Buzz Aldrin punches moon landing denier in the face

Via examiner (more videos at the link):

But some still claim that not only Apollo 11, but all six Apollo moon landings between 1969 and 1972 are nothing but cosmic con jobs. One of their point men, Bart Sibrel, is a  wannabe film maker, with a reputation for stalking astronauts.

As a publicity stunt for himself, Sibrel set Aldrin up for an ambush attack of defamatory comments captured by Sibrel’s cameraman. He called Aldrin  “a coward and a liar and a thief.” I guess he thought the elder Aldrin would just give him some good, angry verbiage that Sibrel could edit later.

Instead, Aldrin threw a punch that rocked Sibrel. Sibrel later tried to file charges against Aldrin, but basically got laughed at.

New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit

Some highlights of an article from Bill Maher:

It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn’t do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn’t used to define us. But now it’s becoming all that we are.

[...] Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite’s day. I thought, “Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it.”

[...] And finally, there’s health care. It wasn’t that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.

But like everything else that’s good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they’re run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They’re not hospitals anymore; they’re Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America’s largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it’s not a right, it’s a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they’re always pushing the Jell-O.

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like “recision,” where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you’ve been paying into your plan for years.

[...] If conservatives get to call universal health care “socialized medicine,” I get to call private health care “soulless vampires making money off human pain.”

Michael Madsen has an idea.

Michael Madsen is a brilliant poet and a guy who — at one time — rated his own movies on his website as “watchable”, “unwatchable”, “skip it”, “pretty good”, or “can’t rate, never seen it”.  He also gave a brilliant interview to Opie and Anthony recently.  Here’s an excerpt (NSFW language):

The rest of the interview (5 parts) is available in the related videos at youtube.

Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla.

Ayn Rand was a bitch.

(picture source)

Independence Day: great movie, or GREATEST movie?

I’m not going to apologize for how lazy this MS paint photoshop job is.  They gave the aliens a cold.  Who’s lazier now?