Friday and home at last. There's nothing like finally getting back to your own hellholelighthouse. Anyway TGIF and welcome all M&M-types.

The 100 Cheesiest Movie Quotes of All Time
Compressed into just 10 minutes. Actually a lot of these are really just B-movie goodness or decent lines delivered by bad actors.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:48 PM | Comments (790)
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Getting hit by a freaking SPACE. ROCK. is almost as deadly as standing out in a lightning storm waving around metal rods...I'm sure this is "peer reviewed" science, so it must be true, right?

The 134-page report, released Friday by the National Academy of Sciences...

...According to the report, current long-term projections estimate that there could be up to 100 fatalities a year caused by space rock impacts, though admittedly the chances of such rare hits are remote...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:51 PM | Comments (199)
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It's been a month or two since the last time I had a chance to note your appalling taste in music. Put me some tunes in comments.

Here's what I'm listening to right now:

You can download it here. Last year's ain't bad either.

This is an open thread. Go meshugga.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:04 PM | Comments (444)
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You're gonna need some pudding after you watch this.

Seriously, if you only watch one airborne laser test video this year, this is it. It's like the Enterprise firing its phasers.

The missile wasn't destroyed but that wasn't part of the plan.

Seriously, I'll be in my bunk.

Enjoy it while you can before Obama sees it and cancels the program. If they do, we're going to have a fundraiser to buy this bad boy. We'll use it to light the skull!

Oh, not quite as awesome but pretty damn awesome. Lasers to destroy IEDs.

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 02:06 PM | Comments (136)
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Funny:

On first glance, it could be the ultimate Valentine's Day card -- a gigantic billboard that towers over New York's Times Square, featuring a happy couple with the text: "You are my soulmate forever, Charles & YaVaughnie."

But as every scorned lover knows, looks can be deceiving. This billboard -- which also has gone up in Atlanta and San Francisco -- is the ultimate act of revenge -- a very public retaliation by a dumped mistress aimed at a very wealthy, and married, businessman who is an adviser to President Obama.

YaVaughnie Wilkins posted the signs after she learned that her lover, Charles E. Phillips — president and director of the tech conglomerate Oracle Corporation and a member of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board — had reconciled with his wife, the New York Post reported.

Cost of posting these in three cities (and three billboards in NY alone): in the neighborhood of $250,000.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (455)
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It just wrapped up so I'm testing the better late than never theory but it was...awful. The speech was disjointed, flat in a lot of spots and just, well, a mess. If this Obama ran in 08 McCain (or Hillary) would have beaten him. Easily.

At one point Obama said, "here in Michigan" alas it was in Ohio. No problem though, it's not like those two states are rivals or anything.

Then it got really bad.

The Q&A was filled with questions one would expect more for a mayor or city council candidate and he didn't hand them well.

Jim Geraghty was watching too.

I was left with a bit of sympathy for President Obama, as questioner after questioner asked about their own specific concerns, often way out of the president's duties, responsibilities, and realm of expertise: one guy was an inventor who wanted to give him a sales pitch, one woman lamented the impatience of the American people before complaining about a slow response from the state environmental agency over her toddler's lead poisoning, one guy wanted to read the president a poem, a woman who talked about the problem of finding students for her truck driving school, an old lady who was upset that her Social Security didn't have a cost-of-living-increase, and a guy who had the patent for some wind turbine issue that was in a fight with some company about. One poor soul raised his hand and just wanted to shake Obama's hand.

In some ways this was like therapy session for Obama. He seems absolutely overwhelmed by the job and the fact that his Awesomeness simply hasn't translated to this job.

The State of the Union on Wednesday is going to be very interesting.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:10 AM | Comments (276)
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He made another stunning admission: He doesn't poop platinum.

President Barack Obama says his administration overestimated its ability to persuade the Israelis and Palestinians to resume meaningful peace talks.

Obama says both parties have been unwilling to make the bold gestures needed to move the process forward. If the U.S. had anticipated that earlier, Obama says he might not have raised his expectations so high.

Did anyone notice what the AP did there? They are paraphrasing Obama, but check out what they say.

If the US had not failed to understand basic reality, then Obama would not have raised expectations so high.

This is not an error of judgment of "the US." "The US" did not fail to anticipate this. "The US," in fact, isn't really a sentient being capable of anticipating anything at all, but to the extent we collectively think stuff, we collectively have long doubted that the Palestinians would ever make peace. Or at least we've been highly skeptical of any progress towards real peace there.

And yet the AP neatly, in an almost nonsensical sentence, pushes off the fault for this to "the US."

Obama didn't make any errors. Obama can't make any errors.

What happened here was that "the US" made a huge error, and Obama just raised expectations based on "the US'" defect in thinking.

But is Obama to blame?

Of course not.

You are, champ.

Obama's like Reverse Jesus. You will, collectively, assume his sins so that he is cleansed and untainted.*

* Yes, I know there's another word for "Reverse Jesus."

I don't think that's really a good thing to say.

When I was in college, some guy -- a transgressive sort of guy, a guy who liked causing reactions and doing shock value stuff to spook the "straights" -- was goofing around, claiming he was actually the Anti-Christ, to this guy who was Christian.

The Christian guy was just shrugging along at how silly it was.

Eventually the Transgressive Guy said, "How do you know I'm not the Anti-Christ?"

The Christian guy smiled. "Easy. Satan wouldn't be so fat."

So funny. Transgressive Guy, to his credit, busted a gut at that too.

Anyway, if you had suspicions Obama was the Anti-Christ, put them out of your mind. Satan wouldn't be such a fuck-up.

Thanks to Gabe.

Posted by: Ace at 08:52 AM | Comments (515)
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As has been endlessly documented, David Axelrod was the "gold standard of astroturf campaigns" for his many PR clients. Astroturf, in case you don't know, is "artificial grassroots" -- a paid consultant attempting to create the illusion of grassroots support.

Readers of this site know we had a lot of "Concerned Christian Conservatives" who showed up in the months before an election to write the same script ten times a week:

1) I'm a Christan.

2) I'm a conservative. I voted for Regan and both Bushes!

3) But I have these concerns about McCain and Palin... like, did you know that Palin tried to ban all books about dinosaurs from public libraries? And that her daughter got knocked up and is, we can surmise, the victim of bad, slutty parenting? Google it! Anyway, this gives me concern as a Christian Conservative... I'm just saying, as a Christian Conservative, I want to vote for McCain/Palin, but all these concerns about them are making me consider Obama... and maybe you should too!

This happened so often it was definitely organized. Perhaps not by Axelrod-- we could never prove that -- but somewhere out in lefty-land, on Organizing for America, a bunch of lefties got the idea to "Moby" (discojagoff Moby suggested this tactic in 2004) and write comments on rightwing blogs to depress the vote and encourage crossover voting for Obama.

(This is why some of you are accused of being "concern trolls," which I think may have been a term created by 4chan to describe this (or a similar) sort of thing. We have, in fact, had this go on here -- and people are a little quick on the trigger to throw out the accusation. But it did really happen. Oddly, after the election, all these Concerned Christian Conservatives stopped posting on the blog. They no longer had any interest in sharing their concerns with us.)

Whether Axelrod (did I mention? "the gold standard of astroturf campaigns") is behind any of this, I don't know (but he almost certainly is).

And it's happening yet again.

In recent weeks, Light has published virtually identical “Letters to the Editor” in support of President Barack Obama in more than a dozen newspapers.Every letter claimed a different residence for Light that happened to be in the newspaper’s circulation area.

“It’s time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work, and that a president can’t just wave a magic wand and fix everything,” said a letter from alleged Philadelphian Ellie Light, that was published in the Jan. 19 edition of The Philadelphia Daily News.

A letter from Light in the Jan. 20 edition of the San Francisco Examiner concluded with an identical sentence, but with an address for Light all the way across the country in Daly City, California.

Variations of LightÂ’s letter ran in OhioÂ’s Mansfield News Journal on Jan. 13, with Light claiming an address in Mansfield; in New MexicoÂ’s Ruidoso News on Jan. 12, claiming an address in Three Rivers; in South CarolinaÂ’s The Sun News on Jan. 18, claiming an address in Myrtle Beach; and in the Daily News Leader of Staunton, Virginia on Jan. 15, claiming an address in Waynesboro. Her publications list includes other papers in Ohio, West Virginia, Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania and California, all claiming separate addresses.

Light – who e-mailed an identical missive to this reporter on Jan. 16 without listing a hometown – would not answer e-mailed questions about the address discrepancies in newspapers that ran her letter, or her identity, although she did say she wasn’t a former co-worker of this reporter’s who had a similar name.

Create the illusion of a inevitability. Make people think they are almost alone in disapproving of Obama, so that they self-censor and won't say they disapprove of Obama, and thereby make other people think they're alone in that too.

PR, PR, PR. Spin, spin, spin. Alinsky, Alinsky, Alinsky.

It was always dishonest. Now it's just pathetic.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 08:41 AM | Comments (159)
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I have to admit I wasnÂ’t expecting this level of nuttiness in reaction to yesterdayÂ’s decision. IÂ’m not sure if they really care this much about the case or it was just too much on top of Scott BrownÂ’s election and the death of health care reform, so they have collectively lost it.

Either way, the heart of the leftÂ’s critique of the decision seems to be that corporations arenÂ’t people and therefore they donÂ’t t have the same rights as individuals.

Not surprisingly thatÂ’s not exactly what the court said. The 5 justices simply said Congress canÂ’t regulate political speech. It doesnÂ’t say anything about whether or not corporations are people, real or imaginary, the thing is the speech, not the speaker. Now IÂ’m not sure where they got this crazy idea (maybe the actual words of the Constitution had something to do with it) but this decision simply recognizes the limits on the power of Congress and says nothing about the rights of corporations.

HereÂ’s Keith Olbermann, to take but one example of lefty reaction.

Today, the Supreme Court, of Chief Justice John Roberts, in a decision that might actually have more dire implications than "Dred Scott v Sandford," declared that because of the alchemy of its 19th Century predecessors in deciding that corporations had all the rights of people, any restrictions on how these corporate-beings spend their money on political advertising, are unconstitutional.

In short, the first amendment — free speech for persons — which went into affect in 1791, applies to corporations, which were not recognized as the equivalents of persons until 1886.

He thinks this is bad. But let’s take Keith and other lefties “logic” to its natural conclusion…First amendment rights should only apply to people not corporations. What else is in the First Amendment? Oh yeah…freedom of the press. I guess according to the logic of Olberman (employee of NBC/GE ), the editorial board of the NY Times (aka The New York Times Company) and E..J Dione (writing in the Washington Post, aka The Washington Post Company) that freedom doesn’t apply to their employers. Following their "reasoning", the government can simply outlaw or regulated any publication, broadcast or activity by those companies.

Is that really the position the left wants to take? Of course not. They’ll argue, ‘well it’s different because…it’s different. Now shut up fascist!”

But how is it different?

Sure the Constitution protects ‘the press’ but as bloggers of today and pamphleteers of the founding era know, you don’t need to be a corporation to be ‘the press’. Clearly corporate media isn’t a necessary condition of ‘the press’ so why should media corporations be afforded special protections for 1st Amendment activities others aren’t?

There's also the inconvenient fact that corporations are nothing more than an aggregation of individuals (investors, workers, managers, etc). Each of these people have first amendment speech rights. Why exactly should those rights be destroyed simply because they are exercising them collectively instead of individually? (hint: they shouldn't)

ThereÂ’s simply no merit to the leftÂ’s critique and they wonÂ’t like where it leads. The beauty of being a lefty is that every case is different and the argument you use one day, isnÂ’t applicable to similar circumstances the next day if it doesnÂ’t help you.

Olbermann and the rest are wrong on the law and wrong on the logic. In other words, just another day in America.

BTW- Have you noticed how much of the anger is directed at Chief Justice Roberts in this case? ItÂ’s kind of funny since he didnÂ’t write the opinion, Anthony Kennedy did. Strikes me that a lot of these folks know that Kennedy is a mercurial fellow and that they may need him someday (say when the Prop 8 challenge reaches SCOTUS in a year or two) and they donÂ’t want to alienate him.

Added: I almost forgot. Our super genius "Professor of Constitutional Law" President had this reaction to the decision.

In a written statement, he said the high court had “given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics,” and pledged to “work immediately” with Congress to develop a “forceful response.”

“The public interest requires nothing less,” Obama said.

Unless by work with Congress he means amend the 1st Amendment, there's not much they can do about a decision that rests on constitutional basis, not simply statutory interpretation.

You'd think a supposedly smart guy like Obama would know that but....

Posted by: DrewM at 07:54 AM | Comments (196)
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Is there any distinction anymore between "straight" news and blogging?

If there's not -- and there doesn't appear to be -- can we have an end to these punk-bitches' assertions of superiority?

Yes, this is a straight news story. Supposedly. Front-page.

Scott Brown left the truck back in Massachusetts.

At 9:30 on Thursday morning, the Republican state senator arrived by US Airways shuttle at Reagan National Airport, though he rode a GMC-driving everyman image and a wave of Tea Party-stoked, establishment-financed frustration into the U.S. Senate seat of Jack and Teddy Kennedy. Looking fresh and fit, he stepped out of Gate 43 for his crash-course introduction to official Washington.

Tea-Party-stoked, establishment-financed? How about Tea Party stoked, Tea Party financed? You think "the establishment" gives its contributions in average lumps of $77?

What the hell is this? First real paragraph, right out of the gate: Hypocrite. Liar. Poser. Wannabe populist beholden to a shadowy "establishment."

Good God All Mighty, do they have no shame left?

Krikorian writes:

This is the kind of thing I'd expect in a bitchy Style section story, not a news story on the front page.

Exactly. But while blogs have been endeavoring to become a bit more professional and credible, these wannabes have been trying to be bloggers, and not even bloggers as they are now, but bloggers as they were back in 2002.

And they're not even good at it. It's all this kind of crap:

Posted by: Ace at 06:57 AM | Comments (172)
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