A script leaked last month, and it's weak.

Wonder Woman has a sort of odd backstory: She is literally an Amazon from Greek myth, from a hidden Amazonian island called Themiscyra, and she literally was created from clay.

DC's always had a problem with pushing her as a property outside of the comics due to the weirdness of her kitchen-sink origin tale. The DC Animated Universe approach is to deal with this strangeness by simply embracing it, full on, and just committing to it. It actually sort of works. Weird, yeah, but once you accept it, it's no weirder than any other superhero origin story.

David Kelley's solution to all this seems to be making up other weird stuff to weigh the character down with. And then giving her a Carrie Bradshaw weeping-for-Mr. Big vibe.

The Daily Beast has obtained a copy of Kelley’s draft of the Wonder Woman pilot script, dated December 16, 2010—and it’s laughably bizarre. In Kelley’s vision, Wonder Woman is presented as a weepy career woman-slash-superheroine with three identities (Wonder Woman; Diana Themyscira, the chairman of Themyscira Industries; and mousy assistant Diana Prince) to juggle.

What? I can only imagine this is David Kelley's attempt to at some kind of psychographic cleverness, attempting to show the three sides of every woman -- like, who she is, who she wishes to be, and who she is in her dreams.

It's gotta be that. Because, if not that -- then why? The superhero secret identity is already dumb (but obligatory) but now you're going to compound that by giving her a third identity?

The pilot episode, which Kelley notes is designed to run “without commercial interruption,” revolves around Los Angeles-based mega-billionaire Diana—who collects planes and a multitude of transforming aircraft called “Ultimates” (no invisible plane in sight here)—as she attempts to take down an evil pharmaceutical company run by morally corrupt scientist Veronica Cale, who is mass-producing a human-growth hormone that is causing its users, mostly black inner city youth, to die. Along the way, she tackles criminals, a Senate subcommittee, and a broken heart, the latter courtesy of lost love Steve Trevor.

Okay, whatever. Apparently she just can't be a clerk in her everyday life because that's not feminist or something.

The writer ticks down the eight stupidest things about the script. Here are some lowlights:

The irritating conceit of Diana having three identities gets even more irksome when it appears that she has not one but two places of residence, including a poky West L.A. apartment.

...

Pages 26-28: One of the most gasp-inducing moments in the script is when Diana has a meeting about the “Asian Wonder Woman” doll that her company is about to go into production on. Yes, Wonder Woman admits to being uncomfortable with the doll’s ample anatomy, leading to a discussion of the size of her breasts and how people are let down when they see her in the flesh. But she seems to understand that the merchandise division helps pay for crime-fighting. “Big tits save lives!” she says, joking, I think. (Yes, read that bit again for good measure.) But the image-conscious Diana draws the line at a fat Wonder Woman. Har har. If you thought this laughable script was missing fat jokes, well, now you’ve got them.

...

But the worst has got to be the way Diana addresses the group, saying, “OK, class, we got ‘bidness.’”

Ah well, at least she didn't give some stemwinder speech in which she offers a bunch of Mary Sue liberal pieties.

Wrong.

Pages 38-47: In the scriptÂ’s most painful sequence, Diana is subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and forced to give testimony about the events in Hollywood. She ends up filibustering about everything under the sun for several pages: the politics of the LAPD (name checking ex-police chiefs Daryl Gates and William Bratton), the economy, stimulus funds, pharmaceutical companies, Roger Clemens, the FDA and the FCC, and how networks will air commercials about erectile dysfunction but not for condoms. ItÂ’s clearly meant to be a showcase scene for the actress playing Diana, a calculated bid at awards and social relevance. Congratulations, David E. Kelley, the transformation of Wonder Woman from superhero to personal mouthpiece is now complete. Adding further insult to injury: real-life California Senator Dianne Feinstein is described as giving Diana a thumbs-up.

I've said this about comic book properties before: They are what they are. Attempting to change them into something they're not results in both commercial failure and professional embarrassment.

As dopey as it was, the old Lynda Carter series seemed to understand the thing was what it was: a dopey power fantasy for girls, with a hero that punched out poachers, counterfeiters, bank robbers and spies.

Is this is the script they're going with: I can't wait. Seriously, I love watching grand spectacles of professional failure.

Bring it on, baby. Bring it on.

You Know... Once you've made the decision to basically re-write the whole character, why not go towards simplicity and plausibility, rather than making up new stuff that's even more implausible than the original story?

Real simple: A government-connected corporation like Rand has gone rogue and is creating female super-assassins on a private island. It's called Project AMAZON. Why only females? Because the gene therapy that makes super-assassins fatally damages the Y chromosome. So only women, with their XX, can survive the process. That's why.

Our heroine is an amnesiac due to Project AMAZON's mind-programming method of teaching. She can only remember bits and pieces of her life, and usually it's filtered through Greek mythological imagery, for some reason. Maybe because the codenames in the project were draw from Greek Mythology so when she thinks of the evil cad who tormented her to increase her resistance to pain she imagines Hades.

She escapes the island. Since she's programmed to do a bunch of spy-type things, she creates the alias "Diana Prince" and hacks it into US military records, assigning herself the position of clerk in a military base, where she figures she'll be safe.

Oh, she escapes with a pair of silver bracelets and a lariet whose function she doesn't understand. Later on she'll realize it's some kind of neural-cord that allows her to weaken and stun enemies (and compel them to tell the truth, but that's later, after people have accepted all this other craziness).

Later she'll steal a prototype partial invisibility stealth F-22.

There, done. Now she has flashbacks to her "Greek mythological" origins and kicks ass with all sorts of super-strength and super-agility and dresses up in the American flag when fighting evil. Plus there's an explanation for a series of female assassin villains for her to beat up.

Anyway, even though that's obviously not her actual origin story, it's simple, mostly.

Instead, David E. Kelley's making her CEO of Themiscyra Industries and giving her two, instead of the customary one, secret identities.

Posted by: Ace at 02:50 PM | Comments (624)
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This is, of course, Cloward-Piven.

The tapes are at Beck's The Blaze. Gee, I wonder what he'll be talking about today.

Here's Business Insider digesting the tapes.

The former SEIU official, Stephen Lerner, spoke in a closed session at a Pace University forum last weekend.

The Blaze procured what appears to be a tape of Lerner's remarks. Many Americans will undoubtely sympathize with and support them. Still, the "destabilization" plan is startling in its specificity, especially coming so close on the heels of the financial crisis.

Question: Would the media feel the need to inject this "sympathy" caveat into a report of a plan to destabilize the country coming from the right? Of course not. They always feel the need to push the idea that the left has the right ideas in its heart, even if you disagree about the details of execution.

Lerner said that unions and community organizations are, for all intents and purposes, dead. The only way to achieve their goals, therefore--the redistribution of wealth and the return of "$17 trillion" stolen from the middle class by Wall Street--is to "destabilize the country."

Lerner's plan is to organize a mass, coordinated "strike" on mortgage, student loan, and local government debt payments--thus bringing the banks to the edge of insolvency and forcing them to renegotiate the terms of the loans. This destabilization and turmoil, Lerner hopes, will also crash the stock market, isolating the banking class and allowing for a transfer of power.

Lerner's plan starts by attacking JP Morgan Chase in early May, with demonstrations on Wall Street, protests at the annual shareholder meeting, and then calls for a coordinated mortgage strike.

Lerner also says explicitly that, although the attack will benefit labor unions, it cannot be seen as being organized by them. It must therefore be run by community organizations.

Business Insider notes Lerner was forced out of SEIU last year for spending millions pursuing some kind of plan that looked a lot like this.

But you know who's scary? The Tea Party, man.

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (401)
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As someone said the other day, hey, why do I have to keep reading about this Lee Stranahan guy I never heard of before last week?

Well, because he keeps writing posts like this. Actually, he's written more; it's like a free-fire zone on the dishonesty of the left over there.

But I'll just link this one.

It was an appearance on Good Morning, America with Andrew Breitbart and Eric Boehlert. IÂ’d watched it because I knew Eric Boehlert, whoÂ’d written about me and the John Edwards story in his book Bloggers on the Bus. So when I watched, I was a lot more inclined to agree with Boehlert than Breitbart.

[video deleted; click on the link to see it -- by the way, the video really showcases why Breitbart is indispensable]

here’s a part in that segment where Breitbart discusses the story about racial epithets being yelled at members of the Congressional Black Caucus by members of the Tea Party; a story that was widely reported in the left wing blogosphere. It was so widely reported, I just assumed it was true but here was this Breitbart guy saying he had video tapes that proved the incident didn’t happened as described. Okay, that was interesting – maybe I had the story wrong and this Breitbart guy seemed eager to prove it,

And then – on live television– Eric Boehlert & George Stephanopoulos totally blew off Breitbart’s offer to show them the video tapes.

That stuck with me for months. The story was either true or not and here was someone eager to get to the truth and the liberal host and other liberal guest werenÂ’t a bit interested. And it seemed so dishonest. I knew if they thought the video proved their case, itÂ’d be shown all day and night. It didnÂ’t make me proud to be on the same side ideologically as Boehlert and Stephanopoulos.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (50)
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I couldn't agree more.

He actually does say that but of course he means slowed.

I'm not linking this for that weak joke, but for a decent column about the problems of Obama's liberal defer-to-the-French-because-they're-better multilateralism.

I can't help but recall Bush's impressively-pithy statement about all this: The mission should define the coalition; the coalition shouldn't define the mission.

But Obama, of course, disagrees. For him, it's all about process and paperwork:

First, multilateral efforts are marked by opaque decision-making and strategic vagueness. It is hard to get leaders from different nations with different values to agree on a common course of action. When diplomats do achieve this, it is usually because they have arrived at artful fudges that allow leaders from different countries to read the same words in a U.N. resolution and understand them in different ways. The negotiation process to arrive at these fudges involves a long chain of secret discussions and it necessarily involves eliding issues that might blow everything up.

...

The members of the coalition could not agree on answers to any of these questions [about the actual goals of the mission], so the purpose of the enterprise was left vague.

Second, leaders in multilateral efforts often obsess about the diplomatic process and ignore the realities on the ground. The reports describing how the Libyan intervention came about are filled with palace intrigue. They describe the different factions within the Obama administration, the jostling by France and Britain, the efforts to win over the Arab League. ItÂ’s not clear who was thinking about the realities in Libya.

...

In this, as in so many previous multilateral efforts, the process blots out the substance. Diplomats become more interested in serving the global architecture than in engaging the actual facts on the ground.

Third, multilateral efforts are retarded and often immobilized by dispersed authority and a complicated decision-making process. They are slow to get off the ground because they have to get their most reluctant members on board. Once under way, they are slow to adapt to changing circumstances.

Sure enough, the world fiddled for weeks while Qaddafi mounted his successful counterinsurgency campaign. The coalition attacks are only days old, but already fissures are appearing....

My main problem with "multilateral efforts" is that what these are always all about is France. What's the major difference between Bush's Coalition and Obama's? France. France was the big hold-out in the War in Iraq. They're on board with this one.

So while the liberal media dances in joy over this terrific new coalition, they're really just dancing that France is on board.

Further, they get the active agent and passive object reversed -- Obama did not persuade France to join the coalition. France persuaded Obama.

I have a whole post brewing about that but for now let me just say I do not think that a geopolitical strategy of "multilateralism" that chiefly consists of attempting to get a single, second-tier power on board is a terribly good one.

Posted by: Ace at 11:42 AM | Comments (94)
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I suspect this is a sockpuppet, but who can tell? It has the texture of authenticity.

Well, actually, I realized, I can tell. I can look up the IP.

I'll toss it out there -- is this real or fake?

Hey hey what is this long boringest angry rigthtwing war post doing?? Why can that cowboy BUSH shoot up the world asking just his American friends of Cheney, but this Black President asks every nation and you say he is a criminal? So he waits some time to reach the agreement, nothing is wrong with that.

Even in Sweden we get everybody's opinion before building a train or a public pool to swim. To kill people it is important not to rush in a teabagger crazy way.

-- Sven Hjartssen

Answer in white font (scroll over it with your cursor to turn it blue):

It's... fake, damnit. I'm 90% sure it's that darned comment-spoofer Paris Paramus again. Update: I'm not sure. I thought this IP was Paris' but he says no.

Actually now that I know, I guess it's pretty obvious.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (116)
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Of course he must.

Let's look at the weakness of those arguing he shouldn't have to. Ann Althouse rightly calls out the increasingly-useless liberal Dave Wiegel -- he's a long way from whatever "libertarian" beliefs he might have claimed to once have held -- for proposing a "despicable" theory of presidential war-making power.

It's simple: Most of Washington doesn't want him to [trouble them with an authorization for war]. To coin a phrase: If they want the president to do it, that means it's legal.

The Constitution does not specify that a secret ad hoc survey of Washington DC insiders as the necessary authorization for war. It demands that Congress -- the people's representatives -- cast a vote in favor of it.

Wiegel's evidence for this is that Lindsey Graham says it's not necessary to seek a resolution; but the Constitution does not say that one Senator shall speak for all on such matters, and even it did, I doubt Lindsey Graham would be elected to such a position.

The Constitution does not merely enumerate the powers of office; it also enumerates the duties of office. Certainly politicians, being politicians, would occasionally enjoy ignoring their Constitutional duties. That does not give them license to do so, however.

There is and always has been argued an inherent presidential war-making power in cases where the situation is moving too quickly for formal Congressional debate, and thus, any debate would in fact resolve the issue by default -- if national interests are at risk within hours, the President (it has long been argued) can act on his own authority, temporarily, to preserve the status quo ante so that meaningful debate over options can be had (in the sense that there will still be options remaining, rather than a fait accompli), and that the president, as commander in chief, can always act in the defense of America itself.

Obviously that last part is inapplicable here; America is not directly threatened by anything that happens in Libya. American interests are indirectly threatened, depending on hypothethical future contingencies, and that means that there may be a reason to act, but this sort of indirect, hypothetical threat is not enough to give the president license to act purely on his own authority.

As to the "we must not tarry" argument -- that is disproven wholly by Obama's perfect willingness to debate this for weeks at the United Nations. He was perfectly willing to allow the rebellion to crumble to the very brink of defeat in order to secure United Nations authorization; obviously, then, this was not a "we must not tarry" situation, because the President tarried quite a bit. In fact, he tarried so much that the situation may now in fact comprise an unrecoverable loss.

Two weeks ago I linked a Politico piece reporting a UN official stating that even though Qaddaffy's tanks and jet bombers were routing the rebels, they were going to debate each and every point and word of the UN resolution as usual.

Furthermore, of course, Obama himself was willing to wait until last Tuesday before making any decision. The fact that he decided to wait until the last minute to make a decision does not disoblige him from seeking authorization from Congress.

The UN debated this matter for two weeks; it was of course perfectly possible for the United States Congress to debate it concurrently over the same period of time.

What is preposterous here, and offensive, is the apparent belief by Obama that an international Tyrant's Club created in 1945 is the true, genuine war-authority authority while the Congress specifically named in the Constitution as the war-approving authority is... what? Nothing, apparently. The international tribunal called the United Nations has, somehow, without a Constitutional amendment, displaced the Congress as the lawful tribunal for approving the injection of United States armed forces into war.

When did that happen? When, as United States citizens, did we all agree that we should no longer have the democratic power to decide when we would and would not go to war, and would instead leave the matter up to foreign powers, many (most) of whom are allied against us in one fashion or another?

Obama believes this did happen. He doesn't think we agreed on it, of course, as he knows, surely, that no such vote every took place. But he thinks that those International Representatives are much more competent to decide the fates of Americans and so, consistent with his left-liberal worldview, such responsibilities and powers are taken away from the American public and reposed instead in "better" people, either a small self-declared American elite or a foreign elite, better able to make decisions on behalf of ignorant, uneducated Americans.

This is simply liberal royalism, the de facto creation of royal prerogatives and royal duties in which the appointed royal class -- trained to be better at thinking, supposedly -- decides all major controversies on behalf of the ignorant underclass and lets the underclass take votes on the less-important stuff, just so they can feel involved.

This won't do. This isn't America.

Contrasting Bush and Obama: One made a case for war to the American people, got Congressional authorization for that war, and also, just as a bonus, secured a fresh demand from the UN demanding a tyrant comply with previous UN resolutions.

The other has barely spoken on this issue, has not made a case for war to the public, did not secure a Congressional authorization, and relies solely upon a UN authorization as his legal pretext for making war.

Of course one was praised and the other despised.

There are prudential reasons to do what Bush did, too, of course-- and those matters of prudence are the reason the Constitution demands a formal democratic debate on such a critical matter.

Obama has not made a case for war. He has not announced our goals in Libya. Because of this, his highly changeable mind concocts new goals almost on a daily basis.

This is imprudent in the extreme. If you're going to war, you should at least have a sense of what you're attempting to win. For Obama, wayward in his sloppy, undisciplined thinking, displacing Qaddaffy is sometimes not a goal, sometimes a goal but not a military goal but instead only a diplomatic one, and, today, suddenly a goal.

Which is it? Depends on Obama's mood, I suppose. The United States armed forces are currently engaged in war with a goal that shifts according to the mood swings of a, ahem, post-masculine man.

It is possible to muddle through successfully -- to blunder through safely with the luck of the staggering drunk -- but this is hardly optimal, and I think our troops -- and our citizens too -- deserve an optimal situation when we go to war.

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (317)
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This ad is from 2006. I believe that Air McCaskill's nearly $300,000 in unpaid taxes started being unpaid four years ago, so that would either make this a lie or a statement which was currently true but about to become a lie.

Either way, it's going to be replayed a lot by the Republicans.

Actually, I don't think it will. Air McCaskill was already "very vulnerable" according to pollsters. I think this is fatal. Democrats spend all of their time screwing up people's lives and ruining the economy; their one big selling point is that they "share your values," so at least you know that the people destroying everything that's important to you are from the lower middle class (broadly defined to include the middle upper class).

McCaskill doesn't have that anymore, so her appeal will be strictly on the Destroying America plank. I do not expect her to stand for re-election in 2012; I think she'll wind up dropping out.

But I could be wrong, of course. Blanche Lincoln stuck in there, bless her little loser heart. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:12 AM | Comments (161)
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He's a God-King so he doesn't really owe you an answer but he's a generous one, so here you go. Now shut up.

Perhaps more interesting is a little nugget buried in the letter that implicitly justifies launching this invasion without Congressional authorization:

"QadhafiÂ’s continued attacks and threats against civilians and civilian populated areas are of grave concern to neighboring Arab nations and, as expressly stated in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, constitute a threat to the region and to international peace and security. His illegitimate use of force not only is causing the deaths of substantial numbers of civilians among his own people, but also is forcing many others to flee to neighboring countries, thereby destabilizing the peace and security of the region. Left unaddressed, the growing instability in Libya could ignite wider instability in the Middle East, with dangerous consequences to the national security interests of the United States."

Note the mention of the “consequences to the national security interests of the United States.” Some Dems are arguing that Obama needs Congressional authorization under the War Powers Resolution, which only allows the President to initiate military action without Congress if America is under attack or under serious threat.

This whole idea that there are US national interests involved here is simply argument by assertion. Obama keeps saying there are national interests involved but he never quite gets around to naming them.

If the danger of instability in the Mideast is a casus belli that doesn't require congressional approval for going to war, then every President since Truman had an open invitation to wage war there

In a different post, WaPo lefty Greg Sargent is really excited that Obama took a swipe at Bush while in Chile.

Crucially, Obama also took a tacit shot at Bush, comparing his own multilateral approach favorably to the former presidentÂ’s:

“In the past there have been times when the United States acted unilaterally or did not have full international support, and as a consequence typically it was the United States military that ended up bearing the entire burden.”

Again, this is simply argument by assertion. When did Bush act unilaterally? When he had far more nations supporting the US in Iraq and Afghanistan than Obama does in Libya? (here's an unofficial list. I can't find an official one. You'd think they be touting that)

And this awesome coalition? Yeah, it's falling apart 3 days in.

Norway and Italy said their participation in air operations over Libya depends on settling who will command the operation, as members of the coalition split over what role to assign to NATO.

The U.K. and Italy want the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to take over the leadership of military operations in Libya, a step resisted by France. Norway is demanding clarity. The U.S., which is now running the missions, says it will turn over the command role in days.

Turning things over to NATO is going to be a bit tricky because our, um, NATO allies, in Turkey are blocking it.

The United Nations should be the umbrella for a solely humanitarian operation in Libya, NATO member Turkey's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, said on Tuesday, staking out opposition to international military intervention.

Turkey has said it is unable to agree to NATO taking over enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya if the scope of the operation goes beyond what the United Nations sanctioned.

"Turkey will never ever be a party pointing weapons at the Libyan people," Erdogan said in a speech to deputies of his ruling AK Party in parliament.

(Turkey may be coming around but France is opposed to NATO command).

Oh and those "Arab" jets we were told would be flying the Libyan skies? Not so much.

The United Arab Emirates was prepared to deploy 24 aircraft to help enforce a no-fly zone over Libya but decided not to participate in the allied effort because of U.S. and European policies towards Bahrain, the former commander-in-chief of the U.A.E. Air Force said Tuesday.

"The U.A.E. was willing, and there were preparations, to deploy a significant number of aircraft for the no-fly zone, but a reprioritization--specifically the European and U.S. positions on Bahrain--did not satisfy the Gulf states to this end," said Maj. General Khalid Al Buainnain. Speaking on the sidelines of an Abu Dhabi conference, he said the U.A.E. had been prepared to deploy two squadrons of 12 aircraft each to Libya.

Qatar is still sending fighters (2 whole jets!) but that's not much of an upgrade on Bush's Iraq coalition since Qatar is the home to the forward deployed part of US Central Command is essentially where we ran the invasion of Iraq from.

I don't think we need to make this a Bush v. Obama thing but if lefties like Obama and his lapdogs in the MBM like Sargent are gong to make crap up, we need to call them on it.

*I took out a couple of lines about Sargent's opinion on the War Powers Act. I meant to remove them from the draft post prior to posting this but accidentally hit publish first.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:18 AM | Comments (222)
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All I can do is quote Richard Cohen, as dependable a liberal columnist as the WaPo has ever had:

The change that Obama promised has settled on us all like an irritating drizzle. His ideas were untested by either age or experience. It is one thing to decry American unilateralism and quite another to await international action when time is of the essence. It is not necessary for America always to lead, but it is sometimes necessary for it to do so — and always necessary for the president to know when that moment has arrived. Obama seems not to know. He often solves problems by ignoring them.

Cohen makes the obligatory liberal swipe at Bush towards the end of the column, but he's mostly going through the motions. And, yes, Richard, a lot of Americans knew that Candidate Obama -- not just his ideas, but the man himself -- was "untested by either age or experience", which is why a lot of Dems voted to nominate Hillary and why a lot of Americans voted to elected McCain. But thanks to the anointing of the Chosen One by the mainstream media -- you listening, Richard? -- no real due diligence of Candidate Obama was done, and we ended up with President Feckless.

Votes have consequences, but so does biased media coverage. How's that hope and change working out for you, Richard? ..fritz..

LATE BREAKING UPDATE:

Heh. ..fritz..

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:21 AM | Comments (90)
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This long article by Yuval Levin at National Affairs, entitled Beyond the Welfare State, is a fuller exploration of some of the things I've been ranting about and is well worth your time.

Here's a little taste:

All over the developed world, nations are coming to terms with the fact that the social-democratic welfare state is turning out to be untenable. The reason is partly institutional: The administrative state is dismally inefficient and unresponsive, and therefore ill-suited to our age of endless choice and variety. The reason is also partly cultural and moral: The attempt to rescue the citizen from the burdens of responsibility has undermined the family, self-reliance, and self-government. But, in practice, it is above all fiscal: The welfare state has turned out to be unaffordable, dependent as it is upon dubious economics and the demographic model of a bygone era.

Posted by: Monty at 05:15 AM | Comments (122)
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