(Sorry, one of my favorite Simpsons quotes.) They're also still happily voting Democrat, of course, and contributing in large quantities to both parties.

I blame the zombies.

Austin Bay writes shares his adventures in attempting to watch the Cowboys-Packers game, which was only available on the NFL Network, a channel many cable companies have yet to include in their line-ups:

Thursday around noon: Richard proposed we meet at a sports bar — Third Base, on Sixth Street near MoPac. Sounded fine to me, I’d never been there but I told him the place’ll be packed. We need an infiltration plan with a seize and hold objective. Richard said he’d get there at 6:30 pm. I said I could get there about 7:15 because I had to meet my wife downtown at a Rice University graduate get-together in our favorite Austin, Texas coffee shop, Halcyon. Cool deal.

Except Richard called me on my cell at 6:20 and said the line at Third Base already extended into the parking lot. Nix on Third Base (…a vague suggestion of Abbott and Costello…). My wife suggested I walk around the corner from Halcyon to a bar on Lavaca Street and see if that establishment had the NFL Channel. Indeed the bar did have the channel, but it also had a not-quite elbow to elbow crowd and no open seats or tables to seize and hold.

I phoned Richard and laid out a Yeats’ allusion: “This is no place for old men…who can’t stand up for three hours.”

Richard said to come by his house and we’d watch the game on his super Mac. I trundled in about 7:45 PM and we sat down to watch the game on the computer.

Internet stutter galore, occasionally interrupted by total freeze. Richard decided that NFL.com’s server was overloaded. We followed the game for a quarter-plus via the “game tracker” screen. For those who haven’t seen one, it’s a small football field where the line of scrimmage moves across the screen as the game progresses. You also get written commentary on the plays.

Well, you get what you pay for, or in this case don’t pay for.

Hopefully things will be easier when we move into a Web 50.0 world--rapidly becoming a necessity as total time spent online ratchets up exponentially. (Thus explaining the corresponding Red Queen's Race to the bottom that’s simultaneously occurring in several competing legacy media.)

As I've said a couple of times before, Helen Thomas stays in the front row of White House press conferences for only one reason: to make it so easy for presidential press secretaries to shine as they score points off her endless screeds.

Update: Ian Schwartz has the video of Perino's TKO of Thomas.

In case you missed it, yesterday's show on XM satellite radio's POTUS '08 channel is available for downloading here. Pretty nifty line-up, too:

Join host Bill Bradley for thoughts on yesterday's GOP YouTube/CNN debate, plus:

Pajamas CEO Roger L. Simon and Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee interview Sen. Fred Thompson regarding the future of America's War On Terror.

Should Thompson not get the nomination, Ed Morrissey and Duane Patterson (producer of The Hugh Hewitt Show) discuss his chances as a GOP vice presidential nominee.

Glenn Reynolds and Dr. Helen Smith discuss the upcoming Supreme Court case involving the Second Amendment with Robert Levy of the CATO Institute.

Liz Stephans and Scott Baker of Breitbart.TV on the role of YouTube and viral online video in the 2008 presidential election.

Produced by Ed Driscoll.

For extended versions of each of today's segments, and the video of the Thompson interview don't miss this week's PJM Political "Director's Cut Interviews."

For podcasting techies wondering what I used to record the segments with Liz and Scott, and the previous segments from the last two weeks' shows all recorded earlier this month from Blog World in Las Vegas, I simply used my trusty Samson Zoom H4 Handy Recorder (which has a pair of pro-style XLR jacks, visible in the photo that accompanies the Videomaker review), a pair of Shure SM58 mics, and a pair of tabletop mic stands. The Zoom recorder uses an SD card, and an 2-gig sized card provides about two hours of audio, which can quickly be ported over to a PC's hard drive and then into your DAW program of choice for editing and mixdown.

I threw them all into a suitcase before heading to Vegas just as a lark, but I was astounded at how clean the audio was, even with the roar of Vegas Convention Center crowd all around, which is why I ended up doing so many interviews there. The trick, I think, is the Shure SM58s. There's a reason why so many rock groups use them on-stage and on live recordings--their cardioid input pattern makes them great at focusing the loudest sounds (which normally should be the person talking/singing/playing into them) and de-emphasizing the background noise.

Glenn Reynolds quotes this passage from a recent Politco article:

"Congressional Democrats are reporting a striking change in districts across the country: Voters are shifting their attention away from the Iraq war. . . . One House Democratic aide summed up the challenge for the leadership, and admitted that it may be a smart move for Democrats to focus on the economy since they haven't been able to deliver on Iraq."

Translation: it's time to really start talking the economy down even more before next November.

For years, I've been aware that I prefer more vermouth than most modern sybarites whenever I mix a Martini. Now I know why!

Cold Fury's Mike Hendrix looks at the "avant-garde" art world, which has never met an attack on Western Civilization and its philosophical underpinnings it didn't like, rendered inchoate by radical Islam's ever-present threat of death. It ends with a link to this dark fantasy post:

NEW YORK: The American photographer Andres Serrano, who gained notoriety with his photographs of corpses and a work entitled Piss Christ, was gunned down earlier today in Manhattan. New York City Police Department spokesman, Kevin McEngano said his department had received a letter from a previously unknown group called Warriors of Christ for Justice that has claimed credit.

McEngano quoted from the letter: ”Let it be known that offensives to the Christ and His Bride will no longer be met with mere words. Blasphemers like Serrano will no longer profit by mocking the Redeemer.”

The reality in the west is quite different, of course. The freedom to attack Christianity with impunity has ultimately provided "artists" such as Serrano with remarkably cushy gigs.

Related: "In this battle between chick lit and God, chick lit wins."

Back in 2003, a period when Steven Den Beste was routinely cranking out brilliant 5,000+word essays on a daily clip. (Don't try this at home, kids!), he wrote a terrific piece on the post-9/11 credibility gap that Amnesty International has been suffering--very much a self-inflicted wound.

Which has yet to heal.

Related: Tammy Bruce, in her first op-ed in nearly two years, writes, "Teddy Bear Case Exposes Failure of American Feminist Leaders".

Chalk up both Amnesty and feminism's silence to yet more crippling cases of "Hypocrophobia."

As the above headline suggests, Red State has some thoughts on what should happen next at CNN. Meanwhile, Glenn Beck compares and contrasts how CNN's management runs roughshod over his CNN show, versus what "accidentally" slipped through the cracks last night.

Then-Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos in 1993:

We have become hostage to Lexis-Nexis.

Ramesh Ponnuru, today:

Can CNN Use Google?

I doubt Bill and Hillary are complaining about the media's technological "progress" over the last 14 years.

Virginia Postrel--who owns the word Dynamism (in many, many ways) links to Daniel Weintraub's column in the Sacramento Bee:

Wow.

I tuned into the CNN/YouTube Republican presidential debate Wednesday night and was surprised to see so much fear. I thought the GOP was supposed to be the "daddy" party -- all strong and manly. But these guys were quaking in their loafers about any number of threats to our safety and livelihoods. From Islamic terrorism to Chinese manufacturers, European farmers, Mexican laborers and even Canadians (yes, Canadians!), the Republicans seem to think the world is about to take us down. Their solutions vary. Some want to curl up in a little American ball to shield ourselves from attack. Others want to "stay on the offense" with the military to keep the bad guys at bay. Nobody really conveyed a sense of confidence in the future, or in the American people's ability to prosper peacefully in a more competitive world.

Of course, the Democrats are not much better. They deny that the Islamists are a threat but see even bigger monsters in the economic closet and are even more eager than the Republicans to protect us from competition and change.

The sad thing is that these candidates must know that a lot of voters share their insecurities, or they wouldn't try so hard to feed them. But doesn't anybody on the campaign trail speak for dynamism, the creative spirit, innovation, and the potential of individuals to do great things? Doesn't anybody running for president think that Americans can compete -- even thrive -- by participating in, not fleeing, a growing global economy? This is the dawn of the Information Age. The world is changing fast. Yet these folks all sound as if they think it's 1955. The Cold War and the Red scare all over again.

I work in what's commonly thought to be the 21st Century equivalent of the buggy whip industry, yet even I have a far cheerier outlook about the future than any of these guys exhibited last night. It was almost as if they were trying to channel Lou Dobbs, or they were hypnotized by that great CNN fearmonger on their way into the studio.

PS to my Republican friends: I know CNN did a lousy job picking the questions and half of them came from people with links to Democratic candidates and causes. But they didn't pick the answers. The candidates still had their say. And in two hours of yakking, I don't think I heard a single sentence expressing confidence in the ability of individuals to pursue happiness on their own. Isn't that what the Republicans are supposed to be all about?

Paging Mr. Gipp; Mr. George Gipp to the white courtesy phone, please.

Yesterday, Dean Barnett gave his predictions regarding last night's debate:

Last night, [Hugh Hewitt] had YouTube's “director of news and politics,” Young Steve Grove, on his radio program. It's an interview that has to be heard to be believed. Young Steve showed an unusual mastery of the new left’s rhetorical tics; he mindlessly repeated his talking points, while evading such simple questions like where he went to school and how old he was.

In a way, it's sad that this most important of Republican debates will descend into demagogic idiocy. Expect the same kind of purportedly heart-tugging rubbish the left faced, e.g. hospital patients asking about health care reform and school teachers inquiring about No Child Left Behind with a brood of smiling tykes in the background. Of course, it will probably be worse than that. Let your mind run wild, picturing wounded vets and grieving widows.

The good news for the candidates is with all this stupidity running amuck and wildcards being dealt, there's a golden chance for some candidate to have a real “I paid for this microphone” moment. Tonight's format will likely reward the bold.

Today, Jim Geraghty writes:

And I would have liked to see a Republican candidate rip into CNN for using a cartoon that mocked the sitting Vice President to ask a question. I don’t care if his approval rating is at 2 percent, you don’t mock the number two man in government as a power-hungry paranoid snoop at a GOP debate. You just don’t.

Talk about a blown opportunity--this would have been an absolutely killer sound bite for any GOP candidate wishing to energize the conservative base.

On the other hand, one of Dean's predictions is very much coming true:

And hopefully tonight will serve as a teachable moment for Republicans regarding technological flash vs. political substance.

This is a huge "See, I Told You So" moment for both Hugh Hewitt and Rush Limbaugh.

Compare and contrast: NBC turns a few of their studio lights off in a useless symbolic gesture of faux energy effiency. But CNN really walks the walk--turning off their computers, their Internet connection, and planting, planting, planting!

Update: Hugh Hewitt writes, "Last night's fiasco was so thorough that it will take a while to settle in just how damaging it was to CNN's reputation as a news organization." As Glenn Reynolds notes, "If Fox hosted a Democratic debate and many of the most pointed questions turned out to come from Republican activists, but Fox didn't disclose that, do you think it would pass unremarked?"

Details here.

(Alec Baldwin could not be reached for comment.)

Well, not exactly. But scroll to about 44 minutes into the latest episode of Breitbart TV's B-Cast to hear us name-checked, in our regards to our recent PJM Political interview with Liz Stephans and Scott Baker.

Bill Bradley, the host of Pajamas' PJM Political on XM's POTUS '08 channel, has some thoughts on the GOP debate on CNN, in a podcast we recorded immediately after the debate aired on Wednesday night.

Michelle Malkin writes:

Retired Brig. Gen./gays in the military lobbyist/Hillary-Kerry supporter Keith H. Kerr wasn’t the only plant at the CNN/YouTube debate. The plant uncovering is in full-swing over at Free Republic.

Read the whole thing--Michelle and her readers are doing a pretty thorough job themselves.

More at Wizbang.

Update: Found via Gina Cobb, CNN didn't exactly distinguish themselves when the questions weren't plants, either.

Hugh Hewitt is your one-stop shop for post GOP debate who-said-what spin. We'll also be talking about the debate on tomorrow's episode of PJM Political on XM's POTUS '08 channel.

And speaking of Hugh, in light of who lost the debate--again--it's worth flashing to this.

Back in 1993, after Bill Clinton promised to be all things to all people to get elected, and then began flopping his flips once in office, then-presidential aide George Stephanopoulos (now with ABC, very much a lateral move) chastised journalists for being too literal:

He says reporters today all have computers, which means they can look up promises too easily. His bottom line: ''We have become hostage to Lexis-Nexis.'' He may have a point, at that.

But that was at the tail end of the stone knives and bearskins era of the online world. These days, "Clinton Campaign Not Compatible With YouTube Era . . . "

Update: In more ways than one, I'm not sure how compatible CNN is with the YouTube era, either.

When I was a kid, English heavy metal referred to Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. It’s taken on an entirely new meaning these days, as Mark Steyn notes:

The other week, in Wednesbury in the English Midlands, an unusual crime occurred. A thief passed down a residential street and methodically stole every single front door handle and house number. The victims discovered the burglary when they tried to leave their homes and found the door no longer opened. An Englishman’s home may be his castle but if you can’t let down the drawbridge it’s indistinguishable from a dungeon.

Trying to get a, er, handle on property crime in the United Kingdom is a problematic business. Why would anyone steal door knockers? Well, there’s a construction boom in India and China. Demand for lead is higher than at any time since 1980 and the price of copper has quadrupled in two years. And in a globalized market place that hasn’t escaped the attention of Britain’s criminal gangs, for whom “scrap metal” has become a far more lucrative proposition than it might once have been. According to The Times of London, this summer 19 schools had their roofs stolen. What’s the point of locking your valuables when the lock itself – and the handle and the hinges – is suddenly valuable? Eighty manhole covers were recently stolen from the streets of Gloucester. And don’t bother warning the criminals that if they carry on like this they’ll wind up in court, because they’ve already been there: The magistrates’ court in West Bromwich now leaks because metal thieves stole the lead from the courthouse roof.

Or as Steyn writes, "The police have no leads, and the buildings have no lead."

To understand how a society can change radically within a generation, it's worth flashing back to this quote from Stanley Kubrick in 1972, when he was promoting his film version of A Clockwork Orange:

Mr. Kubrick now lives in a sprawling home in Borehamwood, 30 minutes out of London, with his third wife, Christiane, an artist, and their three daughters, together with seven cats and three golden retrievers. The house, enclosed by a brick wall, also contains the director's offices and editing facilities.

"It's very pleasant, very peaceful, very civilized, here," Mr. Kubrick said in an interview. "London is, in the best sense, the way New York must have been in about 1910."

These days, just as Burgess and Kubrick warned, England has come to resemble the out of control liberalism depicted in A Clockwork Orange, with a feckless police watching helplessly as crime throughout England (especially London) skyrockets. Meanwhile, thanks largely to Rudy Giuliani’s Broken Window policies,"New York's murder rate has dropped to its lowest level since police records first became available more than 40 years ago", as London's Telegraph notes.

Force Majeure Farm performs some simple arithmetic:

When I was in second grade, I played the part of one of the innkeepers in St. Catherine's School nativity play. I was a great innkeeper and delivered my line (line, not lines) so memorably, with such expressive gesture (gesture, not gestures), that my parents still like to tell the story each year over Christmas dinner. "There is NO room at the INN!"

There were at least 100 friends and relatives packed into the room to see our little production, all smiling and wishing us well. Sister Marita stood in the wings, script clutched to her chest, exuding confidence in us.

Last weekend, Brian DePalma's movie Redacted opened in 15 theaters. 3,000 people showed up. 3,000 -- I had to look at the article twice -- not 30, 000, not 300,00 -- 3,000. That works out to 200 people per theater and about $26,000 in gross profit.

This amazes me, because I would have figured the school play effect would have been much larger. By this I mean that, no matter how boring the play, no matter how bad the actors, you can always count on your mother or best friend to attend and tell you it was wonderful. By adding in a famous director, a professional cast and crew, and expensive marketing campaigns, one could reasonably expect the school play effect to be magnified -- conservatively, let's say 10 family and friends per cast/crew member who will see the movie out of die-hard loyalty.

IMDb lists approximately 85 people as the official cast and crew for Redacted, who therefore account for nearly a third of the audience according to "school play" math. Since I've never heard of any of the cast members (admittedly, I don't follow Hollywood that closely), I'll give DePalma credit for drawing in the remaining audience: 2,150.

Wow. Who told DePalma and his backers that this is a movie people want to see? Where was his big cheering section when it counted, literally counted, in ticket sales? It's enough to suspect a Hollywood fragging.

He should have hired Sister Marita.

I have no idea if insurance companies still do this, but for years, wannabe insurance men had to go through a sort of rookie hazing the agencies typically called "Project 21". Which was a fancy way of saying that they had to write down the list of 21 names of their friends and families and give them the hard sell for a life insurance or auto policy. Maybe DePalma should have had each member of his crew make a Project 21 list in return for employment.

Dean Barnett has some thoughts on tonight's GOP YouTube debate. If you haven't already heard it yet, make sure you follow the link and listen to the interview that Dean refers to:

Last night, [Hugh Hewitt] had YouTube's “director of news and politics,” Young Steve Grove, on his radio program. It's an interview that has to be heard to be believed. Young Steve showed an unusual mastery of the new left’s rhetorical tics; he mindlessly repeated his talking points, while evading such simple questions like where he went to school and how old he was.

In a way, it's sad that this most important of Republican debates will descend into demagogic idiocy. Expect the same kind of purportedly heart-tugging rubbish the left faced, e.g. hospital patients asking about health care reform and school teachers inquiring about No Child Left Behind with a brood of smiling tykes in the background. Of course, it will probably be worse than that. Let your mind run wild, picturing wounded vets and grieving widows.

The good news for the candidates is with all this stupidity running amuck and wildcards being dealt, there's a golden chance for some candidate to have a real “I paid for this microphone” moment. Tonight's format will likely reward the bold.

And hopefully tonight will serve as a teachable moment for Republicans regarding technological flash vs. political substance.

We'll be rebroadcasting the audio from Pajamas' recent video interview with Fred Thompson in tomorrow's PJM Political on XM. Near the end of the 16-minute long interview, Thompson thanks Roger Simon for giving him so much more time to discuss the issues (in this case, the GWOT) than the typical ten second soundbite on the evening news. That's the sort of way that technology can benefit the candidates, not video clips of sock puppets asking inane questions.

Besides, doesn't the MSM do that already?

Update: On the other hand, this guy's pretty good--run some of his questions, CNN!

Further proof that it's time to bring McLean Stevenson out of cryogenic storage: "Iraq = Korea".

Fed-up with Hollywood's anti-war movies? Why not another round of Catholic bashing, then!

Roger Simon makes a great point about Hollywood's current crop of anti-war/anti-American movies. Their lack of passion and paint-by-numbers formula are killing them at the domestic box office almost as much as their politics:

Now that Brian De Palma’s Redacted is such a bomb you almost feel sorry for the director (the film opened nationally to a total audience of three thousand souls – you could do better with your grandmother’s home movies… or maybe even a blank screen), I would like to go further with my analysis of why the Hollywood antiwar movies are failing.

In his interview with Pajamas Media, actor/politician Fred Thompson said they flopped because they were probably “bad movies.” Undoubtedly so, but there is a reason for why this particular “badness” occurred and it is not simply their seemingly anti-American viewpoint. The movies are essentially inauthentic. The filmmakers think they are supposed to be antiwar, but they don’t feel it in their guts.

How do I know that? Part of this is admittedly a gut feeling on my part. This feels to me like a cinema of “received wisdom,” not based on personal experience or “emotional knowledge” of any kind. No matter how you stand or stood on the Vietnam War, compare these recent ventures (Lions for Lambs, Rendition, Redacted, The Valley of Elah) with, to pick one example, Oliver Stone’s Platoon. The director’s passion is literally splattered all over the screen. Ditto for his Born on the Fourth of July. And, not surprisingly, the audience went.

No passion, no conviction of this sort, is evident in the current movies. And that is lethal. Art without genuine conviction is boring and worthless. What else does the artist (filmmaker) have to give to the audience but his or her passion? It’s no surprise the audience is disinterested without it.

And since beneficent deed goes unpunished, since American audiences have had the good taste to say, ala Sam Goldwyn, "Include me out" of the current crop of Hollywood's Ike Turner-style patriotism, expect lots more of these films:

Seven of the seven anti-war films haven’t just flopped, they’ve been humiliated. So, what does Hollywood do? They greenlight a half-dozen more of them.

Like I said, expect a glut in the guitar picks market by the end of next year.

Update: Related thoughts from Ed Morrissey and Investors' Business Daily.

You watched their show, seen their clips from the candidates--now hear how they do it, their thoughts on the YouTube phenomenon and the role DIY video will play in the 2008 presidential channel, as Scott Baker and Liz Stephans of Breitbart.TV sit down with me for a 15-minute audio interview recorded live at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas.

Michelle Malkin, and Scott Baker And Liz Stephans of Breitbart.TV weigh in on the Denver City Government's crude, racist "diversity training" video:

But hey, on the plus side, the rapidly declining cost and increasing accessibility of self-produced video means that demonizing white males isn't just for Madison Ave. and the big TV networks anymore!

Well, if you say so, Variety--you certainly can't prove it in the television ratings. Though as Iowahawk's recent parody correctly notes, it's not like Hollywood loses much sleep these days over pleasing its domestic audience, whether it's on the big screen or small.

Tim Blair writes:

It’s not often one happens upon a story combining issues of architecture, environmentalism, institutes of higher learning and accidental avian windowcide, let alone such a story written in a manner joyously suggestive of B-grade horror movie previews. For this, we thank the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and journalist Andrea Jones.

As Tim adds, in full Monster Chiller Horror Theater Mode, "Read on. If you dare!"

Someone is taking the title of Jonah Goldberg's upcoming Liberal Fascism just a mite too seriously:

The only positive thing I can think of about Hitler’s time on earth–I’m sure he would have eliminated all bloggers. In Colonial times, bloggers were called “Pamphleteers.” They hung on street corners handing them out to passersby. Now, they hang out on electronic street corners, hoping somebody mouses on to their pretentious sites. Different medium, same MO. Shakespeare accidentally summed up the genre best with these words from a MacBeth soliloquy: “. . .a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. . .”

As Ace writes, "That's a quote from a Philadelphia sportswriter responding to a baseball blogger who, fairly politely and rationally I think, wrote him an email telling him that his pick for MVP was wrong."

Shades of another former sportswriter's reductio ad Hitlerum.

"Bronco Fans: Honk If You Want To Go To Court!"

I think this would qualify as the legal equivalent of givin' 'em the business...

"The Wonderful Politics of Lawrence Of Arabia"--which like almost all classic movies, would be a disaster if made by today's filmmakers.

Richard Miniter explains "Why 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Linger."

Meanwhile, Mark Steyn, celebrating his Website's fifth anniversary, flashes back to the left's conspiracies regarding the death of Paul Wellstone, and Neo-Neocon goes back even further, to the mother of all conspiracy theories.

Theodore Dalrymple writes, "For millions of its inhabitants, Britain is a failing state. It assumes responsibility for education and health care without regard for results; and it fails in its most basic duty, to ensure that its inhabitants can go about their business with reasonable security":

A recent incident—the assault of a 96-year-old man—has brought home to the British public just how little it can rely on the state for protection. The assailant, 44, was frustrated that the elderly man was in his way as he tried to board a train. Shouting “You bastard!,” he punched the man in the face, blinding him in one eye. The attack occurred in full view of many other passengers, and a closed-circuit television camera captured it as well.

Police subsequently apprehended the man, who claimed that the 96-year-old had attacked him first. It would be difficult to imagine a more brutally unfeeling and egotistical crime or more cynical self-justification. It is extremely unlikely that the guilty man is a model of kindness in his other human relations.

The judge in the case, however, said that sending the man to jail would “do nothing to protect the public,” and therefore sentenced him to just three years’ probation. How he came to the opinion that requiring the perpetrator to have a brief chat once a week with a probation officer would achieve this objective is a complete mystery. As the judge himself conceded, “a significant prison sentence would well be justified,” and the charge was such that he had the power to sentence the guilty man to life imprisonment.

The very next day, fittingly enough, the government released figures revealing how probation endangers the public. Over the previous year, serious offenders who had been released from prison early and placed on probation committed at least 83 murders and rapes, a significant portion of the national total. Given the extremely low arrest rate for reported crimes of violence in Britain—and bearing in mind that one-half of all crimes are not even reported—the real figures for violence committed by serious offenders placed on probation after early release from prison must be significantly higher.

Much like its condition in England today, FDR-style American liberalism thoroughly exhausted itself as rational governing force by the late 1960s and (especially) the 1970s. And a big reason why, as Steven Hayward noted in example after example in the first volume of The Age of Reagan, were liberal prosecutors who were often remarkably lenient to criminals. (See also: Horton, Willie.) The vast majority of Americans eventually stopped tolerating such radical chic permissiveness in their government officials and criminal justice system. But is such a course correction still possible in England--and if so, how long will it take to occur?

Update: Needless to say, the crime prevention techniques of this nation are no great shakes, either.

With Trent Lott riding off into his hair the sunset, it's worth flashing back to Reason magazine in December of 2002, when, inspired by Lott's urge to party like it was 1948, Charles Paul Freund wrote:

It was Inauguration Day, and in the judgment of one later historian, "the atmosphere in the nation's capital bore ominous signs for Negroes." Washington rang with happy Rebel Yells, while bands all over town played 'Dixie.' Indeed, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who swore in the newly elected Southern president, was himself a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. Meanwhile, "an unidentified associate of the new Chief Executive warned that since the South ran the nation, Negroes should expect to be treated as a servile race." Somebody had even sent the new president a possum, an act supposedly "consonant with Southern tradition."

This is not an alternate world scenario imagining the results of a Strom Thurmond victory in the 1948 election; it is the real March 4, 1913, the day Woodrow Wilson of Virginia moved into the White House. The details, above and below, are drawn from the work of historian Lawrence J. Friedman, especially 1970's The White Savage: Racial Fantasies in the Postbellum South.

Wilson plays a surprisingly large role in the early chapters of Jonah Goldberg's upcoming Liberal Fascism, of which Kevin Holtsberry has some thoughts. (And having read the book's galleys myself, watch this space for lots from me on its topics in the coming months.)

Listening to his interview with Laura Ingraham and his fear of Rush Limbaugh, Tom Brokaw clearly has issues with the new media world:

This morning on Laura Ingraham's radio show, she talked to former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw. Brokaw's got a new book, and she says to him, "You mentioned Rush Limbaugh in the book, but you kind of throw away a line about Limbaugh, and it's in the drug section. And without a doubt, Rush Limbaugh's the most influential Boomer I think in the media today. There's no person who has had more of a profound impact on the way people think about politics than Limbaugh, and he gets a line, you know, the drug thing, which I just don't think that's right, Tom.

BROKAW: My problem with the whole spectrum is that there is not -- you know, you know what Rush is -- what his whole drill is, he doesn't want to hear another point of view, except his.

INGRAHAM: Oh, I disagree. He talks to all sorts of people. Well, he doesn't interview people like I do. I mean, I have guests on--

BROKAW: He doesn't -- he doesn't interview people, and he mocks people--

INGRAHAM: But he's not an objective -- he's not an objective person, he doesn't say he is, and that's the difference between him and anchors on some of our networks who have political agenda but then pretend that they're objective.

BROKAW: Well, Laura, we're never going to resolve this. You know, you have your point of view, and I have mine.

(Audio here.)

And Tom does have his point of view, as does the nightly news. Post-9/11, the more perceptive members of the legacy media have gone on the record to discuss their biases (even Tom inadvertently triangulated himself earlier this month); and numerous journalists have written articles explaining why a completely unbiased media is an impossibility, but an arguably necessary fiction to maintain in the early days of radio and TV, back when broadcast frequencies were scarce. (Humbly submitted for your approval...) Someone should alert Tom that that's no longer the case in the 21st century, as anybody who's glanced at the channel line-up of his DirecTV or XM satellite radio receiver has seen--or simply surfed a handful of the 100 million-plus blogs tracked by Technorati.

More: Tim Graham of Newsbusters adds:

This is rich talk coming from a man whose network hired Bill Moyers as his newscast’s only commentator in 1995, and a man who wrote a syrupy tribute to hot liberal mock-jock Jon Stewart for his "Athenian" ideals in Time magazine.

Not to mention someone who was upset in 2003 with Eason Jordan, then chief news executive of CNN. Brokaw had no beef with CNN broadcasting out of Iraq for years little more than propaganda approved by Saddam Hussein. No, he was angry that Jordan finally disclosed the sham after Iraq was liberated. As Brokaw said at the time:

On Tuesday's Late Show, Brokaw told David Letterman that CNN “should have worked harder at conveying” what Jordan knew, but that if you “decide to keep that as a secret for yourself to protect those people and to protect the interests of your company, then you probably ought to keep it secret for a long time because it opens them up now, wherever they go, wherever they're stationed, 'well what are they not telling us now?'”

And heaven forbid the public ask that.

Gratuitous Unrelated Ra^ther Bashing: "Dan Rather, Plus Three:"

iYule.TV puts a virtual fireplace in your pocket.

As Orrin Judd writes, "Doesn't this need to be a streaming simulcast?"

Mary Katharine Ham--"Pronounced With an 'Umpty'"

"Teen materialism linked to self-esteem".

I need a study to tell me this?

David Freddoso writes, "Hastert Resigns Today":

I am told that former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) is faxing his resignation letter to Gov. Rod Blagojevich this afternoon.

Once the resignation is official, the governor has five days to set the special election within 120 days of the resignation. Because filing deadlines and the like prevent it from being much earlier, the primary will probably be held Feb. 5, the same date as the presidential primary.

Hastert announced Nov. 15 that he would be resigning before the end of the year.

That's the headline on Power Line's post announcing Lott's retirement from the Senate next month. As Allahpundit writes:

Bad on pork, bad on racial issues, bad on amnesty, and hostile to the one media weapon conservatives wield simply because it dared to challenge him. Like Mark Levin, I shall not miss him.

I doubt few Republicans will.

(But his hair--the Important Southern Hair!--was perfect. Maybe he'll hand it over to his successor!)

Longtime readers will know that I'm not a huge fan of Pat Buchanan for reasons that we explored in this post, amongst others, but in his new book, Buchanan really goes beyond the pale with this particular recommendation:

• A purge of neoconservative ideology and the “Cakewalk” crowd” from national power.

But they make such cool recording software!

Given the statistics (and her meltdown in November of 2004), former ABC News Anchorwoman Carole Simpson endorsing Hillary isn't at all surprising. Just add her to this list.

I'm not entirely crazy about Mike Huckabee, for some of the reasons that John Fund discussed in his recent PJM Political interview. But still, this is a terrific ad:

Mike Lief brings horrific photos back from his recent ocean cruise:

I was standing on the 10th deck, gazing down on the midships pool on the Lido Deck, when something caught my eye. What the hell? That can't be what I think it is ... can it?

Holy crap! It's a man with a tramp stamp! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you People's Exhibit 1, circumstantial evidence that the modern American male has lost his mind (not to mention his self respect). Ladies, you can't possibly think that's attractive, can you?

I'm not sure what the ladies will say, but I do know what the good Dr. Dalrymple has written on the subject in general...

Tattoos are a "refutation of the doctrine that the customer is always right. In the tattoo parlour, the customer is always wrong".

...is especially applicable in this specific case.

Clintonian bimbo erruptions come early this campaign season: Huma Abedin definitely has it going on; the Times of London wonders if she has it going on with Hillary.