December 16, 2008
— Open Blog Cyanide-Producing. Dragon. Millipede (genghis)
According to the WWF (World Wrestling Federation) via CNN, the Mekong Delta is a ‘Treasure Trove’ of more than 1,000 newly discovered species. Good on them! That’ll more than make up for the loss of the polar bears (unless the nearly extinct, or so we’re told, polar bears become reverse “boat people,” er, “boat bears” and paddle their way to ‘Nam and become jungle bears.)
Some additional examples of the charming creatures the wrestler-biologists found:
”(CNN) -- A rat believed to be extinct for 11 million years, a spider with a foot-long legspan, and a hot pink cyanide-producing "dragon millipede" are among the thousand newly discovered species in the largely unexplored Mekong Delta region.”“Perhaps a more startling discovery than the rat was a bright green pit viper scientists spotted slithering through the rafters of a restaurant in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.”
Oh, bullshit. When I go to a Thai restaurant I expect to see a pit viper slithering through the rafters. If I don’t, I automatically deduct 1 ½ stars from my online reviews. Of course, CNN places this story under their "PLANET IN PERIL" section, so I guess discovering new species, no matter how hideous and disgusting, yet fun to place in the office suck-up's desk drawer, is a bad thing.
”The Fund dubbed the Mekong a "biological treasure trove." The organization's report "First Contact in the Greater Mekong" says 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, four birds, four turtles, two salamanders and a toad were found. “
And a partridge in a palm tree. Or whatever kind of trees still infest ‘Nam. (Insert Agent Orange joke here) . Here’s a pic of our newfound millipede friend/feather boa:
Unfortunately, they found something else in the jungle. ThatÂ’s revealed below the fold.
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— Ace The Chicago Way, part sixty eight:
The ABC7 I-Team has learned that an attorney who went undercover for the FBI in the late 1980's says he told federal authorities years ago about wrongdoing by Blagojevich.His name is Robert Cooley.
Cooley was a criminal defense lawyer in Chicago in the late 1980's who became one of the most potent witnesses against Chicago corruption, testifying for federal prosecutors in cases that resulted in dozens of convictions.
Cooley says that before Rod Blagojevich got into politics he was a bookmaker on the North Side who regularly paid the Chicago mob to operate.
...
He told ABC7 that Mr. Blagojevich regularly paid a so-called street tax to Robert "Bobby the Boxer" Abbinanti, a convicted outfit gambling collector. In the early 1980's, Abbinanti was working for convicted West Side mob boss Marco D'amico. Bookies pay street taxes to the crime syndicate in exchange for being allowed to operate such a racket.
"I predicted five years ago when he ran the first time that he was a hands on person who would be selling every position in the state of Illinois and that it exactly what happened," said Cooley.
So, here's another thing about Obama's political culture we didn't know.
On the other hand, we know that Sarah Palin once indulged and African priest who blessed her against witchcraft and that the Mat-Su Valley has a high incidence of methampthetamine use.
PS, Obama was asked a bit about the Blago case today. He responded "Don't waste your question" and expressed his preference to not answer.
Which he's done before. He tells the press "I'd rather not talk about that" and they say "Okay, seems fair." Um, yeah. Hard-news men, never afraid to go where a hot story might take them.
Meanwhile, no one bothered to ask if he ran Blago's 2002 campaign. One of those things Mike Barnicle instructs us is unnecessary to ask about, because his "instinct" has already told him the answer.
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— Ace Funny.
Headline: Someone Get This Fat Fuck a Carrot.
Thanks to MattM.
Similar... "Unreasonable anger" is kinda funny , which is of course the joke of Fuck You, Penguin. I did something similar when I fisked a completely unobjectionable article about archaeoglogy.
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— Ace
22 Pounds of Fat: The UAW's Work-Rules with GM,
Mandating as Much Inefficiency and Excess Cost as Humanly Possible
It's not often I think Michael Barone is out to lunch, but he seems as wrong as possible here.
Before getting to that, an interesting nugget from Kaus, which I didn't know.
A misguided Warren Court decision--basically requiring unions to prosecute individual grievances under a "duty of representation"--magnified the Wagner Act's inherent adversarialism, it should be noted. Before the decision, unions could pick and choose only the best grievances and drop the rest. (In 1957 at GM, for example, the UAW only pursued 24 grievances to arbitration, according to Robert M. Kaus).
Did you know that? I didn't. I thought unions were solely being pricks about enforcing every idiotic work-rule to the letter. Now I find out that the Warren Court -- thanks, guys! -- actually mandated they do so. (I assume the case was brought by a union worker whose beef had not been pursued by the union; the Court ruled that as his representative, the union was obligated to bring every single beef of his to management.)
On to Barone:
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— Ace According to a New York Times news story, Blago's lawyer, who just coincidentally defends a lot of mobsters, says the case against his client is weak, because it's all "just words."
In an New York Times analysis piece, the Times asks (in the headline) In Blagojevich Case, Is It a Crime, or Just Talk?
Marching orders.
Now, you might object that the proposition being offered, the New York Times is duty-bound to seriously consider it. However, they seem over-eager to absolve Blago:
In the case of Mr. Blagojevich, it would be legal for the governor to accept a campaign contribution from someone he appointed to the Senate seat. What would create legal problems for him is if he was tape-recorded specifically offering a seat in exchange for the contribution. What would make the case even easier to prosecute is if he was recorded offering the seat in exchange for a personal favor, like cash, a job or a job for a family member.Indeed the government has claimed the wiretaps show that Mr. Blagojevich told his aides that he wanted to offer the seat in exchange for contributions and for personal favors, including jobs for himself and his wife.
But talk is not enough. Any case will ultimately turn on the strength of the tapes, and whether the governor made it clear to any of the candidates for the Senate seat that he would give it only in exchange for something of value.
First things first; Blago was arrested for conspiracy, where "just words" are the foundation of the charge. A conspiracy is an agreement between two or more parties that a crime will be committed. Now, the law itself contains a provision to ensure that mere words are not enough to convict. Otherwise football fans who agree that a particular ref should be strung up and beaten with sticks would be potentially prosecuted for conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to kidnap, and conspiracy to beat someone with sticks.
That provision is that a conspiracy requires an "overt act" in furtherance of the conspiracy, which need not need be illegal in and of itself. If one agrees to do a a burglary, buying rubber gloves and a crowbar are overt acts in furtherance of that conspiracy, even though there's no law against buying either.
The "overt act" provision keeps conspiracy from being a crime based solely on "just words," and also separates those who are just bullshitting ("We should rob Fort Knox, you know that?") and those who are seriously agreeing to commit a crime.
In Blago's case, it stops being "just words" and turns into chargeable conspiracy when he begins scheduling fundraisers with businessmen and supporters of Candidate Number Five. As well as other acts. But that seems to be the clearest overt act.
On to the next misstatement of law. The NYT claims, "Any case will ultimately turn on... whether the governor made it clear to any of the candidates for the Senate seat that he would give it only in exchange for something of value." I don't know this area of the law well, but it seems to me this cannot possibly be the standard. If it's true that a charge can be made only if one makes it clear that government favor can be had only in exchange for something of value," then the law cannot ever be broken, because those wishing to exchange government favor for cash can simply avoid saying it so directly.
They can say "You have a very low chance of getting what you want, approaching 0%, if you do not pay me, and a very high chance, approaching 100%, if you do pay me," and they would be not eligible for prosecution, as the promised favor does not turn only on payment. After all, there are other factors, accounting for 1% of the decision-making loop; the payment itself "merely" elevates that chance from 1% to 99%.
If the NYT is right about this "only" business, then there basically is no law against government corruption, because you can always say there's a one in a million chance you'd get your favor without payment. In that case, it's not true that you'd "only" get the benefit in exchange for payment. You could win that one-in-a-million lottery if you don't pony up.
So the NYT works kinda-hard to make a hash of the law here. Coincidentally on the same day Blago's mob lawyer claims it's all "just words."
Analysis, sure. And fine distinctions have to be made in this murky area of the law, where logrolling and political favors in exchange for other favors are legal, but political favors in exchange for direct personal enrichment are not.
But please try to get the analysis right. And not merely take dictation from Blago's lawyer, who has a curious, and rather self-interested, concept of the law of conspiracy and solicitation of bribery.
Meanwhile... Tony Rezko's sentencing date had recently been set, indicating he wasn't talking to prosecutors, who would move to delay that date until they heard what he had to say and could decide whether or not it was worth urging leniency on the judge.
Well, that date has now been suspended.
A federal judge has indefinitely postponed the Jan. 6 sentencing for Tony Rezko, the prominent political fund-raiser and former adviser to Gov. Blagojevich.The move this morning came after Rezko lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve last week to throw out the sentencing date.
Rezko's request comes as he restarts talks with federal prosecutors. Those talks hit a stumbling block as Rezko asked to be let out of solitary confinement at the downtown federal lockup. He asked for a rushed sentencing in January.
Before you get excited: It's likely that Rezko is refusing to talk about Obama. After all, if he had something to offer here -- and was willing to spill -- he could have started talks with prosecutors last year.
So it's likely he's just offering more dirt on Blago. And he might have a lot to say only about that.
Prosecutors don't like leaving things to chance so even if they think they have a solid case against Blago, they'd certainly be willing to cut Rezko's sentence to sweeten the case a little more and raise their chances for a big verdict.
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— Ace Well, it's virtually pornographic. Joe Scarborough demands to know why the media doesn't know if Barack Obama ran Blago's 2002 campaign -- and notes that Blago was already under investigation for years, so the press should have had some interest in this.
And he wants to know why hundreds of reporters were sent to Wasilla to dig up dirt on Palin and none, apparently, were sent to Chicago.
Scarborough's questions are damning -- but Barnicle's and the NYT's John Harwood's answers are more damning yet. Link fixed.
How do we know Obama wasn't intimately involved in Blago's 2002 run?
"Instinct," says Barnicle. And that's sufficient, he feels.
It was instinct that told the MSM that Sarah Palin was a snake-handling subretard and thus required hundreds of reporters digging through the most picayune details of her life. It was also instinct that that told the MSM that Barack Obama was the Risen Christ and needed to be worshipped.
Instinct.
They make much of this virtue. It doesn't occur to them that their instincts almost all trend the same way -- to supporting liberalism and undermining conservatism.
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Bonus: Wolverine Trailer Added
— Ace The article says 13 but at least two (Terminator and Ghostbusters) aren't remakes but sequels in the existing cycle. Among the more interesting ones: Logan's Run, Westworld, Robocop, and even Flash Gordon.
The supposed rule of remakes is that you're not supposed to remake a great film -- if the original guys got it right the first time, all you can do is screw it up. (Even if you do a nearly shot-for-shot "recreation," like that awful refilming of Psycho. Perhaps especially if you do that.)
If you're going to do a remake, remake a bad movie, or at least a movie that had potential but didn't quite come off.
Based on that idea, Robocop shouldn't be remade. For one thing, it's a good movie. For another thing, the special effects still pretty much hold up. Sure, you can do a CGI ED-209, but is it going to be any better than the old stop-motion double-exposure version? No, it's not. It will just be faster. A big problem with CGI guys is that they have literally no limits as to what they can do in animating computer generated characters, and they inevitably decide to show off by just making things move faster... which often doesn't work, as it just doesn't look right to see large creatures (Godzilla, the Scorpion King) moving at 140 miles per hour. Big creatures should be more lumbering.
But the others... well, there's a lot of room for improvement with Logan's Run and Flash Gordon. Both movies are remembered fondly by Geeks of a Certain Age, but not really for good reasons. For the camp of it, mostly.
Best bet? Flash Gordon. It's got a pretty nifty premise, there's no way in hell it will be compared to the 1980 film (no one could or would try to remake that strangely compelling mess), and we could use another sci-fi movie that's just a fun pulp ride. <>Star Wars was once like that, until George Lucas began conceiving of his prequels as Important, Adult Movies with Vital Messages About Present-Day Politics.
Westworld is kinda in the middle. The movie as a whole was very cheaply made, there wasn't much going on for long stretches of it, and the premise is pretty silly. On the other hand, they got the selling point of the movie -- the Black Hatted Cowboy Robot's long, silent pursuit of the hero through the ruins of the park -- pretty much right (how can you top Yul Brenner for laconic cowboy menace?). So they can make the bad parts better, but they'll make the good parts worse.
Another movie in development is a Forbidden Planet remake. I know that's considered a big classic but I haven't seen it.
Oh: And Dune, yet again. At some point someone has to get this right, I guess. They've got actor-turned-pretty-good-director Peter Berg at the helm. I actually think he may get it right.
A lot of times directors who do this kind of movie are pretty jaded about genre films and so they lard them up with either auteur-like flourishes and pomposities (see, for example, Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, or, actually, David Lynch's Dune) or insipid camp (see, among a whole host of others, Joel Schumacher's Batman gay fashion parade). Peter Berg is a good pick for this kind of material because he's a pretty good director but new enough at it that he's not jaded (yet), so he doesn't feel the need to either show off or spoof his own movie to demonstrate he's "above the material" and make it plain he's just doing it for the paycheck.
Wolverine Trailer: Allah's unimpressed, but I think it looks just swell.
Liev Schreiber as a bad guy. And, finally: Gambit. Who was the hot X-Man like, um, 15 to 20 years ago. But still. I remember him from when I used to care.
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— Ace And those are the ones they taped. Who knows if a couple were made on non-bugged phones.
No contacts? Really dude?
Jesse Jackson, Jr. Working With the Feds Since Last Summer? I'm not buying this. If it were true, then JJJ helped arrange a sting on Blago, with the Jackson Family playing along to set him up.
Possible? Sure. But I don't buy it.
More likely the claim comes from JJJ's camp itself and by "working with" the feds regarding Blago, he means answering questions in the long ongoing inquiry.
Which is hardly a big deal. Or proof of innocence.
Blago Adviser Pleads Guilty to Unrelated Charges: About unreported gambling income. But he still might have some interesting tales to tell:
He was not charged with conduct related to state deals but is widely known to be under scrutiny for fund-raising schemes under Blagojevich.
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— Russ from Winterset OK, this isn't exactly a big shocker. Who would have thought that George Lucas would whore out his greatest achievement for a few more shekels? Well, other than "everyone who's been paying attention over the last three decades".
What's up next? Star Wars, the Musical.
Not to start a "red on red" firefight here, but I'm sure that those dorks over at the Jawa Report are already on their 20th orgasm of the morning after getting this "good" news.
Hat tip to Gary the ex-donk over at the Llamabutchers (definitely the smartest conservative cultural blog on the Interwebthingy written by llamas who also happen to be Miami Dolphin fans - if you're not reading that site regularly, you should be, dammit.)
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— Dave in Texas Wow, what a crappy week for everybody. Lots of upsets.
It wasn't all bad though...
heh.
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4 mesablue 118
4 buzzion 118
7 Torque_820 115
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7 All Hail Alex 114
10 DrZin 114
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