Instapundit.com - December 30, 2007 - January 05, 2008 Archives

January 05, 2008

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE looks at Obama's position on corporate governance. "I’d give Obama a failing grade on this issue."

THE HIGH SCHOOL ROBOTICS COMPETITION kicks off!

HILLARY CLINTON: Obama's too liberal! Yeah, that'll work.

ABC NEWS says its viewers wanted the Dems to spend more time on the economy. Hardly any wanted to hear more about Iraq.

TOMORROW'S NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE leads with a big story on problems with electronic voting. Hey, there's been an obvious solution for quite a while. (Via Bradblog).

SOME HDTV PREDICTIONS for 2008.

HRC, MIA.

GUY HERBERT: "Big business bonanza: Parents must pay for children to be watched at home by online officials." Britain ain't what it used to be.

MARC AMBINDER'S SUM-UP on the Republican debate. "On points, Fred Thompson won the debate. Every answer was thoughtful and well-crafted; his tone matched the tone of the question; he wisely refrained from interjecting in the back and forth squabbling. He very deftly reminded viewers that he served on key Senate national security panels and is bringing his experience to bear. Even his insults were subtly and gently constructed."

Plus, a gutsy move by Hillary: "Wow -- HRC uses her husband's failed strike at Pakistan in 1998 as a reason why caution should be exercised in this affair."

UPDATE: Dan Riehl, on the other hand, thinks it was Romney.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Yeah, that's news if it's true: "Bill Richardson just said that terrorists have obtained nukes in Russia. Really? Isn't this like really, really, really, really big news? And bad?" All of the above, if it's true.

MORE: Romney: Standing up against anti-pharma demagoguery. Good for him. How many sick people have you cured, Senator?

Peter Robinson: "Fred Thompson turned in a very fine performance, the more effective for proving underplayed. . . . If (as I expect) Romney fares badly in New Hampshire, Thompson will be the obvious choice for conservatives. He's going to prove an easy man to rally around."

Plus, a strangely touching moment: "ABC’s Charlie Gibson, who is moderating these back-to-back debates, asked at the conclusion of the Republican contest for the Democratic candidates to come out and shake hands with the Republicans. They had a civil minute of joshing and smiling. I don’t want to sound sappy, but there was something lovely about it."

Josh Marshall: "Obama's very solid. Edwards really tried to slam the door on Hillary permanently. She was ... I'm not certain what the right word is, enraged? But it was a good response. Impassioned in ways that I think will play very well with some and probably not well with others. But really captured her argument as well as, I think you have to say, her anger at being in this position."

STILL MORE: Exhaustion setting in? I can see why -- but there's an awfully long road ahead.

Plus, Stephen Green has been drunkblogging. "Finally, someone had the stones to defend the pharmacutical companies who, whatever their faults, make modern health care possible. That someone was Mitt Romney. Why wasn’t it free-marketeer Ron Paul? Well, after watching Paul’s performance so far tonight, I’ll tell you why: Paul knows that he’s already lost libertarians like me, and is counting on nothing but the anti-war vote. It’s that simple, and that craven." But wait: "FINALLY, Paul is talking his principles. He’s taking a stand against the national ID card in general, and the welfare state in general. I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong."

Plus this: "Obama is taking the easy lob, and looking good doing so. He’s got an easy command of the facts, even if he sounds a LOT more like Bush than any good (or bad, bar Lieberman) Democrat would ever admit."

Also: "Clinton says we’re approach a recession, and she’s probably right. What’s telling is, her one statistic: The unemployment rate has increased to five whole percent. A modern recession is better than a 1970s growth period. Cool. . . . Bill Richardson just claimed that he "runs" the "state economy" of New Mexico. I can see him with his eyeshades and pencil, determining the markdowns at Safeway and the wage increases at Los Alamos National Laboratories. For the first time, Hillary has spent more time attacking her fellow Democrats than the Republicans. That’s a major change in strategy, and it speaks volumes. Big, womanly volumes of experienced change."

Lots more from Freeman Hunt, including this: "This is the best debate format. Kudos to ABC and Charles Gibson." And some advice that shouldn't be necessary, but is: "Note to all GOP candidates: talk about and explain the free market more."

Ann Althouse on the Democrats: "Will any of them admit the surge is a success? No."

And there's anti-Pharma demagoguery in the Democratic debate, too: "Clinton likes to accuse her opponents of having staff members who are 'lobbyists for the drug companies.' It’s a specious, meaningless charge. But shouldn’t someone point out that Mark Penn, chief Hillary strategist, is also CEO of Burson-Marsteller, the PR firm for Wyeth, Pfizer, Amgen and hundreds of other corporations? I don’t see anything wrong with Mark Penn’s career, but the depth of her phoniness is breathtaking." It is, but I find it reassuring to think that she might just be in the pocket of Big Pharma. That should limit the demagoguery to words, not actions . . .

Finally, the cool kid versus the valedictorian. And here's Ambinder's wrapup on the Democrats' debate.

AFTER QUOTING ONE OF MY READERS, JOE CARTER WRITES: "The fact that Reynolds (and many others) think that screwing over one's employees is a central 'free-market principle' is disheartening."

I can see how that would be disturbing, if it were true. My problem with Huckabee, however, is a bit different -- it's that when he talks about this stuff, he sounds like a slicker John Edwards.

UPDATE: Joe responds: "With all due respect to Reyonlds, anyone who thinks Governor Huckabee--a supply sider who favors reducing corporate tax rates, supports the Bush tax cuts, and proposes eliminating the AMT and the death tax--sounds like Sen. Edwards obviously hasn't been paying attention to his actual message."

Well, I guess his communications department needs to be doing a better job of getting that message out, as opposed to the "I'm a Christian!" message, which we all get by now. Because I'm hardly the only one to get this impression, and it's come from Huckabee's own statements.

THE PENTAGON and Islamic scholars.

January 04, 2008

HILLARY booed in New Hampshire.

HUCKABEE'S PROBLEM IN NEW HAMPSHIRE: "His aides are wary of New Hampshire. 'It's all no tax, no government there,' said Bob Wickers, a top strategist. 'It's not ideal.'"

SONY DITCHING DRM:

In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony (SNE) and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.

Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group (WMG), which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon.com's (AMZN) digital music store. EMI and Vivendi's Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007.

Good idea.

THE DVDS THAT PEOPLE ARE WATCHING as they wait out the writers' strike.

SLIPPERY SLOPES: "Switzerland is introducing speed cameras on the slopes to try to reduce the increasing number of accidents. The first such nationwide controls will treat skiers like cars on the motorway. Speeders will be caught with hand-held radar devices carried by hidden personnel." They're going after anyone going faster than 19 mph.

Well, you could see that kind of thing coming. And, come to think of it, I did.

HILLARY RESPONDS TO THE LOSS, badly.

MILLIONS LOSE POWER IN CALIFORNIA:

A fierce storm swept through central and northern California on Friday, cutting power to more than 1 million homes and businesses, closing major roads and canceling flights at several airports.

The storm may dump as much as 6 to 8 feet (1.8 to 2.5 metres) of snow through the weekend in the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada, and up to 2 feet (0.6 metre) at the popular tourist spot of Lake Tahoe, forecasters with the U.S. National Weather Service said.

Southern California braced for possible flash floods and mudslides in areas that burned in the October wildfires. Total rainfall could reach 5 inches (12.5 cm) in Los Angeles and 10 inches (25 cm) in the mountains of Southern California -- the most significant rainfall in the region since January 2005, and on the heels of the driest year on record.

"It is very important, since there is so much land that has burned, that we are prepared for mudslides," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said after being briefed by the Office of Emergency Services.

Hope they've done their disaster-preparedness in advance, because it's too late now.

UPDATE: Snow in Mexico?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Readers think this storm is being, er, overblown:

Being here in the brunt of the storm, I can attest that this is the biggest storm to hit California since, oh, March.

I'm not sure what the news here is. Yes, the winds have toppled trees all over town. This happens EVERY year. The TV reporters were measuring the depth of the water in the gutters; it was up to 4 inches. (Sacramento people usually dump yard waste in the street, causing storm drains to be clogged. Again, this happens EVERY year.) We joke - but it isn't really a joke - that in California, our four seasons are Earth, Air, Fire and Water; mudslides, Santa Ana winds, forest fires and floods.

This isn't _disaster_ preparedness, Glenn; this is _winter_ preparedness. EVERY year we have wildfires. EVERY year, we have mudslides when the rains soak the fire-ravaged hillsides. EVERY year we have strong winds, generally starting about now, that blow down a few trees and power lines. Every year, hikers and skiers get trapped by "unexpected" snowstorms in the mountains and have to be rescued. And any person with an IQ in triple digits knows enough to have flashlights, battery powered radios, and the minimal basics of storm preparedness.

You remember the old children's song about the "Eeensy Weensy Spider"? That's us.

Ah, to live in idyllic California! And reader Rodney Graves emails:

Here in South San Jose the area around us is without power (including my data center [about a mile from here], which is still running on generator power), while our new housing development is powered.

The storm has been very windy, and we had some gusts I would estimate at more than 50kts here on our hill. Rainfall has also been heavy.

But...

Not all that unusual for our rainy season here. Worst in six years, twelve worse than this in the last fifty. More of a pain in the posterior than a threat to life and limb for most.

Bad weather news overhyped? Say it ain't so! And speaking of weather alarmism, John Tierney has some thoughts: "It would be nice to think that we, unlike the ancients who propitiated the gods with human sacrifices, could accept the fact that it’s natural for unusual weather to occur — that the weirdest year of all would be one in which no record was set anywhere."

MORE: Dr. Stanley Tillinghast emails:

In the few hours my MacBook Pro's battery has left, I went first, of course, to Instapundit.

I appreciated the dose of reality from your Sacramento reader. This is our winter; we won't freeze to death, but may get wet.

My wife and I are cocooned very snugly, thank you, in our vacation home on the northern California coast. Last night the storm was howling, today the surf was high, but we had a little breakthrough sun just before sunset.

Our necessary 'survival' equipment so far has included: (1) an Aladdin oil lamp that puts out a light via its mantle that is bright enough for comfortable reading; (2) a Coleman propane stove; (3) our Lopi wood-burning stove. The Mountain Green LED lantern is very useful but not as cozy as the Aladdin lamp.
We do have the two cookbooks you recommended for when the power goes out, but are too lazy to actually cook up anything as long as the canned soup and PB&J makings hold up.

We don't quite have the emergency radio thing worked out, though. I think the local radio station lost power too.

Power outages are expected here on the coast; the full-timers have their generators, but we're very happy with our books and the light to read them by.

Just finished reading Robert Zubrin's Energy Victory, BTW, and highly recommend it.

I have one of these hand-crank radios. But the radio station should have a generator. . . .

LIKABLE, YES. BUT ELECTABLE? Kerry Howley looks at Mike Huckabee. Of course, if he's likable enough, he's probably electable.

JONAH GOLDBERG ON OBAMA AND DISAPPOINTMENT: "Imagine the Democrats do rally around Obama. Imagine the media invests as heavily in him as I think we all know they will if he's the nominee — and then imagine he loses. I seriously think certain segments of American political life will become completely unhinged. I can imagine the fear of this social unraveling actually aiding Obama enormously in 2008. Forget Hillary's inevitability. Obama has a rendezvous with destiny, or so we will be told. And if he's denied it, teeth shall be gnashed, clothes rent and prices paid."

He's right. And as I've noted before, Hillary runs a smaller-scale version of this risk in the nomination battle -- if she outmaneuvers Obama rather than beating him straight-up, that'll probably alienate a lot of people and cause them to stay home in November.

UPDATE: Bill Quick: "If Huckabee beats Obama, everything you’ve seen during the past eight years of Bush Derangement Syndrome will become nothing more than a mild neurosis. Bottom line, though, is that the real threat of a Huckabee candidacy is not that he’ll defeat Obama, but that he’ll destroy the GOP coalition in trying."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ryan Hartman thinks this is about urban riots. I'm thinking more an extended chattering-class hissy fit. Yes, it's hard to believe that people could get more deranged than they've been since the 2000 elections, but I think they've got it in them.

Meanwhile, Hartman should note that the "secret Muslim" claims about Obama come from other Democrats, in the form of Hillary and Edwards proxies.

BLOGGER ANDREW OLMSTED has died in Iraq. (Via Blackfive). He left a last post for publication in this event; you can leave a note of condolence for his family in the comments, but please, nothing political. Here's his blog, always worth reading. (Bumped to top).

JOSE PADILLA sues John Yoo.

PERRY DE HAVILLAND ON the American legal psychosis. Surely it's mere neurosis, isn't it?

CHINESE COUNTERFEIT GOODS: A national security angle.

NORMAN HSU UPDATE: Democratic Fundraiser Norman Hsu Sentenced to 3 Years in Calif. Fraud Case.

I DIDN'T HEAR LIMBAUGH TODAY, but reader Doug Hutson emails: "I notice that Rush Limbaugh is concerned that most Republican candidates for POTUS are not true conservatives in that they are for open borders, increased spending, higher taxes, etc. He is saying in his anti- Huckabee monologues that Huckabee is no conservative. He is now adopting your reasoning prior to November 06 that ideas matter more than party. You won!" Well, he wasn't very happy with my GOP pre-mortem, but it's held up pretty well. So, for that matter, has this, alas.

UPDATE: In response to a couple of readers, let me be clear: I don't think that I changed Limbaugh's mind. I think that events did. After the election, Limbaugh said he felt "liberated" -- I think that before that he felt obliged to put the best face on things. Now he doesn't. And, once he looks at the problem honestly, it's no surprise to me that he sees a lot of the problems that I saw. That's not because of me, it's just because that's how things are.

JEEZ: "China has upped the ante on censorship, moving beyond the Great Firewall of China to mandate that all Internet video sites must be state-owned." No Internet coverage of the next Tiananmen massacre if they can help it.

SOUNDS GOOD: "Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!"

UPDATE: Several readers think this is a hoax, or at least overstated, and one writes:

Nice dreams. but i find many issues with the story.

I use waste veggie right now in my Dodge. It clatters more than diesel, not less, the engine is less quiet than on diesel. You have to filter your wvo to less than 5 microns, and you can't do that through a pair of jeans (it generally won't flow through denim at less than 140 deg F), and it takes a pump to push it through a filter. If it were that easy,
more of us would do it. (trust me, I run 20K+ miles a year on veggie.....)

Biodiesel does require different materials in your fuel system (believe me, I *know* this from experience...The hard way). And biodiesel uses feedstock, just like ethanol does. His idea about electric (plug in) vehicles is good, and not far off the mark, but the devil is in the details. TO get good range, you need a LOT of batteries. You can't "go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor" and just "bolt the electric motor onto the back of the
transfer case" and hook up the batteries. In the basics, that works. In reality, you need gearing to mate the DC motor to the rest of the drivetrain, and the weight of the batteries is prohibitive if you want any real range. (again, I know this from experience in DC driven farm carts and such). I've built 5 so far.

Hydrogen and Natural Gas are wonderful fuels, but they won't cut mileage in half. At best, they are an alternative fuel. They will produce more power, but so will adding more gasoline or diesel to the current engine's fuel mix. Hydrogen does help diesel burn cleaner, but it is cost prohibitive. The diesel guru's have often used propane or Natural gas to increase HP in their engines. But it's just putting another fuel into the engine. More miles per gallon of diesel, perhaps. Less fuel used per mile? No.

If adding hydrogen or propane or natural gas were economical, don't you really think that the freight companies would use it? They'll do anything to save a buck, but they haven't. It really doesn't save anything. More HP in the same size engine, but at a reduced lifetime.

Ethanol as you have posted previously, is at best a boondoggle for farmers via subsidies. It really doesn't save any energy after all has been considered. If we had sugarcane, it might, but corn ethanol is a waste of good food.

He has some good ideas. But converting them to practical automobiles for people and cargo transportation? That's the rub.

Yeah, over the years I've heard a lot of stuff that sounds good about homebrew MPG tinkering. Often you can make a vehicle that works pretty well if the driver is also the designer and mechanic; it's a lot harder to make something you can sell to consumers. I've also heard a lot of hoaxes. Don't know which this one is. There's some skepticism in this DailyKos thread.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More discussion at Bill Quick's place.

WHERE IS EUROPE'S RON PAUL?

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE REAL WORLD: As the Iowa hoopla dies down, some useful thoughts from William Shawcross about the big picture.

MARK LEVIN: Relax. Huckabee will not be the Republican Nominee.

FAT-BLOGGING: I guess it's the time of year, but there's always lots of interest when I put up a diet or fat-related post.

I will say that I tried the Shangri-La Diet as an experiment back when we did our podcast with Seth Roberts, and absolutely nothing happened. Of course, it's supposed to work better the more overweight you are, and I'm not overweight -- except on the lame BMI scale, which doesn't really work for people who lift weights -- so I suppose it's possible that it lives up to the hype elsewhere.

In my experience, though, the only real weight-loss plan that works is eat less and exercise more. But nobody wants to do that . . . .

RICHARD FERNANDEZ on climate, corruption, and bureaucratic empowerment.

A REPORT FROM JOHN MCCAIN'S blog conference call.

WHY THE NETROOTS aren't overjoyed about Obama's victory.

CLAIM: A cold spell soon to replace global warming.

So, would that be good news, or bad?

FIREFLY RETURNS: as an online game.

IN THE MAIL: Eric Finkelstein & Laurie Zuckerman's The Fattening of America: How The Economy Makes Us Fat, If It Matters, and What To Do About It.

MICHAEL YON: "The body armor controversy is heating up again. The military is being accused of malfeasance but I believe that certain manufacturers have been more successful at manufacturing controversy than body armor." And on a related note, see Michael Totten's comments on wearing heavy body armor: "One lieutenant forced me to wear Marine-issue body armor – which weighs almost 80 pounds – before he would let me go out on patrol with him. I felt like Godzilla lumbering around with all the extra bulk and weight, and I didn’t really feel safer. Running while carrying those extra pounds all of a sudden wasn’t much of an option. Sacrificing most of my speed and agility to make myself a little more bullet-proof might not be worth it." That's a trade-off that the press stories usually ignore.

UPDATE: Bill Ardolino emails:

"Marine issue" body armor weighs 80 lbs. only when it is accompanied by webbing and a full complement of ammunition and other gear. A standard issue interceptor or spartan vest with kevlar inserts and the heavy ceramic rifle plates is about 35 lbs., max 40 lbs. with kevlar bells and whistles like sleeves.

Up until recently in Anbar, this rig, while cumbersome and problematic for middle-of-the-night and Special Ops stuff, was fairly useful in stopping armor piercing and other high caliber sniper rounds, as well as protecting against lesser threats like shrapnel and 7.62 rounds.

Regarding the ostensibly superior dragon skin armor: as a journalist embed without the ammunition, I would find the extra weight prohibitive. If I were a soldier or Marine with an extra 40 lbs. of ammunition and gear, I would find it REALLY prohibitive.

More info on body armor here.

It probably feels like 80 lbs. soon enough.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on body armor at The Captain's Journal.

MORE: Still more on the armor faux-controversy here.

STILL MORE: A reader emails:

Right after my son got to Iraq, they weighed his basic rig. That was armor(with side and shoulder plates), camelback with water, basic ammo load, first-aid kit, all the stuff you ALWAYS take. It was right at 90 pounds. Add in helmet, rifle, extra ammo, etc., and that's a lot to carry around.

Yeah. If you know you're gonna get shot, you'd like to be wearing the heaviest armor possible. But if you know you're going to duck, you'd like to be wearing the lightest armor possible. It's a bit like sports cars vs. SUVs, I suppose: You see a wreck, and you'd like to be in a big heavy SUV. But you don't see the wreck that didn't happen because the guy in the sports car managed to swerve out of the way.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY: "With oil prices soaring, a U.S. distracted by war in Iraq and the rise of populist anti-American leaders in Latin America, it's amazing that free trade isn't better understood as a way the U.S. can boost its influence in its own hemisphere." Yeah, even among the supposed devotees of "soft power" it gets short shrift.

A CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW PREVIEW. I'll be there with the Popular Mechanics folks starting on Sunday.

MICKEY KAUS says Iowans are smarter than he thought -- but he also finds journalists admitting they're afraid to write negative things about Obama.

GOOD NEWS -- VINDICATION. Bad news -- 26 years behind bars for an innocent man:

Three times during his nearly 27 years in prison, Charles Chatman went before a parole board and refused to acknowledge he was a rapist. His steadfastness was vindicated yesterday, when a judge released him because of new DNA evidence showing he indeed wasn't. The release of Mr. Chatman, 47, added to Dallas County's nationally unmatched number of wrongfully convicted inmates.

I think he ought to get a millon bucks per year served. At a minimum.

FREE SPEECH? WHAT'S THAT? British blogger to be arrested for inciting racial hatred. What, are they channeling the Saudis in Britain? If you're interested in supporting free speech rights, the British Embassy's contact page is here. As with the Saudi case I don't know much about the blogger, but I don't need to -- people shouldn't be arrested merely for blogging things that the powers-that-be don't like.

But since the British government disagrees, they should be forced to live with their position, and the one-sided nature of it should be brought out. As with the Steyn-persecuting Canadian government, British citizens who value free speech should be flooding the authorities with complaints about hate speech aimed at Jews, Christians and, for fun, even Americans, and then documenting the action, or lack thereof, that results.

UPDATE: Brian Micklethwait comments: "If Lionheart's claim that he faces arrest just for blogging his mind are correct, then of course it is everything-and-the-kitchen-sink time. Let battle be joined. But for now, I would like just a little more reconnaissance." Well, if it turns out he knocked over a bank or something, then yes. But the notion of people being arrested in Britain just for saying politically incorrect things is hardly shocking these days. That said, I'd be happy if this turned out to be something else, for obvious reasons. As one of Micklethwait's commenters observes: "Surely the bigger issue here isn't whether or not he actually goes to chokey, it's the fact that we now live in a society in which he credibly could." And that's pretty clearly the case in Britain, which is also trying to export its laws to the United States via libel tourism and the like.

STEPHEN GREEN TO IOWA REPUBLICANS: "What the f*** is wrong with you people?"

BIG -- AND DEVASTATING -- NEWS ON THAT LANCET STUDY claiming massive civilian deaths in Iraq. A National Journal cover story by Neil Munro suggests the possibility of outright scientific fraud. Munro notes serious problems with the study, and a failure on the part of The Lancet's staff to determine if the data on which it was based -- data which the authors will not share -- were even true. In addition, there are problems with conflicts of interest and political bias. This is a big deal story; it'll be interesting to see if it gets the attention it deserves.

UPDATE: Some background here. (Bumped).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Much more here. "This should be a lesson to Old Media that a little digging is in order when something so out of line with previous reports shows up. But it’s one that probably won’t be learned — at least when outlier studies like Lancet’s fit their advocacy template."

ON TO THE Wyoming caucus!

SEEING A GHOST in New Hampshire.

RON RADOSH REVIEWS Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. Our podcast interview with Goldberg is here.

UPDATE: Another review, by Fred Siegel, in the Wall Street Journal. Jonah comments here.

MORE JOURNALISTIC SCANDAL: The latest on Scott Horton and Harper's.

THEY'RE NOT AN ENDANGERED SPECIES IN ACADEMIA YET, THOUGH: Where have all the Marxists gone?

JAY GRODNER UPDATE: Professor Bainbridge has more thoughts on the lawyer charged with "keying" an Iraq-bound Marine's car. And Eric Scheie has thoughts on moralistic vandalism.

THE INVISIBLE INGREDIENT IN EVERY KITCHEN: Heat.

BIG BROTHER'S WATCHING YOU -- but who's watching Big Brother? Big Brother doesn't want it to be you . . . .

I've written on that myself, recently.

BIDEN DROPS OUT.

January 03, 2008

HILLARY'S new talking points.

Meanwhile, reader Jody Green emails: "The start of this election is a little scary and has started with two populist, eloquent demagogues. They talk about hope when half the world hopes to be in America."

UPDATE: The votes are all in, and Hillary's come in third, behind Obama and Edwards.

MORE: TigerHawk: "If the nominees really turn out to be Huckabee and Obama, the paternalists will have won long before November. And the jihadis will not have done too badly either." Ugh.

FINALLY: Big Iowa reaction roundup here.

And Fred Thompson: "We just got our ticket to the next dance."

DRUDGE'S IMAGE.

UPDATE: State 29 has a moment of glee.

LAURA INGRAHAM is saying that the energy in the Democratic caucuses -- for Obama -- was huge, especially by comparison to the Republican caucuses. Interestingly, it's Susan Estrich who's saying that winning Iowa doesn't seem to help Democrats much. Ingraham responds that "Republicans are missing the boat on this economic security issue." It's the "I feel your pain" issue, again.

Interestingly, though, the SEIU supported Edwards, and AFSCME supported Clinton, and Obama won.

WHAT ROMNEY COULD LEARN from Obama.

ANOTHER CHANCE TO PLAY name that party!

NOW I'M WATCHING OBAMA'S SPEECH, and before he started talking my first thought was "what a great suit." What is it, Canali? Brioni? But the speech is good, too. "You have done what the cynics said we couldn't do." But while the speech is good, his facial expressions are curiously still -- not usually like him. Good on TV, but probably better on radio. But what's surprising is how closely his speech parallels Huckabee's.

Meanwhile, Tyrone Steeles writes: Obama 1, Black Democratic Establishment 0. Yeah, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson can't be liking this too much.

Keith Olbermann could be happier, too.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Chris Matthews has Franz Fanon envy?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mark Steyn: "We shouldn't take away from the Senator's achievement tonight. He's made history. And the problem for Hillary is that, for those Democrats who want to cast a history-making vote, he's a much more appealing figure than she is."

HUCKABEE'S GIVING A GREAT SPEECH: Says the election proves that "people are more important than the purse." He's good at this stuff. And I'd swear his speech is crafted to bounce off of Hillary's, even though he only had a few minutes.

UPDATE: The big question in a lot of people's minds, apparently, is "who's the hot blonde over his shoulder?" I'm pretty sure she's with Chuck Norris -- who's over the other shoulder -- so I wouldn't let that question run away with me, guys . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Chris Maiorana emails that she's Norris's wife. So, really guys, back off . . . .

MORE: Richard Viguerie sends out an email-blast to the effect that Huckabee's win is bad for the GOP: "Mike Huckabee is a Christian socialist. He is a good man, but with a Big Government heart. He is the most liberal of all the Republican presidential candidates on economic issues."

And here's some Ed Rollins video.

ALAN COLMES SAYS that Chris Dodd has dropped out of the race.

DAVID FREDDOSO was at the Republican caucuses in Iowa and reports:

As the results shake out, nothing is settled on the Republican side, except that Romney is the only Republican loser of the night. It's hard to see how he comes back from this.

Huckabee wins, of course — evidently, he found the holy grail of the caucuses, expanding the pool. Thompson did much better than expected, as did McCain. Rudy Giuliani watches the race stay unresolved long enough that his late strategy could work. And even Ron Paul made double digits.

But Romney is in big trouble now.

Not irretrievable, but yeah.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, John Edwards is the big loser. Not so much from the vote, but from the absolutely awful speech he's giving right now. I think he knows it's awful, too, as he's blinking about twice per second. The crowd response is unenthusiastic, too.

UPDATE: Hillary looks to come in third, but her speech is much better, and the crowd was at least acting enthusiastic. She's standing next to Bill, and so far hasn't made the obvious point about losing Iowa and still becoming President.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Video here.

MORE: Matt Welch on Edwards: "It strikes me as a little-remarked phenomenon in this election that, for the first time since maybe 1988, the Democrats are running a serious candidate with an essentially Naderite worldview on the evils of Corporate Greed. . . . With the one-day Hucka-BOO-yah on the GOP side, the big winner in Iowa tonight seems to be illiberal economic populism."

HOW BILL AND HILLARY WERE DIFFERENT, as law professors.

FOX HAS NOW CALLED IOWA FOR BARACK OBAMA: Clinton & Edwards are basically tied for second.

UPDATE: Arianna Huffington is celebrating.

A FAKE REPUBLICAN in the New York Times? I used to get a lot of letters published in the NYT, and the letters staff knew who I was. I don't think there's much chance that they didn't realize they were publishing letter after letter from a "lifelong Republican" who happened to always agree with Democrats.

UPDATE: Reader Mark Artuso emails: "The way you worded this article, it makes it sound like YOU are the lifelong Republican who happened to always agree with Democrats... I'm pretty sure that isn't the case." Oops. Nope. That's obvious if you follow the link, but I can see how people who didn't do so could get the wrong idea. Note to self: Reduce pithiness by 10%.

FOX IS PROJECTING HUCKABEE THE WINNER in Iowa.

JIM HOFT is live photoblogging the Nodaway, Iowa Democratic caucus.

PRESIDENT MUSKIE, meet President Gephardt. A look at Iowa's importance.

CAPT. ED MORRISSEY is liveblogging the caucus results.

CAUGHT YOUTHENING: If John Edwards did this, people would make fun of him.

JED BABBIN: Fred won't quit after Iowa. "Sources told me that Thompson’s campaign was already moving elements to South Carolina where they expect to do very well." Was The Politico suckered?

JOHN MCINTYRE: What the major campaigns need tonight.

THIS HOMEMADE FRED THOMPSON AD is better than the real thing.

PHOTOBLOGGING THE MEDIA at the Iowa Caucuses.

THE BOYS OF ENGLAND -- spirit not fully crushed yet:

An 11-year-old boy demonstrated The Force when he defended his mom by hitting an attacker with a toy lightsaber.

The man, in his 30s, fled after being confronted by the youngster outside a bakery in Swardeston, near Norwich, England.

Police said the boy hit the man with his toy after the man had punched and verbally abused his mother as she approached her car.

Obviously, British educators must redouble their efforts. (Via Jonah Goldberg).

I GUESS THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT GREENHOUSE GASES AND THE PLANET:

The New York Times has figured out a way to bypass the massive journalist exodus from Iowa to New Hampshire, starting late Thursday. Two words: corporate jet.

Exhausted Times staffers will be transported, Sulzberger-style, out of Iowa starting around 6 a.m Friday morning.

Well, maybe they'll pack them in like sardines, for efficiency's sake.

TOM MAGUIRE:

Well - whether Obama wins by a little or a lot Hillary will be the Terminator candidate. She can't be bargained with. She can't be reasoned with. She doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And she absolutely will not stop, ever.

But that doesn't mean she can't be defeated.

Predictions from Tom and his readers follow.

KEITH MILBY PREDICTS a second-place finish for Fred Thompson. That's certainly defying the conventional pundit-wisdom. We'll soon find out if he's right . . . .

HOW THE FRENCH MEDIA are covering Iowa.

THE LATEST PJM POLITICAL is now available online.

WHAT BLOGS SHOULD DO: A.C. Kleinheider has been bird-dogging the Nashville election commission break-in, where hundreds of thousands of voter records were stolen.

BRING A HOT DISH AND SOME PBR: IowaHawk is liveblogging the Iowa caucuses.

NEVER LET A PHOTOGRAPHER WHO'S TAKING YOUR PICTURE GET TOO CLOSE: Here's why.

DON'T MISS PJM POLITICAL tonight on XM Satellite Radio Channel 130 at 6 pm Eastern. Ed Driscoll emails: "This week’s XM show features an interview I did with Austin Bay this weekend in a Tex-Mex roadhouse in beautiful downtown Lampasas Texas (no, really!) on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, as well as your interview with Jonah on Liberal Fascism. Plus lots of coverage of Iowa, in-between."

UPDATE: Never mind. Ed Driscoll just emailed again that it's been put over until 7 pm tomorrow night, because of the wall-to-wall Iowa coverage. It'll be online in a bit, though, and I'll post a link when that happens.

NEW HAMPSHIRE BLOGGER JAY TEA endorses Fred Thompson.

UPDATE: Also a Thompson endorsement from Free Republic founder Jim Robinson.

THERE'S NOTHING MORE TIRING, apparently, than a war that's now going well:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite their pledges to continue pushing to end the war in Iraq, face growing pressure from their rank-and-file Democrats to focus more attention on domestic, “pocketbook” issues in the upcoming election year.

Junior Democrats describe an “Iraq fatigue” setting in among some members after dozens of successful withdrawal votes failed to drive a wedge between Republicans and President Bush on the war strategy.

We'll end the war -- in fact, have largely done so if you mean "the war" in the narrow sense these folks obviously do -- but not by skedaddling.

But you know, we should have foreseen that Congressional backbone would be in short supply way back during the Great Congressional Bug-Out of 2001. See this piece by Walter Shapiro, too. And this was a warning, too. Still, I guess Congress has done better, in some respects, than we might have expected.

WHAT'S GOOD FOR GENERAL MOTORS is good for the DNC. Or something like that.

A ROUNDUP OF Iowa predictions.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS with Karl Rove.

MICHAEL S. MALONE is bearish on Google. And Apple.

SLY, WRY, and dry.

ED DRISCOLL SPOTS breaking news from 2002.

I'D LOSE SLEEP JUST CONTEMPLATING THE PRICE TAG: A $50,000 high-tech bed.

A NEW HAMPSHIRE BLOGGER endorses McCain.

STRATEGYPAGE ON CASUALTIES IN IRAQ:

In hindsight, U.S. troops will get credit for keeping their own casualties down to historically low levels (compared to any other 20th century conflict). Professional soldiers have already recognized this feat, and are studying American techniques intensively. Less well appreciated are the efforts the Americans made to keep civilian losses down. But foreign military experts are coming to appreciate that this aspect of the war paid long term benefits. Iraqis saw, day by day, the efforts by American troops to avoid hurting civilians. Initially, Iraqis saw that as an American weakness, but in the long run they recognized it as a sensibility rarely seen in the Middle East. This will have long term consequences for relations between the United States and Iraq.

Read the whole thing.

PETRAEUS'S INTERVIEW WITH FOREIGN POLICY: Jules Crittenden comments.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF IRONY: Paks flee to relative safety of Afghanistan.

BACK TO THE FUTURE, with new, improved blimps! No, this is not a story about the Ron Paul campaign.

BILL BRADLEY reports from Iowa.

FRED THOMPSON RESPONDS TO The Politico:

GOP presidential hopeful Fred Thompson said in an in-studio interview with KCCI-TV in Des Moines that there is no truth to rumors that his campaign will fold before New Hampshire if he doesn't have a strong showing in Iowa.

"That is absolutely made up out of whole cloth," said the former U.S. Senator from Tennessee.

Thompson said a rival campaign was likely the source of that rumor.

"Can you imagine such a thing in politics?" he asked.

No, that would require a willing suspension of disbelief. More from Rich Galen.

IN THE MAIL: William Drinkard's new science fiction novel, Elom.

KENNETH GREEN LOOKS AT the climate gap and the Presidential campaign.

THOUGHTS ON BRANDING, RATIONAL IGNORANCE, AND POLITICAL NEPOTISM: "Because voters know very little about the details of candidates' ideology and issue positions, they use a candidate's family affiliation with a popular political leader as an information shortcut."

Take it away, Adam Bellow!

JAY GRODNER UPDATE: The story of the lawyer charged with having "keyed" a Marine's car just before the Marine left for Iraq has now made the Chicago Tribune.

UPDATE: Reader David Emerson emails:

Glenn- FYI. Since placing a American flag decal (perhaps 3"x5") on the rear window of my SUV, it's been keyed twice and has had its windows gratuitously smashed several times too. I'm here the city which so prides itself on tolerance....San Francisco....it could be the antiwar crowd or the anti-SUV crowd simply becoming more hostile. Wonder if others have experienced the same thing.

I'm no fan of hate crime legislation...but next time this happens may report it as one and see what happens.

I think you should.

HERE'S MORE ON THE SAUDIS' CRUSHING OF DISSENT. And there's a Free Fouad letter-writing site.

A BIG IOWA CAUCUS ROUNDUP.

IRAQ: The issue that was to define the campaigns, hasn't.

THE BELMONT CLUB: "US deaths in Iraq are at the lowest 3 month total ever. The three month total for October, November and December 2007 is 93. It's also the first time a 3 month total has dropped below 3 digits."

ARMED CUSTOMER thwarts grocery store robbery:

A 51-year-old man stopped a masked man from robbing a Southside grocery store and held him at gunpoint until police arrived.

Charlie Merrell was in checkout line at Bucks IGA Supermarket, 3015 S. Meridian St., when a masked man jumped a nearby counter and held a gun on a store employee at 5:17 p.m. Monday, according to a police report made public today.

While the suspect was demanding cash from the workers, the police report states that Merrell pulled his own handgun, pointed it at the robber and ordered him to put down his weapon.

Read the whole thing. I suspect that Merrell will carry in Condition One from now on. Though his way worked. (Original condition-inversion error fixed. Danger of posting without coffee!)

WELL, DUH: Press, political pressure helped 'lose' Fallujah, report says.

A secret intelligence assessment of the first battle of Fallujah shows that the U.S. military thinks that it lost control over information about what was happening in the town, leading to "political pressure" that ended its April 2004 offensive with control being handed to Sunni insurgents. . . . The authors said the press was "crucial to building political pressure to halt military operations," from the Iraqi government and the Coalition Provisional Authority, which resulted in a "unilateral cease-fire" by U.S. forces on April 9, after just five days of combat operations.

They could hardly do more damage if they were on the other side.

UPDATE: Reader T. Tareeq thinks this is unfair, noting that in the second battle of Fallujah embedded Western reporters provided a valuable corrective. That's true, but uncritical repetition of biased Arab reporting has been a hallmark of Western press coverage of this war.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts here.

What happened? During the initial effort to retake Fallujah in April 2004 -- following the brutal murders of four Blackwater contractors -- Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya began broadcasting propaganda that Western media immediately repeated. The two Arab news services showed video of babies in hospitals and claimed the Marines had wounded these and killed more. Both channels made explicit comparisons to the Palestinians, and the American and European press ate it up.

The propaganda efforts worked. The Marines withdrew and the terrorists made Fallujah the center of their oppression over the people of western Iraq. It took months for the US to mount another offensive, this time with media embeds to counter the propaganda that the Western press seemed eager to indulge. In November 2004, the US finally cleared Fallujah, but not before losing a lot of credibility with the Iraqis who felt abandoned to the terrorists.

This is just a repeat of the Peter Arnett story. In the first Gulf War, Arnett famously repeated without any hint of skepticism the notion that the US bombed a baby-milk factory instead of a weapons factory. Years later, Eason Jordan would admit that CNN cooked its reporting to curry favor with Saddam Hussein, and would occasionally just read copy into the camera provided by the Saddam regime as though it was CNN's own. Rather than treat the Al-Jazeera propaganda with any skepticism at all, the Western media instead regurgitated it while insisting that American military sources could not be trusted to provide honest accounting of the fight.

Yes.

January 02, 2008

A NEW TABLET COMPUTER from Apple?

FRED THOMPSON: REAGAN CONSERVATIVE? Peter Robinson weighs in.

UPDATE: Thompson: Political Reporters Lack 'Fire in the Belly'.

REIHAN SALAM: Obamier Than Thou.

UPDATE: The black Gary Hart?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Captain Ed puts out a warning, which I reproduce in full:

Sources on the Hill tell some of us that a critical point has been reached at the White House on whether to issue an Executive Order that would prevent federal agencies from spending funds on 90% of the earmarks in the Omnibus Spending Bill. According to the whispers, the earmarkers on Capitol Hill have begun to lean heavily on the White House to let the matter drop and to keep the earmark funding in place. Every day brings a fresh round of calls from the same lawmakers who porked up the overdue spending bill, "airdropping" almost all of them (against the new rules in Congress) to keep the porkers from accountability.

If CapQ readers want George Bush to issue the Executive Order and hold Congress responsible for violating its own rules while pursuing personal political benefits, they need to let the White House know now how they feel. The EO advocates need to remind Bush that only through dramatic action can the GOP reclaim any momentum on fiscal responsibility. A rescission package would only play into the hands of the same people who larded up the spending bill while delivering it three months late.

You can make a difference. Call 202-456-1111 and politely explain why the President should issue the EO, or e-mail the staff at comments@whitehouse.gov.

What he said. If the G.O.P. wonders why fundraising and enthusiasm are lagging, it's because of stuff like this. Pocket-stuffing business-as-usual politics won't arouse the enthusiasm of the base. They should have listened when the "not one dime" pledges started, two years ago. Some of us were pointing that out back then.

D.C. FIRES ITS GUN LAWYER.

UPDATE: More on this from Dave Hardy.

YOU CAN GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUR INNER TERRORIST, but if you do, Amy Alkon might just go all Petraeus on you. Ouch!

ACCORDING TO THE CLUB FOR GROWTH, stocks go up when Congress is out of session. Makes sense to me! The obvious policy lesson is that we should have them meet for no more than 60 days a year, and we can all get rich!

MCCAIN'S CLOSING ARGUMENT TO IOWA:

Compare with the very different approach taken by Fred Thompson.

SENIOR DNC FIGURES TO BE DEPOSED IN DISCRIMINATION LAWSUIT. (Via Memeorandum).

"CLINTONESQUE:" RUSH LIMBAUGH went after Huckabee today.

THE SMART CAR: It's itsy-bitsy, but is it really that smart?

UPDATE: Reader Donna Barber emails:

My sister in Scotland has had one of those Smart cars for a couple of years and loves it, as much for the ease of parking as the mileage. When my 6'1" father visited her last year, he was surprised that he was comfortable in it. (As comfortable as he could be with her driving too fast and on the wrong side of the road, and all. ;-)

But what really surprised me at your link was the gas mileage of the other cars mentioned since my 1998 Cadillac gets 22 city/30 highway. I'd stand to lose significantly buying one of those car as the money saved on gasoline wouldn't come anywhere near the cost of a car payment.

Yeah, and there's always one of those 75mpg diesel VWs.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hey, here's an application!

MAX BOOT IS unimpressed with John Edwards.

VENEZUELA'S VIOLENT DEATH RATE -- double Iraq's? And yet Hugo Chavez is a hero to people horrified by the "senseless slaughter" in Iraq.

FRED THOMPSON GETS TESTY over "fire in the belly" questions.

GEORGE W. BUSH -- A DIVIDER, NOT A UNITER: "Such is the low esteem of George Bush's America in the rest of the world that Britain and France are fighting over which of them is our closest ally."

LIBERTARIANISH LAW PROFESSORS on who they support for President and why.

It's not quite the same thing -- I haven't lined up behind anybody yet -- but here are some thoughts of mine on the field.

A LATE-BREAKING SURGE FOR THOMPSON? According to Zogby, anyway. . . .

ZUBRIN UPDATE: In response to our podcast, senior McCain policy advisor Doug Holz-Eakin emails:

Obviously, we agree with flex-fuel vehicles. From McCain’s energy speech to CSIS in April:

“We need not wait for another age, in which science fiction becomes every day reality. Flexible-fuel vehicles aren't futuristic pie in the sky. We can easily deploy such technology today for less than $100 per vehicle; and we must develop the infrastructure necessary to take full advantage.”

Perhaps some of the other candidates will want to weigh in?

UPDATE: Some thoughts from Autoblog.

DEALING WITH FEAR though forgetfulness. It's not quite the same thing, but on the few occasions where I've seemed to act with conspicuous bravery, I was in fact oblivious to any danger. Hey, I'm a professor. We're supposed to be absent-minded.

ROGER SIMON WILL BE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE interviewing McCain and Giuliani for Pajamas Media, and he's asking blog readers to suggest questions.

SAY UNCLE says he's found a case of anti-gun sockpuppetry: "Anyway, the telling thing about NRAFOUREVER is that he had to create what was the stereotypical gun owner in his mind and act on it on the internet."

BILL WHITTLE POSTS A NEW ESSAY: Forty Second Boyd and the Big Picture.

IN THE MAIL: David Young's new book, The Founders' View of the Right to Bear Arms - A Definitive History of the Second Amendment. Very timely.

HEH: "I can't help but think that the Times' editors' thought process is something like this: if I absolutely had to talk to a conservative Republican at a cocktail party, who would it be?"

The Glenn and Helen Show: Bob Zubrin on How to Break OPEC

How can we break the OPEC oil cartel for $100 a car? Engineer Bob Zubrin has the answer -- by requiring all new cars sold in the United States to be flex-fuel vehicles that can run not just on gasoline, but on ethanol and methanol. (Note that methanol can even be made out of kudzu, which we southerners will find highly appealing.)

We talk to Zubrin about his successful new book -- the first printing sold out in December-- Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil, about how oil money funds terrorism, and about how proven off-the-shelf technology could undercut OPEC's power.

You can listen directly -- no downloads needed -- by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can download the file and listen at your leisure at by clicking right here. You can get a lo-fi version suitable for cellphones, Treos, and dialup connections by going here and clicking "lo fi." And, of course, you can always get a free subscription via iTunes. Free! Show archives are at GlennandHelenShow.com. Zubrin's website is at EnergyVictory.net

This podcast brought to you by Volvo Automobiles. Music is "Indistinguishable from Magic" by Mobius Dick.

AUSTIN BAY WILL BE ON FOX NEWS around 9:45 this morning, talking about his Terrorists' Tet column.

THIS COULD BE MY next Mazda. Well, in my dreams.

MICHAEL TOTTEN POSTS a new report from Fallujah.

LEFT OUT: Iowa caucuses discourage participation by many voters.

BE WHAT YOU WOULD SEEM: Becoming Cary Grant.

MILTON FRIEDMAN debates Naomi Klein.

GAY MUSLIMS in Berlin.

A LOOK AT Hillary and the youth vote.

WHAT'S WRONG with NGOs.

January 01, 2008

GIULIANI'S STRATEGY, unveiled.

FRED THOMPSON: Too sane to be President? Quite possibly.

Fred Thompson is in the middle of a 40 town Iowa tour - so he is hardly lazy. And he does go on television shows - thus dealing with critics, such as myself, who attacked him for not going on enough shows. But what sort of person would enjoy all this?

A lunatic. Someone who was interested in office for its own sake - not as a means to reduce the size and scope of government.

What the media, including Fox News (the only non-leftist news station and, therefore, of vital importance in the Republican nomination process), are saying is that Fred Thompson is too sane to be President. It is not enough to produce detailed policies for dealing with the entitlement program Welfare State (a cancer that is destroying the United States and the rest of the Western World), or producing a new optional flat tax (individuals could continue to use the existing system if they wished to) to deal with the nightmare of complexity that the income tax has become.

It is not even enough to have a long record of service, going back to Watergate and taking down a corrupt Governor of Tennessee in the 1970's. And having one of the most Conservative voting records in the United States Senate - before leaving it in disgust at how the system did not allow real reform.

No - someone has to enjoy the prospect for office for its own sake, not to reduce the size and scope of government and restore a Federal Republic. One must enjoy the whole process of politics - i.e. be crazy. Or one must pretend to enjoy it - i.e. be a liar.

And then people complain that politicians are either crazy or corrupt. When they shoo away anyone who comes along who is neither crazy or corrupt.

I think he's right. Thompson is running the kind of campaign -- substantive, policy-laden, not based on gimmicks or sound-bites -- that pundits and journalists say they want, but he's getting no credit for it from the people who claim that's what they want. It's like in Tootsie when Dustin Hoffman tries doing the things he's heard women say they want from men, only to discover that they don't really want those things at all . . . . Related post here.

IN THE NEW ATLANTIS, Rand Simberg reviews Michael Belfiore's Rocketeers. My review of that book is here.

HEH: Huckabee Unveils Dirt He Won't Use Against Rivals.

BECAUSE THEIR REPUTATION ISN'T LOUSY ENOUGH ALREADY: Saudi Arabia arrests a blogger.

Here's the Free Fouad site. The Saudi Embassy page is here. Of course, if you really want to scare 'em, send a copy of Bob Zubrin's book . . . .

AMANDA CARPENTER is jealous.

HUCKABEE'S SECRET WEAPON: Bloggers in Iowa.

INSIDE THE SATELLITE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: Ed Driscoll goes behind the scenes at XM Satellite Radio.

CINDY SHEEHAN gets booed.

BOB KRUMM ON HUCKABEE'S GAMBLE: If Huckabee does fall short in Iowa, it will be a tribute to the power of alternative media and blogs, because most of the bad news about his campaign hasn't gotten much big-media play.

REBECCA AGUILAR UPDATE: Unfair Park notes the Marisa Trevino piece I linked the other day, and observes:

Marisa Trevino is a friend of Rebecca Aguilar's; she's very clear about that in her Scripps News-syndicated column about Aguilar's continued absence from KDFW-Channel 4, from which Aguilar was indefinitely suspended in October following her polarizing parking-lot interview with James Walton. But regardless of the columnist's relationship with Aguilar, her question is legit: Why, after the managing editor and cameraman involved with the controversial piece received only hand slaps, hasn't the station lifted Aguilar's suspension?

Blog-commenters aren't buying Trevino's "racism" claim, and rightly so. Had a middle-aged white guy treated an elderly Hispanic woman the way that Rebecca Aguilar treated her ~~victim~~ interviewee, Trevino would likely find the behavior objectionable. So is her defense of Aguilar racist?

That said, she didn't run the piece on her own, and other people at the station thought it was worth airing. It's hard to justify the disparity in treatment, though I suppose you'd argue that a news anchor or correspondent is a "brand" and Aguilar has seriously damaged hers.

FUEL CHOICE: Bob Zubrin's Energy Victory plan gets a thumbs-up from Frank Gaffney. I thought I'd linked this review before, but I guess not.

The book seems to be playing well with Democrats, too.

TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO, the importation of slaves was made illegal.

And on this day in 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect.

UPDATE: History.

ECONOMICS: 2007 not such a bad year after all.

I just hope it's not average, like in the old Soviet joke: "How is today?" "Average." "Average?" "Yes -- worse than yesterday, better than tomorrow, so: average."

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: "Watching the debate over whether Huckabee’s withdrawn 'attack' ad is over the top, and other assorted Iowa psychodramas makes interesting contrast with the rest of the world’s electioneering outside the Great Satan. . . . Meanwhile, we are daily reminded that Pakistan’s 1998 detonation of a nuclear weapon remains the greatest foreign policy lapse of the last quarter-century."

PATRICK RUFFINI PREDICTS a big McCain victory in New Hampshire.

Plus Rudy's problem: "In recent conversations with New Hampshire Republicans, I'm struck by how fierce hostility to the Mayor is. The media put this down to problems with 'social conservatives,' but that underestimates the scale of the problem. Granite State libertarians and small-government types find his gun record unacceptable. Base-wise, that doesn't leave a lot."

OPEN SECRETS: and the connection between Mark Steyn and the tiger at the San Francisco zoo.

MARS UPDATE: "The impact probability for a collision of asteroid 2007 WD5 with Mars on January 30 has increased from 1.3% to 3.9%." Still long odds, but getting shorter. If Earth were facing similar probabilities, it would be big news.

TOM SMITH: "There's something very strange going on in the UK. It's getting to the point where it's not even funny anymore."

A CLINTON HOWLER ON PAKISTAN:

Senator Hillary Clinton was praised in the wake of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for demonstrating her command of the players and the issues at stake in Pakistan, even as another candidate, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, was criticized for stumbling over details.

But in two confident television appearances, on CNN and ABC, Clinton made an elementary error about Pakistani politics: She described President Pervez Musharraf as a "candidate" who would be "on the ballot."

In fact, Musharraf was re-elected to the presidency in October.

Ouch.

VIEWS ON THE ECONOMY: Irwin Stelzer looks at the disconnect between people's views on the economy and its actual performance.

TEN THINGS that will change your future. (Via John Birmingham, who likes the Chumby).

IN THE MAIL: The Insta-Wife got a copy of Roberta Isleib's murder mystery, Deadly Advice, a story about a clinical psychologist who writes an advice column on the side. Blogs are involved, too. Gee, why would Helen be interested in that? . . . .

IRAQPUNDIT on New Year's in Baghdad. "Though it's not there yet, our city is on its way back." Plus, the WaPo reporters don't know how to party.

REGRETS, MIGHT-HAVE-BEENS, and the loss of "possible selves:" I think this is an interesting subject. Even if all your choices turn out well, they're still choices, and you only get to live one out of many possible lives; in doing so you necessarily extinguish many other possible lives. In fact, as long as the value of those possible lives is more than zero, it's theoretically possible to be in a situation where you have so much potential that anything you do is in some sense a net loss. I actually wrote something about this in the Yale Law Report (warning, big PDF file) some years ago. There's even a mathematical model of life satisfaction as a function of options not exercised. . . .

This may also explain why people tend to get happier past their mid-forties. By that point, most of the possible selves have been extinguished (or at least the range of possibilities has narrowed) and the opportunity costs of living go down. You don't have to veer into Barry Schwartz territory to find this interesting. And I do. I've forgotten who said that "the tragedy of life is that not all values can be realized," but it's certainly true.

UPDATE: Reader Gil Roth sends these Hegelian thoughts.

A HAPPY 2008 for Brendan Loy!

FORECAST FOR 2008: A 100% chance of alarmism.

I don’t know if disaster will come by flood or drought, hurricane or blizzard, fire or ice. Nor do I have any idea how much the planet will warm this year or what that means for your local forecast. Long-term climate models cannot explain short-term weather.

But there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).

Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels. . . . When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

This is why it's fun to point to unusually cold weather -- because it forces them to respond that weather isn't the same as climate.

UPDATE: In that spirit: Record snowfall in New Hampshire. "Today's snowstorm made this month the snowiest December in New Hampshire in more than a century."

HMM: Overeating And Obesity Triggered By Lack Of One Gene.

NOT THE FRESHEST FLOWER IN THE BUNCH: Cindy Sheehan to march on Rose Bowl Parade.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! May 2008 be a good one.

December 31, 2007

NOT GOOD FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION'S REPUTATION:

A University of Arizona law school student and beauty queen has been indicted on charges that say she and three others held her former boyfriend captive for 10 hours while torturing and robbing him. Kumari Fulbright, a law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge Raner Collins, was indicted Dec. 18 on five felony charges – armed robbery, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Jeez.

UPDATE: Further thoughts here.

POWER LINE ON "2007, a year that couldn't seem to get any respect but was, on the whole, pretty good." Sure could have been worse.

I'LL BET THE BAGHDAD ZOO DIRECTOR isn't nearly as well paid as the San Francisco zoo director, either . . . .

SECRETS OF WEIGHT LOSS, REVEALED!

HAPPY NEW YEAR: "2008 arrived in a less-violent Baghdad, and residents said it was the first real party they had seen in years."

JOE TOBACCO endorses Hillary.

Meanwhile, Ralph Nader endorses Edwards.

UPDATE: Tom Smith isn't bullish on Hillary: "As much as I am sure I would not like the policies of the Democrats in the White House, mostly I just don't want the spectacle of Hillary and Bill back in the White House. I'm still not over the Starr Report, which I wish I had never read, like one of those websites you are sorry to have stumbled upon. Call it right wing paranoia, but I thought the Clintons brought to public life a degree of ruthlessness that appalled many of even the hardened souls in DC, and I was in DC for about half of the Bill years. I would much prefer Obama or even Edwards. It would take either of them years to build the private army the Clintons have at their disposal." This is the Insta-Wife's take.

PEOPLE HAVE BEEN EMAILING ME for a couple of weeks with claims that Mike Huckabee didn't lose all the weight he claims by dieting, but by bariatric surgery. I haven't been persuaded. Now here's a fairly convincing refutation. Plus, a denial.

TOM BARNETT'S top 10 foreign policy wishes.

ADVICE FOR WOMEN from Amy Alkon.

MICKEY KAUS: "Press pros on the ground (excitable Joe Klein,, Marc Cooper, the First Read crew) are convinced Huckabee's press conference today--in which he announced he was pulling a negative campaign spot and then showed it to the press anyway--was so disastrous as to be Dean-screamish. Like Jonathan Martin, I'm not so sure."

THE VERY DEFINITION OF MODEST GOOD NEWS: "Pre-owned home sales up 0.4%" But hey, it's better than bad news.

SO I'VE HAD THE GPS for a while, and it's worked pretty well. Once or twice it got confused about whether a left turn was permitted or something, but overall the mapping is quite impressive, and it's never really steered me wrong. As for my earlier worries that it would cause me to lose my sense of direction, well, not so much. Keeping it on in "map mode," in fact, makes me aware of things in a new way. On the other hand, I was visiting somebody's house the other night in a neighborhood that's so new it's not on the maps yet. Ordinarily I would have memorized the route back out, and I didn't. That may have been GPS-induced laziness, or it may just have been . . . laziness.

THOUGHTS ON DIVERSITY AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, from James Taranto.

TOO CLEVER BY HALF?

Related item here: "That Huckabee still showed the spot to dozens of reporters jammed into a press conference will ensure the most skeptical, bordering on cynical, coverage on every national news broadcast tonight and in all the major national papers tomorrow. After it became clear that he was not going to air the ad on Iowa television, but would still preview it here, the press corps offered a collective laugh in plain recognition of what Huckabee was up to."

UPDATE: Huckabee's response.

PATTERICO POSTS A year-end review for the Los Angeles Times. It's not pretty.

TIME FOR a "Surge" in Afghanistan?

JOHN FUND: "What's the Matter With Iowa?"

REACTIONARIES fighting diversity. I guess they liked it better back when "those people" knew their place.

CALLS TO IMPEACH CHENEY: It'd almost be worth it just to see him preside over his own impeachment trial.

UPDATE: Slanted, or planted?

I'VE ALWAYS KNOWN THAT I HAVE A GREAT WIFE, but I've never seen it explained so pithily.

MICKEY KAUS on the Iowa Caucuses: "Letting the presidential nominee be picked by the Iowa caucusers is like letting your antiwar tactics be picked by the last people left at the end of a 4-hour SDS meeting in 1970."

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of Sunday's book reviews in various papers.

SURPRISING NEWS FROM BRITAIN:

Playing with toy weapons helps the development of young boys, according to new Government advice to nurseries and playgroups.

Staff have been told they must resist their "natural instinct" to stop boys using pretend weapons such as guns or light sabres in games with other toddlers.

Fantasy play involving weapons and superheroes allows healthy and safe risk-taking and can also make learning more appealing, says the guidance.

It conflicts with years of "political correctness" in nurseries and playgroups which has led to the banning of toy guns, action hero games and children pretending to fire "guns" using their fingers or Lego bricks.

You have to listen to the science, right? But there are always people who will oppose science for religious reasons:

But teachers' leaders insisted last night that guns "symbolise aggression" and said many nurseries and playgroups would ignore the change.

Don't they care about the children? Apparently not:

Research by Penny Holland, academic leader for early childhood at London Metropolitan University, has also concluded that boys should be allowed to play gun games.

She found boys became dispirited and withdrawn when they are told such play-fighting is wrong.

Of course, to some educators, that's not a bug, it's a feature. (Via Dave Hardy).

UPDATE: Rand Simberg denounces this child-destroying war on science.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts from the Insta-Wife.

JINGLE BOMBS.

ILYA SOMIN ON A CLASH OF VALUES: The debate over radical life extension technologies.

I've had some related thoughts here. Plus some thoughts on life extension and retirement.

A MCCAIN VICTORY? Just remember when the turnaround started . . . .

CAN FRED THOMPSON turn it around?

DUCT TAPE, "SAFE ROOMS," and Oak Ridge.

MR. CLEAN? A well-timed raise, a trip, and a rather lackadaisical approach to investigating Gov. Spitzer. (Via JWF).

TURKMENISTAN stops gas exports to Iran.

BAGHDAD ZOO is a draw again. "'I feel safe here. I feel relaxed,' said Hussein, 51, a taxi driver." Sounds safer than the San Francisco Zoo.

NEW AIR-SAFETY RESTRICTIONS on traveling with lithium-ion batteries.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: "A multidisciplinary team of UCLA scientists were able to differentiate metastatic cancer cells from normal cells in patient samples using leading-edge nanotechnology that measures the softness of the cells."

MAJOR JOHN TAMMES: The training I felt uncomfortable about - and shouldn't have. "I did take advantage of what the Army has taught me. Oddly enough, it was at home and not on a battlefield."

THEY TOLD ME IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, campus student groups would be banned because of their unacceptable views on premarital sex. And they were right!

NEW FATALITY NUMBERS FROM IRAQ: Some people will be unhappy. But they'll be the people who should be unhappy.

December 30, 2007

A NANNY ON HORSEBACK: "Buoyed by the still unsettled field, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run."

ISN'T IT ILLEGAL TO THREATEN VOTERS? Caucus for Biden, or he may kiss you!

THOUGHTS ON Kipling.

ABOUT A GAZILLION READERS have sent me this link to a report of an anti-military lawyer trashing a Marine's car. All I can say is, it's gobsmackingly vile, if true.

DANIEL DREZNER: Should celebrities set the global agenda?

I've got a one-word answer.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: Tennessean Sid Evans is moving south to take over Garden & Gun magazine. We get that; it's not bad -- somewhere between Town & Country and Sports Afield, with a touch of not-so-politicized Vanity Fair added in. And where else can you find out about Winston Groom's favorite shotgun? (Via Michael Silence).

JOHN TIERNEY on the proposed Science Debate 2008: "I can’t imagine the candidates’ handlers are happy with this prospect, given how much extra work it would mean for them in bringing the candidates up to speed. Politics attracts lawyers and liberal-arts majors, not science whizzes."

OF HILLARY AND P.G. Wodehouse.

FRED THOMPSON'S CLOSING ARGUMENT TO IOWA VOTERS:

(Via The Corner.)

UPDATE: Peter Robinson likes it: "Thompson has sat himself down, looked into a camera, and spoken for a quarter of an hour, calmly and straightforwardly making his case. I myself find this impressive—in a way, moving. Thompson seems to have stepped out of the eighteenth century. He trusts voters to think. And if the comments on YouTube are at all representative, plenty of people agree." But enough?

FRANCE VS. SYRIA.

REMEMBERING the election before Pearl Harbor.

TOM MAGUIRE: "Where's the lefty traffic? (I blame Dick Cheney)."

A LOOK AT How and why knots form. There's math.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: "The Iraqi interior ministry lauded its achievements over the past year on Saturday, saying that 75 percent of Al-Qaeda's networks in the country had been destroyed in 12 months. Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf also outlined sharp falls in the numbers of assassinations, kidnappings and death squad murders."

BENAZIR BHUTTO apotheosis.

WHEN THE CORPSE TWITCHES, the jaws snap: "Record Industry Goes After Personal Use . . . the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer." The brain's been dead for a while, though.

UPDATE: "I guess I won't be buying that iPod, then."

TIM BLAIR: "If you can’t laugh at murderous fanatics, what can you laugh at?" Those who run PC-interference for murderous fanatics?

MIKE HUCKABEE and the wages of sin.

WHY LAW PROFESSORS ARE HAPPY: "It is striking that job satisfaction among academics is high not only relative to those in private practice, but also relative to graduates employed in 'public service,' which is often viewed as a career path chosen in large part to maximize personal happiness rather than income." Of course, the data involve Yalies, who are presumptively weird, so . . . .

MY CHRISTMAS PRESENT TO MYSELF: A copy of Propellerhead's Reason 4 software. I've been happily producing podcast music -- "stingers" and "bleebles" as they're known in the trade. It's very intuitive and easy to use. By the way, you can get a free copy of the software synth I've loved for years -- the ReBirth RB-338 -- here. All you have to do is register on the site.

UPDATE: Reader John Marcoux emails:

From a long ago email to you, I related how, in a conversation with Paul Van Dyk at a club in Chicago, I learned that many of the great European DJs, including Paul, run Reason on Apple notebooks (see pic below).

I fooled around with it but found it harder to master than you apparently have. Maybe it works better on an Apple. For dabblers (at 67, that's me) this Amazon item is pretty good and only $30. Won't run on Vista.

Yeah, there's a lot of good cheap software out there. Meanwhile, I certainly haven't "mastered" Reason; I've just figured out how to get some sounds out of it that I like. That's step one . . . . I didn't realize so many DJ's were using Reason, though -- I thought it was more Ableton Live or Final Scratch, but I've been out of touch with the DJ scene for a few years. I blame blogging.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader David Preiser emails:

You're right about Reason. It's a great studio tool, and a lot of pros on the creative end use it (as opposed to editors and sound guys, and studio mavens, I mean). If you ever do composing or create midi files elsewhere, Reason is great for making them come alive. And it is very intuitive, but only if you've ever worked with real equipment, even a little bit, which I know you have. The key feature that got me making noise within minutes was the Tab button. If you've already discovered that, you'll know what I mean when I say that anyone over 25 who has ever handled real equipment will be forever grateful to the folks at Propellerheads for that one.

Yeah. Reason simulates a rack of hardware, and when you hit "Tab" it rotates to let you look at the back. You can see cables connecting the different pieces of virtual equipment, and repatch them by clicking and dragging. (And when the rack flips around, the "cables" jiggle, which is a nice touch that Reason has had since earlier versions.)

MORE: Here's a short Reason video.

HOW CLEAN IS YOUR ELECTRICITY?

BILL KRISTOL'S NEW YORK TIMES COLUMN GIG IS CONFIRMED, and Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts. Plus, a response to the NYT review of his book.

FRED THOMPSON corrects the media. "Today I had this story written about me regarding what I said at a Town Hall event in Burlington, Iowa by a reporter who wasn’t even at the event."

THE GREAT FALL OF CHINA: They're still big, just not nearly as big as we thought. Walter Russell Mead looks at the implications.

UPDATE: Sam Dinkin has further thoughts.

WARNER BROTHERS goes copy-protection free with DRM-less MP3 downloads at Amazon. This is a good trend.

HORTON HEARS A WHO?

THOUGHTS ON evolution vs. creationism.

WE HAD FUN HANGING OUT WITH GUN-BLOGGERS LAST NIGHT: Helen posts a report. Just don't tell the folks at WATE-TV about the picture! It shows her shooting one of those dangerous full-capacity firearms. . . .

MARC COOPER REPORTS on Hillary's Iowa finale. Mama's gonna make everything all right.

Meanwhile Mickey Kaus notes some Learjet liberalism: "It looks like that pro-Edwards '527' group defended by Paul Krugman as a 'labor 527' and a '527 run by labor unions' actually got about a third of its money 'in a single check from an entity linked to Rachel Mellon, the widow of Paul Mellon, who inherited his share of the great American fortunes.'"

CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER: Signs of moderation at the Modern Language Association? Well, by MLA standards, anyway. Best line: "'I support speaking truth to power,' said Rzepka, but that requires truth, he added."

MARK STEYN channels Edward Gibbon.

Plus, is England ripe for revolution? Overripe, I'd say . . . .

THE BHUTTO ASSASSINATION: A sort of honor killing?

Meanwhile, Claudia Rosett looks at North Korea.

WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE DONE: General Petraeus as Man of the Year at The Telegraph.

January 05, 2008

January 04, 2008

January 03, 2008

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December 31, 2007

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