Movie Review: The Lucky Ones (2008)

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Brian Wright

Intelligent comic drama about war and real people (7/10)

Kind of a road picture for soldiers home from the Iraqi front, I don’t think writer/director Neil Burger intends to make an antiwar statement… but pretty much any human being with a heart will take it as such. The quote above, “No, thank you,” occurs at several points in the story as these three soldiers, on leave—Fred Cheaver (Tim Robbins), T.K. Poole (Michael Peña), and Colee Dunn (Rachel McAdams)—make their way across the US. What happens is they have a transaction with a civilian who learns they’re from the front, and the soldier will say thank you to end the exchange, to which the civilian will say, “No, thank you.” With emphasis, expressing the fairly common sentiment that we have toward those in uniform.

In my previous review of the two (anti)war movies in the WW2 genre—Bridge at Remagen and A Bridge Too Far—I brought up the little used quote from Herbert Spencer:

“When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.” —Herbert Spencer. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Logic on Vaccines from Affected Parent

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Brian Wright

To the parent of an immunocompromised child who thinks my child is a threat
by Megan Heimer… excerpted from Living Whole article here

I am so sorry that your child has cancer. I cannot imagine how hard that must be for you. I am sure you are trying to do what you think is best for your child, even if that means requesting that I do something that’s not best for mine. There are no hard feelings here but I have to be honest with you…I too, have a number of emotions surging through my body right now.

Towards my children, I am feeling extra protective. Towards my rights, I am like a mean mama bear who got poked during the middle of a nap. Towards the creators of the hysteria that all of a sudden, for the first time in history, deemed one child more important and makes my child a perceived threat to everyone else’s, I am angry. Towards the parent of an immunocompromised child I am sympathetic, yet frustrated by the fact that you do not respect my choices, that you think my unvaccinated child is the only one who threatens yours, and that you would insinuate that my child should be sacrificed on the altar for your child. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: The Vaccine ‘Holocaust’ and Grand Juries

Posted on August 2, 2015 by Brian Wright

Recent excesses in government criminality cry out for all-American justice

The main news comes from the Vaccine Culture War front, courtesy Mike Adams of Natural News and Jon Rappoport of Nomorefakenews.com. Representative Bill Posey of Florida, on July 29, 2015, entered a statement into the Congressional Record regarding Center for Disease Control (CDC) scientific fraud—the Congressman appeals to his colleagues to launch a full Congressional investigation. Whistleblower Willliam Thompson, senior research scientist at the CDC, went public approximately a year ago that he and others helped destroy test data and other evidence showing that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine from Merck substantially increases risk of autism, especially in black baby boys.

“…the [CDC] co-authors scheduled a meeting to destroy documents related to the [MMR vaccine] study. The remaining four co-authors all met and brought a big garbage can into the meeting room and reviewed and went through all the hard copy documents that we had thought we should discard and put them in a huge garbage can.” (William Thompson, CDC researcher) Continue reading →

Book Review: Dave Barry Slept Here (1989)

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Brian Wright

A sort of history of the United States
by Dave Barry

What can one say that hasn’t been said already about Dave Barry, who sprung on the humor scene nationally in the early 80s with a syndicated column via the Miami Herald. “Funniest man alive” isn’t too far off the mark… and of course the question is why. What draws us to his zany worldview? That’s probably it! Dave Barry has a brilliant way of juxtaposing subjects, verbs, and objects of English prose from different worlds… that yield relevant commentary to our own experience:

“The typical lifestyle in the early colonies was very harsh. There was no such thing as the modern supermarket, which meant that the hardy colonists had to get up before dawn and spend many hours engaging in tedious tasks such as churning butter. They would put some butter in a churn, and they would whack it for several hours, and then they’d mop their brows and say, ‘Why the hell don’t we get a modern supermarket around here!’ And then, because it was illegal to curse, they would be forced to stand in the stocks while the first tourists took pictures of them. Continue reading →

Movie Review: State of Play (2009)

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Brian Wright

“All the President’s Men” meets modern-media reality (8/10)

Della Frye: Did we just break the law?
Cal McAffrey: Nope. That’s what you call damn fine reporting.

Not being a reader of Variety or really in tune with the machinations behind the scenes of modern film making, I was unaware until sitting down to write this review that the movie State of Play is a two-hour Americanized condensation of the critically acclaimed six-part British television series of the same name. The BBC series State of Play aired in 2003; if you look at the two IMDb records, the movie currently ranks 7.8 with viewers while the TV series ranks a full point higher at 8.8! Continue reading →

Guest Column: The Twisted Logic of Vaccines

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Brian Wright

Dumbed-down populations accept outrageous vaccine logic
by Jon Rappoport, Nomorefakenews.com 5 February 2013

Editor’s Note: I’m transcribing Mr. Rappoport’s entire column in this instance. Which I prefer not to do, but the issue is so important that people receive information as conveniently as possible from all sources. Please visit Jon Rappoport’s nomorefakenews.com Website and patronize his work and advertisers. He is the premier alternative (i.e. genuine) information source on the Web today and the absolute leader in claiming the benign, heroic world of our individual imaginations… destroying the collectivist Death Star once and for all.

I’ve written articles attacking the theory and practice of vaccination from a variety of angles. But the whole issue also needs to be approached from the perspective of logic. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: The SAILE Fallacy

Posted on July 26, 2015 by Brian Wright

Sacred-Authority Abstraction Impervious to Logic or Evidence
(Okay, it’s technically SAAILE… also more an addiction, syndrome, or disease)

So where did I come up with this line of thought? From near the front lines of the Vaccine Culture Wars… a college-educated lady friend recently reacts poorly to my communication of a succinct scientific analysis of so-called herd immunity with comments:

“Since the beginning of vaccination, there is little [i.e. no] proof [and no reason to believe] that vaccines are responsible for eradicating disease even when herd immunity vaccination levels (95%) have been reached. [Quite the contrary: ‘By the end of 1868, more than 95 percent of the inhabitants of Chicago had been vaccinated. After the Great Fire of 1871 that leveled the city, vaccination was made a condition of receiving relief supplies. Despite the passing of strict vaccination laws, Chicago was hit with a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1872. … vaccinating most of the population (which would later be termed herd immunity) did not protect the population from the scourge of smallpox.‘–Suzanne Humphries, Dissolving Illusions: Disease, vaccines, and the forgotten history. Innumerable instances of other mass vaccination failures exist, and for other diseases.] — parenthetical comments mine, bw

Note: virtually the entire range of fundamental logic that applies to the safety and efficacy of today’s vaccines is located in this essential column from investigative journalist Jon Rappoport. The knowledge in Jon’s column enables you to slice & dice provaccine shills.

Continue reading →