From the complex, nuanced readers of Le Monde.

Posted by: Ace at 09:34 AM | Comments (13)
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I was going to re-post this Friday, but it didn't seem appropriate with all the Terri news. Last chance to guess at the remaining quotes, and maybe the links, before I post the answers tonight.

Same rules: Name the movie, name the actor or character. (Don't sweat the minor characters in a couple of these quotes.)

This time it's a weird kind of list... some older movies, some frankly AWFUL movies that you still probably saw and unfortunately remember.

The Twist: Potato Head got it. All adjacent quotes are linked by common actors; i.e., an actor in #1 is also in #2, and actor in #2 is also in #3. In a couple of cases these Kevin-Bacon-style links are a little obscure; in one case, it's damn near impossible to get. But by and large they're fair.

First five to get the ball rolling, the rest beyond the jump.

1. I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice

2. All that hate's gonna burn you up, kid.
--It keeps me warm.

3. This is the Cosby decade. America loves black people.

4. Oh I can hold my breath for a long, long time!

5. What does a girl have to do to sleep with you?
-- Try knocking.

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Posted by: Ace at 09:26 AM | Comments (76)
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A re-post which most of you have already seen, but I still like it.

A very horny duck who ruined my first marriage (scan down to "Never Waste a Good Premise Update").

Posted by: Ace at 09:24 AM | Comments (1)
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24 terrorists dead, seven wounded and captured. But it's a very disturbing sign:

20 - Iraqi insurgents ambushed an American military convoy in daylight outside Baghdad on Sunday, igniting a battle that left 24 of the attackers dead and 7 wounded, American military officials said. The unusually bold assault appeared to be the largest by insurgents against an American target since the Jan. 30 elections.

Six American soldiers were wounded in the ambush, in Salman Pak, a town 12 miles southeast of the capital, said Capt. Patricia Brewer, a military spokeswoman in Baghdad. The attack hit a patrol of the 18th Airborne Corps as it was driving through town, officials said.

At least seven people were reported killed in insurgent attacks elsewhere in Iraq on Sunday, including an American soldier patrolling near Kirkuk in the north and a senior police commander overseeing an anticorruption unit in Mosul, also in the north.

Details about the Salman Pak ambush were vague, but the audacity of the insurgents, on the second anniversary of the start of the American military campaign that toppled Saddam Hussein, showed that the guerrilla war still burns fiercely here, long after President Bush proclaimed major combat operations over and despite a high turnout among Iraqis in the Jan. 30 elections. As the violence persists and as the winners of those elections continue to haggle over a new government, the optimism from the vote is quickly fading among ordinary Iraqis.

If they kill our soldiers, it shows the war cannot be won.

If we obliterate three platoons of their terrorists, it also shows the war cannot be won, because the "audacity" of the attack is just, well, so audacious.

Heavens. A few more paper victories like this and America is done for as a nation.

Thanks to AndrewF.

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (6)
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It's late. The normal rules don't apply. It's like, you know, after hours.*

Plus, I'm drinking a little wine, well, a little more than a little, actually. And I just heard this song again on the radio, and it bothered me.

Actually, this song has been bothering me since I was a kid.

There's this song, right? If you're much younger than I am, you've never heard it. If you're as old as I am or older, you know this song.

It's Into the Night, by a guy called Benny Mardones, who you never heard of, even if you have heard the song.

Content Warning, and hey, I don't even know if it's worth it. You've been warned.
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Posted by: Ace at 10:06 PM | Comments (68)
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...to avoid debating Cathy Seipp on the radio about her continuing campaign to be more annoying than usual.

She says she had to tuck in the little ones and could not possibly find a cordless phone with which to call into the show.

Maybe that's why Michael Kinsley doesn't publish more of her columns -- maybe he keeps trying to contact her for a piece, but she's puttering around the house picking up roller-skates and Tickle-Me-Elmo's and always stumbles over the vacuum-cleaner on the way to pick up the phone.

In related news, Kinsely has been so effectively chastened by the haus-frau mau-mau that he's willing to tell ludicrious lies. The lie in question? That Maureen Dowd is "the most influential columnist of our time."

He brings up Larry Summers in this column; good, I was going to as well. Just as Larry Summers was forced to recant his heresies -- as somone said, he was punished for not professing enough belief in the Gods of the City -- so is Michael Kinsley forced to do penance.

Winston Smith was forced in Room 101 to declare 2 + 2 = 5; and so Michael Kinsely is now forced to claim something even more illogical and incomprehensible -- that Maureen Dowd's eight-grade slam-book comedy stylings make her "the most influential columnist of our time."

I can imagine alternate universes, based upon strange systems of mathematics in which 2 + 2 does equal five, and in which parallel lines not only meet, but meet as frequently as their schedules will allow, catching dinner and a show together and then going back to one line's pied a terre to engage in some form of hot cryptogeometric copulation.

But I cannot fathom a plane of existance in which Maureen Dowd is "the most influential columnist of our time."

Apart from Wonkette, and the various interns/ghost-writers who churn out much of "Wonkette's" burblings-- who the fuck is she influencing, exactly?

Oh, right. Why, I see George Will engaging in her childish name-calling alpha-girl style all the time. And I'm told Jack Germond intends to begin mentioning Queer Eye For the Straight Guy in every column he may write henceforth. And reliable sources tell me that from now on, Max Boot's foreign-policy analyses will be entirely based on junior-high crush-party politics.

Susan Estrich may have been out of line to bring up his battle with Parkinson's in such a nasty manner, but face it, the man has gone from being a genuine must-read first-rate talent to barely-tolerable hack and a soporific shill. Who knows why. Maybe, like many, he was doomed to burn brightly and then simply flicker out.

You want to know who was influential? Michael Kinsley was influential. His just-on-the-right-side-of-snide manner -- combined with the crystal-clarity of his prose and his openess to challenge liberal canards (and conservative ones too, of course, but that's hardly remarkable in a liberal) -- made him one of the best columnists in America through the eighties and nineties.

You can see his influence in the amateur leftist webzine Slate today, except that writers like Tim Noah can't get away with Kinsely's snarkiness, since they don't possess his wit, his charm, his brains, or his facility with the written word. All these writers are able to do is to ape his attitude, the sneer of the superior, except they just can't get away with it-- they're not superior. Or even somewhere in the middle.

Their attitudes are writing checks their gifts can't cover.

But the days when Michael Kinsely could get away with this are, too, sadly passed. He is unfortunately just another left-wing hack who isn't even interesting enough to read for the purpose of getting miffed.

If It's On a T-Shirt, It's Gotta Be True Update: DeeDaGo sends:

Credit Update: When I posted this, I could not find the email nor the blog that had referred me to the Kinsley column. It was tom from The New Editor.

Pardon my lack of a proper hat-tip. I really did look but I couldn't find it... until three seconds ago.

The link in the main article has been changed to point to his site.

Posted by: Ace at 02:51 PM | Comments (13)
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9-11 radicalized me. I had always been a critic of Clinton for his weak-sister military responses to Al Qaeda terrorism, and to his reliance on law enforcement as the primary weapon with which to fight an actual shooting war, but 9-11 was something different.

I got into a huge argument with a long-time on-line friend and usual ally over the invasion of Afghanistan (I realize that's not the anniversary we observe today, but bear with me). My friend supported the plan, as it was known before it was actually executed, of taking out Al Qaeda training camps and Taliban military targets and using the Northern Alliance to fight the war on the ground.

I did not. I was angry. I wasn't just angry, actually; I'm angry about Terri Schiavo. I was filled with blood-lust. I didn't want to take out a tent with a $200,000 missile; I was not sanguine about the chances that the Taliban could be ousted simply by knocking down the few radio masts they possessed.

I wanted, I'm not proud to say, a bombing campaign against civilian-rich environments. Also known as "cities," where people live with their families and work. And I'm afraid to say that at that time I didn't much care if innocent men, women, and children had been killed -- hadn't ours? I suppose I agreed with Ward Churchill, in a roundabout way-- they were the "little Eichmanns" supporting, or at least allowing to exist, the subhuman monsters who had killed 2800 Americans and foreigners working in America.

Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Savagery against savagery.

And when discussing this with liberal correspondents, I'm afraid I really let loose. This email was sent to me by Von Kreedon:

Regarding my "of course" being a good guy, when last we were speaking you were calling me a traitor, a fucking idiot, and an asshole, while insisting that my positions were indistinguisable from any other Liberal position you wanted to argue. I had considered you a friend, but it became apparent that was not the case and when I stated such you did not deny it.

You are an excellent and hilarious writer. You have an excellent intellect. You let your vitriolic partisanship get in the way of your intellect in such a way, at least on line, as to make it impossible to have either a political discussion or even a friendship in which politics impinges. You are not alone in this; after 9/11 [deleted] and [delted] also became viciously unfriendly and perhaps worse, unfunny

I quibble with the idea of "partisanship" having anything to do with my anger; it wasn't partisan, it was payback against people who I thought deserved as bad as we would dare deliver (and probably double that again). But there can be no doubt-- I was not sunshine and sugar during this period.

Bush and Rumsfeld did not, of course, heed the counsel of Ace of Spades. And for that I thank them.

Instead, they mounted what must be the most merciful war in human history, against the most savage and barbaric enemies this side of the Third Reich.

I didn't think this merciful approach would work. I was angry at Bush for choosing mercy over bloody justice.

But it did work. And rather than having fought a war that America might be ashamed of in the coming years, they fought a war that future generations can be proud of. They went to Afghanistan not for vengeance, but to actually improve the lives of our enemies.

And seeing the progress there now: Who, except the most partisan of liberals and most committed of pacifists, can say they did wrong?

As they say: Not in Our Name. And rebuilding Afghanistan and turning it into a fledgling democracy where women are not beaten in the streets for daring to hold the eyes of a male passer-by, and where girls can actually be taught to read without threat of execution for the teachers... a wonderful thing. Not in My Name, I have to admit. But I am proud as an American that my countrymen, at least, were wiser than I.

And now the two-year anniversary of the war against Saddam's brutal and dangerous regime.

Once again, a supremely merciful war, fought with the greatest feasible caution against harming civlians. A massive and costly reconstruction, both in terms of physical infrastructure and democratic, liberty-supporting political infrastructure.

Over 1,500 brave and good men and women died to accomplish this so far, and sadly I think another 500 will perish before it's through. And thousands more of our troops have lost limbs or suffered paralysis or brain damage in fighting one of the most honorable fights in the history of warfare.

There is hardly any point saying "Thank You," as those small words hardly convey the gratitude of the nation, and can hardly bring much comfort to the dead and the maimed. But I offer them anyway: Thank You. They are two little nearly-useless words, but I mean both of them. Thank you all, and thank you eternally.

George Bush, in consultations with his top advisors -- Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, Rice -- saw two main possibilities for confronting the ever-growing and evermore-savage threat posed by Arab/Muslim hatred of the west.

First: be prepared to visit unholy nightmares upon the region, kill as many as possible to convince the survivors to stop attacking us, or giving aid and comfort (and money and shelter and technical assistance) to those who attack us.

Second: change the region, and for the better, in the hopes that better lives and more hopeful futures will channel all the hate and rage into more productive directions.

They chose the second option, of course. I didn't think it would work; I still didn't think it would work when Bush gave his Second Inaugural, announcing his goal to be the "end of tyranny."

I am still not sure it will work.

But it may work. It may liberate millions from tyrants as well as from hatred and resentment and the impulse to murder.

It seems, in retrospect, to have been a good gamble. And one that is beginning, however tenatively, to pay off.

This country was less savage than I thought it ought to be, and more merciful and humane than I, frankly, thought wise. But the mass of my countrymen were right and I was wrong. And that's another reason I'm proud to be an American, even if I'm not proud of some of the bloody-minded impulses this particular American felt after 9-11.

Posted by: Ace at 10:59 AM | Comments (43)
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She'll have to wait until Monday morning before any possibility of food.

Sure wish they hadn't recessed early on Friday.

I don't know exactly what motivates liberals in this case. The facts seem, at very best, to be pretty sketchy as to whether euthanizing Terri is appropriate.

I really suspect that there is an awful lot of "if they want it, we're against it" going on here: thumb-in-the-eye politics. Plus a feeling that "we can't just keep letting them win." And, more understandable, the likelihood that many liberals simply have not read much about this case and assume, wrongly I submit, that this is the standard right-to-die case with Terri's fondest wishes for a quick death being thwarted by right-to-life crazies.

Right-to-life Christians are a big part of this, of course, and the media shouldn't hide that; but I do wish they would be a little less lazy in their reportage and point out that one could be agnostic, or mildly in favor of the right-to-die in certain situations, or an "ardent liberal," and still object to euthanasia in this particular case, given these specific facts.

If only a bunch of liberal bloggers could make the case to their fellow liberals that they ought not be in a rush to pull the food from Terri's mouth, there might be a change in pulbic opinion that would (of course) change politicians' opinions, especially the nine Republican Florida state Senators who voted against an effort to save Terri.

Joining Lesbiencestmoi is Airman of Airman's Blog, who's not just a liberal, but a military liberal (it seems).

Kudos to both for looking past the tempting template of left-vs.-right in this case. And good luck in recruiting more to your point of view.

Posted by: Ace at 10:00 AM | Comments (83)
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Sounds like a good one to me:

I would like to suggest an extension of our voices in opposition to the crimes being committed against Terri. I say we make a strong and symbolic stand. I think we should send food and water BY THE BOXFULLS to the Hospice Center. Keep sending and encouraging people to send until they decide to stop this murder and feed Terri.

We can make arrangements for the food to subsequently be given to a local shelter, but in the mean time, we make a symbolic statment that we do not accept anyone being starved to death on our watch!

Seems like a good way to make the symbolic point that she's not being kept on "life support" apart from the normal "life support" of food and water. If that's "life support," then Oliver Willis is in critical condition.

Plus, the food and water will then go to hungry, so the media almost has to cover it.

(Plus, of course, food and water for the hungry. Bonus points!)

Posted by: Ace at 04:14 PM | Comments (106)
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Argrif opines:

The main argument that I've heard in favor of letting Terri starve and dehydrate to death is that she's in a PVS so you "might as well" let her life end because there's no point to it and she won't suffer at all from the starvation and dehydration. But this is the thing, if this is true then she's not suffering now and there is absolutely no harm in letting her family keep her alive as long as they're willing to pay for it. If, on the other hand, the argument is that she would want to die because she is suffering then she is not in a PVS is she?

She's either able to experience pain or she isn't. If she isn't then it does no harm to anyone to let her family keep her alive. If she is able to feel pain then removing her feeding tube and letting her die by starvation and dehydration is horribly cruel and wrong. In that case, even if this could be considered a "right to die/euthenasia" case, this is still probably about the least humane way possible to end her life.

Seems to have a point there, I think.

Posted by: Ace at 03:58 PM | Comments (28)
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