236.com.

Why 23/6? Because it's not 24/7, and see their motto is "Some of the news, most of the time."

Note that the 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour took quite a shellacking for its uninspired time-based gag name. Arianna Huffington decided that that well wasn't quite dry, and tried her hand it.

Enjoy the ineptness. The next time a liberal claims that liberals are funny whereas conservatives are dour, just shoot him the 236.com url and collect your big pile of win.

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 AM | Comments (20)
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Nope: Forget this whole post. Allah (and then I) got taken in by the Ultimate Peril of Bloggers, the old story that for some reason of bad archiving practice has today's date stamped at the top of it.

Thanks to both Allah himself and Double Plus Undead for bringing this to my attention. The rest of the post follows, but again, it's all wrong.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:58 PM | Comments (13)
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...at least I think that's what J-Pod is saying in this review.

Sounds pretty fucking funny, man. Who knew Redford was such a gifted natural comedian?

Another good one from The Onion's AV club:

Director-producer-star Robert Redford continues his slow descent into irrelevance with Lions For Lambs, a hopelessly stilted political drama that plays like U.S. News & World Report: The Movie. Redford's latest middlebrow muddle is so hopelessly talky, mannered, stagy, overwritten, and didactic that it's hard to believe Aaron Sorkin isn't somehow involved.

And another:

We're a few scant minutes into Lions for Lambs and already it's offered up more inanity than any politically "serious" movie should ever contemplate.

It is, of course, only just getting started. The interview itself, between Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise) and TV reporter Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) isn't really an interview at all, but rather a debate between the former's pious warmongering and the latter's jaded skepticism. The problem is that the arguments made by both sides are consistently idiotic. Given that the target audience of the film is educated Americans, anyone likely to see it is also likely to see through it. I don't believe I was the only one in the theater to shudder slightly when Irving tells Roth that he can talk to her until eleven o'clock and she replies enthusiastically "The whole hour?" (Don't worry: In reality, the Irving-Roth jawfest takes up a mere thirty minutes or so of screen time.)

The senator tells Roth that the U.S. government, which he seems somehow to be running, is responding to an incursion of Sunni militants from Iraq into Afghanistan via Iran (and no, the film doesn't explain why militants leaving Iraq is a bad thing) by putting a number of small combat units into Afghanistan to root them out. Irving's case for the new mission consists mostly of stereotypical pro-war blather about "getting it right" and "fighting to win." What's odd is that Roth's anti-war case, which the film is intended to promote, is even less persuasive, consisting of simple-minded sloganeering-"So, it's basically kill people to help people"-and a point-scoring obsession with recounting past mistakes: "Why did it take us three years to armor up our Humvees?" "Didn't we also arm Saddam in the 1980s?" "It really reminds me of Abrams in '68."

As a break from the astonishing cinematic inertia of Cruise and Streep yakking, Lions for Lambs intercuts their debate with ... another scene of people arguing back and forth across a desk.

I got all three from Ross Douthat, but you can check his post to read even the amateur leftist Webzine Slate's hyperliberal nitwit reviewer Dana Stevens bashing the movie.

The film's running time is eighty-eight minutes. I note this for two reasons: Whenever a film is godawful the first thing the producers demand is "cut it down, cut it down, cut it to ribbons." They do this for two reasons:

1, they could get lucky and wind up with a not-bad short movie which doesn't test the audience's patience because it's cut so leanly and hits its big moments so quickly and ends before it really has time to piss you off;

and 2, because when you have a dog on your hands, you want a really fucking short movie so you can cram in as many showings per night and at least make some money before word gets out and theaters begin refusing to show it at all.

The other reason I mention it is because Woody Allen somewhat-famously pronounced that the exact perfect length for a comedy was exactly 88 minutes.

Scott In OC Adds:

There's actually something more significant to note about this particular running time. To deliver a film for sale domestically (and maybe foreign too?), the minimum length is 87 minutes. This is written into any standard contract. So basically they cut Lions/Lambs into the just barely legal category. The producers couldn't chop any more out if they wanted to. And I'd bet dollars to donuts they probably did...

Hah.

Let me say I doubted Scott at first. Because I'd seen the godawful remake of Walking Tall, which was the shortest film I'd ever seen in my life. The credits were very long, but I figured the actual running length was around 75 minutes, which is barely longer than a one-hour tv show.

I guess those credits were longer than I realized. Because according to IMDB, the official running length of that piece of crap was... 87 minutes.

The weird stuff you guys know.

Maybe that was actually the secret gag to Woody Allen's joke-- that he was saying 88 minutes was the perfect length just because it was one minute longer than the minimum length he was legally obligated to deliver.

Posted by: Ace at 07:38 PM | Comments (68)
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Beauchamp, etc. But it's a good piece. See How She Runs and you know how she'll govern, too.

Penchant for secrecy? Check. An "ill-wind chilling political dissent"? Check. Mau-mauing the media into reporting her faith-based view of the world? Check and check.

And while the media hated George Bush for these supposed offenses, they seem oddly reluctant to slap Hillary for attempting the same things.

Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record--"They're too smart," one furtively confides. "They'll figure out who I am"--privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers. Hillary's aides don't hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters' jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. "They're frightening!" says one reporter who has covered Clinton. "They don't see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game."

Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage. "It's one of the few times I've seen journalists respect someone for beating the hell out of them," says a veteran Democratic media operative. The media has paved a smooth road for signature campaign moments like Hillary's campaign launch and her health care plan rollout and has dutifully advanced campaign-promoted themes like Hillary's "experience" and expertise in military affairs....

It's enough to make you suspect that breeding fear and paranoia within the press corps is itself part of the Clinton campaign's strategy. And, if that sounds familiar, it may be because the Clinton machine, say reporters and pro-Hillary Democrats, is emulating nothing less than the model of the Bush White House, which has treated the press with thinly veiled contempt and minimal cooperation. "The Bush administration changed the rules," as one scribe puts it--and the Clintonites like the way they look.

...

Several sources report hearing that the Clinton campaign has bragged about forcing one reporter at a major news organization from the Hillary beat. The boast, which one source heard from a senior Hillary aide, is incorrect. But the claim has become a part of insider Washington lore. Like the tale of the killed GQ story, it has only enhanced the dark mythology of the Hillary machine--a mythology the Clintonites don't dispel. "They brag about scalps that they take, " says a Democratic operative who has heard such tales.

Most Democrats in Washington agree that, had John Kerry responded more effectively to conservative "Swift Boat" attacks about his war record in the summer of 2004, he would be president today. And, if the Clinton campaign is overzealous, some say, it's because they are determined to avoid the alternative. "There's a Swift Boat around every corner," says one Democratic operative close to the campaign. "We'll be damned if we're going to let that happen again." Almost as important--in the Democratic primaries, at least--it is determined to show that it won't let that happen again. "They've cultivated this attack-machine image because they think that Democrats want that," says one political reporter. "They're pandering to the bloggers."

Although this may seem like minor stuff -- ragging out reporters isn't any threat to democracy -- it is interesting to see how reporters cover up for Hillary's tactics in this regard.

With Bush, such tactics not only don't work but are actually front-paged as stories about the Growing Fascism in America (TM).

But they're rolling over for Hillary -- which does not bode well for the future, or for the press' (giggle) supposed job of a watchdog over government. At least not when a Democrat is involved. Whether the claim is true or not, the Hillary camp is bragging about getting media people they don't like fired or reassigned to less important positions -- and yet the media as a whole doesn't find this disturbing.

Incidentally, the article also notes the strangely coordinated (and, perhaps, illegally coordinated) behavior of Media Matters in roughing up any reporter who's not nice to Hillary.

Related: It appears that Hillary was told which student to call on at that planted question fiasco, despite claims from her machine that she wasn't told who to call on and didn't know anything about it.

Interestingly, the reporter covering this story is one Patrick Healy-- mentioned in the TNR piece as getting a dose of Hillary hate after he dared to write a positive, humanizing piece about Barack Obama.

Although I scoffed when the TNR article suggested that maybe there's a backlash a-comin', who knows, perhaps there is. (Or perhaps it's just that Healy has a good relationship with the Obama camp, who fed him this story.)

Both Hillary and the media are arrogant, condescending, thin-skinned harridans contemptuous of anyone who doesn't bow to their own sense of superiority... or more accurately supremacy. I don't know if DC can hold all their egos simultaneously. Could be some hard elbows thrown in the future.

Also Related: Mickey Kaus will be thrilled to hear that the Hillary-is-having-a-lesbian-affair-with-Huma reason just got 1% more support.

Seems like Hillary!, and only Hillary!, has the sort of pull with the media to kill a big juicy sex-scandal story.

Posted by: Ace at 06:51 PM | Comments (35)
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Not me.

Not me.

I know. It's so old.

Has the train arrived in Paddington yet?

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 06:44 PM | Comments (4)
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Not surprising I suppose. Just creepy.

Dillon Cossey's attorney admits he communicated online with Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who killed 6 students and 2 administrators at his school 30 miles north of Helsinki last week.

I understand the reticence. I do.

But isn't diligence part of the answer? Is that not part of the lesson of Columbine, and so many schools before them (Paducah?).

The kid who was supposedly solicited by Cossey may well have prevented unimaginable heartache.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 06:26 PM | Comments (5)
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A somewhat stunning admission from NBC News. We've know this forever, of course, but the media has been kind enough to protect the country from this sort of information.

Posted by: Ace at 05:26 PM | Comments (24)
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That's it, the media is now officially insane.

Posted by: Ace at 04:57 PM | Comments (36)
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While the story does ultimately mention her husband's party affiliation, it doesn't say anything about hers.

A state representative in a runoff election infuriated civil rights leaders after she ended a conversation with the mother of the NAACP's local president by saying, "Talk to you later, Buckwheat."

[Another paragraph.]

[Another paragraph.]

[Another paragraph.]

[Another paragraph.]

"I made an insensitive comment when speaking with Hazel Boykin, and I have apologized to the Boykin family and publicly for my choice of words," Dartez said in a statement. "I have a strong record of fighting for issues important to the African American community; in fact, I have a 93 percent voting record with the Black Caucus."

But the "Buckwheat" remark is the latest bit of trouble for Dartez and her husband, Lenny, who is a member of the Democratic Party's State Central Committee.

So that's seven paragraphs in before the article hints at her party affiliation, but does not in fact state it.

Over at Hot Air they have a story which mentions her party affiliation in the second paragraph, but that is the way it's supposed to be done. And yet I'm guessing that 90% of the stories about this buried her partisan affiliation completely.

Thanks to PaulM.

Posted by: Ace at 04:37 PM | Comments (30)
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Let's hope:

The first big test of security gains linked to the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq is at hand.

The military has started to reverse the 30,000-strong troop increase and commanders are hoping the drop in insurgent and sectarian violence in recent months—achieved at the cost of hundreds of lives—won't prove fleeting.

The current total of 20 combat brigades is shrinking to 19 as the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, operating in volatile Diyala province, leaves. The U.S. command in Baghdad announced on Saturday that the brigade had begun heading home to Fort Hood, Texas, and that its battle space will be taken by another brigade already operating in Iraq.

Between January and July—on a schedule not yet made public—the force is to shrink further to 15 brigades. The total number of U.S. troops will likely go from 167,000 now to 140,000-145,000 by July, six months before President Bush leaves office and a new commander in chief enters the White House.

As the U.S. troop reductions proceed, it should become clear whether the so-called "surge" strategy that increased the U.S. troop presence in and around Baghdad resulted in any lasting gains against sectarianism.

...

But Fil said it was now clear that U.S. forces, with Iraqi help, have gained the upper hand in Baghdad.

"Perhaps even most significantly, the Iraqi people have just decided they've had it up to here with violence," he said, echoing the assertion of numerous other commanders that one of the most important developments since early summer has been an erosion of what some call a culture of fear in Baghdad.

Their belief is that the tide has turned in favor of the forces of moderation. But will it last?

Posted by: Ace at 01:13 PM | Comments (39)
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