Just saw a preview for Bill Maher, and the Great Orange Satan will be on.
*** Update ***
The 8 o’clock movie on HBO is the Marine, which is so aggressively bad in every regard that I can not stop watching it.
by John Cole| 23 Comments
This post is in: Media, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Just saw a preview for Bill Maher, and the Great Orange Satan will be on.
*** Update ***
The 8 o’clock movie on HBO is the Marine, which is so aggressively bad in every regard that I can not stop watching it.
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Kevin Drum is feeling ornery, and is asking for submissions of the five worst blog posts ever (and, I suppose, the five best). Throw your nominees in the comments. Let’s see what we can come up with, and let’s do the worst first.
Five WORST:
1.) My first selection is Ann Althouse video wineblogging, but I am not sure whether to put that in my top five best post list due to the sheer joy it brought me, or the worst because of how truly awful it was. Disqualified because it looks like she sobered up and edited out most of the drinking. Damnit.
1.) John Derbyshire, reacting to the Virginia Tech shooting:
As NRO’s designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy?
(Update- it was Michael Kelly, and was then filched by Coulter, so it does not count as a blog post. We need a new #2).
2.) Whatever post started the “objectively pro-terrorist” crap that so completely poisoned the blogosphere for, well, still. Can someone remember where that started?
2.) Either this ‘analysis’ of Terri Schaivo’s CAT scan or this B. Preston post titled the Triumph of Intentional Ignorance:
Maybe I’m all alone on this, but I find this kind of behavior despicable and unacceptable. It borders on monstrous indifference to human suffering. Terri Schiavo is starving to death right now. She does feel pain. This is not an abstraction–this is the intentional taking of a life based on the reasoning of a single judge whose flawed finding of fact several years ago put Schiavo’s life in jeopardy. That finding of fact, as to her medical condition, was definitely based on incomplete information, yet it has withstood a raft of appeals mostly because it all keeps coming back to the original flawed finding of fact and the original judge who made it. In that sense, the case is rather simple and a decent take on it can be obtained by a gaining a fairly cursory understanding of what did and did not enter into the original case. Namely, the finding that Terri Schiavo lives in a persistent vegatative state is based on a 45 minute examination by one doctor and a half hour examination by another, neither of whom ordered MRI or other tools routinely used to diagnose a PVS condition. That failure means that the diagnosis is at best incomplete and at worst may be evidence of malpractice. There is much more about Terri’s actual condition here, for anyone actually interested in the facts of this case.
In the mean time, she has done no wrong, and her husband has done much wrong, yet because of this original flawed finding of fact and a great deal of indifference to her plight, she will soon die. But these bloggers (and many others I respect, such as National Review’s John Derbyshire) are essentially saying “Don’t bother me with the facts because they’re unknowable, I don’t care if that woman dies a cruel death, but you’re wrong to intervene to save her. Of that, I am absolutely, resolutely sure. So just make it all go away.”
Well soon enough, it will all just go away because Terri Schiavo will be dead. She will have died of starvation and dehydration over the course of a few days or even weeks. She will have felt pain the entire time, and will have thus been tortured to death. Intentional ignorance of the facts pertaining to her case will also have been a contributing factor to her death.
After recognizing the triumph of Ignorance, Preston immediately went on ignorance’s payroll as one of Malkin’s chief bloggers at Hot Air.
3.) Michelle Malkin’s I Am Sam or I am not Afraid or I am John Doe post (real name- The John Doe Manifesto. Unfortunately, unlike the other great manifesto of our time, written by the Unabomber, this was not banged out on a typewriter by a recluse in a cabin in the woods, but by someone who is treated as a thinker and a celebrity by the right) A sample:
I am John Doe.
I will support law enforcement initiatives to spy on your operatives, cut off your funding, and disrupt your murderous conspiracies.
I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.
I will resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.
I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.
4.) Ann Althouse freaking out about Jessica Valenti’s breasts (not once, but multiple times)
5.) Hugh Hewitt, defending Harriet Meiers:
Does George W. Bush deserve any loyalty from his party? From pundits identified with his party? If so, how much and why not more?
Do Harriett Miers’ many accomplishments count for nothing?
Does Harriett Miers strike the commentator as a dedicated public servant?
Hugh just couldn’t quite grasp that she was Bush’s choice for the SUPREME FUCKING COURT, and not for the chairman of the Orange County GOP.
*** Update ***
And because you all are cruel bastards, pick the five worst posts I have made. 2002-2005 is a target rich environment. And I hate you all in advance.
by John Cole| 11 Comments
This post is in: Movies
I have talked about it before, but I want all of you to check out Brian Linse’s new flick, Before the Devil Knows you’re Dead:
Here is a sampling of what Rolling Stone had to say about it:
Give props to Sidney Lumet. His influence is everywhere. American Gangster is just the kind of film this prince of New York City would have directed in the 1970s. And Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton owes much to Lumet’s Network and The Verdict. So it’s a kick that Lumet, 83, puts the younger mavericks to shame with a dynamite film that ranks with the year’s best.
Here is a trailer:
More can be found here.
Check it out. Brian is a good guy, and has given two+ years of his life to this project- that alone was worth it to me to check it out.
by Tim F| 20 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Hmm, I feel like we don’t have enough Katherine Harris photoretrospectives around here. How about this – you guys make sure that we don’t finish dead last in our category at the webbies and I promise to forget that the idea ever occurred to me. In the unlikely chance that we win I’ll even start up regular beer blogging again on a weekly basis.
Each IP can vote once per 24 hour period, so return as many times as you feel like doing. While there don’t forget to support your favorites in the other categories as well.
***Update***
Vote for the Newshoggers too since I probably bolloxed their shot at Best Liberal Blog (and because they’re a damn good blog).
This post is in: Beer Blogging
If you want a good case of beer on the cheap, try J.W. Dundee’s Craft Pack. In Atlanta, it’s less than $10. Probably elsewhere it’s more expensive, but the Hefeweisen is great. Also, the Pale Bock tastes like it should sell for $5 a bottle on its own. It’s the best tasting cheap beer you can buy (with the exception of the Honey Brown – yuck.) Also, try Fire Station 5. Great product and inexpensive**, and they also have a variety pack.
If you want advice on either choosing a good beer, or making your own (beer or wine) let me know. I know my shit!
** When I say inexpensive, I’m talking from a Canadian point of view, where beer is mostly at least $20 a dozen. For example, Budweiser in New Brunswick is $21.99.
by John Cole| 58 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Democratic Stupidity
I haven’t really been following the Mukasey hearings too closely, because, let’s be honest, we need to face facts. We all know the eventual outcome, because it is what always happens with these guys. There really are only two ways this will fall out:
Option 1:) Right now, several prominent Democrats in safe seats have announced their opposition to Mukasey. Several of the Democratic front-runners, pressured by Dodd’s near-immediate opposition to Mukasey’s waffling, have come out against him. Several Republicans will pose token opposition and state they are “concerned,” and then when push comes to shove, Graham and Specter do their walk-back and will vote the party line, “serious” Democrats will fold, and he will be confirmed with a vote of 65-35 or something around that.
Option 2:) This is the less likely option. In a display of cohesion and message clarity that will bewilder and stun long-time watchers, the Democratic majority will unite in opposition against Mukasey. At the last minute, Mukasey will be called to testify once again, utter some language that we will all be told in the press was crafted behind the scenes by Joe Lieberman and Lyndsey Graham (A BRODERISTIC BI-PARTISAN COMPROMISE!) that gives the Democrats enough political cover (but means nothing), Democrats will rush to proclaim that they accept Mukasey’s new clarification, and he will be confirmed 90-10, with only cranky SOB’s like Leahy, Feingold, Kennedy, and Byrd voting against.
Either way, Mukasey is going to get confirmed, he is not going to have to proclaim waterboarding is torture to get confirmed, and you all know it. We have just been down this road too many times. With that in mind, here is the latest verse in the same old song and dance:
As Democratic opposition builds over attorney general nominee Michael B. Mukasey, no Democratic lawmaker has found himself in a tighter spot than Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who had eagerly recommended the former federal judge as a consensus candidate.
After Mukasey refused to say whether an interrogation technique called waterboarding amounts to illegal torture, Schumer has watched a growing number of his colleagues announce their opposition to the judge.
Schumer, who has remained uncharacteristically quiet throughout the furor, said in an interview yesterday that he is now “wrestling” with whether to vote against a nomination that he was instrumental in bringing about. He compared the controversy to the 2005 nomination battle over Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Schumer voted no against Roberts, so who knows what that means, really. At any rate, like I said before, I came to the Democrats pre-disenchanted.
*** Update ***
Scott Horton. Read.
Then read this.
Then go up a post to the beerblogging, and just get drunk. I was going to say just get “shitty,” but I am trying to swear less. It seems you can say or suggest any manner of things, including advocating torture, permanent war, whatever, and be considered serious, just so long as you don’t swear. Toss off a few f-bombs and all your points are invalidated, according to our new masters in General Wingnuttia.
by John Cole| 56 Comments
This post is in: Media, Military, War, General Stupidity
At Memeorandum, this proclamation from Aussie Andrew Bolt:
THERE is a reason Iraq has almost disappeared as an election issue.
Here it is: The battle is actually over. Iraq has been won.
I know this will seem to many of you an insane claim. Ridiculous!
After all, haven’t you read countless stories that Iraq is a “disaster”, turned by a “civil war” into a “killing field”?
Didn’t Labor leader Kevin Rudd, in one of his few campaign references to Iraq, say it was the “greatest … national security policy disaster that our country has seen since Vietnam”?
You have. And you have been misled.
Here is just the latest underreported news, out this week.
Just 27 American soldiers were killed in action in Iraq in October – the lowest monthly figure since March last year. (This is a provisional figure and may alter over the next week.)
I am sure by the end of the day this will be the most popular item among the jingosphere- it has the right mix of chest thumping, contempt for liberals, and paranoia about the media that it is right up their alley. Regardless, here is my take:
Fine! Great! You were right, I was wrong. Can we bring the troops home now?
*** Update ***
Another piece on declining casualties. While things are just down to the level of violence a year ago, I am just happy it means fewer dead GIs.