And I thought Transformers was kind of a joke.

William Morris, the oldest theatrical agency in Hollywood, has promised Hasbro, which owns Parker Brothers, the manufacturer of Monopoly in the US, that the cream of its stable of 2000 actors will help create a blockbuster movie.

Scarlett Johansson and Kirsten Dunst are being considered for roles. Hasbro, which claims that Monopoly has been played by 750 million people since the 1930s, wants the film to feature "sexy young people" in an attempt to attract teenagers to board games.

So Monopoly gets Ridley Scott. Dungeons & Dragons got... I don't even know the director's name. I doubt even the director knows his own name.

To be true to the spirit of Monopoly, the movie should go on forever, and viewers should just leave the theater when they've decided they're bored enough.

Of course, movies made from board games haven't been entirely awful.

Thanks to Sinistar and his new mee.nu blog.

Posted by: Ace at 12:44 PM | Comments (29)
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So I'm told. I haven't watched it yet.

I stopped watching Sicko after it went into Michael Moore's comfort zone of conspiracy theories and Republican-bashing. The early parts about health insurance companies aggressively looking for any pretext to deny coverage they were, in fact, lawfully contracted to provide were effective, I thought. Seems to me that if you are lucky enough to have health insurance, and to be paying for that service out of your own pocket (and if your employer pays, it's still your pocket-- that's part of your salary), you have the right to expect them to actually give you full value on your premiums, as Paul Anka would say.

In an effort to reduce costs, they seem to arbitrarily deny coverage to whomever they can. That's wrong -- if paying the true costs of covering everyone they've contracted to cover would require raising rates, then they should actually raise rates, rather than simply look for random people whose coverage they can deny. While I'm sure that Moore's evidence is highly selective and also anecdotal, it can't be denied he had on one former health industry worker explaining that whenever an insured actually required costly treatment the insurer had contracted to pay, a "hit team" went after his application looking for any plausible, or even implausible reason, to claim fraud in the application process and thereby deny all coverage.

Many Americans don't have health coverage. They know they're not covered. That's bad, but at least they know what they can expect (i.e., nothing).

On the other hand, many Americans do have health coverage. They know they're covered... except they're not, not quite. They're covered if and only if the insurer cannot contrive some reason to deny them coverage when they actually need it.

Whether Moore's evidence here is no longer operative, I don't know. Has the health insurance "bill of rights" corrected these wrongs? Again, I don't know. But denying a woman continuing coverage because she failed to disclose she'd once had a yeast infection -- a yeast infection! -- is pretty egregious.

Previews of more anti-socialist medicine short films can be seen here. They'll be released in full next week.

A Right Wing Blogger Confirms The Gist Of Insurers' Determination To Deny Insurance To The Insured: Robbie from the Malcontent:

I work with insurance, and I found the scenes involving the American insurance industry to be convincing and factual. Sure, Moore is going to find the most egregious and infuriating examples of what insurance companies can (and will) do to save themselves money. But the gist of it is true: You may think you have insurance, but if you make even the slightest and most innocent of mistakes on insurance applications, the company can and will pull that coverage if they're in the mood. (And they're almost always in the mood to find ways out of six and seven figure claims).

On the other hand, he finds Moore -- get this! -- to be either childishly naive and/or deliberate mendacious as regards socialized medicine:

However, Moore lost me when he decided to go on his "The rest of the world is a health care wonderland!" jaunt. I've lived in Britain. I have stories about Britain. Among them, all of the private dentists in the area I lived had years-long waiting lists. That doesn't exactly speak well of the kind of treatment people receive within the NHS. Of the people I knew in England who could afford regular private medical treatment, almost every single one of them opted for it.

Brown Line contradicts Moore's claim that there are no long queues for treatment in Canada:

As for the Canadian health system, both my wife and I have lived in Canada; and among my friends are Canadian physicians. Just try getting a doctor, even in a major metropolitan area like Toronto: good luck. Single-payer plans are not immune to controlling costs by restricting access; in fact, that's their principal means of doing so. They don't forbid you from having anything you need; they just make the queue unreasonably long. And given that there's no competition, users have no recourse when they're screwed.

If you like to discuss public policy based on what you see in the movies, I strongly suggest viewing the opening ten minutes of the Canadian film The Barbarian Invasions, which walks the viewer through a (fictional) oncology ward in a Montreal hospital. Consider, too, the scenes where palms have to be greased to get what we would consider an acceptable level of care, or in which a patient has to be taken across the border into the US, at his own expense, to receive diagnostic radiologic procedures in a reasonable amount of time, ie, while he's still alive.

There are plenty of problems with our health-care system. But Canadian-style socialism would only make matters worse.

I accept this all as true. What I found compelling -- and infuriating, even as a heartless rightwinger -- is that companies with whom you had contracted, and paid!, to deliver a service were/are constantly trying to weasel out of their end of the bargain on the shoddiest of pretexts.

Left-wing bleeding heartism aside, that's a basic violation of right-wing rule of law-ism.

I think some readers think that because I think Moore has successfully illustrated a problem, that means, ipso facto, I've bought into his "solution."

Not so. As I said, if insurance companies cannot provide the catastrophic coverage they've contracted to provide, they should either stop offering it (and stop taking premiums for it) or else raise rates to more accurately reflect the cost of actually providing the service. I find denial-due-to-sham-pretext system repulsive on numerous grounds. Even if it "keeps costs down," it's doing so in the worst way possible -- not by generally reducing benefits on all (increasing copays, etc.) but by striking like lighting out of the blue to deny this person and that person coverage completely based upon a meaningless failure to disclose something as innocuous as a yeast infection.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (71)
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Just mentioning this because I so long questioned Sony's decision to seriously overprice its PS3 in order to bundle it with a Blu-Ray player, in hopes that they could leverage the PS3's popularity into a victory for their proprietary high-def DVD format.

With HD-DVD only available in the current 250 Blockbuster outlets (as well as online) that offer both formats, and now Blu-Ray about to be stocked in 1700, it does seem like they got something out of their sacrifice of the PS3.

And a sacrifice it was:

Market watcher NPD this week said some 338,000 Wiis were sold in the US in May. Microsoft sold 155,000 Xbox 360s and Sony sold just 82,000 PS3s.

And the PS3 rolled out like a half year later than the XBox 360, so, based on timing considerations alone, one would expect the PS3 to be outperforming the XBox.

But the PS3's real competition isn't the XBox but the PS2, which continues outselling both platforms despite its supposed obsolescence.

The Death-Knell For Theatrical Exhibitions? How good is high-def on a decent sized screen? Really good. Really, really good. I still find that I'm getting a 10% bonus in enjoyment watching football just based on how startlingly clear the picture is.

Combine a decent hi-def tv with a middle-range speaker system and a hi-def DVD player and there really is no reason to go to the movies anymore. I'm sure that film, when projected properly on to a clean screen not stained by thrown sodas and otherwise marred, is still a higher-resolution format; but then, one usually sits 30 feet from a movie screen, and only six or eight feet from a HD TV screen. The actual subjective resolution, as actually experienced by a viewer, is better on HD TV. I was blown away watching Casino Royale on HD TV; I found it to have been a sharper picture than what I'd seen in the movie house.

More... Adolfo asks if conventional DVDs will become obsolete.

Not technically -- I think even the HD players will still play them -- but the very fine resolution on a HD TV really exposes the limitations in resolution of the DVD format. DVD played on a big HD TV winds up looking grainy and muddy... kind of like videotape images looked after you'd gotten used to DVD.

forged rite mentions an up-converter DVD player, which supposedly delivers a higher-resolution picture from conventional DVDs to an HD TV. He said it was no improvement at all. I disagree (that's where I am now), but the improvement is not vast. It's just an incrementally better picture, just a bit better. Anyone telling you that this sort of player can deliver HD pictures is lying. It can't -- it's not even close -- but it will make conventional DVDs look not quite so muddy and grainy on an HD TV.

I'm not sure the future is with discs of any kind, necessarily. I watched Casino Royale in HD right off my cable's HD PPV menu for like $5.99, which was a pretty decent price. (A buck or two over the usual cost.)

And they're working on even more interesting means of direct delivery. I heard a while ago about a scheme to provide customers with a black box containing a massive hard drive (or several of them) that would be loaded with something like 100 movies already on it -- you just have to pay each time you want to watch one.

It gets updated all the time with new movies -- if I'm remembering correctly, they were interested in paying local PBS affiliates to partially steal their cable or broadcast signal so that part of PBS's feed would be dedicated to a delivering new movies, bit by bit, over the course of days (all day long, while you're working or sleeping, without you even noticing), so that every few days you'd find that you'd had a couple or three movies added to your menu. (I think stealing a bit of PBS' terrestrial-broadcast bandwith is just to make it so you don't need cable or internet to actually use the service, as well as to avoid having to pay cable companies for carrying a signal.)

The ultimate move, I think, is away from physical delivery systems (movie theaters, even DVDs) to the broadcast/broadband model of just moving bits on to your hard-drive. The format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD may be a false war, as both formats are rendered obsolete and quaint within five years.

Posted by: Ace at 11:04 AM | Comments (47)
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There are a number of "villains" in the immigration debate, but none have turned out to be as odious as Lindsey Graham. From his speech before La Raza to his temper tantrum on the floor of the Senate, Graham has upped the rhetorical ante each time he opens his mouth.

What I don't get is this - if the immigration debate is all but over and they have the votes, why does Graham feel he has to resort to such low tactics? Is it because he can't help himself, or is the amnesty caucus feeling the unpopularity?

You would think, given how this debate has all but doomed McCain's presidential bid, the Senate would get the hint and stop defying and insulting its base.

The fight isn't over yet, though, so keep those letters and phone calls aimed at the Congresscritters.

Posted by: Slublog at 10:10 AM | Comments (60)
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Recently there has been an epidemic of "teh gheyness" on the Right side of the blogosphere. Why, thanks to the interventionist postings of a number of prominent lefty bloggers, such luminaries of the dextrosphere like Instapundit, Jonah Goldberg, Victor Davis Hanson and even our own Ace of Spades have been "outed" as alleged deeply closeted homosexuals.

This is truly a tragic state of affairs for all of us on the Right. Because if there is one thing that all these Right-of-center bloggers have in common, besides their general political opposition to the modern Left, it's that they had no idea of their sexual orientation until these Lefty bloggers defined it for them.

Think of all the time, emotion, and money that these poor men wasted going on dates, happily marrying members of the opposite sex, and in some cases producing children, because they simply didn't know they were carrying "teh gheyness". Why, had they only known, they could have updated their wardrobes and furnished their urban loft with those fabulous throw cushions instead.

Well, we here at Ace of Spades HQ don't want to see this tragedy repeat itself. So we have developed this patented self-test so that you can, in the privacy of your own home, determine if your conservatism is a result of your deeply repressed homosexual desires or not. Think of it as a way to "out" yourself before those caring and tolerant voices on the Left do it for you.

Remember, kids, the key to the tests accuracy relies on you answering the questions honestly. By cheating on the test, you are only cheating on yourself.

Do you have "the ghey"? Find out after the jump. more...

Posted by: Jack M. at 08:11 AM | Comments (84)
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LONDON - British police, with aid from U.S. investigators, have shattered a global Internet pedophile ring, rescuing 31 children and rounding up more than 700 suspects worldwide, authorities said Monday.

Emphasis mine.

The ring was traced to an Internet chat room called "Kids the Light of Our Lives" that featured images of children being subjected to horrific sexual abuse — including streaming live videos.

Authorities said they used surveillance tactics normally used against terrorism suspects and drug traffickers to infiltrate the pedophile ring at its highest level.

Officials also said the United States, Canada and Australia were Britain's main partners in the investigation, which involved agencies from 35 countries.

Investigators with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they could not immediately comment on the arrests because the U.S. investigation, spanning at least 12 states, is ongoing.

I feel like standing up and applauding!
Let's hope they get everybody they're looking for, and help guide those poor children back to humanity.

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:08 AM | Comments (31)
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He says he doesn't mind people appropriating his little home movies without paying.

Rob Port calls his bluff, and posts the whole thing online. Enjoy!

Actually, I think Moore might not be entirely bluffing -- not because he's truly willing to live by the rules of socialism he champions, but because he knows he's immune to them. People don't go to see Michael Moore movies to be entertained or informed, God knows; they go to see his movies in order to support Michael Moore, to keep him gainfully employed as a useful idiot fighting the Bush Administration.

So why should he mind if people download them for free? It's a marketing stunt that gains him more than it loses him. 90% of the people willing to sit through one of these inane film-school-final abortions at all aren't looking for a way to see his movies and avoid paying him; if anything, they'd rather there was a way to pay him some money without having to go through the pain of watching his film.

Still, it's there. Review away! As Sandy Berger told the DNC flunkies after pilfering documents from the 9/11 commission, "Gentlemen, start your shredders."

Brilliant, brilliant hit-whoring on Rob's part, I have to say. As a big ol' hit-whore myself, I have to give him big props.

I Don't Mind People Downloading My Movies... anyone want to bet Rob will be slapped with a harrassing letter from a law firm employed by Moore's studio in the next couple of days?

Completely forgot about that -- Moore can claim he doesn't mind giving his movies away for free. But goshdarnit, his investors are such sticklers on the point of recovering their money!

Actually... It's kind of interesting. Certainly the flick exposes how nasty the health insurance industry can be about weaseling out of paying for treatments.

Hah! Knew It: Thought I was in the twillight zone in there for a minute as Michael Moore was actually presenting facts. Now he's into his more comfortable millieu of conspiracy theorizing, blaming all health care woes on George Bush, and before him Ronald Reagan, and before him, Richard Nixon.

Good Lord.

Posted by: Ace at 08:48 PM | Comments (129)
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The left is gnashing its teeth about my noting that it was strange for Glenn Greenwald to be calling his ideological opponents sissies and fairies.

First of all, the entire left seems to miss the point that Greenwald was doing precisely what he decries -- accusing his political opponents of being unmanly, effenimate, sissy, queer. He doesn't say "queer," but he certainly implies it -- certainly he would infer such an implication were right wingers similarly impugning the masculinity of liberal men.

How do I know? Well, for starters, he already has claimed that knocking someone's masculinity as being the equivalent of calling them gay. Attacking the media for even noting that John Edwards sure seems to primp and fuss with his hair a lot, Greenwald wrote:

It is striking how they all use the word "pretty" to describe how John Edwards wants to look. She then links to the three-year-old You Tube clip of Edwards brushing his hair. Is any of this, at its core, any different than the oh-so-aberrational-and-universally-condemned Ann Coulter remark about Edwards?

And the Coultler remark he refers to was her CPAC "joke" about Edwards being a "faggot."

Ergo, according to Greenwald: Suggesting someone is less than entirely masculine is ""at its core, [no] different than" calling someone a "faggot."

So what precisely was Greenwald's intent in deriding so many right-leaning writers as effeminate? We can infer his intent from his own words. After all, Greenwald's words surely mean something, right? (Well, he writes so many that relatively few of them mean anything; but certainly when he gives us, mercifully, a relatively short declarative sentence, that must mean something.)

And his ideological wingman Andrew Sullivan, of course, is in full agreement, objecting to the term "wussy:"

The misogyny behind it - as behind so much homophobia - is pretty clear.

The left has long had a... nuanced attitude towards anti-gay slurs. (Sullivan himself, of course, after shrieking that term "wusses" was homophobic, called opponents "wusses" within a fortnight. But that's too easy-- it's Sullivan, after all! Not exactly a model of constancy!)

Calling someone gay is actually quite a popular past-time on the left -- certainly I've been called gay hundreds of times, both explicitly and by implication, by no lesser lights than John Edwards' former official campaign blogger and her merry band of imbeclies. It doesn't particuarly bother me, but I do seem to notice that, when lefties decide to insult a political opponent, the "fag" slur is always on the list of go-to put-downs.

See, when they say it they're just calling attention to our "psychosexual issues," as Marcotte says, but when we say it we're engaging in the most vile of homophobic speech...

Gay writer Bruce Baugh, definitely in the it's-just-so-horrible-to-call-someone-gay camp, of course finds it convenient to suspend his well-nigh absolute rule if he can attack someone on the right:

I would place a small bet on Ace of Spades being caught in teh gay act one of these days. That combination of obsession and need to denounce is familiar.

Caught? No way. That's why I'm anonymous! No one asks what blog you write when the lights are down, savvy?

That's from Matthew Yglesias' comment section -- a comment section demonstrating the typical nuance we've come to expect from lefties, and gays, and gay lefties especially, on this issue. As of last count...

Total number of comments in Yglesias' post knocking my purported anti-gay bigotry: 24.

Total number of commenters calling me a queer: 12.

...and the night is yet young.

50%. Not too shabby, Lefties! I'm pretty sure that 50% mark would pretty much beat any thread on the wildly homophobic Ace of Spades HQ!

Look -- once and for all. Is calling someone "wussy" or "queer" or "homo" forbidden or not? You can't employ one rule for yourselves -- "It's okay if they really deserve it!'' -- and another for your ideological opponents.

Greenwald descended into the sissymary/nancyboy name-calling he himself excortiates when it comes from people he disagrees with. I called him on it. At least I was more honest than to hide my statements in tediously verbose obscurantist language.

Deal with it, get hip to the idea that there's one rule for all, not one rule for you and another for everyone else, and finally, please, do try to make some progress towards getting the fuck over yourselves.

Yawn: Firedoglake, which knows the right circumstances under which to call someone a faggot:

Eureka! I think maybe something snapped into place for me today, though IÂ’m not sure. IÂ’ll let you decide.

HereÂ’s the question: why does the Republican Party recruit and promote so many closeted gay men?

Closeted gay Republicans serve a very important function in the GOP ecosystem. The GOP likes to put them in key positions where they can be trusted to hold the party together among warring factions, putting a face on the party to promote the party without promoting themselves at anyone elseÂ’s expense. If they ever fail to perform the assigned function, well, secrets have a way of finding daylight when the people who keep them need to keep a man in line.

So, whaddya think of my theory? Am I on to something?

Digby at Hullaballoo, who would of course say that, while it's wrong to call political opponents queers, "If this is wrong, baby, I don't want to be right:"

I honestly don't know what to make of all these men in the political establishment who insist on using their mancrushes as some sort of guideline for who is and is not "presidential." Honestly, even Kathryn Jean Lopez's famous drooling over Mitt Romney isn't as embarrassing. Other than her predictable true confessions I've not seen a lot of females (except Margaret Carlson) going on about the candidates as if they are romance novel heroes. No, this particular form of dreamy prose is oddly confined to ostensibly straight, middle aged men who are so taken with certain alpha leaders that turgid descriptives just come pouring out of them.

...

There's something wrong with them and it has nothing to do with being gay or straight. This is way deeper than that --- so deep, in fact, that someone should do their psychology thesis on the subject. Why do so many male Washington courtiers have giggling mancrushes on phony Republican politicians? A question for the ages if there ever was one.

Note the attempt at covering his tracks -- "this has nothing to do with being gay or straight" -- while writing of "ostensibly heterosexual" men with "giggling mancrushes" on other men.

No, nothing to do with being gay or straight. It just so happens that every crush here mentioned is man-on-man. Just sort of worked out that way.

I'm going to not h/t in order to not draw attention to the h/t'ers. But really, it doesn't take much to find this shit on the left.

So what's the objection, fellers? That I was funnier about it? That I actually built jokes around it rather than just calling someone a queer?

My personal favorite comes from this site -- from the lefty trolls in the comments section, I mean. Dozens of times lefty trolls have called me a queer. Once in a while I ask them to square this name-calling with their self-righteous stance against homophobia of any sort. My favorite reply: "It's your own homophobia causing you to assume I meant calling you queer as an insult!"

Heh. Right. I guess I missed the intended compliment.

Posted by: Ace at 05:15 PM | Comments (205)
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Credit the BBC for breaking this story a scant forty years after every other person in the world.

...what emerges from the report is a picture of an organisation with a liberal, anti-American bias and an almost teenage fascination with fashionable causes.

If our own media wasn't biased, they'd report this. Not only is it an important story in its own right, it's a chance to stick it to the competition, which, in theory, the competing news organizations should wish to do.

But they're only competing in some ways. Ideologically, they are only competing to the extent that each is racing the other to the left. And they certainly don't want to raise difficult questions about their own agendas.

Posted by: Ace at 04:44 PM | Comments (18)
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A paean to the Good Old Days when clearly left-wing cranks like Walter Cronkite could propagandize and get away with it.

And here's a link that was sent to me, by the site owner/author, I think, but I'm not sure.

Is this legit? Or is this similar to Don Novello's famous "Lazlo letters"? I think they're the latter, but I'm only 90% on that. Either way, they're kind of funny.

You know, if you really want to unnerve some celebrity doucheweasel you hate, don't send them hate mail. Send them a letter like these. They're twice as creepy and there's no chance of prosecution!

DEAR CHRISTOPHER -

You are not going to believe this, but the other day, it was raining cats and dogs here in Crestline, CA. I had to go to the post office to get my mail. Suddenly, your clone appeared before me. I thought it was an apparition.

The guy was your height and weight with blond hair. He was wearing a black trench coat that must have weighed at least 25 pounds, came to his ankles. Now, I have seen some trench coats in my day, but never anything like this one! As I stood next to this enormous man, I felt like a little weasel. I touched the coat, asking about the material from which it was made. He explained that it was some sort of fabric that had been impregnated with oil. He told me that it is the coat whalers use in the Antarctic. For all the world, he looked like Darth Vader. As we chatted, he kept fiddling with the metal hooks, trying to get them to connect.

I told him that, like you, he looked very menacing. He denied the charge.

Christopher, I think it is just wonderful to have one of "our golden boy" up here in the mountains of Southern California, but "don't spread yourself too thin."

CLONING!! What hath man wrought?

Tink

...

LETTER TO ANDREW LACK OF NBC REGARDING CHRISTOPHER MATTHEWS

DEAR MR. LACK -

Last week, Christopher appeared on HARDBALL with the collar of his shirt standing away from the shirt, itself. This happened two nights in a row. Of course, the viewing audience was simply aghast.

Quite frankly, I am amazed that Mrs. Matthews would allow "our golden boy" to leave the house "looking like that."

It is now abundantly clear to me: Christopher needs a P. A. (personal assistant) to take care of "the little things," thereby freeing him up to handle world affairs. It is even more clear that Mrs. Matthews has neither the time nor inclination to deal with such matters because of her own career in broadcasting.

I would like to apply for the job. For a measly $300,000.00 a year (which is what I was making before GE "screwed" the hell out of me), I am willing to "come back there" and take on the responsibility. Why, under my tutelage, Christopher will have "the chicks and babes" (to use his terms) swooning all over him. My references and credentials are impeccable. You may view my resume, in part, by going to www.edwardbaskett.com.

Why don't we "give it a whirl?" You can't tell what 6 months might do.

With kindest regards,

Edward Eugene Baskett
"I take BIG, and I spend BIG!"
Aimee Semple McPherson

...

I AM SO HAPPY!!

DEAR CHRISTOPHER -

I am so happy that you are back safely from your trip to South Africa. I am sure your many viewers missed you, as I did.

I hasten to point out, I was on the verge of contacting Andrew Lack over at NBC and telling him to "fill your shoes" with James Cramer of "America Now.” He, like you, looks like a big, healthy baby with beady little eyes. Too cute!!

While not as dignified and refined as you, James is colorful and fiery in his own right. The nice thing about James is, he doesn't have hair for me to "worry myself to death about."

Anyway, you are back, and your job is secure. Remember me to Andrew the next time you see him. Give him my kindest regards.

Cordially,

EDWARD EUGENE BASKETT

More odd letters to Chris Matthews at his website. He seems to have compiled these into a book.

I love the "quotes." For some reason, "quotation marks" are and always will be the "funniest" sort of "punctuation." Mis-using "quotes" elicits a smile in ways that, for example, mis-using "commas" or "colons" doesn't.

Posted by: Ace at 04:12 PM | Comments (10)
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