Captain Wonderful & fam will be the subjects of a four month long love-you-mentary set in the White House.

NGT has been in talks with Obama's team since last August - before he won the US presidential election - to secure access to film the world's most famous politician. It last month got the green light, and only last week begun filming inside the White House. It will now film for the rest of the year, through Christmas and until January 2010.

Talking to C21 at Mipcom, NGT's exec VP of editorial and new business development, Maryanne Culpepper, said: "We started talking to the administration before he was elected in August last year, and we got permission last month.

"We did our first shoot last week and I have about five minutes of rushes. It's amazing footage - he goes to New York, then he's having lunch with Bill Clinton, then he's running down the corridor with his dog in the White House. It's fantastic."

Emphasis me. Also, I just threw up a little, in my mouth. The nice thing about finding quotes from events like Mipcom is that these media folks know they're among friends and feel comfortable gushing about their crush on the quarterback.

Sweet Fancy Moses. How many C-batteries has this woman exhausted so far in the course of reviewing footage? And are they tax deductible?

The documentary show is expected to air in November of 2010. On PBS. So you can fairly assume taxpayers are footing the cost. Nice.

Though the lefty media's affair with Obama is galling as ever, who knows what effect it will have going forward.

Even most of those who support Barack Obama are not tuning in to soak up his every syllable and gesture anymore.
First of all, they're adults and no longer draw hearts in glitter pen on their Trapper-Keepers, for anybody. Second, the guy never shuts up as it is. The market is saturated. Barring unforeseen circumstances, Obama-demand is not poised to spike.

Let's hope the lefty media never wakes up to the fact that the vast majority of Americans are not as enraptured with the Obamas as they are. Keep f*ckin' that chicken, guys.

Posted by: LauraW at 09:57 AM | Comments (72)
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Worth watching.

There are two cool things here:

1. Scarborough's tone is pitch perfect. I get a little annoyed when conservatives are too often in outrage mode, particularly when it involves personal slights to leaders. The reason I'm annoyed is that it's counterproductive. Independents don't want to see fights about personalities and who said what about whom; they want to see parties concerned primarily with making good policy.

The he-said-this-but-you-said-that stuff fires up partisans, but I am absolutely convinced it turns off moderates. Hell, I'm a a partisan and most of the time it turns me off. Anyone dabbling in this sort of thing publicly should take a page from Scarborough here and make sure that the dispute is cast in terms of policy. You can still talk about the dispute, and still say Democrats did it first and all that. But it has to be tied relentlessly to policy and ideas and moving America forward. A lot of times conservatives forget to do that and focus only on the he-said-a-dirty-word crap which makes us look juvenile and only concerned about regaining power, for the sake of power, and playground style namecalling.

It's about emphasis, not about forbidding the topic completely. Democrats will not shut the hell up about about rightwingish efforts to delegitimize President Prissypants. The "You did it too" defense is the right defense, and does have to be noted, just to dismiss this particular nit-- but only when hooked up to policy considerations.

Keep coming back to the why Obama is being opposed. Simple assertions that we have the right to behave like the left did aren't particularly helpful. That's true -- we sure do have that right -- but not all rights need to be exercised. So when we do exercise our right of full-on no-compromise opposition, we always have to be careful of explaining why we're doing it.

And it helps to adopt Scarborough's world-weary, "this is becoming a cartoon" boredom with the entire topic. He's the grown-up, Blumenthal is the mewling infant. Through tone he establishes that he's the adult who cares about policy and Blumenthal is the man-child who just wants to fling poo.

2. The other cool thing is that this is, as far as I know, the first time CGI has been used to wholly create the illusion of a leftist political commentator. Look at how the computer-generated homonculous "Max Blumenthal" very nearly has a lifelike look to him, almost deceiving you at times that he's a genuine human being, rather than a nightmarish creature dreamed up by ILM.

Impressive. "Max Blumenthal" keeps repeating the same menu of stock bile and hissing, but actor Andy Serkis invests him with something approaching genuine human pathos. All those hours in a blue suit studded with a hundred ping-pong balls really paid off. We slam Hollywood a lot, but we need to give them credit for their technical wizardry and creativity -- you can almost believe that a shriveled gog-eyed runtish monster like "Max Blumenthal" really exists in the four corners of the living world.

"I have a new book out!... Wait, let me try that
without so much spittle."

Oh: Let me add that as far as Point One goes, I chiefly mean leaders and prominent spokesmen. I'm not really talking about bloggers and I'm certainly not talking about commenters -- we're partisans here and we're trying to fire each other up.

I'm talking about people in positions of genuine influence. Anytime a major conservative spokesman or spokeswoman gets caught only dealing in the "he said a dirty word" crap, that's not just a lost opportunity to talk policy and program, that's a net negative where a bunch of people just tossed up their hands and said, "Oh these guys aren't serious either; all they want to do is complain about what the Democrats said."

Oh, Part II: At CPAC a couple of years ago, Max Blumenthal was going around asking conservatives why they hadn't signed up for the Iraq War.

Fair point, but I always wanted (and lobbied for) someone to stick a camera in his face and ask why he hadn't signed up for the war he supposedly supported, Afghanistan.

Well, Barack Obama is now president, and, while he's dodging the question of full counterinsurgency like he campaigned on, he has not formally withdrawn his oft-repeated assertion that Afghanistan is a "war of necessity" and must be won.

So, my question for Blumenthal is the same as my question for Glenn Greenwald -- did you find it difficult writing your book in Kabul, in between your covert operations against the Taliban?

I hope they get some good screenwriters to come up with a plausible answer to this question. Something that sounds like what "Max Blumenthal" would say.

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (148)
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With the usual caveat that this is the NE, and then the usual counter-caveat that they're almost always right.

David Letterman's sensational sex scandal has triggered a $300 million divorce war between the 62-year-old talk-show host and his outraged wife Regina, say sources close to the star.

The couple - who lived together for years before marrying March 19 - are fighting over everything from his extensive property holdings to custody of their son Harry, 6, according to insiders.

"It's become a real battle," revealed a Late Show insider.

"Regina is humiliated, and she wants to get even with David for his public admission he cheated on her repeatedly during their 23-year relationship."

CBS has announced the divorce filings will be scheduled to coincide with winter sweeps.

No, not really, of course. But former comedian turned reality tv show star David Letterman sure is getting an awful lot of ratings mileage out of his self-created mess.

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (123)
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There is an excellent article in The New Republic about a course being run in Afghanistan to ensure that our tactical leaders fully understand the concepts of population-centric counterinsurgency and how to implement it in the field. There are a number of anecdotes that illustrate how changing the mindset of our officers and then our troops is vital to success.

For one week each
month, 130 students descend on Julien to learn about counterinsurgency.
Attendees come from every possible background: U.S. and coalition
troops of all ranks, ages, and nationalities; State Department and
USAID personnel; Afghan soldiers and police; members of NGOs;
contractors; Army anthropologists. (I was there in July as part of my
research on law in situations of counterinsurgency.)....

"How many of you have read David GalulaÂ’s Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice?"
Lt. Colonel Matt Galton, the deputy director of the center, asked in
his Australian accent. Two hands slowly went up. It was not surprising.
Though GalulaÂ’s book is a--possibly the--classic
starting point for counterinsurgency, it was written over 40 years ago
and isnÂ’t required reading. More troubling, when Galton asked how many
had read the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, only about five hands went up.

This was
surprising, given how pervasive, even trendy, counterinsurgency has
become in policy circles. In the nearly three years since the release
of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual,
its authors have gone on to fame, at least in the public policy world:
Nagl appeared on "The Daily Show"; Kilcullen is a frequent television
commentator; and Petraeus, the lead author of the manual, is now the
head of U.S. Central Command--in charge of the militaryÂ’s operations in
the Middle East. But, despite the coachesÂ’ rise to prominence, most of
the players havenÂ’t read the playbook.

"I didnÂ’t even know
counterinsurgency was a term," Lieutenant Aaron Lewis said of his tour
of duty in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. "I felt something was wrong with what
we were doing ... but I didnÂ’t know what."

The rest at BLACKFIVE

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 07:57 AM | Comments (41)
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One of the confusing things about Obama's hesitancy about adding troops to Afghanistan is that many thought this was settled back in March when the Administration announced a comprehensive new strategy focusing on Counter Insurgency.

Turns out, Obama and his team had no clue what they were agreeing to at the time.

That conclusion, which was later endorsed by the president and members of his national security team, would become the first in a set of recommendations contained in an administration white paper outlining what Obama called "a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan." Preventing al-Qaeda's return to Afghanistan, the document stated, would require "executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy."

To senior military commanders, the sentence was unambiguous: U.S. and NATO forces would have to change the way they operated in Afghanistan. Instead of focusing on hunting and killing insurgents, the troops would have to concentrate on protecting the good Afghans from the bad ones.

And to carry out such a counterinsurgency effort the way its doctrine prescribes, the military would almost certainly need more boots on the ground.

To some civilians who participated in the strategic review, that conclusion was much less clear. Some took it as inevitable that more troops would be needed, but others thought the thrust of the new approach was to send over scores more diplomats and reconstruction experts. They figured a counterinsurgency mission could be accomplished with the forces already in the country, plus the 17,000 new troops Obama had authorized in February.

Turns out some of the big brains on Team Obama thought it meant more diplomats and aid workers...you know, the community organizers of the government. Yes, those elements are part of COIN but they come after the military operations...Clear, Hold, Build. You can't send in reconstruction teams to areas where the enemy is running wild or can come back and destroy what you have created.

Now they are stuck with the reality of what their strategy announcement meant and are lost.

Were any of these idiots paying attention to the last 3 or so years in Iraq? Is there anyone who pays the least bit of attention to the news who doesn't know the general outline of modern day COIN methods? Of course Obama isn't just anyone, no he's the smartest, most deliberate thinker ever. Hell, he was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker gave their presentations about the Iraq 'surge'.

Maybe he would have paid more attention to this if he thought COIN and reconstruction efforts had some contracts that could be directed to his friends at ACORN.

If this story is true, it is criminal incompetence.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:13 AM | Comments (168)
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No, not Theodore Kennedy. *

It's been going on for months. Pretty much since April. But today the lengths to which the MSM is carrying Obama's water vis-a-vis the dismal Employment numbers struck me as rote monotony, as if the Media has so internalized the formula that it plays in my mind like the bored monotone of that ancient and tenured professor who has lost the passion for his work, but carries on for the paycheck (and for the movement) nontheless.

It's the same-old, same-old.

Update (because my in-joke was a little too 'in'). Theodore because I was just playing with the name, since somehow John F's name became 'Jack', and I can't help but think Teddy wished he had been a Theodore. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:48 AM | Comments (108)
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Get re-elected. And distrance themselves from an unpopular direction, should Barack choose to go down that road.

Although Pelosi is waiting for Obama to propose a strategy, she seems more receptive to the creation of a smaller force focused on anti-terrorism operations on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, an approach reportedly favored by Vice President Joe Biden.

Reid has maintained a far more open posture — and has refused to take a position until Obama lays out his long-awaited strategy for the 8-year-old war.

Harry stepped in it Tuesday with Pelosi at a joint briefing after meeting with the President, hugging up on Granny Botox McRictus and asserting that "'everyone' would support 'whatever' Afghanistan policy the president produces."

Don't think so Harry. Check out the bug-eyed reaction to Harry's statement at 0:14, after her visceral reaction to the snuggy.

Yeah, we'll see.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 06:46 AM | Comments (47)
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The American Legion blog has more on the battle in Afghanistan that killed 8 Americans and efforts to help them replace the personal belonging they lost.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:55 AM | Comments (70)
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According to the Enquirer Kennedy decided to tell the complete truth about his life in his memoirs including sexual conquests and details about his night with Mary Jo Kopechne. However horrified family member and advisers cut out the embarrassing chapter of his autobiography.

Here are some of the juicy details:

Ted Kennedy slept with more than a thousand women - and spent at least $10 million in hush money over the years to keep his skirt-chasing a secret!

The late senator made those sensational confessions in a chapter of his autobiography, but horrified family members and advisers cut them out.

Before he died of brain cancer at age 77 on Aug. 25, the womanizing politician also revealed that he planned to seduce Mary Jo Kopechne on the night she drowned, said a close source.

Overall this pretty much confirms what a lot of people including myself had always assumed about Ted, but it's nice to see it confirmed. And yeah at this point I'm willing to trust the word of the Enquirer over the self-filtered output of the MSM. I wonder what the 'waitress sandwich' cost him if anything. Given inflation and what Polanski paid his rape victim, $10 million could cover up a lot of evil.

Posted by: Open Blog at 11:08 PM | Comments (165)
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Good evening Viet-morons!

Thugs Attack Transvestites Who Actually Are Cage Fighters in Drag; Hilarity, Beating Ensue
This happened in the UK and the cage fighters were apparently heading to a bachelor party where everyone would be in drag. Best quote:

But the other cage fighter, wearing a sparkling black dress and matching long wig, sprang to his friend's help, delivering two lightning-quick punches to the two stunned yobs.

The cage fighters were then seen teetering away in their high heels, stopping only to pick up a clutch bag they dropped during the melee.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:06 PM | Comments (682)
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