What a terrific soldier! I'm sure the US military counts itself lucky to have picked up such a highly qualified, motivated, organization-enhancing recruit.

Obviously, they've been pretty damn high on this guy. In just the short span of a year and a half this college graduate (? -- at least he was spotted on a college from time to time) managed to be promoted all the way up to Private. I think that's somewhere between the ranks of full-bird colonel and Hard Ass Heartbreaker and Life-Taker, First Class.

The Washington Post actually wrote to Major Kirk Luedeke to inquire if this was a violation of OPSEC. His answer:

It most certainly is an OPSEC violation.

Wait, did I say the Washington Post bothered to follow-up on this? I meant blogger Bob Owens. It's hard to tell the MSM and bloggers apart from each other anymore, except, I guess, it's the bloggers who actually check facts and refrain from publishing rumors until they're confirmed and the MSM which runs with whatever bullshit floats across their transom.

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 04:48 PM | Comments (39)
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Allen will of course only have a cameo as Indy's Baby-Mommy, because you have to imagine the love interest is Cate Blanchett.

I didn't think Connery was coming back given the last I'd heard he still hadn't signed on and filming already began. Ah, well, probably would have been a distraction, since they've already got the family-tension element in Indy's son, played by Shia LaBouef, an actor who I cannot figure out, for the life of me, why everyone else seems so keen on. I haven't been this far off the Hollywood page since Edward Norton.

They call LaBoeuf the "next Tom Hanks." Guess what? I wasn't a big fan of the last Tom Hanks. Just when every other movie doesn't star the last Tom Hanks, great, here comes the new one. So, gee, I had four or five Hanks-free years.

Good years, to be sure. Great years, in fact. And now they're gone.

So this movie stars a supposedly-adult son of Indiana Jones who looks like he'd get his ass handed to him by Short Round.

As goes the catchprase in another jump the shark Ford francise, "I've got a baaaad feeling about this."

Via Hot Air.

Posted by: Ace at 04:07 PM | Comments (49)
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I haven't been this annoyed at a new character being pushed on me since I was first introduced to Larry "Bud" Melman.

Posted by: Ace at 03:25 PM | Comments (22)
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They opened this up a while ago, permitting such call letters as KCUF.

The organization in question already snapped up the not-quite-as-good KWTF.

They seem to have gone a little too far, though, with KUNT.

The thing is, the FCC now has a policy of letting stations pick their call letters so long as they're available, and will not police for objectionable combinations.

So, unless they somehow plug this hole in the law, you'll be able to pick up KUNT 24 hours a day in Hawaii.

Thanks to Marcus, and apologies to everyone else.

Posted by: Ace at 02:52 PM | Comments (26)
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I know, I know. Too much. This is worse than the Great Greenwald Sockpuppet Swindle.

Read the thread. In case you don't know, "Beth Greem, ROTC" is one of Gracie's psueonyms, and apparently it's been hijacked by someone using a TNR IP.

Guess they've got that investigation just about all wrapped up now, if they have the time for internet flaming.

So I assume Franklin Foer will be announcing the results tonight?

In way, I don't blame them for taking delight in having fired Gracie.

Because TNR can expect the same level of empathy when Scott Beauchamp is dishonorably discharged.

Elspeth, could you check my resume? I'm pretty proud of the "Skillz" section, where I highlight my nunchuk mastery as well as my "soulmagination."

Ummm... Howie Kurtz? Now that TNR is actually baiting its critics by bragging they fired "the rat," yeah, you can go ahead and publish that now, don't you think?

Posted by: Ace at 02:08 PM | Comments (43)
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Not sure how we're supposed to connect the dots if we don't have any friggin' dots.

Posted by: Ace at 02:01 PM | Comments (9)
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The two cars stopped in a parking lot near the cop shop. When police arrived, Dante says it seemed as if Lindsay told officers, "I wasn't driving. The black kid was driving."

Not a cop or judge in America who isn't nodding knowingly at that.

Happens all the fuckin' time. The other day my car happened to be pulled over as it slowed down beside a four-hundred-pound Samoan tranny hooker, and as I dangled a $10 bill out the window, I realized there was a brown person at the wheel of my car and working my arm like I was a frickin' Eddie Murphy Marionette.

Actually, come to think of it, that brown person was Eddie Murphy. I remember we were having an argument over whether he owed me ten dollars back for Pluto Nash (not that I paid to see it, but I figured my time was at least worth that much), and somehow the next thing I'm danging a Hamilton in front of a Sumo wrestler in a Carrol Channing wig with a big white ass the size of Michael Moore's secret emergency-Gorditos vault.

To make matters worse Marion Barry was in the back seat injecting me with a solution of crack and embezzlement.

Via Rachel Lucas. Speaking of Michael Moore, he just got subpoenaed for his illegal Cuba visit, at the Lucas link.

Posted by: Ace at 01:42 PM | Comments (23)
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All I can say is he's better than Matt Damon.

And you've got to admit: He's got the Kirkian cockiness and hamminess and preening down.

Can he act?

No idea. Never hurt Shatner any.

If he can play Bond, why not Kirk?

I just like that video because it samples the hook of the underrated James Bond Theme You Only Live Twice.

BTW, I don't buy this for a red-hot second. They're always floating these absurd stunt-casting ideas for publicity. Like, again going to James Bond, the rather absurd idea of casting Burt Reynolds as Bond after Connery's retirement.

Uh-huh. Razor-rimmed cowboy hats and lasers disguised as CB radios. What-ev-eh.

Story Garbled! So let me try to degarblify it.

Assuming there's anything to this rumor, Williams is not going to play Kirk. He doesn't have the cache to carry a big-budget franchise relaunch. Few outside of 15 year old girls in England even know who the fuck he is.

Plus we don't even know he can act. Mug, yes. Act? No idea.

But as Charton points out-- he's a dead ringer for the former Captain of the Enterprise, Captain Christopher Pike!

And we know they're going for near-dopplegangers (wisely). Sinise for McCoy is inspired.

So-- let's get the story right by expanding our mindthoughts. Open up with a young Kirk, only second in command on a relatively minor ship, up for possible command of the brand new, state-of-the-art ship-of-the-line Enterprise. Also in the office as Star Fleet makes its decision: Robbie Williams as Christopher Pike. Pike gets the command. Kirk gets the condolence that while he's has lots of potential, he's just too young.

A year passes. Kirk is summoned from his boring duty to Star Fleet. The wreckage of a man that is now Pike is being evacuated off the Enterprise, highlighting the danger of the command. And now Kirk is told he'll be placed in command. And warned he might have some tensions with his capable but odd second in command Spock.

Makes a little more sense, huh?

Oh... by the way, I'm savvy enough to know you don't insert two otherwise-unnecessary scenes just for the sake of fan-service of the hardest core geeks. Obviously those scenes, if they were to be in the film at all, would have to serve other purposes, like establishing, I don't know, Kirk is too cocky for his own good (or, alternately, he's actually underconfident when he first gets his command, and only after being tested under fire by the midway point of the film does he get his signature swagger).

Whatever. I just threw that out as a notion, not as a fully-developed idea.

Just sayin', really: Williams is a dead-ringer for Pike.

Posted by: Ace at 01:24 PM | Comments (29)
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Beauchamp's statement implies that he himself made the decision to drop his psuedonym, and TNR's editors do nothing to correct this impression:

I am Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

My pieces were always intended to provide my discrete view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military. I wanted Americans to have one soldier's view of events in Iraq.

It's been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.

Is this true? Did Beauchamp decide that it was "important to stand by [his] writing under [his] real name?"

When did he decide that?

Was it, perhaps, after TNR received an email at around 3:00 AM the night before asking if the Baghdad Diarist was in fact Scott Thomas Beauchamp?

And when I say "asking if," I mean "informing that," and asking for comment or denial.

I know such an email was sent. Does TNR deny this? Do they deny that was the reason for Beauchamp's outing?

I confess I don't know if they had already decided upon this course of action. It's possible it was a coincidence.

It's possible that they decided before the email -- but only after they'd checked all their office computers and figured out they had a whistelblower in their midst.

TNR isn't answering questions about it. The MSM isn't bothering to ask. TNR's statement on the matter strongly implies that Beauchamp decided to reveal himself only in order to "stand by [his] words" under his real name.

Is that true?

Or another lie?

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (21)
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Breaking like the wind, baby!

Posted by: Ace at 12:59 PM | Comments (30)
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