The History Channel is to history what baconnaise is to condiments.

I was trying (but have failed) to find a War Nerd column (highly recommended reading) on the subject of american military revisionism in WW2. The Sherman "makeover" as actually being a really nice tank and yadayadayada was part of a larger jingoistic effort during the start of the current desert wars. Remember those days of red, white and blue fever? Wonder if the History channel will make a doc on that...

As for the Sherman, you just need to look at it. I would call it a VW Beetle with a turret mounted on top, but that would be insulting a fine car.

The truth of course is that the real WW2 was fought on the eastern front and the might of the Wehrmacht was only halted by rivers of Russian blood.

i hate the term history buff...

it makes it sound negative to actually want to know what has gone on before our time, to give us more insight as to where we are and where we are going

those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it as the saying goes

yeah, Regan was the "golden age" to alot of conservatives... funny though because alot of what he accomplished wasn't really conservative

but i'd say the downfall of both parties is closer to the era after JFK than Regan, though bankers were corrupting the system since Eisenhower

History of Hardship makes it sound almost like it's not someones fault. When largely the coup and the troubles in the early to mid nineties can be traced directly to America.

The latter star Wars trilogy were the most disappointing pieces of shite in the history of film making. I walked out of the theater half way through two of them. In comparison, Dune was a fricken' masterpiece. Of course this is only my opinion, and I know some people get hard-ons for all things Star Wars.

Humpty Dumpty's American History X

Edward Norton knows how good looking he is and so decided to overpower director Tony Kaye's American History X film, making his own edited cut. This infuriated Kaye, who then demanded that his name be removed from the credits and replaced with Alan Smithee. However, the DGA and the studio refused his request, and also his subsequent request of using the name Humpty Dumpty. Why the refusal? Kaye had publicly attacked the film in national publications, which is against the Alan Smithee policy of the DGA. Imagine Humpty Dumpty's Great Fall remaining unattributed!

Source: http://www.miamipoetryreview.com/2008/04/urban_legends_of_cinema_2_the.html

I guess you couldn't have predicted it, but I think you'd eventually regret disowning IMDb's 39th top film of all time.

Republicans make rich people richer, and that's all that McCain cares about.

This Joe guy is a fake and $250,000 is not rich.

And the vast majority of us make much less than $250,000 primarily because there are no jobs in this country because the fucking Republicans have been shipping them overseas by the boatload.

And the jobs that do exist are still being paid wages that were considered shabby even by the standards of the 1990's.

Bush gave the rich the biggest tax breaks in history - did it make our country richer, stronger, better?

Fucking wake up.

Going online today. History in the making!

The brand and these history book peeps make strange bed fellows.

LOL! You are funny, schmawy! I don't think I've ever seen anyone downvote their own post before. History in the making right over here!!!

I know. Let's not learn from history. Let's make the same gruesome mistakes again and again until the whole planet is dead.

WTF...no...this is history in the making...learn a foreign language and get your exercise at the same time! Those crazy Japanese...what will they think of next?

^ that's just bollocks. you have to ignore american foreign policy and world history entirely to make it fit.

violence creates violence. only the weak and stupid lash out, because they can't think of anything else to do, and they completely fail to see the situation from the other side.

QM have you ever lived in a different culture and tried to understand it?

How do you ignore the enormous profits made in war? You really think it's about protecting us? Keeeeyripes.

Wearing "thin" is it? Oh well I guess the only option is to take a leaf out of mohammed's book and level tehran, right? that would probably not escalate into a worse shitstorm, right?

You just want permanent and increasing war, that's the only conclusion from what you say.

So are you in the army or just spouting shit from behind a plastic keyboard?

on a lighter note:
i lol'd http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/29/bush_portrait_rumpus/

MarineG,

I think the trouble is with the concept of fighting 'terrists'. There isn't "al-Q" coming from all over to Iraq to fight there. Does that even make sense? So Iraq is like a pest trap where Japanese Beetle fall in the water?

Look, the vast, vast majority of people there with guns are insurgents, aka pissed off people who have lived there their whole lives. I guarantee if some country occupied your hometown you would also become an insurgent. Now we have sectarian war and ethnic cleansing going on.

The US has no business staying there. It would be one thing if anyone in the puppet regime even wants us there, but they don't. It would be another thing if the US was doing a good job with even basics like water, electricity, infrastructure, but they haven't. We have left people stuck with almost NO electricity. Wasted billions on rebuilding projects, lost billions of money that just vanished. Guns are being given and sold to who know what, all over the place. If we wanted peace there, we would be ARMING BOTH SIDES.

The goal is to keep it as unstable as possible to keep access to the oil. It is the biggest screw up and illegal war in modern history. Staying there makes less sense especially when people admit what a bad idea it was in the first place.

So you came home drunk from the bar and wake up next to a 350lb, one legged, inbred 45yr old cougar. So you keep dating her because you were duped, and you already invaded her. You already setup shop, and it's going to upset her if you leave...

This kind of trailer is history in the making. It was an incredibly potent ad for paramount picture to promote a movie that no one knows the name off. Got a lot of buzz generated from it.

The New Orleans Museum of Art has a large water color of his.


For those folks unfamiliar with his work, here is a brief snippet from the Wikipedia aritcle:

"Darger's human figures were rendered largely by tracing, collage, or photo enlargement from popular magazines and children's books. (Much of the "trash" he collected was old magazines and newspapers, which he clipped for source material.) Some of his favorite figures were the Coppertone Girl and Little Annie Rooney. He is praised for his natural gift for composition and the brilliant use of color in his watercolors. The images of daring escapes, mighty battles, and painful torture are reminiscent of events in Catholic history; the text makes it clear that the child victims are heroic martyrs like the early saints. One idiosyncratic feature of Darger's artwork is an apparent transgenderism: Characters are often portrayed unclothed or partially clothed, and regardless of ostensible gender, some females have male penises. Some feel Darger was unfamiliar with female anatomy, that he meant it as a symbol of power (a chapter of In the Realms of the Unreal includes an articulate rant on the ability of girls to accomplish as much as boys), or that he modeled the girls after images of the infant Jesus."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger