Moe Lane

If you’re wondering why I picked The Last Action Hero, given that the star (Arnold Schwarzenegger) of it has recently been revealed to have fathered a child out of wedlock over a decade ago (and hiding it from his wife for that amount of time), it’s simple: the character (Jack Slater) played by Schwarzenegger had an opportunity to confront his… English doesn’t really have a perfect word for it.  Not ‘creator;’ not exactly ‘interpreter,’ either.  Anyway, Slater wasn’t happy to meet the guy that was kind of responsible for Slater having to live in an action movie universe:

I do not like you. You have only brought me pain.

And, honestly?  Turns out that when Schwarzenegger was playing himself as a self-centered, ultimately hollow man… he wasn’t acting.  In other words, this movie has been improved, thanks to recent developments.  Hard to imagine, but htere you go.

And so, adieu to Monsters.

Moe Lane

It’s strong; I thought that it might have been a bit long before watching, but there’s nothing in there that doesn’t need to be.  Mitt Romney‘s campaign came up with a good one, here.  One with a theme that should be repeated by the eventual candidate, at every opportunity.

Via Jim Geraghty. Transcript (via email; no link, sorry) after the fold: note that the transcript doesn’t include the signs, which give a pretty good cross-section of the victims of this horrible economy that President Obama and his Democratic party has been inflicting on the rest of us (from either 2009 or 2007, depending on how you’re scoring things).  Granted, they’re also inflicting it on themselves – but then again, it’s their fault in the first place, so I’m not feeling entirely obliged to be upset on their behalf. (more…)

We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, The Animals

I have to say: they don’t particularly look like animals.  Non-human animals, that is.  You know what I mean.

Unintentionally.  I hope.

(Via Hot Air) All in the name of the scoop, of course. The title is bad enough (“U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors“), but the fools who wrote the article* gave names and procedures. They also explicitly used still-classified material to break this story:

The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.

Which is illegal. It was illegal when it happened to Bush, it’s illegal now, and it will be illegal in the next Republican administration. It’d also be a stupid idea even if it was legal. Why? Well, let me tell you a story from World War I. Supposedly, once the war started British troops in at least one section of the front had made a happy discovery: the Germans artillery apparently thought that the enemy was a bit farther back than they actually were, and were thus essentially overshooting the actual front lines. Great news… at least, that’s what the British media thought, so they wrote stories about the lucky break in the papers. And then the Germans read the newspapers – because that’s one thing that foreign agents do; they pass along relevant information from the newspapers – and proceeded to adjust their firing solutions so that they were actually hitting their targets. (more…)

I am linking to this David Mamet interview in the Financial Times largely for this passage:

But attitudes in Europe to the Middle East tend to be more sceptical about Israel than American ones, I interject. Does he believe that anyone who disputes Israel’s land claims and believes in reallocation of territory to the Palestinians is anti-Semitic?

Uncharacteristically, Mamet hesitates slightly as he starts to answer and I wonder if he will back down, or at least hedge his answer. “Well, at some level … listen …” He throws his head back and looks briefly at the ceiling before emitting a grunt of relief as he abandons caution.

“Yes!” he exclaims. “Of course! I mean you Brits … ” He smiles ruefully. “I love the British. Whatever education I have comes from reading your writers and yet, time and time again, for example reading Trollope, there is the stock Jew. Even in George Eliot, God bless her. And the authors of today … I’m not going to mention names because of your horrendous libel laws but there are famous dramatists and novelists over there whose works are full of anti-Semitic filth.

(more…)

A simple question, with teeth in it:

The Anthony Weiner scandal has created a dilemma for female Democrats who are turned on by his politics but turned off by his sexual shenanigans.

…Why?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Via JammieWearingFool, via Hot Air.

I was emailed details about this movie probably because of my somewhat… exuberant… reputation on RedState for being cruel to trolls, but htis is worth viewing on its own merits:

Hollywood already wants to get their grubby hands on the concept – which may not be bad news; they had the mother-wit to largely leave Paranormal Activity alone after it was made clear to them that the original was fine – but the original looks fun.  And… hmm.  Plays in DC on July 1st.  I might actually be able to catch it in theaters.

Odd in that it – like the May recess, come to think about it – came and went without a plethora of stories about how citizens flooded* town halls across the land to ritually burn the Republicans at the stake over Paul Ryan’s Medicare/budget reform plan.  Which is actually quite surprising, given that we were more or less promised Armageddon along those lines.  Almost as surprising as the lack of stories of Democrats capitalizing on their supposed killer political advantage by holding their own town halls.  Instead, we got… nothing much, really.  Dribs and drabs, but nothing special.

Then again, I lie: this is not surprising.  The Organized Left’s greatest problem is that it has everything that it needs for a populist movement except for actual people; and they’re constitutionally incapable of spawning protests that are organic, self-organizing, self-sufficient, and capable of growth.  And every time that they get distracted enough that protesting slips from from the top of their to-do list, it shows.

Moe Lane

*For a given value of ‘flooded.’  By Tea Party standards even the Easter ‘protests’ were more like a slow-draining sink.

The President’s apparently ramping up the use of his first campaign sign, but Chicago Boyz felt that it… lacked something.  So they punched it up some.

Link.

Pass it on.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I prefer ‘improved’ to ‘hacked,’ actually.

…to run through this video and smack EVERY LIVING THING* in it upside the head with a halibut.  Seriously, I have never wanted to drink Perrier water less than I did after watching this thing, and I never understood the appeal of designer H2O in the first place.

And you kids get off of my lawn!

Moe Lane

PS: Morbid curiosity; it was up on the main YouTube page.

*Except for the albino snake.  It’s clearly being held hostage.

…won’t run Democrats in Republican recall primaries.  The point of that strategy is to delay the election for another month*, which is something that the Democrats don’t want.  Which is why they’re bitterly whining about it now; apparently, they’re quite upset that their opponents can and will play by all the rules of the game.

Seriously, none of this should be a surprise: we went over this already.

Moe Lane

*Something that’s obvious to anybody with a triple-digit IQ; which is of course why We Are Wisconsin didn’t ‘get’ it.

It was good; better than the last X-Men movie, which should have been cut in half and each half expanded out into its own flick. Good actors, decent take on the 1960s, fairly straightforward plot, and most of the X-Men didn’t have insanely overpowered AND FLASHY abilities.  All in all, good movie: the biggest problem I had with X-Men: First Class was the last five minutes, which went a little (read: ‘a lot’) twisty in its attempt to get the movie back in line with the original continuity.

Anyway, light posting today.