May 03, 2008

"MY IMMIGRANT VAGINA IS ANGRY:" Won't Monistat take care of that for you?

BLAIR'S LAW meets Radical Chic.

TOM MAGUIRE: "NOTE TO HENDRIK HERTZBERG: Your list of 'relevant facts' is woefully incomplete; try doing some reporting. "

THE SILENT SCREAM of asparagus. "What is clear, however, is that Switzerland's enshrining of 'plant dignity' is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people."

Haven't we seen this before? I guess now it's the first time as farce! Though that would make this time the tragedy . . . .

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Maggie's Farm: "These folks have taken the Pathetic Fallacy to a psychotic extreme."

HOME THEATER RECEIVERS are marked way down, but I've never done the whole surround-sound setup myself. I don't watch a lot of movies, and anyway the sound I'm getting seems pretty good. I'm afraid if I improve it I'll start noticing the difference . . . .

MICKEY KAUS:

Jon Keller revisits possible Obama wrang-wrang Deval Patrick--the pioneering African-American governor of Massachusetts who now has a 56% disapproval rating. What's the difference between Obama and Patrick? They were both relatively inexperienced. They were both advised by David Axelrod. They both ran on "hope."

But there is a difference, reportedly.

A LUKEWARM REVIEW FOR IRON MAN, from Kyle Smith: "The first hour of Jon Favreau's new film is right up there with the best movies of the genre. Too bad the second half sounds like a Ralph Nader lecture on America's responsibility for all the world's wars."

MARKETS AT WORK:

Call it the paranoid theory of petroleum. Somehow, dark forces behind the scenes keep us from doing anything about soaring oil prices. In fact, something is being done to bring down oil prices. And you're doing it. . . .

U.S. fuel demand in the first three months of 2008 was down 1.4% from a year earlier — the third straight quarterly year-over-year decline in a row.

Gasoline consumption has risen about 1.5% a year since 2000. But Energy Department data showed demand in the first quarter edging down for the first time in more than two decades.

In short, the tide has turned.

The New York Times notes that U.S. car buyers have suddenly gone ga-ga over small cars. One in five purchases is now a compact or subcompact, while SUV sales are off 28%. "It's easily the most dramatic segment shift I have witnessed in the market in my 31 years here," said George Pipas, Ford Motor's chief sales analyst.

Go figure.

A BUNCH OF MOTHER'S DAY GIFT RECOMMENDATIONS, helpfully sorted by price and category.

VISITING THE Tesla Motors factory store in Los Angeles.

BOB OWENS:

Fifty-four shootings in two weekends. Shot-up bodies recovered in groups of three and five. Is this Ramadi? Basra? No.

Welcome to Chicago.

Note the fruits of gun control. Plus this on the Chicago P.D.'s up-armament: "If the department arms 10,000 of their officers with M4s, the police will have 9,900 more assault rifles in Chicago than the U.S. Marines presently have in Fallujah, Iraq."

POT, KETTLE: Hillary Clinton's flyer calling Barack Obama a gun-grabber. (Thanks to SayUncle for the tip).

A ROUNDUP ON FUSION POWER RESEARCH from Alan Boyle. And some more information here, focusing on the Bussard Polywell fusion project.

WELCOME TO THE CLUB! Iraqis begin to "despise" the Mahdi Army in Baghdad's Rusafa district.

JULES CRITTENDEN ON REGULAR FOLKS and elitist, pointy-headed types.

VIDEO: Healing the rift between blacks and jews, on Holocaust Day.

UPDATE: Wrong link before. Fixed now. Sorry!

OBAMA AND "THE WEATHERCOUPLE:" Are reporters telling less than they know?

Related thoughts from Jules Crittenden.

UPDATE: As long as Elizabeth Wurtzel is back in the news, might as well recycle this savage Jim Treacher clipart parody one more time!

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Treacher link isn't working right for some reason, but he's reposted the Wurtzel strips here.

CAMEL DEMAND SOARS IN INDIA, in response to higher gas prices.

RANDY NEAL'S EXPERIMENT IN HYPERLOCAL JOURNALISM has been frustrated by the usual Internet dumbasses. Plus a few of the non-Internet variety.

IN THE MAIL: Ain't Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry. Including many cool photos.

UPDATE: Sorry -- link was bad before. Fixed now.

MICHAEL BARONE LOOKS AT Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, and the polls. " Is the bottom falling out for Barack Obama? It's too early to say that, but there are some disturbing signs."

Karate class, West Knoxville.

UPDATE: In response to various emailers, it really is a karate class, Isshinryu style, notwithstanding the patch.

DOG BITES MAN: "Robert Reich Demagoguing on Taxes."

A LOOK AT THE BRITISH ELECTIONS:

U.K. voters resoundingly rejected the Labour Party in local elections last week. It was no capricious shift, but a citizen revolt against trendy carbon and nanny-state taxes that empower only bad government.

For Labour, it was the worst election in 40 years. In a massive turnout, the Conservative Party took 256 seats in parliament, along with control of 12 town councils and 44% of the vote. Labour and moderate Liberal Democrats got to split the remains, and even the Liberal Democrats ,with 25%, won more than Labour.

Britain is ripe for change, it seems to me, though it's not clear how much actual change the Tories will deliver.

UPDATE: Reader Nick Walmsley points out that, contra the quote above, the seats were council seats, not parliament seats, an error I'd missed due to seeing what I expected instead of what's there.

IT'S PLEDGE WEEK at The American Thinker.

YOU CAN NOW pre-order Firefly on Blu-Ray. Now if they'd just make another season . . . .

AS WELL HE SHOULD:

The federal minister in charge of Canada's multiculturalism file cautioned an anti-racism conference Friday against exploiting the power of human rights commissions to silence offensive speech.

Addressing the annual gathering of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) in Calgary, Jason Kenney, a Cabinet member and Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, labelled "dangerous" the "illiberal tactics" employed by some activists in the name of tolerance.

Indeed.

THE DISAPPEARING MIDDLE CLASS: In Europe. "I blame Bush."

INDEED: "Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear."

I'm going with "because he thought it was worth a shot." (Via Sonic Frog).

IS MRS. CONYERS smarter than an eighth grader?

May 02, 2008

KNOXVILLE OPERA FESTIVAL rivals U.T. football for turnout. Somebody tell Jeremiah Wright.

TOM MAGUIRE: Such language from a "Baptist Minister!"

KATIE GRANJU ON the value of a few skinned knees.

TOM ELIA: Is Obama in bigger trouble than anyone thinks?

WHOOPING COUGH, MEASLES, POLIO: Diseases making a comeback because of anti-vaccine hysteria.

That's what happens when you neglect the advances that have produced fewer dead babies. As a commenter says: "Lucky, hell! Maybe it's the direct result of improvements in basic hygiene, waste collection and disposal, water treatment, vaccinations, medical improvements and, yes, much better environmental living conditions." All the stuff that people, and politicians, take for granted.

UPDATE: Reader Kevin Menard emails:

Those anti-vaccine folks need to talk to some one who has been a medical missionary. There are still place sin the world where all these diseases still kill people or cripple them for life. Any tendency you have to buy the crap goes right out the window with the horror stories of what measles, chicken pox, polio etc do to people.

Of course, that might mean they might have to talk to a Christian or a Mormon as most missionaries I know are led to it by faith...

Indeed.

HMM: Futures Traders Bet on Dollar Gain For First Time Since 2005.

ANDY MCCARTHY WAS INTERVIEWED on Limbaugh today about his new book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. The transcript is here.

STRICTER CREDIT CARD REGULATIONS: "The Federal Reserve and two other banking regulators are set to unveil today one of the most aggressive efforts in decades to crack down on the credit card industry, prohibiting practices such as arbitrarily raising interest rates on outstanding balances."

These industries operate as what Scott Adams calls "confusopolies," taking advantage of complexity to bilk customers. I'd prefer transparency to outright regulation, but that's probably hard to accomplish.

TIM MONTGOMERIE has a roundup on "Red Ken" Livingstone's defeat at the hands of Boris Johnson. Overall, a good election for the Tories, though whether that will translate into actual improvements in Britain is less clear. Plus, a defeat for Islamic extremists? Those are always good.

UPDATE: Roger Kimball is happy: "Boris Wins! And so does London."

DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE? "Kos Disappears Kantor 'WWN' Diary."

UH OH: States Aim To Tax Private Jets, Yachts. First they go after Harvard, now this . . . .

UPDATE: Aleta Jackson emails:

A lot of people who have airplanes are not wealthy. We save up for our trips, and are frugal with the extra cash we have. And with avgas prices at $4.50 or more per gallon, you can bet that owners of small airplanes are looking for good deals on where to go, places where we will be welcomed. Maine has just closed the door to any visit by me or my plane. When we fly to a place we usually stay for at least three days. So Maine just lost three days of bed taxes, meal taxes, rental car taxes, plus taxes on the goodies we usually carry back for our friends. Then there's the revenue that won't be going to Maine residents, and let's not forget the taxes Maine won't get because I won't be filling the plane's tanks for the return flight.

The flying community learns fast where general aviation is unwelcome or discouraged.

I hadn't realized that Maine was in a position to turn away trade.

FROM THE BBC, a look at the new survivalism: It's not just for deranged loners and religious cults anymore!

This story has already been addressed here, and here. But I'm happy to see these ideas get more attention. Everybody's better off with some emergency skills and supplies, just in case. You don't need a bunker, but more of what Massad Ayoob calls "soft survivalism."

HILLARY-HATRED IN AUSTRALIA: Don't these comments count as some sort of hate speech there?

MORE COMPLAINTS ABOUT FRANKLIN GRAHAM-SHILLING in Knox County Schools. And note this, from the comments:

Junipero is so right about how our kids' school time is squandered in Knox County.

FYI, though: No one's going to be sponsoring recess. They don't get recess--not at Bearden Middle School, anyway.

That's right: No recess for the more than 1,000 10-15-year-olds spread over just 3 grades.

Just can't fit it in, I guess, what with the demanding roster of baby showers for teachers, pizza evangelism, and sports fundraising.

I remember my teachers exhorting us to "use our time wisely." I notice that my daughter seems to get exposed to a lot of this kind of thing. On the other hand, it's not just the Christian stuff. Kids are constantly being sent out to sell crap (frozen Sara Lee pies?) to raise money. And, as I mentioned before, one of her teachers turns every lecture into a lesson on the evils of white Europeans, and of Western civilization generally. This is why I don't get more upset at the notion of "teaching to standardized tests." I suspect things would be even worse if it weren't for that . . . .

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, we'd see college professors fired for refusing to swear loyalty to the state. And they were right!

DANICA PATRICK going Formula One?

IT'S NOT A BLOG. It's a journal.

WHO NEEDS GPS, when your cellphone can do the job?

STEVEN EMERSON: "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is refusing to identify the 'influential Muslim Americans' and 'leading U.S.-based scholars and commentators on Islam' who met with Secretary Michael Chertoff in helping shape a softer approach to government lexicon about terrorists and their ideological motivations." (Via Memeorandum).

SO THE KANTOR VIDEO IS BOGUS: But who's behind it? Obama people? Or Hillary people? It was certainly exposed as a fake very quickly. . . .

SHOCKINGLY, PEOPLE RESPOND TO PRICE SIGNALS: As Gas Costs Soar, Buyers Flock to Small Cars. At least the ones who aren't sticking taxpayers with the tab, anyway.

TIM PAWLENTY: Wrong on Polka, Wrong on America!

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 45 years since Bull Connor's firehoses, and a reminder that things weren't as some might think.

MR. CONSERVATIVE: Jonathan Rauch on John McCain.

ARE UNIVERSITIES TURNING INTO PINK COLLAR GHETTOES?

Some related thoughts here.

DUDE, WHERE'S MY RECESSION? (CONT'D): Chicken Little Alert, or how to make good news sound like bad news.

BEWARE THE screaming ovaries.

I GUESS IT'S GOODBYE TO "RED KEN" LIVINGSTONE: Boris Johnson poised to become London Mayor as Tories seal local election success.

THERE'S NEVER ENOUGH MONEY: U.N.'s World Food Program Cried Poverty While Sitting on Cash Stockpile of More Than $1.22 Billion.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Obama Joins Levin and Coleman to Introduce Absurd Bill to Stop “Misuse” of U.S. Companies. "This bill is a very bad idea."

AN ANTI-CLINTON DIRTY TRICK IN INDIANA? I was hoping for change.

BLOGGER "has Al Franken's campaign reeling."

IN THE MAIL: Mark Juergensmeyer's Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State.

DUDE, WHERE'S MY RECESSION? (CONT'D): Jobless Rate Falls; AP, Economists Baffled.

WHILE LECTURING US ON CONSERVATION: Little-Known But Exploited Loophole Allows Politicians To Drive, Maintain Expensive Cars, SUVs On Taxpayer Money. Are you surprised?

Barber shop, Harriman, Tennessee.

YOUR, ER, TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Tax Court: IRS Attorneys Committed Fraud on the Court. "In an extraordinary 137-page opinion issued yesterday, Hartman v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2008-124 (5/1/08), Tax Court Judge Beghe held that IRS attorneys committed fraud on the court in the Kersting tax shelter project which affected more than 1,300 cases."

IN THE BRINK'S COMMERCIAL, the burglar just runs away. In real life it takes more than an alarm to be safe:

Jon Sokol wasn't trying to be a hero when he confronted a burglary suspect who had brazenly broken through the front door of his home in St. Paul.

Sokol, 49, said his adrenaline was flowing as he crept up the stairs, revolver in hand, from the basement bedroom he shares with his wife.

His wife had been awoken at about 4:45 a.m. Wednesday by their alarm system and initially thought Sokol had -- again -- opened the door to get the newspaper without turning off the alarm. But there he was, sleeping right next to her. . . .

"Down on the ground he went and I insisted, in a not very nice way, that he not move," he said. "I held him at gunpoint until the police arrived."

Michael G. Spencer, 31, of St. Paul, has been charged in Ramsey County District Court with two felony counts of burglary. He has a lengthy criminal record, including convictions for theft and burglary as recently as last year

Soon to grow lengthier, I'd imagine. He was carrying a knife.

UPDATE: Another report here, somewhat more vivid. Via Scott Johnson who adds: "Unbelievably, the story is followed by self-defense tips (also pasted in below) which do not include packing heat." Self-defense tips are good. Here's another one: Have a gun.

I'M AN ARTIST, DAMMIT, NOT A SCIENTIST. "The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, say the work which was fed nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system just five weeks after the show opened." Growing like a cancer on externally supplied nutrients while creating nothing of value. A fit metaphor, anyway . . . .

AUSTIN BAY on Darfur.

MOST MONEY GOES TO ADMINISTRATORS AND THEIR PET PROJECTS: "Across sectors of higher education, only a minority of spending by colleges supports direct instructional costs, according to a report being released today as part of an effort to reframe the debate over college costs."

"FOX TRUMPS NETROOTS, BLOGGERS REBEL." Sorry guys, the Dems don't need you anymore. "The Democratic leaders’ new openness to Fox reflects the liberal left’s diminishing power, at least at this point in the political cycle. Once feared by the Democratic candidates, these activists are now viewed at least in part as an impediment to winning the broad swatch of support needed to clinch the nomination."

ANTI-INCOME TAX EFFORTS IN MASSACHUSETTS are moving forward. They lost last time, but did better than I would have expected. No wonder the Massachusetts legislature is thinking about taxing Harvard.

JERRY POURNELLE:

I have to say it again: cheap energy will cause a boom. The only cheap energy I know of is nuclear. Three Hundred Billion bucks in nuclear power will do wonders for the economy. We build 100 1000 MegaWatt nuclear power plants -- they will cost no more than 2 billion each and my guess is that the average cost will be closer to 1 billion each (that is the first one costs about 20 billion and the 100th costs about 800 million). The rest of the money goes to prizes and X projects to convert electricity into mobility.

Of course we won't do that.

I detect a lack of confidence in our political class.

A DARK CLINTONIAN PLOT: Spike Lee suspects that Jeremiah Wright is being paid to keep talking.

CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRESS: In Louisiana, a bill to allow licensees to carry guns on campus advances. And it looks like we'll see legal carry in national parks, too.

LESS PRESSURE ON GASOLINE PRICES? This is from a petroleum industry newsletter I get:

A surprising build in crude oil highlighted this week’s national inventory statistics. Crude oil built by +3.8 million barrels when only a slight +.3 million barrel build was anticipated. Likewise, distillate built by 1.1 million barrels (vs. a pre-stat guess of -.1 million) for the first sizable build in stocks since the second week of January. More builds are anticipated as we enter the month of May, the lowest demand month of the year. Refinery run rates were able to hold on to last week’s huge increase by only dropping .2% to remain at 85.4%. Maintenance programs are winding up, so more refinery recovery should be in store.

That's good news. On the other hand, there's this:

Two worker strikes, combined with a bit of sabotage, idled as much as 2 million barrels per day of production capacity in the UK and Nigeria. The UK strike at Grangemouth looks to be settled. Workers were called off for 48 hours, effectively slicing 700,000 barrels per day of production. In Nigeria, a strike against ExxonMobil’s Bonny Light field idled almost 900,000 barrels per day. As part of the negotiation, it appears that workers were going to return, but as of press time I haven’t found evidence of that as yet. The state owned oil company, NNPC, is more than urging the sides to get back to the table quickly. The strike is having the biggest impact of any strike since 1994 and has cost the government billions of dollars in lost revenue. What’s the status of the rest of the volume? That’s from the ultimate strike…blowing up their own oil pipelines and infrastructure.

So that's not so good. But it wouldn't surprise me to see crude oil prices fall a bit in the next few months.

THAT'S A PRETTY HIGH ERROR RATE: More than 10 percent of speed camera tickets rejected.

MAYBE THIS EXPLAINS THOSE GULFSTREAM ORDERS: Optimism Begins to Ease Onto Wall St.

May 01, 2008

ANOTHER PLANTED QUESTION at a townhall meeting.

JOHN HINDERAKER: "The Democrats' domestic policies are an incoherent jumble: they want lower gasoline and heating oil prices, but they block the very things, oil drilling and the construction of new refineries, that would actually reduce them. At the same time, for reasons of 'climate change,' they want less consumption of oil and gas, which implies higher, not lower, prices." I think they want higher prices, but without taking responsibility for that outcome. In which case there's nothing incoherent about the approach at all.

WILL BLACK VOTERS STAY HOME if Obama loses nomination?

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE DIRTY GUV'NAHS, who won Best of Knoxville this week. They'll be opening for Robert Earl Keen, who I know from way back in the Ella Guru's days, at Sundown in the City at the end of the month.

ON MAY DAY, REMEMBERING the victims of communism.

WHY A CURVEBALL curves.

BAD NEWS FOR POLITICAL CONSULTANTS: Robocalls, Direct Mail Don't Work.

PEW POLL: Obama's Image Slips, His Lead Over Clinton Disappears.

There's also this bad news: "Public Support for Free Trade Declines."

Meanwhile, Indiana Poll Shows Clinton With Big Lead Over Obama.

DONATIONS: I don't mention the tipjar much -- I prefer to encourage donations to folks like Michael Totten or Michael Yon, or embattled Canadian bloggers -- but I just checked the balance and for some reason a lot of people have donated. So I used the money to order a new blogging tool that I'll review. Everyone wins!

ENDOWMENT DEBATE seeps into the states:

With college endowments a favorite target for politicians in Washington, and many states struggling to find enough tax revenue to make ends meet, it’s almost a surprise that it took state legislators this long to start casting their eyes on colleges’ funds. But it’s perhaps not a shock that if the issue were to emerge anywhere, it would be in Massachusetts, home to the university (Harvard) whose nearly $34.6 billion endowment has become the poster child for higher education wealth. . . .

“Why do we want to tax the poor all the time, but we let off the hook the richest of the rich?” said State Rep. Angelo Scaccia, a Democrat, said during the course of Monday’s debate, according to the Metrowest Daily News. “We’re not going to break them,” he added of colleges’ endowment funds. “We just want a little.”

From each according to his ability. . . .

JUST SAW HILLARY ON O'REILLY talking about Iraq. She was better than Obama, but I still think she was wrong, and I encourage her and her advisers to watch this excellent video from Austin Bay on the consequences of a premature withdrawal from iraq.

UPDATE: Related criticism from Abe Greenwald.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, this is weird. Hillary is gone, and O'Reilly is talking about D.C. Madam Deborah Palfrey and seems to suggest that her suicide was "karma" for threatening to expose her clients: "This woman was threatening a lot of people's lives. . . . If you're doing something wrong, you get caught, you pay the price, you shut up." Omerta lives.

MORE: Further comments on Hillary, and video, at Gateway Pundit.

DUDE, WHERE'S MY RECESSION? (CONT'D) I don't think it's online anywhere, but I just got my latest Aviation Week and here's a report that suggests things aren't too slow:

G650 Customers Wait in Line

Gulfstream's planned output of 83 G650 business jets in the first 2.5 years of production is oversubscribed by a factor of six to seven, says parent company General Dynamics. Gulfstream began accepting $500,000 refundable deposits on the new $58.5 million ultra-long-range jet on April 15, signing time-stamped letters of intent with customers that it is now working through to convert to orders.

Seems like this is one of the first places a business could cut back. Am I wrong?

UPDATE: Maybe. A reader emails:

The G-650 is an awesome airplane, and it fits a market niche that currently has no competition. In re:
recession, the Gulfstream customer generally doesn't worry too much about recessions, so I'm not sure if it's a good indicator. I don't imagine Ferrari is feeling much of the pinch of any recession either.

One thing to mention though, the G-650 will have a lower carbon impact than any other large corporate jet. Maybe we can sign Al Gore up for one!

I can't speak for Al, but if Gulfstream wants to lend me one, I promise to blog evenhandedly about the experience. I could use a lift for my next dive trip!

UPDATE: The full story is online now. Thanks, AvWeek!

PERRY DE HAVILLAND: "The prime motivation of government is . . . to be in government. Making the country a 'better place' comes a distant second."

"RIGHT WING" ATTACKS ON OBAMA, via Sidney Blumenthal.

UPDATE: From Mickey Kaus, a reminder: "If we elect Hillary, we're going to get Sid as part of the package."

WHAT OBAMA wishes he could say about Hillary.

OKAY, ACTUALLY THIS DOES SOUND SORTA COOL: "I was amazed at how thin you could slice your produce. Think of the thickness of the ginger you get on the side of your sushi order. This mandoline could slice thinner than the thinnest slice of that ginger." Not likely something I'd buy, though.

UPDATE: Reader Sung Chun Kim emails: "I just put in a comment on that ridiculous Shun mandoline you linked. What a crazy expensive device! I use an old Benriner mandoline that cost me $20 back when I bought it ten years ago, and it’s still going strong. I can still cut paper-thin potato chips (as well as julienned carrots, daikon, etc., with the included guides). The thing is made of plastic, but then plastic lasts forever, right? The key to not slicing your fingers is to slow down when the vegetable gets thin and then to stop completely and toss away the excess when it gets too thin. Veggies are cheap, fingers are not--although you do link to that finger-growing article… who knows, maybe it’s still cheaper to grow back your fingertips than buy a $350 mandoline!." Heh. Not yet.

BILL ROGGIO: US troops kill 28 Mahdi fighters in Sadr City. Follow the link for the context.

GENERAL PETRAEUS: Man of no influence?

HILLARY'S Hoosier momentum.

GERARD VAN DER LEUN: The Banality of Sedition.

THE MAN WHO grew a finger.

Mr Speivak's brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine - sent him the powder.

For ten days Mr Spievak put a little on his finger.

"The second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger.

More of this, please.

UPDATE: Some skepticism.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This comment suggests the story is genuine.

MORE: Further thoughts here.

STILL MORE: A report from Scientific American.

CAR LUST: Remembering the 1971-74 Dodge Charger.

RUNNING OUT OF GAS? "Not knowing the exact city could be excusable in the grind of a presidential campaign, although it’s not exactly flattering, either. Not understanding what month it is — getting it almost two months off — and miscalculating the amount of time left for the general election looks more problematic. . . . Obama’s the youngest candidate in the race. He’s the one who should be showing energy, enthusiasm, and presence. Instead, Hillary Clinton and John McCain have shown more of all these qualities, especially of late."

AUSTIN BAY: What Powers — And What Weakens — Terrorist Organizations?

"D.C. MADAM" commits suicide.

UPDATE: "Was it really suicide?"

THOUGHTS ON love and marriage in Britain.

TOM MAGUIRE changes the subject at Michelle Obama's suggestion.

MANUFACTURE AND SELL ANYTHING: In minutes. "Welcome to the age of the instapreneur." I like the sound of that!

A LOOK AT THE REZKO SCANDAL'S SOUTHWEST CHICAGO ROOTS:

Tony Rezko may have lived up in wealthy Wilmette, but many of the key players around him are from the Southwest Side and suburbs of Chicago.

Some have been named and others are only identified as Individuals “A through E” in a guilty plea agreement signed by Ali Ata, a Palestinian American from Lemont who was active in Southwest Side Arab American circles.

Much more at the link. (Via NewsAlert).

THE ALGAE ECONOMY?

MY LAW SCHOOL CLASSMATE, Superdelegate and former DNC Chair Joe Andrew, explains why he's switching from Hillary to Obama.

YOU DON'T EVEN NEED THE HYBRID PART: Saving gas with start-stop technology.

SPACE BOOMERANG VIDEO.

IN THE MAIL: Alex Bella's Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire.

DISCIPLINE: Some people say that regular blogging takes discipline and stamina. And it does. But I was at the gym yesterday on the machine next to Jessica Paxson, who's a professional fitness competitor, and I'm absolutely sure that what she does takes a lot more discipline and stamina than blogging. I asked her how she keeps it up and she said "I don't know." Neither do I!

The constant working out is one thing -- I'll often come in, do my entire workout, stretch, and cooldown routine and she'll have been on the step-mill the whole time without slowing down -- but it's the incredibly restricted diet that I don't think I could handle. Then you have to travel somewhere, miss sleep, eat with incredible care and then show up looking fresh and vital.

Blogging isn't nearly as hard. Trust me.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL said he looks like Justin Timberlake. Some students call him "Professor McDreamy." But my colleague Ben Barton let his head be shaved into a Mohawk for a student fundraising drive.

Then, when it was over, he shaved the Mohawk off and became temporarily bald. I think it gives him a kind of Stone Cold Steve Austin aura. But although he's certainly not the only law professor with a shaved head and goatee, for a few days he was probably the only law professor in America sporting a Mohawk. That's gotta be worth something.

AT THE YALE LAW JOURNAL POCKET PART, swingers, porn, and the Sixth Circuit.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Dude, where's my recession?

NICK BOSTROM on why we should hope that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence turns up nothing.

GETTING PERSONAL: "It's not so much that Wright's ideas were anti-American and his politics were extremist and left-wing. Obama had to have known that from a 20-year association with the man (unless he only had the association for appearances and political advancement and never really cared what Wright thought). Obama got mad, it seems, because he could see that Wright meant to hurt him and was getting fired up moving for the kill."

UPDATE: Related thoughts here: "In Obama's eyes, the most serious wrongdoing in Wright's statements is their disrespect of Obama."

RICHARD MORGAN wins the Arthur C. Clarke prize for his novel Thirteen. I thought it was pretty good.

MORE ON VITAMIN D.

MCCAIN BLOWS IT: "Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending."

I yield to none in my disdain for pork-barrel spending, but the problem with the bridge was a design defect, and I think it's kind of hard to tie that to pork.

POLL PANIC: Obama's bad numbers.

UPDATE: Daniel Henninger notes that suddenly all those famous Obama endorsers are nowhere to be found.

BABY-SNATCHING in Arlington County.

MORE ON CHOLESTEROL from Robert Mayer.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Will a "’proto-prototype’ for a nanoassembler" lead to atomically precise manufacturing?

TIGERHAWK: Youthful passion is really quite tedious.

April 30, 2008

PW: How the establishment media has smeared black churchgoers.

"SHE HASN'T PUMPED HER OWN GAS IN YEARS:" This could have been turned into a story like the George H.W. Bush supermarket scanner story. "Clinton hopped out of the truck without incident and joined Wilfing at the pump. She seemed very interested in the actual set up, acknowledging later that she hasn't pumped her own gas in years." And then there's the coffee machine video.

THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST.

ROBERT SAMUELSON: Start drilling.

It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves).

What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity. Americans favor both "energy independence" and cheap fuel. They deplore imports -- who wants to pay foreigners? -- but oppose more production in the United States. Got it?

Read the whole thing.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Postcards from the Balkans.

I'VE BEEN SAYING FOR YEARS THAT HOMELAND SECURITY IS A JOKE, but this isn't funny: "Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) familiar with the situation say the mix-ups, in which marshals are mistaken for terrorism suspects who share the same names, have gone on for years — just as they have for thousands of members of the traveling public."

WSJ: Weinstein Reversed Again, This Time in NYC’s Suit Against Gun Makers. Mayor Bloomberg is unhappy, so I'm pleased.

CONFLICT AMONG THE NETROOTS: The Messianics vs. the Menopausals.

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN OFFERS A HISTORICAL CORRECTION to Jeremiah Wright:

I'm largely uninterested in this never-ending Jeremiah Wright controversy, and I'll leave the debunking of his nutty National Press Club rant to others in the blogosphere. But there is one minor point that deserves a correction. According to Wright, his "congregation stood in solidarity with the peasants in El Salvador and Nicaragua, while our government, through Ollie North and the Iran-Contra scandal, was supporting the Contras, who were killing the peasants and the Miskito Indians in those two countries."

I'm not sure I would be trumpeting my "solidarity" with the foul dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, but I suppose that's a matter of taste. It should be noted, though, that it was the Sandinista government that famously massacred truculent Miskito Indians, who then responded by fighting a prolonged guerilla war against the very government supported by liberation theologists like Wright.

Is anything Wright says true?

MORE ON THE rebounding cougar population. I've heard several reports of cougars in East Tennessee, but there's no official confirmation.

JUST WATCHED HILLARY ON O'REILLY, and what struck me most was how much both of them seemed to enjoy the interview. O'Reilly had it right -- they're both "polarizing figures," and they're both okay with that.

UPDATE: Reader Jody Green emails:

I watched the Bill and Hill show as well and what struck me was how tough she plans to be on those evil corporations. She will lower gas prices by taking the profits away from American Oil Companies???? How are old Chavez and Mugabe doing with those evil corporate profits they took away? Prices sure seem to be lower, eh?

Yeah.

ZIMBABWE UPDATE: Mugabe beaten in presidential vote, says government source. By so much they couldn't even fake it, I guess.

YESTERDAY'S POST on the motorcycle GPS unit produced several emails that I quoted, but today I got this from Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger:

Glenn, we've got one - I got it because Tenacious G (my wife) rides really well, but navigates less well, and we found that the stress of trying to navigate on the fly on a motorcycle tends to degrade her riding skills - making her less safe.

I've used it on my motorcycle, and found it not to be overly distracting at all (plus it plays MP3's via Bluetooth).

Highly, highly recommended.

As long as we're talking gadgets, we also got one of these - a Spot Messenger (http://www.findmespot.com/Home.aspx). It uses GPS and satellite communications to allow you to send emails with a Google Maps link to a designated list of people saying "I'm OK" or "I need help" and it also will page the GEOS rescue center for you. Makes those long rides through cell-phone-less back country just a little more secure...

That looks like a very cool gadget.

JAMES TARANTO:

So, was Obama sincere? Did he spent 20 years as an intimate of Wright and a parishioner of his church without ever having an inkling that the guy is a wacko hatemonger?

If so, can you think of anything more terrifying than sending such a naïf to the White House while there's a war on?

Read the whole thing.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON VOTER ID FRAUD: "Have Marty Lederman and Rick Hasen never heard of Mayor Richard 'the Boss' Daley?"

PROFOUND DESIRE NOT TO BE JUDGED.

LOUIS FARRAKHAN DIDN'T PUT CHAINS ON HIM: An interview with former Sudanese slave Simon Deng.

THE WEB IS FIFTEEN YEARS OLD TODAY. While still a fractious adolescent, it's showing some signs of maturity . . . .

CHOLESTEROL HELL.

REPORTING ON THE WISCONSIN LAW SCHOOL sex toy controversy.

UPDATE: Worth quoting: "The enlarged pictures are NSFW, but I guess if the women put them up, then it's not sexual harassment."

CONSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS AT THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS? All I can say is that if they're being sued by Bob Long, they might as well surrender now.

OVER AT JOYSTIQ, a review of Grand Theft Auto IV.

FRED THOMPSON IS BACK ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: For McCain.

EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON: Obama, Not Wright, Is Obama's Worst Enemy. "Finally, and worst of all, no matter how much he protests that Wright doesn't represent him or his thinking, the fact is he sat in his church for nearly two decades, called him a spiritual mentor and family confidant, appointed him to an advisory post in his campaign, and in his so-called race speech refused to disown his two decade experience and relationship with him. This instantly makes his Wright protest sound like the wail of a politician running scared, and who sees the long, arduous, time consuming and patient work he put into building up public trust in him as the nation's great political hope fast washing down the drain."

Related thoughts here: "You know who made this a racial thing? Not Sean Hannity. Not Fox News. Not Hillary Clinton. Barrack Obama made Jeremiah Wright a race thing. It was his big 'race speech' that transformed a singular black preacher into the living personification of the 'Black Community.'"

FLOYD ABRAMS: Foreign Law and the First Amendment. A bad combination.

SCIENCE LEADS YOU TO KILLING PEOPLE? If this quote is accurate, Ben Stein has completely lost it.

UPDATE: Related thoughts at ChicagoBoyz.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve Poling emails:

You cited Derb's quote by Ben Stein and suggest he's lost it. I'd like to offer a brief apology (in the Socratic sense).

In the last century, we saw several governments adopt the notion that they, the government, were ultimate. Mr. Stein accurately identifies one of them, risking Godwin's law. Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese governments were responsible for murdering millions of their citizens. The same century saw the Tuskegee experiment and other eugenics mischief under the banner of what Francis Schaeffer (franky's dad) termed "Sociological law." All these crimes were RATIONALIZED using science.

You'll see this common theme running throughout Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism." I disagree with Mr. Goldberg's thesis, finding the common thread true of both Communist and Fascist and American Progressive mischief is a rejection of transcendent absolutes. "If there are no absolutes, then the state is absolute," said Francis Schaeffer.

But the root problem has to do with human nature and Lord Acton's dictum, power tends to corrupt. Since the people running the gas chambers in Germany were philosophically naturalists who dressed in lab coats while spouting pseudo-science, I don't think Mr. Stein's curse lands upon true scientists, but at relativists who see nothing larger than their own personal grasp on power and no transcendent checks upon its exercise.

The American Constitution is as close as this world is likely to see. I see it as a legacy of Deist and Christian framers who looked outside government for absolutes to serve as checks upon government. However, since all text is subject to interpretation, that legacy is endangered by judicial activism... Sorry to have wandered so far afield. Francis Schaeffer made the same mistake when he contemplated these things immediately after the Roe v Wade decision.

However, the absolutes vs relativism question seems to lie underneath Mr. Stein's remarks. If just want to make him a straw man, and find an excuse to ignore everything else he says, you can frame his remarks as mere obscurantism. However, if you want to constructively engage the problems which have nettled this world for the last century or so, you might want to consider relativism's baleful influence on Western Culture.

Auschwitz was not conceived as science, nor was it impelled by science, or scientists. The Holocaust was not a scientific endeavor, but had its roots in the Nazis' unscientific loathing of the Jews. The Nazis did try to dress up that loathing in scientific dress, but that was a propaganda move, not science. (Indeed, Nazi science, for the most part, was dreadful science, made up by people to suit their preexisting beliefs without actual resort to the scientific method.) One can argue quite compellingly against moral relativism without engaging in raw intellectual dishonesty. Stein's approach, however, seems more worthy of a Michael Moore. And in this spirit, do read what Jay Manifold has to say at the ChicagoBoyz link above. And here's a somewhat related post from a while back.

MORE: Ed Morrissey comments: "I found a lot to recommend about Expelled, but this leaves me wondering if Ben Stein missed the point of his movie. Science does not lead to Dachau; ideology perverting science led to Dachau.. . . How could Stein say this without a hint of irony? The best themes in Expelled take Academia to task for the same destructive sin."

STILL MORE: In the comments at ChicagoBoyz, David Foster writes:

I’ve enjoyed a lot of Stein’s writing, and it saddens me to see him descending to this nuttiness.

“the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed”…surely Stein knows that the concentration camps were run by the SS, 99% of whom were not scientists. While it is true that the Nazis employed chemists for nefarious purposes, it is also true that the Nazis employed musicians to help hide from inmates the true purpose of the camps. Would Stein also assert that music is evil?

Good point, exposing just how cheap Stein's cheap shot was.

HEH: Berkeley College Republicans apply for same protest privileges as Code Pink.

Related: Military moms crash Code Pink dinner.

OOPS: Hillary blasts Bush for not stopping a project her husband approved.

VIDEO: A Top Gun weekend.

GAY PATRIOT REPORTS ON Pansy-Gate.

MILEAGE TEST: Diesel vs. Hybrid SUVs.

IN THE MAIL: David Runciman's Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond. Seems timely. But then, the subject is evergreen. . . .

From the Gay Street viaduct.

OLIVER KAMM: "Even many supporters of his own Labour Party will be glad if London mayor Ken Livingstone loses Thursday's election - and gladder if he departs public life altogether."

STEVE GILL: Obama gets a do-over. I think he's taken real damage, though.

GAIL HERIOT: "If you have ever wondered why colleges and universities seem to march in lockstep on controversial issues like affirmative action, here is one reason: Overly politicized accrediting agencies often demand it."

She thinks the Education Department needs to rein in the American Bar Association. I don't really understand why the ABA is in the accreditation business to begin with. (Via The Volokh Conspiracy). Here's a question -- and it's a real question, because this isn't my area of the law. If, as it seems, the ABA is pressuring schools to violate the law in the name of diversity, why isn't it vulnerable to a civil-rights conspiracy claim? And couldn't such a claim be brought by students who are not admitted to schools of their choice because of affirmative action? Is this more of a stretch than some of the other civil rights claims that are brought in the context of admissions, etc.?

HE'S CERTAINLY RIGHT: Obama says rivals Clinton, McCain pandering on gas tax.

UPDATE: Tom Friedman:

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Read the whole thing.

CHINA WILL LOVE THIS: Ahead of Olympics, Congressman Pushes 'Global Online Freedom Act'.

IS IT A TREND? Another professor sues students, though at least this time it's not over course evaluations. Still seems unthinkable -- but, then, so did the idea of students suing professors, until recently.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse: "Suing students! It seems unthinkable. But this is the direction we head when free speech and academic freedom lose their grip on us."

AN INTERVIEW WITH LIBERTARIAN TRANSHUMANIST (though he doesn't like that word) philanthropist Peter Thiel.

AT IOWAHAWK, advice to the lovelorn.