JOHN WIXTED NOTES THAT THE FEDERAL DEFICIT IS PLUMMETING, and stresses a lot of other good economic news:

Let’s see, GDP growth is strong, productivity is way up, unemployment is low, family incomes are rising, inflation is down, the stock market is up, and the federal deficit is down. Yet polls show that we are about to put more Democrats into both the House and the Senate.

So much for “it’s the economy, stupid!” Wixted has lots of interesting charts and data.

GETTING READY FOR THE Schwarzenegger / Angelides debate.

MEGACHURCHES WITHOUT GOD: This should prove an interesting sociological experiment, if nothing else.

We’re already part-way there. My daughter took one of her karate belt-tests at a megachurch whose denomination was indiscernible — even its Christian nature appeared only thinly, as the cross in the sanctuary was inconspicuous and the only one present. But it had a cafe with free wi-fi, and extended child care.

FUN TIMES DRINKING with Countertop and Dave Hardy. Plus, “Dave Kopel is a hottie.”

MORE ON preventing school shootings.

MAIMON SCHWARZSCHILD VISITS FRIDA KAHLO’S HOUSE and is appalled to find it lovely:

Say what you will about Kahlo’s art – it has always seemed self-dramatising kitsch to me – she had a lovely house. It’s disconcerting to realise that you have tastes (in surroundings, if not in art) in common with a devotee of political barbarism.

The fashion shoot pleased me, on the other hand. There’s something oddly reassuring about Kahlo’s radical chic transformed into pure unadulterated commercial chic.

Will Trotsky be next? His house is around the corner from Kahlo’s. He appears to have had a brief affair with Kahlo. That would have been before Kahlo’s hero in the Kremlin had Trotsky murdered with the icepick.

I think Trotsky’s house would be an excellent site for a fashion shoot.

ON FREE SPEECH, Peter Beinart asks liberals where’s the outrage:

If pressed, most liberal bloggers would probably have condemned the opera house’s decision. But they didn’t feel pressed. Blogging thrives on outrage (see, for instance, my colleague Martin Peretz’s outraged blogging on the affair at tnr.com/blog/spine), and the Idomeneo closure just didn’t get liberal blood flowing. And why is that? Perhaps because it didn’t have anything to do with George W. Bush. . . .

But it’s not enough. There are liberal causes that have nothing to do with opposing Bush and his Republican henchmen. In fact, some of those causes might even place liberals and Republican henchmen on the same side. And liberals must be passionate about them nonetheless. Partisan militancy may be necessary to combat Republican power. But it cannot define what it means to be a liberal in the United States today.

Except that it pretty much does.

MULTIMEDIA: Bloggers discuss the success of the transparency legislation, on video.

And here’s a podcast of last week’s Pajamas Media panel on “How Partisan is Too Partisan?” at the National Press Club in Washington.

A FULL FOLEYGATE INVESTIGATION IN THE WORKS? Some people won’t like the “under oath” part.

ED CONE sends a link to this interesting photoblog by Lisa Scheer.

A BLOG CONFERENCE TOMORROW in Greensboro, N.C. That’s the second one this month! But this one features Scott Johnson of Power Line.

$1.6 BILLION for YouTube? Seems like a lot to me. I’d sell InstaPundit for half that much!

USING THE N-WORD at Columbia University.

UPDATE: A statement from Columbia President Lee Bollinger. Plus, this email from reader Ian Jay:

Just wanted to point out a note regarding the link you put up to the News Alert article, which went on to link to a Fox News transcript, where Marvin Stewart of the Minutemen stated that the protesters used “the n-word”. I wasn’t there, and I haven’t seen video, so I obviously can’t comment on whether that’s correct or incorrect.

But, it’s worth bearing in mind that Marvin Stewart later in that interview proves himself to not be the most reliable narrator of the evening. He went on to say that, with regards to the banner that was unfurled by the protesters, he “was informed that the Arabic writing stated that the holocaust did not happen.” According to the Blue and White, a Columbia blog which has been covering the issue, this isn’t quite true. Or really, isn’t true at all.

Link

So in general, I’m suspicious of the way he recaps the evening, just as I’m suspicious of the anecdotes coming from the other side that claim they “peacefully” went on to the stage and were “attacked”.

On a related note, I’m not planning on really taking sides here, but I do want to emphasize that the protestors who rushed the stage were absolutely not representative of “the viewpoint of Columbia University” (which is the way this story seems to be headed), any more so than the Minuteman speakers were. The people who rushed the stage were, according to reports I’ve read, members of the local branch of the International Socialist Organization, which at last count had about 30-40 student members, out of a Columbia student body of about 20,000. Their actions are absolutely condemnable, but it’s disconcerting to read things that seem to indicate a belief that the viewpoint of those who rushed the stage is shared by Columbia students in general. We should denounce the protestors, but I’d be wary of denouncing Columbia as an institution along with them.

This was far longer than I had expected it to be. Either way, have a great weekend.

I will. And how Columbia as an institution looks depends on how Columbia as an institution acts. So far it looks hopeful, but we’ll see.

Here’s a report from the New York Sun.

THE IRAQ WAR MOMENTUM POST from this morning has been updated a lot. Scroll down, or go here.

HYBRID UPDATE: A look at the Lexus GS450h. “We can see the self-appointed hybrid police objecting already. The new Lexus GS 450h doesn’t promise 50-mpg fuel economy. Instead, it delivers V8-like thrust with four- or six-cylinder economy. And to us, that makes good sense.”

THE INEVITABLE FOLEYGATE CONTRARIANISM IS STARTING TO APPEAR:

This Florida ex-congressman Mark Foley stuff is totally lame ass crap manufactured and distilled way out of proportion to be some sort of scandal, when it is really little more than some idiot douchebag’s personal embarassment. What crime was committed? So far as I can tell as of this typing, none. What potential crime was averted through the breaking of this information in the national news media? None. What happened? Okay: some idiot wrote supposedly creepy and salacious instant messages to some teenager a couple of years ago, maybe apparently at the teen’s goading, maybe not. But, anyway, who cares?

Nothing happened to nobody. . . . Will any of these right wing commentators arguing that something bad and evil happened please explain what, exactly, was bad and evil? And, no, I wouldn’t want some douchebag creep writing my sons similarly, and I hope to raise them right enough to not even need to find themselves remotely close to the position of receiving such communication, but beyond the fact that one nitwit wrote highly embarassing instant messages to someone he shouldn’t have, and resigned as a result, where, exactly, is the source of outrage fueling all this?

Andrew Sullivan has a similar, if more restrained, take:

The most infuriating aspect of the Mark Foley fiasco is that we’re still unclear on what exactly it is we’re infuriated about. This was not pedophilia: The pages involved were all above the legal age of consent in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t exactly pederasty either, given that we have no evidence (at least not yet) of any actual sexual contact between two live human beings. Sexual harassment? It doesn’t appear that, at the time of the now-infamous instant messages, the pages were in Foley’s employ. The best phrase I have been able to come up with for Foley’s transgression is “virtual pederasty,” with a large dose of extremely creepy and abusive behavior toward younger, vulnerable people whose trust he clearly betrayed.

Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.

But as a preemptive move, Roger Simon has outed himself, the better to stay ahead of the McCornthyites.

UPDATE: More on “The List” and witch-hunts from Gay Patriot.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bob Owens continues to ask what Brian Ross knew, when he knew it, and who he knew it from. And A.J. Strata is asking questions, too.

Meanwhile, reader Michael Sauter emails: “Your various posts on FoleyGate and the coming elections brought a question to mind: whatever happened to the old saw, ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’?”

The GOP would be ahead by 50 seats if that were true. And reader C.J. Burch emails:

David Corn sort of makes it appear that the Dems are willing to crush the gay folk to get elected in ’06. The question is will the gay folk step into the meat grinder as willingly as the feminists did when Bill Clinton had his problems with Monica Lewinsky? I think what you’re beginning to see from Andrew is called a second thought, as in on “second thought maybe this is a bad idea.”

Feminism has never recovered from Monicagate, as even Maureen Dowd has noticed. But in a followup email, Burch adds:

Of course none of this changes the fact that Hastert has been a terrible majority leader for the Repubs, (William Jefferson, ethics reform, pork, etc., ect.) and the nation as a whole. The Repubs clinging to him so desperately is a sign of a deep rot in their party. A rot that is different from the rot that is eating the Democratic party away, (hatred of America, defeatism, political correctness, socialism, ethnic plantations) but disgusting all the same.

Yes, the two-party system would be more appealing if we didn’t have these two parties. . . .

FINALLY: “Outing closeted gays is good, but outing anonymous accusers is despicable!”

THE LATEST BLOG WEEK IN REVIEW PODCAST is up, with Austin Bay, Richard Fernandez, and Gerard van der Leun talking about North Korean nukes, Congressional emails. Plus, Australia integrates Islam.

JAMES LILEKS:

It comes down to this: Islam is being defined in the popular mind by three forces: the radicals who kill, the PR-savvy activists who protest, and the officials who cave. The aggregate effect does not produce good will. Every time something gets cancelled out of fear of the Few, it works to alienate the Many, be they people annoyed by the cancellation, or those annoyed by the initial provocation.

Read the whole thing.

TOM MAGUIRE LOOKS AT BILL CLINTON’S VIEWS on media bias.

ARE AMERICANS OBSESSED WITH SEX?

Yes, and there are double standards galore, too.

BURT RUTAN TALKS ABOUT the future of space travel, and SpaceshipTwo:

I think the public will be surprised at how large it is. We are building 11-place commuter airliners. If you’re going to send somebody to a resort hotel in orbit, it’s okay to cramp him into something small with a little window. Because when he gets there he has this big spacious hotel, and he gets his view and his weightless experience. But with suborbital spaceflight, your destination has to be your transfer van. We believe the people — and there will be large numbers of them at the cost at which this can be done — they’ll want to float around and look out of large windows facing all directions.

Read the whole thing.

IN THE MAIL: Ian Bremmer’s The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall. Looks pretty interesting, though this bit from the jacket copy is contestable: “U.S. policymakers have sought to manage security threats with a simple formula: reward your friends and punish your enemies.” I’m not so sure that accurately describes our approach, unfortunately.

UPDATE: Here’s a review of The J Curve in the Philadelphia Inquirer, by Tim Worstall.

SHARON BEGLEY:

You have 100 doses of a vaccine against a deadly strain of influenza that is sweeping the country, with no prospect of obtaining more. Standing in line are 100 schoolchildren and 100 elderly people.

The elderly are more likely to die if they catch the flu. But they also have fewer years left to live and don’t get out enough to easily spread or catch the disease. The kids are more likely to act like little Typhoid Marys, sneezing virus over anyone they encounter, and have almost their whole life ahead of them. But they’re also less likely to die if they get sick.

Whom do you vaccinate?

Plus, there’s this: “Last year, scientists showed in a model that if you vaccinate about 60% of U.S. schoolchildren, flu deaths among the elderly would fall to 6,600 from the typical 34,000.”

As a parent, it’s easy to convince me that the nation’s schools are the key reservoir of infectious disease.

THE NRA HAS ENDORSED Tennessee’s Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen.

ALL WEEK, Patterico has been posting a series of interviews with a nurse from Guantanamo. Here’s the roundup post with links to all of them.