>> ^StukaFox:

"Oh Maggie, Maggie what did we do?"


))) Roger Waters ftw.

"Oh Maggie, Maggie what did we do?"

1. Yes, Randall should die. It's unfortunate, but by his own admission, he's already confirmed that the group he was with are not the most savory characters. He knows where the farm is and who Maggie and her family are. Plus, he knows that most of Rick's group are keen to kill him, which makes his motive for escape that much more enforced. At least his former group never tried to kill him. (We can't speculate here; only that facts that are presented to us, the audience) So he's definitely a liability to Rick's group.

2. Karl wants to prove himself. He's got two father figures telling him what to do, on top of a guarding mother. How should his parents approach the situation? Well...they haven't seen anything "wrong" yet, other than mouthing off to Carol. They don't know he stole Darrel's handgun, or confronted a zombie in the woods, etc. As for Karl wanting his Dad to shoot Randall, I'm sure Rick will have a sitdown and try to explain to him the logic behind his initial decision, and then the subsequent change of mind. Will he confess responsibility about the zombie? Tough call; if the writer's stick with the old Karl, he will. But Karl has changed (per his actions in this episode) and we never saw an apology to Carol. He could just shut down and harden up. Will the guilt get the better of him? I'd say yes, due to 1) he seems to have been brought up with a sense of justice and "doing the right thing" in part because of his father being a cop, and 2) at that age, when you screw up that bad, you don't just hide it away. He'll either confess, or confide in someone. I would have said he would have confided in Dale, but...well...you know....

3. Was it the right time to kill off Dale? Is it the right to ever kill of a character? Well, seeing as they've COMPLETELY strayed from the original Dale/Andrea story line in the original source material, I guess now is as good a time as any. My guess his Hershel will step up and take the mantel of the archetypal wise old man; it could give his character some redemption, if the writer's choose to go that route.
My immediate reaction to him dying was thinking "Well, Jeffrey DeMunn's off the show....I wonder what he'll do next with Frank Darabont..." Was his early death motivated by television politics....who knows. It seems to me that when you get an actor/director pairings, like DeMunn/Darabont, Russell/Carpenter, Depp/Burton, those tend to be pretty strong allegiances. I'm sure if there was some background gaffing over Darabont leaving the series, DeMunn was more than onboard with Darabont and wasn't surprised his character was killed off. I'll wait for the eventual news story/tell all book.

***Possible spoilers ahead if you haven't read the graphic novels***
As an aside, I'll cut back to season 1 for a moment, and what Jenner whispered to Rick before blowing up the CDC. I don't think he whispered some major secret to Rick; I have a feeling Jenner explained to Rick that "they" were the walking dead, and not the creatures outside. This is given in a huge, revelatory speech at the end of one of the books, don't remember which, after Rick breaks down from all the stress/guilt/death (that will eventually happen?). Seems a perfect fit into the storyline as they haven't mentioned it since the beginning of season 2 (when he's trying to reach Morgan on the radio). And I'm still waiting on Merle to show back up as the Governor.

Ha! I remember this. I don't think I've heard it since the 80s, unlike so much other 80s music which just never went away. There's an interesting page explaining the radio messages of the troubled flight - http://www.ommadawn.dk/design1.php?sideid=30&snak=

Between Maggie Reilly's vocals and the lyrics, this always sends a shiver down my spine.

Mike Oldfield - Five Miles Out.

What do you do when your falling,
You've got 30 degrees and you're stalling out?
And it's 24 miles to your beacon;
There's a crack in the sky and the warning's out.

Don't take that dive again!
Push through that band of rain!

Five miles out,
Just hold your heading true.
Got to get your finest out.
You're number 1, anticipating you.

Climbing out.
Just hold your heading true.
Got to get your finest out.
You're number 1, anticipating you.

Mayday! mayday! mayday!
Calling all stations!
This is golf-mike-oscar-victor-juliet
Imc cu.nimb...icing,
In great difficulty, over.

The traffic controller is calling,
"victor-juliet, your identity.
I have you lost in the violent storm!
Communicate or squawk 'emergency'!"

Don't take that dive again!
Push through that band of rain!

Lost in static, 18,
And the storm is closing in now.
Automatic, 18!
(got to push through!) trapped in living hell!

Your a prisoner of the dark sky,
The propeller blades are still!
And the evil eye of the hurricane's
Coming in now for the kill.

Our hope's with you,
Rider in the blue.
Welcome's waiting, we're anticipating
You'll be celebrating, when you're down and braking.

Climbing out.
(climbing, climbing)
Five miles out.
(climbing, climbing)

Five miles out,
Just hold your heading true.
Got to get your finest out....
(climbing, climbing)

Five miles out,
Just hold your heading true.
Got to get your finest out....
(climbing, climbing)

Climbing out.
Just hold your heading true.
Got to get your finest out....
(climbing, climbing)

Five miles out,
Just hold your heading true.
Got to get your finest out....
(climbing, climbing)

Climbing out.
Just hold your heading true.
Got to get your finest out....
(climbing, climbing)

Climbing out.
Just hold your heading true.
Got to get your finest out....

<grouch>How can Maggie be surprised at the second surprise? She just said it's something that happens that you don't expect!

And I don't think teaching kids to solve their balance problems by magic is a good idea... grumble grumble
</grouch>

However, I will forgive all of them, because Emma Stone, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Sesame Street are all awesome in their own ways.

I like how they yell at Maggie!... yeah... it's HER fault... Love this videos... always makes miss my pups... but i do so love them.

>> ^ant:

Maggie and Marge look weird.


Um, they all look pretty weird!

Maggie and Marge look weird.

Kinda reminds me of a more substantial Maggie Q. (The latest Nikita, who is a bone rack)

Below is an explanation of why it is both fair and logical for the rich to pay more taxes. Taken from http://www.zompist.com/richtax.htm The website also has an argument against the flat tax.

It was written a while ago (90s I'm guessing) but most of the points are still valid today.

For more than a century it's been generally recognized that the best taxes (admittedly this is an expression reminiscent of "the most pleasant death" or "the funniest Family Circus cartoon") are progressive-- that is, proportionate to income.

Lately, however, it's become fashionable to question this. Various Republican leaders have trotted out the idea of a flat tax, meaning a fixed percentage of income tax levied on everyone. And in their hearts they may be anxious to emulate Maggie Thatcher's poll tax-- a single amount that everyone must pay.

Isn't that more fair? Shouldn't everyone pay the same amount?

In a word-- no. It's not more fair; it's appallingly unfair. Why? The rich should pay more taxes, because the rich get more from the government.

Consider defense, for example, which makes up 20% of the budget. Defending the country benefits everyone; but it benefits the rich more, because they have more to defend. It's the same principle as insurance: if you have a bigger house or a fancier car, you pay more to insure it.

Social security payments, which make up another 20% of the budget, are dependent on income-- if you've put more into the system, you get higher payments when you retire.

Investments in the nation's infrastructure-- transportation, education, research & development, energy, police subsidies, the courts, etc.-- again are more useful the more you have. The interstates and airports benefit interstate commerce and people who can travel, not ghetto dwellers. Energy is used disproportionately by the rich and by industry.

As for public education, the better public schools are the ones attended by the moderately well off. The very well off ship their offspring off to private schools; but it is their companies that benefit from a well-educated public. (If you don't think that's a benefit, go start up an engineering firm, or even a factory, in El Salvador. Or Watts.)

The FDIC and the S&L bailout obviously most benefit investors and large depositors. A neat example: a smooth operator bought a failing S&L for $350 million, then received $2 billion from the government to help resurrect it.

Beyond all this, the federal budget is top-heavy with corporate welfare. Counting tax breaks and expenditures, corporations and the rich snuffle up over $400 billion a year-- compare that to the $1400 budget, or the $116 billion spent on programs for the poor.

Where's all that money go? There's direct subsidies to agribusiness ($18 billion a year), to export companies, to maritime shippers, and to various industries-- airlines, nuclear power companies, timber companies, mining companies, automakers, drug companies. There's billions of dollars in military waste and fraud. And there's untold billions in tax credits, deductions, and loopholes. Accelerated depreciation alone, for instance, is estimated to cost the Treasury $37 billion a year-- billions more than the mortgage interest deduction. (Which itself benefits the people with the biggest mortgages. But we should encourage home ownership, shouldn't we? Well, Canada has no interest deduction, but has about the same rate of home ownership.)

For more, see Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman's informative little book, Take the Rich Off Welfare.

How about social spending? Well, putting aside the merely religious consideration that the richest nation on the planet can well afford to lob a few farthings at the hungry, I'd argue that it's social spending-- the New Deal-- that's kept this country capitalistic. Tempting as it is for the rich to take all the wealth of a country, it's really not wise to leave the poor with no stake in the system, and every reason to agitate for imposing a new system of their own. Think of social spending as insurance against violent revolution-- and again, like any insurance, it's of most benefit to those with the biggest boodle.

Maggie was arguably the first to realise that...and its been fucking shit ever since.

The folks demanding more regulation after the financial crash, they were Johnny-on-the-spot back then, just like now. Maybe you can even get the same regulators, they did do a wonderful job after all.

What happened back then? Fuck all.
And what's going to happen now? Fuck all.

Some enforcement would be nice, but even old Maggie knew that you cannot hold an office without sucking up to the yellow press.

Maggie Doyne is my hero.

Glad to hear your reading Crake. >> ^bareboards2:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/vaporlock" title="member since December 4th, 2006" class="profilelink">vaporlock ... Maggie like you've never seen her.... I'm halfway through Crake. Hard to reconcile this Mags with the author of that great and sad book.

My government decided to stay out of this mess for the time being, but just like the Turkish, they are already on the verge of joining the party. I was suprised -- and baffled, really -- by the enormous amount of pro-intervention articles by the media, both progressive and conservative, and the lack of hard information therein. The most commonly named reason for supporting the intervention was international standing and diplomatical reliability -- and they don't even realize what fucked up reasoning that truly is.

And the political odour of this entire activism by Sarkozy and Cameron, it just smells like the gents at the pub I was last week: both have serious domestic problems, so one can't help but think of Maggie Thatcher's eagerness about the Falkland War. Fukushima certainly didn't help those two either, both are strong proponents of nuclear power.

Laughland mentioned Kosovo. Remember how the war criminal Slobodan Milošević was removed from power by supporting the UÇK? What a merry band of democrats that was, Hashim Thaçi certainly is one hell of a posterchild. Carla Del Ponte, former prosecutor for the ICTY, published some very insightful articles about it over the years, but the ones I have at hand are in German. Despicable shit.

As for the intervention in Libya: Al Jazeera had some informative op-eds about it, eg. "The drawbacks of intervention in Libya" and "Libya intervention threatens the Arab spring". And, as usual, Greenwald: "The manipulative pro-war argument in Libya".

I had five more paragraphs of personal opinion, but I decided to remove that block of biased rambling.