THE DESIRE NAMED STREETCAR: When I visited my parents in South Jersey this weekend, I noticed that NJ Transit's light rail system is finally operating in their area.
...and surprise, surprise, the cars and local station appeared virtually empty. Texas Public Policy Foundation looks at the impact of light rail on America's cities and does not like what it sees:
Out of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas, 23 had rail transit in 2000. This study reviews those 23 regions and finds:I understand that cities need public transportation to function, but why not purchase additional buses and build additional roads or widen existing ones, which would benefit not only the buses but also individual motorists. Unlike fixed rail lines, if a route doesn't provide enough passengers for a bus to make sense, it's easy to reassign them elsewhere.• Half of all rail regions lost transit commuters during the 1990s;
• Taken together, rail regions lost 14,000 transit commuters in the 1990s;
• Meanwhile, bus-only regions gained nearly 53,000 transit commuters in the 1990s;
• Transit lost market share of commuters in two-thirds of all rail regions in the 1990s;
• Per capita transit rides declined in half the rail regions;
• Transit’s share of total travel declined in a majority of rail regions;
• Sixteen of the 20 urban areas with the fastest growing congestion are rail regions –
and one of the other four is building rail transit; and
• By comparison, only three of the 20 urban areas with the slowest growing congestion
are rail regions – and only because all three have nearly zero population growth.Based on these and other criteria, including cost effectiveness, safety, energy, and land use, this paper constructs a Rail Livability Index that assesses the effects of rail transit on urban areas. Every rail region earned a negative score, suggesting rail reduces urban livability.
Rail transit is not only expensive, it usually costs more to build and often costs more to operate than originally projected. To pay for cost overruns, transit agencies often must boost transit fares or cut transit service outside of rail corridors. Thus, rail transit tends to harm most transit users.
Rail transit also harms most auto drivers. Most regions building rail transit expect to spend half to four-fifths of their transportation capital budgets on transit systems that carry 0.5 to 4 percent of passenger travel. This imbalanced funding makes it impossible to remove highway bottlenecks and leads to growing congestion.
Rail’s high cost makes it ineffective at reducing congestion. On average, $13 spent on rail transit is less effective at reducing congestion than $1 spent on freeway improvements. Investments in rail transit are only about half as effective as investments in bus transit.Rail transit also tends to be more dangerous than other forms of travel. Interstate freeways cause 3.9 deaths per billion passenger miles. Accidents on urban roads and streets in general lead to about 6.8 deaths per billion passenger miles. Among the various forms of urban transit, buses, at 4.3 deaths per billion passenger miles, are the safest; heavy rail averages 5.0, commuter rail 11.3, and light rail 14.8.
The Texas Policy report is an 84 page Adobe Acrobat file, so I'm not going to say "read the whole thing". But just skimming it is pretty frightening in and of itself.
You can learn a lot about a movie critic by comparing how he reviewed Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ with what he wrote about Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
UPDATE: Make that 23: James Panero of The New Criterion looks at how Andrew Sullivan views the two films.
BEST OF THE ED TODAY: James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today" column echoes something we wrote last week. Here's Taranto:
From where we sit, it appears that Democrats in 2004 are repeating the mistake Republicans made in 1996: assuming that the intensity of their own loathing for the incumbent means that loathing is widespread beyond the partisan base. We could be wrong, of course--our own political preferences no doubt color our views--but a party that consorts with the likes of anti-American filmmaker Michael Moore strikes us as more desperate than confident.I guess we view things through a similar shade of Wayfarers. As I wrote last week:
They're overplaying their hand, just like the over the top Wellstone funeral-cum-political orgy of 2002. They've hitched themselves to something which is likely to rebound very badly in their faces; but in the meantime, I hope a rope-a-dope strategy is in place by the White House, because without signs of the president fighting back, all of this can be brutal to watch. On the other hand, the staggering amount of overheated rhetoric doesn't sound at all like the FDR-style jaunty "happy days are here again" feeling of a party confident of victory in the fall.Incidentally, the rope-a-dope began the next day.
If a tree falls but the Washington Post doesn't report it, does it make a sound? Paul Bremer gave a stirring speech before leaving Iraq on Monday--but you wouldn't know it if you read the Post, which reported, "There was no farewell address to the Iraqi people, no celebratory airport sendoff".
Meanwhile, Tom Brokaw is helpfully schooling Iraq's new Prime Minister on the Saddam-al Qaida connection.
As the Professor writes, "Why, oh, why, can't we have decent news media?"
POWER LINE LOOKS AT Orwellian Maryland, where food stamp recipients don't actually get "stamps" anymore. Instead, they get a plastic card modeled on bank debit cards.
Its name? The "Independence Card."
BEATS DRAMAMINE ANY DAY: Set sail with Steve Green's Navy!
M-AUDIO'S OMNI-STUDIO: Another review on Blogcritics, this time on a nifty soundcard for home musicians, complete with an audio file of a song I recorded using it.
THE NEW MUSIC BUSINESS: I have a review of Robert Wolff's How To Make In the New Music Business on Blogcritics.
IF IT'S TUESDAY, I MUST BE THE FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: I just downloaded the 57 bazillion emails I received while I was away from a broadband connection for a couple of days. 56.5 bazillion of them were spam, but this one is a classic:
From your latest column:I'm not printing the name of the person who sent this to me (or the foul language, which I replaced with asterisks) because deep down inside, I'm a nice guy."One needs to point out that the pan-Arab media said nothing when the Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad destroyed Hama and killed more than 10,000 of his own innocent people, or when Saddam Hussein used poison gas on Iraqis and created 300,000 anonymous graves."
Guess which liberal ****sucker gave Saddam the gas along with anthrax, smallpox, and other bacterial cultures in '83-'84? (I can talk like this 'cause Cheney proved it in the Senate last week.) Donald Rumsfeld gave him the gas and germ cultures for the Reagan administration and admitted it before Congress in testimony last March. Look it up.
The whole country is getting hip to neocon ***holes like you, Rummy, and Bush. Crowds are flocking to Fahrenheit 9/11 and recognizing the truth when visual evidence is shown to them. AND YOU CAN'T DO A THING ABOUT IT. The days of hysterical demagogue liars like you, Coulter, "Savage", the Limbaughs, Hannity, and the rest are coming to an end. These little piggies are going home. Bye-bye.
And I don't want to embarrass somebody who has confused me with Newt Gingrich.
(Does Newt receive nastygrams about his latest posts in Blogcritics?)
BACK IN CALIFORNIA: Expect regular blogging to resume tomorrow (Wednesday).
NOT YOUR FATHER'S--OR MOTHER'S--GOP: The Washington Times has long been the conservative answer to the more liberal Washington Post.
And there's always interesting material in the Times' commentary page. Including, this weekend, several prominent Victoria's Secret ads! (Click refresh a couple of times if they don't immediately come up.)
Not sure what that means (especially at this ungodly hour), but it's certainly an interesting sociological phenomenon. It does lend credence to one of P.J. O'Rourke's theories, though.
MIAMI VICE MEETS MATHNET: Got a big drug deal coming up? Not sure of that complex kilos to ounces conversion ratio? Why not ask your math teacher! Joanne Jacobs in a post titled, "Why Math Matters", says "Police, who seized the cocaine from a school locker, said it was in two "bricks" weighing 0.468 and 0.506 kilograms. No word yet on how many ounces that is."
Junk Yard Blog looks at a 90 minute town hall meeting at Ohio State in February of 1998 by three of President Clinton's top cabinet officials and finds all sorts of connections to present-day events.
WHAT A LONG, STRANGE WEEK IT'S BEEN, huh? Between Fahrenheit 911 and its embrace by the "Coalition of Wild-Eyed": 98 percent of the Democratic Party--and 100 percent of Manhattan and Chicago's film critics; the return of Bill, Al, and Granny D; the birth of "the digital brown shirts"; the increasingly postmodern press, and the rest of the usual and sundry insanity, I'm exhausted.
I may blog a little bit more tonight, but after that, blogging will be light until early next week, as I'll be visiting friends and relatives this weekend.
ALSO A FAIR QUESTION: A commenter on The Brothers Judd Blog asks:
What I'd like to know is how does Moore get permission to use all those news clips and outtakes? Does he actually pay for the rights? If I tried to use that material for profit, I'd be inundated with lawyers waving "cease and desist" orders for my copyright violations long before I got to the screening stage. And are those new organizations really that willing to license their material, especially the stuff (like the makeup outtakes) that was never meant to be shown publicly?Right--we won't help the US military if it's under attack. But we will help someone attack the US.
Sounds about right.
Daniel Henninger wants to know if John Kerry thinks it's evil to behead innocent men.
LUCASFILM RELEASE FINAL ARTWORK FOR STAR WARS DVDs: Is it just me, or do these boxtops look incredibly garish and ugly?
Why couldn't Lucas have simply used the original posters for the films, instead of relegating them to the tops of the discs themselves? Or simply have the great Ralph McQuarrie draw up some new artwork?
THE MILLION DOLLAR GUITAR: Eric Clapton's "Blackie", the Fender Stratocaster that accompanied him at countless live shows from the early-'70s to the mid-'80s, went for a record $959,500 at auction yesterday.
We first previously mentioned the auction at the beginning of the month. We were only slightly off in what we thought it would fetch...
YEAR THREE: Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on where we stand in the war on terror:
Right after 9/11, some of us thought it was impossible for leftist critics to undermine a war against fascists who were sexist, fundamentalist, homophobic, racist, ethnocentric, intolerant of diversity, mass murderers of Kurds and Arabs, and who had the blood of 3,000 Americans on their hands. We were dead wrong. In fact, they did just that. Abu Ghraib is on the front pages daily. Stories of thousands of American soldiers in combat against terrorist killers from the Hindu Kush to Fallujah do not merit the D section. Senator Kennedy's two years of insane outbursts should have earned him formal censure rather than a commemoration from the Democratic establishment.Read the whole thing.What a litany of distractions! Words — preemption," "unilateralism," "hegemony," — whiz by and lose all meaning. Names — "Halliburton," "Chalabi," "INC" — become little more than red meat. Vocabulary is turned upside down: "Contractors," who at great risk restore power and water to the poor, are now little more than "profiteers" and "opportunists"; killers are not even "terrorists" but mere "militants." "Neo-cons" are wild-eyed extremists; "realists" are no longer cynics — inclined to let thousands die abroad unless the chaos interrupts transit of oil or food — but rather "sober" and "circumspect," and more likely Kerry supporters.
A depressing array of transitory personalities parades before our screen, entering stage left to grab 15 minutes of notoriety for their scripted invective, only to exit on the right into oblivion. Who can remember all these one-tell-all-book, one-weekend-on-the-Sunday-news-programs personalities — a Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, Howard Dean, Paul O'Neil, Joe Wilson, Richard Clark, or Richard ben Veniste? In between their appearances on Sunday morning television or 60 Minutes, a few D.C. functionaries are carted out for periodic shouting — an unhinged Al Gore, a puffed-up Ted Kennedy, a faux-serious Bob Kerry, and occasionally a Senator Byrd or Hollings. And since the very day after 9/11 we've gotten the Vietnam-era retreads — a Peter Arnett, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Robert Scheer, John Dean, or Seymour Hersh — tottering out with the latest conspiracies about the old bogeymen and "higher-ups."
We are winning the military war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists are on the run. And slowly, even ineptly, we are achieving our political goals of democratic reform in once-awful places. Thirty years of genocide, vast forced transfers of whole peoples, the desecration of entire landscapes, a ruined infrastructure, and a brutalized and demoralized civilian psyche are being remedied, often under fire. All this and more has been achieved at the price of political turmoil, deep divisions in the West — here and abroad — and the emergence of a strong minority, led by mostly elites, who simply wish it all to fail.
Did Al Gore call Bill Clinton a digital brown shirt yesterday? Because it's pretty obvious that the two don't see eye-to-eye on Iraq.
Of course, maybe Al just called himself a digital brown shirt, because his digitized version from the 1990s directly contradicts his current version. And an Al divided against itself cannot stand! (Apologies to both George Costanza and Jayson Blair. And probably James Taranto, too.)
At the start of the Clinton administration, there's no way I would have believed that Bill would be the calm, sensible one, out having fun, doing talk shows, looking to enjoy his retirement in a relaxed aging-but-still-youthful-but-elder statesman-like manner (I know, I know, he's made up stories out of whole cloth, but let me run with this) and that Al Gore would be out giving demonizing speeches and constantly breaking Godwin's Law. As I've said before, wasn't Al put on the ticket in '92 to be the moderate half of the equation?
UPDATE: Heh.
OH, THOSE WMDS: 10 or 12 sarin and mustard gas shells have been found in various locations in Iraq.
DEMOCRAT ZELL MILLER TO SPEAK AT GOP CONVENTION: He's retiring in January, so he's got nothing to lose.
SPOKANE GETS 100 BLOCKS OF WIRELESS INTERNET: Look to see more and more large scale Wi-Fi applications, something we've been writing about since this site's early days.
NEW FOR 1974! IT'S THE CLOCKWORK ORANGE COLLECTION! "Welcome to Eurobad '74, an exhibition of Europe's worst interiors of 1974", the introductory page says, and it's certainly tough to argue with that. Every room looks like a set from A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick's dystopian classic.
Viddy well, little brothers! Viddy well!
(Via Blackfive.)
WELL, YES, I CAN, ACTUALLY: Andrew Sullivan asks, "Can you wait for Roger Ebert's review of Fahrenheit 9/11?"
It's now online. Keep Ebert's stated biases in mind when reading it.
THE CRACK-UP CONTINUES: After years of complaining that Strom Thurmond was too old to function in the Senate, the Democrats have found a nonagenarian of their own: the infamous Granny D.
As the Resurrection Song Weblog notes, "Things aren't perfect in my camp, I'll be the first to admit. But can't the Democrats do better than John Kerry, Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, and Granny D?"
Also, I thought Democrats were supposed to appeal to the young--you know, the "Rock The Vote" crowd. But it's party whose leading lights include 86-year old Robert Byrd, 80 year old Frank Lautenberg, and now, entering the picture, 96-year old Granny D.
FROM THE MAN WHO MADE ME BATMAN: Eugene Volokh, Porn Star.
"TENS OF THOUSANDS OF READERS HAVE DESERTED [England's] Daily Mirror because its Iraqi torture pictures were exposed as a fake, the newspaper’s owner admitted yesterday."
Gee, what a surprise.
UPDATE: As is this.
WELL NOW WE KNOW: Yesterday, I wrote:
At what point do we start coming up for names for what the left is doing now? To paraphrase President Clinton, it's not a conspiracy; it's right out in the open: the constant hammering of President Bush by the press (who ignore their own reporting on Iraq during the Clinton years), the outbursts in the Senate by disgruntled leftwingers like Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, and Frank Lautenberg; Michael Moore's film and now this...[This being the backing of Fahrenheit 911 by the chairman of the DNC and other high ranking Democrats.]Today, this was a headline on Reuters.com:
Read the rest of the Reuters piece. Finally, Bush is getting the mainstream media to report on the Democrats' shenanigans, by highlighting them in his ads and press releases.Bush Camp Hits Democrats' 'Coalition of Wild-Eyed'
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's re-election campaign lumped together vocal outbursts by Democrats Al Gore, Howard Dean and others on Thursday and called them part of John Kerry's "Coalition of the Wild-Eyed."
The Bush-Cheney campaign released a video on its Web Site that played up some of the more strident statements Democrats have made on the campaign trail and declared: "This is not a time for pessimism and rage."The implication the Bush campaign appeared to be trying to leave was that some of the main boosters of Kerry's presidential campaign are filled with rage and perhaps a bit kooky.
"Today, our campaign is releasing a web video to 6 million of our supporters to show them what we're up against and what we're up against is John Kerry's 'coalition of the wild-eyed,"' said Bush campaign manager Ken Melhman.
As Hugh Hewitt writes, "It stings because it is so true". Hopefully more will follow.
CONGRATS TO TECHNICAL SGT. STRYKER, now with extra stripes on his sleeves!
FLASHBACK: In April of 2003, we wrote:
KEEPING THE BACK BENCH WARM: Back in the 1970s, "me too Republicans" in Congress ensured that their party would stay on the back bench for many years, by offering little in the way of new ideas. Rather, they'd look at the welfare and social spending by the Democrats and talk about how expensive it was, and that the fat should be cut out of it...[Nancy] Pelosi is the House Minority Leader--and looks to continue to keep her party in the minority.She must be thinking they'll be there for a while--because she's just introduced a House minority "Bill of Rights"!
Via Hugh Hewitt, who writes, "That's pretty revealing, isn't it? She's ready for a long stay on the loser's side of the aisle. I was in Washington for a long stretch of the Democrat's majority in the lower body. I think they should get every courtesy they extended to the GOP."
Oh--and this does help to explain the Pelosi-Beaker connection that Chris Muir noticed today.
UPDATE: Speaking of keeping the backbench warm, this doesn't sound like the actions of a party that's trying to recapture America's goodwill, does it?
GOOORRRREEEE UPDATE: Neither does this. Power Line also has some thoughts, and notes that just as the press has forgotten their own words in the 1990s, so has Al Gore.
SELLING ITEMS ON EBAY? Snopes has some important advice to heed before photographing them.
FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN HOT SPRINGS, ARKANSAS: David Letterman's "Top Ten Things Overheard in Line at the Clinton Book Signing".
Actually, I'm kind of surprised that "Greg Packer! Not you again, man!" isn't on the list.
Pauline Kael was among the first critics perceptive enough to spot what a huckster Michael Moore is (unlike Rex Reed), and her 1989 review of the film has been reprinted here.
Back when I was a film junky, I also remember reading an article in England's Sight and Sound magazine (hardly a bastion of conservatism) that exposed many of the lies in that film as well, which put Moore on the map. Not the least of which was the film's premise: Moore wore a silly cardboard cartoon "PRESS" badge whenever he visited GM, thus ensuring that he'd never meet with Roger Smith--because if he did, there'd be no movie.
(Via Terry Teachout.)
Update: The blog post with Kael's review has been deleted, but curiously enough, it's also been reprinted--in English--in a French Web forum devoted to film that Google spidered. Here's the text, before that too vanishes:
Read More »
GREAT MOMENTS IN PRESIDENTAL HISTORY, as spotted by Joshua Claybourn.
BILL HOBBS HAS AN EXCLUSIVE: "Torture at Guantanamo? I've got proof", Hobbs claims, adding:
a source deep within the Pentagon has sent me the previously classified transcript of a secret video tape of an actual interrogation session involving both men and women. The partial transcript is unclear as to time, date and full identies of all those involved.(Via Steve Green.)
THAT '70S SHOW: Tim Blair spots John Kerry slumming with a once-popular author whose career peaked in the mid-'70s, not coincidentally because his talent has become ravaged by heavy pharmaceutical excess. He's now known primarily known as a leading Holocaust denier.
Why do I expect Kerry to appear at his next campaign stop wearing John Travolta's white polyester suit from Saturday Night Fever--or worse--maybe a lime green leisure suit?
"NEWSPAPERS BITE", writes journalist Kathleen Parker, who says they're looking for love in wrong places:
Let me be blunt. Newspapers bite. The work isn't much fun anymore, thanks to the soul-snatching corporate culture that has euthanized newsroom personalities. Most papers reflect that numbers-crunching, cubicle-hunkering mentality. We're boring, predictable, staid and out of touch with the folks with quarters.RTWT.Nobody rushes to the rack anymore to see what the paper's great voices have to say because there aren't many great voices left. Meanwhile, half the nation's editorial cartoonists - Doug Marlette's "designated feelers" - have disappeared from editorial pages, leaving holes where hearts used to beat.
With television offering headlines - and Internet blogs offering inspired commentary - why do people want to get their hands dirty reading stale stories that fail to ring the chime of truth?
Declining reader confidence isn't just about high-profile scandals such as the Jayson Blair/New York Times and Jack Kelley/USA Today debacles. Distrust is also tied to the reality "disconnect" between those who produce newspapers and those who read them.
Yes, the media tilt left and the Earth is round. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center that has journalists debating themselves reports that the elite media are far more liberal than the public ("Ordinary Americans," as the elites like to call you). While 34 percent of journalists self-identify as liberal, only 20 percent of Ordinary Americans do. Only 7 percent of journalists consider themselves conservative, compared with 33 percent of the public.
Even those figures may be misleading, as a large majority of journalists consider themselves moderate. You be the judge.
THE PRESS MISFIRES: Paul Greenberg writes, "Once again strawmen are strewn about everywhere as the major media all agree a claim the Bush administration never made now has been refuted."
Meanwhile, David Limbaugh says that The New York Times owes President Bush an apology. Only one?
A REFRESHING CHANGE: Colorado Republican Senate hopeful Pete Coors urges lowing the drinking age from 21 to 18:
"We got along fine for years with the 18-year-old drinking age," the former CEO of the Coors Brewing Co. told an audience of about 200 people at a candidates' debate here. "We're criminalizing our young people."Wow--the Instapundit conspiracy moves in mysterious ways...
INSERT FISH INTO BARREL. NOW AIM: Rex Reed reviews Fahrenheit 911. James Lileks rebuts.
Screedy fun ensues.
"STAY QUIET AND YOU'LL BE OK": Robert Spencer suggests a new slogan for the anti-war militant left and the press. (Sadly increasingly indistinguishable these days.)
As William McGowan noted in Coloring The News, by drinking the PC Kool-Aid in the late 1980s, the press pretty much assured that this would be their tone. In their fear to not offend anybody--save for, as "Pinch" Sulzberger was quoted as saying, "white, heterosexual males"--they've also completely lost their moral compass.
What's interesting though, as a commenter on Charles Johnson's site noted, is that since this tactic has alienated much of the American public (based on the latest Pew Report), their primary readers are increasingly, exclusively the left. And they either had to have seen this coming, or be clueless as to the unintended consequences of the direction that they set out in. So as not to alienate their remaining readers, it becomes increasingly more important to keep them in the liberal cocoon. And the cocoon narrows that much more--on both the readers and the press. But hey, stay quiet, and you'll be OK!
For somebody the left considers a dummy, this guy is sure on to something.
(Found via Little Green Footballs.)
HAWKISH CLOTHES ITCH DOVES: Jonah Goldberg writes:
Peter Beinart, the editor of The New Republic (and a friend of mine), has been complaining for a very long time that conservatives haven't shown the sort of introspection liberals have in the wake of the White House's missteps. After all, conservatives historically have looked skeptically on pie-in-the-sky Wilsonian adventures abroad -- and especially on the notion that the Pentagon has some sort of Easy Bake Oven nation-building set that can whip up democratic societies overnight. Now it is the liberals and leftists who sound like Kissingerian foreign policy realists, making allowances for barbaric regimes and ridiculing conservatives who needlessly demonized Saddam.But Saddam was a demon. Since we've been in Iraq, we've confirmed that he killed more than 300,000 Shiites after 1991 alone. We've found up to 30,000 in a single grave. Forty thousand "marsh Arabs" were murdered and their lands drained. We didn't need to confirm what happened to the Kurds.
It's also worth recalling the reason we were in a de facto state of war with Saddam long before the actual war: It was to keep Saddam from doing these sorts of things to Kurds and Shiites again (never mind the Kuwaitis). The no-fly zones, the laughably and tragically inept sanctions regime -- which was making Saddam stronger and French and UN bureaucrats richer -- the various cruise missile attacks: These were all acts of war necessary to "keep Saddam in his box." And that whole system was falling apart. Bush faced a choice: Let Saddam out of his box or get rid of him. The former would make Saddam a hero, lower the price for defying America and further solidify the law of the jackboot in the Arab world. After 9/11 Bush felt he had no choice at all. We had to force changes in the Arab world before the Arab world forced worse things on us.
Removing Saddam has had unforeseeable bad consequences, as well as some foreseeable ones. But it seems to me that liberals who now think we shouldn't have done it, solely because we didn't do it "just right," are falling prey to their own historic pie-in-the-skyism. There is no "just right" way to do things like this. If there were, we would have toppled Saddam with nerf bats.
DURING ONE HIS MANY INTERVIEWS THIS PAST WEEK (I think during the BBC interview), President Clinton was asked about "the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy", and he said something along the lines of "I think it was wrong of Hillary to refer to it as a conspiracy. It was a very big machine, but it was right out in the open."
At what point do we start coming up for names for what the left is doing now? To paraphrase President Clinton, it's not a conspiracy; it's right out in the open: the constant hammering of President Bush by the press (who ignore their own reporting on Iraq during the Clinton years), the outbursts in the Senate by disgruntled leftwingers like Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, and Frank Lautenberg; Michael Moore's film; and now this:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Cheered by supporters, Michael Moore previewed his Bush-bashing documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," before a mostly Democratic audience in the nation's capital Wednesday night.Add to it Mario Cuomo's efforts to get its rating lowered from R to PG-13 so that more kids could attend. Here you have three very prominent members of the Democratic party praising a piece of agitprop designed to trash a sitting president. Hillary could go on The Today Show in 1998 and claim a vast right wing conspiracy with a straight face, and nobody in the press questioned her.Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said he thought the film would play an important role in this election year.
"This movie raises a lot of the issues that Americans are talking about, that George Bush has been asleep at the switch since he's been president," McAuliffe said as he walked the red carpet into the premiere.
Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa implored all Americans to see the film: "It's important for the American people to understand what has gone on before, what led us to this point, and to see it sort of in this unvarnished presentation by Michael Moore."
Does Bush get to make a similar claim about the left? If so, how can he frame it, considering how much he's loathed by the press?
I do think that ultimately, this stuff isn't helping the left's cause, and they're overplaying their hand, just like the over the top Wellstone funeral-cum-political orgy of 2002. They've hitched themselves to something which is likely to rebound very badly in their faces; but in the meantime, I hope a rope-a-dope strategy is in place by the White House, because without signs of the president fighting back, all of this can be brutal to watch. On the other hand, the staggering amount of overheated rhetoric doesn't sound at all like the FDR-style jaunty "happy days are here again" feeling of a party confident of victory in the fall.
It's not 1968--yet. But it can certainly feel like it, at times.
UPDATE: John H. Hinderaker of The Power Line Blog writes, "With all of this publicity, Fahrenheit 9/11 can only be a mega-hit. I mean, the last cultural phenomenon to receive this kind of hype was Air America". Heh.
More from Power Line on the left's crack-up here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: John Hawkins has some questions for the Democratic politicians who consider Moore to be part of the mainstream.
AXIS OF STUPIDITY: Charles Johnson writes, "I’ll bet there were some dropped jaws in BBC boardrooms at the results of this Glasgow University study, which somehow, against all odds and evidence, found that the BBC favors Israel in its reporting.
"I didn’t think it possible", Johnson adds, "but I believe we’ve found someone even more anti-Israel than the Beeb".
A COOL AND LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BICYCLE MENACE: Just found out one of my favorite P.J. O'Rourke essays is online.
GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM: Scott Ott "reports" that SpaceShipOne pilot glimpsed "Edge of Clinton Book Hype".
And so did Matt Drudge, who currently has a long list of headlines from local book sellers reporting less than brisk sales.
Meanwhile, RatherBiased explores the CBS-Amazon partnership.
Sadly, Greg Packer could not be reached for comment.
THE LOST PATRIOTS OF HOLLYWOOD: Michelle Malkin picks up a theme we've discussed several times, perhaps most memorably here.
IN THE MODERN POLITICAL ERA, it's all about the sound bite. Crafting a phrase that instantly captures your goals, your style, your elan:
These are all some of the more memorable sound bites from the past two decades of presidential politics."Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!"
"A kinder and gentler America."
"I feel your pain."
"The soft bigotry of low expectations."
Of course, when you've given your opponent a sound bite he can use against you, you've clearly fumbled the ball.
And by the way, did Jay Nordlinger call this, or what?
"HOW CAN HE DO THAT--IT'S NOT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE!" "IN NEW JERSEY ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN!" was a gag line in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo about the always strange doings in my home state. And as Darren Copeland, the Colorado Conservative writes, it's about to commit fiscal suicide, raising taxes for those New Jersey residents earning more than $500,000 each year. "I wonder how many of those households remain in New Jersey if this tax is implemented", Darren writes. "If I were one of those people, I would be moving, and leaving New Jersey high and dry".
A fair chunk will do just that, as the Laffer Curve remains inviolable.
(Incidentally, Darren, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at last month's Colorado Blogger Bash, has lots more good stuff on his blog.)
UPDATE: Not surprisingly, The Wall Street Journal has some thoughts.
MORE ON PUNITIVE LIBERALISM, from Roger Kimball of The New Criterion.
TWO MORE NEWS SOURCES EXPOSE THE SADDAM-BIN LADEN CONNECTION: CNN and The Guardian. Oh wait, just like Newsweek, NPR and The New York Times, those stories ran in the late '90s.
As Glenn Reynolds writes, "No doubt this was a preemptive fiction on the part of the not-yet-nominated Bush Administration".
It was! After all, CBS told me that President Bush was in office back in '98.
CLINTON'S BBC INTERVIEW: Here's the full clip of the interview that Drudge has been flogging, which is an hour long. The sparks (and finger-pointing) occur at about 28 minutes in; it's hilarious watching President Clinton verbally beating up on a man from the BBC(!) about "wanting to help the far right". Although the warm-up, where Clinton blames the politics of Watergate for leading to this, is fun. Gee Bill, which party created the politics of Watergate to bring down a sitting president?
On the other hand, it's pretty staggering that Clinton has to go to the BBC to escape what Mickey Kaus calls "the liberal cocoon"--the mass of reporters in America who prop up, and refuse to ask politicians on the left tough questions.
(Via "The Corner". Real Player required to via video.)
David Brooks points out something that Rod Dreher wrote about last year: that just as Republicans became the party of religion, the Democrats have become the party of the Godless. As Brooks writes:
More than any other leading Democrat, Bill Clinton understands the role religion actually plays in modern politics. He knows Americans want to be able to see their leaders' faith. A recent Pew survey showed that for every American who thinks politicians should talk less about religion, there are two Americans who believe politicians should talk more.This isn't news; the fact that it's being discussed in the Times, is. As Dreher wrote:And Clinton seems to understand, as many Democrats do not, that a politician's faith isn't just about litmus test issues like abortion or gay marriage. Many people just want to know that their leader, like them, is in the fellowship of believers. Their president doesn't have to be a saint, but he does have to be a pilgrim. He does have to be engaged, as they are, in a personal voyage toward God.
Clinton made this sort of faith-based connection, at least until he sullied himself with the Lewinsky affair. He won the evangelical vote in 1992, and won it again in 1996. He understood that if Democrats are not seen as religious, they will be seen as secular Ivy League liberals, and they will lose.
John Kerry doesn't seem to get this. Many of the people running the Democratic Party don't get it either.
True story: I once proposed a column on some now-forgotten religious theme to the man who was at the time the city editor of the New York Post. He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "This is not a religious city," he said, with a straight face. As it happened, the man lived in my neighborhood. To walk to the subway every morning, he had to pass in front of or close to two Catholic churches, an Episcopal church, a synagogue, a mosque, an Assemblies of God Hispanic parish, and an Iglesia Bautista Hispana. Yet this man did not see those places because he does not know anyone who attends them. It's not that this editor despises religion; it's that he's too parochial (pardon the pun) to see what's right in front of him. There's a lot of truth in that old line attributed to the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, who supposedly remarked, in all sincerity, "I don't understand how Nixon won; I don't know a soul who voted for him."And unlike Dreher and Brooks, I doubt many of the reporters on The Times understand how the Democrats became the Godless Party.
(Via Betsy Newmark.)
"SAVE THE PLANET. JUMP IN YOUR CAR!" Glenn Reynolds and Reason have great posts on a recent study which indicates, as Roger Ford of Modern Railways magazine says, "a family of four going by car is about as environmentally friendly as you can get", especially when compared to today's trains.
Maybe that's why Syd Mead told me that:
"Mass transit" is purely an academic term. With half the world's populations living in cities by 2050, owning a private automobile becomes a default response to the imperfect and often inconvenient availability of so-called "mass transit" mobility.Sadly though, "the desire named streetcar" continues to percolate in most city planners' brains.
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE to go to the book store: Greg Packer is back, and being quoted in (where else) The New York Times.
SANTANA PLAYS THE RACE CARD, after the death of legendary jazz drummer Elvin Jones last month, in an article in the San Diego Union Tribune:
A hippie at heart, Carlos Santana has long championed music as a potent force for creating positive vibrations that – as this veteran of the 1969 Woodstock festival puts it – "can change your molecular structure."There's a very simple answer to this: put your money where your mouth is, Carlos--create a jazz TV channel for cable. If Al Gore can convince a group of investors to buy a Canadian TV channel to create Al-TV, there's no reason why Santana can't try to do something similar.But the legendary rocker sounded uncharacteristically angry during a discussion about the recent death of one of his musical heroes, jazz drum icon Elvin Jones, who died May 18 of heart failure.
Santana, who will be honored in Los Angeles as the 2004 Latin Recording Academy Person of the Year on Aug. 30, is incensed that Jones' death elicited scant media coverage. He expressed his frustration during a recent interview from his San Rafael office.
"I'm really embarrassed for this nation, and for MTV and VH1 and Rolling Stone, because it was a very racist thing not to acknowledge this most important musician when he passed," said Santana, whose 1999 album, "Supernatural," won nine Grammys and has sold more than 25 million copies.
"For them to (play up) Ozzy Osbourne and other corny-ass white people, but not Elvin, is demeaning and I'm really embarrassed to live in this country."
* * * The reason for the slight, Santana believes, is a matter of racial and cultural prejudice."When Miles (Davis) died (in 1991), for four hours in France they stopped everything on TV and radio – all the regular programming – and just showed Miles for four hours, all through France," Santana recalled. "Here in the U.S., it's embarrassing (how jazz is treated). People should be ashamed of themselves."
But will there be enough of an audience for advertising revenues? Because as Air America on the radio is showing, if nobody tunes in, it won't stay on for too long. VH-1 showed jazz every Sunday night in the mid to late 1980s. Jazz musician Ben Sidran was the host, and I used to watch it each week. But apparently, nobody else did, because it was eventually cancelled.
There's a great book from the late 1990s called If It Ain't Got That Swing: The Rebirth of Grown-Up Culture by Mark Gauvreau Judge. Judge argues that rock and roll took off in the mid-1950s largely because jazz musicians and their critics abandoned the popular swing bands for the much more insular bebop and cool jazz, which made the musicians and critics happy, but alienated mass audiences, who wanted simple music they can dance to. When Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Elvis came along offering them just that, guess where the audiences went?
And Santana knows this--there's a reason why his latest record sold 50 bazillion copies: because it had simple songs with popular young singers on them, rather than Coltrane-style modal jams.
So Carlos is filling sports arenas playing rock, but surprised that nobody's buying jazz records.
Go figure.
Incidentally, has anybody asked Santana what he thinks of the outpouring of emotion that Ray Charles received when he died? Or does that not count because Ray sold out and played popular music to the masses, rather than jazz.
...You know, like Santana.
SPACESHIP ONE: When it comes to space, I'm strictly a layman. But this article appears to me to be a somewhat decent first look at SpaceShip One's flight yesterday.
But its level of cynicism doesn't help matters. It's written as if only the federal government's contributions to space research count. The headline makes it sound like the flight was a giant Estes model rocket launch. Was the Wright Brothers' flight a giant leap for paper airplane builders? And these equally cynical paragraphs don't help matters:
In many ways, the moment is more Wild West than Wilbur Wright, opening a new frontier for the geniuses and thrill seekers, businessmen and hucksters who have long followed pioneers to new lands and new markets.I wasn't around when Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth for the first time, and when Alan Sheppard and Gus Grissom followed with their first suborbital flights, but yesterday's flight is equally important: the first time a man who wasn't on a government payroll went into space. (Unfortunately, pilot Mchael Melvill isn't on Henry Luce's payroll, so he won't get the endless and positive PR that the Mercury Seven astronauts received.)"It's like the opening of the West," says Howard McCurdy, a spaceflight historian at American University in Washington. "Entrepreneurs followed in the wake of the oft government-funded explorers. There were a lot of characters and a lot of innovation."
Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey will eventually arrive, but like most Kubrick productions, it's going to take much longer than first anticipated.
LATEST ELECTRONIC HOUSE NEWSLETTER ONLINE: For three decades, X10 has been the home automation language, making it possible to buy compatible products in stores like Radio Shack and Home Depot. But it's definitely getting long in the tooth. My latest Electronic House newsletter asks if a potential successor has been found.
ENEMIES TOGETHER: Robert L. Pollock writes, "Clinton was right: Saddam and al Qaeda had numerous connections".
Heck, you could read about some of them in the news--back in the late '90s.
ROGER SIMON ON FAHRENHEIT 911:
Now I know I will be criticized for making this statement without seeing the film (perhaps fairly). But I did see the trailer the other night and what is being emphasized in the advertisement is that the documentary reveals the shocking news that Bush helped the Bin Laden family leave America immediately after 9/11. Now Hitchens, of course, shows how this is a bald-faced lie. Bush critic Richard Clarke has acknowledged his sole responsibility for that. (I blogged about this a few weeks ago.) It seems to invalidate the entire film without having to go further. It will be interesting to see how the critics respond. Don't look for the Cannes Film Festival to rescind the Palme d'Or. After all, Quentin Tarantino informed us that his jury had awarded the film the prize "for aesthetic reasons."Of course they did.
PUNITIVE LIBERALISM: I'd say that a meme is born, except that I've long been aware of this condition (and you probably have been as well). But now it has a name.
Don't make Christopher Hitchens angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry. And I'll bet the Incredible Bulk himself, Michael Moore, really hates Hitch today:
A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.James Lileks writes, "Ever wondered if there’s a literary equivalent of someone attacking a hanging side of beef with a chain saw? Wonder no more."If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.
MR. PRESIDENT, WE CANNOT AFFORD A PRIVATELY FUNDED SPACECRAFT GAP! Steve Schmidt, Bush-Cheney '04 Spokesman notes some bad timing on Senator Kerry's part today:
Only John Kerry would declare the country to be in scientific decline on a day when the country’s first privately funded space trip is successfully completed. America is the world leader in patents, research and development and Nobel prizes, and the President's budget raises federal research and development funding to $132 billion for 2005, a 44 percent increase since taking office.More on Spaceship One, later.
I GUESS THIS IS A SLIM MAJORITY, TOO: Seven in 10 rate President Reagan over President Clinton.
Seven of Nine could not be reached for comment. (You had to throw that in there, didn't you?--Ed. But of course!)
THE NEW MATH: At the Detroit News, 64 percent is a "slim majority".
CNS NEWS REPORTS THAT the left-liberal Media Maters Website is discrediting the Clinton book reviewer at the New York Times.
That reviewer is Michiko Kakutami. Michelle Malkin limns her, here.
COULD NADER'S VP PIC shore up his standing with the Green Party?
THE END OF POWER: Niall Ferguson writes that without an American hegemony, the world would likely return to the dark ages.
Meanwhile, James Lileks notes, "I ask my Democrat friends what they’d rather see happen – Bush reelected and bin Laden caught, or Bush defeated and bin Laden still in the wind. They’re all honest: they’d rather see Bush defeated."
UPDATE: And meanwhile, a Federal judge is comparing Bush to Mussolini and his wife is protesting Bush "on behalf of herself and her husband".
EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES: George Will looks at the nifty new book by Lynee Truss. As soon as my wife is done with it, I really should read it. We live in an age where, thanks to the Internet, the written word has never been more ubiquitous. And yet paradoxically, as Will notes, the vast majority of people online have an appalling lack of knowledge of proper spelling and punctuation:
The connection between the words "punctilious,'' which means "attentive to formality or etiquette,'' and "punctuation'' is instructive. Careful punctuation expresses a writer's solicitude for the reader. Of course punctuation, like most other forms of good manners, may yet entirely disappear, another victim of progress, this time in the form of e-mail, cell-phone text messages and the like.I wouldn't go that far--I'm quite happy to live in an era of demassified media (to borrow one of Alvin Toffler's favorite phrases). But I'd happily take the language skills that flourished in the past.Neither the elegant semicolon nor the dashing dash is of use to people whose preferred literary style is "CU B4 8?'' and whose idea of Edwardian prolixity is: "Saw Jim -- he looks gr8 -- have you seen him -- what time is the thing 2morrow.''
Oh, for the era when a journalist telephoned from Moscow to London to add a semicolon to his story!
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "The 9/11 Commission: Rehabilitating the reputation of The Warren Commission with every passing week."--Hugh Hewitt
ALIEN VERSUS PREDATOR: You played the video game. Now go see the movie!
(Or don't. Because it looks incredibly silly. And no sign of Sigourney Weaver stripping down to her undies either, even though she still looked pretty darn good on that Esquire cover a couple of years ago. So really, why even bother?)
(Found via Murdoc Online.)
Think this detail about John Kerry would have gotten in there otherwise?
Earlier this month, Andres Oppenheimer of The Miami Herald asked John Kerry what he thought of something called the Varela Project. Kerry said it was "counterproductive." It's necessary to try other approaches, he added.Based on his record in the Senate, I'm not at all surprised that Kerry is an anti-anti-Castro. And while Brooks is an awfully squishy conservative, his column continues to pay big dividends with its location.The Varela Project happens to be one of the most inspiring democracy movements in the world today. It is being led by a Cuban dissident named Oswaldo Payá, who has spent his life trying to topple Castro's regime. Payá realized early on that the dictatorship would never be overthrown by a direct Bay of Pigs-style military assault, but it could be undermined by a peaceful grass-roots movement of Christian democrats, modeling themselves on Martin Luther King Jr.
As a young man, Payá founded a magazine called People of God, but it was shut down. He criticized the Soviet Union and was thrown into a work camp. He was given a chance to escape Cuba, but refused.
Then in the mid-1990's, he and other dissidents exploited a loophole in the Cuban Constitution that allows ordinary citizens to propose legislation if they can gather 10,000 signatures on a petition. They began a petition drive to call for a national plebiscite on five basic human rights: free speech, free elections, freedom to worship, freedom to start businesses, and the freeing of political prisoners.
This drive, the Varela Project, quickly amassed the 10,000 signatures, and more. Jimmy Carter lauded the project on Cuban television. The European Union gave Payá its Sakharov Prize for human rights.
Then came Castro's crackdown. Though it didn't dare touch Payá, the regime arrested 75 other dissidents and sentenced each of them to up to 28 years in jail. This week Payá issued a desperate call for international attention and solidarity because the hunt for dissidents continues.
John Kerry's view? As he told Oppenheimer, the Varela Project "has gotten a lot of people in trouble . . . and it brought down the hammer in a way that I think wound up being counterproductive."
Imagine if you are a Cuban political prisoner rotting in a jail, and you learn that the leader of the oldest democratic party in the world thinks you're being counterproductive. Kerry's comment is a harpoon directed at the morale of Cuba's dissidents.
Imagine sitting in Castro's secret police headquarters and reading that statement. The lesson you draw is that crackdowns work. Throw some dissidents in jail, and the man who might be president of the United States will blame the democrats for being provocative.
Imagine if in the 1980's Ronald Reagan had called Andrei Sakharov or Natan Sharansky or Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel "counterproductive" because, after all, what they did spawned crackdowns, too.
If there's anything we've learned over the past 20 years it is the power of moral suasion to buck up dissidents and undermine tyrannical regimes. And yet Kerry seems to have decided that other priorities come first.
UPDATE: More here.
TEN SIMPLE RULES FOR DATING MY DAUGHTER: I rather like number three, myself.
MYSTERIOUS WAYS DEPARTMENT: Charlotte Allen writes, "I admit it: I laughed, not cried, when I read that most of advertising magnate Charles Saatchi’s famous collection of "transgressive" art got burnt to a transgressive crisp in a London warehouse fire a few weeks ago":
One of the artworks destroyed in the Saatchi fire turned out to have been Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary. That was the elephant dung-splattered, female-buttocks-and-genitalia-surrounded painting of the Madonna that was part of the "Sensations" show of Saatchi-owned art at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999. As might be expected, New York City’s substantial Catholic population was incensed that a tax-supported museum was using their money to pay for what they considered to be a three-way combination of blasphemy, scatology, and pornography. Then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani threatened to pull the museum’s $7 million grant from the city. A lawsuit followed, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the rest of the usual suspects--but it would seem that the final justice rendered might have been divine, for most of the "Sensations" show perished in the recent fire.Read on, to observe Salon’s Daniel Kunitz waxing philosphic--about a painting covered in elephant dung.What I loved about the Holy Virgin Mary flap was the tidal wave of pretentious blather it induced from the intelligentsia, who cast themselves as usual, as defenders of free speech and great art from the mindless, puritanical mob.
TARANTO'S ON A ROLL TODAY: Just click here and keep scrolling. And be sure to note the update to this story from yesterday--it's a doozy.
AL QAEDA BEHEADS AMERICAN PAUL JOHNSON: Outside the Beltway has numerous links. And be sure to check out these two posts by Andy McCarthy.
The more I think about it, the more this quote by Dennis Prager hits home:
As a famous Soviet dissident joke put it: "In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it's the past which is always changing."In the 1990s, President Clinton and his administration released numerous bits of intel and information on Bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein to the press. As a result, The New York Times, as well as Newsweek, and NPR each ran stories documenting his ties to Bin Ladin. Yesterday, the 9/11 commission confirmed those ties, and admonished the press for ignoring them. Was Saddam directly tied to 9/11? President Bush never said he was. But clearly, Iraq and Al Qaeda were quite cozy with each other. Something the press spent the past decade documenting when it benefited one administration, and the past three years chucking down the memory hole when it hindered another.
UPDATE: Steve Den Beste has a new post which shows how Prager's line applies to academia:
In the "new" "enlightened" approach to history, you don't study historical events in order to learn the consequences and results of certain kinds of decisions and policies. History is a source of lessons, but you don't study history and derive lessons from past events. The lesson comes first. The conclusion is already known. You study history to find justifications for that lesson, but you already know the lesson is right before you begin that study.Needless to say, RTWT.If history doesn't actually give you the justification you require, then you modify it as needed so that it does. That may mean you ignore some of it and emphasize other parts, or it may require you to rewrite it so that it happens the way it should have happened. This is a fundamentally teleological approach to history, in which the esthetic beauty of a conclusion, and the fact that we strongly want it to be true, are more important than whether it is empirically correct. If not, then the universe must change, because the mind and the concept are the most fundamental realities of all.
UPDATE: The Gipper's farewell from the White House warned of such revisionism.
Speaking of President Reagan, here are some thoughts on how his legacy should be tought in school, by Robert Mandel, that rarest of breeds these days: a conservative teacher.
NEW YORK TIMES DISCOVERS SADDAM-BIN LADEN CONNECTION: Set the wayback machine to 1998, Mr. Judd!
HUGH HEWITT ON THE LA TIMES and their omission of the new (favorable to President Bush) polling numbers: "If the facts don't fit, you must omit".
That works equally for their counterpart on the other side of the country.
Paging Mr. Goldberg. Mr. Bernard Goldberg to the red courtesy phone.
UPDATE: And even if you don't omit it, if the truth doesn't fit, don't bother putting it in the headlines. Note the headline at AP has for this story:
ASTANA, Kazakhstan - Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday his government warned Washington that Saddam Hussein's regime was preparing attacks in the United States and its interests abroad — an assertion that appears to bolster President Bush's contention that Iraq was a threat.I guess "Putin Confirms Saddam Was Threat" would be too gauche, huh?
The Left: The war on Iraq is a disaster! The world hates us! You did it unilaterally! You should have gotten Russia on board. You should have gotten Putin to support a U.N. resolution. The support of Russia would show this isn't just America being imperialist, but the whole unified world coming together to face Saddam.If the facts don't fit...The Right: Well, Putin says Saddam was going to attack us with terrorists.
The Left: Well, who the hell trusts Putin and the Russians?
KAFKA SAYS GIBSON TOP CELEBRITY: Peter Kafka of Forbes, that is:
Hollywood turned its back on his bloody Bible flick, a cross that Mel was only too happy to carry himself. With The Passion of the Christ bringing in more than $600 million at the box office, he is likely to make at least $150 million more in the next year. Mel made the top 10 in every category we measured this year: money, magazine covers, press clippings, Web presence, TV/radio hits.Who says the auteur theory is dead?
Over at National Review Online, Megan Basham reviews Spielberg and Hanks' The Terminal:
The real Viktor Navorski [Tom Hanks' character], a displaced Iranian named Merhan Karimi Nasseri, was stuck in Charles De Gaulle airport for over seven years before the two European governments made any attempt to resolve his situation. Now, sadly, it seems Nasseri has gone a bit mad, and refuses to leave the airport for any country save England, which is not an option for him.The same is true of Saved which, as Jonathan Last notes, does something [satire] no other Hollywood film has ever done before [/satire]: make fun of Christians!With Spielberg and Hanks at the helm, The Terminal is, for the most part, everything one would expect — charming, funny, and possessing its own singular character and visual beauty in much the same way as their last collaboration, Catch Me If You Can. But what it is not is intellectually honest. True, Spielberg most likely could not have set this film in France with as much success. But if he had, it is unlikely he would have made a French immigration authority the villain he makes out of Dixon.
Truth, as always, remains stranger than fiction, and Hollywood's fiction, as always, does what it can to undermine the reputation of certain American institutions. The Terminal manages to amuse, entertain, and inspire. But as with almost all things connected to Tinsel Town, just don't expect it to educate — at least, not fairly.
Don R. Lewis, of Film Threat, wrote that "Saved!" is "a sweet and funny movie that starts off with bite but settles into an honest feeling of happiness and acceptance for all types of people and their choices." Of course, he doesn't really mean all types of people. He went on to note that the movie is "a gentle exploration of why the judgments of the Catholic church are so screwed up." ("Saved!" is about evangelical Christians--not Catholics--but you know how it is. They all look alike.) John Leonard of CBS thought the movie "good-hearted," while Manohla Dargis, in the Los Angeles Times, labeled it "a soft-bellied, sweet-tempered satire." Both Newsweek and the New York Times judged as merely "gentle" the ribbing that "Saved!" gives to Christians.For all its flaws, audiences instinctively knew that The Passion took its Christianity seriously, propelling a low budget vanity film by Mel Gibson into the box office stratosphere. Will anybody else in Hollywood get the message?Too gentle, for some. The Chicago Tribune lamented that "after bravely lampooning an institution so many consider beyond reproach, Saved! chickens out." Michael Atkinson, from the Village Voice, wrote that American evangelicals--whom he called "warmongers praying for corpse-heaped victory"--need "a good, steel-tipped satiric whipping," and that the movie didn't deliver it. For good measure, he added: "the born-again, one-hand-in-the-air prayer stance. . .resembles a Nazi salute." Ms. Dargis faulted "Saved!" for not having the courage to "admit that some of [God's] most ardent believers will always be invested in hate."
Other reviewers were not so dismissive of Mr. Dannelly's grit. "Teasing Christians," said Newsweek, "is risky business." David Denby, in The New Yorker, solemnly nodded, adding that although "Saved!" was not an attack on Christianity, "to make it at all took courage."
Actually, it took no courage, since the movie plays straight into Hollywood's smug stereotypes about religion, especially the non-Buddhist variety.
THE INTIFADA'S OVER, writes Charles Krauthammer. And the Israelis won:
For Israel, the victory is bitter. The past four years of terrorism have killed almost 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands of others. But Israel has won strategically. The intent of the intifada was to demoralize Israel, destroy its economy, bring it to its knees, and thus force it to withdraw and surrender to Palestinian demands, just as Israel withdrew in defeat from southern Lebanon in May 2000.RTWT.That did not happen. Israel's economy was certainly wounded, but it is growing again. Tourism had dwindled to almost nothing at the height of the intifada, but tourists are returning. And the Israelis were never demoralized. They kept living their lives, the young people in particular returning to cafes and discos and buses just hours after a horrific bombing. Israelis turned out to be a lot tougher and braver than the Palestinians had imagined.
The end of the intifada does not mean the end of terrorism. There was terrorism before the intifada and there will be terrorism to come. What has happened, however, is an end to systematic, regular, debilitating, unstoppable terror -- terror as a reliable weapon. At the height of the intifada, there were nine suicide attacks in Israel killing 85 Israelis in just one month (March 2002). In the past three months there have been none.
The overall level of violence has been reduced by more than 70 percent. How did Israel do it? By ignoring its critics and launching a two-pronged campaign of self-defense.
(Via Steve Green, who's going through the same mind-numbing hell fun of remodeling I went through last year, but left us lots of weekend links in the interim.)
THE MOD SQUAD: Looking to hot rod your PC? Check out an article I wrote for the July issue of Videomaker Magazine.
(Spot the Trogdor reference!)
9/11 PANEL ADMONISHES MEDIA: Ace of Spades has the details.
Fortunately, Newsweek got the story right--in 1999, that is.
SWIMMING TO BOSTON: Eric Fettman of the New York Post writes:
The opening night of next month's Democratic convention in Boston is set to feature an emotional party tribute to hometown hero Ted Kennedy, who has served in office longer than every other senator but one.Wonder if this writer from the Boston Globewill be covering the event.Guess no one at the Democratic National Committee took a close look at the calendar: That July 26 salute to Teddy just happens to coincide with . . . the 35th anniversary of Chappaquiddick.
UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein has a copy of the invitation.
"ENRON, YES. ISLAMIC FASCISM, NO.": James Lileks writes that The clock has been reset to 9/10.
For some, that's true. Not for all of us, though.
The second half of my interview with Bernard Goldberg is online at Tech Central Station.
(If you haven't read part one yet, it's here.)
"NO ONE ASKED US": It's funny that the left only pulls the chickenhawk sophism out of their rhetorical playbook when they want to oppose something. Which is too bad--they might learn something from this essay by Major Stan Coerr, USMCR SuperCobra attack helicopter pilot and forward air controller, and veteran of the liberation of Iraq from Suddam Hussein.
ON A MUCH MORE UNSAVORY NOTE, John Hawkins explores Michael Moore's Hezbollah connection.
THE GIPPER-FDR CONNECTION is explored by Michael Barone, who writes:
Ambitious to succeed, the young Reagan went off to college, then made a career in radio, then passed a screen test and became a movie star. The 1920s and 1930s radio and 1930s and 1940s movies were universal media, aimed at all Americans, presenting a vision of a friendly and open nation. Those movies were the strongest popular culture since Charles Dickens and, for many, still define the American character. Ronald Reagan was suffused with their spirit and brought it or, rather, brought it back to American politics.That grace under pressure may best be summed up by a quote that Reagan himself made: "Uncle Sam is a friendly old man, but he has a spine of steel".Brought it back, because it was the same spirit brought to politics by Franklin Roosevelt, for whom Reagan voted four times. Roosevelt and Reagan both came to office when people had given up on the American economy, and both brought it back toward prosperity and abundance — Roosevelt by expanding government, Reagan by cutting taxes and curbing inflation, freeing the American economy to produce the largely unpredicted surge of prosperity of the past 20 years. Roosevelt and Reagan as presidents both faced a world where totalitarian regimes were on the march and where the United States seemed helpless to stop them. Roosevelt led the American people to victory and the destruction of Nazism and took steps to keep the peace in the postwar world he did not live to see. Reagan pushed the Soviet Union to the brink of collapse and had the satisfaction, before his mind dimmed, of watching the Berlin Wall fall and Moscow's empire crumble. He is buried now near a slab from that wall, overlooking the mountains and the Pacific to the west.
Reagan always admired Roosevelt, even as he came to oppose many of his policies, and there were similarities in their characters. Both were optimistic and friendly and seemed open, yet both had hard cores inaccessible even to their closest aides: cold steel beneath the smiles. Both had courage, "grace under pressure," as Thatcher said. Roosevelt, at his speeches, stood in steel braces and with great effort, in enormous pain, walked forward to the microphone and addressed the nation. Reagan, after he was shot, stood and walked from the ambulance into the hospital, taking care to button his jacket. The two men stand now, in history, the two most consequential presidents of the 20th century.
Back in early April, we linked to this site at its old URL and wrote:
P.J. O'Rourke once wrote a book called Holidays in Hell. If you're up for a virtual one, how about a motorcycle ride past the abandoned hulk of Chernobyl and its nearby deserted ghost towns, with Elena, a beautiful Russian brunette as your guide?Steven Den Beste links to Elena's site as the launching pad for an essay on the archeological implications of Chernobyl. Den Beste describes what it tells us about the state of the Soviet Union at the time of the Chernobyl meltdown, only four years after Arthur Schlesinger, just back from a trip to Moscow in 1982, said that President Reagan was delusional about the crumbling state of the Evil Empire:
"I found more goods in the shops, more food in the markets, more cars on the street -- more of almost everything," he said, adding his contempt for "those in the U.S. who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse, ready with one small push to go over the brink."
EARTH TURNING TO DUST, UN SAYS: There's no way this article can be true. Because dammit--Spielberg owes me. I bought miles of property in Trenton, New Jersey after seeing A.I. a few years ago, and I expect to be sitting on prime ocean-front land in a few years!
BUT DON'T QUESTION THEIR CREDIBILITY: The Chicago Tribune reports their crosstown rival, the Chicago Sun Times trashed large amounts of its own daily run to boost its circulation numbers.
Do the environmentalists know about that?
THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS: At the end of a Washington Times article on John Kerry's campaign trek through Ohio, is this:
Talking about education yesterday, Mr. Kerry also told the largely black crowd at the day care center that there are more blacks in prison than in college.James Taranto writes:"That's unacceptable," he said. "But it's not their fault."
Rather than the inmates, the former Boston prosecutor blamed poverty, poor schools, a dearth of after-school programs and "all of us as adults not doing what we need to do."
What do adults "need to do" to prevent youngsters from turning to crime? Surely, above all, instill in them a sense of personal responsibility. Kerry sends precisely the opposite message when he says of criminals--and, it would seem, only of those criminals who happen to be black--that "it's not their fault." There's a tinge of racism, what President Bush aptly terms "the soft bigotry of low expectations," in Kerry's assumption that young blacks can't be expected to do any better than end up in prison.Another staggering Kerry gaffe that old media won't comment on, for several reasons.
(Via Joanne Jacobs.)
WHOOOO'S THAT GIRL?? Meet Esther. She's not quite like a virgin. But she's waiting for you to justify her love!
Malcolm Muggeridge--call your offfice!
UPDATE: Wow, that was fast! Jeff Goldstein has scored the first interview with Esther.
FROM THE BOTTOM UP: I have a new (and relatively long) article, which traces the electric bass from the Fender Precision Bass to today's software synthesizers, online at Blogcritics. The article also has lots of tips for home recordists.
UPDATE: First comment the article received was posted by this fellow: "Speaking as a working bassist, your kung fu is the best. Thanks Ed, for a fantastic article and reverent homage to the Low End."
I really have to do a post with the kudos this site and my writing has gotten. And somewhere "your kung fu is the best!" has to be among them.
Well, back in 1999, that is:
There was a time not long ago when the conventional wisdom skewed heavily toward a Saddam-al Qaeda links. In 1998 and early 1999, the Iraq-al Qaeda connection was widely reported in the American and international media. Former intelligence officers and government officials speculated about the relationship and its dangerous implications for the world. The information in the news reports came from foreign and domestic intelligence services. It was featured in mainstream media outlets including international wire services, prominent newsweeklies, and network radio and television broadcasts.I wonder if the 9/11 Commission knows about this.Newsweek magazine ran an article in its January 11, 1999, issue headed "Saddam + Bin Laden?" "Here's what is known so far," it read:
“Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas -- assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. U.S. sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused of masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last summer.”
....NPR reporter Mike Shuster interviewed Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, and offered this report:
“Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994, when, according to one U.S. government source, Hijazi met him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in Baghdad to be nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait....Some experts believe bin Laden might be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire to obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA Director George Tenet referred to that in recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee when he said bin Laden was planning additional attacks on American targets.”
By mid-February 1999, journalists did not even feel the need to qualify these claims of an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. An Associated Press dispatch that ran in the Washington Post ended this way: "The Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against Western powers."
Where did journalists get the idea that Saddam and bin Laden might be coordinating efforts? Among other places, from high-ranking Clinton administration officials.
In the spring of 1998 -- well before the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa -- the Clinton administration indicted Osama bin Laden. The indictment, unsealed a few months later, prominently cited al Qaeda's agreement to collaborate with Iraq on weapons of mass destruction. The Clinton Justice Department had been concerned about negative public reaction to its potentially capturing bin Laden without "a vehicle for extradition," official paperwork charging him with a crime. It was "not an afterthought" to include the al Qaeda-Iraq connection in the indictment, says an official familiar with the deliberations. "It couldn't have gotten into the indictment unless someone was willing to testify to it under oath." The Clinton administration's indictment read unequivocally:
“Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.”
UPDATE: More here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: This issue's controversy in an election year is somewhat muted by the fact that John Kerry agrees with the president' position...
PLANE ESCORTED BACK TO SEATAC WITH F-16 ESCORT? My wife has a friend who's a volunteer fire jumper with a scanner, who says that a Horizon Air passenger flight enroute to Hawaii was in the air for 30 minutes when it was escorted back to Seattle's SeaTac airport with a fighter escort. More on this if and when there are some substantial details to post.
A FEW MORE DETAILS: Apparently, it seems the plane was not transmitting on its transponder which may be as simple as a blown fuse, but the fighter jets had to escort it because otherwise it's invisible on the transponder displays which are so crucial to air traffic safety. It's sounds like it's going to land at McChord Air Force Base just outside of Seattle.
THE KERRY-REAGAN CONNECTION, as explored by Power Line: "Kerry yearns, say his friends, for the era of good feeling that prevailed during the Reagan presidency, highlighted by the Iran-Contra and Bork hearings".
Heh.
ARE REPORTERS ABOVE THE LAW? The obvious answer is "of course not". Over at his MSNBC Blog, Glenn Reynolds explains why.
I've always liked Charlton Heston's response when CNN tried to claim some sort of made-up neutrality.
IT IS THE END OF DAYS: Truly, it is.
(Via Jeff Goldstein, who's equally frightened.)
KERRY MAKES STATEMENT on his repeated absences from the Senate this year. Although he hasn't entered into this poll yet.
SPEAKING OF JONAH, he explains the Geneva Convention to Joe Biden.
(Via Betsy Newmark.)
JONAH GOLDBERG TAKES ANDREW SULLIVAN TO TASK for his regular attacks on President Bush, and I think he's got a point:
A blog which soared with high-minded rhetoric about how the war on terror is the test for this generation and that Bush was the right man to lead that struggle, now day-after-day tries to whittle away at reasons to support Bush in the fall as if the war on terror were merely another issue which can be trumped by any other issue you happen to feel more passionate about."Some days", Jonah adds, "it really sounds like Sullivan wants to jump into the anti-Bush pool but he just can't muster the gumption if others won't join him."
UPDATE: Jonah notes that Sullivan has pulled a fast one:
I must say I was surprised to discover this link from the gay magazine The Advocate. It seems that Andrew had been unequivocal about his opinions on Bush in that publication but not in his blog. In his Advocate essay he writes:Well, at least now we know.But it’s time to say something very clearly: Bush’s endorsement of antigay discrimination in the U.S. Constitution itself is a deal-breaker. I can’t endorse him this fall. Like many other gay men and women who have supported him, despite serious disagreements, I feel betrayed, abused, attacked.And...I will be excoriated by the same people who always denounce anyone who doesn’t toe the Democratic Party line. “What took you so long?” they sneer. Hope, engagement, principle are my answers. I do not regret trying to make conservatism safe for gays. It’s still possible to be in favor of small government, low taxes, a tough foreign policy, and to be a proud gay man. My principles haven’t changed. Nor will they anytime soon. But when a president allies himself with forces that really do want to keep gay people in jail, therapy, or the closet, it’s time to break off. The deal is broken. And no amount of rationalization can make it whole again.Now I disagree with much (but not all) of what Andrew says in his essay. But it's an honest and decent position. Still what baffles me is why, to my knowledge, he's made no reference to this essay or his absolutist position on his site. Maybe, I missed it and he has. But I don't think so. Obviously, there's no binding code of ethics governing the blogosphere and even if there were I doubt it would have anything to say about not linking to articles you've written elsewhere or being obligated to express every significant opinion you have. But still, reading Andrew over the last year, you would have gotten the impression that at least theoretically his mind was open on who to support. According to this piece, it isn't. And that strikes me as an extremely significant silence.
(Via InstaPundit.)
UPDATE: Ace of Spades has some thoughts on Sullivan, in a long, detailed post.
ONE MORE UPDATE: This sounds like some furious tap dancing to me.
A THOUGHT: When Andrew finally does line up for Kerry, watch The New York Times eventually start running him on the Op-Ed page again.
OK, ANOTHER UPDATE OR TWO: More from Ace of Spades, here.
Meanwhile, Sullivan takes a real cheap shot at Jonah, quoting anti-gay posters from Jonah's mom's site, Lucianne.com. One would assume that when Sullivan endorses Kerry, it will be in spite of some of the more extreme comments written by the folks who post at say, Democratic Underground or IndyMedia.
IS BILL RICHARDSON out of the Kerry veep running?
UPDATE: Is Sam Nunn now in the picture? Will Collier writes, "Dubya should be so lucky".
NEW HOME AUTOMATION STANDARD PROPOSED BY SMARTHOME.COM, whose CEO was nice enough to stop by my office today at noon (in between stopping by some very high-powered folks in the San Jose area). Here's an article about it on a site called Designtechnica.com. Expect my write-up in the not-too-distant future.
PROTEIN WISDOM GENTLY REBUKES MICHELLE MALKIN for missing the subtext in Paul Krugman's latest article.
(Looks like we missed it as well!)
POSTMODERN TERROR: Steve Green writes, "I don't buy that the Paul Johnson video is a ransom message. I have the sick feeling Mr. Johnson is already dead".
RTWT.
UPDATE: Charles Johnson adds, "And now back to Prison Scandal 2004!, brought to you by the mainstream media of the West, currently at war but unable to recognize it".
DEN BESTE: "I don't necessarily want you to agree with me. But if you disagree, I want you to understand why."
Imagine if the elite media had that as their philosophy. It's easy if you try...
WHY SCHROEDER LOST, and what it means for America: Kevin Hassett writes:
The Germans now face what is to them an unthinkable possibility. Their eastern neighbors are dramatically more successful than they are and may soon enough be richer. The costs of their lazy socialism are apparent even to their children, and the country is in a panic. "We all recognize," one participant told me, "that Germany needs its own Reagan."That's true of several countries in Europe.
HELL, REVISITED: Last October, when the conventional wisdom was the Howard Dean was going to be The Man that the Democrats would rally around, Jonah Goldberg had a great cover story in National Review about Vermont. The cover's chief headline was set in enormous type and was one word: Hell. (Here's an spin-off article that Goldberg wrote for National Review Online.)
C.C. Kraemer picks up the theme, looking at "Green Mountain Statists" in Tech Central Station:
Vermont is a paradox. It's a relatively poor state filled with low-income families who can use the price breaks brought by discount retailers. But it's also a playground for wealthy progressives and elitists who tend to be concentrated in the Burlington area. They began flocking to state three decades ago because they saw an opportunity to take control of Vermont's policy-making process and force through a progressive agenda.Kraemer concludes, "Most Vermonters could use more Wal-Marts and the low prices and job opportunities the retailer brings. Yet an elite few are willing to make sure they get neither. The world's largest retailer is unwelcome in Vermont and in other self-characterized progressive states and communities across the country. That might be OK for the cocktail party crowd, but it is a disservice to those who rely on Wal-Mart to make their incomes go further".
Though their wealth is a product of our capitalist, free-market system, these left-leaning relative newcomers see development and economic advancement as threats to Vermont's rural and quaint small-town flavor. That puts them at odds with much of the more deeply rooted populace that shares neither the elitists' wealth nor their values. As such it becomes clear why the state is the perfect location for the escalating culture clash over Wal-Mart.
THINK DIFFERENT: Then: The Belmont Club writes:
Sophisticates unwittingly paid Reagan a compliment by calling him a cowboy, by which they meant gunslinger, instead of in the more accurate sense of a man able to see nature without blinders; to know things for what they were. Although Ronald Reagan has left the nation a huge legacy of achievement still it would be incomplete and his bequest to posterity less final if we forget that his greatest strength was to think for himself and dare to do the same.And now:
These days, [leftwing radio personality Phil Hendrie] is more likely to appear on Dennis Miller’s new MSNBC comedy news show, or even to be booed at the recent Aspen Comedy Festival, at a Saturday-morning panel on “Who’s Funnier — the Left or Right?” “I’m delighted to be counted among Phil’s admirers,” says Harry Shearer, “although he’s hopelessly wrong about the war . . . Long and short of it — he’s way too good for KFI.”“Ever since 9/11,” says Hendrie, “as the days tick by, I wonder if I’m insane. I wonder if I’ve overreacted, because I’ve seen the country drift back to this blasé attitude: Maybe 9/11 was this isolated thing, and maybe we should just cool out. And sometimes I doubt myself — should I be as shocked as I was? But I remember those days. Everybody felt it. And it’s changed me a lot. I feel like I need to say this. I’m not going to change anyone’s mind, but I’ve got to get it off my chest. And I’m not a Republican; I am a Democrat. I know I’m a Democrat, and I know what the Democratic Party stands for. I think the president is wrong-minded on certain domestic issues such as gay marriage. I think he’s being badly influenced by, once again, the thing that’s going to tear the Republican Party apart, the religious right. But that said, I don’t think I need to turn my card in just because I don’t hate George Bush. I know war is bad, but this is not the generation that’s going to end it.”
San Jose is awfully far from San Diego, and I wasn't even aware of a quake until I read Glenn's post, unlike the Christmas week quake near San Simeon, which I definitely felt. But several San Diego-era bloggers noticed this one, and The Professor has links to them.
Very Late Update: 10/30/07: This post is from 2004. For those searching for details on today's earthquake in San Jose via Google, click here.
Very Late Update: 7/29/08: The above post is from 2004. For those searching for details on today's earthquake in southern California via Google, click here.
NARCISSUS' POND: Bestsy Newmark has some thoughts on Bill Clinton and his presidential portrait.
WHY DIDN'T THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVER the speech given to terrorist Richard C. Reid (the would-be "shoe bomber") by the judge who sentenced him to life in prison?
Instead, we get the New York Times printing that "Mr. Ashcroft has yet to convict any actual terrorists".
The coverage of our war on terror by the press has all-in-all, been an abomination. Of course, as Lileks noted recently, it makes sense, when you consider that the nihilism of Hunter S. Thompson is the tone journalists love to affect:
Thompson has less hope than the Islamists; at least they have an afterlife to look forward to. All we have is a country so rotten and exhausted it’s not worth defending. It never was, of course, but it’s even less defensible now than before.Of course, that doesn't mean the public--you know, the folks who actually buy newspapers and log-on to news Websites--think the same way. Which helps to explain this, doesn't it?He can say what he wants. Drink what he wants. Drive where he wants. Do what he wants. He’s done okay in America. And he hates this country. Hates it. This appeals to high school kids and collegiate-aged students getting that first hot eye-crossing hit from the Screw Dad pipe, but it’s rather pathetic in aged moneyed authors. And it would be irrelevant if this same spirit didn't infect on whom Hunter S. had an immense influence. He's the guy who made nihilism hip. He's the guy who taught a generation that the only thing you should believe is this: don't trust anyone who believes anything. He's the patron saint of journalism, whether journalists know it or not.
SHADES OF THE IMPEACHMENT WARS: Remember during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, when the left and feminists (and the feminist left) would twist their arguments to the point where it resembled pretzels and Silly Straws? Pretzel logic, once thought to be fit only for Steely Dan records, is far from dead these days:
In a sworn statement to be made public Tuesday, University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman said a four-letter word used toward women can sometimes be used as a "term of endearment."Decorum prevents me from mentioning the school's initials are the same two...The comment comes from Hoffman's latest sworn testimony in connection with a federal lawsuit against the university. 9NEWS received a copy of the passage in question from the university after sources both outside and inside CU told us about it.
* * * In the deposition, Hoffman was asked whether the "c-word" is "filthy and vile."She said she knows the word is a swear word, but "It is all in the context of what--of how it is used and when it is used."
She was asked, "Can you indicate any polite context in which that word would be used?"
Hoffman answered, "Yes, I've actually heard it used as a term of endearment."
A CU spokeswoman said President Hoffman is aware of the negative connotations associated with the word.
But, the spokesperson said, because Hoffman is a medieval scholar, she is aware of the long history of the word. She said it was not always a negative term.
...Well--moving right along now!
COUNTRY JOE'S SECOND THOUGHTS: The singer/songwriter whose "Fixin' To Die Rag" was a showstopper in the 1970 documentary film Woodstock (complete with "follow the bouncing ball" on-screen lyrics), has second thoughts about the Vietnam that he and his fellow "peace" activists helped create.
Expect a handful of today's anti-American/anti-West/pro-Saddam/pro-Al Qaida, etc., etc., celebrities to have second thoughts as well in the coming years. Of course, as we wrote earlier today, this past week has shown that introspection and second thoughts are a rare commodity in the world.
NEW PURITANS UPDATE: Tech Central Station says, "They're Coming for Your Shrimp"!
REMEMBER MICAH WRIGHT? We posted about him briefly here when, as Steven Den Beste wrote today, "He had his fifteen minutes of fame a couple of months ago, though it would be more accurate to call it his fifteen minutes of mortification".
He's back though, with an Oliver Stone-like conspiracy theory about the people who did much of the legwork uncovering the fact that unlike his claims, he never actually served in the military.
DEJA MOO: The feeling that you've heard the same bull once before. Maybe Mrs. Reynolds is more right than she knows.
MICHELLE MALKIN DOESN'T MINCE WORDS when it comes to her take on Joe Biden and how he uses his son as a pawn in his speechmaking.
DEPLETING THE URANIUM ARGUMENT: What does the Seattle PI newspaper really believe, Brian Crouch asks. "Is depleted uranium in munitions used by the military somehow more of a radiological threat than a bomb made of non-depleted uranium by a terrorist? I suppose it depends on whose side you're on".
I've always thought Sgt. Stryker had the definitive warning on depleted uranium.
MEET THE NEW IRAQI PRESIDENT: Roger L. Simon writes:
I find Meet the Press a prime example of the decline of the mainstream media during my lifetime. A show which began years ago with several voices has devolved into the fiefdom of Tim Russert--and the medieval analogy is not accidental. Still, I watch it, even if his questions are not designed to reveal the truth, but rather for dramatic-gotcha effect.Simon says that Iraq's incoming president, Ghazi Al-Yawar, did a masterful job of defending himself from Russert's gotcha-games--and the quotes of Al-Yawar confirm it.
DECONSTRUCTING THE TIMES: Steven Den Beste looks at a New York Times article that "tries to portray Reagan so as to present a sharp contrast to President Bush, and in the end...puts Reagan inside a bunny-rabbit costume and presents him as an accommodating cooperative multilateralist who was only interested in getting along with everyone and who didn't have a confrontational bone in his body".
Den Beste concludes, "If you have to lie about something, it's stupid to lie to someone who knows the truth. It's really stupid to lie when 100 million people know the truth, and to tell that lie in a NYT column which lots of them are sure to see".
For those who paid attention last week, numerous Websites, but especially the Media Research Center and National Review Online provided a valuable service: examining the original pieces that journalists and broadcasters filed on President Reagan before and during his two terms of office. Never have so many been so wrong about a man, and to this day been loathe to admit it. Why should The Times start now?
No wonder the credibility of the press has plummeted. When you can use the 'Net to fact check their asses (to coin a phrase), it's easy to see how often they let their biases get in the way of their reporting.
UPDATE: For future Times articles, Jeff Goldstein has an easy to follow template that should make first drafts much easier.
CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER UPDATE: H.D. Miller is praising a Times article, something that I doubt happens very often.
WHAT WE LEARNED LAST WEEK: Gleaves Whitney looks at Ronald Reagan and us.
JAMES TARANTO IS REALLY ON A ROLL TODAY: Just keep scrolling.
GOD LIVES: At least for now, in the Pledge of Allegiance. After watching President Reagan's funeral last week, Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts on what a central role He plays in our government.
And nice to see another late Republican president's efforts still paying dividends.
UPDATE: Joanne Jacobs warnes that "Somewhere in our fair land, there are custodial, pledge-hating parents who are polishing up a lawsuit".
Betsy Newmark looks at what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's sons went through the day after Ronald Reagan was elected to his first term as president.
WHAT IS AN "INTELLIGENT" PERSON? Roger Kimball and Mark Steyn have some thoughts on the subject.
UPDATE: As does the Power Line blog.
A TALE OF TWO LETTERS: Not surprisingly, Oh, That Liberal Media notes a pretty clear double standard at play with the LA Times.
BUSH 41 TURNS 80, SKYDIVES TO CELEBRATE: George H.W., the first President Bush, decided to celebrate his 80th birthday by skydiving, making a 13,000 foot jump over his presidential library earlier today:
He made a tandem jump - harnessed to a member of an Army's Golden Knights parachute team - after officials decided the wind conditions and low clouds made it too dangerous for the 41st president to jump alone, which he did when he turned 75.This wasn't the first time Gorbachev felt afraid when confronted by a request from an American president..."This was a real thrill for me," said Bush, wearing a black-and-gold jumpsuit. "I felt no fear ... for me to get a chance to jump with the Golden Knights is a dream."
With Staff Sgt. Bryan Schnell on his back and a black-and-gold parachute ballooning above them, the former president waved his arms to some 4,000 spectators as he neared the drop zone - a painted logo of "41 at 80" in the center of a football-field-sized area on the grounds of his presidential library at Texas A&M University.
"It's been a great day," Bush said after sailing to the ground, landing and scooting a ways on his backside. "This was a day of joy and a day of wonder for the Bush family, certainly for the old guy."
The crowd included his wife, Barbara, his son Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev - whom the former president had invited to jump with him.
"Afraid," Gorbachev said through an interpreter, explaining why he didn't accept the offer. "Maybe on his 90th birthday. ... For me, it would be a first. At my age, that may kill me."
Gorbachev gave Bush flowers and a bottle of vodka.
UPDATE: For some reason, this article omits the fact that Chuck Norris and Brit Hume also jumped with President Bush. I had to learn about the latter via "Day By Day" (!) and then Google for another news story!
THE TEACHER'S T-SHIRT: Other than the gym coach, teachers at my school didn't wear T-shirts when they taught class. Particularly slogans like "War Without End? Not in Our Name" or "A Woman's Place Is in Her Union".
As Joanne Jacobs says, "It's hard to get students to think for themselves. It's just about impossible when the teacher is flashing 'correct answer' on her shirt.
I'd love to see the reaction of the teacher than Joanne profiles to this T-shirt.
VIDEOTARIANS: Mudville Gazette looks at an unusually idiotic USA Today article on the eeeeeevils of military-themed videogames. "Usually we must wait 'til near Christmas for assaults on the fun toys", Mudville's Greyhawk writes, "but fortunately for ignorant, impressionable, and gullible young men everywhere USA Today reporter Mike Snyder is on a mission to save them".
ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER: Check out how AP described President Reagan's liberation of Grenada this past week.
GOOD QUESTION: Jeff Goldstein wants to know why this story isn't the news story in the press today. And he has some thoughts why.
IS THE INTIFADA OVER? Roger L. Simon has some thoughts on Israel and the Palestinians.
A SNEAK PREVIEW: The opening of Steven Hayward's The Age of Reagan: Lion at the Gate is online here. The book, the second and concluding volume in Hayward's magisterial series is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2005, according to Scott W. Johnson. We reviewed volume one here.
Godwin's Law * forces The Chicago Sun-Times to cease publication after this article. More here and here.
THEY ARE LARGE, THEY CONTAIN MULTITUDES: Stephen Green notes a self-contradictory article in The Hollywood Reporter on the amount of coverage President Reagan received this week and concludes, "when you read stories like this and feel disdain for the press, remember that the feeling is mutual."
IT WAS THE CONTENT: "I won a nickname, 'The Great Communicator.' But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation — from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in principles that have guided us for two centuries. They called it the Reagan revolution. Well, I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense."
FAREWELL: John Derbyshire has a nice recap of the funeral. "The British, in fact, used to boast that they did this kind of thing -- pomp and circumstance -- better than anyone. I don't see how that boast can any longer be maintained. This was done as well as it possibly could have been."
PROTEIN WISDOM HAS A TRANSCRIPT of today's episode of the ABC talk fest The View, starring Barbara Walters, Star Jones, Joy Behar and other women lower on the daytime TV foodchain.
[ED NOTE: Dude--it's a parody.] It is?? Because it's not very difficult to picture everyone of them saying what Jeff's written. [Trust me, it is.] Hey, you're speaking in italics. How can I not trust you!
CREDIT THE LIBERATOR, not the dictator.
GROUP CAPTAIN MANDRAKE: "Isn't it odd how some 'all hail diversity!' liberal types want to see acts of violence done to people who don't agree with them?"
Initially it seems that way, but you get used to it after you've seen it for the first thousand times.
NEVILLE AGAIN: The Arthur Schlesinger-Neville Chamberlain connection, revealed.
WHEN IT COMES TO THE NEWS, Roger L. Simon turns one of the Gipper's most famous slogans on its head: "Don't Trust; Verify".
SOLIDARITY: "When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty."--Lech Walesa
THE SCORPION: Looks like Col. Qaddafi isn't quite the pussycat he's been pretending to be lately. H.D. Miller has a novel way to bring him back to his senses.
"NICE AIM": Not surprisingly, there's too much good stuff in James Lileks' syndicated column for me to single out. It asks a simple question: "When did we start hating presidents? Openly, that is". So...RTWT, already.
(Found via John Hawkins, who did not have the best of days today...)
IMAGINE IF THE GIPPER OR GWB DID THIS: Betsy Newmark looks at how John Kerry asked his aides what behavior they thought would look appropriate when he visited President Reagan's casket at the Reagan Library on Tuesday.
A commenter says that Kerry had all of the regular visitors of the library wait outside. "He then went in with his photographers and cameramen and about a dozen shills".
He lacks the common touch, as my dad would say.
SUMMERTIME, AND THE AUTOMATION IS EASY: My latest monthly "Ideas For Every Room" newsletter for Electronic House magazine is on outdoor automation.
RAY CHARLES DEAD: The Grammy-winning singer was 73.
In 1982 the Dow Jones industrial average hit a low of 800. After the final pieces of the Reagan tax cuts were installed, the market rocketed upward for 18 consecutive years. From 800, the Dow rose to 10,000 — creating between $15 trillion and $20 trillion in new wealth and industries. The Dow would have to climb to 100,000 by 2020 to match this Herculean performance. By clearing away the wealth destroyers of high tax rates and high inflation, U.S. companies became far more productive, profitable, and valuable.Moore quotes Arthur Laffer, who says that at Reagan's first cabinet meeting as president, "Reagan, the seasoned actor, waited for silence in the Cabinet Room. He then stood and said, 'Gentlemen and ladies, I hate inflation, I hate taxes, and I hate Communism. Do something about it.'"The economy also created 15 million new jobs under Reagan and grew in real terms by 40 percent. Some have likened this to adding a new California to the U.S. economy.
By the end of the 1980s, in what was a fitting tribute to the Reagan program, almost all industrialized nations had sharply lowered tax rates to regain a competitive position lost to the U.S. in the decade. Reagan would note that "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." In this way, Reaganomics saved not just the U.S. economy from worldwide depression, but the entire global economy as well.
The Reagan way was spurned throughout the 1980s as "voodoo economics" (one of George Bush Sr.'s few memorable comments.) Many college textbooks to this day even argue that Reagan's economic policies were flawed because they created record budget deficits. But the textbooks don't mention that as the national debt rose by $2 trillion, national wealth rose by $8 trillion. They also don't mention that the Laffer curve worked: Lower tax rates did generate more tax revenues at the federal, state, and local levels. Federal tax collections rose from $500 billion in 1980 to $1 trillion in 1990.
They did.
UPDATE: Get a load of this quote by Tom Brokaw, from a 1983 interview with far-left magazine Mother Jones:
“I thought from the outset that his ‘supply side’ [theory] was just a disaster. I knew of no one who felt that it was going to work, outside of a small collection of zealots in Washington and at USC – Arthur Laffer, Jack Kemp. What I thought quite outrageous was the business community, which for years carped and complained that it could never get a President sympathetic to its needs, finally got its champion, Ronald Reagan. Then, to its horror, it discovered that he was actually going to press ahead with supply side – a theory whose disastrous consequences businesspeople began desperately to prepare for, but did not publicly warn the rest of the country about. They knew it simply could not work. But what they did was look to their own little life raft and not to anyone else’s.”Lots more quotes in a similar vein via that same link.
CONGRATS to Mr. And Mrs. Jeff Goldstein and their son on their fourth wedding anniversary. "The fourth year being the fruit (traditional) or flower / appliance (modern) anniversary. So we'll be having sushi".
Works for me. (No, really!) I only hope Jeff has gotten his pants back if he's going out.
THE BERKELEY INTIFADA: Michael J. Totten writes that "A city that prides itself on tolerance and diversity is fast-becoming an epicenter of hate".
Totten adds, "Political Correctness is finished. What started out as intolerance of hate has become hatred's enabler. It fails to live up to its own standard and can't possibly become more absurd than it already is. It slid all the way down the slippery slope and annihilated itself."
PC kills people. It's driven a wedge between the news media and the customers it's supposed to serve. It's driven a wedge between the blue and red states. It's driven a wedge between the hard left and more moderate liberals. It's shrunk Hollywood and the music industry's audiences. It's driven a wedge between universities and the people and communities they serve. But while Roger L. Simon says that Totten has written its epitaph, PC is actually far from dead.
WOW, AND I WAS CONCERNED ABOUT SLOPPY REPORTING IN AMERICA: Germany's Der Spiegel mentions former "US president Kissinger" in an article about President Reagan.
CHRIS COX ON PRESIDENT REAGAN: "Today, the Soviet Union sits on the ash heap of history, and the Reagan legacy can be measured in lives liberated and dreams fulfilled. Before Ronald Reagan became President in 1981, there were 56 electoral democracies on earth. Today, there are 117. Today, more than a billion more people are living in freedom than on the day that he took office. "
UPDATE: And here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Graham writes:
Think of everything Reagan did, and then add: He did it all before Fox News. He did it all before the Rush Limbaugh phenomenon. He did it all before the instant battle cry of his defenders could hit the Internet. He did it all before C-SPAN caught on and people could enjoy the game of watching entire speeches and debates and then observing how the network tricksters discombobulated them into liberal hatchet jobs. He did it all when (well, eventually) the only conservative regular on the big networks was ABC's George Will, and at that time Will was still fashionably fussing about Americans being "taxophobic" and spurning Reagan's "Morning in America goo."Graham adds, "We should welcome any reevaluation by the reigning pundits of the Reagan era as the truth winning out. We should welcome the warm glow of nostalgia from all Americans who share it. Reagan won over many adversaries by his magnanimity under rhetorical assault. Bitterness at this time wouldn't be Reaganesque."In the prologue to his book on Reagan Dinesh D'Souza captured the flavor of how Reagan was greeted by the Washington establishment. Everything Reagan sought to accomplish seemed ludicrous and uneducated to the long-standing liberal consensus. Tax cuts would be wildly inflationary. A foreign policy based on the radical notion that Communism should be put on the ash heap of history was dismissed as a bellicose fantasy too dangerous for the nuclear age. At the end of it all, Reagan was the wise man, and all his detractors — Democrats and ersatz Republicans, political scientists and economists, "Sovietologists" and journalists — were the dummies.
ONE MORE UPDATE: "Were we fools then, or are we dishonest now?" And here's one more for the road.
OK, ONE MORE, ONE MORE UPDATE: Virginia Postrel notes the slanted polling questions in this week's MediaBistro poll. "The survey is unscientific, but the dominance of answer five certainly doesn't exactly make the participating journalists look, uh, fair and balanced."
Answer five reads, "He was a vacuous ideologue and his death was not unexpected. Enough already".
THE RETURN OF THE SON OF ONE MORE UPDATE: "Rest in peace, Mr President. And know that after all these years, you were right - and all these people were clearly, emphatically, embarrassingly, wrong".
GOTTA GIVE HIM CREDIT FOR BEING HONEST: H.D. Miller spots someone who's gone on the record and actually said that he wishes Saddam Hussein were still in power.
GOT A FEW HUNDRED MILLION UNDER THE MATTRESS? Fender Musical Instruments is for sale.
In other guitar-related news, this man turned 89 today--and he's still going strong.
UPDATE: Fender denies it's for sale.
A DEMOCRATIC NICARAGUA honors President Reagan.
I wonder what these three men have to say about that.
LILEKS ON MR. MISTY, BRAIN FREEZES and chocolate-dipped cones.
Like Salieri and Mozart, how I envy this man's talent with a keyboard.
BABY GOT BURQA: Charles Johnson looks at "Hip-Hop, Islamofascist Style".
LOS ATHEISTS UPDATE: L.A. Country Board of Supervisors affirms its decision to remove cross from county seal.
DENIAL: While Stephen Green is busy demolishing his basement, Will Collier, his partner-in-blogging, demolishes the press's reaction to the Pew study we linked to yesterday:
Expect to see a lot of chatter today and tomorrow over the just-released Pew study of news audience attitudes. Howie Kurtz has a rundown in today's Washington Post, including some crowing from various network/newspaper PR flacks about the results. One of those, from CNN's Matthew Furman, struck me in particular:Daaaaamn right, as Isaac Hayes would say."We're obviously pleased -- once again we've been voted the most trusted news organization in America."Man, you talk about burying the lede. That's like being ranked "the most successful professional football team in Atlanta." According to the Pew survey, less than one-third of those "able to rate" CNN said that they believe "all or most of what they see" on the network.Memo to Matthew Furman: When 68% of your potential audience doesn't trust you, you don't have any reason to brag.
While part of the reason for this lack of trust is that viewers and readers now have more options available to them, there's another reason why. While Bernard Goldberg did yeoman work in Bias and Arrogance to expose many of the medias' follies, William McGowan's Coloring The News is in some ways more impressive. Goldberg showed the rest of the world that bias in journalism exists, something that conservatives have been railing about since the days of the "nattering nabobs of negativism" speech by Spiro Agnew (and written by Bill Safire). And for that, he should be commended.
What McGowan (a self-professed liberal like Goldberg, incidentally) did is a bit more subtle, which is why his book has gotten less attention that Goldberg's two titles.
The title of his book is somewhat of a misnomer. While it does talk extensively of how the press covers (and in many cases avoids) racial issues, what it's really about is how, by drinking the politically correct Kool-Aide (and gallons of it) in the late '80s, the press took a hard left turn, and went from doing straight reporting to frequently turning routine stories into activist journalism. And this was after the majority of the country elected a conservative president, and the man who campaigned as his successor, in three blow-out victories. (And don't forget, Bill Clinton ran as a "New Democrat", and frequently governed as such--voting for such conservative issues as NAFTA and welfare reform, and was far more fiscally restrained--after the Hillarycare debacle of course--than most previous Democratic presidents had been.)
What the press didn't count on was that by the late '90s, there'd be so many choices available via the Internet and cable TV. And as the late Robert Bartley said only a couple of years ago:
"If it finds the mainstream press lacking, the public will simply find its own sources of information--as declining readership and network news ratings suggest is already happening."So I'm not surprised to see, as Will Collier wrote:
For all intents and purposes, more than half of the populace (everybody except partisan Democrats, and even their numbers for credibility are nothing for most of the press to brag about) has written off the vast majority of the national press. And they're doing so because they believe that the press has written them off.That a lot of people have their head in sand. And it's going to years for them to come up for air (and that doesn't even take into consideration CNN's own enormous credibility problem with Iraq). In the meantime, as Bernard Goldberg told me:Things have gotten to the point where the President of the United States sees no reason not to ignore the networks and the New York Times. If the coin of your realm is trust, and influence is what you buy with that coin, what do today's viewership realities say about the state of the realm?
I'll give you a quote from paragraph one of Arrogance:It has.If the media elites don't start to listen to reasonable criticism about them, they're going to become the journalistic equivalent of the leisure suit: harmless enough, but hopelessly out of date.The reason why I called that book Arrogance is that these people don't listen to anybody. They don't listen to any criticism! If you point something out to them, they say, "this proves that you're the one with the bias problem".If they continue that, they will be less relevant next year then they are this year, and less relevant two years from now than they will be next year. They're becoming less and less relevant. And proof of this is that once upon a time, not ten thousand years ago, but just in the recent past, the most trusted man in America was Walter Cronkite. Does anybody, no matter what his or her politics are, does anybody think that Americans would pick one of the three network anchors as one of the most trusted men in America today? I don't think so. I don't think so.
So they're losing their clout, they're losing their influence, they're losing their relevance, and they continue to fiddle while Rome is burning. They are so arrogant that they can't see straight, and I think it's going to cost them.
JONAH ON REAGAN: "To summarize why I admired the Gipper: He was put on earth to do two things: kick butt and chew gum, and he ran out of gum around 1962. The rest is commentary."
LET'S FACE IT: It's Bill's world; we just live in it. Even if you're the grieving widow of a recently deceased president.
As Mark Levin wrote:
What matters is not what Bill Clinton wants, but what the Reagan family wants. And somehow, here we are again, discussing Bill Clinton when he has absolutely nothing to do with this event. And once again, we witness the spectacle of Bill Clinton's lack of class and graciousness.And as P.J. O'Rourke wrote...
"STASISTS* ARE DULL", says Roger L. Simon. Read the whole thing.
*Click here and here for our takes on the book that that word came from.
ADVANTAGE ED! A Pew Research Center's survey finds that news audiences are increasingly politicized.
Heck, we could have told them that.
THERE'S A RECORDING STUDIO HIDDEN IN YOUR PC: My latest Electronic House newsletter looks as the basics of getting started with home recording.
INSTITUTIONALIZING OUR DEMISE: Roger Kimball looks at America vs. multiculturalism.
THE INTERNET PRESIDENT: James Pinkerton writes:
Reagan invented the Internet. Well, OK, that's not exactly right, but his administration made the key decision that opened the Internet up to commercial utilization. But wait just a doggone nano-second, you might be saying, didn't Al Gore invent the Net? Or didn't he at least try to take credit for it in 1999, when he told CNN, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet"?Pinkerton adds, "A quarter-century after my first contact with Ronald Reagan, I now see that he was right: our best days as Americans are still ahead of us, as they are always ahead of us -- because there are no natural limits on the capacity of free minds. Reagan knew it then; I finally know it now."Of course, what started out as Arpanet reaches back to the late 60s, when Gore was still in school. But as for "creating the Internet" as THE Internet, one might turn to a 2000 book written by Reed Hundt, who declares himself to be one of Gore's biggest fans. Hundt's memoir of his tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993-1997, You Say You Want a Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics, was written, in part, to help Gore's presidential prospects; in a talk four years ago to the New America Foundation, he described himself as "Al's lieutenant," sent to the FCC to "implement his agenda." Yet even so, the author's basic honesty got in the way of his political advocacy.
On page 133 of his book, Hundt noted that a "far-sighted, or accidentally smart" ruling by the Reagan-era FCC prohibited phone companies from levying "access charges" on data, as distinct from voice transmissions. "In the absence of the FCC's decision," Hundt writes, "the Internet would have been so expensive that [founder Marc] Andreesen's Netscape would not have been a hiccup, much less one of the first bubble stocks of the Internet." Let's pause over this for a moment. Even a pro-Gore Democrat concedes that the biggest pro-Internet inflection point dates back to the early 80s. In fact, if one looks up the case -- MTS and WATS Market Structure Order, 97 FCC 2d 682 (1983) -- one sees that the FCC was then chaired by Mark Fowler, a Reagan appointee. And so Gore looks less like a prime mover, and more like a free rider.
And Reagan, meanwhile, gets credit -- or should get credit -- for picking free-market heroes such as Fowler. Did the Gipper ever know about the Net? Maybe not, but it hardly matters; even through lean times, such as the 70s, he never lost his faith in the genius of the American people and in the almost-magical powers of the free market. So if someone had told him that American enterprise had created a Next Big Thing that was adding trillions of economic output, he would probably have said, "Well, of course."
CNSNews reports, "Removal of Cross from County Seal Brings Lawsuit"
I don't know if anything will come of this, but I'm happy to see people fighting back from what was presented to the public as a fait accompli between the county and the ACLU.
UPDATE: AP reports (registration may be required, but this is the bulk of the article):
The County Board of Supervisors plans to reconsider the deal it reached last week to remove a cross from the county seal.OK, so it could cost millions to update the seal, and the County would probably win a suit against the ACLU. But that didn't prevent the supervisors for being so quick to roll over.The supervisors voted 3-2 to remove the symbol from the seal after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened a lawsuit, saying it was an improper endorsement of Christianity.
Supervisors Michael Antonovich and Don Knabe said their offices have been bombarded with phone calls and e-mails since the decision was made, including from a conservative legal group offering to represent the county for free in a legal battle against the ACLU.
The county would probably win such a lawsuit, those groups said, because there have been similar instances were crosses were permitted because they were historical rather than religious symbols.
Antonovich estimated it could cost millions of dollars for the county to remove the tiny cross from all its letterhead, officials vehicles, uniforms and buildings.
UPDATE: Oh, That Liberal Media looks at how the L.A. Times has been covering the story, siding with the ACLU "while pretending not to side with the ACLU".
CUBA'S REACTION TO PRESIDENT REAGAN'S DEATH: Jonah Goldberg writes that the Gipper wouldn't have it any other way.
UPDATE: This quote about the left's reaction sounds almost like something Reagan would have said himself.
NOT ANTI-WAR--JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE: Reading this nifty piece of original reporting by Citizen Smash, I have to ask: why aren't I reading about Gillian in the L.A. Times?
Think the editor of the Times will ask his reporters the same question?
Nahh--me neither.
THE OMBUDSGOD LOOKS at the difference between a militant and a terrorist at the BBC.
THE PIVOT POINT: David Cohen looks at the decision that made Reagan's presidency great, and signaled victory in the Cold War.
IRAN-CONTRA: As Paul Harvey would say, "And now, the rest of the story..."
Batman has been my favorite comic book character ever since I was a wee youngin'. But--honest!--I don't wear a black cape or utility belt.
(Sheesh--the stuff I have to put up with whenever I leave Gotham City...)
UPDATE: On the other hand, just what was Jeff Goldstein doing with Philip Michael Thomas??
KERRY PLAYS POLITICS...by not playing politics with President Reagan's death, writes Charles Johnson.
UPDATE: More on Kerry and President Reagan, here.
UPDATE: The more I think about this, the more I do feel that Kerry's in a can't win situation, as some of Charles' readers commented. If he did politicize Reagan's death, he'd be reviled for it, as I did with the shot Kerry inserted into his statement on Saturday. Sitting out the week seems to be the most sensible approach for him--and I'll give him credit for that.
Stephen Green looks at a major bit of revisionism going on by the Germans at D-Day today:
if Germany wants to rewrite history to show that Hitler and the Nazis were some sort of occupying power in Germany, then they risk forgetting the lesson taught to them at the cost of millions of Allied lives. "Never again" becomes "Never what again?" becomes "It's happening again."Ironically, Germany's efforts at revisionism come at a time when historians are finally starting to recognize just how welcome and accepted the Nazis were in Germany. And this is in marked contrast to the themes of previous tomes, such as William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. As Orrin Judd noted:We can't afford to let Germany forget what happened, and who was to blame.
A perfectly acceptable relic of its time, [Shirer's] book treats Hitler and the Nazi Party as complete aberrations, imposed on a slumbering Germany by a freakish set of circumstances. This view, understandable in a liberal West which finds it necessary to aver "it couldn't happen here" and which found it necessary to rehabilitate Germany into a worthy Cold War ally, has prevailed for the better part of sixty years now. In recent years however at least one book has come along to directly challenge this view, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's excellent Hitler's Willing Executioners. But to my knowledge, British historian Michael Burleigh's Third Reich is the first major one volume history to rival Shirer's work and it is an invaluable corrective, precisely the kind of big idea contrarian history that we could use more of and which, even if the author's claims are ultimately rejected, can serve to clarify the thinking of us all on the issues he broaches.As Orrin said, we needed to maintain the fiction that the Nazis were a strange alien virus imposed on innocent Germans, to resuscitate them into a worthy Cold War ally. But as Steve notes, the Germans themselves are returning to that fiction, just as she and France are returning to their shared anti-Semitic roots.Burleigh apparently draws on some academic work (for instance that by Saul Freidlander) with which I'm unfamiliar, but his central argument will ring a bell with anyone who's ever read Eric Hoffer's great book The True Believer. Burleigh considers the Third Reich to have been the product of a political religion, replete with symbols, hymns, liturgy, martyrs and a Messiah. From this perspective, the German people, defeated in WWI and impoverished by reparations and Depression, emerge, not as unwitting dupes, but as desperate believers in a new state religion propounded by Hitler, a true totalitarianism, suffused with racially motivated criminality, which sought to infiltrate every aspect of their lives.
It had been sitting on my PVR's hard drive since Monday, and today seemed like a very good day to view it. I thought Selleck's portrayal of Eisenhower was spot-on, and very much like George C Scott's of Patton: neither actor looks much like the man they portrayed, and neither was trying to do an impersonation, but both captured their essence brilliantly. (Both films share some similarities: in Patton, it was Ike who was the great man just off screen; here, it's FDR.)
FDR freed western Europe. President Reagan freed its eastern half, as Scott Johnson describes, here.
HOW REAGANOMICS MADE THE WORLD WORK: While President Reagan will best be remembered as the man who won the Cold War, he also revitalized our economy when it was in its worst slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s. So it's worth remembering the thoughts of another great man recently deceased, the late Robert L. Bartley, longtime editor of the Wall Street Journal.
PEJMANESQUE: Pejman Yousefzadeh has several thoughts on President Reagan, here.
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION has a comprehensive site remembering President Reagan.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, John Hawkins has a primer on the Gipper's legacy, "Reagan 101".
SCOTT OTT: "In addition to recordings and transcripts of dozens of the most compelling, sincere and influential speeches ever heard, President Reagan also leaves behind an America that is no longer afraid to call evil what it is, and to do something about it".
ROGER KIMBALL HAS A MOVING POST on The New Criterion's Weblog.
LBJ'S SERVICE WILL BE MODEL FOR FUNERAL: Orrin Judd has details, here.
NOT SURPRISINGLY, National Review Online has numerous articles on President Reagan.
And here's my review of Steven Hayward's The Age of Reagan, Vol. I from 2002.
UPDATE: Speaking of Steve Hayward, here are his thoughts on Ronald Reagan's successful legacy.
RONALD REAGAN DEAD AT 93.
UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez writes:
As I understand it, Reagan will lie in state in Sacramento, then at the Capitol. Then there will be a memorial service at the National Cathedral, after which RR will be flown back to California for a sunset interment at the RR Library.UPDATE: Paul Kengor, author of God And Ronald Reagan has a moving tribute, here.
UPDATE: Terry Teachout has this prophetic quote from Reagan In His Own Hand:
"Communism is neither an ec[onomic] or a pol[itical] system--it is a form of insanity--a temporary aberration which will one day disappear from the earth because it is contrary to human nature. I wonder how much more misery it will cause before it disappears."Teachout looks at another collection of President Reagan's writings, here.Ronald Reagan, Reagan, In His Own Hand (written 1975, collected 2001)
UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg compares the coverage at CNN and Fox News (I'm watching Fox as I type this, incidentally).
UPDATE: John Kerry's statement--complete with a nasty dig at the 40th President--here.
UPDATE: Nice tribute to the Gipper from Gabriel Syme of Samizdata.
UPDATE: Speaking of nasty digs, check out Slate's coverage of a former president's death: "The Man Who Ruined Republicans".
UPDATE: Alphecca, a self-proclaimed "gay gun nut in Vermont" has collected some quotes from a few left-leaning blogs on the Gipper's death. And like Slate, they're not pretty.
LAST UPDATE (for now): Many more links here.
TOO MUCH, TOO LATE: David Gelernter writes that baby boomers are heaping insincere praise on the "greatest generation":
My political credo is simple and many people share it: I am against phonies. A cultural establishment that (on the whole) doesn't give a damn about World War II or its veterans thinks it can undo a half-century of indifference verging on contempt by repeating a silly phrase ("the greatest generation") like a magic spell while deploying fulsome praise like carpet bombing.RTWT.The campaign is especially intense among members of the 1960s generation who once chose to treat all present and former soldiers like dirt and are willing at long last to risk some friendly words about World War II veterans, now that most are safely underground and guaranteed not to talk back, enjoy their celebrity or start acting like they own the joint. A quick glance at the famous Hemingway B.S. detector shows the needle pegged at Maximum, where it's been all week, from Memorial Day through the D-Day anniversary run-up.
ROCK AND FARKING ROLL: The fabulously talented Photoshoppers of Fark give today's celebrities and politicians some hairmetal-band makeovers. Mullets to the fore!
(Via "Hit & Run".)
HOLY SCHNIKIES! Village Voice calls for all Republicans to be "exterminated". No, really!
UPDATE: Charles Johnson writes:
There's a bad craziness loose among the media elites. That a reputable journalist would write such a thing is bad enough--but for any paper, even the Village Voice, to publish it without a qualm is infinitely worse.I thought the whole beef that elites have Weblogs is that there's no editor to fact check and to prevent over the top remarks from being published. With the Village Voice, you have to wonder what's in the water, that would allow an editor to let a quote like that to fly under radar.
Of course, as James Lileks presciently wrote this past week:
To paraphrase an influential thinker of the previous century: The death of millions is a statistic.That's certainly true as far as 36 Cooper Square is concerned. Never mind the fact that a real extermination occurred only a few blocks away from there.The reelection of one is a tragedy.
GOD AND FDR GET CENSORED AT THE WWII MEMORIAL: California Yankee has the details.
(Via Betsy Newmark, who has lots of other good stuff today, as usual.)
PUTTING ABU GHRAIB into context. (Via Jeff Goldstein.)
WOW, AND THIS WAS BEFORE I STARTED DRINKING! Proof positive that I was indeed at the Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash last Friday.
No fault of the photographer (who also has a nifty Weblog), but I really look embalmed in my photo. I think it was taken shortly after I walked in the door and long before Jeff Goldstein took off his pants.
GIVING UP QUIET RIOT FOR JIHAD: The FBI's "be on the lookout for" list contains the following name: Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, a.k.a. Abu Suhayb, a.k.a. Yihya Majadin Adams, a.k.a. Adam Yahiye Gadahn.
AKA Adam Pearlman.
No, really.
"Asparagirl" looks at how "the half-Jewish half-Catholic son of rural California goat-farming hippies" ended up converting to Islam and making the charts on the FBI's hit parade as a Johnny Taliban-come-lately.
ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER: David Brock, the conservative turned liberal journalist who now heads Media Matters, the left's answer to Brent Bozell's Media Research Center recently said this:
...journalists have allowed themselves to be cowed by "organized right-wing groups."OK--so the news media is right wing--but they don't cover its most prominent radio talk show host."I think they are afraid," Brock said. "For a long time, the mainstream media has not stood up. They've essentially allowed Fox to happen. They do not cover Limbaugh -- he is a serious political figure in this country -- they don't write about what he says."
....Right.
(Oh and by the way, Rush is featured in Time magazine this week. He felt so comfortable talking to the house organ of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that he also tape recorded the interview himself, in case Time butchered one of his quotes.)
UPDATE: Tim Graham of the Media Research Center notes:
CNN did a whole story promoting their campaign to censor Rush Limbaugh off the Armed Forces Radio Network. Can you imagine how they would have reacted if an MRC had demanded the removal of NPR from Armed Forces Radio because it was too demoralizing to troops?PS: Their Web site is hot and heavy defending George Soros from conservative attack this week. They know who butters their panini.
CBS POLL SHOWS VETS FAVOR BUSH: Given how veterans have rejected Kerry (not the least of which are those who served directly with him) and are supporting President Bush overwhelmingly, I'll bet the left has turned on a dime from the chickenhawk sophistry they tried to employ last year.
Andrew Sullivan notes that the "anti-Western left has come up with a new term for a terrorist".
I wonder if Reuters will start using this one.
LILEKS ON LOS ATHEISTS: "I wouldn't join a movement that wanted to add a cross to a public seal. But I am dead-set stone-cold opposed to those who, in this instance, want to take one off".
UPDATE: Those crosses probably won't be the last religious symbol to vanish on LA's seal. Hugh Hewitt writes, "The days of law and logic at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have already passed, so Pomona ought to leave with them". Read his interview with some of the more spineless members of the board.
AS JEFF GOLDSTEIN SAYS, "Mike Wallace: Brillcreamed, rough-hewn, old school... And spanked like Carl Berstein 'on assignment' in Bangkok".
UPDATE: Wallace told Bill O'Reilly, "I had no idea C-SPAN was there...Mind you, I should not probably have said it there", at the Smithsonian's "National World War II Reunion".
Brent Baker adds, "One wonders what other opinions Wallace shares when C-SPAN cameras aren’t around".
In his recent syndicated column, Jonah Goldberg referred to this exchange from a 1989 PBS show, where Wallace admitted that given the choice between saving American soldiers' lives and getting a story out of their being killed in action, he'd simply roll tape and not feel the least but sorry for refusing to help them.
I'D SECOND SEVERAL OF THE PEOPLE ON THIS LIST: John Hawkins looks at "People On The Right Who Get On My Nerves".
DR. HUXTABLE MEETS THE BLOGOSPHERE: Matt Rosenberg analyzes how the press covered Bill Cosby's speech at the NAACP two weeks ago and concludes:
Dick Meyer of CBSNews.com gets it right: "Plenty of white writers or editors simply avoid wading into this altogether because it is perceived as too risky, too easy to be accused of prejudice, or meddling." And that avoidance, as Meyer notes, "ensures the issues become even more buried. Pimp rap goes uncriticized. Schools stay bad."Read the whole thing.The slow but now-steady spread of the Cosby story illustrates one more way bloggers serve an invaluable function: not just by rebutting or correcting the news; but by watering and "sunshining" stories that are dying on the vine because they disrupt the pre-conceived liberal agendas of media elites.
Many bloggers who depend on the news hold in low regard the person whose job title is "Page One Editor," "National Editor," or "Foreign Editor." And rightly so, all too often. These folks play up what they like according to their politics, and downplay what they don't like. What gets two inches on page A12 might really deserve 25 inches, starting on Page One.
Enter the humble blogger. True, the percentage of Internet users who report they view blogs regularly is still low. But even then, we're talking some 31 million regular blog viewers. Admittedly, some blogs are about knitting, snow-boarding, or origami. Others are authored by navel-gazing college students, polyamorists, vegan anarchists, or self-declared alcoholics detailing each wretched night's debauch. But watch out for many of the rest. Their reach grows.
The Cosby story — like others before it — has shown that a news story can grow "legs" thanks more to repackagers in the blogosphere than to "legitimate" print and broadcast outlets.
FYI FOR BOATERS: The international signal flag code has been revised. Boaters should please memorize this list and adjust accordingly.
It's been a pretty hectic few days here, and normally, when I want to actually write about something rather simply linking to it, I like a few minutes to think about what I want to say. So I haven't had a chance yet to write about the Denver Blogger Bash on Friday--so let's remedy that.
It was a blast.
I've been online continuously since 1994 (actually, I was also in CompuServe briefly around 1982, but that didn't last very long). And over the past decade, whenever I've had the opportunity, I've tried to meet in person those people whose pixels I've enjoyed reading. So with the help of some frequent flier miles, it was possible to shoot in and out Denver International Airport fairly quickly.
I'm not sure why the Denver area has so many great bloggers around it--but at 1:00 in the morning, while Steve Green was cutting Kim's arguments defending suicide bombers to ribbons, (man I wish I was that articulate after four Martinis) I had an interesting conversation with Darren Copeland's friend about the regional aspects of blogging. I tend to discount them; I'm of the opinion that thanks to the Internet (and especially, thanks to broadband), anybody anywhere who has an opinion can get a Weblog from Blogger or Typepad and get his thoughts online.
But having a community of friends for support and to bounce ideas off of is great. And the Denver crowd certainly seemed pretty unified. What was interesting was comparing the discussions of the bloggers with those who don't blog. Steve noted his exchange with Kim, which was pretty darn heated. And simultaneously, I watched Darren's friend pounding the table as his gave us his opinions. And I'm pretty sure that neither of them have a blog. There's something about knowing that your ideas are going up on the 'Net, and that your friends and acquaintances would be parsing them, adding on to them or rejecting them that makes one choose his or her words very carefully. It's a very different medium from the bully pulpit of a newspaper where the communication is much more one way. (See also: Raines, Howell.)
So I can see where regular gatherings of bloggers would not only keep those who actively do it psyched to continue, it also provides a subtle push for others to join in the fun as well.
Curious, isn't it, that the 'Net, which was supposed to create an global village free of boundaries (that's the mindset if you smoked enough McLuhan, like Wired did) ends up doing a far better job of strengthening regional ties.
Incidentally, this was my first trip to Denver, other than changing planes at DIA. But hopefully it won't be my last. It looks like a great city. And the people in it aren't too shabby, either.
LUMP SUM: Sgt. Stryker wants his reparations--now.
ANDREW SULLIVAN FISKS HOWELL RAINES, noting that his "fascinating little column" praising Kerry "is a very useful insight into how he turned The New York Times into a crusading left-populist pamphlet" as its former editor.
And as Glenn Reynolds' readers have noted, it also has this whopper in it:
In that Raines article in the Guardian you linked, he writes "As America's FIRST WAR-HERO candidate since John F Kennedy, he ought to be leading the national discussion on what went wrong in Iraq."Hey, it's not like an editor checks facts or anything.You would think Howell Raines would have heard of George McGovern or at least George H.W. Bush, right?
LOS ATHEISTS: Los Angeles County surrenders to ACLU; will remove the crosses on its seal.
As Ramesh Ponnuru wrote, "No word on how long the county will be allowed to keep its name".
UPDATE: Charles Johnson has contact information for LA County, "if you live in LA and are as outraged about this totalitarian attempt to erase history as I am". I'm sure they'd like to hear from out-of-towners as well.
BLACKIE: Got a spare $150,000 or so under the mattress? Then one of Eric Clapton's most famous guitars could be yours. (In 1985 I bought my first Fender Stratocaster--which I still own--a black 1957 reissue with a maple fretboard. Guess which guitar I was trying to copy?)
Incidentally, "Brownie", Blackie's sister is on display at Paul Allen's EMP Museum in Seattle. It was the guitar featured on the title song and back cover of this album. Consequently, it sold (presumably to Allen or an intermediary) during a previous auction for $497,000.
UPDATE: If you decide to take a second or third mortage out to bid on the axe, you might want to avoid Green Point Mortgage...
THE KUMBAYA KID: If elected, John Kerry promises to make all of the bad people around the world get rid of their nuclear weapons--including North Korea and Iran.
Of course if they don't, there's always this option.
THEN AND NOW: David Lewis Schaefer and Mark Levin each look at The New York Times 50 years ago and today, and find some interesting parallels--and not surprisingly, divergences.
Meanwhile, Hyspeed wonders how Fleet Street would have covered World War II had it been dominated by the mindset of today's media.
His headline? "BISMARCK SUNK, BRITAIN DOOMED".
I HAVEN'T LINKED TO JAY NORDLINGER IN A WHILE, and that's an oversight on my part. As usual, he's got lots of great stuff today, so stop on by.
ANDREW SULLIVAN PUTS THE WAR ON TERROR INTO PERSPECTIVE and concludes that it's "an extraordinary success".
"Now watch the media do all it can to accentuate the negative", he adds.
Meanwhile, Rod Dreher has a column on that very subject in the Dallas Morning News, and adds:
I've been getting great e-mails all day from around the country over my DMN column whacking the media for ignoring the good news out of Iraq. One of my correspondents was Mark Tapscott at the Heritage Foundation, who sends along results of a Gallup poll released today. The poll surveyed the confidence Americans had in their institutions. The military got the highest rating, with 75 percent of those polled expressing a "great deal" of confidence, while only five percent saying they had "very little or none" in the military. Compare that with TV news, in which 30 percent of respondents report a "great deal" of confidence, and a nearly equal number reporting "very little or none." It's not much better for newspapers: 30 percent have a "great deal" of confidence, while 25 percent have "very little or none.""And of course", Dreher notes, "this will be ignored in newsrooms, which have an uncanny ability to ignore handwriting on the wall when it tells them things they don't want to hear".The U.S. military, then, is the most popular institution in America. The news media are among the least popular.
UPDATE: John Hawkins also has some thoughts on the topic.
P.J. O'Rourke writes that maybe America should become isolationist again:
And the best thing about Americans recusing ourselves from global entanglements is that we will be loved again. Imagine a world where American manners and mores set the standard almost everywhere, where American fashions, American ideas and American lifestyles are universally sought out and copied. A world where people avidly listen to American music, eagerly watch American TV and movies, and try to imitate Americans in every way. Imagine a world where the U.S.A. is so admired that people by the millions want nothing more than to come to America and recuse themselves from global entanglements.Hey--it could happen!
TO FREEDOM: Right around the time of the global Live Aid concerts in 1985, Amnesty International began running a slickly produced commercial featuring numerous celebrities, including Glenn Close, who said that in many countries, raising a toast to freedom could get you arrested, and that Amnesty International was fighting for those oppressed people everywhere.
THE LEGACY OF CROKNITE: Steven Den Beste has two long, detailed posts on media bias.
Makes a nice triple-feature with our interview with Bernard Goldberg, author of Bias and Arrogance.
A LITTLE LATE FOR MEMORIAL DAY, but there's a terrific new article on Insight Magazine's Website about Les Paul and the fighting music of World War II.
(Via Charles Johnson. For our profile of Les Paul, click here.)
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"Ed Driscoll is 'The Diplomat', for always being the one to bridge the divide."--Alexandra von Maltzan, All Things Beautiful
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