Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom caused a furore (classy) because it was 1) pretty lame, but mostly 2) because it featured violence which had previously earned a film an R-rating, but the MPAA rolled over for St. Steven and gave him his PG.

Some people agitated this was unacceptable, and that such strong material (strong? it seems quaint now) should either get an R, or an in-between rating for a film halfway to R should be created.

And so shortly after was created the PG-13 rating. Red Dawn was, I think, the first film so rated.

Anyway, from what I've read today, the Norwegian parliament is given control over creating the actual Nobel Peace Prize committee.

I figure there is some outrage even in Norway over what is supposed to be an award for actually, you know, advancing peace or human rights being rewarded for no other reason than pure brazen fellow-traveler puffery.

So... I think there's a damn good shot that a right-leaning party in Norway introduces a bill to reform the Nobel Prize Committee and insure the prize is given for the purposes originally intended, rather than be debased further as some grotesque leftist beauty pageant.

Not predicting it will be adopted -- but predicting it will be proposed.

And that will be pretty embarrassing for President Prissypants -- to be so obviously inappropriate and unacceptable a choice so as to provoke legislative corrective.

Posted by: Ace at 06:01 PM | Comments (104)
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Barack Obama edged out the terrorists Dr. Swoop and Mesablue with 0 picks in week 5, starting off slow but applying an awful lot of potential and goodwill to ace this year's pick groups.

It's a proud day for America unless you're a hater.

Don't forget to submit your picks for the remaining honors, one of these could still be yours.

Obama = Bucs Cheerleader

Nobel Prize = Tony Romo breaks his own interception record against the Chiefs

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:56 PM | Comments (14)
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Welcome to Friday all. It's a crazy world out there and that makes me want to drink, burn things, and kill the undead. That's my happy-place.

Why Women Love Vampires And Men DonÂ’t

To most guys, vampires are the monster movie equivalent of that sensitive man-sponge in college who plays acoustic guitar in order to seduce chicks.

Why women find date-rapey parasites who wear capes compelling must have something to do with deeply primal fears. A vampire is a monster, who looks, acts, and talks like a man. Who is passionate, romantic, and tortured. To surrender to this character is to play with fire. The vampire, in many ways, is the prototype of the bad boy.

Yep, women love bad boys even undead ones who sleep on dirt and turn into flying rodents.

_{[language warning for the video]}

Lades, please - do not date vampires. You are not their soul mate, you do not have a special connection with them - you're just a snack. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:06 PM | Comments (770)
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Move over, Marvel Comics! Theres a new House of Ideas!

The goal, senior administration officials said Thursday, is to weaken the Taliban to the degree that it cannot challenge the Afghan government or reestablish the haven it provided for al-Qaeda before the 2001 U.S. invasion. Those objectives appear largely consistent with McChrystal's strategy, which he says "cannot be focused on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces" but should center on persuading the population to support the government.

"The Taliban is a deeply rooted political movement in Afghanistan, so that requires a different approach than al-Qaeda," said a senior administration official who has participated in the meetings but has not advocated a particular strategy.

Some inside the White House have cited Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese political movement, as an example of what the Taliban could become. Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, but the group has political support within Lebanon and participates, sometimes through intimidation, in the political process.

Yes, and all the time funded by Iran and attack US and its allies at behest of that mullahcracy.

Wonderful.

We gave him the Nobel, can we still get him the MacArthur Genius Grant?

Posted by: Ace at 04:04 PM | Comments (117)
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The funniest day I can remember in the last year -- actually, it was last year -- here on the site was during a McCain/Obama debate, when we started doing this joke:

Obama = Paul Reiser

McCain = Facehugger in closet

or

Obama = Poacher #3's face

McCain = Chuck Norris' foot

or even... well, I'll save Warden's joke for the comments, because, uh, I don't want it on the main page. Biggest laugh I've had in a while.

Anyway, it being my theory that today is a major setback for Obama, thought I'd try to revive that meme again.

Feel free to trot out old jokes. I don't remember many of them anyway.

Posted by: Ace at 01:45 PM | Comments (1483)
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Yes, yes, and yes. Today officially marks the start of LOLTUS.

Mission Accomplished? And whatever will SNL do now? (Answer: Nothing, unless Jim Downey is guest-writing there this week. But Stewart will have to.)

TodayÂ’s Nobel Peace Prize announcement raises the question: Is a negative caricature of President Obama now fully developed?

One thing that eluded Mr. Obama during his presidential campaign was that he was never successfully lampooned by the Republican PartyÂ…

Well, today’s announcement - while totally out of the president’s control - finally may have handed his critics their own “Mission Accomplished” moment.

Like the Democrats did after President Bush prematurely declared the Iraq war “accomplished” on that aircraft carrier in 2003, the right is already using the Nobel prize as an opportunity to hammer Mr. Obama for not having accomplished what he’s being honored for.

And they fret that Obama is in fact now finally funny:

[Also problematic for Obama is] the comedy gold that the blogosphere as well as the late night talk show hosts and "Saturday Night Live" will exploit to no end.

In fact, there's already a joke formula that's exploded: fill in the blank with your favorite award (Oscar, American Idol, etc.) and say that President Obama has already won it without accomplishing anything to deserve it.

And give credit to the folks at "SNL" who were a week early when they mocked Mr. Obama as all talk and no action last Saturday.

Bob Schieffer on CBS earlier quoted a European commentator who wondered if the prize were a "poison chalice" for Obama.

On Friday’s CBS Early Show, Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer wondered about negative political fallout from President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize win: “one European commentator who said ‘will this become a poison chalice?’ In other words, is this going to hurt the President rather than help him?...is this going to widen the part of partisan divide rather than bring people together?”

Actually, what they really worry about is that it's going to alter the partisan divide and move some voters from weakly supporting Obama to weakly opposing him. And it will.

Read on in that Newsbusters piece, and you'll see the Leftwing Media treating the Nobel Prize as a situation requiring... Damage Control.

Glor went so far as to treat the prize-winning as a scandal in need of damage control: “Bob, how quickly or easily do you think the White House and the President can tamp down the controversy and all the questions we’ll hear this weekend?” Schieffer advised: “ I think what they have to do is just go back to business and get back to doing and facing all the problems and trying to resolve the problems that are on their plate right now. There’s really not much they can do about this besides what they’ve already done, I think.”

That's the same advice given to Bill Clinton when he got caught with Lewinsky.

As noted at Hot Air, the DNC says anyone who's laughing at Obama "sides with the Taliban."

They seem to have forgotten that the White House just declared the Taliban a non-enemy and furthermore said the Taliban should share in governing.

So they're saying we should share in government? I think they'll get that wish.

(By the way, they also said we're siding with Hamas, which, as was pointed out downblog by DrewM., endorsed Obama for President.

And, furthermore, the crushing weight of everyone laughing at this means, apparently, we're all terrorists now. The DNC echoed Bush's threat -- you're either with us or you're with the terrorists -- and we all (including half the Leftwing Media, and a White House aide who reacted to the news by asking if it was April Fools Day) collectively chose to laugh it up with the terrorists.

Among the terrorists' most frightening weapons? Mirth and ridicule.

The Question: Let's say you're dating a girl. Let's say it's not going very well.

Let's say you'd like to give things time with her, but she might want to break up with you before you have that time.

What's your best hope here? Well, you hope that she doesn't start seriously pondering The Question of whether she wants to stay with your during this rocky patch.

Because, if she does, she'll probably break things off, eh?

So you're hoping The Question doesn't occur to her, or at least she doesn't think too hard about it, until things maybe start to get a little better between you.

You don't want The Question asked when you're not really doing so well.

This is the problem that the Nobel committee has tossed into Captain Wonderful's lap.

Real unemployment is at 17%, he tripled the deficit to $1.4 trillion, we're looking at possibly two generations (40 years!) of economic malaise and endless debt, Iran's about to get the bomb, he continues to dither on Afghanistan, a war he swore he'd win, he's a hyperpartisan archliberal (at best), he can't get his own party to vote for his leftwing healthcare plan, his primary community-organizer supporters moonlight as child-sex-trade enablers, etc.

Obama does not want voters thinking very hard about The Question -- this one, whether voters support him, or even think he's competent at all -- at this time. He would very much like them to delay thinking about this question until he gets a little bit of good news.

When will that be? Who knows. Maybe no for a long time. But definitely not now.

This ridiculous, laughable non-achievement not earned by Obama forces the public to start answering The Question at the nadir - so fa-ar! -- of his young, failed presidency.

And he didn't need that.

His ego wanted the prize and overwhelmed what little sense he had. Had he thought this through, he would have realized he did not want people asking The Question "Does this guy know what the hell he's doing?" now.

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Comments (256)
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A lot of people are asking that. Wedon't know who placed, but here's some of the rest of the field.

Chinese Human Rights Activist Hu Jia - imprisoned for campaigning for human rights in the PRC, not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama.

Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China's communist system. -- not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama. (Not to mention the symbolic value of awarding a Chinese dissident on the 20th Anniversary of the Tianenmen Square Massacre.)

Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute has built nearly 80 schools, especially for girls, in remote areas of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past 15 years - not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama.

Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, a philosophy professor in Jordan who risks his life by advocating interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims, also not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama.

Afghan human rights activist Sima Samar. She currently leads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and serves as the U.N. special envoy to Darfur and is apparently also not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama.

But come on. Not a single one of them has ever been on the cover of People Magazine.

Update: Someone mentioned this (forget who) -- Thank God the Nobel Committee didn't use its power of publicity to highlight the travails and triumphs of those people, and use the spotlight to illuminate human rights abuses, or anything.

Thank God Himself they gave the prize to someone who really needs a bit of additional media hype.

Vid 1.

Vid 2: more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (190)
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Dom Irerra has a joke: "My girlfriend can be so nice, but I really wish she could get along better with my wife."

According to the NY Post, Letterman didn't get that that was a gag.

And the No. 1 reason David Letterman is a cad: The "Late Show" host brought the assistant he was sleeping with on Caribbean vacations with his wife and their young son, sources told The Post.

Letterman's wife, Regina Lasko, had no clue the comic was having an affair with his pretty, much younger assistant Stephanie Birkitt -- a $200,000-a-year employee -- when she was tagging along on the cozy, romantic trips, sources said.

Lasko, 48, "has to be really, really pissed" to learn recently that Letterman was so brazen as to have invited his paramour on vacations with their 6-year-old son, Harry, a source said.

At least one jaunt was to the Caribbean island of St. Barts.

How did he get away with it? Simple: He's rich, and he brought along a bunch of people to hide her in a bodyguard of lies:

Lasko -- a former show staffer herself who married Letterman in March after 23 years as his girlfriend -- believed that Birkitt was only an innocent "friend" and "co-worker" at the time. Letterman also brought other friends and co-workers along for the ride.

It really takes a lot of the tensions out of a marriage when you can slip away from your wife on vacation to boink your mistress.

The article, by the way, states that this affair was not over during Letterman's marriage, and that he went on long hikes with Birkitt at a ranch as late as last fall.

And, apparently, she was sleeping with him even while she was living with this other guy, the blackmailer.

I can sorta understand why he was pissed.

Posted by: Ace at 11:46 AM | Comments (95)
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Great.

ecurity sources in Paris said the suspected Islamist - arrested along with his brother on Thursday in Vienne near Lyon, worked on projects for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) on the Franco-Swiss border just outside Geneva.
The 32-year old Frenchman of Algerian origin was last night being held with his 25-year old brother at the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence - France's equivalent to MI5 - in Levallois-Perret, northwest of Paris..

Under anti-terror laws, they can be held for four days before being formally charged.

Investigators described the older man as "very high level" and said that he had been in contact with individuals linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim) - the North African wing of the terrorist network - about potential targets in France.

Intelligence sources said he had expressed a "wish, a desire" to carry out a terrorist attack but had "not committed material preparatory acts".

The Large Hadron Collider is the mini-blackhole creator designed for exploring the post-Big-Bang universe.

They claim he did not have access to any sort of technology that would be helpful for carrying out attacks. Obviously, Al Qaeda is not going to suddenly be able to weaponize a Black Hole Bomb.

But...

It is hard for me to believe these guys didn't have access to an awful lot of nuke-tech stuff.

Not sure how much that matters, given that Iran's going to have the bomb in two years anyway.

Thanks to both DrewM. and Slublog.

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (34)
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A prank I noted a while ago is picking up steam.

Posted by: Ace at 11:09 AM | Comments (97)
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