If the left sees every war as Vietnam, then for show business, every moral crusade is the blacklist of the 1950s. Which is why it's not all that surprising to see Nathan Lane starring in a play about Dalton Trumbo, the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter. Mark Steyn's entire article about the play is well worth reading, but these two paragraphs really sum it all up:

By way of comparison, let me offer the example of my old friend Diana Mosley, who died recently at the age of 93, a victim of the Paris heatwave. In the Thirties, Diana got the hots for Fascism and Nazism: Hitler came to her wedding, she thought he had exquisite table manners, etc. When war broke out, the Government in Britain had her jailed as a possible security threat. After the war, she began a lifelong exile in France. She didn’t kill anyone, she didn’t take up arms against her country, but she never quite sufficiently regretted her youthful support for a totalitarian philosophy that proved to be genocidal. Although she was witty, charming and a biographer of distinction, it would be impossible to imagine a play about Diana Mosley in which her enthusiasm for Nazism was not placed squarely at the centre.

Like Diana, Dalton Trumbo didn’t kill anyone or take up arms against his country. Like Diana, he went to jail and paid a price for being merely a youthful supporter of a totalitarian philosophy that proved to be genocidal. Though the play won’t tell you the answer to that famous question – “Are you now or have you ever…?” – the answer is: yes, he was. The more interesting question is: How do you feel about getting one of the great moral questions of the century wrong?

Don't hold your breath waiting for a play to answer that question anytime soon!

But do read the whole thing, as they say.

FLASHBACK: Halloween seemed particularly scary two years ago.

The fact it's trick-or-treating as ususal speaks volumes about both how effective we've been in the Middle East, and how quickly we forget the past.

BEATS MICHAEL SAVAGE, ANY DAY: CNBC hires Dennis Miller to host show.

For our previous coverage of Miller, whom we've always liked, going back to his "Weekend Update" days, click here.

OPEN MOUTH, INSERT FOOT: Wesley Clark, in Maxim magazine:

In the 19th century, we were motivated by manifest destiny. In the 20th century, it was the idea that it was our duty to contain the spread of Communism and keep open the door for freedom. Today there is no substantial challenge to American ideals.

As James Taranto wrote, "Islamic fundamentalism? Never heard of it."

WHAT DID LP STAND FOR, GRANDPA? Nick Gillespie writes on how file sharing clears out the dead wood.

MORNING IN AMERICA: John Podheretz describes yesterday's economic news as "disaster for Dems". As we said way back in February...

ECONOMY DODGES A BULLET: Senate rejects McCain-Lieberman global warming bill.

UPDATE (11/2/03): Pete du Pont has some thoughts.

COMING SOON TO A TARMAC NEAR YOU: "Group Captain Lionel Mandrake" has a list of the
Concorde SSTs' retirement homes.

TECHNICAL KNOCKOUT: My review of Sony's brand-new The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, a box set of five CDs of jams, out-takes and alternate takes that make up the seminal 1971 Miles Davis album is up on Blogcritics. It's complete with screen captures of Miles and Jack Johnson in the ring (not together, of course!) via my brand-new DVD-burner and its screen capture program.

MONDAY MORNING FIREFIGHTING: Matt Welch writes that "natural disasters and bad public policy go together like drought and fire", and has numerous examples (and links) to prove his case.

WHY YES, that is my profile of Chris Muir and his "Day By Day" cartoon in Tech Central Station today!

UPDATE: Damon addicts unite! Dean Esmay, linking to my TCS article, reprints his excellent interview with Muir on Blogcritics.

SEND SLUGGER O'TOOLE BACK TO IRELAND! Well, at least for a little while: Slugger O'Toole, a UK-based blog covering Northern Ireland politics and culture, is looking to do a Josh Marshall, and cover the Northern Ireland elections firsthand. He's already raised a few pounds, and could use more.

CLEAN BOOT: A hard drive in my wife's office died. Guess who got to install a new one, and reinstall Windows 2000, Outlook 2002, Word 2000, IE6, Norton System Works 2004, and all of the friggin' updates and patches tonight?

Just wanted to apologize for the lack of posts this afternoon and evening.

JUMPED THE SHARK: It may very well be that when future historians look back on the Dean campaign, this was the moment it passed its freshness date.

UPDATE: James Lileks has it exactly right, as usual:

Back to the house. Get to work. Call up browser. Learn that Howard Dean temporarily called himself a “metrosexual.” Shudder. Do they have that on tape? Lee Atwater would have the commercial in production already: Split screen. On the right, Bush in flight suit, walking on the deck, waving, giving the thumbs up. On the left, Dean in a loop: “I’m a metrosexual. I’m a metrosexual. I’m a metrosexual.” Nothing more. Tagline: Bush. He doesn’t moisturize. He doesn’t tweeze. And he never had a pedicure.

When I wrote my original post, I was tempted to ask if this was Dean's Dukakis-in-the-tank moment. Maybe it will be.

SAVE LIVES, GO TO THE BRIG: Why is the Army punishing an American officer who coerced an Iraqi into providing information that foiled a planned attack on U.S. soldiers??

Shades of LBJ and McNamara.

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CLARKS: The Keir Dullea/Wesley Clark connection, as discovered by Camille Paglia.

UPDATE: And here's the Clark/George C. Scott/Karl Malden connection.

TURF WAR: Why were Air National Guard fire-fighting C-130s kept on the ground during the first phases of the devastating Southern California fires?

MEET THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM ("same as the old anti-Semitism" quips Charles Johnson), as explained by Mort Zuckerman.

HOW WILL HE GOVERN? Mr. Schwarzenegger goes to Sacramento. John Fund has some thoughts.

Unfortunately, Mayor Quimby and Rainier Wolfcastle could not be reached for comment.

ROTISSERIE JOURNALISM LEAGUE: Scott Ott "reports" that it's new at the New York Times!

Back on September 11th of this year, we quoted Mackubin Thomas Owens' brilliant line, that "9/11 revealed an emerging geopolitical reality: that the world's most important fault line is not between the rich and the poor, but between those who accept modernity and those who reject it."

Saul Singer, commenting on Mahathir Muhammed's breathtakingly anti-Semitic speech a couple of weeks ago, picks up the theme:

Like the satisfied porcines in [George Orwell's Animal Farm], the summiteers in Malaysia blithely adopt the language of freedom and human rights. But when they talk about oppression, they mean being deprived of the right to dictate.

Those who see Mahathir as a moderate are confusing the trappings of modernization with the modernization of the mind. Muslims, including the most fundamentalist variety, would be happy to embrace a very modern device, the nuclear bomb, in the service of an aim as primitive as the caveman's club.

Mahathir's speech shows that the West has made progress in convincing the Muslim world that the means it employs are futile. But the speech was also a step backward in that it challenged Muslims to wage jihad with brains, not to snap out of it altogether.

The goal of the war against terrorism should be to cure the Muslim world of a form of jihad that kills us and enslaves them. The first sign that a real corner has been turned will be when Muslims start talking about living with, rather than destroying, the State of Israel.

We've certainly got our work cut out achieving that.

THE GEORGE ORWELL/ATKINS DIET CONNECTION, as discovered by Lileks, J., citizen of Oceania.

IS PUTIN'S RUSSIA ANTI-SEMITIC? Stephen Green links to a Washington Post article which suggests it is--big time.

BUT AFTER ALL, IT WAS YOU AND ME: John Hawkins notes that the Democratic Underground has a up a poll asking, "Did Bush Family Interests kill JFK?":

Currently, 59 out of the 79 (75%) of people who have voted in this admittedly slanted poll have selected option 1, which is, "yes. Absolutely".

Oliver Stone, call your office!

"U.S. OCCUPATION STILL A QUAGMIRE": A rather surprising admission by the folks at the Brothers Judd Blog, but there you have it.

Of course, having toured the front lines of that region myself, I'd say its citizens aren't too worse for wear under their occupation.

THE SIREN SOUND OF SONTAG: Sullivan examines a recent quote of Susan Sontag and writes, "If you ever had any doubts where the far left is headed, listen to Sontag. Before long they will be forced to the logical conclusion of their current hatred of the U.S.: open support for Islamist terror."

Based on this and this, and this, I'd say they're getting closer every day.

ANDREW SULLIVAN ON THE PROTESTORS:

It seems to me that the far left anti-war message, misguided before the war, is close to obscene today, and tells us something about what we're up against. Before the war, these people claimed they weren't pro-Saddam; they were just pro-peace. But now that the Iraqi people have the first chance in living memory to have a decent, pluralist and democratic country, these demonstrators want to abandon them to chaos, terror, civil war and a possible new dictatorship. The only connective thread in this movement is hatred of the United States. (Oh, and Israel. Some posters [carried by protestors] openly called for the eradication of the Jewish state.)

Of course, they're far from the only protestors to do so.

MONDAY NIGHT IN TEMPE: As a result of the devastating fires in southern California, the NFL is moving tomorrow night's Chargers-Dolphins game to Tempe, Arizona, from Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego.

OFF THE FLOOR: CNSNews.com reports that, "The resignation of Richard Grasso as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange may be hurting Jesse Jackson's Wall Street Project. For the first time, Jackson will not be utilizing the prestige of the NYSE floor to host his annual Wall Street Project gala fundraiser".

THE SHALLOW EDGE: David Brooks writes about living "in the Age of Edge".

UPDATE: speaking of edgy and shallow...

WHO'S WINNING THE THINK TANK WARS? Richard W. Rahn has some thoughts.

SOME "PEACE" ACTIVISTS probably thought this was a good thing.

BIAS BY OMISSION: Check out this AP story, about anti-war rallies this weekend (against a war that's already over). The article correctly describes Free Republic as "an independent grass-roots conservative group", who's planning a counter-protest. But no mention anywhere of the communist ties of ANSWER, the chief anti-war group mentioned in the piece.

Me? I was with this crowd back in January, and I'll be there again today...

UPDATE (10/26): "Belligerent Bunny Blog" has photos of the lame Washington DC rally.

"THERE IS A TIME BOMB TICKING IN THE MIDDLE EAST", writes Victor Davis Hanson, but this time, "it is in Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh":

A successful consensual government in Baghdad will serve as a glimpse of what life can be like amid the economic and political stagnation of the surrounding Arab world. More importantly, it will confront radical Islam with a competing ideology that possesses a far more revolutionary message than the Islamists' tired old culture of death that ruined Afghanistan and Iran, wrecked the economy of the West Bank, tore apart Algeria, ended the tourist industry of Egypt, brought international scorn on Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, turned the president of Malaysia into an international laughingstock, nearly made Pakistan an outlaw regime — and led to the reckoning after 9/11. Holdover Soviet-style Baathism didn't work; Islamic fascism was a failure; tribal dictatorship and monarchies are no better; Pan-Arabism was a cruel joke. The Arab world is running out of alternatives to democratic governments and free markets.

A free Iraq will place a terrible dilemma on the governments and elites of these closed Arab societies who must explain to their own poor and oppressed how satellite pictures of voting Iraqis, Internet cafes, and raucous debates on television are really fabricated images concocted by the American-Zionist international consortium. There is a time bomb ticking in the Middle East, but it is in Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh, where corrupt elites can only pray that things don't calm down in Baghdad and thereby prompt al Jazeera to switch from tailing dead-end Baathists to interviewing Iraqi parliamentarians.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Afghanistan will compete in a beauty contest (including the swimsuit competition) for the first time in more than 30 years, two years after the fall of the Taliban regime. James Taranto has details--and photos.

I wonder how that's playing in Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh?

UPDATE (10/26): Glenn Reynolds ran a photo of Afghanistan's contestant, and got a few surprisingly negative comments.

SEVEN PERCENT GROWTH?? Wow, check out this quote from an AP piece on the recent drop in jobless claims:

The economy, which grew at a decent 3.3 per cent rate in the second quarter is expected to show a blistering seven per cent pace in the third quarter, economists predict. The government will release the economic growth figures for the third quarter on Oct. 30.

That's staggering, if it's true. Can't wait to hear what the actual numbers are!

BAD WEEK FOR DEMOCRATS, according to John Podhoretz. He didn't mention it, but this issue didn't help them, either.

ONGOING WEIRDNESS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES, as documented by Andrew Sullivan.

DONALD, DUSTIN AND DAVE: The Rumsfeld--Tootsie connection, as spotted by David Frum.

MYSTERIOUS STRANGER ENTERS DEMOCRAT RACE: Happy Fun Pundit has the, err, "details".

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Jonah Goldberg writes, "this is the normal state of things for the last forty years. We protect Europe, the Europeans think they solved their problems through chit-chat."

That's the TSA's motto according to this Washington Times commentary by James Bovard, who writes that the agency does a fine job of dominating, intimidating and controlling average American travelers, but does a lousy job of actually doing what it should be doing: detecting security threats.

I first began experimenting with multi-track music recording in the mid-1980s. This speech by Brian Eno, titled "The Studio As Compositional Tool", was the Rosetta Stone for me, opening my eyes as to the incredible possibilities of multi-track recording.

I was in the process of OCR'ing my old photocopy of it, when I found someone had already typed and uploaded it to the Web--which is fine by me. One minor correction to the piece: it's subhead says, "From Downbeat [magazine], probably 1979". It's actually from two issues: July and August of 1983.

For anybody who's thinking about home music recording and has never experimented with it, this article is an eye-opener. Everything that Eno describes as possible in a commercial recording studio is now available to the home recordist with a PC and a decent soundcard. All he needs to get started is a program such as Cakewalk's Home Studio or Sonar or Sony's Acid, and it's off to the races.

(Also on Blogcritics, where I'm a regular contributor.)

BIG BAD BIG BOX: Interesting discussion in the comments section about Oakland's city council turning away Wal-Mart on Reason's "Hit & Run" blog.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I’ve no reason to say this, but: my antennae are twitching. I have this feeling that 2004 is going to feel a lot like 1968. But it’s just a feeling."--James Lileks

Election year? Check. War in foreign country? Check. Lots of angry leftists? Check.

Look out.

"IF ADVENTURE HAS A NAME, IT MUST BE NEW JERSEY DRISCOLL!" No, that's not right--but the Indiana Jones box set certainly is. Nina and I watched the film tonight. We'll probably watch the third film and the bonus disc tomorrow. As to why we'll take our time before watching the second movie, James Lileks summed it up best.

FROM ONE COWBOY TO ANOTHER: Might Jimmy Johnson replace Dan Reeves as the next head coach of the Atlanta Falcons?

REASSESSING THE NEW DEAL: Did it prolong the Depression? The great Robert Bartley of the Wall Street Journal has some thoughts.

(Link via Orrin Judd. And yes, I asked the above question strictly rhetorically.)

AP'S LOSING IT: Congress may very well pass a partial birth abortion ban. President Bush may very well sign it. But check out this headline on my Yahoo News page:

"Congress Near Passing Abortion Ban Bill" Gee, I don't remember headlines when the bill outlawing so-called "assault weapons" that read "Congress Near Passing Bill Banning Guns".

So why the scare headlines this time around?

NO GOOD DEED DEPARTMENT: H.D. Miller writes that "Wal-Mart is selling the heck out of Michael Moore's latest shoddy diatribe". But check out how Moore returns the favor!

IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME! While we applaud President Bush speaking directly to Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad concerning Mahathir's rabid anti-Semitism, this is the man who should finish the job. Mahathir would never know what hit him.

UPDATE: Mahathir's speech is (sorta kinda) defended by Paul Krugman! Krugman writes that Mahathir's "remarks were inexcusable. But they were also calculated — for Mr. Mahathir is a cagey politician, who is neither ignorant nor foolish."

Ah yes, the "but"--the Copperhead Conjunction rears its ugly head again.

UPDATE: Instapundit (back after another denial of service attack at Hosting Matters) has links to others angry over Krugman's Copperhead convulsions.

WELL THIS CLEARS IT UP: ESPN's clear, precisely written answer to the Volokh Conspiracy certainly explains, in copious detail, why Gregg Easterbrook was fired.

KEITH BURGESS-JACKSON (a Nader man!) tracks the natural history of Bush-Hating at Tech Central Station.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds also has some thoughts, in his MSNBC column, on what happens when the chattering class grows fangs.

MORE ANTI-SEMITISM FROM MAHATHIR: Whatever happened to the good old days, when the CIA would quietly put a Mickey in the coffee of somebody like this?

LET THEM PAY CAR TAXES: In the Washington media, a popular euphemism for a politician moving to the left is that he's "evolved as a politician". Joan Didion's "evolution" from her early days at National Review and a key part of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and '70s, to her current leftist politics can be summed up with the quote that Andrew Sullivan discovered. It's priceless--and speaks volumes about why the Democrats are no longer the party of the working man.

NOPE, NO MEDIA BIAS HERE.

MORE ON EASTERBROOK, from James Taranto:

Those who've commented on the Easterbrook kerfuffle fall, roughly, into two camps: those, like Foxman, who believe his original posting was an expression of classic anti-Semitism, and those who don't know what to make of it. An example of the latter is blogger Josh Marshall: "What Easterbrook said was weird and something a hair's breadth short of ugly. . . . Try as I might to explain to myself how Easterbrook could have unwittingly walked into such an unfortunate formulation, I still find it a bit difficult. What was he thinking? I go back and forth. I'm not sure."

Well, allow us to explain. Easterbrook's essay was an expression not of anti-Semitism but of a lesser, though still insidious, form of prejudice. Call it liberal condescension. This sentence from his apology reveals all: "How, I wondered, could anyone Jewish--members of a group who suffered the worst act of violence in all history, and who suffer today, in Israel, intolerable violence--seek profit from a movie that glamorizes violence as cool fun?"

"Members of a group": This is the language of liberal identity politics. And note that this is a philo-Semitic prejudice, not an anti-Semitic one. Easterbrook's premise is that the suffering of the Jewish people ennobles Jewish individuals--or should--even if those individuals have not themselves suffered. Thus he presumes to hold Jews to a higher moral standard by virtue of their Jewishness--though in fact all he's doing is asking them to agree with his highly debatable opinion (does it really make any sense to liken stylized Hollywood violence to the Holocaust?).

Ideologically, Easterbrook's earnest criticism of Jewish studio executives is of a piece with Maureen Dowd's racist rant against Clarence Thomas. Because Thomas is black, Dowd, like other liberals, expects him to conform to liberal orthodoxy and thus treats his conservatism as a far greater offense than that of, say, Antonin Scalia. This kind of prejudice may not lead to pogroms and lynchings, but it's divisive and often ugly all the same.

It's Taranto's lead post today. Scroll down below it for a look at how President Bush took on Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad face-to-face for Mathahir's rabid anti-Semitic remarks last week. And don't miss how Reuters headlined the story!

MUST SEE TV: Evan Coyne Maloney has an amazing piece of guerrilla QuickTime video titled, "When Protesters Attack".

Reason's "Hit & Run" Blog looks at "The Top 10 Reasons to Forget Light Rail".

Or as James Lileks recently wrote:

Heading into the office today I was startled to see the poles - ten per block, tall and gray, ugly lumps hanging from the wires that laced the poles together. The final step of the light-rail project: the electrical wires are back.

And so the bad idea finally showed its ugly mug. The ads for the light rail system are cool - they borrow 30s / 40s rail iconography, which is clever. The stations are quite impressive, including the immense, lovely, and utterly nonfunctional assemblage across from the Metrodome. Fifth street downtown has been screwed beyond belief - from three lanes to one until you hit the Government Plaza, at which point the street is closed to thru-traffic. Brilliant. But I think some people believed that the trolleys would just . . . move on their own accord, gliding on the rails. No one reminded us that we’d have to string wires in the sky again. And so the intersections now have these latticework constructs, these anal-retentive dreamcatchers, these tic-tac-toe puzzles pasted over your view of the sky. Wonderful.

Eight hundred million.

As I have said elsewhere, somewhere, I am not opposed to mass transit. I see the double-segment busses trundle past at rush hour, filled to the gunwales, and I’m glad: congestion would be worse without the busses. And even if the effect on congestion was limited, I’d still support it; people need to get around. When I was a poor college student I took the bus. When I was an entry-level 20something downtown drone I took the bus. I believe in dedicated bus lanes. I think poor people should get vouchers to take them to jobs in the outer burbs.

Eight hundred million dollars for a trolley that goes from the bar district to the Mall of America!

I keep thinking of some old guy coming downtown for the first time in years, looking up at the poles and bright string, and shouting: what are you doing? Do you know how pleased we were to see the sky when the wires came down? That’s why we welcomed the busses, you idiots! They were air conditioned, they went everywhere, they pulled over to let people out, they didn’t clog traffic - now you’re bringing back the old ways? What’s next, four-aisle supermarkets? Radios without FM? Black and white newspapers? TVs without remotes? You idiots!

The Desire Named Streetcar, indeed.

FROM BOTTOM TO TOP: Numerous times on this site, we've commented that the protestors against the war in Iraq were essentially aiding Saddam Hussein, and hurting the Iraqi people, by wanting to keep him in power. (George Orwell made essentially the same argument 60 years ago, during World War II.)

Diana West writes that the same holds true for presidential candidates as well:

Soon, the burning question Democrats must answer will be not what they think is wrong with George W. Bush's policy, but what they, as members of the antiwar elite, would do in his place.

This is a tough question. It forces members of the antiwar elite to admit they would have left Saddam Hussein and his murderous regime in place -- not exactly a surefire policy to make either Iraq or the world safe for democracy. And now that most of the Democratic presidential candidates have come out against the president's $87 billion funding request to stabilize and democratize the terror-torn, debt-laden country, they are taking themselves and their party to a new extreme. Indeed, being anti-Bush and antiwar, Democrats now pack a double political whammy that, in effect, bolsters Baathists and vitiates victory. And it leaves the American Left prone to increasingly weird contradictions.

No kidding!

MARK STEYN CONNECTS THE DOTS, and does not like what he sees--and neither should you.

EASTERBROOK FLASHBACK: By now, you've read that the New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook has been fired from his part-time gig as a columnist on ESPN's Website. Glenn Reynolds has as thorough a round-up of links as can be imagined, and here's a flashback to my thoughts on Easterbrook, Limbaugh, and ESPN, from a couple of weeks ago.

SENATORIAL SMACKDOWN: Sean Hannity and Ted Kennedy mix it up in an impromptu radio showdown--for charity!

PUNISHING SUCCESS: Terrific essay by Thomas Sowell:

Name some of the things that make us so much better off than Americans of just a couple of generations ago.

One of the most important things are new medicines that not only prolong life but leave us vigorous at ages when old folks used to sit around in rocking chairs. Airplanes have put the whole world within our reach. Computer operating systems have enabled people with no understanding of the science and technology of computers to use them nevertheless to do innumerable things.

You might think that those who created these things would be among our heroes. On the contrary, they are demonized in the media, harassed by the government and sued by lawyers.

Read the whole thing, as somebody once said.

FROM SADDAM HUSSEIN TO BURGER KING: Iraq now has its first Burger King. Hopefully many more will follow. If there had been Burger Kings in 1947, and one opened in Berlin, I wonder what Life would have thought about it.

ROOT CAUSES: Howard Kurtz explains why outright hatred of Bush has become so prevalent on the left.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg has a few thoughts on the subject.

AN APOLOGY: Back on September 30th, I unloaded a couple of barrels of buckshot against Matt Rowe, who runs the very enjoyable MusicTap Website, which announces upcoming new CD and DVD-Audio titles. Rowe emailed me a very, very polite letter stating that he had read my post, and that he was simply trying to express his admiration of John Lennon in his original article (which I linked to).

As I said in the original post, there's a lot about Lennon and the Beatles that I also admire greatly, and I apologize for dumping on Matt. We try to maintain some decorum and civility around here, and definitely failed that time.

AXIS OF EVIL, POP WARNER LEAGUE: Check out the quotes in this USA Today story:

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Thursday told a summit of Islamic leaders that "Jews rule the world by proxy" and the world's 1.3 billion Muslims should unite, using nonviolent means for a "final victory."

* * * "The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy," Mahathir said, opening the meeting of Islamic leaders from 57 nations. "They get others to fight and die for them."

When I spoke to Alvin Toffler shortly after 9/11, one of the most surprising things he said was that:

Islam is not a middle-eastern religion, even though it originated there. It is an Asian religion. There are more Muslims, just in Indonesia, than all the Arabs in the world put together, from North Africa all the way over to the other side of the Mediterranean. And there is, as we know, not only in Pakistan, but of course in India as well. So if you put these together, not to mention the smaller population of Afghanistan, you’ve got the majority of Muslims not living in the Middle East.

And most of them want to go about their daily lives. They want to feed their kids, they want to go to prayer, but they’re not eager to take up arms. And many in Asia, for example, expressed more than once, the wish that the Arab-Israeli conflict would simply go away and not bother them, and so on.

Tough to do so, when you've got leaders like Malaysia's prime minister billowing hate-filled rhetoric, which Israel has quite rightly condemned.

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner's post on Mahathir is well worth reading.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Charles Johnson is all over this story:

[Mahathir] also ranted that Muslims are humiliated and wrongly depicted as terrorists, while at the same time calling on the Islamic world to arm themselves with “guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships.” That’s using the old noggin, Maha baby.

In the same post, Johnson describes AP's version of Mahathir's speech (which I linked to above, via Drudge), as "a blatant whitewash", and in another post, notes how French President Jacques Chirac "actually blocked a statement condemning the antisemitic speech by Mahathir Mohamad."

THIS SHOULD BE INTERESTING: Apple is opening its iTunes music service for Windows.

THESE KIDS WERE MORE THAN ALRIGHT: My review of the Who's 1979 midnight movie, The Kids Are Alright (sic) is online at Blogcritics.

THE L.A. TIMES IN A NUTSHELL: Orrin Judd writes, "So one of the leading figures in the most important industry in Los Angeles was outed as a serial sexual harasser thirty months ago, but the hometown paper only got around to the story when it became obvious he'd be the Republican governor of CA--this is supposed to be their defense of their editorial judgment? Suppose the same stories were circulating about Ken Lay, a leading figure in another important business to CA--would they wait until he announced for office to look into them?"

THE NEW YORK TIMES IN A NUTSHELL: Jonah Goldberg explains why the New York Times editorially endorsed the Boston Red Sox over the New York Yankees--and never bothered to explain the conflict of interest behind their endorsement.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING! THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!! Err, that is unless it reflects badly on "peaceful" protestors, in which case they'll beat up the cameramen recording them.

Of course, Evan Coyne Maloney's example is far from the first example of this occurring. On the Thursday in March during the week that war in Iraq first broke out, I posted:

I'M WITH STOOOPID: KTVU just mentioned that a protestor took a swipe at one of their cameramen.

Err, guys, TV is on your side--they live for those images! You don't want to upset them.

UPDATE (3:30 PM): Ken Wayne of KTVU just mentioned some looting occurred today, possibly connected with the protesting. There's a shock!

Wayne also mentioned that a number of the protestors are "upset with the type of coverage they're receiving". They certainly shouldn't be upset with the quantity of coverage they're receiving, however.

And yet, apparently they are.

Back in January, William Whittle made quite a splash in the Blogosphere with his essay on anti-war celebrities. (Here are my thoughts on it from back then.)

Whittle had a terrific paragraph about celebrities such as Woody Harrelson, whom Whittle described as embodying "one of the great ironies of the America-bashing glitteratiÂ…he is one of those actors who became beloved by playing someone who, for all intents and purposes, is his polar opposite."

I call this the Lou Grant effect. The talented Ed Asner, the actor who played Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is politically to the left of Mao. Put Ed Asner and Lou Grant in a steel cage, let them talk politics for five minutes, and Lou Grant would kick Ed Asner’s ass. Even Murray Slaughter would be handing up folding chairs: “Hit the bastard again Lou, he’s still talking about income redistribution!” Dana Scully is a brilliant, courageous, skeptical physician who is handy with an automatic; Gillian Anderson is deep into crystals and has trouble with her shoelaces. Jack Ryan crawls through the bowels of a stolen Russian submarine fighting a dirty shadow war to keep America free, and Alec Baldwin…doesn’t. He seems to find the whole idea of a Jack Ryan deeply embarrassing. This list, sadly, goes on too.

Whittle's phrase, "The Lou Grant Effect", is particularly apropos, because I used to love watching Asner as Lou--and could easily have pictured myself knocking back a few Scotches and discussing the good old days of journalism with the man.

Of course, that's not possible: Lou is fictional, and the real Ed Asner is a very, very different fellow from the all-American character he played in the 1970s, as Andrew Sullivan demonstrates.

Sullivan's post about Asner is titled, "Lefties and Tyrants". Sadly, as we noted around the time of Whittle's post, Asner isn't the only Hollywood celebrity who worships them.

UPDATE: The author of the piece that Sullivan quoted has since retracted Asner's quotes--apparently he transcribed them incorrectly, or worked from an inaccurate transcription.

SEATTLE'S LENIN STATUE: Back on June 11th, I blogged about my encounter with the city's 30-foot high representation of Vladimir Ilyich. Jesse Walker picks up the theme, in an article about totalitarian art.

GOOD TO SEE: CNSNews reports, "Phoenix, AZ Man Sentenced To Death for 9-11 'Backlash Attack'."

The fact that you count on one hand the number of life-threatening crimes committed against Arabs, and those mistaken for Arabs (in the case that occurred in Arizona) speaks volumes about what an amazing tolerant society America is.

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID: And its recovery is coming along nicely, if the stock market is any indication. Rich Galen, and Patrice Hill of The Washington Times each have some thoughts.

IDIOTARIAN OF THE YEAR FRONT RUNNER: Geez, did Pat Robertson really say, "If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer"??

Congrats Pat. That line has just advanced you to pole position in the idiotarian of the year race.

Admittedly, the State Department has serious problems. And yes, complaining about Pat falls into the comments that James Bowman made yesterday. But what a fine Christian Robertson is, for wanting to see hundreds of innocent staffers killed.

Unbelievable.

UPDATE (10/13/03): Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts.

AXIS OF EVIL, ATLANTIC DIVISION: If I was Castro, I would not be happy seeing headlines that read, "Bush Seeks Ideas for Cuban Regime Change".

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez spots the bias in the above story's lead.

TELLING GAFFE made by Howard Dean in the debate last night.

RUSH GOING INTO REHAB: Rush Limbaugh has issued a press release on his addiction to prescription pain medication. He's going into a 30 day rehab program.

The left has been extremely tolerant of drug abusers (how many people in Hollywood, athletics and the music industry have gone to Betty Ford or Hazelden, and still enjoy enormously successful careers?), and of course, still reveres JFK, even though he's since been reported to have spent a lifetime addicted to pain killers. The double standard that Limbaugh is about to face when he's damned for his failings should be pretty blatant.

UPDATE: Fellow radio man Hugh Hewitt also has some thoughts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: As does John Hawkins.

SCHWARZENEGGER'S POLICY COMPASS: Larry Kudlow says that when it comes to economics, it's clear, and conservative.

There's too much from this article to quote from, so if you're at all interested in Schwarzenegger's economic policies, read the whole thing. Arnold's got his work cut out for him, not the least of which is dealing with fiercely partisan bureaucracy in Sacramento. But having a moral compass pointing in the right direction (pun intended) isn't a bad place to start.

TEMPER TANTRUM: Vote for Schwarzenegger? Voted for any of the Republicans when they regained the House and Senate in '94, during the landmark "Contract With America" election? Either way, you had a temper tantrum, according to ABC News.

Now that's chutzpah: a television network that literally tells the majority of its viewers that they're being childish, instead of trying to provide them with a service and earn their respect. No wonder people are increasingly tuning out the big three networks and CNN.

UPDATE: Here's more, from Brent Bozell.

"THE INVASION OF THE DUH PEOPLE" was a very funny Florence King essay from a couple of years ago (that fortunately is still online). James Bowman picks up its theme, and elaborates on how the media and politicians cater to them, in his post today.

LIFE'S TOUGH: "Schwarzenegger' Hard on Headline Writers".

The article quotes Dave Tepps, deputy managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News, as saying that the paper is opposed to just calling Schwarzenegger "Arnold", because the first-name reference is not appropriate for a serious story, in Tepps' opinion.

I'm pretty sure that it was the Merc that I'd pass by on the newstands during the recall election, that often referred to Arnold as "The Actor" in their headlines, as in "ACTOR SAYS DAVIS CAR TAX TOO HIGH", or whatever. I can only assume they were trying to tie him in with another fellow from Hollywood who won two terms as California's governor--and then another two terms of elected office somewhere else.

Like I said, I'm pretty sure that was the Merc, but it may have been the San Francisco Chronicle. In either case though, I'm sure they thought of it as a pejorative title for Schwarzenegger, though.

SPIN CITY: Last month, Democrats told everyone who could listen that the recall movement in California was another sign of a vast right wing conspiracy gone overboard.

Beginning on Tuesday night, the party line is that it's sending a statement--to George Bush!

Byron York and Hugh Hewitt each have takes on the DNC spinning out of control.

UPDATE: There's no bias in the media of course (just ask 'em!), but the networks have picked up on this spin as well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan notes that the rinse cycle of the spin machine began on the weekend before Tuesday's election.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

On TV, CNN reports from Austria that a young Arnold predicted he would be a world champion body-builder and a movie star. That he would marry a beautiful woman and achieve great wealth. Finally, claims CNN, Arnold said he would be the most powerful man in the world. For now, how about worker's comp reform?

--Arnold Steinberg, on Arnold Schwarzenegger.

UPDATES: There's a bunch of them scattered throughout the last two day's worth of posts. We do update breaking stories during the day, so stop back often--and if you can't, be sure to look for "UPDATE:"--it's our symbol of fine bloggidity goodness in every bite. Err, byte!

Umm, bite.

Or something like that.

GUESS HE'S LISTENING TO FRIEDMAN, NOT BUFFETT: Arnold vows not to raise taxes.

ARNOLD WAS A FLUKE, NOT THE START OF A TREND: There's bi-partisan support for that opinion from both John Hawkins and Gregg Easterbrook.

UPDATE: On the other hand...

About the double play by the media against Schwarzenegger and Limbaugh last week, Leo writes that high-profile figures are increasingly under media attack:

We seem to be in the midst of a campaign to take down high-profile conservatives. The gay lobby did a job on Dr. Laura, in effect getting her new TV show canceled and portraying her as a hater for holding the traditional Judeo-Christian view of homosexuality. She is brusque and blunt, but no hater. There is plenty of testimony on the record about her kindness to gays and the help she gave to PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. But the gay lobby took her down anyway.

William Bennett went down too, for his over-the-top slot-machine gambling. He did it himself, of course, but the only moral rule always observed in Las Vegas casinos is Thou Shalt Never Reveal How Much the Heavy Roller Hath Lost. That rule was somehow suspended in Bennett's case. The total amount of his losses, $8 million, was somehow fed to the media. Curious, no?

John Fund, the very talented conservative journalist, got the treatment as well. He was smeared as a wife-beater. Eric Alterman, the liberal commentator, helped clear the air with a piece in the Nation headlined, 'Who Framed John Fund?' Alterman's question for the left was this: Who do we want to be, people who try to destroy opponents or people who act on principle? It's a good question for the right, too, and for everyone now poised to jump into the Limbaugh case.

Perhaps, having gotten a taste of the politics of personal destruction in Washington, the press need fresh kills, and are expanding their hunting grounds to include any figure whose opinions they disagree with.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste also has some thoughts on the press, in a typically detailed and fascinating essay.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR GRAY DAVIS? Scott Ott checks in with the soon-to-be-ex-governor.

UPDATE: On a more serious note, I could see this one happening.

POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE: David Horowitz writes that the California recall election "is already shaping the political future not only in California but nationwide":

The big losers in this election were California liberals, feminists, the politics of personal destruction, the myth that the press is not in bed with the Democrats and the image of Republicans as mean-spirited morality police. The Republican Party has suddenly become the big tent it has aspired to be but never quite achieved until now. According to exit polls 55 percent of independents and 18 percent of Democrats voted for Schwarzenegger – despite the fact that the Democratic Party threw all its big guns into the state including all its presidential candidates, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Jesse Jackson. Thirty-nine percent of union households voted for the Republican and thirty percent of Hispanics – despite the fact the Democrat Bustamante would have been the first Hispanic governor in history if he had won. Moreover, the turnout of Republicans themselves was also obviously large with the overwhelming majority of conservatives and an even larger majority of moderate Republicans coming out to vote for him.

In short, the new governor inspires passion in the Republican base and yet hope among those who are often put off by that base. In California, Arnold has created a new Republican coalition that has raised the Republican Party from the dead and produced an electoral landslide in the process. In a state which Republicans lost by a million votes in the last presidential election (without the Democrats having to spend a penny in the state) the combined Republican vote may have exceeded 60 percent -- an electoral landslide. This is what is meant by a political earthquake.

Fair enough!

15 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: David Letterman's Top Ten list last night was taped before the polls closed, so he simply took an amusing review of "Top Ten Possible California Newspaper Headlines for Tomorrow".

THE POLITICALLY CORRECT GOOGLE: It accepts porn ads but refuses those for guns, according to CNSNews.

FLASHBACK: For a quick history of the recall Davis movement, Robert B. Bluey has a look at how it got started--and how it snowballed.

BEAT THE PRESS: Tim Graham looks at how the media covered Schwarzenegger, and quips, "The sum-up headline for the California recall could be 'Schwarzenegger Wins, Media Lose'. As Jonah Goldberg writes, "For a Republican of any flavor — including, in this case, California Alpine — to be elected in such a liberal state with that kind of baggage is a serious feat."

UPDATE: It's about the media and Iraq, but Ralph Peters' comments also apply to California:

One of the whopping lies of our time is that journalists are simply innocent bystanders with no responsibility for the outcome of events...The truth is that today's media shape reality - often for the worse. The media form a powerful strategic factor. They're actors, not merely observers.

The media are not detached from all responsibility for the events they cover. A journalist will tell you - sometimes sincerely - that he or she only reports the facts. That's never quite the truth. And it's often an outright lie.

Even the best journalists must choose among the facts to form their reports. Ethical reporters do strive for accuracy. But phony efforts to provide "balanced coverage" - to report the mass-murderer's side of the story with evenhanded sympathy - skew reality. Struggling to be fair to the viciously unfair is a sign of moral weakness, not objectivity.

Still worse, the competition for headlines drives journalists to report only those tiny slivers of ground-truth that qualify as "news." Setbacks make the cut. Successes don't.

As I wrote on Monday, "Last week's carpet bombing of Rush and Schwarzenegger is proof that media bias is alive and well, if incredibly ham-handed and increasingly easier to spot."

UPDATE: Oops, I didnt' realize that Glenn had also applied Peters' article towards the election.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lowell Ponte writes that the L.A. Times, "this once-great newspaper did worse than tilt its reporting to the Left. This newspaper betrayed its most fundamental role: to be an honest watchdog that warns the people of government wrongdoing. Instead, the Los Angeles Times reportedly became an attack dog working in conjunction with corrupt Democratic Party bosses who dominate both houses of the state legislature and control every statewide office in California."

THE TREND IS HIS FRIEND: Late last night, I was talking to a friend about Schwarzenegger's chances of getting reelected in 2006. My take? The trend is his friend. California's economy was already showing some signs of life even before Arnold got elected. And it should benefit from the strengthening economy throughout the country. If it does, Arnold can take the credit for it. If it doesn't well...

I realize that California's economy is much more than Silicon Valley. But the end of the Internet boom makes a good starting point to track California's recession. Considering that dotcoms started going bust around 1999 or 2000, and the NASDAQ cratered in April of 2000, back when Clinton was still in power, and their anti-trust rulings against Microsoft were certified by a judge, that will be six years of recession for the Golden State. That doesn't seem possible--but if that's the case, whoever's in charge should get the blame at that point.

Along similar lines, Jay Bryant writes:

If he goes against the lessons he supposedly has learned from Friedman and raises taxes, Schwarzenegger may balance next year's budget on paper, but he will doom the state to an ongoing downward spiral in which each year's budget will be harder and harder to balance, as businesses, people, and tax revenues suffer.

A Friedmanesque fiscal policy is the best way to restore budgetary sanity in Sacramento. Combined with an improving economy (likely nationally in 2004, and in which California will share to the extent its business climate improves, something the Governor can impact directly), such reforms could indeed mean that Californians could, within the next year, feel they were distinctly better off.

These actions, however, will also trigger an unending spate of "ketchup as a vegetable" stories about the heartlessness of the new regime. Either Schwarzenegger has the courage to put up with such criticism or he doesn't.

A popular and successful Schwarzenegger can be a huge boost to the California GOP, raising unprecedented money for its local candidates; he could even possibly put it into the Bush column in 2004, although this is far less certain. At least the Democratic candidate will have to spend some money there, unlike Gore in 2000.

Conservatives need to forget about social issue criticisms of the new Governor and keep the pressure on for him to follow his Friedman instincts on fiscal policy.

Exactly. Of course, having Warren Buffett on his team will be worrisome.

GUANTANAMO BAY: Could it become the next theater in the war on terror? James S. Robbins has some thoughts.

ON THE OTHER HAND: Despite Arnold's landslide, don't count out the California Democrats just yet, Stephen Green writes.

UPDATE: John Hawkins rounds up what the far left is saying about Schwarzenegger's win. And it's not pretty.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Neither is this LA Times editorial, which dubs Arnold--in the headline!--"Der Gropenfuhrer".

Classy, guys. Really classy.

DEMOCRATIC CONTRADICTIONS: Rich Lowry opines. Steven Den Beste fleshes things out.

Ed Driscoll probably shouldn't be posting this late at night.

FLASHBACK: Man, did Lileks nail Schwarzenegger's campaign and appeal, or what?

Of course, he got to observe the prototype up close, having lived in Minnesota when Arnold's "John the Baptist" (as Lileks described him) was governor.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn did a pretty good job as well.

RULES OF THUMB: John Hawkins is some spot-on when it comes to the inner workings of American politics.

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER! Andrew Sullivan has some links, but Glenn really sums it up:

Congrats, Arnold. Now all you have to do is govern the most ungovernable state in America!

(Understatement alert): He's got his work cut out for him, but I don't think Arnold is a Ventura-like poseur.

I've read profiles of Schwarzenegger from the 1980s that discussed his running for governor of California. So there's no doubt that he's thought long and hard about becoming governer of CA. Now we'll see what he does with the job.

And the state.

SHADES OF THE BLUE STATE/RED STATE MAP: Check out this map to see which counties voted to recall Gray Davis.

Liberalism is increasingly consigned to urban areas, as the 2000 USA Today map proved.

Incidentally, and not surprisingly, county for county in California, the exact same counties that voted for Gore in 2000 voted to keep Davis in power today.

UPDATE: InstaPundit also has some thoughts on this map, and its implications.

PAST ITS SHELF LIFE: During my numerous trips to the dentist this past month, I paged through the waiting room copy of the 70th anniversary issue of Esquire and thought I was reading something so lame, so one-sided in its left-wing slant, and so tired in its choices of subject matter, that it was sad to see a once great--and fun--magazine become sclerotic with age.

The Wall Street Journal agrees:

In the '60s, the monthly, known for its earlier star writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Salinger, became a laboratory for what was then called "the new journalism." The rat-a-tat-tat burst of vibrant stories by Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr, Philip Roth, Terry Southern, Norman Mailer (before he went batty) and Gore Vidal, in addition to Diane Arbus's photography and Mr. Lois's provocative covers, made Esquire the "must-read" of that era.

These days, however, there's nothing biting in Esquire's editorial content--not a single story that would be considered, to use the parlance of years past, "hip" or "edgy."

One feature in the current issue shows just how "nerdy" it has become: "The Esquire 70: As in, The Seventy Things That Make Us Very Happy to Be Alive Today." Included on this list are iTunes, Altoids Tangerine Sours, Canada, creamed spinach, the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, JetBlue, outdoor showers, Jennifer Coolidge, the New York Times, "the revenge (if there's even a shred of justice in the world) of Howell Raines," Sarah Silverman, "the nooner," Maura Tierney, deflation and Kleenex Cottonelle.

Tiny mummies--not just for the New Yorker any more!

MODERNITY WITHOUT MODERNISM: Interesting essay by Robert Locke that I tripped over while doing a Google search for God-knows-what.

I'm not sure if I agree with all of the points the author makes, but there's some interesting stuff going on here.

SEEING GREENPEACE: Could the IRS soon be investigating them? Deroy Murdock has some thoughts.

MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL: Two thoughts: was that a great game last night, or what??

And Snoop Doggy Dog should never be allowed to "sing" the Monday Night Football theme song. I'm not qualified to judge his rapping, but his singing voice was weak, thin and awful--I'd have been embarrassed to have cut those tracks.

This year's theme of having young pop stars duet with Hank Williams Jr. is a big, big mistake--they've been uniformly pathetic so far.

JUST BACK FROM VOTING, which took place in a local kindergarten/pre-school sort of center. The Romper Room atmosphere of the class of five year olds that was visible in the hall as we were waiting to vote certainly seemed appropriate to the events at hand.