Bob Hope once introduced comedian Mort Sahl (the thinking man's Woody Allen!) at the Academy Awards by saying "Here he is folks, the favorite of nuclear physicists everywhere!"
Similarly, based on his choice of footwear, Ron Paul--the thinking man's Pat Paulsen--definitely has the all-important American gym teacher vote all sewn-up.
Rather than a pair of black sneakers, Ron might have better odds in a slightly more upscale pair of kicks such as these. However, despite his shabby shodding, the Ron Paul boomlet could be catching--I actually saw a car parked at the Marie Callender's restaurant just outside of San Jose with not one, but two Ron Paul bumperstickers in its rear window.
No word yet on which phys. ed. class its owner teaches.
According to Rolling Stone, CD sales are in rough shape this year:
Overall CD sales have plummeted sixteen percent for the year so far — and that’s after seven years of near-constant erosion. In the face of widespread piracy, consumers’ growing preference for low-profit-margin digital singles over albums, and other woes, the record business has plunged into a historic decline.Libertas's "Dirty Harry" surveys the wreckage and wonders why Rolling Stone is willing to blame everything but the low overall quality of major label music itself.
And speaking of which, England's Telegraph spots a genre of the music industry whose sales have plumetted at double the rate of the overall CD market:
In 2006, rap sold 59.1 million albums, down 21 per cent from 2005. Not one rap album made the American top 10 sellers of the year - a list headed by the saccharine tunes of the soundtrack to Disney's made-for-television High School Musical. The bad boys of rap are now trailing the cowboys of country and the headbangers of heavy metal.If the mid-to-late 20th century is any guide, popular music in general, and black music in particular seems to undergo major self-immolations every few decades on a regular basis. In the 1940s, Miles, Dizzy, Bird and Charlie Christian used their Manhattan nightclubs as a laboratory to invent bebop, eventually killing the swing orchestras dead in their tracks. While bebop and its offshoots produced some brilliant music, by and large, it wasn't a genre you could easily dance to. Which is why, as Mark Gauvreau Judge wrote in 2000's If It Ain't Got That Swing, the teenagers of the 1950s found an alternative: rock and roll. A few years later, Berry Gordy's Motown borrowed from the assembly lines--not Detroit's, but Hollywood's--and adapted Tinseltown's studio system approach to music, and produced hit after hit.Since rap's apotheosis five years ago, when Eminem's album The Eminem Show topped the American charts with 7.6 million sales, no rapper has come close to emulating his success.
Rap has been deserted by many white fans and middle-class blacks, apparently tiring of the "gangsta" attitude to women, racism, violence and bling - the gold rings and medallions that have made hip-hop a byword for -vulgarity.
"The public has made a choice. They're saying, 'We do not want the nonsense that we see and hear on radio, and we are not putting our money there'," said KRS-One, a rap legend from the Bronx. "Rap music is being boycotted by the American public because of the images that we are putting forward."
One of the reasons why both bebop and rock succeeded was that it required less musicians than the large swing orchestras. And somewhat similar to the demise of swing jazz, the singers, producers, tunesmiths and studio musicians of 1960s Motown and its '70s offshoots such as Philadelphia’s soul studios--and of course, disco--were replaced by rap's turntables, drum machines and sampling.
But rap took off over 25 years ago (with a sneak preview provided in 1970 by the Last Poets' cameo on the soundtrack of 1970's Performance), and that genre has also played itself out. I don't know what comes next, but I'd like to see a move back to quality songwriting, melodies and musicianship--and infinitely less misogyny. Of course, like the film industry and network TV, it may just be that popular music as a commercial force is another holdover from the era of mass media, and going forward will face increasing difficulties competing in the era of the Long Tail.
In any case, with rap, rock and pop all deep in the doldrums, I'm quite happy to roll my own, as it were.
Because, clearly, that epithet is reserved for only one man on the world scene. But as Noel Sheppard writes:
I’m not sure what derangement syndrome Bill Moyers is currently suffering from [I'd call it this--Ed], but on Friday’s “Bill Moyers Journal” broadcast on PBS, the outspoken host went into an invective-filled tirade about media tycoon Rupert Murdoch that frankly was one of the most disgraceful exhibitions of liberal bias so far this year.How can you? Real life always trumps satire for its sheer absurdity.In his closing monologue, Moyers compared Murdoch to the Marquis de Sade, Imelda Marcos, and Satan himself.
I kid you not.
Speaking of which, apparently AP stands for Ad-Hominem Press these days.
Surprisingly found in the L.A. Times, there's a good column by Meghan Daum titled "Who killed Antioch? Womyn":
Bard College President Leon Botstein (who in the 1970s was president of the seriously far-out and short-lived Franconia College) came down hard on what he sees as a failure of liberals to support their institutions.Last year, Mark Steyn wrote, "unless they change, the academy will risk becoming a kook fringe unsupported by either party, increasingly abandoned by parents, and less and less able to justify their huge public subsidies"."One of the tragedies of the progressive liberal movement," Botstein said, "is that unlike at a conservative institution — such as Princeton or Dartmouth, where the alumni are deeply loyal and give it support and money — for liberals, higher education is not a strong enough cause. Their causes are social causes, and higher education is left for the conservatives to fund."
Whether or not contemporary Princeton or Dartmouth can fairly be characterized as conservative (though, admittedly, you have to declare a major at these places, and it can't be in roach-clip design), Botstein makes a good point. He also conjectured that Antioch, which he called "the founding college of the American progressive movement," had been "killed" by, among other things, its own liberalism.
Botstein's not totally wrong, but as members of his baby boom generation are apt to do, he equates "liberalism" and liberals with the demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s, including a six-week campus strike in 1973 during which students firebombed buildings to protest racial inequality at the school. But it was the next iteration of liberal excess that really did the place in. To later generations, Antioch is famous for one thing: its Sexual Offense Prevention Policy.
In 1993, it suddenly became national news that Antioch required anyone engaging in sexual activity on campus to ask for and grant permission throughout every step of the encounter. Conceived by a group called Womyn of Antioch, the policy stipulated that consent could not be granted through body movements, nonverbal responses or silence. Furthermore, it stated that "consent is required each and every time there is sexual activity" and that "each new level of sexual activity requires consent." Translation: dorm room make-out sessions were being punctuated by steamy questions like, "May I kiss you now?", "May I remove your (Che Guevara) T-shirt now?" and "May I … " (you get the idea).
Admittedly, this was the early '90s, a time when many liberal arts campuses were so awash in the hysteria of political correctness that it seemed entirely possible a lamppost could commit date rape. But the attention to the Antioch policy, which got as far as a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, not only came to symbolize the infantilizing dogma of the new left, it turned an already obscure college into a laughingstock.
Leftwing ideology becomes more and more oppressive as its policies moves away from the center, needless to say. America's Blue States have their own PC issues--in their case, punitive taxation, anti-family and anti-business policies--have had net population declines. And so too have the "liberals in a hurry" at Antioch demonstrated once again, that when it comes to the socialist eschaton, if you build it, they will leave.
Once someone shines a light on it, campus PC insanity is self-satirizing, of course. It would be perfect material for a documentary, we're an ambitious film maker so inclined...
Charles Johnson has photos, and Hot Air has an ongoing round-up. As Tim Blair would say, at least initially, it sounds like yet another example of Presbyterian terrorism.
Update: Video here.
10,000 geeks will look at this video clip and think: "Man, I'm glad we Windows / Star Wars / Star Trek / furgasm fans aren't as crazed as these guys":
Online Videos by Veoh.com
(Triumph could have had a field day in this line, incidentally.)
Austin Bay interviews Thom Shanker, Pentagon correspondent for the New York Times in this week's Blog Week In Review podcast, over at the Pajamas Media mothership.
"Now, I’m saying to myself, wait a minute, you call into a program that no one watches, alright...I’m giving you a forum where ten million people on radio and TV are going to see it and you say no."
Greg Gutfeld writes that today's foiled London bombing attempt is very much a teachable moment.
Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg explores "Dogs That Don't Bark"--and needless to say, he doesn't mean his faithful sidekick Cosmo.
Police defused an explosive device found in a parked car in central London on Friday, and the new government called an emergency meeting of senior security chiefs to investigate what many feared could have been a planned terror attack.(H/T: CWA-NJ)Police said the car—parked near busy Piccadilly Circus—contained a "potentially viable explosive device" but would not give further details.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who took office on Wednesday, said the incident was a reminder that Britain faces "a serious and continuous threat" and the "need to be alert."
"I will stress to the Cabinet that the vigilance must be maintained over the next few days," Brown said.
The incident comes a week before the second anniversary of the July 7 London bombings, when four British Muslim suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 bus and subway passengers.
"CNN Contributor on Ann Coulter: ‘At Some Point, You Have to Punch the Bully in the Mouth’"
Of course, there are several bullies CNN have always been happy to buddy up with.
Cost:
DV tape cassette: $4.95
12 pack of Diet Coke: $3.95
Confusing the hell out of the WSJ? Priceless.
As I wrote a couple of hours ago:
Speaking of Big Media, oh to be a fly on the wall in this newspaper's editorial boardroom.Today, the Journal writes, "Just who sponsors Hot Air’s ad, and other similar ads popping up across the Internet, is unclear".
Allah highlights their multimillion dollar production values; Mickey Kaus could not be reached for comment.
Update: "Maybe it will help the WSJ to be owned by Murdoch". Heh--but don't tell these guys that.
Just got off the phone with Andrew Breitbart, Liz Stephans and Scott Baker on the nuts and bolts of Breitbart.TV and video hosting in general for an upcoming article. They also alerted me to their 18 minute video interview with Drew Curtis of Fark.com on his new book, It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News. And lord knows there's plenty of that.
Here's Jim Geraghty on May 18th:
Two words for anybody who thinks this immigration bill is a done deal, and there's no way enough opposition builds:As Glenn Reynolds writes, "Score One For Alt-Media: Immigration bill fails".Harriet Miers.
Mark Krikorian looks at all of the forces that Alt Media was up against:
Today's defeat of the Senate amnesty bill was more than a run-of-the-mill legislative victory, representing as it did a self-organizing public's defeat of combined force of Big Business, (some of) Big Labor, Big Media, Big Religion, Big Philanthropy, Big Academia, and Big Government.Speaking of Big Media, oh to be a fly on the wall in this newspaper's editorial boardroom.
Update: Welcome Jim Geraghty's Kerry, Hillary Campaign Spot readers! Please look around; there's sure to be a few other things here you'll also enjoy.
"With virtually no warning, the Islamic Regime declared gas rationing in oil-rich Iran, sparking furious protests across the country — and Pajamas Media has video of the angry crowds setting gas stations on fire".
CBS runs to daylight and makes victims out of aging former NFL gladiators. As an Opinion Journal piece back in February noted, look for more of these stories; "Noticeably absent from this debate is any discussion about the personal responsibility these players bear for their post-career conditions".
But if the networks truly cared, shouldn't they simply drop all NFL coverage? Sure, it would accelerate the speed of TV's ongoing ratings collapse a hundred-fold. But the money created by television advertising is what inspires NFL players to punish their bodies during what they hope will be long, multimillion dollar careers. Aren't the networks enablers themselves, if they continue to air their abusers’ video?
And if television doesn't put a stop to this voluntarily, then all I can say is: C’mon Congress: your next ban on free speech awaits!
(And yes, I'm taking absurdity to its natural conclusion; like a lot of guys, pro football is one of the few remaining network shows I still regularly tune into.)
Fresh off their article titled, "Hollywood's Hope For Record Summer Fades", Reuters brings yet more news of fresh disaster in the legacy media world: "Networks hit new lows in grim weekly ratings".
Here's are two reasons why: one is technological. The other is sociological. Combine them, and it's perfect storm for TV.
Rick Moran links to John Leo's City Journal essay regarding Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam's study on immigration and multiculturalism. Leo's article, and others on Putnam's findings have been making the rounds in the Blogosphere, but Moran concentrates on the professor's fear that he may have commited one seriously doubleplusungood thoughtcrime:
Rather than look at the study, I am more intrigued with the Professor’s hand wringing over the fact that his work tends to knock the chocks from underneath a pillar of leftist thinking; that by pigeonholing Americans and recent arrivals into their own special group while encouraging a separateness based on culture and language, tolerance and acceptance will automatically follow in the country at large. This has been an article of faith on left for 30 years. It has affected school curricula for children as young as pre-schoolers on up through the speech codes and diversity mandates found in the finest institutions of higher learning in the land.As they say in Eurasia (or is it Eastasia?), read the whole thing.And rather than accomplish anything, it has made things worse.
Dean Barnett writes:
I don’t claim to be an aficionado of arcane Hardball facts, but until yesterday I was not aware it was a call-in show. If I knew it was, I would have called in many times in the past to offer Chris Matthews some constructive criticism, e.g. limit yourself to 20 Red Bulls a day.Meanwhile, Tammy Bruce notes another example of Edwards' use of his wife to deflect attention away from his stance on what could be a particularly thorny issue for his putative campaign.How did Elizabeth Edwards have a call in number handy when to the rest of the viewing public’s knowledge no such number existed? A cynical individual might conclude that there was nothing spontaneous about Ms. Edwards’ outrage whatsoever, and that the whole incident was a big set-up co-hatched by the creative minds at Hardball and the Edwards Campaign.
Elsewhere, Chris Matthews displays his overt conservative bias by comparing Republicans to Burt Reynolds in his classic leading man heyday....
Byron York has a great post on how the Web has helped to shine a light on the shady backroom machinations to get the amnesty immigration bill passed:
Here’s something new. The first true Internet-Age presidential campaign was in 2004. The first major Internet-Age Supreme Court nomination was Harriet Miers, in 2005. Now, in 2007, we’ve got what is arguably the first truly major down-and-dirty Roberts-rules-of-disorder parliamentary battle fought under the searchlight of the blogs."Masters of the Universe" tend to have a fairly short-lived stay on Mount Olympus. Certainly, nobody's used that title to describe bond traders in a long, long time.The Internet was critical to the immigration bill’s first failure. If not for the blogs, the bill’s deceits and flaws would not have been so well or quickly exposed, and "comprehensive reform" would probably otherwise have passed within a couple of days. Now we’re at yet another new level. The public is being exposed to a basket of legislative tricks–of a sort that are rare in any case, and surely of a kind that have never been subjected to mass and rapid-fire public exposure. The undemocratic character of all that is happening here is being conveyed to the public in short order and with clarity–often through the medium of Senate aides themselves.
Do the Senators now called "Masters of the Universe" understand this? Presumably, senate aides, who certainly read the blogs, have communicated to their senators how dangerous it is to be exposed in this fashion. But maybe some senators still don’t get it. They seem to think they can get away with backroom maneuvers in an era when blogs are serving as virtual fly-on-the-wall cloakroom cameras.
Earlier today, in "Off the Table," I argued that passing this bill is not going to make the immigration issue go away. On the contrary, the blogs-eye-view we’re getting of all this sausage making is going to be frozen in the public memory for a very long time. It’s going to inspire new campaigns, and it’s going to haunt the Masters of the Universe–and the Amnesty 8, too. I still don’t think they quite realize this. In fact, the Masters’ false belief that quickly passing this bill is going to somehow get this issue off of their backs is the method behind this their deceptive madness. They don’t seem to realize that they’ve already been caught with their pants down.
Update: "I have only my intuition to go on. My intuition tells me that it is impossible to be cynical enough about what is transpiring here".
In City Journal, Nicole Gelinas reviews Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, by Benjamin R. Barber:
Somewhere in Consumed, Benjamin Barber, a civil-society professor at the University of Maryland and the author of the 1995 book Jihad vs. McWorld, has a serious point to make: many Americans have opted out of a common civic culture based on shared values and have turned inward instead, to a relentless, infantile narcissism that free markets only encourage. But Barber can never quite grasp this point in his own book, or make practical suggestions on how to deal with the problem. Instead, he wildly overreaches and couches everything he writes in apocalyptic terms.For the flipside of Barber's argument, one that has been made frequently by a surprisingly puritanical left probably even before Peter Seeger and Malvina Reynolds' ticky-tacky-screedy "Little Boxes" singalong, it's worth rereading Virginia Postrel's The Substance of Style.
Reuters reports:
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - April's rosy forecast that Hollywood would reap a record $4 billion at the box office this summer has been replaced by hopes of merely keeping pace with 2006 as Friday's midpoint of the season nears.And subtract the first, eagerly awaited Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, 2006 wouldn't have been any great shakes either, of course.
"It's an Odd World", Kathryn Jean Lopez writes, "where the Village Voice goes after you (Rudy) for not being Catholic enough ('he's on the outs with God') while you get a standing ovation at a Christan college".
I think Bob Parks is safe if the left succeeds in reviving the "Fairness Doctrine"--cross-cutting Al Gore's words on Iraq from today and the 1990s certainly has all sides of the issue covered:
(Via Tim Blair.)
Found via Libertas, Gay Patriot spots a blatant example of a so-called "objective" MSM shifting from reporting to cheerleading:
For those of who want to speak out on politics, movies and whatever, it’s sad to see the success of someone who has based his entire career on distorting the facts, pulling quotes out of context and otherwise misrepresenting his adversaries. But, then again, what he does is little different from what many left-wing bloggers (and even some on the right) do every day. Indeed, we see it frequently in the comments section of this blog, coming from both sides, but more often from our critics than our supporters.And note that by and large, Moore's critics aren't the people who actually are film critics--as they too, at least since Pauline Kael's gone off to the great matinee in the sky, function much like a high school pep squad whenever a new Moore film is released.If the MSM were truly devoted to portraying things as they are, instead of heralding Michael Moore, they would treat him as they do right-wing propagandists. They would note his many deceptions and wonder at his success.
It’s a sad sign for our country that such a hateful and dishonest man has achieved such prominence. But, then again, his success gives his critics the opportunity to take issue with his lies and address the real issues at hand.
Meanwhile, Brent Bozell spots an even more brazen example of MSM cheerleading:
You could add together all the contributions to liberals uncovered in this MSNBC report and still they pale in size compared to the donation about to be made to the political left by MSNBC’s parent, NBC Universal.Especially because, in addition to the money that reporters routinely donate to politicians on the left, their employers throw even larger sums at environmental causes.On July 7, Dedman’s employers at NBC Universal are launching a massive extravaganza, 75 hours devoted to coverage of Al Gore’s Live Earth "climate crisis" concerts on all seven continents (including some British scientists jamming in Antarctica, presumably going for that ever-elusive Penguin Vote).
In addition to devoting the entirety of NBC’s Saturday prime-time hours to this Gorestock, hosted by Ann Curry of NBC News, there will be seven hours on CNBC, 18 hours on Bravo, 22 hours on both the Sundance Channel and the Universal HD channel, and three hours combined on Telemundo and Telemundo 2. On top of that, NBC’s press release added that "MSNBC will broadcast special coverage of this global concert event throughout the day with live reports from the concerts in New York and London."
It’s an enormous in-kind campaign contribution. Can you imagine how many millions of dollars this 75 hours of air time would cost a billionaire politico like Ross Perot if he tried to buy it? But NBC is just giving it away to Al Gore, even as liberals press him to run for president in 2008. "NBC Universal is proud to be the exclusive U.S. broadcaster of this historic television event," said Jeff Gaspin, the president of NBC Universal’s cable and digital content. This concert’s "historic" status is certainly multiplied up by all the hours and hours of free publicity.
Have NBC executives convinced themselves, a la Randy Cohen, that Al Gore’s concerts are really "nonpartisan"? If so, they’re not reading the press accounts. In Rolling Stone, Live Earth organizer Kevin Wall is saying the concert will press their demands: "no more f—ing excuses...No more coal-fired energy plants can be built. Three percent a year reduction in carbon emissions in all industrialized nations...We have to mobilize an army, and that’s what we’re about to start doing."
These nostalgic corporate "global citizens" at NBC are not in the news gathering business. Rather, they are looking to make the news by creating the next Woodstock, and the leftist utopia always looming around the corner in their minds. It is impossible to defend as non-ideological an agenda that mobilizes "an army" for Al Gore to put a big government-enforced dent in our energy use.
In and of itself, I have no problem with any of this, as long as it's disclosed to the public, so they understand that what they're seeing is largely political grandstanding. But too many in the MSM who still blindly claim to be objective are instead holding on to talking points born in the 1920s and badly in need of updating for a new century with infinitely more media diversity.
I had a friend from New York email a link to a Columbia Journalism Review article written in full Murdoch Derangement Mode incensed that Rupert Murdoch is defending himself against being smeared by the New York Times (also in full Murdoch Derangement Mode). As I wrote back (and I believe somebody already suggested this in NRO's Corner) I'm fine with Murdoch owning the Wall Street Journal. As long as the Page 3 girls will be illustrated in that familiar wood-carved line drawing style that the Journal has historically used.
Call my priorities woefully misplaced, but this, on the other hand, I'm a little more concerned about. Though not at all surprised; especially after Reuters' Picture Kill trainwreck last year.
Just kidding about that headline. But no one could accuse James Lileks of kidding around when he writes, "Nothing quickens the pulse like a fresh, aromatic" new study--and fortunately he's got one!
According to a new Coors Light survey of Minneapolis men, ages 21-44, more than 75 percent would rather have air conditioning in their homes than win a date with a supermodel . . .No. When it comes to serious babe magnets, there is another.This seems to make no sense, but it’s probably true. The air conditioning unit would stick around and do something, and the supermodel would sit there looking bored smoking cigarettes and texting friends in Monaco while you decided whether to put on the Macy Gray or the Green Day record. On the other hand, it’s easier to get a supermodel in the a window than an air conditioning unit; tell her Karl Lagerfeld is in the parking lot below, and she’ll lean right out.
Sidney Pollack, the director of Havana (and numerous, not to mention, better movies) on Fidel Castro:
Castro lost his mind a long time ago. He's a dictator. He started out like a lot of them with probably genuinely good impulses to create a revolution that was fair and then he got in power and look what he did.Or as fellow Hollywood denizen Peter Mehlman wrote over the weekend:
You could argue that even the world's worst fascist dictators at least meant well. They honestly thought were doing good things for their countries by suppressing blacks/eliminating Jews/eradicating free enterprise/repressing individual thought/killing off rivals/invading neighbors, etc. Only the Saudi royal family is driven by the same motives as Bush, but they were already entrenched. Bush set a new precedent. He came into office with the attitude of "I'm so tired of the public good. What about my good? What about my rich friends' good?"Fortunately, the Daily Gut has a running tally, "For those of you keeping score at home, here's a partial list (in no particular order) of leaders who have meant or mean well":How can anyone not see it? It's not that their policies have been misguided or haven't played out right. They. Don't. Even. Mean. Well.
HitlerMao obviously meant well, especially when he has Hollywood admirers ranging from the Godfather-era Francis Ford Coppola to Shrek's sweetheart, Cameron Diaz.
Stalin
Lenin
Mao
Big Kim and Li'l Kim
Castro
The Khmer Rouge
Ceausescu
The Taliban
Saddam
Ayatollah Khomeini
AhmedinejadI'll take an incompetent leader over one who means well any day!
The thing about Mehlman's column is it lays out the central tenet of lefty thought: All that matters is that you mean well.
In the 1940s and '50s many lefties (including some if not all of the Hollywood Ten) were apologists for Stalin? Who cares - they were "idealists" who meant well.
Decades of welfare programs actually hurt the already poor and and caused more to join them? Doesn't matter - we meant well.
Ted Kennedy is directly responsible for a young woman's death? Water under the bridge - he means well.
Carter's weakness made the US a laughingstock and emboldened the Iranians to kidnap Americans? Hey, c'mon, the man's practically a saint - he meant well.
Clinton's lack of response to terrorist aggression laid the groundwork for 9/11? That's okay - he meant well.
The UN is a corrupt friend to dictators that does nothing to stop mass slaughter, human rights abuses, and genocide? No biggee - it's a noble ideal and we support it because we mean well.
Pretending there are two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when one side glorifies suicide bombers, rejoices when America is attacked, and can't even keep from fighting and killing amongst themselves? Sure - because we mean well.
Amnesty International equates Gitmo with Soviet-era gulags? Why not - they mean well.
Giving credence to nitwits with double-digit IQs who think the Bush administration had a hand in the 9/11 attacks? Of course - they're just "questioning authority," which makes them patriots who mean well.
Depending upon which California newspaper you read, "Global Warming and Environmentalists Blamed for Lake Tahoe Wildfires".
Hot Air has an extensive round-up; Stanley Kurtz wonders how a bill with such low poll numbers (something like 25 percent of those polled actively support it) could pass. Will Congress derail it?
Update: Even if they do, Dean Barnett writes that he's "outraged": "What the Republican Senate and the Bush admninistration have done is hardly forgivable, even if the House Republicans save them from their stupidity".
More: "Has Bush Squandered the Last of His Political Capital on Immigration?"
Elsewhere, one of Mickey Kaus's readers speculates that the cloture vote is merely C-Span Kabuki:
I think the first cloture vote is now itself possibly becoming a sort of kabuki for some senators, like Burr and Bond, as they will vote to proceed today to impress the leadership and the Grand Bargainers, in hopes of keeping their relationships decent with them for future favors. These guys can afford, they calculate, to vote for cloture today, knowing they can still filibuster it on the second cloture vote. (I think the message has been gotten by most that a traditional kabuki move of voting for cloture and against the bill won't work anymore.)I think that's a remarkably safe bet to occur.So this raises an absolutely critical question: what will happen between a vote to proceed today and the next cloture vote? The outrage and pressure, mainly from the right, will have to triple.
One of many amazing passages from Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man. To very slightly paraphrase Michael Herr: simple surfaces, long reverberations:
For years now, Roosevelt had been reading Duranty in the New York Times on Russia. The godlessness troubled him--the purge of the churches. He told Perkins about his meetings with Maxim Litvinov the Soviet envoy. “Well now, Max, you know what I mean by religion. You know what religion gives a man. You know the difference between the religious and the irreligious person.” He went on: Look here, sometime you are going to die, Max, and when you die, you are going to remember your old father and mother—good, pious Jewish people who believed in God and taught you to pray to God.” Roosevelt told Litvinov that religious freedom was important if the the United States was to recognize the Bolsheviks, and he told Perkins he thought he had made an impression on Litvinov.More from Shlaes, here.
Well to be fair, the nation does have quite a bit of prior experience in regards to mixing a "progressive" post-Christian cult-like pagan religion with made-up pseudo-science; best to cut them some slack on this one.
And incidentally, given the inevitable comparisons the film is sure to draw if it is completed, did Peter Mehlman do any work on its screenplay?
Update: Allison Kaplan Sommer links to Defamer:
There are suspicions that the decision was based “on an early treatment developed by Cruise, in which his von Stauffenberg character attempts to slowly kill Hitler by depriving him of the many self-actualizing services offered by Scientology, causing the Fuhrer to die from the despair of knowing he’d never reach his potential as a fully clear leader without the help of daily auditing sessions.”So it's Downfall meets Battlefield: Earth, I guess. The Color of Reichsmarks.
Mark Steyn writes:
Far away at the back of my mind, I still remember the Rushdie of the 1980s - reflexively leftist, anti-Thatcher, the works. The old line – a neoconservative is a liberal who’s been mugged - goes tenfold for him. He’s not just a liberal mugged by reality; he’s a liberal whom reality has spent the last 13 years trying to kill.Long off the Peace Train, The Artist Formerly Known As Cat is very much up for the job.
So far, I've managed to avoid all of the Hollywood rat movies. I can handle Mickey Mouse, because as Tinseltown rodentia goes, he's gotten by far the best PR during the 20th century. But I've skipped Ben and Willard--and the latter's recent remake, needless to say. I've skipped King Rat, with George Segal and Denholm Elliott. I don't think I've seen the original Ocean's 11 all the way through, either--or any of the other Rat Pack movies, for that matter. While I've been planning to keep the streak alive by avoiding Pixar's Ratatouille simply on principle's sake, I've stumbled across yet another reason to sit it out.
(Of course, I probably would have watched it in the 1990s. It wasn't very hip to protest Hollywood back then.)
Don Surber writes:
The British princes join that American prince, Albert Gore, in saving the planet by living life to the hilt, spewing carbon dioxide and various pollutants into the atmosphere in order to save the planet from global cooling.I am fully prepared to do my part in this battle as well with as much binge travel as possible.
And I'm not alone: thousands of jet setters, not to mention dozens of THE HOTTEST ROCK STARS! will also Fight The Cooling come next month.
Or perhaps it's the daily post surveying the crazed fringe. In any case, Robyn Blumner of The Columbus Dispatch is in high dudgeon mode about those mean, mean Men In Black:
Often you can sum up the collective actions of the Supreme Court under a particular chief justice with one word. The Warren Court always will be remembered as liberal, the Burger Court as pragmatic and the Rehnquist Court as conservative. The Roberts Court in its short tenure has already earned the moniker mean.Funny, I've never confused Clarence Thomas with Roland Freisler myself, but I guess that's just my own naiveté.The addition of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito to the heartless duo of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas has cemented a plurality for cruelty. If there's a choice between casting a lot for the little guy or putting a foot on his throat, it's a safe bet that these four will put on their jackboots.
Neo-Neocon explores "The unintended consequences of teaching expurgated history":
In my day, what was left out was anything that was too complex, and also anything that conflicted with the perception of America as a righteous and near-perfect place—which included any personal foibles and imperfections of the Founding Fathers (and of course, anything remotely related to sex). What’s left out today is anything that isn’t politically correct on either side (which of course is virtually everything of truth) and anything that might make the US look good (I’m engaging in only a slight bit of hyperbole there, I’m afraid).In his latest essay, Mark Steyn explores how this sort of collective self-lobotomization can cripple a society: "It seems Her Majesty's Government in London was taken entirely by surprise by the scenes of burning Union Jacks on the evening news" as a result of the Queen knighting Salman Rushdie.In short, anything of interest is left out, as well as anything that would meaningfully connect the teaching of history with the problems we are facing today—which would be what would make it most interesting and most helpful.
The consequences of putting history into a blender and turning it into bland, featureless, and easily digestible pap is not just having students who are bored to tears, although that would be bad enough. Nor is it just that history textbooks now have a strong bias on the Left, although that isn’t a good thing either. The worst effect is that such an approach to the teaching of history creates an ignorant and naive populace that is even more condemned than would otherwise be the case to repeat history’s errors.
I’m convinced, for example, that failure to properly teach the history of the wars that we have fought in the past—their complications, controversies, and errors, as well as what led to them and what was accomplished by them—has led to unrealistic and simplistic expectations of warfare itself.
And, come to think of it, perhaps this is not an unintended consequence; it’s possible that the current overarching Leftist bias of the writers of today’s textbooks include a pacifist agenda, of which this is part.
"When we say that Congress lacks credibility, this is what we mean. When was the last time Congress worked so hard to pass legislation that so few supported, so many of which supported it because it won't work, and whose opponents hated it so badly? Certainly not within my memory".
Here are two of them (or four, depending upon how you do the math):
In contrast to Rudy Giuliani, who managed to clean up the porno-infested Times Square, Mayor Mike's Manhattan manages to have things uncovered from top to bottom.
"By the way, the image at the top of this post is of a real HDNet promotion for Dan Rather. Who needs PhotoShop!"
"Sea, sand and sunshine make Paignton the queen of the English Riviera. But for the next six months this sleepy Devonshire resort will be transformed into the blizzard-swept wastes of the South Pole. For today shooting starts on the epic