Ah yes. It's Caturday. What better way to start it off than to talk about a kitteh that didn't quite get his story told in the movie Alien. Yeah, that's right. A Ginger Kitteh. Jonesy Tells His Side Of The Story.

When, at the end of Alien, Sigourney Weaver says, "This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off," she's not telling the whole truth. Because there's another survivor, curled up with her in the hypersleep capsule. Jones (or Jonesey) the ginger tom.

Jones serves multiple functions within the Alien storyline:
1) CATGUFFIN, a pretext for characters to go wandering off on their own.
2) CATPANION, an excuse for Ripley to express herself out loud when she's otherwise alone.
3) CATSHOCK, a cheap shock tactic in which the cat jumps out unexpectedly.
4) CATSCALLION, a wild card; at the end of the film, the cat might yet be harbouring an alien.

In short, one cannot overestimate the importance of Jones to Alien. This is his story.

Posted by: CDR M at 05:02 PM | Comments (1086)
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Glad they did this.

"It's not necessarily overdue, it's just the right thing," said Radford, a 23-year Army veteran who walked in the parade alongside his 8-year-old daughter, Aimee, and 12-year-old son, Warren.

Radford was among about 600 hundred veterans, many dressed in camouflage, who walked along downtown streets lined with rows of people clapping and holding signs with messages including "Welcome Home" and "Thanks to our Service Men and Women." Some of the war-tested troops wiped away tears as they acknowledged the support from a crowd that organizers estimated reached 100,000 people.

Fire trucks with aerial ladders hoisted huge American flags in three different places along the route, with politicians, marching bands - even the Budweiser Clydesdales - joining in. But the large crowd was clearly there to salute men and women in the military, and people cheered wildly as groups of veterans walked by.

Nice.

Related enough: The Tenth Circuit ruled yesterday (PDF) that the Stolen Valor Act is constitutional. The Ninth Circuit went the other way last year, holding that lying about military service is speech protected under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court will ultimately decide the issue later this year.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:33 PM | Comments (185)
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Kind of neat.

I like the hero's introduction -- he's 1, he's the best there is, but 2, he's a loose cannon.

They really say that.

Some writer really s t r e t c h e d his craft right there. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:30 PM | Comments (243)
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Sarah Palin's latest post taking the Establishment to task for using Alinsky tactics against Newt Gingrich is noteworthy for how out of step it feels with the rest of the Tea Party and, indeed, Gingrich's own campaign.

Rather than reject Alinsky's rules for radicals, the Tea Party has adopted many of them in the spirit of fighting fire with fire. Tea Party leader Michael Patrick Leahy wrote a book about it called "Rules for Conservative Radicals," which encouraged conservatives to "follow the tactics of Saul Alinsky, but apply the morals and ethics of Martin Luther King." James O'Keefe was also inspired by Alinsky, particularly Rule 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." FreedomWorks, a Tea Party-affiliated group (although it's based in D.C. and chaired by uber-Establishment figure Dick Armey), boasted in 2009 that "Rules for Radicals" was the first book given to every new employee. Conservative organizers were teaching activists about "Rules for Radicals" at training sessions throughout 2009 (see here, for example).

So it's surprising to me to see Palin complaining about Alinsky tactics now. Having enthusiastically embraced these tactics back when their anger was directed at Obama, it's not surprising to see Republicans pointing their new-found tactics at each other. A tool is a tool and there's no denying that these folks want to win, whether they're competing against Obama or competing against a fellow Republican.

And speaking of a fellow Republican who employs Alinsky tactics, I can think of nobody in the campaign more enthusiastic about Alinsky than Gingrich. Here's Phil Klein:

On NBC's "Meet the Press" this past Sunday, Gingrich attributed his South Carolina victory to two things. The first was the economic pain that people were feeling. He then continued, "The second, though, which I think nobody in Washington and New York gets, is the level of anger at the national establishment."

Gingrich's clashes against the establishment are classic Alinsky.

"The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a 'dangerous enemy,'" Alinsky wrote in "Rules for Radicals." He went on to reveal that, "Today, my notoriety and the hysterical instant reaction of the establishment not only validate my credentials of competency but also ensure automatic popular invitation."

Though Gingrich has spent several decades profiting from being part of the Washington establishment, the fact that he's been attacked by so-called "elites" has become self-validating.

The whole thing is farce from top to bottom. Gingrich as a Washington outsider? Get real.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:27 AM | Comments (695)
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Because I'm a giver.

Added [rdbrewer]: Bloody Pingu more...

Posted by: DrewM at 08:29 AM | Comments (135)
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"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." ~ George Orwell

Today's must-read, via Jonah Goldberg.

The armed services’ ethos, although noble, is not a template for civilian society, unless the aspiration is to extinguish politics. People marching in serried ranks, fused into a solid mass by the heat of martial ardor, proceeding in lock step, shoulder to shoulder, obedient to orders from a commanding officer — this is a recurring dream of progressives eager to dispense with tiresome persuasion and untidy dissension in a free, tumultuous society.

Progressive presidents use martial language as a way of encouraging Americans to confuse civilian politics with military exertions, thereby circumventing an impediment to progressive aspirations — the Constitution and the patience it demands.

Whether they're fetishizing China, attempting to reorder society to combat fictitious global warming or taking over the healthcare system, rest assured that when you cut through their high-minded bullshit, the heart of a petty tyrant beats in every "progressive".

Posted by: andy at 06:20 AM | Comments (257)
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Truman linked this campaign to stop the Navy from naming a ship after miserable cretin John Murtha in the sidebar. If you're looking for something to do today, this would be a good use of a few minutes of your time.

Posted by: andy at 04:09 AM | Comments (270)
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As Americans, we are used to achieving success in truly tough and demanding times or while attempting to strive for some unachievable feat. It started with the Revolutionary War and continues to this day with our battlefield achievements and technological advancements. But what if something went wrong and things didn't go as planned or hoped for? Doomsday Speeches: If D-Day Or The Moon Landing Had Failed.

On June 5, 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower wrote down a message, carefully folded it, and placed it in his wallet. It contained a public statement in case the D-Day invasion failed. Twenty-five years later, in 1969, Richard Nixon's White House drafted a speech to use if the moon landing was unsuccessful and the astronauts were trapped on the lunar surface. This is not alternate history. This is very real history, about leaders preparing for a contingency that never transpired. More than anything, the messages reveal the fine line between triumph and disaster.

Posted by: CDR M at 06:00 PM | Comments (639)
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After the Costa Concordia accident I joked (badly, I know), "did Joseph Hazelwood get another job with a cruise line?"

I'm still wondering now.

State officials were scrambling Friday to determine when — or if — they would repair an 80-year-old bridge over Kentucky Lake that was ripped through by a huge ocean-going cargo ship on Thursday night.

Two sections of the Eggner Ferry Bridge, which carries U.S. 68 and Ky. 80 over the lake, were destroyed by the northbound Delta Mariner, a 312-foot ship carrying rocket components from Decatur, Ala., to Cape Canaveral in Florida.

I realize this isn't a NASA mission per se, but, dude. Did you not see that bridge thingy up ahead?

Fortunately no injuries, other than wounded pride, were reported.

Bridge stories always make me miss a former cob-logger, Dr. Reo Symes. He had a thing about bridges.

via Mare over at the H2. The happening place for news of the day and big boobs on Friday. It's this, I don't know, this thing they do. Too much trouble to explain.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:51 PM | Comments (151)
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Those are my words. Cost says Obama isn't a socialist, according to the usual meaning.

He doesn't believe in revolution.

What he believes in are clients, bagmen, payoffs, and ward-heeling.

ItÂ’s not just that Obama is a big government guy in the progressive tradition, which conservatives have opposed for more than a century. ItÂ’s also that heÂ’s a client guy, meaning that his idea of big government inevitably has special payoffs hidden in it somewhere. And more than even this, he's a boundless client guy in what should be an age of restraint. Payoffs to party clients are one thing when the economy is growing at a four percent rate per year; that is a situation where the times are so prosperous that government patrons are really just drawing upon the national surplus to satisfy their partisans. But when the economy is growing at less than two percent per year, barely enough to keep up with population growth, paying off party clients is actually like robbing from Peter to pay Paul. And while Obama and congressional Democrats have put off that bill -- in the form of our trillion-plus deficit -- conservatives are not fools. They know they'll be asked to pay up sooner or later, and with a stagnant economy that means less money in their pockets, in part because the president wants to hold together his voting coalition.

That's what's so bad about Obama.

Democrats are just a collection of rent-seekers, beak-dippers, and vig-skimmers, who have convinced themselves that it is not only acceptable that they should collect rents, dip their beaks, and collect a vig on everyone else's transactions, but that to deny them such rents, dippings, and vigs constitutes the most hateful, vicious, and fundamentally un-American behavior they can conceive.

If a guy comes over to your business and begins demanding that you do x and pay y tithe to group z, and is all up in your grill about it, you'd probably either call the cops or spare them the trouble by getting out your gun and telling the miscreant to remove himself from your site or be removed from the earth.

But these cats get a degree in Public Policy and worm themselves up the Media-Distributionist Complex, and suddenly that behavior isn't merely legal -- now they've got the coercive force of the government on their side.

And then they ask: What's the problem? I'm smart. You're not as smart. I am telling you how to better allocate your small pile of money for the benefit of society; and sure, it just so happens my salary is coming out of a skim from your wealth.

Why don't you thank me for telling you how to best direct your own resources, instead of being all angry about it?

They just don't get it and never will. They just don't understand why you're having such a hard time accepting them as your new cadre of government-appointed bosses, ordering you about and taking the larger half of the fruits of your labor.

And they also just don't get that --

1. Even if they were smart, you weren't looking for a new boss.

2. You don't accept that they're that smart. In fact, you think they're kind of douchey faegelas who don't know shit about shat.

3. You also reject the weird premise that a certain type of ability, like intelligence, naturally makes one party a master and a complete stranger a slave. Why shouldn't we just say that physical might creates such a relationship, as was true for the first 10,000 years of human existence?

And what's the ultimate justification for all of this? We voted. A group of us got together and decided we would rather have your wealth in our pockets than your wealth in your pockets.

See, we voted.

Now--

What's so bad about Obama?

Posted by: Ace at 03:55 PM | Comments (182)
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