Hollywood screenwriter and blogger Robert Avrech comes out as a formerly-closeted Republican, and comes out swinging against soft-headed Hollywood liberalism:

I’m a Republican. A heretofore secret Hollywood Republican. I know men and women who are heavy drug addicts and they have no problem finding employment in Hollywood. I know men and women who are gambling addicts and they work pretty regularly. There’s even a director who was arrested for child molestation and yet was hired by Disney — yes, Disney — to helm a picture, and people defended this decision by saying even child molesters have a right to work. I would bet my bottom dollar that all these people are on the correct side of the political spectrum. They are liberal democrats.

Me, I’m a Republican. A conservative Republican. I believe passionately in free market capitalism. I believe in the Second Amendment, i.e., the right to bear arms (I even own several guns and go to the shooting range with friends from shul several times a month). I despise communism and fascism, and I believe there is a special place in hell for Islamic totalitarians and their Western apologists — probably 99.9 percent of Hollywood people.

Let’s be clear about one thing. Hollywood people are glamorous. But that’s about it. They are ill informed about jihad. They are ill informed about Islam. They are ill informed about Israel, the PA, Iraq, Afghanistan. They are ill informed about U.S. history, the Constitution, etc. The truth is, the movie people I’ve met are ignorant about most everything — save the weekend grosses of the top ten films. That they know like human computers.

Ouch.

Note to Hollywood: He said that, not me. I'm just the messenger.

Personally, I love you guys, and I would do anything (and I do mean anything, savvy? I'm talking to you especially, William Baldwin) to get someone to read my script.

Posted by: Ace at 02:35 PM | Comments (24)
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Some crack advice to jump-start your blogging career.

Here are some of the basic items you'll need:

1. A computer. When John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry developed the first digital computing machine at Iowa State University in 1937, little did they know that their invention would become an integral part of a sophisticated worldwide cat picture distribution system. Today, you can buy a miniature commercial version of that same machine at local retailers, such as Best Buy or Wal-Mart.

And this is in the funny-because-it's-painfully-true category:

Did you know that today, over 7 million Americans are writing their own blogs -- and nearly 1.2 million Americans are actually reading them?

Posted by: Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (7)
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I always doubt there's a technological solution to a fundamental moral question -- it just strikes me as too easy; life is seldom easy that way -- but some researchers believe they can effectively create stem cells without the need to kill additional embryos.

Note that that link leads to Breitbart.com, a new news-accumulating site created by Drudge's longterm researcher/partner Andy Breitbart. Fishbowl LA reproduces an IM session with Breitbart, in which the New Media Mogul says he may about to be making some truly crazy blogmoney.

Thanks again to the Blogometer for the link to Breitbart.com. Sometimes the Blogometer is all kinds of good.

Posted by: Ace at 12:54 PM | Comments (3)
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At least according to his latest telling of his story.

Maguire says this constitutes a "change of story" for Shaffer -- which is sloppy of him. He calls it a change of story because Rep. Curt Weldon claimed that Shaffer had named Mohammad Atta to the 9/11 Commission. Obviously, there's a contradiction between Weldon's story (second-hand, of course) and Shaffer's, but no contradiction I see between Shaffer's claims.

There's room here for mistatements and confusion -- Schaffer may have named Atta to his Pentagon superiors, but not specifically to 9/11 Commission staffers. And a vague or misunderstood question could result in mistatement or misinterpretation.

Bear in mind, there are at least two scandals here-- one, why didn't the Pentagon forward this information to the FBI?, and two, why didn't the 9/11 Commission see fit to investigate this or even mention it in its final report?

They're similar scandals, both about bureaucratic incompetence and negligence and CYA-ing, and it's easy to take a question about one as a question about another, especially in casual conversation.

Captain Ed says this is a misunderstanding-- Shaffer was saying he didn't name the other terrorists discovered in Atta's cell, but he did name Atta himself, Atta being the only name he remembered.

The transcript suggests this is quite plausible, but of course we'll need Shaffer himself to clarify precisely what he meant and what he told the 9/11 staffers.

More... From Captain Ed again. It seems that other members of the Able Danger team are talking to the press-- meaning that we're not just relying on one man's (or two men's) say-so.

Posted by: Ace at 12:24 PM | Comments (12)
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Tony writes:

There is a "crossover point" where the cost of Arab oil exceeds the cost of making oilish products from scratch out of other hydrocarbon sources - like coal - which the USA and europe, Russia, etc are lousy with.

In reality, "oil/gas" are what I'll term a "convenience" energy products, because the raw form is closer to what you want than coal is. But, to a chemist constructing relatively simple hydrocarbon molecules, its just a matter of production cost between using oil as a starting point rather than coal, or discarded furniture, or scrap plastics, dead bodies, etc...

As the chicken people say - parts is parts.

There may be a few years lag where oild prices are stratospheric, but when local cracking plants are built and come online, then arab oil won't be worth any more than the synth equivalent product and prices would stabilize for the next several hundred years.

This is true, but it's hardly cause for great comfort. Alternative methods of producing liquid petroleum are expensive, and only become economically competitive when the price of oil becomes very high.

So it's true that there is an upper limit to the cost of crude oil -- at some price-point, yes, it will become as costly as producing oil from shale or coal. I don't know what that number is, but let's say it's $150 per barrel. Yes, oil won't go much higher than that, as at $150 per barrel it has no cost advantage over shale-oil or coal-oil, but obviously the prospect of $150/barrel oil is hardly cause for celebration.

Oil is a pretty amazing substance. It packs an energy wollop not found in much other chemical compounds (apart from explosives, which are expensive to produce, and difficult to control in combustion reactions), and very little energy needs to be added to make it an easily portable, easily controlled, easily carried, fairly safe, and very potent energy source. Millions of years of geothermal pressures have already packed oil with a great deal of energy, easily combustible-- just add oxygen and a spark. Sure, there are costs for refinement and extraction, but those costs are pretty low compared to the amazing energy punch oil packs.

It's not absolutely irreplaceable-- we can replace it, if necessary -- but it will not be cheap to do so.

And, just as an economy may stagnate when labor costs grow too high, so too can an economy plunge into recession when energy costs grow too high. And this world relies more and more on petroleum power and less and less on simple manpower.

If it does happen that oil becomes so expensive that alternative fuels become viable, we can expect the cost of those fuels to go down, as more and more money and talent and research is poured into making their production as efficient and cheap as possible. But it still will be much more expensive than crude oil, at least as we've come to know the expense of crude oil, because crude, unlike the alternatives, is virtually ready to be combusted right out of the ground.

There is an upper limit to the cost of liquid petroleum. That upper limit, however, may turn out to be disasterously high. Or, if not disasterously, at least much higher than we've come to expect, and requiring some nontrivial changes in lifestyle.

Much Cheaper Than I Guessed? Commeters Brass and "[anonymous]" say that shale can be converted to oil and sold for $45/$40-$50 per barrel-- and the only thing preventing this from happening on a larger scale is fears of a sudden drop in the cost of crude, making a major investment in such industry a financial disaster.

True? I don't know. I'll have to look it up (or, if they're kind enough, they can shoot me a cite).

If this is true, though-- then it seems that the government ought to guarantee the success of companies producing this sort of oil, promising them, for example, that they will purchase all excess product for at least cost plus 10% (or $50 per barrel, or whatever), and put that oil into the Strategic Petroleum reserve. And let that guarantee run for 10 years or so.

Costly? Well, to the government, as a direct cost, yes, possibly. But if it's true that oil can be produced from shale at so competitive a price (at least competitive according to what we've come to expect, price-wise, for the last year and a half), then it seems this technology is the fusion of today.

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (35)
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Not lazy, as usual, but the whole system has been glitchy today. I wasn't able to get the posting window up for two hours.

Which brings me to a Frequently Asked Question-- Have I been banned?

The answer is almost always no. Sometimes there are glitches in the software that prevent people from posting. The site is frequently attacked by trackback and comment spam, and this slows things down, and sometimes causes some features to go offline as Pixy Misa tries to thwart the attack.

I've only banned two or three people, always for good reason (multiple libel after multiple warnings, etc.). I just don't ban too many people. Unless you've said something flagrantly objectionable, racist, or libelous, I haven't banned you. Your inablity to comment is a temporary thing caused by software problems, not my banning you.

And, btw, I've always announced bannings, I think. At least in the comments after the offensive comment. I wouldn't just ban someone without saying why.

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (28)
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I actually posted this before, but it's amusing. It's a version of Revenge of the Sith with very bad Chinglish subtitles.

Thanks to NickS.

Posted by: Ace at 11:45 AM | Comments (2)
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In 2008, Democrats need to get rid of strategy and go with their “gut”. The Democrat who demonstrates the most “gut” should be the nominee.

-- Oliver Willis

Thanks to The Blogometer.

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (20)
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I'm not sure about "worse." I would say it's neck and neck, and the Nazis were only worse because they had more physical power to put their venomous philosophy into programatic action.

A brave Saudi named Muhammad al-Sheik has written

The ideas of radical Islam are similar to the ideas that drove the Nazi ideology. If the economic freeze and national depression in 1930 led to the emergency to murderous Nazism, we can say that the economic and cultural failure that grip Arab and Muslim countries today, together with the frustration of many Muslims, are once again driving this murderous philosophy.

and:

I still believe that one of the first tasks for the international community today should be to reconstruct its experience with Nazism and cope with this barbaric, dangerous culture as it did with the Nazi culture.

He also writes (this is paraphrased by the Frontpage article relating his words) that the radical Islamist philosophy is based on a hatred of "the other," blaming the scapegoat for all failure, humiliation, and economic stagnation, which sounds an awful lot like the Nazis.

Thanks to OgreGunner.

Posted by: Ace at 09:15 AM | Comments (16)
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Let's see now.

Elizabeth Edward's son, Wade, was killed in an automobile accident.

Cindy Sheehan's son, Casey, volunteered to serve in the Army and was killed in combat.

Gwen Kopechne's daughter, Mary Jo, was killed in an automobile accident.

Cindy Sheehan says President Bush murdered her son. Has any liberal ever complained about a lowlife drunken adulterer from the state of Massachusetts committing what can be characterized as vehicular manslaughter?

Update: Kennedy Drank, Mary Jo Sank

Edit By Ace: I actually asked Tanker for permission to edit this post, but he hasn't responded yet, and I didn't want the questionable phrasing in question to stand for much longer. So I've gone and edited without permission. Sorry, but I just didn't want it up there anymore.

I changed the post to say that Ted Kennedy committed "what can be characterized as vehicular manslaughter" rather than the more strident term Tanker used.

Posted by: Tanker at 06:37 AM | Comments (98)
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