August 18, 2007

DEAN UPDATE: A HURRICANE WATCH in the Cayman Islands. But Dean is still heading straight for Jamaica.

UPDATE: More here: "According to the 8:00 PM EDT intermediate advisory, the aircraft reconaissance flight currently in Hurricane Dean just reported a minimum central pressure of 920 millibars — down 10 mb from the last reading. Dean is strengthening again."

ANOTHER UPDATE: The island of Little Cayman is being evacuated, with inhabitants sheltering on Cayman Brac. Caves in the bluff ("the brac") are the traditional place to ride out a hurricane.

MORE: A prayer for Jamaica.

MORE STILL: The Caymans have upgraded to a hurricane warning. Plus, extra flights leaving Grand Cayman. Also, where to secure your car. You can see why that matters here. And a roundup of Cayman press notices here.

And good news for us -- but not for Mexico -- Dean likely to miss United States.

(Bumped).

JOURNALISTS BEHAVING BADLY: And blaming blogs.

BRIDGES AND TAXES: A look at the politics of transportation spending.

SOME OF THE WORLD'S weirdest animals.

DID RUSSIAN HACKERS CRASH SKYPE? Skype denies it.

ARRH! Pirates for Freedom! "It strikes me that cowardly publishers ought to lose all moral rights to the copyrighted material they pull."

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO statutes of limitations?

OBAMA: Read my lips: No new debates.

UPDATE: More from Marc Ambinder.

SCIENCE BOOKS for kids.

THE SURGE COULD LAST ANOTHER YEAR, as it seems to be working. "Citing statistics on captured militants and insurgent attacks, Odierno said he was 'cautiously optimistic' that U.S. forces were improving security in Iraq. Roadside bomb attacks have declined for the last two months and attacks against civilians were at a six-month low, he said."

Meanwhile, people are starting to use the word "postsurge." But I wonder if "Operation Fig Leaf" will succeed? "Embrace victory, call it defeat!"

UPDATE: A cautionary note: "While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force." That's been a theme of many milbloggers. I hope it's wrong, since otherwise it means that we will lose the war as a result of enemy psychological warfare and "lawfare."

NOT STANDING UP FOR FREE SPEECH in academia.

PROFESSORS ON the battlefield.

THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE TRUSTEESHIP WARS between the Administration and the alumni have heated up -- check out VoteDartmouth.org.

Some background can be found here.

IN THE MAIL: Joe Biden's new book, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics. Lots of glowing reader reviews from people who are "huge Joe Biden fans." Example: "I have to say that I was a huge Joe Biden fan prior to reading the book, so I may have a biased opinion. It is not possible to read this book and walk away willing to accept the fact that this incredible leader is not a first tier candidate for 2008."

Also: "Joe Biden is a man of the people. From his quiet middle class beginning in Scranton PA. to his Catholic upbringing and coming of age in Wilmington DE. to his election at the age of 29 to the US Senate- this is clearly a man to be admired." Reading these reviews, it is hard to understand why he's not leading the polls.

POPULAR SCIENCE: Two Defective iPhones in Less Than Two Months: What's Going on Here? "Considering all these frustrating weaknesses along with an incredibly high cost of ownership of some fairly buggy hardware, and I'm starting to wonder what kind of revolt lies in store for us when first-gen iPhone users' warranties start to expire come July '08."

MORE KNIFEBLOGGING: I said that I'd gotten a lot of email, and I was telling the truth: I didn't notice this email from Stephen Green endorsing the Global knives until I saw it on his site. It was a flood!

My question about ceramic knives brought some comments. Reader Tim Adamec wrote:

I've owned a couple of ceramic knives; they're very sharp and explode in interesting ways when dropped. I think Frank Herbert modelled Kris knives in Dune after them: "May thy knife chip and shatter."

Uh oh. But reader John Ramsey emails: "I have owned a Kyocera Chefs Knife for over 20 years, It's a very light weight (easy on the wrist) very sharp and very brittle knife. About 4 years ago I knocked the tip off trying to work a turkey leg loose. Not the right tool for the job... Otherwise it has been fantastic. I have never sharpened the blade as I wouldn't know how but it is as sharp as a razor after all these years. I bought my wife the paring knife for Christmas last year and she loves it."

Meanwhile, reader Matt Johnson wonders why I haven't mentioned Cutco knives:

I think I know now what it's like to be a Ron Paul supporter.

But seriously, you have NO IDEA how freaking awesome these knives are. I've never sold these things myself, I just use them. I admit, they will offend a knife traditionalist but they also happen to be a better knife. There are just not that many products out there that are designed with a purpose and designed to solve so many problems and does its job so darned well.

A lot of other readers praised Cutco too. My only exposure was when my friend Doug Weinstein sold Cutco stuff door-to-door in college, which didn't leave me with a favorable impression. That had more to do with their lame canned sales pitch (hand knife to prospect while intoning "Shake hands with a Cutco!" in a Ted Baxter voice) than with the product, though.

Final issue: I want stuff that's dishwasher safe. Yeah, I know you're supposed to wash good knives by hand, and I do, but in my house everything winds up in the dishwasher sooner or later, as others aren't so careful. So I need stuff that can tolerate occasional dishwasher exposure without stains, loss of temper, etc.

Earlier knife posts, for those just coming into the discussion, are here and here.

A REPORT FROM BANGKOK on the Thai constitutional vote.

"SO LONG, SUCKERS!"

AND YOU THOUGHT RATHERGATE WAS BAD: A CBS Reality Show Draws a Claim of Possible Child Abuse.

UPDATE: A good question: "Who allows their children to participate in something like this?"

FRED THOMPSON ON GAY MARRIAGE:

For the record, the Thompson camp has officially noted that "Fred Thompson does not support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage." He supports the rights of States to choose their marriage law for themselves. . . .

Thompson believes that states should be able to adopt their own laws on marriage consistent with the views of their citizens.

Federalism.

ARRESTED FOR carding the cops.

AN AD FOR THE APPLE 1 COMPUTER:

A fast (1 kilobaud) cassette interface is available and includes a tape of Apple Basic. And ... Yes, Folks. Apple Basic is Free!

You don't want those slow cassette interfaces

August 17, 2007

DEAN IS NOW A CATEGORY 4, FLIRTING WITH CATEGORY 5, and aimed at Grand Cayman: "Cayman Islands Leader of Government Business Kurt D. Tibbetts has urged all residents of Grand Cayman to be prepared for a direct hit from a predicted strong Category 4 Hurricane Dean. The storm is forecast to have 130 mph winds when over Grand Cayman."

More here.

YEAH: "The Baker-Hamilton group and others have urged the administration to have direct talks with Iran; I believe such talks are going to take place with respect to Iraq. Isn't it a little hard, though, to find common ground with a country whose leaders think it's a compliment to be considered a terrorist?"

Well, here's a strategy we might consider.

JAMES HANSEN RESPONDS on the 1998/1934 climate data correction.

UPDATE: Dave Price thinks Hansen's response was rather intemperate.

MICKEY KAUS: "Am I crazy to think that the failure of comprehensive immigration reform--and with it, the prospect (despite sponsors' assurances) of millions more legal and illegal immigrants--has something to do with the trouble in the housing market?"

BERNANKE BLINKS, Wall Street rallies. Is that good? Beats me.

WHAT THE TROOPS THINK ABOUT the war debate:

For the troops on the front lines and the colonels in the rear—and just about everyone in between—the big news in Iraq every day is that they’re still alive and healthy. When it comes to Senate votes on the U.S. presence in Iraq, Sunday talk shows thrashing out length of deployment and stateside pundits talking to themselves, nearly every grunt, airman, sailor, soldier and Marine I speak with just doesn’t care. . . .

During last month’s heated, all-night debate on Capitol Hill about when and if the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq, I asked several military officers of different ages and ranks about their thoughts on a potential pullout. Nearly every one stressed how important his or her work here has been—and will be. “If we leave within months, Iraq will be a province of Iran,” one colonel said. “Everyone with any education or skills who hasn’t already left will end up leaving.”

A mortarman with the 25th Infantry stationed in Tal Afar stressed that he thought the American media has not been reporting what really goes on during daily ops across the war zone. “It’s all about body counts,” he said. Marines out in the former Wild West of Anbar province said the same. They are proud of the job they’ve done in cleaning up what was once considered a lost, Al Qaeda-infested area. They wondered why America hasn’t heard MORE of that news.

A sergeant 1st class with the 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, whose unit is attached to the Marines near Habbaniyah, patrols daily around Al Anbar province. This is his third tour, and he’s confident that progress is being made, despite what he calls early missteps in policy. “I think [Americans] understand our sacrifice, but they don’t understand that we’re just not ready to leave.”

Read the whole thing.

DEBATING THE CASE FOR ANARCHY. "I know there is a tendency among many to respond to defenses of anarchism with snickering or derision. Given all the harm caused by government (mass murder, genocide, repression, war, and so on), this tendency should be resisted."

FREE SEX CHANGES in Brazil.

GOOSE CREEK UPDATE: "The FBI is urging people not to jump to conclusions in the case of two men accused of having pipe bombs in their car, saying the allegations may not be true. One former federal prosecutor said the agency's statement was 'highly unusual.'"

It is.

A CLASS ACTION against the RIAA.

NEW ORLEANS: In the crosshairs again? Depends on which model you like.

UPDATE: More here: "Does the GFDL computer model know something that all the others don’t?" Let's hope not.

ANOTHER UPDATE: "Real devastation" in Martinique.

PATTERICO OFFERS LEGAL ADVICE to Yale University Press.

AN AWKWARD SPOT FOR NANCY PELOSI:

Another Congressional Democrat has shifted his views on Iraq to support from opposition -- and this change has significance. Rep. Brian Baird, one of the Democrats who voted against the authorization to use military force in 2002, has now returned from Iraq convinced that we need to give General David Petraeus more time. . . . Baird made it plain that his change of heart is based on two very clear criteria. One, a pullback would devastate Iraq and be catastrophic to the region and our national interests. Primarily, though, Baird believes that Petraeus has made real progress. He does not want to pull out while success can still be achieved.

The trash-Petraeus campaign may have waited too long to get off the ground.

UPDATE: Jules Crittenden: "That non-veto-proof margin is shrinking. Anyone care to hazard a guess where it’ll be by mid-September?"

MAGICAL THINKING IN AMERICA'S POLITICAL CLASS: "Cincinnati - Mayor Mark Mallory refuses to fire a starter pistol to kick off an upcoming road race, saying he doesn't like the gun's symbolism in a city that set a record for homicides last year."

"POLL: AMERICANS WANT TO WIN:" And a growing, though still inadequate, number seem to think that we just might: "47 percent of Americans now think we’re making progress in Iraq, despite the best effort by our major news media organizations to ignore this, to bury it, to cast it in the worst possible light."

Imagine how things might be if the press were, you know, honest.

A LOOK AT eco-affluence in the 21st Century. I found the discussion of how much environmental damage is being done by government subsidies enlightening.

IT'S LIKE "ANIMAL FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS." Well, sort of: "For New Yorkers without the time, space, or willingness to commit to owning a dog, a new share program launching in Manhattan next month offers pets for rent." Okay, not much, really.

MICHELLE MALKIN INTERVIEWS Mitt Romney on immigration.

MORE EXCITEMENT IN TEN MINUTES than the PBS Newshour packs into sixty! The latest Corn & Miniter Show is up! This time with special guest Michelle Cottle.

UPDATE: Michelle Cottle on Fred Thompson: "To run for President, you have to be a little crazy." Is Fred too sane?

NEEDED: Nine million new smokers. It's for the children!

IT'S PRETTY SIMPLE: "A shovel, a house fan, and other objects: as a parent, I think that about sums up the emotion you’d feel. You find someone assaulting a nine-year-old girl, you subdue the attacker with whatever you can get your hands on."

REJECTING A $10 MILLION EARMARK.

BURYING THE LEDE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: "Do people even click to see what's on page 2?"

Plus, Al Qaeda watercooler chatter: "Heard the latest? They say Human Resources just decided that virgins 47-72 are redundant. And did you ever notice how they always seem to send us off on these suicide missions just as our stock options are about to vest?"

RICH LOWRY: REVENGE OF THE TRIBES.

BRENDAN LOY: No, really, get out of Jamaica: "When Hurricane Gilbert slammed Jamaica in 1988, it killed 45 people and caused $4 billion of damage. It destroyed houses, roads and small aircraft. It 'severely damaged all but two medical facilities and 50% of the water supply.' So even if you survive the hurricane, the aftermath will be ugly, if it hits as badly as it could. Seriously — there’s no reason to risk it. Get the hell out."

UPDATE: A Cayman Islands hurricane alert.

HOW TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT: Prices!

AARON HANSCOM LOOKS AT 21ST CENTURY HYPER-PARENTING: I had some related thoughts on the topic here.

IN THE MAIL: IF YOU LIKED THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS, then there's always How to Be the Best At Everything. And there's also a girls' version. The books include such highlights as how to fight off a crocodile, how to rip a phonebook in half, how to escape quicksand, how to act like a celebrity, how to read body language, and how to grow a crystal.

They look pretty cool, though the "how to fly a helicopter" treatment in the boys' book is a bit, um, brief.

THOUGHTS ON GIULIANI AND EDWARDS' foreign policy writings.

SOME INTERESTING STUFF ABOUT THE NATION and war veterans.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS UPDATE: Popular Mechanics' big disaster-survival feature is now up on the Web.

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? "For years, members of the military brass have been warning that soldiers' blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post far more potentially-harmful than blogs do."

A BLOG GROWS in Brooklyn.

TRYING TO SINK the Delta Queen. Because her crew isn't unionized.

A SPACE HOTEL: By 2009?

MORE PHOTO QUESTIONS FOR AFP: Maybe I should start my own news service. Apparently the demands are lighter than I had thought.

UPDATE: Tigerhawk notes that the press is much less charitable where misconduct by other big corporations is concerned.

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS stands up to libel thuggery on behalf of an "Islamic charity" that came off rather badly in Matthew Levitt's Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad. Now maybe somebody should take a closer look at "KinderUSA," which brought the suit.

UPDATE: Bravo for the American Library Association. Nice to see some backbone, though the Middle Eastern Studies Association isn't looking so good.

MORE: In the comments section on the Levitt book, above, we're starting to see 911-denialist posts like "Twin Towers not knocked down by aircraft." Sigh.

ACADEMIC HIRING IS STARTING TO GET more outside scrutiny. That seems entirely reasonable to me.

IF YOU'RE IN JAMAICA OR YUCATAN, Brendan Loy suggests you get the hell out.

August 16, 2007

AN INTERVIEW WITH the rapping Marine.

PORK NEVER DIES: "So far this year, three members of Congress have died. But they did not take their earmarks with them. The earmarks keep going and going."

UPDATE: Reader Chris Foster emails:

Three members of Congress this year? Do you realize how high that mortality rate is?

It's just too dangerous. Get them out now.

"Congress Out Of Washington Now!"

It's a quagmire, and their presence is only making things worse.

MORE ON ONGOING GROUND COMBAT IN AFGHANISTAN: What? Not just air raids on civilians?

HURRICANE DEAN becomes a "major Caribbean storm threat."

They're paying close attention in the Cayman Islands.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL IS UPSET about a Taser marketed to women. My question for Amnesty -- what is it about women, in particular, that makes this especially inappropriate?

Most women would at least be smart enough not to taser a man holding a baby. . . .

Earlier post on this topic here.

WHAT IF ELVIS HAD NEVER BEEN BORN? But everyone -- well, almost everyone - has missed Elvis's greatest achievement.

Well, one of them: I remember some years ago having drinks with then-Tennessee Attorney General Bill Leech. He said that in the early '50s he was working in Memphis and used to take his girlfriends to hear some guy sing; he didn't like the singer that much, but he seemed to get the women pretty heated up. It was pre-fame Elvis.

DAVE HARDY: "At least in Dodge City, you could shoot back."

MORE ON KNIVES: Okay, I was at the mall buying my mom's birthday present and I looked at the Ken Onion chef's knife at Williams-Sonoma. It looked so cool that I almost bought it on the spot, but fortunately I am a man of no small self-control. They had a full set of Ken Onion kitchen knives, too, for (slightly) less than a thousand bucks. Maybe a bit pricey for an impecunious law professor such as myself. . . .

I said I'd get to more mail, so here goes -- though in truth it's like bailing an ocean with a teacup. But here are some highlights. Reader John Morgan offers an economical solution:

For those with less financial resources or for the truly frugal I recommend finding a knife-sharpening store. In the two cities I have recently lived in (Kansas City and Chicago) there are stores (Ambrosi Brothers and Northwest Cutlery, respectively) that supply sharp knives to restaurants. Essentially they go once a week to the restaurants and replace the knives in use at the restaurants with newly sharpened knives. Over time, the knives are sharpened down to a much smaller size and are no longer usable by the restaurants. These stores then put the knives in a bin and sell them for a dollar or two. Aesthetically, they are not the beautiful knives of our dreams, but practically, they are very good and very sharp knives. These stores also will sharpen your knives to an impressive, almost scary, sharpness for a few bucks per knife.

Another reader echoes what a lot of people have written: "Forschner is the best. Go to any reputable butcher shop or meat cutting operation….for example, Butler and Bailey in Knoxville. Ask what knife they use and they’ll show you a Forschner." That's fairly economical, too, especially compared to the Ken Onion.

Reader Christian Gils emails:

I can wholly recommend a Dexter-Russell 8" Chinese chef knife. It's a mix of carbon and stainless steel, not entirely stainless, so you should wipe it dry after cleaning it, but it can hold a great edge. It's cheap, too, and great for just about anything except paring and maybe filleting. A Chinese chef knife takes a bit of getting used to but I find myself leaving my other knives alone and just using this one most often.

If you've got a Chinatown near you you can pick them up quite cheaply, otherwise Amazon carries it via a vendor.

Reader John Richardson emails:

Here is a knife brand that won't be on the radar screen for most of the gourmets - Cold Steel.

When I went back to grad school in the mid-90s, I worked as the bookkeeper part-time for a knife wholesaler. As such, I got to play with a lot of knives of all sorts from custom Bowies to collector pocketknives to switchblades (pardon me, automatics). I picked up one of the 7-inch Cold Steel K-7 kitchen knives. It does the job right and it doesn't slip when your hand is wet. It does a very good job of
thin slicing.

The other thing I might suggest is to get in the car and go down to Sevierville and visit Smoky Mtn Knife Works. They have a lot of kitchen knives. It would give you a chance to try out a lot of different knives and see what fits your needs.

I didn't realize Cold Steel made kitchen knives. I used to own one of their Tanto utility knives and it was good. And the Smoky Mountain Knife Works suggestion is a good one, except for the ungodly Sevierville traffic. Maybe post-Labor Day. . . .

Reader Chad Wayne emails: "Anolon has ventured into knives. They're less expensive than the
designer brands and just as good. I bought the 5" and 7" Santoku knives from Amazon and it is all we use now. No other knives we own can compare."

Reader Jim Evangeliou emails: "Get a magnetic knife bar. Do you know how to clean out a knife block? Neither do I." Several readers noted that knife blocks get dirty with age.

And several readers asked what I know about ceramic knives. Not much. Anybody out there got advice?

UPDATE: Several readers recommend the Kapoosh universal knife block. It's washable, and takes anything.

AN AMATEUR JOURNALIST offers the pros some help.

UPDATE: Perhaps professional journalists should look in the mirror.

"I FEEL VERY GOOD ABOUT WHERE I AM."

THE SUPREME COURT SEEMS TO BE VERY MUCH IN STEP WITH PUBLIC OPINION on questions of race.

TOM SMITH DEMONSTRATES WHY HE'S A LAW PROFESSOR, instead of a headline writer for the NYT or WaPo.

MORE ON POLITICAL CAMPAIGN DONATIONS FROM ACADEMICS, at John Wixted's place. "Nowadays, almost no one seriously disputes the idea that academia and the media both lean far to the left. Even so, the evidence concerning how far left they lean never ceases to surprise me."

HMM:

After being virtually tied with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for several months, Republican contender Rudy Giuliani now leads Clinton up 47% to 40% in the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

In the match-up of the frontrunners, this result marks a significant shift. For the last three months the two frontrunners have never been further apart than three percentage points. Last month, Giuliani and Clinton were separated by just a single point.

These polls don't mean much at this point, but this can't make the Clinton camp happy. My guess is that she's dropped because of attacks from Barack Obama and John Edwards. But if those rather mild attacks make this much of a difference, how will she do in a real campaign?

BOOING BUSH in the MSNBC newsroom.

UNIDIRECTIONAL multiculturalism.

COOL IF TRUE: "A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time."

I'd await confirmation, though. And does quantum tunneling really violate special relativity? It's been a while since I studied such things, but I didn't think so.

JOSE PADILLA: Guilty on all counts.

SCOTT BEAUCHAMP: Tip of the Iceberg. "These offenses have been going on for years, long before the internet. But there does seems to be a rise in the number of reported offenses in recent years. Did the number of offenses go up, or did the fraction of discovered offenses go up?"

LARRY KUDLOW: "The power outage in banking and credit markets continues to deepen as the sub-prime mortgage infection spreads throughout the U.S. and the global financial system."

I told somebody the other day that if Kudlow ever started sounding gloomy I was going to liquidate my portfolio and turn it into canned goods and shotgun shells. He's not sounding gloomy yet -- but he is sounding kind of worried.

UPDATE: John Coumarianos emails: "All Wall Streeters are screaming bloody murder to induce Bernanke to drop rates. That's the kind of relationship they had with Greenspan, and they're testing Bernanke now to see what they can get from him."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader George Zachar emails:

I'm the Park Ave/Hedge fund guy who's corresponded with you in the past.

It's true that some Street crybabies are testing Bernanke to see if he'll blink and elevate the level of moral hazard in the financial markets. But it's not true that "all Wall Streeters" are doing so. Some of us, amazingly, want a robust self-regulating system that can operate with minimal government intervention. But there are no headlines in silence and maturity.

I've noticed that myself.

A LOOK AT WHO'S KILLING MUSLIMS in carload lots. Shockingly, it's not the United States or Israel.

WOW: I just noticed that yesterday's traffic broke 275,000 pageviews. Not a record or anything, but a lot for a slow news day in the summer. Must be the cookware blogging!

AND THAT'S NOT COUNTING how Wile E. Coyote can walk on air until he happens to look down:

Movies such as Spiderman 2 and Speed generate excitement among audiences with their cool special effects. But they also defy the laws of physics, contributing to students’ ignorance about science.

Some people really do believe a bus traveling 70 mph can clear a 50-foot gap in a freeway, as depicted in the movie Speed. And, if that were realistic, a ramp would be needed to adjust the direction of motion to even try to make the leap, said UCF professor Costas J. Efthimiou, who co-authored the article.

“Students come here, and they don’t have any basic understanding of science,” he said. “Sure, people say everyone knows the movies are not real, but my experience is many of the students believe what they see on the screen.”

Well, they're better and better at making it look plausible.

EARTHQUAKE IN PERU: Gateway Pundit has a roundup of the latest reports.

IN THE MAIL: Mike O' Connor's Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe: A Memoir of Life on the Run.

AN UPTICK IN ARMY SUICIDES: James Joyner thinks it's random variation, and notes the small numbers involved: "We had a spike of more than 11 percent from 2005 to 2006. That’s huge. But it represents 11 individual soldiers. The preliminary numbers indicate that the rate will likely decline for 2007. That’s despite a surge in the number of soldiers deployed to Iraq and an increase in the combat tempo. If that holds, it almost surely means that the 2006 spike is largely random variation in a complex phenomenon." Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Tam notes something rather crucial:

In 2006, the overall suicide rate for the United States was 13.4 per 100,000 people. It was 21.1 per 100,000 people for all men aged 17 to 45, compared to a rate of 17.8 for men in the Army.

This leads her to comment: "Y'know, I don't mind being jerked around a little bit, Mr. Reporter, but if you want your propaganda headline to work better, you really shouldn't include the raw numbers. It makes me feel like you think I'm dumb."

A LOOK AT the new John Edwards.

WELL, YEAH: Law schools recruiting bloggers to boost rankings?

MEDIA HUBRIS: Victor Davis Hanson says enough with anonymity.

IT'S NOT "FOUL-MOUTHED" when we're using those words!

AMIT VARMA LOOKS AT THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT, and thinks he's living inside a Nigerian scam email.

IT'S TIME FOR THEM TO GO: More Ted Stevens troubles: "The FBI is investigating the National Science Foundation's award of $170 million in contracts to the oil field services company that oversaw renovations on U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens' home, McClatchy Newspapers has learned. . . . The disclosure provides further evidence of the degree to which the investigation of public corruption in the Alaska legislature has widened to include at least two of the state's three members of Congress. Alaska's sole congressman, U.S. Rep. Don Young, is also under investigation for his ties to Veco."

I don't know how much there is to this story, but Stevens' questionable dealings continue to mount, and Young isn't looking much better. If the GOP is smart, they'll be encouraged to retire in time to run somebody obviously non-criminal in the next election.

RALPH PETERS ON CONGRESS AND PETRAEUS:

Those dead and maimed Yazidis were just props: The intended audience was Congress.

Al Qaeda has been badly battered. It's lost top leaders and thousands of cadres. Even more painful for the Islamists, they've lost ground among the people of Iraq, including former allies. Iraqis got a good taste of al Qaeda. Now they're spitting it out.

The foreign terrorists slaughtering the innocent recognize that their only remaining hope of pulling off a come-from-way-behind win is to convince your senator and your congressman or -woman that it's politically expedient to hand a default victory to a defeated al Qaeda.

Read the whole thing. And check out this call to action from Blackfive, too.

RADLEY BALKO ON "The government's morally dubious use of drug informants:"

Late last month, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the death of the Kathryn Johnston, the 92-year-old Atlanta woman killed by police during a November 2006 drug raid on her home.

Johnston died when she mistook a team of narcotics officers for criminal intruders. When the police broke down her door, she met them with an old pistol. They opened fire, and killed her.

A subsequent investigation revealed that the entire chain of events up to and shortly after Johnston's death were beset with lies, planted evidence, and cover-up on the part of the narcotics cops. They fabricated an imaginary informant to get the search warrant for Ms. Johnston's home. They planted evidence on a convicted felon, arrested him, then let him off in exchange for his tip—which he made up from whole cloth—that they'd find drugs in Ms. Johnston's house.

When they realized their mistake, they then tried to portray an innocent old woman as a drug dealer. They planted marijuana in Ms. Johnston's basement while she lay handcuffed and bleeding on the floor.

More investigation revealed that this kind of behavior wasn't aberrant, but common among narcotics officers in the Atlanta Police Department. Police Chief Richard Pennington eventually dismissed or reassigned the entire narcotics division of the APD.

What came out at the hearings investigating Kathryn Johnston's death was even more disturbing.

Read the whole thing. And there's a followup post here.

YOUR HOMELAND SECURITY TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: "A criminal investigations report says several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees are accused of aiding Islamic extremists with identification fraud and of exploiting the visa system for personal gain."

THIS RESEARCH WON'T SURPRISE MANY BLOG-READERS:

The average newspaper should expand by a factor of 50 the amount of space given to corrections if Scott R. Maier's research is any guide.

Maier, an associate professor at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication, describes in a forthcoming research paper his findings that fewer than 2 percent of factually flawed articles are corrected at dailies.

Read the whole thing.

MYSTERY RESEARCH: Michelle Malkin asks Ellen Goodman a question, but doesn't get a much of an answer.

DANIEL HENNINGER on the death of "diversity" as an ideology.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED, people who disagreed with the dominant religion would risk criminal charges. And they were right.

A PEDAL-POWERED AIR CANNON: Doesn't everybody need one?

PATRICK HYNES criticizes "identity group conservatism."

August 15, 2007

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Some pork pushback for the piggish Alaska delegation:

For the last 15 summers, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) has hosted his state’s political heavyweights at a down-home pig roast fundraiser. But this August, pigs of a different kind snorted back at him.

About 75 protesters, crying “Oink! Oink!” and “FBI! FBI!” gave Young, Alaska’s two senators and their supporters a shockingly poor reception at last week’s fundraiser. When Young held a public picnic on Monday, the protesters were back, wearing swine masks and waving angry signs.

More than 3,600 miles from the Capitol, one thing is clear: Young and Sen. Ted Stevens (R) are in political as well as legal jeopardy. . . . Polls released this week suggested that Democrats may have a leg up. The Hays Research Group in Anchorage found Stevens with a 44 percent positive rating in the state and showed Republican Gov. Sarah Palin trouncing Stevens by 23 percentage points in a hypothetical Senate primary next year.

To coin a phrase, it is time for him to go.

A LOOK AT India as a great nuclear power.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATH OF BOOKS: Glenn Derene looks at the future of e-publishing.

DOWN MEMORY LANE with Bill Keller and the liberal hawks.

A LOOK AT the battle over the war narrative.

NOT AGAIN: "He's in Georgia. He's in Georgia, insulting Wisconsin? Well, now, it's a war between the states!"

Plus, provoking "conversations among nebbish males." I don't think that's how the Civil War got started, unless somehow Dolley Madison's rack started the process of estrangement . . . .

EDITOR & PUBLISHER: General Petraeus is polling well.

7.5 EARTHQUAKE IN PERU.

UPDATE: A tsunami warning for Hawaii.

I SAY CALL HIM "HERMAN," OR I'LL START BLOWING SHIT UP: "A Roman Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has proposed people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding, stoking an already heated debate on religious tolerance in a country with one million Muslims."

UPDATE: Mess with lunch, and risk beheading.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Less sarcasm, but no more enthusiasm, from Professor Bainbridge.

WELL, THEY CAN'T ALL BE AS HAPPY AS ME -- but why are middle-aged men depressed?

BILL QUICK IS NOT IMPRESSED with Wikipedia: "Can’t you people get anything right?"

BUSH ON the Zombie threat.

It's always about the zombies.

STOP THE PRESSES: A Baghdad Diarist who isn't a miserable phony.

THOSE GLOBAL WARMING DENIALISTS at Newsweek.

A LOOK AT BARACK OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY: I think we should try to do more with the porn.

NEWS FLASH: THINGS DON'T SUCK: "A surprising 94 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with their lives - although far fewer in New York and other Eastern states think they're better off than they were five years ago, according to a new survey."

It seems regional, though: "But only 42 percent of people in the Eastern U.S. said things had improved since 2002. By contrast, 60 percent of Southerners and 62 percent of Westerners said their lives had improved."

THE IMMIGRATION ISSUE turns into local politics in northern Virginia.

MORE PROBLEMS FOR CHINA'S BRAND: "Certain vinyl baby bibs sold at Toys “R” Us stores appear to be contaminated with lead, laboratory tests have shown, making the inexpensive bibs another example of a made-in-China product that may be a health hazard to children."

NOT JUST A MISLABELED PHOTO, but a deliberate deception? We've never seen that before . . . . "The picture seems to show common commercial 55-grain civilian ball ammunition patterned after the Vietnam-era M193. With this in mind, I'd state that this ammunition wasn't even dropped by American forces, as they don't carry such ammunition. This isn't just a a photo that just shows ignorance. It appears to show a willful deception using civilian ammunition." Regardless, it's one that would never have gotten by had AFP's photo editors possessed even a smidgen of knowledge or critical faculty, and cared about accuracy.

INSIDE THE NAZIS' WELFARE STATE: Michael Moynihan reviews Gotz Aly's new book, Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State.

THE MAIL CONTINUES TO POUR IN on last night's post on kitchen knives. Apparently, InstaPundit readers do a lot of cooking.

HEY, WAIT: I thought all we did in Afghanistan was stage air raids and bomb civilians. And yet: " Hundreds of US-led troops have launched an offensive against al Qaida and Taliban militants in eastern Afghanistan . . . . The offensive involving ground troops and airstrikes in the Tora Bora region of eastern Nangarhar province is targeting 'hundreds of foreign fighters' who are using dug-in fighting positions, said coalition spokeswoman Capt Vanessa Bowman." Ground troops? And we're bombing "foreign fighters"? What, there were no civilians to target?

GLOBAL WARMING: It started longer ago than I realized!

OBAMA'S SPEECH PROBLEMS: The campaign has been aware of them for a while.

TERRY MCAULIFFE, thinly fictionalized.

NIFONG: "The dog ate my law license." No, really.

"CLUSTERS" OF HOMEGROWN TERRORISTS? "The report, in its conclusions, asserts that the most significant threat to the homeland is not al Qaeda but the spread of the ideology promulgated by violent extremist Muslims, such as those belonging to al Qaeda, into the United States where it helps to radicalize residents."

FROM ANATHEMA to hero.

IT'S ALL THE RAGE: Bombings and beheadings -- in Russia.

IN THE MAIL: Eric Berlin's The Puzzling World of Winston Breen.

BOY, YOU CAN'T GET AWAY WITH ANYTHING: "I want to examine as objectively as possible what I consider to be some very suspicious behavior by Glenn Reynolds."

It's a fair cop.

CHINA VS. THE TALIBAN: "China and Pakistan have signed a formal agreement covering security arrangements for the 4,000 Chinese citizens working in Pakistan. What this has done is make China a major player in the war against al Qaeda inside Pakistan. . . . All this Chinese counter-terror work is done very quietly, and covertly. That may keep it out of the Western press, but the Chinese are increasingly tagged as major bad guys by the Islamic media, especially the outlets that are pro-radical."

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD IRAQ NEWS: "The top U.S. general there is expected by Bush administration officials to recommend removing American troops soon from several areas where commanders believe security has improved, possibly including Al Anbar province."

Hmm. Maybe T.M. Lutas was right when he predicted this last April.

Capt. Ed has more thoughts: "Will Congress buy it? Many are heavily invested in withdrawal, and they will likely argue that pullbacks should result in reductions, not redeployments. It's hard to argue with success, however, and that will be the effect of Petraeus' report." And Jules Crittenden has a prediction of his own: "Watch for withdrawal enthusiasts to denounce any partial drawdown on grounds that Iraqi forces aren’t ready, and then go on to proclaim the cause hopeless, and demand total abandonment." Plus, a recommendation for Congress!

UPDATE: Harry Reid acknowledges the success of the surge. Much more information at the link.

Plus there'sthis: Al Qaeda in Iraq Has Lost 75% of Civilian Leadership. Good riddance.

MORE: Lindsey Graham, armed and dangerous.

STILL MORE: Jay Reding: "Petraeus is looking at the long game now, concerning himself with how we beat al-Qaeda and secure Iraq in the next few months. The big variable is the quality of the Iraqi troops — if they can fight off al-Qaeda, that means that we’re close to the point where we can make a responsible exit from Iraq. If they can’t, we’ll need to continue the surge throughout 2008 and start planning for how best to reduce the strain on our armed forces."

MICHAEL TOTTEN POSTS another report from Baghdad. And via email, he recommends this piece on Beirut by Lisa Goldman.

TAKING VW'S TOUAREG 2 OFF-ROAD: It's "hyper-capable," but how many will ever be driven that way? If you like it, though, I'd hold out for the turbo-diesel powered 2009 model, which promises less-ghastly fuel mileage.

PUTTING COLBERT AND STEWART on the witness stand.

EURO FALLS against the dollar.

TIGERHAWK looks at campaign contributions, special interests, and federal appropriations.

HEH: The AFP photo editor must have been fresh back from happy hour . . . .

INDIA PLANS FIRST REUSABLE SPACECRAFT BY 2010. I wish them success.

FACT-CHECKING THE A.P.'S NEDRA PICKLER.

NO, I HAVEN'T BEEN BLOGGING ABOUT the Space Shuttle's problems. Sorry -- I wish 'em well, but I just don't have much to say.

SHE'S STILL FAMOUS FOR HER CUPCAKES: "Dolley Madison had a decent rack."

BAD SUICIDE BOMBING IN IRAQ, targeting the Yazidis. That last is kind of interesting, as it doesn't fit into the general political picture. Alas, this kind of thing will continue for a while no matter what -- it's just too easy to make bombs, and too hard to root out the people who do it, and once started it tends to feed on itself.

UPDATE: Michael Yon, who's currently vacationing in Bali, posts some thoughts. And he emails: "The people here in Bali, Indonesia are very warm and friendly. The island is stunningly beautiful. Bali even gives Hawaii a run for its money on beauty, and that is saying a lot. Americans are very welcome here, but the terrorists are not. I ate in a restaurant last night because I saw a waiter wearing a shirt that said Fxxx Terrorists. Not a class act, but still I voted with my feet and had dinner there."

August 14, 2007

REMEMBER ME?

SUITCASES OF VENEZUELAN CASH: Just keep scrolling.

READER ROBERT RUDDIGER EMAILS: "I'm curious what others had to say in response to your knife query."

In fact, the response was so large I was swamped -- I still haven't read all the emails. Forget politics and Iraq -- when you post about kitchenware, the mail pours in. But here are some high points:

Reader Scott Canty emails: "Forget the Wusthof or Henckels. The best you can get are Global. A nice three piece set is really all you need. 8” Chefs, 5.5” veggie, and 3” paring. Make sure to get the ceramic water sharpener."

Cookware expert Brian Erst emails:

Some years back I was your "cookware guy" when the discussion turned to pans (Emerilware vs. All-Clad), so, being the kitchen geek that I am, I thought I'd weigh in on the subject.

I have the Wusthof Classics, and they are very good knives. They hold an edge reasonably well and fit my hands nicely (I'm 6'0", but have small-for-my-height hands). Balance is perfect, and the heft is good - the chef's knife will go thru a butternut squash pretty easily without a hint of bending. You have to like what I call the "mold your hand to the handle, not the other way around" handles (they are flat and hardish) - they look very nice, but some people prefer a more contoured handle. Wusthof makes a line of knives with a cushier/more ergonomic handle (the Grand Prix/Grand Prix 2) that are otherwise identical to the Classics.

The Gourmets are a bit of a different beast. They straddle the line between a stamped and a forged knife - instead of hand cut and forged, they are laser cut and machine-forged/sharpened. Generally, stamped or laser-cut knives are made with thinner metal (as are the Gourmet's). This can be a good thing in some cases (they bend more, which is preferable in a filetting knife, not so much in a chef's knife). As the Classics are on the thick end (some people think they're too thick), this may not be an issue.

I have also used a couple of other brands. The Shun knives are very nice (I have a Shun Santoku that I love). They have a unique handle which you either love or hate - it's VERY nice looking and quite comfortable for me. Instead of being flat or perfectly round, it is a sort of flattened D shape (slightly bulgy on one side, flatter on the other). I find it keeps the knife from slipping. The Shun Classics (and especially the Pros) are beautiful - if aesthetics as well as performance is you thing, you won't find a prettier knife. The Shun "Ken Onion" knives are so pretty they make you want to cry (especially once you see the price). Ken Onion is a famous knife maker (as famous as a knife maker can be) and designed special, super-ergonomic handles for one of their lines.

Shun's are actually another stamped-like knife, but they use a special annealing process to fabricate a knife that looks and feels exactly like a forged knife. Part of the reason it's stamped is that they use a Damascus-style steel that really can't be forged without screwing up the aesthetics of the knife blade. It has these opalescent waves on the side that are very cool - and REALLY hard...

Finally, if you're just looking for high-function knives at a low price, skip all of the above and head out to by some Forschner Fibrox or Forscher Victorinox knives. They are stamped, but they are laser sharp, super tough and dirt cheap. The folks at Cook's Illustrated repeatedly choose them over the others (Wusthof and Shun generally come in second and third). You can get pretty much every knife Forschner makes for the cost of a single Wusthof Chef's knife. Non-slip plastic handles too. Aesthetics... ah, not so much, but if they're sitting in a drawer...

Even if you pick up the Wusthofs or Shuns, you might want to pick up a Forschner filetting knife (if you ever filet things). It's about the perfect filetting knife - strong, supple and bendy in all the right ways.

Thanks, Brian. Quite a few other readers recommend the Forschner knives: Reader Kristian Holvoet emails: "They are nice, good steel, fit my hand well, easy to clean and are cheap. (They are common commercial knives for that reason). They are stamped, not forged, but really, if you aren't a master of the knife, the extra money may not be worth it.

Reader Karl Davis writes: "I highly recommend Shun knives, especially the "Alton's Angle" series. I thought the angle was a gimmick, but they are far more comfortable to use over extended periods. The construction is second to none in all of the Shun knives I have, and the handles are amazingly comfortable and never slip (combination of D-shape and pakkawood material). This is my favorite knife."

Jason Swartz emails: "I love my Henckels Twin Cuisine set: The grip feels fantastic, and the knife is one piece of steel from end to end, through the handle." They look cool, too.

Literally hundreds of other emails -- I'll try to post more when I get a chance. I didn't expect such a flood!

LOOK WHO'S EDITING WIKIPEDIA! Various people, from Ace, to Charles Johnson, to Dan Riehl, are having fun tracking what's going on. Turning Bill Frist into an African-American? Nice to see the New York Times' fierce commitment to truth.

UPDATE: More fun here.

MORE: A "farcical moment."

OBAMA BOMBS OUT: A.P. to the rescue.

UPDATE: Ouch: “AP joins Obama in slander of US troops.”

MARK STEYN: "Being gay isn't exactly one of those jobs Canadians won't do."

MORE EVIDENCE FOR PANSPERMIA.

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: "A spokesperson for the Food Collective says, 'no one should have to have contact with people whose views they find hurtful.'"

YAHOO! BEATS GOOGLE, in customer satisfaction.

FRED THOMPSON: Real Earmark Reform Needed.

REPORT: Academics' donations go overwhelmingly to Democrats. Kind of a dog-bites-man story, but I guess it does add up: "On a related note, employees of the University of California, which has nine campuses, contributed more to 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's campaign than any other employer, including corporations." The report also says that academics donated more than employees of oil companies and drug makers.

LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEER STATE COORDINATORS, at The Victory Caucus.

WHERE'S YALE? "Amidst the dozens of university presidents declaring their opposition to the academic boycott of Israeli professors and universities, the absence of Yale president Richard Levin and Duke president Richard Brodhead is curious." Duke, I've given up on.

UPDATE: Apparently, the part about Brodhead is wrong.

A ROUNDUP ON VERY LIGHT JETS, from James Fallows.

PORK HYPOCRISY: "10 months later and Dr. Fiscal Crisis has become Mr. Hide The Earmark. He has gone from blasting that $26 million in pet projects for his district to grabbing $27 million for pet projects for his home district. Yee-haw!" Meet the new boss, yada yada.

DEMOCRATS IN BLACKFACE: Thoughts from LaShawn Barber.

ROGER VAN OECHS GETS A PATENT on his highly popular Ball of Whacks.

A FOREIGN POLICY ARTICLE BY RUDY GIULIANI, in Foreign Affairs.

And another by John Edwards.

OOPS. But read this, too. Ed Morrissey adds: "Obama started this primary campaign looking like a man with a future in the Democratic Party. His asinine pronouncements on military affairs and foreign policy now make him look like someone drowning in two feet of water."

Not ready for prime time.

UPDATE: Video.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bob Krumm: "Half a year ago I bemoaned the dreadfully early start to the 2008 presidential election. Perhaps I was in error. "

MORE: "Wow. I cannot recall the Associated Press ever before so blatantly rushing to save a candidate from his own words."

START PLANNING YOUR SPACE VACATION at Galactic Suites.

IT'S TIME FOR ANOTHER ASK DR. HELEN column!

J.D. JOHANNES notes a surge in the media battlespace.

IN THE MAIL: David Evans' and Richard Schmalensee's Catalyst Code: The Strategies Behind the World's Most Dynamic Companies. It's got cover blurbs by all sorts of bigshots, including Bill Gates and Peter Lynch.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs emails that there's a website, and a blog for the book, too.

RYAN SAGER: When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. If only more people in the press were equally willing to admit error.

JACK BALKIN AND EUGENE VOLOKH talk about the First and Second Amendments, on Bloggingheads.tv.

THIS IS INTERESTING:

Five reporters must reveal their government sources for stories they wrote about Steven J. Hatfill and investigators' suspicions that the former Army scientist was behind the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton is yet another blow to the news industry as it seeks to shield anonymous sources who provide critical information -- especially on the secret inner workings of government.

There's no constitutional reason for these sources to be protected, and no other good reason that I can see. The press's abuse of anonymous sources is in the process of generating considerable blowback, and rightly so. (Via Michelle Malkin).

IS OUR UNIVERSE SOMEONE ELSE'S HOBBY?

Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.

But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

This would explain a lot. Debug, please . . . .

Thoughts on how to survive inside a computer simulation can be found here.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Beldar.

THE PATRIOT ACT: Now protecting America from cockfighting.

I told you so.

THOUGHTS ON STRENGTH, and relief from obligations.

UPDATE: Somehow, that post made me think of this from Neal Stephenson.

I SUPPOSE WE CAN'T CREDIT GLOBAL WARMING: "It occurred to me today that for all the running around town I've done this summer, I've yet to get a single mosquito bite. How is that possible?"

Come to think of it, I haven't been bitten once this summer either.

NIDRA POLLER: Hot dogs and hamburgers in Kennebunkport. I hope the hot dogs were Hebrew National.

EVEN LOBBYISTS think the new Congressional ethics bill is a joke.

ELIZABETH EDWARDS, UNPLUGGED: I think the Edwards campaign would do better if people heard from her less.

BRENDAN LOY on seasonal hurricane forecasts, and the politics thereof.

HEY, WAIT: When did Bush invade Syria?

TERRORISTS AND CELL PHONES in Algeria.

PRESENT AT THE BIRTH.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: "With large swaths of the Gulf Coast still in ruins from Hurricane Katrina, rich federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are buying up luxury condos near the University of Alabama's football stadium."

DER SPIEGEL: "The U.S. military in Iraq is more successful than anyone wants to believe."

Well, for certain values of the word "anyone," anyway. At German blog Medienkritik, the reaction is this:

As a long-time observer of the publication, my first reaction to reading this on SPIEGEL ONLINE was: Are they on drugs?! - this directly contradicts everything they've reported for the past four years! My second reaction was: Have they finally gotten off the drugs?! Maybe reality is finally starting to sink in!

Keep in mind that less than a year ago, Der SPIEGEL published a magazine cover (depicted below) declaring Iraq a "Lost War".

There seems to be a lot of turnabout going on, all of a sudden.

ANOTHER REPORT FROM BAQUBAH: Thanks to Michael Yon who emailed the link; he adds: "Alexandra Zavis is an excellent correspondent. She gets around Iraq and I always find her stories consistent with what I am seeing on the ground. Her recent story on Baqubah adds more context to my own dispatches, and I believe the inverse is also true."

A LOOK AT REP. MIKE HONDA'S new nanotechnology bill: Sounds interesting.

PAKISTAN: "In Pakistan, the last month has produced nearly 400 deaths from Islamic radical violence. However, most Pakistanis are more concerned about upcoming elections, and the end of military rule, than they are of tribal support for the Taliban and al Qaeda. This year, most of the Islamic radical violence has been in the tribal areas. The Islamic radicals tried to assert themselves in the urban areas, and failed. This was a major blow to the Islamic radicals, who had convinced themselves that they had major support all over the country. They don't."

August 13, 2007

JOHN LEO ON MODERN JOURNALISM:

If anyone ever starts a museum of horrible explanations, the one-liner by Newsweek's Evan Thomas about his magazine's dubious reporting on the Duke non-rape case — "The narrative was right but the facts were wrong" — is destined to become a popular exhibit, right up there with "we had to destroy the village to save it."

What Mr. Thomas seems to mean is that the newsroom view of the lacrosse players as privileged, sexist, and arrogant white male jocks was the correct angle on the story. It wasn't. . . .

We now live in a docudrama world in which techniques of fiction and nonfiction are starting to blur. Many reporters think objectivity is a myth. They see journalism as inherently a subjective exercise in which the feelings and the will of the journalist function to reveal the truth of what has occurred. Two results are the emotional commitment to powerful but untrue story lines, and a further loss of credibility for the press.

Indeed.

UPDATE: "And we wonder why our approval ratings are in the crapper?"

THERE'S A NEW Blawg Review up!

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON POLITICS:

Yet the universal human desire to be associated in the here and now with the assumed winning side — and to shun perceived defeat — trumps them all. Throughout this war, that natural urge explains most of the volatile and shifting views of our politicians, pundits and media as they scramble to readjust to the up-and-down daily news from Iraq.

And so it is with the latest positioning about the surge that to a variety of observers seems successful — at least for now.

A lot of people do seem kind of fickle that way. Related thoughts here: "To paraphrase John Kerry: Who wants to be the last person calling for the U.S. to surrender a war the Army is winning? Apparently not Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama or the New York Times, which just 5 weeks ago said genocide was better than having U.S. troops keep the peace in Iraq."

And still more here.

UPDATE: Barack Obama's latest Iraq strategy.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hmm. The Pajamas Media item above links to this article on Obama from The Guardian, with this passage:

Answering a question on how he would refocus U.S. troops out of Iraq to better fight terrorism, he said, ``We've to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.''

But if you read this version of the same AP story from Breitbart.com, the passage is different:

Asked whether he would move U.S. troops out of Iraq to better fight terrorism elsewhere, he brought up Afghanistan and said, "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."

I suspect that the Breitbart version is more accurate than the Guardian version, because when I read it originally in The Guardian I remember thinking that this would have been a marginally plausible criticism of Afghanistan policy (though the "killing civilians" bit is mostly Taliban propaganda) but was utterly nonsensical in the context of Iraq. I assumed Obama was conflating the two, but it appears that the error is the AP's.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader D.G. Robertson sends this link to a report from the Nashua Telegraph, which has the Obama quote this way:

“Now you have narco drug lords who are helping to finance the Taliban, so we’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops that we are not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there,’’ Obama said.

Well, the narco drug lords are an issue -- has he been reading StrategyPage? Actually, probably not, as here's what StrategyPage says about air raids and "civilian casualties:"

Last week, U.S. forces detected a meeting of Taliban leaders in southern Afghanistan. Smart bombs hit the meeting, which had gathered over a hundred Taliban followers to witness the execution of two men suspected of passing information to the government. Over a hundred people were killed. The Taliban promptly claimed most of the dead were civilians. But they always do that, and no one believes them anymore.

No one but Obama, I guess. Robertson also notes that not long ago Obama was saying that the lives of U.S. troops killed in Iraq were "wasted."

Meanwhile, also from the Nashua Telegraph, is this rather inflammatory quote:

Campaign spokesman Reid Cherlin said Obama was not endorsing the current Bush policy, which consists solely of air raids and bombing of civilians.

Really? Solely? Evidence that the Obama campaign remains unready for primetime, I'm afraid. Or another botched quote from the press, I guess . . . .

I tried to find an email for inquiries on Obama's site, but the closest I could come to was an interview request form. If anybody from the campaign is reading this and wants to clarify, you can email me at pundit -at- instapundit.com.

MORE: Allah says I'm wrong about the civilian casualties, last week's bogus reports notwithstanding. But he doesn't address the Obama campaign's charge that our strategy revolves around bombing civilians. Nor have I heard from the Obama campaign on that issue.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT.

RON PAUL'S French fan base. But maybe they have a hidden agenda.

THOUGHTS ON KARL ROVE'S DEPARTURE, from Marc Ambinder.

AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES chastise their British counterparts for their antisemitic boycott of Israel.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON'T RESIST: And when you do.

Your results may vary, of course.

DETAILS THAT DON'T MATTER, in modern journalism.

MORE ATLANTIC (PROTO) HURRICANE-BLOGGING, from Brendan Loy.

ARMED WOMEN in Kashmir.

DUDE, WHERE'S MY KARMA? The coming shortage of "rapacious oldsters."

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Foolish myths about Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

CANADIAN GENERAL LEWIS MACKENZIE: NATO Countries are Shirking.

It's good to see the United States, Britain and Canada starting to focus on the shortage of NATO "boots on the ground" in Afghanistan, particularly in the volatile southern part of the country. It has been obvious to anyone with a modicum of operational experience that this was the case shortly after the U.S. had to divide its resources between Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003.

With NATO taking a leading role in Afghanistan, it was assumed that Article 5 of the alliance's charter that states that an attack against one is to be considered as an attack against all would result in a traffic jam of NATO troops as they deployed in the direction of the threat. Four years later, politically constrained military commanders on the ground are "requesting" the Alliance's civilian leadership find them 2,500 more troops to secure the south of the country.

You don't tippy-toe in incremental steps in search of victory.

Nope.

THOUGHTS ON ENEMY COMBATANTS and domestic politics, from Jonah Goldberg.

OSLO'S SAD RESULT: "It was less than two months ago, after the violent takeover of Gaza, that Hamas spokesmen took to the op-ed pages of American newspapers to proclaim that despite all the suicide bombings and summary executions, Hamas intends to create a good-government, pragmatic Islamic state in Gaza. . . . None of this, of course, has happened, and the news that has been trickling out of Gaza over the past few days portends an even bigger horrorshow."

A 200MPH FUEL-CELL CAR: Well, maybe. There's video.

SO I FINISHED UP A LAW REVIEW ARTICLE YESTERDAY, and rewarded myself by finishing William Gibson's Spook Country. I enjoyed it, and it had more connection to his last book, Pattern Recognition, than I had expected. It had a bunch of quotable passages, too. Here are a few:

"The world we walk around in would be channels."

She cocked her head at him. "Channels?"

"Yes. And given what broadcast television wound up being, that doesn't sound so good. But think about blogs, how each one is trying to describe reality."

"They are?" "In theory." "Okay."

"But when you look at blogs, where you're most likely to find the real info is in the links. It's contextual, and not only who the blog's linked to, but who's linked to the blog."

-----

The old man was as American as it got, but in what she thought of as some very recently archaic way. Someone who would have been in charge of something, in America, when grown-ups still ran things.

-----

Cultural Marxism was what other people called political correctness, according to Brown, but it was really cultural Marxism and had come to the United States from Germany, after World War II, in the cunning skulls of a clutch of youngish professors from Frankfurt. The Frankfurt School, as they'd called themselves, had wasted no time in plunging their intellectual ovipositors repeatedly into the unsuspecting body of old-school American academia. Milgrim always enjoyed this part; it had an appealing vintage sci-fi campiness to it, staccato and exciting, with grainy Eurocommie star-spawn in tweed jackets and knit ties, breeding like Starbucks.

_____

"A nation," he heard himself say, "consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation."

Anyway, I enjoyed it; if you're a Gibson fan you will too.

JEFF EMANUEL is blogging from Iraq.

RANDY NEAL ON photographing meteors digitally.

THE FLORIDA GOP CONTEMPLATES a rule change on delegates. "Some news that every Republican presidential campaign has taken note of: the winner of the Jan. 29 Republican primary in Florida could get all the delegates. The current winner-take-all-by-congressional-district rules might be jettisoned."

AL QAEDA FACING problems in Arabia: "Many people in Arabia, especially Saudi Arabia, still support terror attacks on infidels (non-Moslems), but have no patience for terrorists who attack Moslems. While a basic tenet of al Qaeda is deposing the Saudi monarchy, trying to do this only turns the Saudi population against the terrorists. Same problem in Yemen. This has caused quite a bit of debate within al Qaeda, but no consensus yet about what to do. So al Qaeda continues to get hammered in the areas where it has the most potential support." Hammer away.

UH OH: "A short time from now it is likely that a new form of Internet based warfare will erupt across the globe. The potency of this iWar will grow as the economies of the world steadily embrace the Internet to deliver services. At the same time, iWar will maintain its ease of adoption and low cost. iWar may also maintain its deniability."

On the upside, however, it doesn't involve cities getting blown up.

RAND SIMBERG on Karl Rove and the Wall Street Journal.

GOOD NEWS: "The number of truck bombs and other large al-Qaeda-style attacks in Iraq have declined nearly 50% since the United States started increasing troop levels in Iraq about six months ago, according to the U.S. military command in Iraq." You can make too much of numbers like this -- but you can bet that if the trend were going the other way it would be getting a lot more attention.

IN THE MAIL: Mark Tungate's Adland: A Global History of Advertising. Looks quite interesting.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Robert Novak looks at earmarks and corruption. Excerpt:

With the midnight hour approaching on Saturday, Aug. 4, near the end of a marathon session, Democratic and Republican leaders alike wanted to pass the defense appropriations bill quickly and start their summer recess. But Republican Rep. Jeff Flake's stubborn adherence to principle forced an hour-long delay that revealed unpleasant realities about Congress.

Flake insisted on debating the most egregious of the 1,300 earmarks placed in the defense money bill by individual House members that authorize spending in their districts. Defending every such earmark was the chairman of the Appropriations defense subcommittee: Democratic Rep. John Murtha, unsmiling and unresponsive to questions posed on the House floor by Flake. Murtha is called "King Corruption" by Republican reformers, but what happened after midnight on Aug. 5 is not a party matter. Democrats and Republicans, as always, locked arms to support every earmark. It makes no difference that at least seven House members are under investigation by the Justice Department. A bipartisan majority insists on sending taxpayers' money to companies in their districts without competitive bidding or public review.

Claims of newly established transparency were undermined by the late-night follies. Flake, who ran a Phoenix think tank, the Goldwater Institute, before coming to Congress in 2001, is immensely unpopular on both sides of the aisle for forcing votes on his colleagues' pork. He burnished that reputation by prolonging the marathon Saturday session and challenging selected earmarks.

Flake looks good. Congress as a whole, not so much.

UPDATE: An earmark anecdote.

THREE MARKS ON THE HORIZON: A new dispatch from Michael Yon. "Our military has increasing moral authority in Iraq, but the same cannot be said for our government at home. In fact, it’s in moral deficit. . . . Washington has no moral clout in Iraq. Washington looks like a circus act. The authority is coming from our military. The importance of this fact would be difficult to understate."

ACE FINDS AN ODD POCKET OF support for creationism.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh thinks Ace is misreading things. Ace responds.

ROGER SIMON has thoughts on gay marriage and the War on Terror.

DEMOCRATS LOOK AT Hillary's prospects.

"BROTHERS IN PEACE?" That would be nice.

HEIGHTENING THE CONTRADICTIONS on immigration enforcement?

DAYS OF OUR LIVES, the blogosphere edition.

SHE'S RIGHT: "The wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Sunday admonished those who question her biracial husband's credentials as a black man, calling the issue 'nonsense.'"

But in an age of identity politics, it's unavoidable. One of my law school friends, similarly situated, got the same "not black enough" treatment from Northwestern Law School.

HERE'S A BIG ROUNDUP OF REACTIONS to Karl Rove's departure.

CONFUSING MEANS AND MEDIANS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: Tom Maguire has fun at the editors' expense.

UPDATE: More lemons-into-lemonade at the Home for Wayward Statisticians: "Cool. I'm using it in my new Applied Statistics class."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Frank Wilson: "Now remember, this is the sort of thing, experts assure us, that the careful editing in the traditional media is designed to prevent, which is why the blogosphere is inherently inferior to traditional media."

SOME PEOPLE SEEM TO THINK THAT "UNITARY EXECUTIVE" is some sort of neoconservative code word for "dictator." Cass Sunstein explains the truth.

IN RESPONSE TO BAINBRIDGE'S SNEERS, James Lileks defends Iowa.

On the other hand, he's unable to put a happy face on the lack of electricity.

A 52-PAGE iPHONE BILL? And it's not that unusual, apparently.

Hey, at least it wasn't for $218 trillion.

LAMBERTED! But no Instalanche.

LATER: In an update: "Matthew Yglesias links to Tim Lambert, obviously deeming him a reputable source. Hey, this is about politics; not accuracy." Yglesias has been off his game lately.

MORE: Brad Plumer has been fooled, too.

BUT NO FROG MARCH: Karl Rove to resign.

More here.

August 12, 2007

THOMPSON QUITS PRESIDENTIAL RACE: Er, Tommy Thompson, that is.

IS HURRICANE DEAN in the process of forming?

FASHION TV: Ann Althouse and Robin Givhan on Bloggingheads.tv.

SHIFTING JUSTIFICATIONS for a gun ban in San Francisco.

MICHAEL SILENCE: "I am officially declaring privacy dead." The Patriot Act is not involved.

MICHAEL YON emails this link and adds: "When I wrote in 2006 that I would not be surprised to see a base overrun in Afghanistan in 2007, some people called me a traitor. . . . We are winning in Iraq. Make no mistake about that. But we are losing in Afghanistan."

Don't know if that's right, though I tend to trust Yon's judgment-- here's the latest roundup on Afghanistan from StrategyPage -- but it's clear that it needs more attention and that it's not getting enough. I also think that the drug warriors have been undermining the real war there.

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: "BTW drug warriors have done an awful lot to wreck economies, promote lawlessness, engender corruption and create illicit economies all over the third world, thus making people of color both miserable and dead. When do they get all the credit they deserve for that?"

To be fair, they've done plenty of harm here at home, too.

MORE: Clandestine weapons to Iraq? Probably actually destined for Iranian revolutionaries who will rise up in the spring. . . .

STILL MORE: John Wixted rounds up reports and comments: "I would be reluctant to disagree with Yon's analyses of Iraq (even if they did not correspond to my own analyses, which they do), but I don't think that his account of Afghanistan is correct. The Taliban are rising, but they are simply being eradicated on a regular basis." I hope that analysis is correct.

JOHN PODHORETZ: "I hate to be nasty, but anybody who takes the Ames Straw Poll results seriously is an idiot."

DAVE HARDY: "Some more revelations on how far CA is sliding toward the British standard, where you cannot defend yourself, yet the government will not enforce its rules, either."

"IS THE WASHINGTON POST smoking pot again?"

Plus, what happened to Drew Carey?

MORE ENVIRONMENTAL HYPOCRISY, this time in Los Angeles government. Rules and self-restraint are for the little people.

MORE ON CHINESE CENSORSHIP, from James Fallows.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE GOES ALL California-superior on Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. "How is it that we persist in allowing these unrepresentative, yahoo infested, pissant states [to] decide who gets to run for President?"

Now that's not very nice. But I think the answer is, to piss off Californians and New Yorkers, something that the rest of the country agrees on . . . .

UPDATE: Bainbridge is guestblogging at Andrew Sullivan's place, for those who missed it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts from Ed Driscoll.

ADDICTED TO REALITY TV: Hey, it's hard to resist Sunset Tan.

BIONIC ARMS AND MORE: Reporting from DarpaTech.

100,000 MEET TO PLAN A GLOBAL CALIPHATE: Gateway Pundit has the scoop.

277 REASONS TO HAVE SEX.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The New York Times sniffs out some healthcare pork:

Despite promises by Congress to end the secrecy of earmarks and other pet projects, the House of Representatives has quietly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to specific hospitals and health care providers under a bill passed this month to help low-income children.

Instead of naming the hospitals, the bill describes them in cryptic terms, so that identifying a beneficiary is like solving a riddle. Most of the provisions were added to the bill at the request of Democratic lawmakers. . . .

Republicans sometimes did the same thing when they controlled Congress. Under a 1999 law, for example, a small hospital in rural Dixon, Ill., was deemed to be in the Chicago area — 95 miles away — at the behest of its congressman, J. Dennis Hastert, who was then speaker.

Meet the new boss, yada yada. (Via Prairie Pundit).

GOOGLE: When ownership isn't ownership.

Notice that Google called these videos "purchased" and "download to own" -- as though by buying them, they became your property. Funny kind of property, that. Imagine if these were DVDs: one day, a man from Virgin Megastore shows up at your door and says, "We're taking away all your videos. Sorry! But we'll give you a credit to spend at a different store. Not a credit for videos, though. Also: it expires in 60 days."

This is a giant, flaming middle finger, sent by Google and the studios to the customers who were dumb trusting enough to buy DRM videos. How many of these people will trust the next DRM play from Google (no doubt coming soon from YouTube) or the studios?

Don't "buy" products from people and companies you don't trust.

CARNIVAL-O-RAMA: The Carnival of Cars is up! So is the Carnival of Recipes, focusing on slow cookers this time. (Here's one of my slow-cooker recipes). But wait, here's another Carnival of the Recipes.

There's also a new Carnival of Homeschooling, and a new Haveil Havalim. I'm not keeping up with the carnival explosion, but you can get more by visiting BlogCarnival.com -- and there are regularly updated highlights in the box in my right sidebar.

THOUGHTS ON WEALTH AND POVERTY from Tam. Also, fashion.

BEAUCHAMP UPDATE: "It seems silly and rather sad for The New Republic to be crawling further and further out on the limb for this guy when he's all but sawn it off."

WILL BUSH VETO THE lobbying "reform" bill?

"IN ALL FAIRNESS, YOUR SITE HAS POSTED AWFUL THINGS:" Harold Ford to Markos, on Meet the Press. Video at the link.

UPDATE: Are we seeing Markos going mainstream and leaving the netroots behind?

KITCHEN BLEG: I've got some pretty decent, but not top-quality, kitchen knives. My brother recently bought some much more expensive ones, and says the difference is big. I'm thinking of upgrading -- I do a lot of cooking around here -- and wonder if there's really a big difference between, for example, these high-priced Wusthof knives and these "budget" Wusthof knives. Any other suggestions also welcomed.

CURIOUS DEVELOPMENTS in the Goose Creek case. Dan Riehl continues to follow things.

MORE EDWARDS/MURDOCH money hypocrisy.

ROBERT SAMUELSON:

We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week's NEWSWEEK cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It's an object lesson of how viewing the world as "good guys vs. bad guys" can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story. . . . But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: we simply don't have a solution for this problem. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray global warming as a morality tale—as NEWSWEEK did—in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society.

I thought dissent was supposed to be the highest form of patriotism. . . . But read the whole thing. Personally, as I've noted before, the whole debate seems to me to be a religious sideshow. Regardless of what you think about global warming, there are lots of good reasons to avoid burning fossil fuels. But the global-warming discussion in the media is a consensus identity narrative designed to achieve political ends, not an effort to find facts or protect the environment. And this also accounts for the backlash.

UPDATE: More efforts to crush dissent, with threats of jail. They told me that if George W. Bush were reelected, those who failed to toe the line would be ostracized and threatened with prison. And they were right!

MICKEY KAUS: GM has the technology, but Toyota has the advantage.

AU REVOIR, Freedom Fries.

SURRENDER IS AS SURRENDER DOES: Jules Crittenden looks at some fancy political footwork on the surge and Iraq.

Some related thoughts from James Taranto: "Actually, when you think about it, it's amazing how similar the 2008 race is to the 2004 race. We have a formidable establishment candidate who originally backed the war, then changed his mind (John Kerry then, Hillary Clinton now); a challenger who has opposed the war all along, and who is clearly out of his depth (Howard Dean, Barack Obama); and a third guy who stands around looking pretty (John Edwards, John Edwards)."