The University of California system is such a complete joke.
The University of California system is such a complete joke.
The Yoo arkticle is infuriating. Isn't the there a professional association that could pull his license?
I've managed to train myself to confuse John Woo and John Yoo. It helps tons, not least because I am boycotting Face/Off.
Yoo said he intends to follow in the footsteps of the chair's previous holders by maintaining a high level of research and scholarship.
That loathsome fucking tick of a man.
"Oh, whoops, did I say 'research and scholarship'? I meant 'implacable, smarmy, world-historically reprehensible loathsomeness'. You have a check for me somewhere?"
Also, Moby, John Yoo is responsible for Hard Target and thus Jean Claude van Damme's crimes against Hollywood, USNFT, and the Congo.
The USNFT really took it on the chin in Universal Soldier. The USMNT owes JKVD and John Yoo a whuppin', too.
Maybe he threatened to shoot the provost.
I like Face/Off. "Ooooeeee, you good-lookin'!"
I like Face/Off, too. Actually I'm a little hurt on John Woo's behalf that he would be confused for such a worthless toad.
One could go on indefinitely about the loathsomeness of John Yoo, but what the fuck, UC administrators? This isn't doing a whole lot to change my belief that school administrators are the worst people on earth.
Sure, you like Face/Off, but did you know that unindicted war criminal John Yoo is also responsible for the incredibly lame Broken Arrow?
What about the weirdly awesome mission Impossible 2, though?
I still haven't watched the six hour (or whatever) Chinese historical epic he did most recently. I should get on that.
Hard Target was kind of awesome. I mean, come on, Cajun Wilford Brimley riding around a horse shooting a bow and arrow!
I can't stop reading USMNT as "United States Mutant Ninja Turtles".
Wonkette's takedown of the Erik Prince autobiography is worth a read, though also infuriating.
re: 14.last
Red Cliff? It's pretty good. Although I've only seen the shorter version. If you like that sort of thing. Doesn't have the visual flair of Zhang Yimou's wuxia, though.
Huh, somehow I'd totally missed that. I'm a big Tony Leung fan as well. Is it on Netflix/Lovefilm?
12: Those Blackwater people in the second link are arguably worse than school administrators.
re: 21
Pretty sure I saw the shorter version via Lovefilm. I don't know if the longer uncut version is on there, though.
22: it's an argument worth having.
It's still unbelievable to me, and at the same time completely fitting, that the Bush administration hired a company named Blackwater to do security in Iraq. I mean, surely somebody in the decision chain must have known what the term means, right?
||
While not actually being very close to getting in a fight, that's the closest I've gotten to getting in a fight in many years. Sorry you are so shitty at life and at not driving on the sidewalk, cab driver! Maybe if you were a foot taller you could have backed up those threats!
|>
26: He's probably under pressure from Uber.
Probably! They claimed the roads, so he has to drive on the sidewalk.
In fairness to the driver, if you'd praised "Face-off" in my presence, I'd have tried to run you over too.
25: Blackwater used to based in northeast NC not far from the Blackwater River. Near the Great Dismal Swamp.
30: Poor guy. He's almost exactly my mother's age (roughly the same amount of time since diagnosis) and she's definitely not doing well. Awful disease.
I have to admit I thought he'd died a few years back.
I should remember that with PCA there could easily be enough visual/motor things going on that you wouldn't want to try to make a public appearance without it meaning that things had progressed to dementia, but still it's all very sad.
I just wanted to say the headline for the OP is really funny.
The link in 19 is good. It boggles my mind that we hire mercenaries to do our dirty work. And that no one outside of the far left fringe even raises any real questions about that.
35 When I read the other day that Julius Rudel had died, I was surprised because I vaguely thought he had died in the 90s.
After Katrina, Armed Blackwater dudes roamed the streets of New Orleans. I do not think that there are open accounts of what the terms of their contract were, or inquiries into what they did. There are lots of accounts of these guys threatening people who photographed them.
Just about finished.
I just wanted to say the headline for the OP is really funny.
I would have been tempted by the more obvious "Nope, shit, same country"
And that no one outside of the far left fringe even raises any real questions about that.
Remember how the warbloggers managed to force Markos to back down from saying that he didn't give a shit about dead mercenaries?
This country sucks so fucking much.
I don't, but not giving a shit about dead mercenaries is a very good way to write blank check for presidents to run a private foreign policy.
||
Do we have a two-word phrase for that principle that journalism always sucks to people who know the issues? Humperdinck's Law or something? What an error-riddled load from EK - "Congress decreed years ago that it can't, under any circumstances, pay for abortions" (it's paid for rape/incest abortions since 1993, and life-of-mother since 1976) and "people in the Medicaid system have no option to choose a plan that covers abortion" (17 states cover most or all abortions, just with their own non-federally-matched money).
|>
Didn't the outsourcing of military work to private contractors begin in earnest during the Clinton administration?
Tangentially, I'm really not looking forward to casting my vote for Clinton. She obviously didn't learn a damn thing from Iraq, and, with Obama's resistance to the constant push for military action, has vindicated using her AUMF vote as a deciding factor in the 2008 primary.
I myself am comfortably resigned to it.
Take pleasure in spite-voting against whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be.
51: I'm sort of hoping for Cuomo to make a strong showing in the primaries, because that'll make me feel really good about voting for Clinton.
You might, but probably won't, take comfort in my possibly wishful thinking theory that HRC will be a somewhat more liberal (but not that liberal! but no less than Obama and possibly somewhat more than Obama) President than Bill Clinton was. The structural conditions have changed dramatically, including for the Democratic party, and that suggests that the Presidency will change as well.
As one, non-dispositive example, HRC was a much less hawkish secretary of State than was Madeline Albright.
I don't really buy the structural argument, but in any case it works both ways. HRC was arguably maximally hawkish for structurally dovish time.
Got an anecdata point on HRC from talking to my mother over the weekend. She volunteered out of the blue that she hoped Clinton was not the nominee as she "brought to much baggage," and went on to extol the virtues of Elizabeth Warren. She is a long-time zealous liberal convert but--like ogged--is somewhat susceptible to media narratives. However, almost zero chance that she won't vote for HRC if she is the nominee.
I disagree with that premise -- HRC's relative hawkishness was consistently at about the party's mainstream through the 1990s and early 2000s; she then was caught somewhat unawares by the whipsaw change of opinion on Iraq. "Why do we have this great high tech army if we can't use it" -- Madeline Albright, speaking for the party mainstream in about 1999. I'm not saying that HRC is particularly dovish, just that she's unlikely to be more or less hawkish than the median mainstream Democrat, and the median mainstream Democrat's hawkishness has declined a lot since 2000 (or even 2004).
HRC is incredibly rich now, so that speaks well of her.
My media hatred is reaching unhealthy proportions, don't know if I can survive Pillory Hillary 2016.
Horribleness ranking exercise for the reader:
Blackwater
UC administrators
Federalist Society
Politico
Aside from listening to you people and the media, I'm quite enthused about an HRC run for the presidency.
I must say that the Yoo thing is shocking. The defenses of his work at the DOJ as being protected by "academic freedom" (which apparently 99% of the professoriate bought) were so despicable and disingenuous that they made me think that it's time to abolish academic freedom. But the real culprit here is probably much more simple, law schools are terrible, craven, non-academically-serious institutions that should be burnt to the ground and built anew.
And on the subject of outsourcing and neoliberalism, reality TV is clearly how neoliberalism invaded Hollywood (per k-sky).
64 is definitely true, although thank God Hollywood is still, by American standards, an extremely unionized, high wage industry.
Aside from listening to you people and the media, I'm quite enthused about an HRC run for the presidency.
I can't manage to be enthused, but I feel as though the stakes are really high in ensuring, to the extent possible, that Dems continue to hold the White House executive branch. Gambling on another Dem candidate seems foolhardy. I mean, I like Biden, but ... HRC's polling seems indisputable.
That said, if I were her, I would not want to take the office. If I had to guess, she's weighing whether or not she simply has to do it, for the sake of the country and all that.
If I had to guess, she's weighing whether or not she simply has to do it, for the sake of the country and all that.
Such a noble public servant.
66.last: She wants it all right. She may be weighing various factors like will it be worth it going through another election only to face the inevitable right wing obstructionism, but I don't doubt that she wants it. Being the first woman president would be a huge achievement, and she's shown every sign that she's ambitious enough to want that brass ring. If she doesn't run it'll be due to knowing she'd spend her entire term in office fighting off pseudo-scandals like Whitewater and Benghazi, and similar bullshit.
Anyway, I think she'll run and most likely win.
If Joe Biden runs in his Onion persona, he'll sweep the country. Shirtless Joe Biden in a bitchin' Camaro? Unstoppable.
Well, we'll see, obviously. If she runs, she'll win, yes.
I myself would not want to be in her position.
And I hope to god that I don't have to eat my words!
If you do wind up being the leading contender for next president of the United States, can I have a job?
I don't understand why anyone who'd lived through a few presidential elections would think it's a given she'd win.
73 - The bloom is going to come off the rose as she becomes more of a partisan figure and less of a hammer with which to beat Obama, but the polling really does suggest that she's a heavy favorite over every single plausible Republican candidate.
Also, allow me to be the first to suggest "HILLARY '16: BE DISAPPOINTED BY SOMEONE OLD" bumper stickers.
I don't understand how Hillary Clinton could ever become more of a partisan figure.
73: It's not clear that any imaginable Republican, let alone any actually-existing one, can win a presidential election anymore, except when the fundamentals demand it overwhelmingly. I mean, I don't want to come off as complacent, but the presidential year electorate skews just as Democratic as the mid-term electorate skews Republican. And HRC, specifically, will benefit from the kind of enthusiasm from women motivated to vote for the first female president as Obama did from African-Americans.
Again, if there's a new recession that runs from late '15 through mid-'16, or if Mexico retakes New Mexico, the GOP nominee could certainly win, but I think that's the level of bad fundamentals it would take.
77 sort of depends on Republicans maintaining their current set of anti-immigrant, anti-minority, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-science, etc. policies. At some point they will adapt.
77.1: I think getting past the Tea Party in the primaries requires a level of obnoxiousness that's going to really hamper any Republican going into the general, but not necessarily so badly he (let's face it, it'll be a guy) can't beat Clinton if she missteps. Rand Paul might pull it off, though it's not clear he can get through the primaries. A Ted Cruz type would be doomed, IMO.
78: They can't adapt right now because they'll all lose their congressional seats to the tea party.
Right. It's not a given that she'd win, of course not, but the female vote is strong; she's more hawkish where Obama seems to many to be dovish; people really like Bill.
If she runs, she'd have to avail herself of Obama's campaign machinery, and I don't doubt that she would. The Firedoglake wing of the Dem party would need some soothing and convincing -- that's where I get uncomfortable, but it's not a new thing, the PUMA faction.
Whee, in-flight wifi! I was about to start working and being actually productive without distractions, but luckily that crisis is averted.
77: How many of the party nominees were the obvious frontrunners two years out? And "no way can the Repubs win this one" is exactly what I was thinking as Bush Jr. got put into office for eight years.
63 last -- and not rebuilt. Lawyers should be trained as in the 18th century.
HRC has to have spent a good 15 minutes laughing at BS, and then wondering how we as a society have come to a point where someone like him is seen as the most plausible Dem opponent, and no one is seen as a plausible Rep opponent. My guess is that even if she didn't burn with the fire to be first, she'd still be looking around saying she has to do it because there really isn't anyone else who's (a) capable of both running and being; and (b) interested.
Dude, Broken Arrow has one of the best exchanges ever!
"Are you crazy?"
"Yeah. Ain't it cool?"
Hard Target isn't ... bad, exactly. It's not good, either. I liked when Van Damage punched the rattlesnake. Not a euphemism, pervs.
[Something about Hillary, I guess.]
Hard Target sucks, but Hard Boiled is so great.
@84: Of course it's a good idea not to be complacent. I would note, though, that Bush Jr. pulled off his (non)win precisely by pretending to be a "different" kind of conservative who wasn't going to be a full on red meat wingnut. Can any republican able to get through the primaries run that kind of campaign today? If he did, would anyone believe it?
So fucking great.
Although I prefer The Killer by the margin of a wistful wisp of gun smoke.
[Doves fly across monitor.]
@88: Hard To Kill is worse than both.
91: That's [puff] really [puff] uncalled for [wheeze], man.
90: I definitely prefer The Killer. Bullet In The Head is also completely amazing. Nobody ever put Chow Yun Fat through the emotional wringer better.
93: He was pretty great in Crouching Tiger and Curse of the Golden Flower.
I think A Better Tomorrow and The Killer have it over Hard Boiled by a nose muzzle-flash-blinded eye.
Oh man A Better Tomorrow II, too. The plot probably makes the least sense of any of them, but that final 40 minute gunfight as a a cleansing, joyous ritual of regained sanity? So amazing.
94: yeah, but that look on his face when the blinded singer puts on the song she was singing when he shot her? That is the most goddamned emotion in, like, all of movies.
I thought both A Better Tomorrow movies were terrible. The set-up for bringing Chow Yun Fat back for the second one was the kind of plot point that you normally only see in parody.
Once a Thief is good -- Chow Yun Fat robs a jewelry store while confined to a wheelchair.
I watched Once a Thief again recently and didn't like it as much as I used to. The humor kinda fell flat? I dunno. I should try again.
Thinking about it, Bullet In The Head might evvvver so slightly edge The Killer for me (nah, not actually. But it's close), just because the magnitude of the characters' abnegation is so hilariously astounding.
I have a friend who was deeply impressed when I said that I would drink an entire bottle of whiskey to save his life, a la Bullet in the Head. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I would drink a bottle of whiskey to save a penny.
I have never seen any movie in this thread. Or finished a sci-fi book.
Bullet in the Head is kind of a bummer.
Like Hillary's inevitable capitulation to Republican intransigence, right? Right? How about that Chelsea, huh? We're all going to be complaining about her in twenty ... months!
Onion Chelsea is going to be pretty dull.
If people won't rally around Hilary, maybe we can get Steven Seagal as a compromise candidate. Chow Yun Fat would probably be better, but I don't think he's eligible.
100: do I have the heart to tell you that in Bullet in the Head, it was actually urine?
105: he'll make himself eligible.
106 cont'd: oh wait, I take it back. It was a whole bottle of booze and then piss.
That probably works better than the other way around.
108: We didn't have that kind of friendship.
101 -- Not even Crouching Tiger?
Youtube says that was a deleted scene. Which is a wise choice -- one should generally delete any urine drinking scenes from your movie.
That was the highlight of Waterworld.
112: it was in the original US theatrical print; I was confused for years afterwards when I saw versions without that scene. Especially since there are like eight director's cuts of that movie.
Say what you will about Yoo, but I'd rather read a torture memo than watch another gun-fu fight scene.
115: You have no honor! [Slow-mo. Radial pan. Fluttering curtains. Duster. Doves [again]. Sunglasses.]
How many of the party nominees were the obvious frontrunners two years out?
Mitt Romney: was the runner-up candidate from the previous cycle.
John McCain: was the runner-up candidate from the previous cycle.
W: was not.
Bob Dole: was the runner-up oh, not everyone agrees.
During one of Seagal's spying sessions, he spots Dave and assumes that Van Damme is building an army to defeat him. The unwritten rules of their feud dictate that this is forbidden so Seagal heads off to see the United Nations of the Van Damme-Seagal conflict, Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris convinces Seagal to calm down, pointing out that an army requires more than one person. But Seagal is not convinced. He goes to his old friend Dolph Lundgren for help, but Dolph is doing something that's become a bit alien to Seagal and Van Damme - a movie. Not only that, but Dolph is going to direct his first film afterwards. Excited, Seagal inquires about a possible part. But Dolph looks away. He's sorry but he doesn't have anything available.
I don't think the whole script is still hosted, but the Scriptshadow review of the Seagal vs Van Damme spec is fantastic. I read somewhere else that Van Damme was game but Seagal said no.
118: And on the Dem side in the last three decades I'd say Kerry, Dukakis, and Bill Clinton at a minimum weren't obvious at all two years before. A lot can happen in two years and Hilary Clinton will be pushing 70.
And I don't think it was clear at all that Romney beat out Huckabee in '08. Huckabee edged him in number of delegates.
I think Romney withdrew before Huckabee because this was back when Romney could still take a hint.
He might have, but I just don't think it was at all clear in 2010 that Romney was going to be the nominee the next time around.
I was a little surprised Romney went back to campaigning a little after McCain lost. But I guess that's ok. Get a job opposite-of-hippie!
Wait, the "I guess that's ok" part was supposed to go with a different direction of snark.
The social conservatives rallied around Rick Santorum. If that's not a sign they'd given up, I don't know what is.
I honestly can't remember at this point if Herman Cain's thing was the 9-9-9 plan, the 8-8-8 plan, or the 7-7-7 plan. I'm sure I could look it up but I'm enjoying not knowing, and reminiscing over the 2-3 weeks when Herman Cain was a thing.
Uzbekibekibekistanstan.
I don't recall the specifics, but one of the China-oriented podcasts I listen to (probably Sinica) had a Herman Cain deep cut where he was praising the (state organized!) building of the Great Wall and compared the northern barbarians to...something beyond ridiculous. People who don't have jobs? State growth? It was great, I'll have to look it up in the morning.
Mitt Romney: was the runner-up candidate from the previous cycle.
John McCain: was the runner-up candidate from the previous cycle.
W: was not.
Bob Dole: was the runner-up oh, not everyone agrees.
Doris Kearns Goodwin has a lot to answer for.
I thought Chelsea was disfavored because of the links to the Russian oligarch dollars.
127, 128: I really love the thwarted "Anyone But Romney" nature of the polling chart from the 2012 Repub primaries. There was the early Bachmann bubble tragically cut short, followed by the Rick Perry flirtation, and then Herman fucking Cain, followed by Gingrich, and a final burst of Santorum. I couldn't remember if Rand Paul had his own moment, but looks like he just garnered a slowly-rising group of young dementeds. What a lineup!
Here it is. Good, hilariously classist stuff:
But there were times during the course of the history of the Chinese people and China, that they tried a lot of other different things other than just fighting those that wanted to invade them and in fact, there was one point in time where they tried to even bribe the Mongols with money, goods, gold, etc. Well guess what? (in raised tone of voice) That didn't last very long, because the bribes got greedy and wanted more from the bribers. You see, the Chinese, they wanted to be left alone. "Just leave us alone. So we got to give you a little bit of goods, we'll do it." But it didn't last, because eventually the bribes get greedy.
It's kind of like entitlement programs. Hmmm...
135: That really was amazing. Every two weeks, somebody new! The fat cats making deals in smoky back rooms were having some serious casting issues.
135 - I like that in this chart, Santorum's line is in fact Santorum colored!
I wonder if that was done purposefully or not.