Has it really come to this? Al Qaeda bigs are bragging merely that they remain alive?

Defining death-cultism down, I guess. Which is a good thing.

Posted by: Ace at 10:00 AM | Comments (14)
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As long as the RINO SOB doesn't vote to sustain a filibuster, who cares?

Chafee's facing an "incredibly tough" primary fight against conservative challenger Steve Laffey. Might be time to break out the checkbooks.

Posted by: Ace at 07:52 AM | Comments (27)
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This interview with Spielberg, Lee, Clooney, and some other guys you never heard of is linked a lot for the statement that filmmakers are more "proactive" about their political beliefs now, but I liked this part by George Clooney:

Clooney: ... I'll wager that every one of our films, when you first tested it with an audience, tested much lower than after it was reviewed. Sometimes people need reviews to explain what a film is, to put it into some sort of perspective.

He's probably right about that, but for the wrong reason. Some people are very succeptible to pressure to conform to the judgments and tastes of others -- those they consider tastemakers -- and undoubtedly a lot of these people need to be told which movies they really, really like.

I've ranted about "disposable classics," supposedly great films that are great for six months, when reviewers are hyping them and the herd is baaing about them, and then are never watched, or even thought of, again. Real greatness is determined by how many DVD libraries you're in three years later. I don't see Brokeback Mountain, Syriana, Good Night, and Good Luck, or Munich passing the DVD library test.

Posted by: Ace at 07:32 AM | Comments (58)
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It is. To Laugh.

Look at the names on Daou's list. Absolutely laughable. Those crafty GOP strategists have really been putting one over on Bob Schieffer, Adam Nagourney and Howard Fineman in the last five years.

Daou's essay reads like a postmodernist collegiate thesis that tries to weave together a bunch of disparate assumptions into an elaborate theory explaining why black is white. Sometimes the world isnÂ’t that complicated. It just is what it is.

...

The reason Democrats cannot shake the label they are soft on national security matters is because they do, in fact, constantly say and do things that lead people to believe that they are soft on national security. It's not because of some cunning strategy on the part of GOP strategists, for example, that Democrats gave Michael Moore a seat of honor next to Jimmy Carter at the DNC. Neither the GOP nor members of the media are responsible for electing Howard Dean as the leader of the Democratic Party or embracing the loony-antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan. And we have to assume, barring some evidence to the contrary, that Jack Murtha was acting under his own power and not as a GOP agent when he took to the floor of the House and called for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

Read the whole thing. Daou's cri du coeur is as silly as the day is long.

The left can't really be serious about their absurd charges of conservative media bias. They're just working the refs, as it were, thinking if they scream enough they'll get a ticky-tack call to go their way late in the third quarter.

The trouble is the "refs" in this case are already giving them all the ticky-tack calls. The media is as forgiving of Democratic mistakes, contradictions, lies, and hypocrisy as the refs are of the Harlem Globetrotters' shenanigans. Basically, Daou is arguing that the referees are on the side of the hapless Washington Generals.

And yet we're always the ones with confetti in our faces.

Posted by: Ace at 07:16 AM | Comments (22)
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I watched Oprah grill James Frey, the author of the alleged memoir A Million Little Pieces, which turned out to be partly (largely?) fabricated, and was pretty annoyed. Basically, Oprah was embarrassed that she'd selected the book as one of her book club selections and then continued defending it even when cases of invention were pointed out, saying on Larry King that the "essence" of the story -- something about redemption -- remained true.

It was just an annoying exercise in brand-protection as Oprah got on her high horse and attempted to undo the damage Frey, and she herself, had caused to her reputation. More annoying was when she grilled the book's publisher, Nan Talese, demanding to know why it hadn't been more thoroughly fact-checked.

This is an okay point, but first of all, it's no big secret that these books are vetted for libel, not for accuracy, largely, and as long as you're lying about someone with a fictitious name or yourself no one's really checking. Oprah was either playing dumb or actually being dumb to not know this.

And she also wanted to know why these big publishing houses didn't just hire someone "for thirty thousand dollars a year" to fact-check. Fair point, right? Except Oprah is herself head of huge corporation, one of the most profitable in the world, and her corporation had chosen the book as a book of the month club entry -- and then marketed it through the club. Couldn't Oprah have hired a fact-checker "for thirty-thousand dollars a year," too? So long as we're passing out blame-- why should it stop with Frey and Talese?

Frey is a liar, but at least he admitted it. Talese just puts books out as nonfiction without checking to make sure they're true, but at least she admitted it. And what did Oprah admit? No real mistakes, except for loving the book so much she... didn't have a fact-checker on the payroll already. And then she had a bunch of "journalists" (actually liberal opinion columnists) like Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich and Richard Cohen tell her how "brave" she was for, well, engaging in PR.

At the American Thinker, Lona Manning notes that Oprah has had on guests who wrote fakey "memoirs" about devil-worship and sacrifice, again without fact-checking. And a lot of women have read those books and become deluded into believing they were "ritually abused" as children.

Posted by: Ace at 06:30 AM | Comments (32)
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I posted this last week but I guess no one watched it because people keep sending it to me.

A mockumentary about D&D players that cuts a little too close to the bone.

Question: Is role-playing cause by genetic factors or by environmental factors? Or, perhaps, a mix of the two?

I think my own "experimental" phase with D&D was largely due to the fact that I once saw my father naked, holding a d12 and some graph paper. But I can't disallow the possibility that I had some genetic predisposition to "alternative lifestyles," such as paladinhood.

Posted by: Ace at 06:18 AM | Comments (50)
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Could this be the new power couple of the Kossack Moonbat brigade?

Excuse me while I go get a lye eyewash.

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 08:12 PM | Comments (17)
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Doesn't matter really. Just buy Danish!

Not just these, I also mean these!

Posted by: Tanker at 01:57 PM | Comments (24)
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No Humping While Stumping

ROME - Premier Silvio Berlusconi has promised Italians he would lower taxes and raise pensions. His latest campaign pledge is rather personal: no sex until April 9 elections, an Italian newspaper reported Sunday.

Posted by: LauraW. at 12:28 PM | Comments (80)
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I knew it was a bad idea to take away their black berets. Now they've got "sand" colored ones. Might as well be puce.

Army officials are investigating allegations that members of the celebrated 82nd Airborne Division appear on a gay pornography Web site, a spokeswoman said Friday.

Authorities at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, have begun an inquiry into whether the soldiers' actions violated the military conduct code.

Division spokeswoman Maj. Amy Hannah declined to say how many paratroopers are involved or identify their unit within the division. A defense official speaking on condition of anonymity said up to seven soldiers are involved.
...

Martha Rudd, an Army spokeswoman at the Pentagon, said soldiers accused of homosexual activity might be removed from their units, although she did not have specific information about the investigation of the 82nd. When asked if the suspected soldiers had been moved out of barracks, Hannah declined to comment.

"We are concerned about the privacy and rights of each trooper involved and that they are treated with dignity and respect," Hannah said.

Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman in Washington, said the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy states that "homosexual orientation alone is not a bar to service, but homosexual conduct is incompatible with military service."

"We define homosexual conduct as homosexual acts or verbal or nonverbal communication that a member is homosexual," Vician said.

Why go the "don't ask, don't tell" route? Isn't this conduct unbecoming? Or has some jackass court ruling given serving soldiers the right to appear in porn?

If not, then this looks like a little media bias, as the reporter dilligently sets this up as a "don't ask, don't tell" issue when really it's conduct than can get anyone booted, whether it's straight or gay porn.

Posted by: Ace at 09:02 AM | Comments (33)
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