Donate to "TerriPAC," a political action committee to raise money for Democrats. Michael, being the Chairman, will I'm quite sure get a bit of money for his management of the PAC.

Because you know, just days before she slipped into a coma, Terri Schiavo told Michael, "If I should be in a vegative state, I want you to pull the plug on me, and then use my name to raise money to protect every woman's right to have the plug pulled on them by a conflict-of-interest-riddled de facto ex-husband. And, while you're at it, make sure you dip your own beak, too."

He's got sworn affidavits that she told him that and everything.

Posted by: Ace at 06:13 PM | Comments (53)
Post contains 127 words, total size 1 kb.

More important than the unending war of Man vs. Woman, of course, is the question of who will win the box office battle -- mighty Kong or wise Aslan?

The debate started here, about 20 or so comments into the thread.

Assuming the wisdom of markets, Kong will win -- by a solid margin. The Hollywood Stock Exchange, where people essentially bet upon the box office takes of movies, has Kong at $220 million domestic take, while Aslan trails at $173 mil.

My money's not on the line, but I'd guess both of those are lowballs.

Kong is also dominating in positive reviews, by a similar margin. Naria rates a good but not great 78% "Fresh" rating according to Rotten Tomatoes, whereas Kong garners a very impressive 100%. (There aren't nearly as many reviews for Kong, and maybe those getting early looks at the movie are more favorably inclinend to give it a good review.)

Whichever movie wins, it looks like a good December for movies.

Critics Pan Christian Allegory? In the comments, See-Dubya snarks:

The New York Times review (and find your own damn link) was explicitly down on the Christian angle. 'Too high a Jeesiosity quotient', I believe they said.

Apparently he's using single-quotes to help conserve for the war-effort. But, still funny.

But also not really that far off the mark. Clive Davis posts on Narnia reactions, and includes this ugly anti-Christian stinkbomb of hatred from Guardian leftist reactionary Polly Toynbee:

Philip Pullman -- he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials -- has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read". Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peel in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too.

Yeahhhh... remember, folks, this is a fairy-tale about a talking lion.

I am always amused by atheist evangelists. They're more fervent than the objects of their ire.

Incidentally, I may be wrong about this, but as far as I know, Pullman's books aren't really "secular" in the sense they don't touch on the metaphysical. They have a God, or at least a Good Omnipotent Being. His name is Satan.

More... The American Scene notes that some critics seem to think C.S. Lewis was a flawed writer, and that flaw, of course, was his Christian faith.

Diversity, schmiversity. The same cheesedicks who'd fall all over themselves to praise a book or movie celebrating paganism (like The Mysts of Avalon) sit here in stern judgment over this kooky, dangerous, occult belief system called Christianity.

Big Plot Hole In King Kong? The '77 remake avoided this strangeness, but the new version faithfully brings it back. John notes:

I think Jonah Goldberg had a good take on King Kong -- they go to an island where they find a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and everyone's excited about the giant monkey?

Hah! That is pretty strange when you think about it. There are dinosaurs -- dinosaurs!!! -- everywhere you look but what really captures Jack Black's imagination is a gibbon with a glandular condition.

Posted by: Ace at 04:34 PM | Comments (98)
Post contains 578 words, total size 4 kb.

FrankS. scolds me for not blogging about this earlier.

I'll note two good round-ups of remembrances, one at La Shawn's, the other at Michelle's.

Ordinary Everyday Christian recalls FDR's and Churchill's speeches on that black day.

FDR's is good. Churchill's is better, and this passage resonates nicely:

There shall be no halting, or half measures, there shall be no compromise, or parley. These gangs of bandits have sought to darken the light of the world; have sought to stand between the common people of all the lands and their march forward into their inheritance.

They shall themselves be cast into the pit of death and shame, and only when the earth has been cleansed and purged of their crimes and their villainy shall we turn from the task which they have forced upon us, a task which we were reluctant to undertake, but which we shall now most faithfully and punctiliously discharge.

The Cliff's Notes version? Let's roll.

Veterans and civilians recall the attack here.

A scholarship tackle on the University of South Carolina football team on Dec. 7, 1941, New York City native Dom Fusci was listening to the radio in the Delta Zeta sorority lounge at USC.

"The coeds always had cookies for us, and we often listened to records and the radio with them in the lounge," Fusci recalls. "While we were there, we heard the radio broadcast that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. We all knew then we were at war."

Within a couple of years, Fusci found himself roaring across some of the most dangerous Western Pacific channels as a machine-gunner on a PT boat and at times on a PT boat-tender. The biggest threat, he remembers, was from the attacking kamikazes. Fusci also made time for a lighthearted fun with shipmates.

"On Okinawa I got a letter from the Washington Redskins," he recalls. "I was a third round draft choice, and they wanted to discuss a contract with me when I got back to Washington."

Fusci approached his commanding officer about the letter, explaining to him that he was being called to Washington to discuss a draft matter.

Confused, the officer asked why Fusci would receive such orders. Fusci handed the letter to the officer.

"The CO read the letter," said Fusci, laughing. "Then he looked at me and said, 'Get your big a** back on that PT boat.'"

A Different Era: Michelle links man-on-the street interviews after the attack. Americans were, fortunately, not as filled with nuance and doubt back then:

John Henry Faulk: Mr. Jirosik, what do you think about Japan's action last Sunday?

Joe Jirosik: I think they were all wrong.

John Henry Faulk: Well, for what reason? Do you think it was any justification whatever on the part of Japan in making that attack?

Joe Jirosik: I don't think there's any.

John Henry Faulk: What do you think the United States should have done then?

Joe Jirosik: Declare war on them.

John Henry Faulk: In other words, you're behind Roosevelt's resolution?

Joe Jirosik: Hundred percent.

John Henry Faulk: Well, that's good. Do you think that all America has fallen, I mean all of your associates have fallen in pretty well behind him?

Joe Jirosik: As far as I can see, all of them.

John Henry Faulk: Do you hear much talk around your job? You're a carpenter, aren't you?

Joe Jirosik: Yes.

...

John Henry Faulk: What seems to be the general opinion amongst the carpenters' union, then?

Joe Jirosik: Well, they all about like me. They think it's right for the United States to declare war on them.

John Henry Faulk: Mm, hmm [affirmative]. Do they seem to have any opinion as to who's going to win and who's going to lose?

Joe Jirosik: Well, some of them seems to think that won't last long, but I'm of a different opinion. I think it's going to last quite a while.

John Henry Faulk: How come?

Joe Jirosik: Well, because the United States is going to first have to corner it.

John Henry Faulk: [laughs].

Joe Jirosik: Just like a dog catching a rabbit, you've got to catch him before you can kill him.

Posted by: Ace at 03:17 PM | Comments (10)
Post contains 702 words, total size 5 kb.

We are at war - mistakes will be made, people will be killed, the enemy will sometimes outsmart us, etc. I find this whole expectation that we should never suffer setbacks or make mistakes very annoying.

I remember reading how during the Guadalcanal campaign Nimitz would constantly remind his gloomy subordinates that the enemy was suffereing and losing ships also.

In his memoirs, Grant (when he was just a militia colonel) wrote about leading a regiment to attack a Confederate camp. He was scared and kept imagining everything that could go wrong. He was outnumbered, it was a trap, etc. He got to the camp and the Confederates had run away. He used that to remind himself that the enemy is also scared and also screws up.

I forget which general said that you can not judge a battle by the rear area of your own army. There will always be wounded, confusion, people running away, etc. The media coverage now does this.

-- steve_in_hb

And remember Afghanistan -- another war that was lost for three or four weeks, until it was won.

I forget Steven den Beste's term for this -- I don't think it was his term, actually; I just learned it from him -- that some armies degrade smoothly and others degrade catastrophically.

Our army degrades smoothly. You can kill our men, but until you've done something nearly incomprehensible like kill 50% of them and cut off further resupply and reinforcement, you can't actually cause the army to degrade catastrophically. If you kill 10 men out of 159,000, you've managed to reduce the American military's effectiveness in Iraq by a commensurate percentage. Something south of 0.001%.

On the other hand, as Afghanistan shows, there's a lot of invisible "hollowing out" of enemy forces such as the ones we face in Iraq. They seem to be maintiaining their effectiveness until one day command, communications, or logistics are overwhelmed and the entire terrorist structure suddenly cracks, and then shatters.

All of this is invisible to stateside civilians. Indeed, 60% of it is invisible to our boys over there and military intelligence.

Den Beste's Original Essay On "Graceful Failure:" Here.

A commenter said this was a thoughtful and intelligent piece.

Well of course it was. I stole it from den Beste.

Posted by: Ace at 02:39 PM | Comments (8)
Post contains 389 words, total size 2 kb.

In related news, Courtney Love worries that her heroin & whore act makes her look "trashy."

Cute comparison of Howard Dean's "We're doomed" comments and Al-Zarqawi's similar comments. Except Zarqawi was talking about the eventual doom of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Posted by: Ace at 02:14 PM | Comments (11)
Post contains 59 words, total size 1 kb.

Up to 40%, on the low side of recent snapshots.

Democrats continue to be confusing. And confused.

Democrats have their own political difficulties on Iraq. The poll found widespread skepticism toward the idea of a speedy withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, an idea embraced in recent days by Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House. Thirty-six percent said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who called for such a withdrawal, while 20 percent said they would be more likely.

And check this out, baby:

As Republican strategists have hoped, the economy may be helping Bush's political standing.

Bush has tried hard to highlight good economic news in recent weeks, which
have seen a drop in the price of gasoline and new figures showing strong growth in the third quarter. The poll showed that 57 percent now describe the national economy as good, up from 47 percent a month ago.

Bush's handling of the economy also got slightly better marks - 38 percent approved, up from 34 percent last month. In a measure of national mood closely followed by political strategists, the percentage of Americans who say the country is "seriously off on the wrong track" has declined - to 59 percent, from 68 percent a month ago.

Let me state the obvious: ten points is dramatic shift in public sentiment. Although the media has attempted to portray the nation as being in a recession (or quasi-recession, at least) for years, the good word about the economy seems to have just gotten out -- in time for the 2006 elections.

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (5)
Post contains 276 words, total size 2 kb.

Okay, before I just liked Karl Rove, but now I like-like Karl Rove.

Anyway, this is the paranoid conspiracy of some on the left. It isn't even Oliver Willis' theory, actually. He just links to it. What, you expected an original idea from him?

Say Anything knocks the theory down.

I've always wanted to be part of a conspiracy theory. I think I'll start deflecting this claim evasively, just so people think maybe it's true.

Will I soon taking money directly from the RNC to push the Bush agenda?

(smiling)

Time will tell. Time. Will. Tell.

So thank you, O-Dub!

Geeze, it's not as if you get some of your money from a megalomaniacal hard-left socialist billionaire with delusions of godhood or anything, right?

Posted by: Ace at 01:45 PM | Comments (10)
Post contains 152 words, total size 1 kb.

Ummm, weren't they already calling for that without the gun to their heads?

Does the gun to their heads add credibility to their statements, I wonder?

Coming Soon: Iraqi "insurgents" kidnap Chris Klein, force him to renounce "placating" behaviors of all sorts.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (13)
Post contains 68 words, total size 1 kb.

This is completely unconfirmed as of yet, so holding-one's-fire is appropriate.

If anyone caught the Peanuts Christmas special airing on Chicago's channel 7 last night, can you confirm or deny that Linus' speech about Jesus was cut out of the show?

But remember, before getting too upset, it's not confirmed. It was tipped to a blogger. This is a question, not a statement.

It does seem very unlikely to me they'd cut such a crucial scene out of a beloved classic. But who knows.

Chicago-Based AoSHQ Virtual Stormtroopers Say: Nope, it ran with the quote from Luke just as it always has.

Posted by: Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (49)
Post contains 116 words, total size 1 kb.

Dick Morris on Hillary!'s growing Iraq problem:

Worried that the left-wing Democratic Peace Train may be leaving the station without her, Hillary Clinton is scrambling for a seat by moving away from her carefully crafted hawkish support of the Iraq war. But she can’t join the left body and soul because she still needs to show how tough she is on national security issues, so she is trying to craft her own “third way” on Iraq.

All she has succeeded in doing, however, is fudging her position, muddying it up, but convincing nobody on the right or on the left.

...

As happened in the 1960s, a new left is emerging around opposition to a war, leaving behind old-style liberals who support the invasion and grinding them underfoot. Hillary could be marginalized in 2008 just as Hubert Humphrey was in 1968 and she is determined to prevent it.

...

[Her muddled, have-it-both-ways] position is a political pretzel worthy of her husbandÂ’s squirming over tough issues.

But it won’t fool anyone. The right knows that she is, at best, an unreliable ally and, at worst, an insincere one. The left will not accept anything less than full-out opposition to the war. And our troops in the field — and their families back home — likely will not find much comfort in learning that Sen. Clinton wants them to risk their lives for a mistake.

...

So what is Hillary to do?

Nail an intern? That seems to work for the Clintons.

Posted by: Ace at 11:42 AM | Comments (19)
Post contains 263 words, total size 2 kb.