down the door to the WMOAT club.

Someone saw the same movie I did.

I find film critics infuriating sometimes

They feel the need to whine about every single thing they had an issue with. Furthermore, they judge every single movie on the Oscar Best Picture winner standard. They can’t say “Oh, this movie is just a simple action movie”. No, every movie has to be up to the standard of Casablanca/Gone With the Wind, with dialogue, story, intrigue, blah blah blah.

Your average Joe wants to see action in an action movie. Taken had some pretty darn good action. Therefore, I enjoyed it.

Yodazilla - January 24, 2012 reply

Exactly

Sometimes movies are about suspending disbelief and just taking the movie at face value. Is it likely that a father who kills his way to his daughter in France wouldn’t be somehow picked up by someone in authority somewhere along the way, or even if not, that he’d even find any sort of trail whatsoever to her? No, but that’s not the point.

Sometimes I want to see a story of a guy whose daughter is kidnapped, and he does what ever father likes to think he could do, which is kill every single mother fucker who had anything to do with it, or who gets in his way.

DanielH123 - January 24, 2012 reply

It's always the same stuff too

“Oooh, but the camerawork is so standard, and lame, and the dialogue isn’t brilliant or artsy. It’s not realistic, or plausible, and I don’t connect with the characters on a primal level; it’s not even like real life!!!! It’s like I’m watching a film.”

Does it have action? If so, how good? How about the music and sound efffects? Overall art direction? None of these things tend to be covered in an average film review. But no, critics always compare every movie to the objective standard and rarely compare within genres.

Yodazilla - January 24, 2012 reply

BUT IT WAS

SO POORLY DONE! I have no quarrel with the premise, it’s the execution. I loved The Long Kiss Goodnight, and it was no more realistic. It was just a better movie.

I know I'm not a "film critic"

(although I was in the past), but when writing about a movie, I definitely approach a film in regards to whether it accomplishes what it sets out to do, hence my love for Rambo and The Tree of Life.

Old Man Duggan - January 24, 2012 reply

Rambo Was 100X

Better than Taken per dollar cost.

Nighthawk at the Diner - January 25, 2012 reply

are either of them as good as Morrissey's Suedehead video?

He reads in a barn. He drives a tractor. He plays the bongos amidst a heard of cattle. He takes pictures of rural Indiana with an old timey camera. It’s the most abstract heartbreakingly earnest, pensive, erotic, zoophilia, ridiculous, sad, exciting, limited, pretentious, portentous, premature, middling, stratospheric, thrill ride I’ve ever forgotten about.

For pure entertainment reasons

I’m so pumped about Gingrich winning South Carolina. If Gingrich was out of the picture, we’d soon be left with watching Romney blandly bash Obama while Ron Paul rants about overseas spending and instituting a gold standard. It would have been a sad, boring end to a delightfully entertaining Republican primary season.

kcdc1 - January 23, 2012 reply

he doesn't have a prayer tho, does he?

winning SC wasn’t that big of a surprise, IMHO…if he wins Fla tho, that would be interesting.

Nighthawk at the Diner - January 23, 2012 reply

Winning SC wasn't a huge upset

But winning it by 12 points and having a 20 point surge in national polls was very surprising.

I’d still give him little shot of winning the nomination, but these events draw the process out and some political drama.

kcdc1 - January 23, 2012 reply

Romney was at 93% and Gingrich at 3% last week on intrade. Now Gingrich has risen to 27.2% and Romney has dropped to 66%.

I'd buy a bunch of Romney shares at that rate if I were a betting man....

kcdc1 - January 23, 2012 reply

They'll be lower after he loses Florida

After Romney loses Florida?

I’d bet a lot that Romney wins Florida. Their GOP voters aren’t as conservative or evangelical as those in South Carolina. And Romney is going to blanket the state with TV ads. Gingrich’s SPAC will put up some ads, but they simply can’t compete with the money Romney’s campaign his SPAC have. Also, Romney’s organization is all over the state. Gingrich can’t come close to his ground game. I think Romney will take Florida. I doubt it will be a blowout, but I also don’t think it will be a squeaker.

Nighthawk at the Diner - January 23, 2012 reply

To bad political corruptness costs most people money, opportunity, etc.etc.etc.

I’d rather have corruptness simply fuel righteous indignation.

Theoretically, a democracy should be among the least corrupt forms of government

Ours works pretty well, but there are other democracies that are much less corrupt. Part of that is cultural, but there’s reason to believe that there are mechanisms that we could copy that would make ours less corrupt (principally dealing with rules on elections and campaign contributions). Unfortunately we’re so proud of being the first (and longest running) constitutional democracy that we’re extremely hesitant to admit that anyone could have improved on our system and so we’re unlikely to change.

Honestly I think that's because government's gotten so large.

Less government = less government corruption. That’s part of why Ron Paul is as intriguing as he is.

Yodazilla - January 23, 2012 reply

All of the less corrupt governments are also larger (relative to country size) than ours

Think Scandanavia, Germany, Japan, etc.

Smaller governments (think Africa, South America, SE Asia) are associated with more corruption.

Or domestically, compare corruption at state or municipal governments to corruption in the federal government.

that doesn't translate straight

government size doesn’t equal corruption, in either direction. I am an anarchist and so think any government is inherently flawed, but size of government (or tax revenue, directly) only seems to relate to how much overseas spending a country can have. Smaller government, less military/foreign BS going on.

Corruption thrives in the absence of accountablility

For a variety of reasons (more media coverage, higher citizens interest in govt programs, higher citizen objection to taxes), larger governments will attract more accountability in democracies.

Smaller governments have much more corruption because nobody is watching.

KSinDC - January 24, 2012 reply

10% of the Florida votes

Have already been cast too, so that’s going to be huge for Newt to overcome.

Money makes a big difference in Florida

But I’m not sure that the different demographics matters much. Newt won basically every single demographic category in South Carolina. If Florida Catholics or moderate Republicans are like South Carolina Catholics or moderate Republicans, Newt will win again.

But money, organization, and reactance theory all say Romney should do much better.

At this point though

Newt doesn’t have to win, he just have to remain the viable alternative to Mitt.

Right, the race between Santorum and Newt in Florida is, in many ways, the more interesting one

I kind of think Newt needs to win Florida to have a real shot at the nomination

After Florida, the contest goes national and Romney’s money and organizational advantages get even bigger. Newt needs another win so that Romney doesn’t steamroll him, especially in the caucuses.

Newt's got some eccentric rich guys to bankroll him for a bit

And money rolls in if people want an alternative. But you do have to wonder how long it is before the GOP establishment steps in and tilts all the advantages to Mitt even moreso.

If the money were going to come for Gingrich, why hasn’t it come yet? I kept expecting the far right to coalesce around one not-Romney but it hasn’t happened, especially with regards to money.

Because his resurrection Iowa may have been seen as not enough

SC may have been kinda flukey, but if he does well in FL, he has kinda established himself as the alternative to Mitt in a way no one else has, assuming Santorum does not.

Santorum dropping out would help a lot

There being one conservative alternative would help Newt. But I just kind of see this playing out like 4 years ago. The Right wing keeps talking about needing to nominate a real conservative, not McCain, but he just keeps rolling, slow and steady.

Oh I agree

Its just not as inevitable as I thought even a week ago

What makes you think the money hasn't come in for Gingrich?

I don’t think we’ve see fundraising numbers for a couple months

I guess I was thinking about the 4Q numbers

Gingrich hit a pretty big peak in December and still didn’t bring in much money. That may well have recently changed. But I haven’t read any stories about big money flowing for him. I really don’t think he was raking in big money pre-SC. He may be now.

Unless I'm mistaken, the last reports filed were for 3Q2011

I don’t think we see Q4 reports until the end of January

I thought for sure I’d read about 4Q fundraising. Maybe it was just anecdotal. Or maybe I’m entirely mis-remembering.

But all of the analysis I’ve been reading has been talking about massive differences in fundraising and cash on hand between Romney and Gingrich. If Newt has been raising big money, he’s been closely guarding this secret. And I don’t think it would make sense for him to do so.

I think there are rumors, but I haven't seen anything official

And, of course, the big money goes to the affiliated SuperPACs and I haven’t even heard rumors on those numbers.

I just saw a tweet

That some rich dude signed a $5 mill check for Newt’s Super PAC today.

yup.

Sheldon Aldeson, and that’s his second $5M check. This one was “from his wife.”

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/fivethirtyeight/primaries/florida

538 gives Gingrich a 84% chance of winning Florida

Over the past 11 days, Rasmussen has seen FL go from 41/19 Romney/Gingrich to 41/32 Gingrich/Romney.

If the primary were held today, I'm sure Gingrich would win

But it isn’t today. And there are going to be a lot of commercials and ground game between now and then.

Well, Romney's dropping like crazy on intrade (FL Primary)

Go make some money.

I don’t think this bounce is going away as quickly though. But we’ll see what happens in these next two debates before next week’s vote.

Who knows what will happen from here, but...

Two days later, 538’s Florida projection now has Romney with a 52% chance of winning and Gringrich at 48%.

Scott McKinney - January 26, 2012 reply

(correction, that’s 3 days later)

And as of the afternoon of 3 days later, 538 has it at

Romney 69%
Gingrich 31%

Scott McKinney - January 26, 2012 reply

I didn't figure Newt would shank two debates

Mix in a plan to put a base on the moon, and top it off with a robocall claiming Romney didn’t let Holocaust survivors eat Kosher.

JonasDaMute - February 1, 2012 reply

Obama winning re-election

Went up quite a bit too, to 58%. I’m sure its just a coincedence.

I don't think the Intrade traders have demonstrated any particular skill in forecasting results so far

I don’t think the markets are demonstrating any wisdom when it comes to political predictions

Touche

I do think what happened in SC does improve Obama's chances

Because of what it means or could mean for the next couple of months. The results of the SC primary mean that Gingrich has some shot. And if he wins the nomination, Obama has a considerably better chance of winning re-election. But I think Gingrich is unlikely to win the nomination. But winning SC, and especially winning probably means he’s in the race longer. And the longer he’s in, the more body blows he the more body blows he lands on Romney. It also forces Romney to spend more money. Also, it pushes Romney to go more negative, which will increase Gingrich’s negatives, but probably Romney’s as well.

OTOH

Hillary made Obama a better candidate. Sometimes getting all the skeletons out of the closet in primary season is advantageous because more than half the country isn’t paying attention and if Obama raises Bain Capital again in September, its already a tired old story that has already been litigated.

Perhaps, but I don't really buy that

I don’t think Hillary made Obama a better candidate. I think Obama was a strong candidate and the political climate was right for him. I think he won despite the long fight for the nomination, rather than because of it.

I think Obama, with less experience, benefitted more from the extra practice than Romney will

But I do think long nomination battles unquestionably make campaigns better. Campaigning is tough and the organizations are built almost from scratch every four years. Practice in the spotlight, with feedback in the form of polling data, makes the whole campaign better, not just the candidate.

But I also think that there’s a big difference between a protracted battle where both candidates are acceptable to the party as a whole and a protracted battle where each candidate is unacceptable to broad swathes of the party. The former gives the campaigns are an opportunity to build electoral infrastructure in a way the latter does not.

I don't know. While there are positives, there are also big negatives

Obama has a big war chest for the GE campaign that hasn’t even had to touch yet. And Romney is now forced to spend a lot of money. That’s money that he won’t have for the general election. And I think the hits he’s taking now are damaging him. His negatives are up significantly over the last month, and this coincides with Gringrich, et al. going more negative.

Also, I think the “he’s not conservative” hits Romney is taking are going to hurt base enthusiasm for him in the general. That means less money and fewer volunteers. That would have a lot of consequences, including but not limited to less of a get out the vote effort.

I don't think there'll be any shortage of money once the nominee is chosen

Especially in the Citizens United era and with the rise of SuperPACs.

As to whether the party will rally around the eventual nominee, I guess, on the one hand, the nominee will have had to face more intra-party attacks and, on the other hand, the nominee will have had to build out infrastructure in all 50 states and will have the advantage to be seen as having truly earned the nomination where the whole party had a say.

I thought Gingrich pulled out of the race

If he can keep running with all of his scandals then Herman Cain might want to reconsider running again

AvilesRotY - January 23, 2012 reply

I Think The

Powers that be in the GOP know the economy will be shit for the foreseeable future and they don’t want the blame. They didn’t really want the presidency in ‘08, and they’ll be happy to punt in ’12.

i've seen reports stating the opposite

that most people care more about how the economy is trending, not how it’s actually doing. and that most economists/politicians assume that the economy will continue improving and carry Obama in 2012.

Loose Seal - January 23, 2012 reply

I don't really know anything (or care) about politics though

Loose Seal - January 23, 2012 reply

I think it's more that the economy might be good enough so it's not an anvil attached to Obama

The economy is improving, but we’re not seeing anything close to the sort of growth that would be associated with easy re-elections (e.g. 1984 / 1996).

Oddly, the entity with the most power over the election isn’t the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. It’s the European Central Bank.

More than the Stonecutters?

definitely will be trending upward by November

The Euro could collapse at any time and take our economy down with it

KSinDC - January 24, 2012 reply

I don't think so

There is a lot more than just the economy at stake. There are judgeships that will be occupied for a generation. That’s always a huge issue for Republicans, especially the social conservatives.

Besides, everyone thinks their ideology can turn the economy around.

Mitt is asking his wife for an open marriage as we speak

billybeingbilly - January 23, 2012 reply

isnt he already a mormon?

thought that came with the territory?

I've always felt like traditional Mormonism was one of those things that looked good on paper...

…like an orgy, only you have to remember everyone’s names and tendencies. I have my hands full and am holding on for dear life with one woman. I don’t envy Mormons.

Is this a new OT thread?

I’ve discovered Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale this week. It’s one of the only perks I’ve found of living in Ohio.

Other OT stuff

Anyone else have AT&T Uverse? My main frustration with them right now is that HD won’t work. Supposedly their box has problems with HDMI so they use component. Except our component cable looks like crap, its 480. HDMI will work at 1080, but every few months, it will start sputtering with a message of something like HDCP Can’t Link or something like that and I have to reset the box, or plug stuff in and out…except now it won’t work at all. Anyone know of a fix?

Call customer service and have them reset the box remotely

If that doesn’t work they will typically send out a tech, and I have always had good experiences with the techs.

BonoBootleg - January 24, 2012 reply

I thought they had a policy of not setting it up with HDMI

I’ll try and see if I can get better component cables from them.

RoyalsRetro - January 24, 2012 reply

logged in to say

Fuck Newt Gingrich. That guy scares me more than any recent politician. Philandering, ethics violation big government Conservative? How many contradictions can you fit into one profile?

I really don’t feel like getting drafted, thanks…

dude said he didn't rule out military intervention

with Cuba.

Jesus.

The Grinch Will

Say anything for attention. He is the classic back bench bomb thrower who found himself with some power by chance. He fucked that up so bad his party was virtually destroyed. He is unelectable above the municipal level.