Hi all. Well I survived the kitteh attack and got my shots. And I don't think I have rabies since my desire to attack and kill people is no higher than usual. So that's good.

Star Wars Bloopers
While we're on a Star Wars kick for the holidays, here are some bloopers from episodes IV, V, and VI.

Posted by: Open Blog at 05:50 PM | Comments (695)
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Cowboys against the Redskins. I love it how they still make Dallas wear their colors on the road.

I also love Terence Newman interceptions.

ALSO. Meaningless game, keep your QB healthy?

I dunno. I just wanna beat the Redskins.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:39 PM | Comments (151)
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I'll leave the official review to Ace, and will just offer a spoiler-free perspective as a preamble to the moron spoilerfest to unfold in the comments.

As with any movie, I went into this hoping to be able to ignore the more blatant and almost ubiquitously non-sequitor digs at the military, Conservatism, and Americans in general. I was also hoping that I wouldn't have to forget too much about what I've long loved about Sherlock Holmes mysteries in order to enjoy a contemporary telling of Doyle's characters.

And truthfully that all took some of my enjoyment away, as I was internally preparing to cringe for a slight either to my politics or to the literary standard of Sherlock Holmes that never came.

This movie stuck to a great plot with terrific characters, and engaged the audience's intellect with all the clues necessary to solve the case with Sherlock and Doc Watson, and also involved us viscerally with some truly entertaining and physically believable action sequences that never quite made me sit up and say "Stop swingin' that big blue dork in my face!". All accompanied by a fantastic musical score by Hans Zimmer that was equal parts classical elegance, and rollicking pub music.

Smart, fun, and terrifically acted in every role -- I'll probably watch this at least once more in the theater if for no other reason than to catch some of the dialogue I missed while acclimating to the tempo and accents.

I give it 4 and a half Deerstalkers out of 5. I'm deducting a half-cap partially because I'm a stingy bastad, and partially to hedge against the surety that someone else will point out a good reason this wasn't a perfect movie, allowing me to say "Yeah, I noticed that too."

Guy Ritchie should have lost that Madonna sized tumor on his creativity long long ago.

Posted by: Open Blog at 03:17 PM | Comments (147)
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Great post at Innocent Bystanders.

Posted by: Ace at 02:46 PM | Comments (125)
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Hey, don't knock binge drinking at work until you've tried it. Takes the edge off things.

Whether he's really drunk, I cannot say, because... Uhhh... I guess I'm supposed to pretend I don't think he's drunk to avoid a defamation suit or somethin'. So, like, maybe he's just on some muscle relaxants for an old skiing injury or something.

He's not wildly, fall-down drunk or anything (actually, he's not drunk at all: He just accidentally ingested some freon while disposing of an old air conditioner), but he does seem a little... well, let's say "happy."

No, but seriously, I can't say he's drunk. All I can do -- the most I can do -- is resort to gossip-page non-libelous nonsense-words.

So let me say he's not drunk, he was just spotted canoodling with a bottle of Dewar's.

Thanks to Adam Baldwin's Twitter feed. Adam Baldwin isn't just sort of hinting he might lean a little right anymore. He also talks to his fans (well, mostly his critics, but fans too) so it's a little celebrity-internet-facetime bonus if you follow him.

Thanks to DrewM. I will try to think of some jokes, but I really wanted to get this up.

Oh -- DrewM's twitter feed is great, too. So is Gabe's, and Dave in Texas', and Slublog's. I don't think the others are on Twitter yet, or at least no one has told me they are.

But then -- none of those guys played Jayne Cobb, did they?

Only One Drink Per Hour So Your System Burns Off the Alcohol As It Comes In And You Stay Sober? The system worked.

No but seriously he's not drunk.

Re-Purposed Post: One of the funnier things I remember writing was riffing on the apparent drunkenness of John Kerry at a campaign rally.

I'm going to just adapt that post to the current situation, because as long-time readers know, I'm just not that funny anymore.

Yes, trust me, I know, and I'm far more disappointed by this fact than you could ever be.

A Vile Attack on Max Baucus's Character Which I Cannot Abide

Ace of Spades HQ is far too responsible and classy an outfit to ever engage in this sort of cheap speculation. It fills me with "heart-ache" that I'm required to even link such vile filth.

Whether or not this monstrous calumny is true or not -- and I think there's at least a 10% chance it's not -- I would add three caveats and defenses of the good character of Max "Jegermeister" Baucus:

1. While no one can say with certainty whether Max Baucus was drunk, except, perhaps, for the bartender who got him all loaded up and sloppy, Baucus obviously has some sort of speech impediment going on, whether because he drank too much (low odds of that) or he accidentally licked a rat-trap.

I certainly would not go so far as to speculate about this distinguished gentleman hitting the sauce in anaesthetized desperation, but I would say that I wouldn't blame him if he sought solace in a bottle, which, let's face it, he almost certainly did.

2. Just because the inability to speak coherently without slurring and without giving you that "Angry Drunk Hornyface" is a classic sign of intoxication, there is no reason to draw any conclusions from Max Baucus' apparent high level of inebriation.

We cannot conclude from that slender evidence that Max Baucus may have downed one or a dozen highballs before speaking, although we all damn well know he did.

3. And most importantly: Getting sloppy slosh-drunk for a Senate speech doesn't indicate anything about one's job performance or capacity to represent one's constituents, except to the extent a Senator is called upon to make lucid decisions about life-and-death matters of national security and fiscal policy during an economic crisis, and honestly, how often does that come up? No more than four or five times a week, tops.

What business is that of mine? Who are we to judge chronic drunks, gutter-rummies, and railroad hobos such as Max Baucus?

Completely Unrelated Link Having Nothing At All Whatsoever to Do With Max Baucus's state of Almost Certain Intoxication: If you missed it, here are the Top Ten Signs That a Bear Might Be Drunk.

This has nothing to do with Max Baucus. Read nothing into it, because Max Baucus is quite plainly not a bear.

At least, I assume he's not a bear.

Honestly, who can say at this point. I haven't seen a DNA test proving he's human, and no one else has, either. I suppose it's quite possible that he's some sort of shaved-down mutant "manimal" created in order to infiltrate our society and ultimately destroy all human life, but really, there's little evidence of that at this point.

Let's just call it an open question whether Max Baucus is a kind of ursine Terminator fueled only by a hatred of the human species and copious quantities of peach schnapps.

And on that last point, I see no reason whatsoever to follow Newsbusters and Adam Baldwin down into the gutter of cheap slanders and start calling Max Baucus "Senator Schnapps" or "the Schnappster" or even "Schnappmaster McDrunkerton" or, worst of all, "Schnappy, the Genetic-Monstrosity Bear-Thing Intent on Enslaving the World."

Let's keep this civil. Let's keep this on the issues. And the issues are 1, whether Max Baucus is a falling-down drunk, and 2, can he balance a ball on his nose while riding a tricycle?

Ba-Zing! Cicero--

This is just before he nominated Captain Morgan for the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (599)
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As Gabe notes below, "The system worked" is such a fire-breathingly insane and stupid statement to make Napolitano should resign at once. Either she believes this rot, and she's too stupid and too content with pure luck being America's defense to keep her job, or she's the most viciously mendacious liar in the history of history.

And sure, I have no doubts this pap is being pushed by Axelrod, Emmanuel, and of course Captain Wonderful, who didn't feel like taking a 7 am call about what could have been a coordinated terrorist attack requiring his order for the immediate grounding of all flights.

Death Star Thermal Exhaust Port Defensive Grid? The system worked.

Hindenburg hydrogen-cell containment system? The system worked.

Delta House coordinated cheating strategy? The system worked.

Charleton "Bright-Eyes Talyor" Heston's ability to avoid being in "a madhouse"? The system worked.

League of Nations? The system worked.

Hooper's shark-cage-and-poison-spear shark-killing scheme? The system worked.

My ability to please a woman? The system worked.

Seems like the Obama Administration not only believes in Bush's statement of "the soft bigotry of low expectations," they aspire to that low bar as their standard of success.

Johah Goldberg (quoted at Instapundt) says fire Napolitano:

Understandbly, the White House is trying very hard to get out in front of the would-be Christmas bomber story. The head of the Department of Homeland Security isn't helping. I watched her on three shows and each time she was more annoying, maddening and absurd than the pevious appearance. It is her basic position that the "system worked" because the bureaucrats responded properly after the attack. That the attack was "foiled" by a bad detonator and some civilian passengers is proof, she claims, that her agency is doing everything right. That is just about the dumbest thing she could say, on the merits and politically. I would wager that not one percent of Americans think the system is "working" when terrorists successfully get bombs onto planes (and succeed in activating them). Probably even fewer think it's fair that they have to take off their shoes, endure delays and madness while a known Islamic radical — turned in by his own father — can waltz onto a plane (and into the country). DHS had no role whatsoever in assuring that this bomb didn't go off. By her logic if the bomb had gone off, the system would have "worked" since it has done everything right.

Napolitano has a habit of arguing that DHS is a first responder outfit. Its mission is to deal with "man-caused-disasters" afer they occur. It appears she really believes it. If the White House wants to assure people that it takes the war on terror seriously (a term Robert Gibbs used this morning by the way), they could start by firing this patenly unqualified hack.

By that standard the system worked fine on 9/11, too. Although there were some deadly errors (the radio system used by police and firemen was apparently bad and led to firemen's deaths), certainly "the system worked" fairly well after the carnage. Many people were evacuated, and a few even saved from the wreckage.

The system worked.

I wonder what the hell it's going to look like when the system doesn't work, by the Obama Administration's lights. If this is what they deem a "success," Good Lord in Heaven, I tremble for what will come that provokes them to concede "mistakes were made."

Adventures in The System Working: Vid of Napolitano.

I suppose one can make that argument — if one assumes that the system includes allowing a man included on a watch list onto an airplane, allowing his visa to remain in force even after his own father informs the US that he’s become a radical jihadi, assuming that any explosive said terrorist will smuggle onto the plane will fizzle out, and that only quick thinking by the other passengers on the plane kept the jihadi from trying it again while he barbecued his crotch.

Is that the actual system we put in place after 9/11? Because if it is, a lot of heads need to roll, starting with the woman who believes that this near-miss represents a validation of the system. Most of us would prefer to keep the known radical Islamist terrorists off the plane in the first place.

The stimulus? The system worked.

Appeasement? The system worked.

Diplomacy with Iran? The system worked.

Obama's got so many "successes" of this sort I don't know how many more victories this country can withstand.

Celebrity Email! I just got an email from Wile E. Coyote.

He says of ACME's various Roadrunner-destruction kits: The system worked.

He also says the system of gravity works, at least after a long enough delay that he realizes he's run out of cliff, which is unfortunate for him. But he assures me that all systems are working smoothly.

Posted by: Ace at 10:41 AM | Comments (267)
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I thought the wires were running three days late when I saw something about all passengers on a Delta/Northwest flight being taken off a plane that just landed in Detroit. A Delta/Northwest Flight 253.

Repeat:

Metro Airport spokesman John Witner said there was a report of suspicious activity on the Delta/Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam Sunday. That is the same flight number as the flight that a Nigerian man was suspected of attempting to blow up over Detroit on Christmas Day.

All 257 passengers and 12 crew have deplaned safely, said Delta spokeswoman Susan Elliott. The flight landed safely in Detroit at 12:34 p.m. Sunday.

Apparently, this fellow, also from Nigeria, locked himself in a lav and wouldn't come out.

Hey, Janet, is the system still working?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:38 AM | Comments (46)
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The words coming out of her mouth have no relation to anything close to reality.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit airline flight Christmas Day demonstrated that "the system worked."

Asked by CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union" how that could be possible when the young Nigerian who has been charged with trying to set off the bomb was able to smuggle explosive liquid onto the jet, Napolitano responded: "We're asking the same questions."

How do we know that even this dimbo knows that the system did not work? They're instituting changes to airline screening and in-flight procedures in reaction. If everything were hunky-dory, there'd be no need for that.

This is the Democratic knee-jerk blather, "See, we're good on national security." They can't even bring themselves to admit that it is only an accident of fate that kept the passengers of Northwest Flight 253 alive on Christmas.

Andy McCarthy ties this back to President Obama's embarrassing foreign policy:

Hadn't Abdulmutallab heard that we are closing Gitmo? Hadn't he heard that we're phasing out military-commissions so we can show the world that we give even the worst mass-murderers civilian trials with all the rights of American citizens? Hadn't he heard that President Obama has banned torture (yes, yes, I know, actually Congress banned it 15 years ago — details, details ...)? Hadn't he heard that the president has called for "a new beginning" in America's relationship with the Muslim world? Hadn't he heard that this is our new, smarter strategy to safeguard the nation from man-caused disasters?

How long do we have to wait before we can say that the President's terrorism policy has failed?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:53 AM | Comments (113)
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I haven't the slightest idea of who is playing this week, so talk amongst yourself.

From India, unrelated but worth noting.

An 86-year old Congress Party leader was forced to resign today after a local news channel broadcast footage of him allegedly cavorting in bed with three young women in his official residence..

For some reason the guy is denying it. If I were 86 and 'cavorting' (a great word) with 3 chicks in bed, I'd be releasing the tape myself. Resign? Hell no, it would be my campaign ad. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 08:18 AM | Comments (202)
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Welcome to another edition of CatSaturday.

And yes tonight truly is Caturday night. Earlier this afternoon I had to retrieve my parents' kitteh out from under the house where she's been holed up for the last several sub-freezing days. Well anyway I succeeded but at the cost of a chewed up, bloody thumb. So I'm off to the urgent care to get tetanus, antibiotic shots, and (crossing fingers) some of the good painkillers. Good times, good times. So anyway I may or may not check in tonight so play nicely among yourselves.

Kitteh Yoga

Posted by: Open Blog at 05:50 PM | Comments (855)
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