Bleargh.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:31 AM | Comments (260)
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(* I may have bamboozled you just a smidge on that headline)

I don't ask for much competence from the media. All I ask is that once they finish writing a story, they look it over one last time and ask themselves "Does this seem like bullshit?"

With those low expectations, you'd think that I wouldn't be showered with ignorance every damn time I opened a paper, watched TV, or even logged onto Hot Air......but NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Even the blogosphere is full of drooling fanboys, eager to believe the fairy tales they're being told. Case in Point: Anna Fermanova, Double-Nought Bimbo.

What's my beef with this story? Wait a minute honey, gonna add it up... more...

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 07:19 PM | Comments (181)
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There's a lot of thinks and believes and may bes in this article.

Let's hope it's not true.

In the wake of handsome Levi Johnston's announcement that he's engaged to Palin's oldest daughter Bristol, one of his old girlfriends is about to give birth to a child she believes may be Levi's!

Levi Johnston doesn't have sperm; he has microscopic Tribbles.

If this is even possibly true -- that is, if there is reason for him to be worried about it... Kid, they're called rubbers, and they even come ribbed (for her pleasure).

Thanks to rdbrewer.

Posted by: Ace at 06:20 PM | Comments (98)
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Happy Thursday all.

More Needless Movie Remakes and Sequels

So Hollywood has been on a tear the last few years remaking or rebooting every hit movie it can get the rights to. Of course most of these were great the first time so the odds of a remake improving on it are pretty low but that won't stop the industry from trying. Here's a list of 75 remakes/reboots that are currently in production. And recently the hot thing seems to be re-doing actions hits from the 80's which is why remakes for Robocop, Total Recall, and Conan are being considered. Only the impending MGM bankruptcy has stopped the new Robocop - for now at least.

But finally there's a sequel coming out that you never would have suspected possible - Titantic 2. It's so unexpected that it's creative in its own way. It comes from The Asylum, a low budget production company that specializes in direct to DVD movies, but it actually looks semi-entertaining and contains 100% less Leonardo. So there's that. Now if they could only combine this with Sharktopus they could have a true hit.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:37 PM | Comments (715)
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Republican challenger Mike Grimm had a good fundraising quarter, so the campaign of Democratic Congressman Mike McMahon decided to highlight how much came in from out of the district.

Seems simple enough, right? Sometimes it's the easy stuff that trips you up.

But in an effort to show that Grimm lacks support among voters in the district, which covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, the McMahon campaign compiled a list of Jewish donors to Grimm and provided it to The Politicker.

The file, labeled "Grimm Jewish Money Q2," for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home.

"Where is Grimm's money coming from," said Jennifer Nelson, McMahon's campaign spokesman. "There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees."

Yeah, that didn't go well.

The McMahon campaign fired the aide and wants people to know the Congressman is sorry. They'd also like everyone to know that his donor list is Judenfrei.

I may have made that second part up. Who is to say?

McMahon by the way is the guy who replaced long time Congressman Vito Fossella when the latter was charged with DUI. Oh and for having a girlfriend and child in DC. The main problem with the girlfriend and child was he had a wife and kids back on Staten Island.

For awhile this seat was pretty much the only inroad the GOP had at the federal level in NYC. Looks like there's a good shot of them getting it back this year.

Via Jim Geraghty.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:26 PM | Comments (214)
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Worth it! more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:34 PM | Comments (277)
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Ten percent here, ten percent there, and pretty soon you're talking about a real mandate.

Support for the building of a fence along the Mexican border has reached a new high, and voters are more confident than ever that illegal immigration can be stopped.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 68% of U.S. voters now believe the United States should continue to build a fence on the Mexican border. ThatÂ’s up nine points from March when the Obama administration halted funding for the fence and the highest level of support ever.
Just 21% oppose the continued building of the border fence.

Support for the fence is strong across all demographic groups. But while 76% of Mainstream voters think the United States should continue to build the fence, 67% of the Political Class are opposed to it.

I always enjoy how twits speak of the symbolism of a thing.

That's why the "Political Class" -- the Gee Aren't I Terribly Enlightened? crowd -- opposes this. They talk about that a lot -- the symbolism of the thing.

How about discussing the reality of it? It's a fence. Its real purpose -- in real-world, real-time reality -- is to halt people from crossing a border. A real border, mind you, although on that point I concede a border is a more abstract concept than, say, a shoe.

It doesn't symbolically represent a division between the countries. It actually is a division between the countries.

And what is wrong with that?

I'm noting this because a few weeks ago I saw a guy at the riots in Toronto who complained that the police barricades were a symbol representing a division between the protesters and the G-20 representatives.

And I thought, "Gee, no, actually it's not a symbol of a division; it really is, in fact, a physical division." Because, see, you're rioting. (And not symbolically in riot, either.) You can tell it's a real-world division because now you can't get to the G-20 conference center and throw rock-metaphors through the window-symbols.

I think there is a type of person -- well-represented in the "Political Class" and in progressive politics -- that has learned, from college, that the Abstract is everything, that Real Smart People are always focused on the Abstract, on metaphors, on symbols.

And they seem to disregard the concrete, the real, almost as a dirty thing, something of concern to the plebians, who cannot of course grasp the subtleties of high representational thinking like they can. You know, with their "symbolic" barricades and all.

They spoke of the Gaza Wall the same way -- that it symbolized the separation of the peoples. When it fact it did rather more than that. It actually separated them. Because one of those peoples was murdering and butchering the other. (And, again, I stress: They did so in a non-metaphoric manner.)

I don't think this is an important point in terms of a slogan or a manifesto or that sort of thing. I don't think you can build a politics around the Concrete. (What would that bumper sticker look like?)

It's just an observation of a type of intellectually-insecure individual who parrots the pattern of thinking of his professors (who once represented intellectual authority to them -- Symbolically, of course) and elevates, always, the Abstract above the Real.

I just tend to distrust this sort of divorced-from-tangible-reality worship of the abstract. Obviously -- duh -- abstract thinking is important. It is, in certain ways, I suppose, a higher form of thinking than thinking of the concrete.

But not when it is shorn of all rootings to the actual world.

This is how evil happens. You can abstract any evil you choose into some esoteric "greater good."

Posted by: Ace at 11:37 AM | Comments (274)
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Time is one of the big dogs. A playah with clout. Its in doctors and dentists waiting rooms ferchrisakes. Even though it sucks, Time gets major eyeball exposure.

It sounds like this piece (which Drudge also linked) has them pretty much saying - repeatedly - that Ogabe's rhetoric over the BP spill has proven vastly overblown.

To make matters worse, Time also mentions that Limbaugh has been scoffing at the Ogabe rhetoric (para 1) and now "has a point" (para 2), then the piece goes on to detail, in many paragraphs, how the spill reality isn't living up to its planet killing billing.

Did I wake up this morning and fail to notice that gravity has stopped working? That hydrogen now has 5 protons rather than 1? Seriously, WTF? Where does some punkass fish wrapper rag like Time get off daring to even suggest that the ascended Messiah was wrong? Nerve? these peasants got it in spades I tell you!

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 10:32 AM | Comments (142)
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There were reports that he cut a deal but based on the statements made so far at the House Ethics Sub-committee meeting, it doesn't sound like it.

Hearing is just getting under way.

13 charges in total broken down into 4 categories:

- Solicitation of donation for "Rangel Center" from individuals and organizations
with business in front of Ways and Means Committee while he was the
Chairman.

- Errors and omissions on financial statements to the House.

- Use of rent controlled apartment.

- Not reporting condo on income taxes.

Look, the dude just wrote the rules and tax laws, no one said anything about actually following them.

Republican on investigating sub-committee says Rangel was given more than one chance to settle the case and Rangel declined.

Rangel isn't going to appear today, it's an organizational meeting not the 'trial' phase.

Meeting just wrapped up after the two Congressmen who conducted the investigation gave their statements and formally filled the charges.

Chairwoman of committee says the documents are on the committee's website.

Most ethical Congress EVAH!

When it looked like there was a deal, I commented on Twitter that part of the deal would be for Rangel to permanently give up the Ways and Means Chairmanship...you know the one that he's going to lose in 5 months anyway.

If it goes all the way through the process that's a possibility but based on the charges it sounds like he'd either have to resign/promise not to run this year or really face expulsion (still hard to believe it would get there).

The last Congressman to make it this far was James Traficant (another Democrat) and he was tossed out and wound up spending about 5 years in federal prison.

On the political front...an ethics trial of one of the most senior Democrats in the House in the run up to this year's elections? Thank you Charlie Rangel!

Posted by: DrewM at 10:18 AM | Comments (59)
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There is some question over whether this would require a Constitutional amendment, or whether it's a matter of interpretation such that legislation could change it. Conservatives often argue the latter, but I sort of think the Constitution says what it seems to say and so it would require a full amendment.

Which Graham is considering.

“I may introduce a constitutional amendment that changes the rules if you have a child here,” Graham said during an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “Birthright citizenship I think is a mistake ... We should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and you have a child, that child's automatically not a citizen.”

...

“People come here to have babies,” he said. “They come here to drop a child. It's called "drop and leave." To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to the emergency room, have a child, and that child's automatically an American citizen. That shouldn't be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons.”

..

“I'm a practical guy, but when you go forward, I don't want 20 million more 20 years from now,” he said. “I want to be fair. I want to be humane. We need immigration policy, but it should be on our terms, not someone else's. I don't know how to fix it all. But I do know what makes people mad, that 12 million people came here, and there seems to be no system to deal with stopping 20 million 20 years from now.”

Graham, I'm guessing, sees this as a piece of a larger deal, a deal to get him the large-scale amnesty he wants.

But it's significant that he's thinking about conceding such a large piece to that end.

If there were serious enforcement (demonstrated over five years) plus this amendment, I could see myself persuaded to support some kind of large (but not blanket) amnesty for, say, half of the illegals here, those with the longest stays and strongest ties to the country, and say a five year special visa for the rest. But five years and that's that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (248)
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