A parody of a 70's AFSCME union video.

Some funny videos here. The one I watched is "Love Leters," and it's pretty funny.

Lots of potty-mouth in both.

Thanks to pajama momma for the Liam Show tip.

Posted by: Ace at 09:26 AM | Comments (5)
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Once again bowing to nutroots pressure to be the fightiest fighty fighters in the world, they're withdrawing from a debate to be hosted by FoxNews.

Background and links at Hot Air. It started with the nutroots, then of course the campaign closest to the nutroots -- John Edwards', with his lefty-blog-freak of a wife encouraging him no doubt (big fan, that one, of Pandagon, Daily Kos, etc.) -- bailed out. Now they all seem to want to withdraw.

Apologies to whatever blogger has been sending me tips about this as it's been happening. I just never thought it was a big story; I still don't, really. I searched my email trying to find your tips but couldn't.

Roger Ailes... addressed the Edwards boycott at an industry speech.

Any candidate for high office of either party who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake about journalists. And any candidate of either party who cannot answer direct, simple, even tough questions from any journalist runs a real risk of losing the voters.

The public knows if a journalist's question is unfair. They also know if a candidate is impeding freedom of speech and free press. If you are afraid of journalists, how will you face the real dangers in the world?

The last paragraph is undeniably true. But that first one?

Does anyone really believe the threatened archliberals at the staid network news organizations are going to go to bat on behalf of FoxNews? And go against the wishes of the nutroots they themselves belong to?

Please.

Now that's comedy writing. Ailes should try his hand at the 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour.

Posted by: Ace at 02:46 PM | Comments (178)
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What, no Spider-Man making swords out of his webs?

Also, nine laws of physics that don't apply in movies.

I have a beef about that no-sound-in-space one, though. Of course sound doesn't carry in space. But almost anywhere interesting is going to have air in it. So when we hear the brrrrzzzap of laser beams, how do we know we're not hearing the sound the laser-cannons make inside the air-filled cabin of the starfighter?

All camera angles are "subjective," by which I just mean the shots are taken from a specific place. How do we know that most sound effects heard in space aren't "subjective" in the sense they're heard from the very limited number of places they can be heard from? If a TIE fighter explodes, can't the "boom" actually be from a "microphone" (stay with me) set inside the TIE fighter and the small pocket of escaping/burning air it creates upon explosion?

See what I'm sayin'?

I mean, yeah, there's no sound in space. There are also no cameras that just happen to be flying around taking dramatic pictures of the space fighting. Why assume those non-existent cameras are placed exactly where the non-existent microphones are? The camera might be a kilometer from the action, while the microphone is right inside the cockpit with the TIE pilot just as his world goes "boom."

Anyway-- this is how I explain it way in my own head, because a space battle without sound is just lame.

Thanks to Locusts & Honey, who's running a good caption contest, and WickedPinto.

Posted by: Ace at 02:26 PM | Comments (55)
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And yet the theoenvironmental movement is determined to get them lableld "endangered" anyway. Why? Because they're cute, and because doing so validates their predictions by mau-mauing the EPA into pretending they know the bears will be threatened in 100 years or so.

As a guy says, we deal in facts, not hazy predictions. And the fact is that polar bears are thriving, thanks in part to all those delicious baby Harp seals they get to club to death and then eat.

Question: If we're going to give in to the theoenviromentalists and call bears "endangered" due to long-range, extremely dubious computer modeling, shouldn't we also put human beings on the endangered list? After all, supposedly we're all going to be killed from either 1) heat exhaustion or 2) frostbite by like next Shivouas or something.

And if we are endangered -- doesn't that sort of loosen up the cuffs on us to start killing some of these other animals we're competing with?

Thanks to Larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 01:51 PM | Comments (87)
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I know -- it wasn't really totally crap.

Posted by: Ace at 01:26 PM | Comments (87)
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Near Baghdad, supposedly, but Allah reminds we've caught him a couple of times before already, at least according to unreliable Iraqi sources.

No confirmation from US yet.

The leader of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, has been captured in a raid west of Baghdad, an Iraqi military spokesman said Friday.

U.S. officials had no confirmation of the statement by Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, spokesman of the Baghdad security operation.

Al-Moussawi said al-Baghdadi was captured Friday in a raid in Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of Baghdad.

"One of the terrorists who was arrested with him confessed that the one in our hands is al-Baghdadi," al-Moussawi said.

A prominent Iraqi Shiite close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also said al-Baghdadi had been captured. But he spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to release the information.

Seems like some decent sourcing this time.

Posted by: Ace at 01:14 PM | Comments (12)
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Goddamn, Michael Crichton is a smart cat. A contract has been awarded to PEAK Beam Systems to...

"...design and fabricate a light-based immobilisation system/deterrent device and integrate it with an unmanned aerial system. This will include any necessary medical research on frequency and amplitude modulation of high-intensity light that will cause immobilisation to all those within the beam."

The Peak Beam Systems device can apparently be pulsed with a strobe effect that has some effect on the human nervous system. The Maxa Beam shown above has quite a range, too. It can illuminate targets as far as 1.5 miles away.

The Maxa Beam is small enough to be hand-held, which is a vital factor in the US Army's selection of the device.

Can't embed it and there's a copyright warning flag across the image, but this could bring back some fond memories for Geeks of a Certain Age.

Light T&A warning. But they cut the girl's death, so no real violence warning. But it sucks because of that.

Love. That. Friggin'. Gun.

Oh, Before The Lunatic Marcotte claims I just dig on seeing women die, well, no. It's just it was a good stunt/special effect, and one of the most swiped scenes in recent Hollywood history.

Richard Donner first did it in The Omen, I think, with Lee Remick plunging to her death from a high window to crash through the roof of a parked car.

LOOKER shamelessly swiped it in its opening. It was very nearly the exact same footage.

And the Lethal Weapon pretty much did the exact same thing again, which was an insider-swipe, because Dick Donner was directing that, too, stealing from himself. His innovation there, I think, was filming it in dawn-light rather than at night.

Pretty much it always works, except for in the miserable FearDotCom, where nothing worked, and even super-honey Natasha McEllhorne looked not terribly good at all.

Vomit Gun? Supposedly, certain radio frequencies can disrupt normal signals from the ear to the brain affecting one's sense of balance and cause targets to become too dizzy to stand or even begin vomiting from disorientation. (Caution: Article has photo of guy vomiting, as if you needed to know what that might look like.)

Had that basic idea in Minority Report, though with a billy-club "Sick Stick" rather than a gun.

And yet, still no flyin' cars or jet packs.

Thanks to JackStraw.

The Blackfive guys came up with some acryonyms for the gun:

BARF - Broad Application, Radio Frequency
PUKE - Personnel Usage Kinetic Energy
SPEW - Systemic Personnel Energy Weapon
RALPH - Radiation Application of Long Phase High energy

I guess there are too many letters in HELEN THOMAS to work.

Posted by: Ace at 12:29 PM | Comments (60)
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Another rock star. Actually, a movie star, and a guy who's made a career of playing high-ranking, non-nonsense executive types.

Thompson has told allies in recent days that he is exploring seriously a bid for president in 2008 in response to what he has described as strong encouragement from Republicans dissatisfied with the current slate of candidates.

A big hurdle candidates always face is getting the public to even be able to imagine them as President. Can't help but think he'll be aided by the public's fifteen year osmotic acceptance of him as DA, Chief of Staff (In the Line of Fire), Director of the CIA (in No Way Out), an aircraft carrier group commander (Hunt for Red October), and yes, even President.

That all may seem kind of silly, but the fact is, it usually takes a crisis to even accept a new president as actually being president. Seemed to work that way for George Bush (not President until Panama) and George W. Bush (not President until 9/11 and the speech on 9/14). There may be some people in the country under the misapprehension that Fred Thompson is actually already the President.

So you just don't have the big psychological obstacle to overcome.

Plus, I hear he played a hard-charging, corruption-fighting prosecutor and Senator in real life, too.

Ever since his high-profile role as the young minority counsel in the Senate Watergate hearings of a generation ago, Thompson had been considered a heavyweight potential candidate for statewide office. As the years and opportunities passed, the once-rising political star began to look like a political Kahoutek - all hype and no happening. After playing himself in a 1985 Sissy Spacek film about a crusade against corrupt state government. Thompson launched a side career in the movies as a character actor, a move that seemed to categorize him as little more than the question to a $1,000 Jeopardy answer: "After uncovering the secret Nixon tapes, he later played a presidential chief-of-staff in the movies."

Uncovered the secret Nixon tapes? Apparently so:

He was responsible for Baker's asking one of the questions that is said to have led directly to the downfall of President Richard Nixon—"What did the President know, and when did he know it?" Also, Thompson's voice has become immortalized in recordings of the Watergate proceedings, asking the key question, "Mr. Butterfield, were you aware of the existence of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?"

Well, let's not hold that against him too much.

And of course he fought state corruption after that:

n 1977, Thompson took on a Tennessee Parole Board case that ultimately toppled Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton from power on charges of selling pardons. The scandal became the subject of a book and a movie titled Marie (1985) in which Thompson played himself, supposedly because the producers were unable to find a professional actor who could play him plausibly.

Plus, get this, his voting record actually seems rather... conservative. Odd, that.

The cats at DraftFredThompson obviously have an agenda, so I guess it's not a surprise they like his record:

BTW, at the bottom the site calls Thompson a "Moderate Populist Conservative." Now, looking through his voting record, I would've probably voted the same way on almost every single bill, yet the website's "VoteMatch Quiz" lables me a "Hard-Core Conservative." Did the website score FDT wrong or is the quiz messed up? I say ignore that nonsense and look at his record and some of his quotes. Look at how he was strongly supported by the NRA, how he was chosen to help with the Roberts nomination, and his positions on issues like the Senate's non-binding Iraq resolution. From that evidence, IMHO, FDT is a mainstream, Reaganite conservative.

Well, what are you going to say? He's been the "DA straight from Central Casting," in both real life and movies, the "Senator straight from Central Casting," again in both real life and movies, and even "The President from Central Casting," so far just in the movies, but his career seems to be a long string of art imitating life and life imitating art.

Good Lord, it's almost not even fair if he jumps in.

And rumors of a romantic involvement with cable-news conservative cutie Kellyanne Fitzpatrick? Again, just not even really fair.

On the Downside: Although he has some executive-ish experience, earlier in his career, as a prosecutor, he's never actually been an executive, and Senators generally don't fare well in presidential contests. You usually want a Governor or, hypothetically, the Mayor of a city bigger than many states.

Correction: I thought I remembered him attending some DC function with Kellyanne Fitzpatrick. I may be right, I may be wrong, but either way, the guy is now remarried.

To whom?

Well... to this.

I'm not sure, but I think that almost counts as polygamy.

Looking at that, I feel like Keir Dullea in 2001: A Space Oddessey, confronted with the incomprehensible vastness of space-time: My God... it's full of starrrs...

He married Jeri Kehn, a DC media consultant, in 2002, and now has a daughter with her. He has three grown children from a previous marriage.

I don't expect infidelity is likely to be a problem, at least for a good long while.

Thanks to Jan.

Fred Dalton Thompson would seem to have some familiarity with the Ace of Spades Lifestyle (TM).

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (140)
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Allah linked a story the other day that a US official had denied the man's objection -- and yet another US official had confirmed it. For what it's worth, the WaPo has a confirmation of his defection as well.

One guy may be denying the story to different media outlets, and one different guy may be going around confirming it. Who's right? I have no idea, though one can speculate that Mr. Denyey is just attempting to do his job by keeping this story secret, and Mr. Confirmey is a dick -- possibly a partisan for "our team" -- who wants the good news out there and isn't sufficiently concerned about keeping secrets, you know, secret.

Whatever one thinks of either cat, or if this ever should have been leaked, obviously it would be nice if it were true. Which I'm inclined to think it is. Mr. Denyey has a strong and good motive to lie; but what's Mr. Confirmey's motive to just make this crap up? Maybe to scare the Iranians, maybe to "ghost" them and see what their reaction may be, maybe to sow doubts about the regime's solidarity; but if that's the plan, why would Mr. Denyey go around sabotaging the disiniformation scheme? Perhaps he's out of the loop, or perhaps he's the dick, pissed off that the Administration is daring to be so dishonest as to push disinformation against an enemy country.

What seems definite is that he is missing, as Iran's official news agency reports he's gone:

Iran's official news agency, IRNA, quoted the country's top police chief, Brig. Gen. Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam, as saying that Asgari was probably kidnapped by agents working for Western intelligence agencies.

Unless, of course, they're the ones pushing some sort of subtle disinformation gambit.

From there, everyone disagrees as to what's hapened to him:

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Asgari was in the United States. Another U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, denied that report and suggested that Asgari's disappearance was voluntary and orchestrated by the Israelis. A spokesman for President Bush's National Security Council did not return a call for comment.

The Israeli government denied any connection to Asgari. "To my knowledge, Israel is not involved in any way in this disappearance," said Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry.

An Iranian official, who agreed to discuss Asgari on the condition of anonymity, said that Iranian intelligence is unsure of Asgari's whereabouts but that he may have been offered money, probably by Israel, to leave the country. The Iranian official said Asgari was thought to be in Europe. "He has been out of the loop for four or five years now," the official said.

"Out of the loop for four or five years now." Seems like what you'd claim if a general absconded, so as to cast doubt on the accuracy of his intel.

Allah struggles mightily to get a handle on it all.

The Iranian former deputy defense minister who disappeared in Turkey last month left his country with documents that prove that there is a link between the Iranian military establishment and terror groups including Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, the pan-Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reported Friday.

A former colleague of Ali Reza Asghari, 63, told the newspaper, which is published in London, that the document also cites groups such as the Mahdi ShiÂ’ite militia operating in Iraq.

Even better, a Saudi newspaper claims Iran is changing and reinforcing its air defenses, fearing that the Ashghari has delivered maps indicating the key sites for Iran's nuclear program.

Meanwhile, an Arabic newspaper claims -- claims -- Sadr is back in Iraq.

Not sure if I want that to be true or not. If there is now firm intelligence Moqtada al-Sadr is working directly with Iran, will al-Maliki continue insisiting on a hands-off policy on a murderous traitor?

And would he recognize one of his key bases of support, Sadr City, post-surge? The watchwords there seem to be peace, hope, and normalcy.

When Raheem al-Darraji looks at the dusty lots just east of Sadr City where scores of bodies have been dumped since last year, he visualizes a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster and perhaps a merry go-round.

"We should have an amusement park," said Darraji, one of two elected mayors in Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite neighborhood where U.S. and Iraqi troops have been peacefully clearing homes since March 4. "We want to rehabilitate the area so that families can have fun."

In an interview at his office, Darraji said the amusement park was one of several projects that community leaders are pushing U.S. officials to fund in negotiations about how to handle the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that has controlled the neighborhood for years.

A concentrated makeover of Sadr City, he said, would support plan's goals in two important ways: by giving young Mahdi militants an alternative to a life of violence and by providing residents with proof of the government's ability to improve their daily lives, diluting support for the militia.

Darraji's requests, however, also reflect a broader effort by Iraqi leaders to dart past "clear and hold" to the more lucrative phase of the new security plan known as build.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (7)
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Very angry:

I don't like him either, but I guess I sympathize with him here, dealing, as he is, with people who believe in unicorns and pixie dust.

In a way, it would be better if the nutroots were calling the shots. Because they are, in fact, "idiot liberals," as Rep. Obey says, and can't manage anything more complex than lighting a bong.

Some quotes:

"We're trying to use the supplemental to end the war. But you can't end the war if you vote against the supplemental. It's time these idiot liberals understand that."

"Liberal groups are jumping around without knowing what the hell is in the bill."

"We don't have the votes to pass [Rep. Lee's Amendment]. We couldn't even get the votes to pass a nonbinding resolution one week ago. How the hell do you think we're going to get the votes to cut off the war?"

"I'm the sponsor of the bill that's going to be on floor. And that bill ends the war. If that's not good enough for you you're smoking something illegal...

"You've got your facts screwed up ... we can't get the votes! You see a magic wand in my pocket? How the hell we going to get the votes for it? We ain't got the votes for it. We do have the votes if you guys quit screwing it up."

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (57)
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