MICKEY KAUS notices that Fox News’ viewership lead over CNN is shrinking. But he misses the obvious explanation, which is that CNN has been actively courting bloggers for months. What else could it be?
Archive for 2005
April 26, 2005
SHOULDN’T FAKE RACIST HATE-MAIL be punished as severely as the real thing? It’s just as damaging.
NORM GERAS ASKS: “What is it that has led to this intellectual and political debacle of so much of the left of (roughly) my own generation? The pathology of anti-Americanism? The failure to call certain political phenomena by their proper names? A loss of nerve and/or moral perspective in face of a capitalism seemingly everywhere triumphant? Perhaps (three times). But a debacle is what it is – the loss to progressive opinion of half a generation or more of those who might otherwise have been expected to pass on a mature wisdom to younger others. Instead, this shameful legacy.”
And here’s another example.
ANOTHER BLOW TO FRENCH SELF-ESTEEM:
PARIS — The United States’ bread-baking skills were crowned superior to those of France and the rest of the world the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, the World Cup of Baking, held in Paris, France.
The 2005 U.S. Bread Bakers Guild team was coached by Didier Rosada and included Jeffrey Yankellow, both of the San Francisco Baking Institute. They beat 11 other countries’ teams to win the competition, the Bread Bakers Guild of America reported today.
And even the metric system is growing less Francocentric.
AND THE 2008 REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE IS . . . well, we’ll see if he’s predicted by this poll.
TED FRANK REPORTS THAT HE IS TAKING THE BOEING — “though I’m not sure that metaphor works for a lawyer taking a paycut.”
CATHY SEIPP turns over the Mom card.
GEORGE W. BUSH — CLOSET DEMOCRAT? The rich are paying a greater share of taxes, and the poor a lesser share, than in 1979.
UPDATE: Brendan Nyhan leaps to Bush’s defense by arguing that taxes haven’t really gotten more progressive, and that the rich really are getting richer. Whew! That’s a relief.
On the other hand, judging by this photo, maybe “closet Democrat” wasn’t quite the right closet.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
ANOTHER UPDATE: This Matt Welch slamming of the Bush photo-op seems about right to me.
IT’S NOT TOO LATE to sign up for BlogNashville, happening May 5 & 6 in, er, Nashville. It promises to be the biggest blog conference yet, and I think it’ll be worth the trip. I certainly plan to be there.
MORE support for Hugh Hewitt’s theory that immigration is the Achilles’ heel of the GOP coalition.
US and US-ally naval officers have told me the big fear in southeast Asia is terrorists hijacking an oil tanker. The terrorists blow up the tanker and create an ecological disaster. Of course this attack could be executed anywhere. Straits (choke points) channel sea traffic. Pirates in small, fast boats can launch a quick attack from the coast. A terror attack will always generate huge headlines, but the headlines will be bigger if international shipping is stalled because a key strait is closed.
He has much more on maritime threats.
THEY’RE ALWAYS DISSING HOME DEPOT over at The Corner, but I usually shop at Lowe’s. I had to go to Home Depot today, and it reminded me why I usually shop at Lowe’s. It took over an hour to execute what should have been a ten or fifteen minute purchase. There were lots of employees, but they were all talking on the phone, often crouched behind desks for maximum inconspicuousness. Once I found someone who would help, she was pleasant but clueless. Overall, not an impressive performance.
UPDATE: Praise for non-big-box hardware stores here.
TOM MAGUIRE looks at some missing stories, and at the Democrats’ Contract With America.
JOE GANDELMAN has a Syria/Lebanon roundup.
I’m curious: how many people do you have to kill, and how many books do you have to destroy, before you’re no longer a benign historical image to be used in a “clever” ad campaign? . . . Next up: Stalin shills for the church! Hey, he was a seminarian, once. See, it’s funny and clever when they didn’t kill anyone you know.
I guess.
GADGET UPDATE: I mentioned that I like this heart monitor for exercise, but my cousin-in-law Brad Rubenstein, who’s visiting, says that he has this far-more-sophisticated gadget and that it works: “You’ll do the run just to see the graph.” Well, maybe. He’s more serious about fitness — and gadgets — than I am, since he runs marathons and works in high tech.
UPDATE: Reader Mark Hoover emails with a reference to this frightening device: the Garmin Forerunner 301 GPS with Heart Rate Monitor.
Forget that FitSense rig. It’s great, but for the ultimate, you want the Garmin ForeRunner 301. Talk about incentive to run! You’re not only looking at a graph of your workout, you’re looking at a map. In fact, you can overlay the map created during your workout onto free downloadable high-res satellite photos (from the Terra server) and literally trace your route.
I use mine for endurance inline skating. To a technically oriented person, having such a richness of performance statistics available allows performance tuning of the body in ways never possible before.
These things have a real cult following. Here’s a great resource page:
Follow the Garmin link to see a graphic that would have looked science-fictional not long ago. Yes, there are lots of people who are both fitter and geekier than me.
CATHY YOUNG dismissed conservative claims of religious bigotry yesterday, producing this response from Stephen Bainbridge, which produced this reply from Young. I agree with Eugene Volokh that Young gets the better of the exchange.
UPDATE: Ann Althouse:
The origin of a nominee’s views — in religion or outside of religion — should not matter. Both Democrats and Republicans have exploited religion to manipulate people in the current squabbles over the judiciary. Some Democrats assert that nominees are religious zealots who will drag us into theocracy. And Republicans will try to immunize nominees because their unacceptable views have a religious source. Both parties need to avoid stirring antipathies about religion and irreligion for political gain.
And neither is capable of such self-restraint, which is why they’re barely capable of governing.
JOHN TIERNEY does a pension comparison, and loses.
A CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY in Florida:
The law will let Floridians “meet force with force,” erasing the “duty to retreat” when they fear for their lives outside of their homes, in their cars or businesses, or on the street.
Many states, of course, already have such laws and have for years, which rather undercuts the alarmist complaints of the critics. But it’s nice to see this modern trend advance.