Sunni cleric says that "Allah will soon send an American Gorbachev to end the American Empire soon."

Gee, I wonder whom he might have in mind? I guess we'll never know for sure, but it does seem that he has hope for a change, IYKWIMAITYD.

I know, I know, it's not fair to hold Hamas' endorsement of Obama against him, nor this fresh endorsement by this jihadist murder-priest.

There's certainly nothing at all about Obama which could possibly suggest to terrorists he's on their side, or at least not terribly off their side.

It's a mystery why all these terrorists keep endorsing Obama. Sometimes people just pick up on signals you're not sending, nope, not at all, not even nearly.

Posted by: Ace at 05:34 PM | Comments (12)
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Too late for people on the East Coast, I guess. Oh well, there aren't many homosexuals there, anyway.

I guess this is an "event" sort of thing, right? I dunno. I just watch Monk and Psych reruns all night.

Posted by: Ace at 05:24 PM | Comments (5)
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"This dog's fuckin' retarded." Retarded-awesome, you mean.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:01 PM | Comments (29)
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It's all over now, but I suppose we should observe the ceremony.

A Fox exit poll says that 50% of Kentucky Democrats would vote for Obama. Only 50%. 32% said they would vote for McCain. (Not sure why it's "would" rather than "will.")

I'm not sure if I can take comfort in these numbers. Gallup shows the McCain-Obama contest all knotted up -- which means, if you think about it, that McCain must currently be getting some of his support from these disaffected Democrats.

The problem is they won't stay disaffected for very long. Most -- at least half -- will return to the Democratic fold.

And then what happens to the numbers?

Posted by: Ace at 04:00 PM | Comments (104)
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Without even bothering to survey the reviews, I can tell you:

1) Even though they may be positive on the film, I'm sure they're lukewarm on it, just a bit on the good side of the the better-than-bad border, which means, for fans like me, it's awful.

2) Critics are fucking assclowns, even stupider than reporters, and simply cannot review a movie like this. For God's sake, they gave Eraser positive reviews. They cannot tell the difference between a Die Hard and an Eraser.

3) Some projects are too big to fail. Critics know that. Remember, they praised The Phantom Menace too.

That said, I guess maybe it's not actually a bad movie if three quarters of them are kinda positive on it.

It's being compared a lot to National Treasure -- and not favorably. National Treasure was of course an Indy derivative (and also a secular, patriotic Da Vinci Code derivative), but it was very well-done. It's sad that Indy can't even rise to the level of his imitators now.

I think the CGI and Really Big Stunts and Effects are going to annoy me. If you watch the movies again -- as I did last weekend -- you come away noting how low-tech it all was, especially the glorious Raiders. The best pure action scene in that was the shoot-out in Marion's bar. And what was that? Indy fighting five guys in a bar. With a gun and fists. That's all. (Okay, it was on fire -- but that's low tech.) The action was clever and fun and exciting, but it wasn't capital-B Big.

Same with the punch-fight with the big shirtless Nazi. And the truck stunts. And Indy simply grabbing the reins of that snow-white stallion, which for some reason was a great moment -- Yeah, now he's gonna ride a horse, yo! We've seen people ride horses. So what was the big deal with Indy grabbing one? I dunno. It was just the spirit of the thing. Something that a lot of CGI shots of fake temples shifting and Transformer-ing can't really duplicate.

Another bit that stands out -- Indy getting shot in the shoulder in the truck, and the blood spraying on the window. And then the Nazi Kommandant repeatedly punching him in his wound. Great stuff. Very low tech. They didn't have to capital-B Big to make an impression.

I fear that they don't have the confidence they did when they made Raiders, and that their idea of excitement and adventure is mostly going to involve Stuff You've Never Seen Before That We Made on a Mac.

I like seeing stuff I've seen before -- just done better, or with some small twist. It always bugged the hell out of me that the James Bond series quickly grew bored of, and failed to realize the implicit potential of, a really well-done car chase. So in all the later films (except for the reboot), chases were these self-parodying joke things with ever more improbable vehicles and ever more ridiculous action (like Bond's car being taken apart piece by piece in the Paris chase in A View to a Kill).

The first Bourne movie made a car chase exciting again just by making it realistic, doing it well, and giving it a real sense of danger and speed.

But I guess it's always easier just to throw money at the problem and hope that a duel between a Mack truck and an F-35 will grab audiences. (Die Hard 4, I'm looking at you.)

Correction: F-35, not F-22. Thanks to some geeks (EC and Herr Blucher).

Posted by: Ace at 03:34 PM | Comments (52)
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This is Tokyo Rose reporting.

Who with your girlfriend tonight, GI?

If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines.

Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily.

...

Today, Iraqi soldiers, not militia thugs, patrol the lanes of Sadr City, where waste has replaced roadside bombs as the greatest danger to careless footsteps. US advisers and troops support the effort, but Iraq's government has taken another giant step forward in establishing law and order.

My fellow Americans, have you read or seen a single interview with any of the millions of Iraqis in Sadr City or Basra who are thrilled that the gangster militias are gone from their neighborhoods?

Didn't think so. The basic mission of the American media between now and November is to convince you, the voter, that Iraq's still a hopeless mess.

...

Developments just keep getting grimmer for the MoveOn.org fan base in the media. Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who had supported al Qaeda and homegrown insurgents, now support their government and welcome US troops. And, in southern Iraq, the Iranians lost their bid for control to Iraq's government.

Bury those stories on Page 36.

Our troops deserve better. The Iraqis deserve better. You deserve better. The forces of freedom are winning.

Here in the Land of the Free, of course, freedom of the press means the freedom to boycott good news from Iraq. But the truth does have a way of coming out.

The surge worked. Incontestably. Iraqis grew disenchanted with extremism. Our military performed magnificently. More and more Iraqis have stepped up to fight for their own country. The Iraqi economy's taking off. And, for all its faults, the Iraqi legislature has accomplished far more than our own lobbyist-run Congress over the last 18 months.

When Iraq seemed destined to become a huge American embarrassment, our media couldn't get enough of it. Now that Iraq looks like a success in the making, there's a virtual news blackout.

One of InstaPundit's readers made a brilliant point. During WWII, Japan's government and media always claimed Japan was winning every single battle. But careful listeners could divine the way the War in the Pacific was really going by noting the locations of each of these "victories" -- each of these "victories" seemed to be occurring closer and closer to the Japanese mainland.

In a near-exact reversal of that situation, the American media laments each and every American "defeat"... but careful readers will note that the "Zone of Quagmire" seems to be radiating farther and farther out from US power centers and closer and closer to the heart of Al Qaeda/insurgent/Sadrist control.

We began by losing in Fallujah so badly our troops now say there are weeks that go by without hearing a gun shot. It's quiet there now... Too quiet.

We then lost Baghdad catastrophically. You can tell we lost because there are so few reports of mortar attacks hitting the Green Zone. The enemy won there by moving further and further out from the city. You know -- surrounding us.

We then lost in Basra so dreadfully it apparently simply vanished from the map entirely, perhaps sucked into another dimension through an interplanar vortex.

Next up we lost in Sadr's last bastion of power -- the slum he's named for -- which you can see by fact that the Iraqi Army is now patrolling the streets and conducts house-to-house searches for weapons. But we lost, because two concessions were made to the Sadrists -- "light weapons" (pistols, rifles) could be kept, one per person, and no US troops would accompany the IA. That last point really stung us, because you know our boys are heartbroken that the IA gets the glamor duty of patrolling this slum. Glory denied; a brilliant psyops tactic to crush the spirits of our troops.

And now we're losing in Mosul, of course.

It's a funny thing -- we keep "losing" by successively moving into the enemy's next-most-dear bastion and taking it for our own.

Meanwhile, they "melt into the shadows," thereby defeating us, because of course they always wanted to be in the shadows anyhow; it was just their bad luck to have wound up in non-shadowy major urban centers. They were sort of trapped there, victims of circumstances, but always had their eyes set on that rich shadowy utopia out in the hinterlands and deserts.

In a way, we did them a favor by finally encouraging them to move to where their hearts had always been from the start. So neener-neener, we still lose.

In related news, Grand Moff Tarkin just called to say, "Hey, everything's going just great here! We're kicking the Rebels' asses, which point is ably demonstrated by the fact that they are now attacking our most prestigious battlestation. (Inaudible as he speaks to someone else; sounds like "Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their pants." Not really sure what that "pants" business is all about. Then he talks to me again.) So, yeah, I think we'll just finish mopping up here, easy-peasy lemon-squeezey. Say, if you could post that big busted Japanese model video again I'd be eternally--"

And then I lost the connection.

I hope he calls back. He seems like a good man. A good Republican man.

Thanks to Tall Dave for reminding me who'd made this point originally.

Posted by: Ace at 02:28 PM | Comments (45)
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Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has a roundup of media coverage of the farm bill with an eye to just what is missing:

Congress has sent to Bush a new farm bill. Let's see, the NY Times editors think it is "disgraceful"; the LA Times editors describe it as "pork, not policy". The LA Times closes with this:

There are a few senators who recognize this bill as the bloated monstrosity it is. The last hope is that there are enough of them to uphold Bush's veto.

"A few Senators"? Are any of those Senators named John McCain? Yes, indeed. Are any of them named Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? Uhh, no. Neither papers' editorial noted that fact...

Click over for more, but scroll down to see the NY Times' David Brooks let Obama have it for being a phony.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 12:57 PM | Comments (19)
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The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals holds 2-1 today that our current paper money constitutes a denial of meaningful access to U.S. currency for blind people. Hans Bader disagrees with the court:

The appeals court wrongly gave short shrift to the burden imposed on third parties, suggesting that it did not even need to be considered, even though other federal court rulings recognize that an institution is not required to accommodate a disability or religious practice if doing so would unduly burden third parties. ...As Judge Randolph noted in dissent, “There are approximately 7,000,000 food and beverage vending machines in the United States; by one estimate, it would cost $3.5 billion to retool or replace these machines.”

Case pending:
Graham Institute of Missouri Paraplegic Studies, et al. v. City of New York -- Alleging that Central Park discriminates against the wheelchair bound; saying it must be entirely paved over.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 12:08 PM | Comments (50)
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Michelle Malkin has been on this for days. I, obviously, haven't. And the vote is tomorrow.

I've never been particularly incensed about temporary guest worker measures. I suppose it's a "reward for law-breaking," but it's not granting citizenship for lawbreaking.

That said, the measure is still deficient:

“There were no hearings on it and nobody had any idea that this was about to happen,” Sessions said from his Capitol Hill office.

His staff had a late night analyzing the 101-page provision that would allow certain agricultural workers to stay in the country legally, and when Sessions came to work the next day, he was back in fiery form as lead critic of any new program that doesnÂ’t cut down on the number of border crossersÂ…

Â… At issue was an amendment giving temporary legal status to those who can prove theyÂ’ve been working on U.S. farms in the past two years, pay a fine, and continue to work at least 100 days a year over the next five years.

“This amendment provides a consistent, stable workforce for an industry that depends almost exclusively on undocumented labor - agriculture,” said sponsor Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. She and fellow sponsor, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, called it an emergency measure to keep planters, pickers, pruners and packers on the job. The number receiving the special status would be capped at 1.35 million, according to Craig’s office.

Although similar to a plan that was in the failed immigration reform legislation last year, it had one key difference - a five-year expiration date. In response, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed by a 17-12 vote to add it to the war funding bill.

The expiration date did not assuage Sessions. He figures the 1.35 million workers who gain the temporary legal status would be joined by about 1.62 million of their relatives.

“What do you think will happen at the end of five years? Is anybody going to ask them to go back home?” Sessions asked.

Yes, that is the problem. Their relatives come -- we can't separate families! -- and then, five years later, we can't ask them to leave because they've now had kids on US soil and, once again, we can't separate families!

Ughh. They're just never going to stop.

Posted by: Ace at 11:52 AM | Comments (53)
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Hmmm...

If he was really and truly "exonerated" and not simply acquitted, there's no there here. I'll do a quick search on him.

A former Army chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was cleared of spy accusations will be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

Former Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim, was among the delegates pledged to Sen. Barack Obama who were elected by precinct representatives Saturday. He's representing the state's 9th Congressional District at the party's convention in Denver in August.

The West Point graduate was accused in 2003 of being part of a spy ring at the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay.

After spending 76 days in solitary confinement, he was exonerated, resigned from the Army and received an honorable discharge.

Thanks to Doug.

Update: Seems he was pretty much actually exonerated:

The criminal proceedings against Capt. James J. Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, fell into confusion on Tuesday and stalled as the military prosecutors asked for extra time to determine whether documents that were found in Captain Yee's luggage when he was leaving the base were, in fact, classified.

The hearing was postponed until Jan. 19 to give the prosecutors time to review the documents that set off a major investigation into whether Captain Yee was a spy, a contention from which the government has since emphatically distanced itself.

The military's case against Captain Yee ostensibly began when customs officials found documents they believed were suspicious and possibly containing classified materials in his backpack on Sept. 10 when he arrived from Guantánamo at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Fla. Officials initially thought Captain Yee might have been part of an elaborate plan to infiltrate the Caribbean base, where some 660 prisoners from the Afghan war are being held.

Officials placed Captain Yee in solitary confinement for nearly three months in a naval brig while they completed their investigation into possible espionage. Maj. Scott Sikes, one of Captain Yee's defense lawyers, said on Tuesday that military prosecutors once told him that they might seek the death penalty in the case.

But when the investigation was completed last month and Captain Yee was released, the military did not bring any serious espionage case. Instead, he was charged with two counts of mishandling classified data, a reference to the materials found in his luggage, as well as four new charges with no apparent connection to security issues. Those included adultery and keeping pornography on his government computer, issues that prosecutors said came to their attention in the espionage investigation.

After repeated complaints from defense lawyers that they could not proceed on the issue of mishandling classified information if it remained unclear whether the documents were classified, the government acquiesced on Tuesday. Lt. Col. Mike Mulligan, one of the prosecutors, said the government had decided to conduct a thorough classification review of the documents.

On the other hand, he's found gainful employment as a terror-symp propagandist against the US military and Gitmo. And seems to be in-demand as a speaker at left-wing anti-war confabs.

Like seeks like.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (17)
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