Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 120

A double standard for data collection…

I can’t believe it! A news item in one of my favorite progressive newsletters, Common Dreams, aligns it with the movement to pardon Snowden. “’Pardon Snowden’ Campaign Takes Off as Sanders, Ellsberg, and Others Join” is an absurd article and this movement is ridiculous when you consider that Snoweden is as guilty of treason as Aldrich Ames, Jonathan Pollard, and Bradley Manning. Ames, a CIA analyst, spied for the Soviet Union. Pollard, a Naval intelligence analyst, spied for Israel. Manning,...

Monday words of wisdom…

You can love peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.—Robert Heinlein

In libris libertas!

Books by celebrities…

President Obama and First Lady Michelle will each write one after he leaves the presidency—maybe the ex-President’s title will be How I Learned to Love Hillary? Bill O’Reilly will probably come out with another Killing… book (he’s already killed Jesus). Elizabeth Vargas will probably have a sequel to her new book called An Alcoholic’s Secret Recipes for Cocktails. I’m also waiting for Roger Ailes’s manual for how to get away with sexual harassment for so long—I’ll put it next to my Win 10 man...

Obama has a few days left to pass test #1…

Obama will add a new nail in the coffin of his legacy if he fails the following test: He only has to wait until September 23 to pass up vetoing the bill that would allow 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia. For once, Congress threw partisan bickering aside and passed this bill in the Senate and the House by a margin wide enough to override his veto…if they stick by their guns. Of course, it might just be a ploy by GOP members to make Obama look bad, so Congress will have their own test to pass...

Monday words of wisdom…

The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as a right for its people.—Bernie Sanders

In libris libertas!

Movie Reviews #36…

Sully. Clint Eastwood, dir. I went into this flick with foreboding, the kind you get when an editor tells you your short story must be between 4000 and 5000 words long, and you have 2500, or your old high school civics teachers tells you that you have to write a paper on the entire industrial revolution in five pages or less. How can anyone possibly make a two-hour film about an event that took only 200+ seconds to unfold? I was expecting long flashbacks about the main character’s past.

There...

Cosmological distances…

Some excitement was caused recently by the announcement of an E-type exoplanet, Proxima b, a planet orbiting the red dwarf Proxima Centauri in the Alpha Centauri triple-star system (Alpha A is a G-type star like the sun, while B is a K-type star, but both are much brighter than Proxima). That system is about 4.3 light-years from Earth, or 40.14 trillion kilometers. (Conversion lesson: convert to statute miles.) The size of the Milky Way is about 100, 000 light-years, so Proxima is right aroun...

How will evangelicals vote?

Indeed, how will anyone with any moral underpinnings at all vote in the 2016 presidential elections? The two major parties have fielded the two worst candidates ever, and the two alternates come across as incompetent. On the one hand, you have the Donald, who will do anything and say anything, and most of the time it’s promoting hate and bigotry. The confrontation with the Mexican president shows his double-speaking capabilities, admiring the Latino spirit and presenting a contrite face in Ci...

Monday words of wisdom…

Vladimir Putin is a strong leader in the same way arsenic is a strong drink.–Gary Kasparov

In libris libertas!

September 11, 2001…

Carlitos, we can’t believe it’s been fifteen years…for you and all the victims of radical Islam here and throughout the world, be assured that you will never be forgotten, and we’ll eventually eliminate this mental aberration!