Outstanding British blogger Don Surber writes on the New York Times' $648 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2006, and the rapidly shrinking value of its subsidiary paper, the Boston Globe:

If the Sulzberger family had given young Pinch $700 million in dollar bills to burn to his heart’s content over the last 14 years instead of allowing him to by the Boston and Worcester newspapers, the family would be ahead by some $148 million today.

Glenn Reynolds declares the situation a hopeless quagmire, and immediately calls for a Pinch of a retreat.

Caroline Glick writes:

In the world of international diplomacy few issues receive more wall-to-wall support than the notion that it is essential to establish a Palestinian state. Leaders worldwide are so busy speaking of how essential it is for a State of Palestine to be founded that none of them seems to have noticed that it already exists.

This state was officially founded in the summer of 2005, when Israel removed its military forces and civilian population from the Gaza Strip and so established the first wholly independent Palestinian state in history. Israel’s destruction of four Israeli communities in Northern Samaria and curtailment of its military operations in the area set the conditions for statehood in that area as well.

And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare.

"By creating the very Palestinian state that those governments and those states pretend to want but actually dread", David Frum wrote in 2005 of what would ultimately be Ariel Sharon's final legacy before his massive stroke, "Sharon is forcing them to end their pretense and acknowledge the truth".

And the truth, as Glick writes today, is that "Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare".

Oh, that liberal media:

Conservative bloggers sometimes exaggerate and write that so-and-so "slammed" the troops, and then you follow the link and read the comments in context and find out they're not that bad — usually it's a garden-variety criticism of how the war is being managed or, at worst, a "botched joke".

And then you read the Washington Post's William Arkin.

The late Katharine Graham once described her paper as "Mass With Class". Even with the media infinitely more demassified as a whole than its heyday, the mass of the Post is certainly still there, at least.

But regarding the latter element of Ms. Graham's equation, as John Hinderaker of Power Line writes, "The peril of newspaper blogs is that a reporter might say what he actually thinks before an editor catches up with him and makes him stop".

Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt adds, "The Washington Post's William Arkin Gets His Reply".

Molly Ivins died today at age 62. Her 1999 book Shrub was one of the early templates for what Charles Krauthammer would dub BDS four years later, as Andrew Ferguson wrote in 2004:

Shrub, by the Texas journalists Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, was granddaddy to them all. Published in 1999, it stands even now as the template for the Bush critique. In his great essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," the political scientist Richard Hofstadter remarked how political paranoids in early America--the anti-Masons, for example--were alarmed from decade to decade by the same chimera: They convinced themselves that they saw, operating just beneath the surface of the national life, "a libertine anti-Christian movement, given to the corruption of women, the cultivation of sensual pleasures, and the violation of property rights." Now, of course, the paranoids are bewitched by the mirror image: In Bush and his followers they detect, in place of a libertine anti-Christian movement, an uptight pro-Christian movement, given to the "virtue" of women rather than their corruption, the denial of sensual pleasures instead of their cultivation, and--perhaps most shocking of all--the preservation of property rights rather than their violation. Times do change. The earlier American paranoids imagined their enemies in drunken orgies and were horrified; today they see them at prayer--and they're still horrified.

Shrub bears all the marks of Texas progressivism. The carefully shaded accounts of Bush's stint in the National Guard and of his failed career as a businessman--accounts that have been plundered and plagiarized by nearly every anti-Bush book since--jump with class resentment. The then-governor's professions of religious faith are viewed with alarm and suggestions of primitivism. Dark, controlling forces move just offstage. Hidden agendas slither beneath the surface of the governor's policy proposals. The contradictions of the standard Bush critique are fully ventilated, and never acknowledged. In Austin not long ago I mentioned to Lou Dubose, Shrub's coauthor, that as admirable as the book is in many ways--it is a genuinely masterful polemic--a reader can never reconcile the contradictions in its portrait of Bush. Is he a dim bulb or a rascal--an ideological revolutionary or a go-along, get-along pol--a feckless rich kid or a cold-eyed manipulator? Dubose laughed. "Yes, to all of the above," he said.

DUBOSE IS TOO SKILLED A REPORTER, and Ivins too high-spirited a polemicist, for Shrub to come off as unrelievedly dark. There's even a grudging affection for its subject lurking in there somewhere; "He's such an affable fellow," the book concludes. "It's not Bush hatred," Dubose told me, smiling. "It's more liberal condescension, which is a much finer quality."

Indubitably. Ivins was also accused of plagiarizing fellow author Florence King and others.

"Less than 24 hours after telling Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki ‘Go forward. We are all with you.’, and with rapidity that would make even Janus blush, U.S. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, returned home to declare ‘What is happening in Iraq is chaos."

Find Law reports:

NEW YORK-Israelis and other foreign nationals can pursue claims in U.S. courts accusing the Jordan-based Arab Bank of promoting Palestinian suicide attacks by funneling Saudi money to bombers' families, a judge ruled.

In a written decision in federal court in Brooklyn, U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon upheld a lawsuit Monday filed under U.S. law that gives non-U.S. citizens access to courts in order to challenge violations of international laws or treaties.

Lawyers for Arab Bank had asked Gershon to toss out the suit, arguing that U.S. courts lacked proper jurisdiction.

Though the judge dismissed portions of the suit, her ruling still allows thousands of suicide bombing victims and their families to seek unspecified damages, said a plaintiff lawyer, Michael Elsner.

"Today was an incredible victory for victims of suicide bombing attacks and other acts of violence in Israel and an important lesson to banks and private individuals that aid and abet acts of terrorism," he said. "They may be held civilly liable in the United States, even if those acts occur outside the United States."

Arab Bank spokeswoman Phyllis Cuttino says the bank "abhors terrorism".

Of course they do.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Syd Mead, the production designer of Blade Runner, and prior to that a visionary illustrator for Detroit and US Steel, on Harrison Ford's flying car.

This fellow is working to make it a reality:

YAVNE, Israel — Rafi Yoeli has an unconventional solution to saving people from burning high-rises or rescuing soldiers trapped behind enemy lines: a flying car.

Yoeli already has gotten a rudimentary vehicle off the ground — about three feet — and hopes to see a marketable version of his X-Hawk flying car by 2010.

Although his dream might seem far-fetched, Textron Inc.'s (TXT) Bell Helicopters is taking a serious look, teaming with Yoeli's privately held Urban Aeronautics to explore X-Hawk's potential.

Think of the people trapped in the World Trade Center. Think of ground patrols in Iraq blown up by roadside bombs. Think of New Orleans residents stranded on rooftops after Hurricane Katrina.

X-Hawk and its smaller version, Mule, might one day offer the same capabilities as helicopters, but without the serious operating limitations — such as exposed rotors — that helicopters face in urban terrain.

If Yoeli's invention makes it to the US, California--or at least several of its cities--will immediately ban it, of course.

Boston's CBS affiliate reports:

Police are investigating four suspicious devices found at four separate locations throughout Boston.

Officials are telling WBZ the devices are similar to the one found this morning in Sullivan Square attached to a beam supporting I-93 north.

The four locations for these devices are the Boston University Bridge, Longfellow Bridge, Tufts New England Medical Center, and the intersection of Stuart and Columbus Streets.

WBZ has learned Boston police removed an item from the Boston University Bridge but they would not elaborate on exactly what the item is. Officers have since cleared that scene.

Charles Johnson adds, "Boston police now say all of the devices are ‘hoax devices’—and one of them contained a picture of a man ‘flipping the bird’ to police".

Apparently, up to to ten "hoax devices" have been discovered so far.

Update: Charles adds that "It’s turning into an ‘oh brother’ kind of day":

The latest news: the “devices” were part of a hare-brained advertising campaign by Turner Broadcasting, promoting the animated show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”

That must explain why I could have sworn I heard Ted Turner muttering something about the people of Boston being "thin, and they were riding bicycles instead of driving in cars"...

Another Update: More details here.

One More: Somewhere, Orson Welles is laughing his head off over this incident.

Paul Wolfwitz: president of the World Bank, clad in a beautiful navy Savile Row suit, single-breasted, cuffed trousers...and photographed leaving a holy spot with extremely holey socks.

No doubt, he'll shortly be getting more than he'll know what to do with from friends and well-wishers. And every man who's had to take his shoes off at TSA line will be sympathizing with him.

Did CBS reporter Lara Logan use video footage shot in Iraq by Al-Qaeda? And if so, how did it arrive in their possession? At the end of a lengthy and detailed post with extensive video analysis, Bryan Preston writes:

I sent Public Eye an email with a link to this post. Their “I can assure you” line won’t cut it after Rathergate. Hopefully they understand that, and why, and will address my investigation with some rigor. Even if they can refute my findings, that would be better than their asking us to just trust them. They haven’t earned that trust. Thoroughly examining how and where Logan obtained that video would go a long way to building some trust, though.

Definitely RTWT, as the people who debunked Dan Rather and Adnan Hajj are wont to abbreviate.

No post titled "The Final Countdown" would be complete without this infamous YouTube moment in which the singer--such as he is--sounds like he really is warbling the above title.

Back around 1988, I watched Ted Danson, then at the height of his fame as the star of Cheers appear on a late-night infomercial pitch for an environmental group. He ended the half-hour advertisement with his saying that "we only have ten years to save the world's oceans". (That's a paraphrase, but as close as I remember the line.)

It's a reminder that, with the exception of Hollywood's greatest Greatest Generation-era stars (Cary Grant, Bogie, The Duke, Coop), Bill Whittle's Lou Grant Effect is inviolable. Having a beer in Sam Malone's bar while he recounts his glory days with the Sox sounds like infinitely more fun than listening to the doomsday prognostications of someone paid to recite lines written by others, with his performance calibrated by someone else.

But since the freshness date has long expired on Danson's dire warning, and the oceans are, near as I can tell, all happily present and accounted for, there have been numerous additional Doomsday Countdowns, which always seem to run for a decade for some reason. Al Gore started his a year ago, and yesterday, aging man-child Leonardo Di Caprio and several accompanying B-list actors and musicians announced theirs.

As Glenn Reynolds writes, "Ten years to save the planet: Let's start by banning private jets."

Here are two extremely environmentally conscious sources who could immediately put their Boeings where their mouths are, and retire their privately-owned jumbo jets for Diet Cokes and a tiny bag of peanuts on Southwest.

Anytime now, fellas; we're waiting...

And while we're waiting, James Lileks has some very much related thoughts: "It’s a peculiar inversion: the height of civilization now consists of undoing the plug, not connecting it."

Update: In 2005, I looked at the number of businesses leaving California for a pro-business climate and wrote, "Will the last person out of California please turn out the lights?"

No need to--California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Pluto) is going to do it for us.

Virginia Postrel recently wrote "California legislators are never without new ideas for regulations and bans"; sadly, that streak sees absolutely sees no sign of abating.

Another Update: Libertas asks, where are the big boys?

Wouldn’t you feel better if it weren’t boy-men trying to save the world? They couldn’t talk Bruce Willis or Russell Crowe into this nonsense? I’m sorry, but I’m just not comfortable leaving the fate of the planet to Leo, Orlando, and Josh.

If things are really as bad as Hollywood wants us to believe, shouldn’t any action that pollutes unnecessary to human survival cease? Like movie making? You can’t scream armageddon while moving forward on another Focker sequel. You just can’t.

No, you really can't. If the earth really is doomed in ten years, then movie making--mere entertainment that no one outside of Beverly Hills needs to survive--should be stopped immediately, to prolong the environment as long as possible by eliminating all of its accompanying chemicals and pollution.

Joe, we hardly knew ye!

Update: Meanwhile, Biden's original target, before he shot himself in the foot, carries some pretty extensive baggage of his own, apparently.

More: Will Al Gore jump into the fray on Oscar night? That's what Donna Brazile, his former campaign manager is speculating.

Another Update: Betsy Newmark asks:

Now that Drudge has picked up on this interview, I have to wonder if the media will pay half as much attention to this gaffe by Biden as they do to Republican gaffes. Will the Washington Post run as many stories on it as they did on George Allen saying macaca? Will every story about Biden and his resolution against the war have comments about Biden, the man who spoke so demeaningly of Barack Obama? Will this be taken as some sort of verbal expression of what Biden really thinks about blacks? Will reporters tie together these other racist-tinged gaffes that Biden has made and draw some grander generalization? Or will it be laughed off by all the reporters who just think that Joe Biden is such a nice guy?

As Betsy adds, "I think we know the answers to these questions". Sadly, yes.

According to SurveyUSA, Jim Webb's statewide approval ratings in Virginia are 42% approval, 47% disapproval. My Election Analysis adds, "Approval ratings are below 50% in all geographic areas of the state, 45%-44% approval among independents. This stands in stark contrast to other members of Webb’s freshman class, all of whom are still basking in the afterglow of their recent election".

Maybe it was the tacit suggestion to nuke Iraq in his rebuttal to the president's State of the Union address that did it...

Err, no that headline isn't quite what it sounds like at first glance: Austin Bay, host of Pajamas' Blog Week In Review podcast, has an excerpt from his new pamphlet in a recent edition of the L.A. Times.

(Bugmenot works well of course, if you'd like to read the article without registering.)

Some comments on the limits of bipartisanship and cultural sensitivity from Mary Katharine Ham.

Related thoughts from Patterico.

Update: Further cultural sensitivity spotted. Meanwhile, Debbie Schlussel shares polite, sensitive reader mail.

"New York Times public editor Byron Calame (aka The Empty Suit) has publicly admonished the Times’ chief military correspondent, Michael Gordon, for saying he thinks the US can win in Iraq."

Given its publisher's worldview, I'm surprised that the Times' would have a reporter positive about US victory in the first place.

Speaking of anti-war biases and worldviews, here's some background on Richard Engel, the NBC journalist who assembled the report that Glenn Reynolds and Hot Air have linked to.

Update: Heh^TM.

John Podhoretz breaks down Hillary's bizarre statement over the weekend that "The president has said [Iraq] is going to be left to his successor. I think it is the height of irresponsibility, and I really resent it."

(Note the tacit assumption that she resents it because she assumes she'll be that successor. Not to mention the complete discard of the often-expressed concept that the GWOT will be a multi-generational war, much like the Cold War. (As Pappa Podhoretz has written.))

Podhoretz writes that Hillary resentment is "actually an interesting, even thought-provoking, formulation":

It's rare to hear questions about difficult policies discussed in terms of personal resentments, but perhaps this is one of the areas where Hillary Clinton will blaze a new presidential trail.

Imagine, for example, that President Bush had given a speech a few days after 9/11 declaring he really resented the fact that Bill Clinton didn't kill Osama bin Laden before Bush became president.

Or that President Bill Clinton, in the wake of the slaughter of 18 American servicemen in Somalia in 1993, informed Americans about his real resentment of George Bush the Elder, who sent those servicemen into Somalia at the tail end of his administration.

Really Resenting doesn't have to begin and end with foreign policy and military matters. President George Bush the Elder could have made public his profound resentment at the consequences of the Reagan tax-reform bill on the real-estate market, whose crumbling value in the late 1980s led to the recession that helped do Bush the Elder in.

For that matter, Ronald Reagan could have spent 1982 expressing resentment at the recession caused by the necessity of choking off the stagflation of the Carter years. And on it goes.

Now, of course, what Hillary means here is that since Iraq is "Bush's war," it's not cricket of him to let it go on past the conclusion of his presidency. The war is supported by no one but him, its presumed failure is solely his fault and his responsibility - and he should get it off the next president's plate.

Or as Steve Green noted a couple of days ago, Harry Truman must have really resented inheriting World War II from FDR, because in short order, he "nuked the crap out of Japan and brought our boys home already".

Podhoretz notes that that latter element could have been a feature, not a bug, for the early days of the "the most uncompromising wartime President in the history of the United States":

Strange. You might think that if the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq in 2009 is unnecessary, the new president might take great relish in being the person to bring them home immediately. Under those circumstances, Hillary could begin her presidency as a hero, at least to her own voters.

What's more, if the war is going badly during the presidential campaign next year, with troops still in Iraq, the entire campaign will revolve around the question of how soon after Bush leaves office the big Bug Out can commence.

In any case, welcome back to the 1990s, where it's always about Bill and/or Hillary.

(Via Betsy Newmark.)

Wow, maybe it is 1968 all over again: Jack Webb is back, and this time, he's on the side of Truth, Justice, and the Techno-Rapping Way, baby!

Alas, it's not the Blogosphere's Stephen Green. But Radio Equalizer has the full details.

As the old proverb says: Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Give a man a fish recipe named after a murderous communist revolutionary who bizarrely wound up a pop culture T-shirt icon, and he'll post it on Allrecipes.com.

As Glenn Reynolds notes, "It's still 1968. And always will be, apparently." Hey, I understand--my dad hung on to the past with his Crosby records; the geriatric left clings to the past via its Crosby, Stills & Nash records.

In Human Events, Jack Langer writes:

“Hey hey, Uncle Sam! We remember Vietnam!” chanted one former flower child from the stage. The problem is, the youth don’t remember Vietnam. The old radicals are thus trying to entice the young into a movement that revolves around the sacred memory of events in which today’s young people played no part. The youth are essentially being asked to become second-class citizens in this movement, having to bow to the superior wisdom of those who fought the reactionary opposition back when it really mattered.

But the attempt to make the current war into a replay of Vietnam is failing quite dramatically. What’s missing is the key element that provoked many of the old radicals to oppose the Vietnam War in the first place: the draft. It wasn’t really the war per say that a lot of them opposed; it was the prospect of themselves actually having to go fight it. Lacking that impetus, the younger generation seems distinctly unimpressed by the urgency of ending a war fought so soon after the 9/11 attacks.

What do the old radicals have left to offer the youth? Socialism. One can understand the attraction of this credo back in the 1960s, when its American adherents only had the millions of victims of the Soviet regime to contradict their assertion that socialism would provide a positive alternative to capitalism.

But now, we know of the atrocities of a whole new set of postwar socialist regimes in China, Cambodia, Romania, and countless other places -- including Vietnam -- as well as the final collapse of most socialist governments and the turn toward capitalism of nearly all the remaining socialist regimes. Younger activists may have the Iraq War to fight against, but they need something to fight for -- and with socialism, their older role models are not offering them anything appealing.

The '60s radicals say they want a revolution, but how often are revolutions successful without any young people? Trotting out a nervous-looking Jane Fonda -- as the Washington rally organizers did -- may excite the old radicals, but the few younger ones on hand seemed distinctly unimpressed. The attraction of spending hours sculpting giant paper mache puppets and creating makeshift bongos out of water jugs for use in antiwar rallies will only go so far. Without a more creative goal than socialism, the youth are unlikely to follow their aging forebears to the barricades any time soon.

Language such as this is a reminder that there's a whole new way to P.O. dad these days.

While I driving around this afternoon, I caught the tail end of Hugh Hewitt's interview with Minority House Leader John Boehner, and Dean Barnett's call into the show immediately afterward. Over the weekend, Dick Cheney said, "I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican, but it's very hard sometimes to adhere to that where Chuck Hagel is involved". That also applies to Hugh and Dean's immediate reaction to Boehner's recent proposal as well:

What did Boehner do to get us so riled up? Boehner, not wanting to be left in the dust of all this resolution hoo-ha, is proposing a benchmark measuring device that he will put forward in a congressional resolution of his very own. Boehner kept insisting that his only motive in cooking up yet another offering for the already-crowded “Meaningless Resolution Buffet” is to help the White House.

Sensing the implausibility of Boehner’s contention that he was from the Congress and was there to help, Hugh asked Boehner what effect he thought his resolution would have on the enemy. By way of an answer of sorts, Boehner spoke for a while but didn’t address the question.

If Boehner thought Hugh wouldn’t notice that he didn’t answer the question, he had another thing coming. You don’t get those degrees from Michigan Law School at the bottom of a Cracker Jack Box. Hugh asked his question a second time – what effect will the resolution have on the enemy? Again, Boehner spoke for a while without answering the question. Hugh asked a third time. Yet again, Boehner declined to directly answer the question.

SO WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF THIS? Two possible scenarios – one is that Boehner knows damn well what this will do for the enemy and yet he still wants to pass the resolution for political reasons. The other scenario, and frankly I find this one both more likely and more chilling, is that Boehner has never even considered, not for one second, the effect his resolution will have on the enemy. Hugh’s question caught him off guard and without an answer because to him, it seemed like a non-sequitur.

As Dean writes, "Such is the nature of the political vacuum that our politicians dwell in. While Boehner may not have considered what effect his resolution will have in the enemy, I would bet he spent extensive time figuring out what effect it will have on the political landscape".

You can't make it anywhere: Air America loses Santa Cruz, one of Nothern California's twin cities (the other being Berkeley) permanently stuck in 1968.

It has to be a slow news day when this is the current top story on Drudge.

And they're not afraid to use it. Fortunately, they've been "Busted" by Michael Totten, because odds are, the legacy media wouldn't bother to point it out.

(Via Charles Johnson.)

Ed Morrissey explores political graffiti in Washington DC, writing that during Saturday's anti-war anti-Bush protests, the police looked away as government buildings were defaced with spray paint:

The First Amendment does not allow people to deface government property, regardless of their motivation. The police did exactly what they should not do -- made a political decision about enforcing the law instead of holding everyone equally accountable for their actions.

The people have the right to assemble and demonstrate for the widest range of purposes and policies, as long as they do not include incitement to riot, the violent overthrow of the United States, and as long as they obey the law. The police are supposed to maintain order and enforce the law. Having police stand around watching while a crowd deliberately violates the law and damages public property not only allows a mob to offend the community, but also demonstrates a lack of will that only encourages more law-breaking -- if not at this demonstration, then at the next. Regardless of political orientation, the police have to serve as a nonpartisan guard against abuses by unruly mobs, and apparently the Capitol Police are simply not up to the job.

Laughably, the DC police chief tries to paint this as a victory, especially the fact that he roused Capitol Hill workers to clean up the graffiti. A victory would have had the offenders cleaning it up while under arrest. Instead of issuing self-serving rationalizations, Chief Morse ought to issue an apology to Washington DC, and perhaps consider adding his resignation to it.

Sounds good to me; that's an absolutely pathetic performance.

On the other hand, Betsy Newmark argues that, "Of course, what the protestors wanted was just the sort of confrontation that was denied them. In that sense, the policy succeeded". Though she adds, "But have we really reached the point that we must surrender control of federal policy to vandals so that we don't have bad TV pictures of spray-painters getting arrested?"

Much like pre-Giuliani Manhattan, I'd say DC reached that point a long time ago.

In the 1920s, Le Corbusier put himself on the map as an avant-garde architect by famously referring to the home as "the machine for living in". But this machine analogy by Japan’s health minister is in a class of its own!

We frequently decry the business CEO who puts the goal of short-term profits ahead of the long-term viability of his company (see: Penn Central, or Detroit, in the mid-1970s). TigerHawk writes that Democrats desperately want to put short term failure ahead of the long-term viability of the entire nation itself--or at the very least, it's credibility:

New York Senator Chuck Schumer seemed to give away the game -- at least implicitly -- on "Meet the Press." He quite obviously does not want the next election cycle to be "about" Iraq. One gets the sense that this sentiment is even more pronounced among the Democrats who will be vying for their party's presidential nomination. It is easy to see why: the problem of Iraq will be nothing but trouble for leading Democrats. The party activists who hold sway during the primary season will demand that candidates embrace the so-called "anti-war" agenda without reservation, but if Democrats do that too enthusiastically they will remind voters that their party has been all about defeat since 1972. Since none of them want to be caught in that Liebermanesque trap, leading Democrats are desperate for Iraq to be off the table by next fall.

From the perspective of Democratic political strategy, the worst possible result would be partial success -- for conditions in Iraq to improve significantly and palpably, but not decisively. That would guarantee that Iraq would remain a central theme in the 2008 campaign, not just as fodder for attacks on Republican "incompetence," but as a problem to be solved in the future, and that would be a nightmare for the leading Democrats. This is the reason, I believe, why at least some leading Democrats are so obviously willing the surge to fail.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times runs a piece titled, "Was 9/11 really that bad?" with the subhead, "The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting".

In other words, with a flourish of the omnipresent Copperhead Conjuction, it's The Return Of The Son Of Stay Quiet, And You'll Be OK.

Or as Mark Steyn puts it:

The American left has long deplored Bush's rhetorical reliance on such vulgar conceits as "good" and "evil." But it seems even "victory" is a problematic concept, and right now the momentum is all for defeat of one kind or another. America is talking itself into willing a defeat that has not (yet) occurred on the ground, and would be fatally damaging to this nation's credibility if it did. Last year Arthur M. Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times, gave a commencement address of almost parodic boomer narcissism, hailing his own generation for their anti-war idealism. Advocating defeat first time round, John Kerry estimated America might have to relocate a few thousand local allies. As it happens, millions died in Vietnam and Cambodia. And the least the self-absorbed poseurs like Sulzberger could do is occasionally remember that the world is about more than their moral vanity.

The open defeatists on the Democrat side and the nuanced defeatists among "moderate" Republicans seem to think that big countries can choose to lose small wars. After all, say the "realists," Iraq isn't any more important to Americans than Vietnam was. But a realpolitik cynic knows the tactical price of everything and the strategic value of nothing. This is something on an entirely different scale from the 1930s: Seventy years ago, Britain and Europe could not rouse themselves to focus on a looming war; today, we can't rouse ourselves even to focus on a war that's happening right now. Read 100 percent of the Democratic presidential candidates' platforms and a sizeable chunk of the Republicans': We're full of pseudo-energy for phantom crises and ersatz enemies, like "global warming.''

Or as Julia Gorin wrote last year, "Freud called it displacement. People fixate on the environment when they can't deal with real threats".

Arnold Kling writes, "how would history have been different had television been available in the 18th century but not in the 21st century, rather than vice-versa? Second, where does the Internet fit in?":

In the eighteenth century, the newly-independent United States held a Convention in order to bring its Articles of Confederation up to date. This contentious, deliberative process resulted in one of the most significant documents in human history -- our Constitution.

In our century, we have seen attempts at historic Constitutions in the European Union and Iraq that so far have failed. The EU produced a bloated document filled with politically correct phrases embodying an unworkable vision, mercifully not yet ratified due to an outbreak of rebellion by voters in the Netherlands and France. The Iraqi Constitution failed to pacify key interest groups, and as a result it has been shattered by insurgents and armed militias.

What if the Constitutional Convention of the 18th century had been held in the media environment of today? My guess is that the outcome would have been somewhere in between what we have seen in Europe and what we saw in Iraq.

By the same token, had the European Constitution been written in a media environment dominated by the written word, perhaps it would have been a humbler, simpler, more pragmatic document. Perhaps if Iraq were not under the glare of television, the suicide bombers and terrorists would not have nearly as much impact on the public mind, there or in the United States, and the forces of peace could prevail.

The Internet has dramatically accelerated the balkanization of mass culture, a trend which was already beginning in the 1970s. Television and print news are increasingly a medium for the elderly--"newspapers are for people who remember newspapers", as Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff recently wrote. And with Hollywood doing everything it can to diminish its power as the last mass medium, oddly enough, politics, and the shared interest in what comes out of Washington, is one of the last unifying elements of popular culture.

Ruth Wisse explores what she calls the growing "gliberalism" of American universities:

Recent surveys confirm that university faculties have been tilting steadily leftward, but I think it is wrong to assume they have been tilting toward "liberalism" as is commonly assumed. Liberalism worthy of the name emphasizes freedom of the individual, democracy and the rule of law. Liberalism is prepared to fight for those freedoms through constitutional participatory government, and to protect those freedoms, in battle if necessary. What we see on the American campus is not liberalism, but a gutted and gutless "gliberalism," that leaves to others the responsibility for governance, and arrogates to itself the right to criticize. It accepts money from the public purse without assuming reciprocal duties for the public good. Instead of debating public policy in the public arena, faculty says, "I quit," but then continues to draw benefits from the system it will not protect.

The national and international crisis may eventually pull the elite universities into action, but by then, gliberalism will have done its damage.

In I Am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe, through the eyes of his eponymous student from tiny Sparta, NC, famously writes in astonishment at the trend in American universities since the 1970s towards the co-ed bathroom.

If that sounds extreme, consider the movement towards the opposite direction in Aussie campus facilities spotted by Tim Blair:

The successful integration of Muslims into the broader Australian community continues apace:

A row has erupted over Muslim-only washrooms at La Trobe University that can be accessed only with a secret push-button code.

Apparently most Australian universities provide Muslim-only prayer and washrooms for students. Shouldn’t they be called multiversities?

Think of it as a school-sponsored return of Separate But Equal.

Update: More "gliberalism" spotted from a not-at-all surprising source: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But what do they think about Justice Ginsburg's comments at Harvard?

Kirsten Powers writes on "The New Intolerance: Atheism"; Jules Crittenden explores its cozy relationship with a centuries older intolerance: "I’m pretty sure when the Islamic revolution comes, Greek communists don’t get second-class citizen dhimmi status."

Ed Morrissey writes, "There's something about the Davos economic summit that drives American leftists to slam their own country while abroad", first Eason Jordan in 2005 and now this year--shocker!--Senator Kerry. And don't forget Bill Clinton praising Iran's Mullahs for their progressive(!) politics.

And speaking of Senator Kerry, with the 2008 elections looming, Hot Air asks, Batter Up in Massachusetts?

To borrow from Woody Allen in Manhattan, behold: Reuters--the castrating anti-Zionists!

Between Vent, Blog Week In Review, and now Mary Katharine Ham's latest HamNation video, I guess it's multimedia day in the Blogosphere. MKH writes:

The distance between the communities "defended" by environmentalists against development and the communities themselves is often large, both philosophically and literally. Filmmakers and journalists, Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney have made a documentary that highlights these environmental battles and the exaggerations, fibs, and sometimes outright lies that keep some of the world's poorest cultures from developing. "Mine Your Own Business" is an entertaining, moving and sometimes humorous look at a side of the environmental movement we don't often see—the dark side.

McAleer traveled to Rosia Montana, Romania several years ago to cover a story for the Financial Times—the story of Toronto-based mining company Gabriel Resources forcing people from their homes, planning an environmentally destructive mine, and ruining the pristine countryside of that remote Romanian village, all against the wishes of its residents. Only, when he got to Rosia Montana, he found a different story.

"I pretty much found that everything the environmentalists were saying was either false, exaggerated, or just a plain lie," McAleer said in a telephone interview Monday.

Residents told him they had sold their land for good money. Mining company representatives told him they planned to clean pollution left by now-deserted state-run mines that were built before environmental standards were in place and modernize housing and plumbing for residents. Locals told him the pristine rivers were actually running with cadmium and zinc.

Environmentalists claim that 80 percent of the people of Rosia Montana are opposed to the building of the mine. When McAleer and his wife toured the streets and homes of Rosia Montana, they found many who spoke in favor of it, and who wondered why so many outsiders were interested in stopping it (a letter signed by the people of Rosia Montana is here).

As I wrote in 2006:

Last year, Matt Welch described a similar sentiment amongst equally leftwing and reactionary tourists to Cuba:

this common sentiment has always irritated the hell out of me. Oh, the crumbling, no-longer-beautiful houses! Ah, the lovely two-feet-deep potholes, and rickety Chinese bicycles (because the 50-year-old Chevys and 30-year-old Ladas don't work, and at any rate there's no gas). How people can derive pleasure from evidence of the suffering of innocents is beyond me, and few sights are more unseemly to my eyes than seeing a Lonely Planet-waving travel snob whine about how some current or formerly misgoverned hellhole has been "ruined" by all that yucky reconstruction, material success, and (worst of all!) tourism. Oh how pretty! The baseball players make $20 a month, and they live on a prison, but at least there's no annoying electronic scoreboard!

Val Prieto, who frequently blogs on Cuban issues at his own Babalu Blog dubs it "Omnipotent Tourist Syndrome".

Sort of like the propagation of SARS, it appears to be spreading beyond travelers to one nation, into a global meme. And it's worth noting that a variation of it was the dominant theme of the 2002 U.N. Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, where numerous Gulfstream Transnationalists such as California's own Jerry Brown urged--for the sake of the global environment, if not local civilizational ruins--that the Third World remain as backward and shackled as possible.

Recently, the Libertas film blog explored the one-meme-fits-all state of documentaries and wrote:

Brave would be a documenatry filmmaker who took the Jesus Camp approach to Islam; who took the Iraq in Fragments approach to what we’ve done right in Afghanistan and Iraq: who took the Inconvenient Truth approach to extremism in the environmental movement. That would be diverse. That would be provoking. That would be brave.

That would get you blacklisted.

By Hollywood, yes. Fortunately, there are increasing alternatives, a topic explored, coincidentally enough, in this week's Blog Week In Review.

Dude, it's back! The return of Pajamas Media's Blog Week In Review podcast:

Eric Umansky and Glenn Reynolds exchange views on the “shake out” in Web 2.0 start-ups and President Bush’s State of the Union Speech. Are Google and Yahoo gobbling up the Web? Find out. Austin Bay hosts and asks the questions. Ed Driscoll produces. Eric and Austin also discuss the benefits of civilian universal national service.

Brought to you by Volvo USA.

Tune in here.

"Who needs journalism when you've got booty and disco beats?"

Michelle Malkin, whose Hot Air Website produced a series of first class videos shot on location in Iraq, checks in on Big Journalism's state-of-the-art online video efforts.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon's brewing first scandal is dubbed "Ban Ki Panky" by an InstaPundit reader.

Read the whole thing.

In between offering helpful tips to harried air travelers, Robert Bidinotto links to this quote by David Frum:

The day will come, and probably soon, when American liberals and the American left will wake up to the fact that...on domestic issues Bush was "one of us." Much as they disliked Bush's foreign policies, cultural style, and political methods, he actually had more in common with them on domestic issues than he did with his own political base.

Wouldn't be the first time that's happened.

I guess this means that nobody can accuse James Webb as being soft on terror.

Update: Related thoughts from TigerHawk. Meanwhile, does this imply that Webb's tacit threat is working?

(Nahh, probably not.)

I missed this when it first ran, but it's a nifty piece of video journalism about an increasingly rare newspaper editor--a brave one:

Flemming Rose is an author and the cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. He is the man principally responsible for the publication of the notorious Mohammed cartoons in that paper last year. On a recent visit to Washington DC, he spoke with Pajamas Media Washington editor Richard Miniter about the reality behind that controversy and its implications for Europe today.

If you missed it as well, click in and watch.

This report sounds like something Scrappleface would have written. But apparently, it's true, and if so, it proves, once again, Malcolm Muggeridge's immutable law: there is no way for satire to best reality for sheer absurdity:

SHANGHAI -- Next month, China will ring in the Year of the Pig. Nestlé SA planned to celebrate with TV ads featuring a smiling cartoon pig. "Happy new pig year," the ads said.

This week, China Central Television, the national state-run TV network, banned Nestlé's ad -- and all images and spoken references to the animal in commercials, including those tied to the Lunar New Year, China's biggest holiday.

The intent: to avoid offending Muslims, who consider pigs unclean. "China is a multiethnic country," the network's ad department said in a notice sent to ad agencies late Tuesday. "To show respect to Islam, and upon guidance from higher levels of the government, CCTV will keep any 'pig' images off the TV screen."

Suddenly, companies reaching out to China's booming consumer market have a pig problem. The edict has sent Nestlé and others [including Coca-Cola, apparently--Ed] scrambling to adapt to the last-minute rule change, altering spots that had included pigs.

Nestlé is now figuring out what to do with its ads, says its media-buying company MindShare, a unit of WPP Group. "We act in line with any requests that we receive from the authorities" about the content of ads, says Francois-Xavier Perroud, a spokesman for Nestlé.

Fortunately, one man is not afraid to keep his pigs flying!

Or, the Winter Soldier in winter: Senator Kerry apparently won't be running in 2008.

Jim Geraghty is certainly disconsolate.