THE INDEPUNDIT SAYS the World Cup is a diplomatic disaster for the United States:

This past weekend, Team USA upset “El Tri,” the Mexican National Team 2-0, to enter the quarterfinals. The US is now officially a Superpower in every respect, along with Germany, Italy, South Korea, Turkey, Japan, England, and Brazil. The French are really pissed.

The fact that our team is in the quarterfinals and most Americans are completely oblivious is especially grating to those we have defeated. Yesterday, police had to break up Mexicans who were gathered at the border crossing from El Paso to Juarez, because they were throwing rocks at cars with American license plates – and the Americans had no idea why it was happening! . . .

But the important thing is that we should celebrate big time in the unlikely event that we win, or we’ll be in big trouble with the Germans – not to mention the Mexicans, who are already on the verge of declaring war . If we lose (which we probably will), we need to be visibly upset at everything German, and crying in the streets. We should all resolve to wear black for a week, and boycott German beer. It’s our patriotic duty.

This is the natural order of things – we upset it at our own peril.

You have been warned. But does Colin Powell know? And is he even now counseling the U.S. team to throw the game in the interests of not provoking the rest of the world?

JESSE VENTURA won’t run for reelection. Actually, what he said was: “I am not seeking reelection again.” Reader Dane Carlson wonders how he can not be seeking reelection “again,” when he’s never sought reelection before. Picky, picky.

READER MARTIN PRATT sends this fairly good news on privacy, from Britain.

Now will our politicians take a lesson from this?

SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED: Ken Layne says we’ve got it all wrong when it comes to Homeland Security.

And I still think that’s a creepy name. “Homeland Security,” I mean. Not Ken Layne.

BO COWGILL scooped everyone with his report (with pictures yet) of the protests at Stanford regarding Condi Rice’s commencement speech. Now Howard Mortman dissects the rather lame coverage in the Palo Alto Daily News, which makes up for being later than Cowgill’s by not being as good. And looking at Bo’s photos of the protests, I’d say the newspaper’s estimate of a “more than a dozen protesters” is rather generous, but Bo’s own report says that there were maybe three dozen, so take your pick. Maybe some of them just didn’t want to be photographed.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Ivers writes:

Let’s see, a generous estimate of 36 (“three dozen”) divided by 4600 graduates means 0.78% of grads demonstrated. Wow!! What a backlash. Looks like the Bush popularity is sliding right down the crapper.

No one is impressed by your bourgeoise math, Mr. Ivers. It has long been used to distract the proletariat from its true interests.

DANIEL PIPES says that FBI Director Robert Mueller shouldn’t be breaking bread with the American Muslim Council, since it’s likely that the FBI will soon be investigating its ties to terrorist organizations.

I don’t know much about this, but I wonder if the Democrats will be able to make some hay out of the connection (which I assume is there) between this sort of thing and Grover Norquist’s efforts to bring American muslims into the GOP fold.

UPDATE: Frank Gaffney and Steven Emerson are criticizing Mueller’s move too.

JESSE WALKER writes that Doonesbury is turning into Li’l Abner. Yeah, reading Doonesbury (when I bother) makes me respect Berke Breathed, Gary Larson, and Bill Watterson for quitting before they descended into self-caricature, even though I miss them.

Personally, I don’t think that Doonesbury was ever as good after Trudeau took his extended hiatus. He lost his groove, and he never got it back. Walker says it’s because he’s old:

Trudeau’s career arc mirrors the evolution of baby-boom liberalism, from the anti-authoritarian skepticism of the 1970s to the smug paternalism of the Clinton years. In 1972 the strip was engaged with the world; in 2002 it is engaged with itself. . . .

But the biggest change is political. There was a libertarian streak to ’70s liberalism: Disillusioned by Watergate and Vietnam, invigorated by the rebellions of the ’60s, it was socially tolerant, supportive of civil liberties, suspicious of executive power, ready to investigate and dismantle the national security state, and even open to deregulation when it was presented in populist garb. (Few remember that it was Ted Kennedy and Ralph Nader, not Ronald Reagan, who pushed through airline deregulation.) Needless to say, this current quickly disappeared — banished from the Democratic mainstream by the ’80s, its last gasp in that party was Jerry Brown’s presidential campaign of 1992.

Yeah. As Walker also points out, the strip used to be about college-age people. Now when college-age people appear, it’s so Trudeau can riff on how much cooler his generation was when it was that age.

But it’s not just the years: it’s the mileage. There’s only so long anyone can be cutting-edge clever before descending into pomposity and irrelevance. I miss The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County — but I respect their creators for quitting before that happened.

HEY, THANKS to the folks who hit my tipjar yesterday. That sudden flurry of activity was quite welcome: I’m paying for this server, after all. No more free Blogspot hosting. (But no more extended Blogspot outages).

BTW, if you want me to know who gave, you can click on a little box in the upper right after donating. Otherwise it’s anonymous.

CHRIS PATTEN IS COMING UNDER MAJOR CRITICISM for the EU’s support for terrorism, according to this story in the E.U. Observer. Hmm. He’s in charge of external affairs, but, er, he’s a hot-button PR liability for the EU. Even the Washington Post thinks he’s an offensive blowhard, which suggests to me that he’s not doing a very good job. I think it’s about time for a “Dump Patten” movement.

SAUDI ARABIA has reportedly arrested a number of Al Qaeda-linked suspects.

SPINSANITY REPORTS:

Restrictions on protests during President Bush’s commencement address at Ohio State University (OSU) Friday sparked widespread outrage on high-profile liberal Internet sites. But criticism of what happened has been plagued by inaccuracy and a reliance on incorrect and sketchy reports. . . . [Claims of arrests, etc. are debunked, and attention is directed to news stories reflecting the facts].

This correction has not been acknowledged by Buzzflash, MWO or even the left-liberal media critics at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, who quoted the original, incorrect report in their critique of the Washington Post’s coverage of the speech yesterday.

Well, there you have it. Hey, anybody can be wrong, but — especially when you’re online and it’s so easy to do — it’s important to correct things once you find out they’re wrong, even if the incorrect version is more politically opportune. I would think that would go double for anonymously authored sites like MWO.

THIS OBSERVATION WOULD STILL BE SAPPY, but it would make more sense if the missile silos in question contained missiles that were, you know, the kind that kill people.

It seems to me that this post — which is from TAPPED, a site I like a lot — demonstrates the sort of symbolic thinking that has deprived the anti-nuclear and anti-war movements of credibility. Then there’s the magical-thinking wish-fulfillment angle: some kid makes a sappy gesture and the threat of nuclear war is ended. Yeah, TAPPED admits it’s sappy, but it’s got about as much connection to reality as Beavis (or was it Butthead’s) remark that “wouldn’t it be great if chicks just did whatever you want?” Only here it’s, “wouldn’t it be great if a wave of emotionalism ended the threat of violence?” Actually, of course, it was the Cold War that ended the Soviet nuclear threat — because we won. The much smaller Al Qaeda nuclear threat will be ended the same way, and no other. Sorry guys. This isn’t one of your best.

GARY FARBER has some interesting stuff on nuclear war and what it means to be conservative.

CAN BLOGS SAVE WALL STREET? Dominic Basulto of Corante says they can, by providing a check on analysts.

BILL HOBBS, who owns this story, has an update on the case of Paul Trummel, who was jailed because a judge didn’t like his website and ruled that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to people who aren’t paid journalists.

I’m astounded — and disappointed — that this case hasn’t gotten more attention. It’s actually a worse First Amendment violation than the Vanessa Leggett case. Is it just that this doesn’t offer an opportunity to criticize Ashcroft?

MISDIRECTION? Ranan Lurie writes that we’re talking about Iraq but aiming at Iran.

SYRIA IS HOLDING a key 9/11 suspect, reports the Washington Post. He is “Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a German citizen of Syrian origin who has told his interrogators that he recruited key hijacker Mohammed Atta.” He’s being interrogated by the Syrians, and he’s cooperating, according to the report.

If this is all it’s cracked up to be, it’s an indication that Syria is anxious to stay on the right side of the United States — which is probably an indication that there’s more going on in the war than is obvious to us sitting here at home. I certainly hope that’s the case.

The Germans are unhappy that they’ve been cut out of the loop where one of their own citizens is concerned. But given their ostentatious unwillingness to cooperate with the United States where such cooperation might lead to someone getting the death penalty, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this is in part a signal to the Germans that there are worse things than a death-penalty trial in an American court.

PAKISTAN WORRIES: I don’t know how much credence to give this story, but it’s certainly troubling. Pakistan’s ISI appears to be choosing poorly.

GRAY DAVIS UPDATE: Matthew Hoy identifies another financial scandal.

BIOTERROR: Joe Katzman has a lot of useful links and information.

THE KANSAS CITY STAR is calling for CIA action to topple Saddam Hussein. Reader Bobby Allison-Gallimore, who sent the link, remarks that this is rather a change from the Star’s usual slant on things.

THYMUS-CLONING ERRORS: Yesterday I posted an item about a human thymus being grown by Australian researchers. That’s what the news story I linked to said, but it appears to be wrong. Dr. Steve White of the University of Chicago sent this:

The researchers collected thymic stem cells from mice, not humans (the clonal populations were collected from 15.5 day old mouse embryos). The exact populations were R1 (CD45.MHC class II.MTS24-) and R2 (CD45.MHC class II.MTS24+) cells. These cells were separated from other cells by flow cytometry and then engrafted into mouse kidneys. Embryonic cells at 15.5 days old (mid gestation for a mouse) were used as it was felt that this represented a point at which thymus cells (technically, thymic epithelial cells) had differentiated into two component types for the developing thymus gland.

This is a remarkable study and deserved publication in Nature Immunology. But these were mouse cells, not human cells, and came from an embryo, not an adult. Hope this clarifies it for you.

Dr. White was kind enough to send me the PDF of the Nature article, and he’s right — it says rather clearly in the methodology section that mouse cells, not human cells, were involved.

PROLIFIC InstaPundit email correspondent Maarten Schenk has his own blog, Live From Brussels, which makes sense given that he’s, well, from Brussels. And he’s alive.

THE NEW YORK TIMES reported on Sunday that greenhouse warming was causing Alaska to “crack, burn and sag.’

Now Professor Gerd Wendler of the Alaska Climate Research Center (he’s a professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, a lovely campus that I visited once) says that the Times’ claim of a seven-degree temperature rise is wildly exaggerated: here are the actual figures, which are much lower.

What could account for this discrepancy?

DO YOU THINK ELSIE LEE, who graces my computer screen pretty regularly these days on a variety of sites, is really just an ordinary “Harris Direct investor,” or do you think she’s actually, like, a model they chose because she looks cute with a keyboard in her lap and her bare feet propped up on the desk next to the monitor?

UPDATE: Will Middelaer, it turns out, has been researching this for weeks and has exposed a troubling coverup effort at Harris Direct.