“EUROPE PINES FOR BIG-SPENDING AMERICAN TOURISTS:”

In Britain – the most popular destination for American tourists to Europe – figures for the first half of 2003 show an 11 percent decline in US visitors. In Italy, it’s more than 20 percent, while in France, it’s even worse: an estimated 26 percent drop this year.

“Until Sept. 11, about 45 percent of our clients were Americans,” laments Mauricio Mistarz, head receptionist at a small three-star hotel on the Left Bank in Paris. “Now, on a good day, Americans fill 20 percent of our rooms.”

The protracted slump in US visitors to Europe is alarming for the millions of Europeans who profit from their dollars – from the travel agent to the taxi driver, the postcard vendor to the tour guide.

American visitors tend to stay longer and spend more than any other tourists. In France last year, the Americans spent more than British and Irish visitors combined, despite being outnumbered 5 to 1. In Britain, the average American spends $1,000 a trip, far outstripping European visitors.

All of this means that US reluctance to travel costs European tourism dear.

The Europeans seem to think that it’s fear of terrorism that’s keeping Americans home. I don’t think that’s quite it.

UPDATE: Michael Demmons says he’s done his part to keep European economies afloat. And scroll up for a definitive post on political ideology.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Note to Matthew Yglesias: “a” is a different word from “the.” Just as the Dutch are different from the Danes. . . .

ALGERIAN TOURIST UPDATE: Looks like they may be on their way home soon, though it’s still not entirely clear what’s going on.

CHIEF WIGGLES has more stuff worth reading. Don’t miss it.

STILL MORE ON ELECTRONIC VOTING:

E-voting, once revered as the savior of an antiquated and problematic election system, is slipping off its pedestal. Legislators nationwide are backing off, rethinking their trust in so-called direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting systems. They want answers to mounting allegations of shoddy security.

Diebold maintains its AccuVote-TS voting machine is safe, even though its own Web site sparked the criticism in the first place.

The site’s confidential files gave Johns Hopkins University researchers a rare peek into the secretive world of touch-screen DRE voting systems. And they blasted Diebold, asserting in a July 23 study that the company’s software is unsafe and an easy target for hackers.

Diebold basically called the Johns Hopkins study hogwash less than a week later. The research, the company said, was based on outdated, incomplete material and biased from the start. But the security concerns chief researcher Avi Rubin raised were still more than enough to rattle officials across the nation.

You already know what I think about this.

MARK STEYN DIVES INTO ARIANNA HUFFINGTON:

I was delighted to hear that Arianna’s running for governor of California. Although many dismiss her as a shallow self-promoter driving around in a silly car, I love those big Hollywood billboards of her with that fabulous cleavage you just want to dive into . . .

Oh, wait. That’s not Arianna, that’s Angelyne, the other shallow self-promoting elderly sexpot who’s running for governor.

I told you the recall would be worth it just for the Steyn meanness it would unleash. (Via Kaus, who observes: “I like Arianna Huffington. Really. Any author who can come up with $410,363 in deductions is a friend of freelance writers everywhere.”).

ERIC OLSEN LIKED MAUREEN DOWD’S COLUMN ON BLOGS, but says that she completely missed the lessons of the blackout: “This is just churlish piffle.”

All the piffle that’s fit to print, as they say.

ROB SAMA has a long and interesting post on the power industry.

UPDATE: Read this, and follow the links, too.

TECHNOLOGY IS YOUR FRIEND: Rob Smith reports success. Stop by and congratulate him.

WHY PEOPLE THINK GOVERNMENT IS STUPID:

Yes, you read that right–an officer enforcing a health regulation ordered a club for recovering alcoholics to get a liquor license. But wait–it gets worse.

Yes, it does.

WHAT GRAY DAVIS’S FRIENDS ARE SAYING ABOUT HIM: Ouch.

TOM FRIEDMAN WRITES:

Many Iraqis today express real resentment for the other Arab regimes, and even toward the Palestinians, for how they let themselves be bought off by Saddam. They feel that Saddam used the Iraqi people’s oil wealth to buy popularity for himself in the Arab street — by giving Palestinians and other Arab students scholarships and nice apartments in Baghdad, and by paying off all sorts of Arab nationalist writers and newspapers. And then these same Arab intellectuals and media gave Saddam a free pass to torture, repress and starve his own people. In other words, “Arabism,” in the minds of many Iraqis, is the cloak that Saddam hid behind to imprison them for 35 years, and now that they can say that out loud, they are saying it.

You’d never know this from watching Arab satellite television like Al Jazeera. Because although these stations have 21st-century graphics, they’re still dominated by 1950’s Nasserite political correctness — which insists that dignity comes from how you resist the foreigner, even if he’s come as a liberator, not by what you build yourself.

But the truth will come out. . . .

Indeed.

BLOG PHOTOJOURNALISM: John Daley sends this:

If you’re interested, here are some blog entries posted from Bryant Park (using a verizon hotspot, not the park’s) during the blackout. There are also photos.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Very cool stuff. Somebody tell Mark Glaser!

UPDATE: Here’s another firsthand report, from Chris Sciabarra, who’s guest-posting at Arthur Silber’s blog.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Brendan Loy has more cool photos. And here’s a link to blog video of the lights coming on in Chelsea.

MORE BBC DEVELOPMENTS:

The reputation of BBC journalism, already under the spotlight at the Hutton Inquiry, faces another test after one of its senior correspondents announced he was taking legal action against an American magazine.

Tom Mangold said he was “issuing legal proceedings” against Newsweek after it alleged that his exclusive report on tthe arrest of a British-Indian businessman for attempting to sell missiles to Islamic terrorists had “blown” a major intelligence operation.

Hmm. This strikes me as ill-advised. Bill Adams has more thoughts on the subject.

TYLER COWEN HAS A ROUNDUP OF LINKS on economics and electricity regulation, and responds to Robert Kuttner’s predictable call for more regulation:

Kuttner argues that the vertically integrated, regulated monopolist (“Con Ed”) model is better. I would like to see an empirical comparison of blackout rates (does anyone know of one?), but of course we had serious blackouts before deregulation. Besides, it is probably too late to go back to consolidation, and this model was dismal on the innovation front.

Meanwhile Sparkey has a roundup of technical information and links. Don’t miss it. And, if that’s not enough to worry about, here’s a post from Alex Knapp on the looming shortage of drinkable water. (Not here in the East Tennessee Rain Forest, Alex!) (Via Winds of Change, which also has an excellent blackout linkfest.)

UPDATE: And Virginia Postrel brings a good firsthand report, which includes this gem:

On Thursday afternoon when the computers popped off and the lights dimmed — brownout! — I said: No prob, I’ll walk home. Then I said: Wait a minute, what‚ll I do when I get there? I live on the 68th floor. Think I’ll stay at the office.

Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Steve Verdon has multiple posts on electricity regulation and deregulation.

“THE REAL QUESTION is not why we had an urban blackout, but why we didn’t have one sooner.”

TOM MAGUIRE POSTS on heat waves, French government incompetence, and gloating.

IF YOU WANT TO BE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA, Tacitus advises, it’s best to renounce your past connections to fascist hatemongers.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll: “those crickets on the set of the Today Show are still chirping.”

WHITE HOUSE DROPPED BALL: This White House press release seems a bit confused about the role of the federal judiciary:

President George W. Bush today announced his intention to nominate one individual to serve in his administration:

The President intends to nominate Peter Sheridan, of New Jersey, to be United States District Court Judge for the District of New Jersey.

“In his administration?” I’m sure someone just cut-and-pasted the wrong language, but it’s a bit embarrassing — and sure to confirm his critics’ worst fears! (Thanks to reader Ben Finkelstein for the link).

NICK GILLESPIE WRITES on why things didn’t go wrong:

Indeed, the most interesting blackout-related story is the one that never happened. The sort of pandemonium, hysteria, looting, crime, and chaos that typically greets even minor football victories as well as catastrophic utility failures simply didn’t materialize. This was true even in New York City, where such antisocial behavior was once seen as part of the city’s very essence. Indeed, the iconic ’70s Manhattan-based sitcom Escape from New York was titled that way for a reason—one that no longer makes sense.

(Note to Gillespie: two “Indeeds” in one paragraph? You’ll be hearing from my trademark lawyers, as soon as they take a break from the work for Fox. . . .)

Really, though, as Kathleen Tierney has noted, the panic-and-chaos reaction is the exception, though the media tend to treat it as the rule. (More on that here.) But the media tend always to paint ordinary people as, well, worse than they really are. Why is that?

UPDATE: Reader Mark Tough explains something else confusing:

The John Carpenter film, Escape from New York, is neither a sitcom, nor a (direct) product of the 70s, having been made in 1981.

Cruising over to Reason, the quote looked the same until I checked the source HTML, where the problem becomes clear. Nick’s original text actually reads:
“Indeed, the iconic ’70s Manhattan-based sitcom The Odd Couple even featured a Boy Scout punching one of the characters, among other signs of defining Big Apple vitriol. The 1981 cult classic Escape from New York was titled that way for a reason — one that no longer makes sense.”

Better?

Indeed.

It is better. But sorry, Mark, you’ll still be hearing from my lawyers. Gotta protect that trademark. . . .

UPDATE: John Podhoretz is crediting Rudy Giuliani. Does Rudy’s influence reach to Cleveland and Detroit?

FISHING FOR BAD QUOTES ON THE ECONOMY? A reader forwards this email from the New York Times:

The New York Times is working on an article about the rising cost of higher education, and the simultaneous reduction of academic programs on some campuses. They want to know how this is affecting members of NSCS.

Is it going to take longer for you to graduate than you hoped? Are you taking out more loans than you expected? Working more? Partying less? Taking a forced break from school?

To share your story, please contact Greg Winter at the New York Times as soon as possible, with your name and chapter, by phone or email.

“Working more, partying less?” The horror.

HERE’S A BLOG ENTRY, purportedly from Iraq. No reason to doubt it, but I don’t know the blogger.

“UNFAIR, UNBALANCED, AND AFRAID:” Josh Chafetz of OxBlog has the cover story in the latest Weekly Standard. It’s about the ongoing unravelling of the BBC:

The testimony so far has not been flattering to the BBC (or the government). Charges and countercharges of corruption fill the front pages of the papers. (Had TV cameras been allowed into the Royal Courts of Justice, where the witnesses are testifying, the BBC might have unwittingly produced and starred in a hugely popular reality TV show.) It turns out that what a captive audience gets from a media megalith with a government-enforced subsidy is exactly what a beginning student of economics would predict: The BBC may be arrogant, but it’s also incompetent, not to mention surly and evasive when criticized.

It’s a short road from the BBC to the DMV.

UPDATE: This post has led one reader to email in defense of the DMV.

WE KEEP HEARING about those Iraqi tips on dealing with blackouts. Now John Cole has some West Virginia tips for Iraqis:

1.) Quit sabotaging your god damn power transmission sites.

2.) Quit looting your damn country.

3.) Quit shooting your AK in the air out of anger, sadness, joy, jubilation.

4.) Quit shooting your AK at coalition troops and provisional Iraqi police.

Silliness, I tell you. I shall also note, when the power went out, no one went to their local Shi’a Cleric to demand protests and burnings of the American flag. They dealt with it, and tried to be part of the solution.

Yes, that is a difference.

Meanwhile C.D. Harris says this never would have happened if people had just listened to Dick Cheney. Cheney? What does he know about energy?

WORTH REMEMBERING:

The number of East Germans killed as they attempted to seek freedom in the West was above 1,000, researchers said yesterday as they released updated figures.

A society established to remember the victims of the Berlin Wall said it had uncovered the identity of a further 23 people, including a pregnant woman, who died.

The workers’ paradise. Of course, some vestiges remain:

The reigning Miss Vietnam, who was preparing to study at Luton University, has been kidnapped, allegedly by the son of a senior police officer upset at her desire to leave her communist homeland.

Is that pathetic, or what?

POWER HAS BEEN FULLY RESTORED in New York City.