And, perhaps not coincidentally, cuter than she's been since Opposites Attract.

Her publicist says she never drinks and was "just tired."

Just tired as a skunk. I'm getting a contact buzz just by watching her.

Posted by: Ace at 06:45 PM | Comments (64)
Post contains 57 words, total size 1 kb.

Let's face it. Those who can write for the MSM, do. Those who can't, write TV criticism for leftist amateur webzine Slate.

So we have a bunch of frustrated wannabe-pundits denied their chance to shine on the op-ed pages.

But the dream will not be denied; they instead work in their scintillating political commentary while reviewing, say, BJ and the Seven Lady Truckers.

I don't get the whole 24 thing myself, so this is not the anger of a fanboy talking. I don't really like the show. I find it as as contrived, and implausible, and predictable as this idiot does. The cliches of the show that even fans acknowlege (as being fun cliches) I just find kind of lame. Dave From Garfield-Ridge is amused that Jack Bauer "just doesn't have the time" to do anything; I just don't have the time for Jack Bauer not having the time.

And yeah, I also don't have the time for setting perimeters or maintaining opsec or downloading profiles onto PDA's or all the rest of it.

But that, of course, isn't why this whiny little he-bitch doesn't like the show.

One Nation, Under 24

Can Jack Bauer exist only in a decadent superpower?

By Troy Patterson
Posted Friday, Jan. 12, 2007, at 6:07 PM ET

[A letter sent to critics by 24's producer] also refers to Jack as "our Everyman," which is rather bizarre. Everyman isn't the first term most people would reach for to describe an unkillable supercop who often takes his orders straight from the president. If Jack Bauer is an everyman, then so is James Bond. Does Gordon mean to say that Jack is every regular guy's ideal of courage? The empowering fantasy of all-American male rage?

He begins with a fair, if churlish, point -- Jack Bauer is an "everyman" only in a world populated by only by Captain Kirks and Doc Savages and John Carters and other family members of the Wold Newtonverse -- and then of course spins it into a nutporn caterwaul about male rage. Taking a trivial bit of sloppy hype in a stupid publicity letter and just going all Gordon Ramsey on it.

...

There's depth to 24, but it's all in the violence—the sight of an actual everyman who, unwillingly drawn into the terror plot, beats a man to protect his family; the sound of a terrorist explaining himself to a former friend: "It's not what I want to do, it's what I have to do. I'm a soldier." Other people hold that the show has substance to it just because it makes regular twitches in the direction of the Fourth and Sixth Amendments. The coming season will keep the president's sister, Sandra, busy as the nation's conscience: "I'm not some idealistic flag-burner … but once you start ethnic profiling, it's a slippery slope," and, "I wanna fight this, bring attention to the civil liberties that your administration has allowed to be violated," and "Blah blah blah blah blah." This talk is tedious but essential to the drama's success—not because 24 wants to entertain actual consideration of the issues, but because Jack's got to be fighting for something. The show is so dense with incident and relentless in its momentum that you don't get to see much of the actual America, just its passenger cars and cellular phones. Sandra shoulders the responsibility for hauling out the cardboard signs that evoke its principles. The faux seriousness also provides cover for fans looking to dignify the fact that they get their jollies watching explosions and bloodshed.

Meanwhile, I'm curious: How many other cultures have shows on the order of 24 and Sleeper Cell—programs that convert blasts of terror into pops of corn? Does it happen in places where things blow up with some regularity? Do they unwind with such stuff in Tel Aviv or Thailand? Has Penélope Cruz ever slipped into a cat suit to battle Basque separatists? Or can an everyman like Jack exist only in this decadent superpower?

Um, how many other countries feature nonstop programming more up your alley, like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, The Christopher Lowell Show, Blow Out, America's Next Top Model, The O.C., etc.?

Dude, there's a whole range of entertainment options out there apart from We, O, and Bravo. Sorry that it bothers you so much, but some of us knuckledragging troglodytes just wouldn't enjoy watching Will & Grace and Frasier repeats 24 hours per day.

24's Politics: Is 24 rightwing, as most snotty lefties, and most conservatives, assume?

Well, let's look at last season, whose plotline was lifted directly from Loose Change and Fahrenheit 911.

A weak, corrupt, and somewhat dim President, in order to create a pretext for invading a country and getting his energy-company buddies rights to build a Trans-Caspian oil pipleline, directly commissions acts of terrorism on his own country, resulting in the deaths of numerous Americans, and blames it on Swarthy Foreign Types in hopes of ginning up plebian bloodthirst for his unwise and unconstitutional illegal war of choice.

And, of course, the season concluded with Jack Bauer advancing on this weak, corrupt, dim Miserable Failure of a President, to arrest him, or, if his thuggish Praetorian guard prevented that, possibly assassinate him, because only he and small cadre of The Enlightened know the Horrible Truth (the evidence has been destroyed by Men in Black, you see), but, fortunately, the Attorney General moves in to arrest him and cart him off in disgrace for his chimpeachment hearings.

This is rightwing? To whom?

The Unibomber?

I'm reminded of a Siskel & Ebert exchange about the Dirty Harry series. One said the series was "fair" in terms of politics, as Dirty Harry skewed hard right, Magnum Force skewed left, and then The Enforcer skewed right again (and also skewed very crappy). The other objected to the term "fair," saying it's not that the series is not "fair" so much as so wildly extreme in both directions that it's sort of hard to peg it as having a consistent politics at all.

24 does that. Its only consistent political message is "Jack Bauer is always right, Jack Bauer kicks major ass, and Jack Bauer just doesn't have the time to wait for you to reposition your KH-11 spy satellite."

But this show does have a recurrent political message that really ought to make left's e'er-bleeding hearts pump with love. That is -- if they really saw terrorists and evil, and truly wanted them defeated.

Think about it: What is the basic plotline of every season?

America, essentially in a reactive posture against terrorism, catches wind of a terrorist plot at the last possible moment, usually almost precisely 24 hours before the Big Bang and often indadvertantly (i.e., not through proactive means and certainly not via military adveturism).

There is no need of messy invasions or pre-emptive unilateral military actions; America always gets lucky, just in time, and finds out it's about to be hit.

At this point law enforcement personnel move with incredible speed and unerring instict to thwart the plot by using, by and large, conventional law-enforcement techniques such as wiretapping, bugging, tailing, and simply reading files, and are always able to stop terrorism without ever leaving American soil (or, indeed, moving 30 miles beyond Los Angeles), and all without violating the national sovereigty of a single tyrannical foreign hellhole.

Indeed, every 24 episode could close with the declaration, No kite-flying children were harmed in the making of this production.

Isn't this the way terrorism is supposed to be fought in the collective fantasia of leftists?

Shouldn't they appreciate the coded political messaging here, i.e., "John Kerry had it right all along"?

Or is that they simply object to fighting terrorists in any way, even in the ways they claim they support?

Chloe, The Bitchy Randian: 24 does have, I admit, a light libertarian theme, embodied in the delightfully-pissy Chloe, a passionate adherent of the "Government should leave me the hell alone" philosophy.

Her government-off-my-back poltics are on display every week, as even the most reasonable request by the Government, also known as "her employer," to do the job she's being paid to do sends her into into a brow-furrowing, sass-snapping snit. "I do not recognize the authority of the Government to order me to do anything except that which I have voluntarily contracted to do," her angry eyes flash each episode, "and even when it comes to the latter, I am not at all happy to be the Government acting like The Boss of Me, even if it is, technically, The Boss of Me."

But apart from this Dagney-Taggart-With-Perpetual-PMS objecitivst heroine, I'm not seeing the strong "rightwing messaging" in the show.

Posted by: Ace at 05:13 PM | Comments (98)
Post contains 1460 words, total size 9 kb.

Surprise, surprise.

I'm shocked that it wasn't one of those roving bands of wild-eyed violent right-wing Christianists I am perpetually told are just as dangerous as Al Qaeda.

I forget who noted it, but it's a sign of the media's nonjudgmentalism about crimes of violence -- which they're generally quite against, except when it's linked to terrorism -- that the standard media method of reporting a terrorist group's admission of guilt is that they "claimed responsibility."

Claimed responsibility for an attack.

No, they admitted guilt. Let's get that right.

There is no need to avoid "pre-judging" these things. Attacking an embassy, or blowing up a schoolbus full of girls, is a defined crime in all jurisdictions. There is not some residuum of doubt over whether or not such acts are criminal.

And if you admit to the crime, you are admitting guilt for the crime.

Not merely "claiming responsibility" for an act of unknown legality.

Posted by: Ace at 04:44 PM | Comments (14)
Post contains 171 words, total size 1 kb.

No mas, no mas.

District Attorney Mike Nifong has requested that he have himself removed from prosecuting the Duke Lacrosse rape investigation, ABC News has learned.

A source close to the investigation said Nifong sent a letter to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper asking his office to assume responsibility of the case.Calls to the Attorney General's office and Mike Nifong's office were not yet returned.

An Email Exchange... between one of the lacrosse players' mothers and Karla Holloway, who resigned her committee assignments in symbolic and ineffectual protest over Duke's decision. (Sound familiar?)

I don't think it's such a big deal, but readers seem to. Bugmenot offers a few logins to get past the annoying compulsory registration; silly99/silly99 worked for me.

Interestingly, Karla Holloway's own son was convicted of rape.

Here's the entirety of Holloway's response to a lacrosse mom:

Dear Patricia Dowd,

Indeed, you should have held off sending it. Your letter reflects nothing so much as an impoverished spirit and intellect. What a shame, for you, and your family.

Karla FC Holloway

The Accuser, Accused? Nifong has subpoenaed his Speaker of Truth to Power to testify in a February 5th hearing.

What is the hearing about? I don't know, and apparently the article's author doesn't know either. It's not the ethics hearing regarding Nifong, which happens May 11.

I guess it's a preliminary hearing about motions regarding Nifong's failure to produce exculpatory DNA evidence to the defense.

Looks like he wants an ally -- or more likely, a second villain -- in the room when that goes down.

This article... notes that the judge is expected to rule on the propriety of the photo line-up at the February 5th hearing.

Makes sense she'd have to be there for that. So maybe not really anything particularly interesting here.

Karla Holloway, Cartoon Character: As Allah describes her. Durham in Wonderland gives us the skinny on her, and, of course, she doesn't care about whether these guys actually did anything worse than drink underage. She only cares about the "symbolisms" and "paralellisms" of the case.

And those symbolisms and paralellisms dictate they have to go to jail, guilty or not, because that's the only way to symbolically and parallelismly free blacks and women.

Posted by: Ace at 02:33 PM | Comments (58)
Post contains 419 words, total size 3 kb.

I knew there was a reason for our God-given instinct to get really super-pissed when we get Canadian coins as change.

Money talks, but can it also follow your movements?

In a U.S. government warning high on the creepiness scale, the Defense Department cautioned its American contractors over what it described as a new espionage threat: Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside.

The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.

Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins.

The U.S. report doesn't suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn't describe how the Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them.

Further details were secret, according to the U.S. Defense Security Service, which issued the warning to the Pentagon's classified contractors. The government insists the incidents happened, and the risk was genuine.

...

"I'm not aware of any (transmitter) that would fit inside a coin and broadcast for kilometers," said Katherine Albrecht, an activist who believes such technology carries serious privacy risks. "Whoever did this obviously has access to some pretty advanced technology."

Experts said hiding tracking technology inside coins is fraught with risks because the spy's target might inadvertently give away the coin or spend it buying coffee or a newspaper. They agreed, however, that a coin with a hidden tracking device might not arouse suspicion if it were discovered in a pocket or briefcase.

"It wouldn't seem to be the best place to put something like that; you'd want to put it in something that wouldn't be left behind or spent," said Jeff Richelson, a researcher and author of books about the CIA and its gadgets. "It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense."

Wrong, dude. It makes perfect sense. Every try slipping a Canadian coin past someone? Everyone has that "shit-coin" radar that immediately detects when you're trying to pass off a fake Canadian "dime" for the real American McCoy. Once you get stuck with a Canadian coin, you're stuck with it for life.

I'm not even sure they'll take Canadian coins in Canada.

Thanks to 5Cats.

Posted by: Ace at 02:29 PM | Comments (31)
Post contains 414 words, total size 3 kb.

In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Tony Snow asks if Hugh's heard "the latest" on Jamil Hussein, then says "the latest" is that Jamil Hussein is back to "non-existing."

That may be a little overstated, but really, there's only one place on earth he could have gotten that idea from, and it's not US News & World Report. (It's also not me, just blogs in general, Confederate Yankee and Flopping Aces in particular on this one.)

The takeaway:

1) Wow, important, influential people read us, or at least hear about what we're writing from their staff;

2) so we'd better be careful about what we write, otherwise we'll wind up leading some of the good guys out on to a very precarious branch.

Posted by: Ace at 02:06 PM | Comments (63)
Post contains 131 words, total size 1 kb.

Correction: It wasn't Paul Wolfowitz who said this at all. It was Bill Clinton, in 2004.

Ooops. You understand how easy it is to confuse them.

...

At the moment the U.N. inspectors were kicked out in '98, this is the proper language: there were substantial quantities of botulinum and aflatoxin, as I recall, some bioagents, I believe there were those, and VX and ricin, chemical agents, unaccounted for. Keep in mind, that's all we ever had to work on. We also thought there were a few missiles, some warheads, and maybe a very limited amount of nuclear laboratory capacity.

After 9/11, let's be fair here, if you had been President, you'd think, Well, this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of fuel into weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were super-powerful chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you're sitting there as President, you're reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah, you want to go get bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, Well, my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I've got to do that.

That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for. So I thought the President had an absolute responsibility to go to the U.N. and say, "Look, guys, after 9/11, you have got to demand that Saddam Hussein lets us finish the inspection process." You couldn't responsibly ignore [the possibility that] a tyrant had these stocks. I never really thought he'd [use them]. What I was far more worried about was that he'd sell this stuff or give it away. Same thing I've always been worried about North Korea's nuclear and missile capacity. I don't expect North Korea to bomb South Korea, because they know it would be the end of their country. But if you can't feed yourself, the temptation to sell this stuff is overwhelming. So that's why I thought Bush did the right thing to go back. When you're the President, and your country has just been through what we had, you want everything to be accounted for.

I'd like to see the left explain what's wrong with this "neocon" worrywort's thinking.

Thanks to LauraW.

Posted by: Ace at 01:55 PM | Comments (26)
Post contains 412 words, total size 2 kb.

Based on my Tigger post, which was really just a friendly joke at Dan Riehl for taking the Tigger Incident too seriously, Dan returned "fire" with this post.

Hyscience writes that the dust-up is "distasteful." Well, it may be too insidey, but it shouldn't be distasteful; it was a joke. I wrote Dan as I was finishing my post that I'd have to have some fun with him for the ZaPoohder film, but that I hoped he'd take it in the right spirit. And he wrote back something like "Payback will be a bitch, LOL."

So, just to clarify, not a blogwar.

And Speaking of Insidey... As I predicted, but never got around to committing to a post, the left has claimed one of Michelle Malkin's pics from Iraq is FAKE!!!

I look forward to the apologies and retractions, and the demanding of same by Greg Sergeant.

BubblePly Vlogging! It's such a simple idea -- a program that lets you put up word-bubbles as people speak in video. And so useful.

Mary Katherine Ham uses it to self-fisk Dick Durbin.

Posted by: Ace at 01:38 PM | Comments (17)
Post contains 208 words, total size 2 kb.

Psyche, she resigned to protest their being allowed back on campus before a court of law was permitted to rule on the blatantly obvious.

Posted by: Ace at 12:50 PM | Comments (40)
Post contains 40 words, total size 1 kb.

Trouble Brewing

Posted by: LauraW. at 11:59 AM | Comments (96)
Post contains 6 words, total size 1 kb.