The Black Crowes have always been one of my favorite bands, and I have always despised the Rolling Stones.  A few years ago I was discussing this with a friend of mine and he said that he had always considered the Black Crowes to be a modern, American incarnation of the Rolling Stones.  I sat dumbfounded for a few seconds and realized:  He's basically right.

40 years makes all the difference in the world.

This isn't a movie, and it isn't really a "Western" -- more just a story about a West Texas rancher.  But it's one of the best stories I've ever read, particularly for Libertarians resisting the Government teat:

The Time it Never Rained by Elmer Kelton

Four years ago we moved from Austin to Chicago. Our moving truck cost $100. They were almost willing to pay ME to take a truck up to Chicago. Last year we moved back to San Antonio from Chicago. The truck cost almost $2000. It was worth every penny to be back.

Stand back and take a look at this entire conversation.Seriously, is it any wonder Conservatives can't get the youth vote?Oh well. That's fine. The Dems can have 'em, as long as I don't have to pretend to find Kanye culturally valuable.Also, having never read O'Brian, I have just ordered the first three books of the series off Amazon. Thanks for the recommendation, Peter.

I spent $8 at Starbucks this morning. The whole time I was there I was thinking what a steal my Ricochet membership is.

I do believe that this is classic Hollywood-style racism, and Katievs nails it:

Yep.  It's the idea that black character must always be presented as good, wise, and noble.  There's also the condescending assumption that audiences will feel sorry for black people. 

In other words, it's the Morgan Freeman effect.  It's not that he's incapable of portraying villainy, it's just that Hollywood is unwilling to paint him with that brush.

I see your point that no other deaths caused riots, but I think the choice to make Rue's district black was designed to create additional sympathy for them.  The audience will assume that, of all districts, their plight has been the worst.

So while I agree that it wasn't necessary to interject race into the story (Rue's character wasn't even identified as black in the book), I don't think the effect was to portray black people as unusually prone to rioting.  Rue's death could have been expected to create rioting for several non-racial reasons:

1) She was only 12 -- the youngest age possible for competitors.  The book makes clear that people considered it very unfair for a 12-year old to be selected for the games.  This would have made her death feel more unjust than the others.

2) Katniss covered her with flowers rather than abandoning her body, which was an act of defiance against the government.

3) Katniss gave a sign of respect to Rue's district upon her death, which would have had the effect of galvanizing competing districts against their common enemy -- the State.

Misthiocracy - I had exactly the same reaction. It looks totally fake. If this would have come from a modern special effects studio, the director would have sent it back and told them to try again. Funny, that.

Douglas is right. Liberals approach having children the same way they approach having jobs. Why go through all the trouble for yourself when it's so easy to commandeer the efforts of others?

Yes, it makes me extremely nervous to agree with Morris. I seriously don't understand how he still gets asked to appear on television. He epitomizes Thomas Sowell's axiom that intellectuals pay no price for being wrong.

I have to say, I'm feeling fairly optimistic about the election and here's why: Obama's popularity in polls is meaningless. People are very likely to answer phone polls favorably toward president Obama because of everything that he still represents. No independents or liberals want to say they don't like him, but I just don't think a large number of those people are motivated to actually cast a vote for him. The novelty has worn off, and so the youth vote will also evaporate to a large extent. I have no numbers to back this theory, it just seems logical to me. The only question is the level of Conservative enthusiasm for our own candidate.

Fail. It said I have a midland accent, but I'm from Texas. The only place in Texas it said I might be from is Dallas (a big city), but everyone here knows that Texas accents are the thickest up in Dallas. One of the questions should have been: do you use the word "y'all" as the plural form of "you"? I do, but I have basically no accent otherwise.

If Mitt Romney could talk about the goodness of wealth for everyone the way McElhinney does, he would definitely beat Obama. Wouldn't this message be a winner? "Mr. Obama wants to make everyone materially equal. I want to make everyone materially rich."

He's defining judicial restraint very differently than conservatives define it. To us, it means: overturning (or upholding) any law based on the Justices' extra-constitutional views, dressed up in frivolous constitutional arguments. He's acting like it means: overturning any law, regardless of constitutional justification. That's silly.

What are the chances that his professor's response to the dance was: "That sucked. Try again next semester."Now what are the chances that would have been the professor's response if the student had explained that his dance was a commentary on the destructive power of the socialism throughout human history?

Legal question: When the inevitable riots come and innocent people are killed or maimed following Zimmerman's likely acquittal, will NBC be held responsible for causing foreseeable harm to others by intentionally creating racial animosity in others?The chain of causation is obviously pretty tenuous there and probably sets a horrible precedent, but I think someone would be justified in filing suit against NBC if they suffer harm in a race riot -- assuming it can be proved that a rioter was motivated by the belief that Zimmerman is a racist, and received that impression from watching NBC.Does anyone know if a suit like that has ever been allowed? Sort of like a "dram shop" theory, without the element of intoxication.