On this Memorial Day…and always!
Updates from May, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
The Night at the Museum sequel beat Terminator Salvation for the #1 spot this weekend. And T4′s box office estimates are in the low 40′s (in millions of dollars). That’s not good money for a movie like that, but it should do much better once you add in the ticket sales from international markets.
Nikki Finke has the figures and analysis.
-
Jehuda
At the South Florida Times, an African-American Republican woman cuts Janeane Garofalo down to size.
-
Jehuda
Wired: Can the FCC search your home?
Via Todd Zywicki.
-
Jehuda
Doug Ross: Which is it, Pelosi?
-
Jehuda
IndieWire is posting the list of winners live, here.
The only American winner prize awarded to an American movie so far is went to Christoph Waltz as Best Actor for his turn in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (a title which will surely do for good spelling what I’ve always feared my blog’s name will do: erode it further). I posted a couple of reviews for this film a few days ago, by the way.
The Palm D’Or this year – Cannes’s highest honor – went to German director Michael Haneke for The White Ribbon. The only Haneke film I’ve ever seen is the French movie Cache (Hidden)
, a tale of revenge served very, very cold that I strongly recommend. But I don’t know that White Ribbon is that good. I haven’t really read anything about it anywhere.
Don’t go thinking that just because the movie got the Palm D’Or it’ll be to your liking. Michael Moore won one for Farenheit 911 some years back; and the one and only year I attended Cannes, back in 2007, the winner was a Romanian film about a girl trying to get a clandestine abortion during the Caecescu years (I’m sure the topic can make for terrific drama, but I haven’t really bothered to find out). I can’t recall the title for it.
In sum, Cannes juries can have unconventional, highly politicized tastes. But sometimes they do pick some instant classics.
(H/T: Thompson on Hollywood)
UPDATE: THR reports on the Cannes prizes here.
-
Jehuda
Times of London Telegraph: British banks and stockbrokers may refuse to take on American clients if Obama international tax plans are passed.
No credit for wanting to close Guantanamo and putting an end (domestically) to the use of enhanced interrogation techniques?
It’s almost as if trying to get the world to like us is of no use. Or maybe Obama just can’t deliver the increase in American credibility abroad that so many of his supporters insisted he would deliver as President. Not sure, but I bet I’m warm.
-
Jehuda
Variety: A paradigm shift for the film business?
Via Thompson.
-
Jehuda
In Kos-land anything is possible, including a call to curb “inflammatory crap”…against Obama, of course.
You see, “war criminal” is never a fitting title for Kos-land’s Dear Leader, even if he is engaging in the same policies that earned his predecessor the same tag from the average Kos-land resident. Unfortunately, Kos-land and the Sorosphere are not big enough to stem the disappointment the White House’s intelligence and security policies are leaving on their wake. I mean, when Code Pink is thinking of calling Obama a “war criminal” you are probably past the point of no return.
Via John T. Simpson at BigHollywood.
-
Jehuda
Funny you noticed. NYT: Some Obama Enemies Are Made Totally of Straw.
Even a broken clock…
-
Jehuda
NYT: U.S. Relies More on Allies in Questioning Terror Suspects.
Hmm. I thought Obama was against sending American jobs abroad. I wonder how the Terror Suspect Questioner Union feels about this.
There’s no telling how common the use torture is in other countries, but I’m not keeping my hopes up.
UPDATE: Good catch, Tom Maguire! None Dare Call It Rendition.
Actually, I recall Professor Hutchinson – a liberal – has had no qualms about applying the term “rendition” to Obama’s repackaged ally cooperation methods. But intellectually honest liberal bloggers like Hutchinson are rare. Most will never question Obama about any Bush-like step he takes.
-
Jehuda
The problem: We’re out of money. The solution: More spending!
Obama may call it this or that, but short term or long term, when you have no money, spending in the trillions can’t be a solution to anything. No matter what you call it, Mr. President.
-
Jehuda
I’m all for tastefully conducted, above-the-belt political debate (if any such thing ever existed), but where was the outrage when the sitting governor of Alaska was pilloried with attacks far worse than what Pelosi is said to endure in this instance?
Comparison to a James Bond villainess is worth being outraged about? Ms. Pelosi’s position must be far more precarious than I had imagined. But wait! There’s more to be outraged about (supposedly):
[T]he waterboarding conflict has been accompanied by a cascade of attacks on the speaker, not as a leader or a legislator, but as a woman.
Earlier this week, Pittsburgh radio host Jim Quinn referred to the speaker on his program as “this bitch”; last week, syndicated radio host Neal Boortz opined “how fun it is to watch that hag out there twisting in the wind.”
There has also been a steady stream of taunts about the speaker’s appearance, and whether it’s been surgically enhanced. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said, “I think if Speaker Pelosi were still capable of human facial expression, we’d see she’d be embarrassed.”
Even erstwhile presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee took the time to pen a poem that begins:
“Here’s a story about a lady named Nancy / A ruthless politician, but dressed very fancy.”
The horror! But I’m not referring to the attacks. I’m talking about the hypocrisy.
Come on, folks. After “Abort Palin” and all that nastiness, you’re crying foul a little too late. That bird has flown. Female politicians in this country were set back by decades during the last election. And the GOP had nothing to do with it.
Related: commentary from Dan Riehl.
UPDATE: Legal Insurrection: Distortion and Hypocrisy Galore.
MORE: Darleen Click is giggling on Protein Wisdom (and is joined by Fausta and Little Miss Attila on their own blogs), but Jane Hamsher wonders if it’s time for women to leave the GOP. Strange. I don’t recall any such concern for women abandoning the Left when Palin underwent attacks much worse than being compared to an anatomically-named Bond villainess.
Another good question: how many of these defenders of womanly honor stood up for Carrie Prejean? Show of hands…Anyone? No? Didn’t think so. Just hoping against hypocrisy, that’s all.
ANOTHER ONE: With all due respect, how much you wanna bet this Republican is not speaking for the base? Talk about pulling a McCain. It’s ok to keep it classy, but give me a break. This ad crossed no line other than the one that separates the glamorous world of James Bond movies from the tacky one of Madam Speaker.
-
Jehuda
From John Nolte. Sounds like it will be a riot.
I’ve only seen a couple of promos for it, but I blogged about it here some days ago.
UPDATE: WSJ: Making a Mockery of Being Green.
About time!
-
Jehuda
Lefties react to the “Highest Form of Patriotism”: A Facebook group page with no other purpose than to tell “Dick Cheney To Shut the Hell Up”.
If Dick Cheney is so wrong and so awful, why would you even have to wish that he would stop talking? He would just be irrelevant and anything he said would be unpopular, right?
Right?
By the way, it’s a duel!
(via Professor Jacobson, of Legal Insurrection)
-
Jehuda
Chris Battles: Why Washington Doesn’t Get New Media.
-
Jehuda
Human Events: Obama Aide says it’s not a White House goal to reduce abortions.
And – with characteristic rhetorical slight of hand – Obama concurred during a recent speech:
Note what Obama said in his speech at Notre Dame:
“So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions. …”
Abortion advocates object to the phrase “reducing abortions.” It connotes that there is something bad or immoral about abortion.
The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004 that Democrats, after losing the presidential election, began rethinking their harsh, no compromise stance on abortion. Their solution?
Change their language but not their position.
How typical. Didn’t Obama also say at Notre Dame that he would prefer a more respectful debate on abortion or some such? Wouldn’t intellectual honesty on his part be a great start towards that goal?
UPDATE: At American Power: a touchy-feely appeal from an Obama supporter who fell for the trick.
-
Jehuda
Paging Mr. Rattner! You got a confidence deficit. AP: Lawmakers want Obama to slow down on GM and Chrysler.
But what do they mean by “slow down” on Chrysler? Judging by FIAT’s impression, Chrysler is in no shape to get very far at all.
I thought Democrats were supposed to be enthusiastic about government intervention in the private sector, but check out Dennis Kucinich objecting to the GM Revamp:
[He] complained that taxpayers’ money was “being used to close dozens of US car manufacturing plants and thousands of dealerships, having the effect of putting perhaps millions of Americans out of work”.
Even a broken clock…
UPDATE: Just in case you still don’t see what’s so awful about Obama creating “Government Motors”, here’s a perfectly succinct and simple explanation from Mark Steyn.
-
Jehuda
Via Instapundit: Of course Obama is a conservative president, Mr. Sullivan! Given how liberally you apply the term to yourself, it makes perfect sense that you are applying it to Obama as well.
Sheesh. I bet admitting one got punked by an admired figure has to be hard, but this level of denial is really astounding. Who’s more of a rube? The rube who gets fooled once or the rube who insists he was never fooled?
-
Jehuda
How did we go from praising the The Greatest Generation
to apologizing for WWII war crimes?
Way to celebrate Memorial Day, Mr. President!
No war can be free of atrocious conduct. That is why it is said that war is hell. But war is also sacrifice and selflessness. And it is evident that a good deal of the world would be speaking either German or Japanese right now if it wasn’t for the way so many Americans gave their lives – and their children’s lives – to fight a global threat that was more immediate anywhere else than in the USA itself.
But the push to besmirch the American effort in WWII is nothing new (ask Jon Stewart, he knows). Revising that stretch of history is important to the anti-American Left worldwide, as it is one of the clearest, most patent examples of American exceptionalism in action – and of the nobility of the American people. And yet, the glow of the USA as Allied leader (in every sense of the word) persists. I think it’s safe to say it persists – of all places – even in Hollywood product…at least for now.
Obama must know that as POTUS any such apology coming from him can darken that glow definitively. He must know that judging such chaotic events through the prism of 21st Century political correctness cannot result but in a gross distortion. But he probably does not know or doesn’t care that any apology to the Germans for U.S. World War II efforts – even for the carpet-bombing of Dresden – would be an overreach that many Americans will not forgive.
UPDATE: At JWF, Just-a-grunt noted the Dresden trip earlier this month.
-
Jehuda
RedState: Ogilvy and Mather’s CLIO Award-winning, anti-American ad campaign.
UPDATE: More from Ed Driscoll.
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
Reuters: Michael Moore is back with a new “documentary”, this time about the global financial meltdown.
But if the way Moore describes it is accurate, this new movie will be as much a piece of fiction as Star Trek. It doesn’t seem that it will focus at all on government conduct as it pertains to the financial system. Any Barney Franks or Chris Dodds on this one? Fannie or Freddie?
Probably not. This movie is about “the rich”:
“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth…They wanted more — a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money. Now, why would they do this? That is what I seek to discover in this movie.”
Sounds like a comedy…
UPDATE: Ace links. Thanks!
-
Jehuda
Chetwynd and Simon sink their teeth into a fun debate, on the latest installment of Poliwood.
Great discussion and free to watch!
-
Jehuda
And we all may end up paying for it, regardless of in which state we reside.
American Power: California seeks federal bailout.
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
CNN: Favorable opinion of Dick Cheney on the rise.
The Left is going to need a bigger Sorosphere…
UPDATE: The Other McCain on how Cheney does that thing he does so well, which makes know-nothing liberals want to be his enemy and conservatives want to be him. Now, that is speaking truth to power.
MORE: DrewM heaps praise on Cheney at AOSHQ. And it’s well-deserved.
-
Jehuda
Heard part of the speech, but the little I heard sounded like a bunch of excuses, justifications, and retroactive buck passing. All of that just to defend the president’s decision to close Gitmo? Little sensitive to criticism these days, isn’t he? What happened to the “I won” bravado he was exhuding in January? That was certainly a no show.
Of course, there was also irony:
Mr. Obama decried a “return of the politicization of these issues that have characterized the last several years.” He warned that “we will be ill-served by some of the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue.”
I guess the politicization was supposed to end on the day of Obama’s inauguration. Sorry, Mr. President. That’s not how it works. What’s good against one administration is good against another. Ask Dick Cheney. He knows. Although I gotta admit: must be tough to defend closing Gitmo when you got Gitmo substitutes in the works. Professor Jacobson explains:
Obama signalled that he would continue to detain indefinitely those detainees who could not be tried either in court or in a military tribunal or transferred to another country, but who pose a threat to the United States.
While we may quibble over the details of detention, this aspect of the speech reflects a mature assessment of national security which was lacking from campaign rhetoric…
Yeah. Reality bites. Just ask these guys. Now Obama is in control and he’s not merely “Bush Lite”. He’s outdoing Bush. So much so that he’s drawing praise from Karl Rove!
It’s ok, Lefties. You’ll get over it.
UPDATE: Tom Maguire: “I’m tough on terror, too.” Ha!
MORE: If Cheney is Darth Vader, then Obama must be his apprentice…with one feel-good difference.
-
Jehuda
The Hill: GOP on offense on Gitmo, and plans to stay that way.
Well, it’s working well enough to make Obama explain his Gitmo decision in a major speech…
-
Jehuda
Washington Examiner: Warning to Obama in California Vote.
-
Jehuda
I hope Sullivan and Greenwald are sitting down.
NYT: Obama Considering Preventive Detention Plan:
President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.
Doesn’t that sound just like police state type stuff? And I’m not being facetious here (although I certainly was before). Doesn’t it boggle the mind that the federal government would even conceive to claim such powers? And if you voted for Obama to undo the “war crimes” of the Bush administration, don’t you feel like you got punked and are living a nightmare at the same time?
Judging by the reaction of the two participants, the answer to all of the above is a big fat “yes”: “The two participants…who spoke on the condition of anonymity…said they left the meeting dismayed.”
But far from me to put words in their mouth:
“We’ve known this is on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning.”
It’s ok. You’ll get over it. After all, it’s Obama. So hope must be around the corner, just after the dismay and stunning realizations. But it’s not a done deal yet. Keep your fingers crossed.
One thing’s for sure. Can’t refer to Obama as “Bush Lite” if this goes through. This is heavy. And it’s all Obama.
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
I hope the gang at Firedog Lake is sitting down.
HuffPo: Obama: Plame Lawsuit Should Not Be Reconsidered By Supreme Court.
Funny how some of the comments are glad to excuse Obama with reactions along the lines of “he’s not in control of the DOJ”, but he is in control of the DOJ, folks. It’s not Bush’s anymore. No one works there but at the pleasure of the POTUS. And that’s Obama, like it or not.
It’s ok. You’ll get over it…
(H/T: Instapundit)
-
Jehuda
Marc Ambinder: A Setback of His Own. Plus this: “[T]he politics of Guantanamo will get tougher for Democrats and Obama before they get any easier.”
And from the comments: “What you’re saying is that President Obama condemned the options and insisted that it was not a hard decision, only to come into office and claim essentially that Bush (and especially McCain, who called for additional safeguards to Bush’s basic position) was right all long, and that it was a hard decision.”
Evidently, some issues are better left undemagogued because they can boomerang on you. Hard to predict which issues are vulnerable to this phenomenon. But I think one can expect such a thing to happen much more often with national security issues. National security policy is often a reaction to a perceived threat. When it comes to terrorists, many on the Left want to convince us that the threat is exaggerated. And then reality rears its ugly head…
UPDATE: Cheney getting to Obama?
MORE: White House admits closing Gitmo was a “hasty decision”. I bet some Obama voters are having similar feelings about voting for Obama. But not the Andrew Sullivan types (via Instapundit). From the comments: “Obama lied . . . the “Bush is evil” slogan died.”
-
Jehuda
Tom Maguire on Joe Klein’s gasbaggery.
Makes you wonder if carrying water for Obama requires that you excel at being a jerk. Any chance Klein will write any of Wanda Sykes’ comedy routines in the future?
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
THR sounds somewhat disappointed: “[A]t the end of the day…an inescapable truth remains: It’s just not the same without the Governator.”
-
Jehuda
NYT: “To the frustration and discouragement of many Democrats, House and Senate lawmakers and aides say it now appears likely that President Obama will this week sign into law a provision allowing visitors to national parks and refuges to carry loaded and concealed weapons.”
