Just call a spade a spade: they're liberals

Hillary Clinton proclaims that she is a progressive who likes to get things done.  Bernie Sanders proudly states that he is a Democrat Socialist.  

Great.  I am pleased that the confusion is all cleared up.  Neither wants to be labeled as a liberal.  But that's exactly what they both are: raging, blatant liberals.

While Bernie is much more inclined to take a wrecking ball to Wall Street than Hillary, whose Wall Street buddies are primarily funding her campaign, they both are philosophically joined at the hip.

As raging liberals, both Bernie and Hillary truly believe that the government is better suited to determine how best to allocate public resources, and they both believe that the more national resources placed under government control, the better.  And when the government hands out the collective goodies, they can control the benefactors of government largess to almost an unlimited degree.  And as raging liberals, this eventuality is exactly what both Bernie Sanders and Hillary desire: ham-fisted control over every American from cradle to grave.

As we have seen throughout history, when a government winds up with control over everything, the population suffers never ending hardships, shortages and unfairness.  Nobody in a government controlled economy has any more than the next guy.  If someone wants to work a little harder than his neighbor, that extra work will not be rewarded, but conversely the fruits of that extra labor will be confiscated and spread out to the collective.

Accordingly, hard work is punished.  Productivity plummets and nobody benefits in the dream world of Hillary or Bernie except Hillary and Bernie (and their buddies).  The rest of us suffer, as human nature takes over in a big way as the slothful worthless slugs among us quickly figure out that they are entitled to an equal share of the nation's GDP regardless of their effort.  In time, the free loaders will overload the system, as the go-getters also quickly learn that any extra energy they put into the economy will not benefit them or their families.  It's happened in every society that has ever fallen victim to total government control over its citizens' lives.

So let's just call a spade a spade: Democrat Socialists, Progressives, Communists, Potentates, Dictators, etc: they are all the same name for nearly identical philosophies: complete government control over the means of production.  

I still call the Democrats what they are: liberals.

"The Martian": a review

If you like colossal, steely-nerved efforts by the hero to overcome what appear by everyone to be impossible odds, you'll love "The Martian."

Matt Damon, as stranded astronaut Mark Watney, struggles to survive on the icy-cold, barren surface of Mars after his fellow crew members scrambled to evacuate before a killer Martian storm wrecked their space craft, and Watney was presumed dead during the chaos after being struck and carried off into the wasteland by blowing debris.

Watney survived, miraculously.  With only his training as a botanist, and McGuiver-esque ability to solve never ending life threatening problems one after the other with duct tape and tarps, Watney mounts his heroic effort to live.  In order to keep the meager survival assets brought by the initial mission together, Watney clings to life tenuously while the entire global community back on Earth mobilized every asset conceivable to mount a rescue.

The technical merits of the film can't be topped to date: the views of the bleak Martian surface truly take the audience into the experience, and the whole effect of Watney's dire circumstances are made real by the director Ridley Scott of "Gladiator" and "Alien" fame.

The  triumphant ending stirred a roar of applause in my theater, and I found myself among the admirers, reveling in the 'feel good' movie of the year; watching "The Martian" makes you wonder if there is absolutely nothing that can't be overcome with determination, guts and duct tape.

You gotta see 'The Martian.'  What a film.