ROGER SIMON interviews Tony Blankley.
Archive for 2006
October 27, 2006
MARY KATHARINE HAM posts another must-see episode of Ham Nation.
UPDATE: I wonder if Mary Katharine could find the “coded racist messages” in this ad?
Probably — she’s that good!
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARK STEYN: Over at Hot Air.
AUSTIN BAY has thoughts on Al Qaeda’s media war.
DANIEL GROSS: “So the Dow hit 12,000. Big whoop.”
Well, it would be a big deal if a Democrat were in the White House. . . .
I do like this line, though: “Only 24,000 points more to Dow 36,000! ”
The Amazon reviews for Dow 36,000 are kind of funny, too. Hey, they didn’t say when . . . .
UPDATE: More thoughts from Daniel Harrison. He also notes that the NASDAQ is way up.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Rob DeJournett notes that although the NASDAQ is way up over recent years, it’s nowhere near its peak. True enough, but as the chart demonstrates, “peak” is really the right word.
ROB HUDDLESTON says that the GOP is “surging,” but that seems a bit optimistic to me.
REMEMBERING THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION: John Fund reports on an event now 50 years in the past.
JON HENKE, George Allen’s campaign blogger, responds to criticism of the Jim Webb novel story in my post this morning by emailing:
Mr. Reynolds,
Something to remember about the Webb/book story — here’s Keith Olbermann talking about the sex scenes in Scooter Libby’s book:
“we have beaten the hell out of Libby for this, and deservedly so. If a Democratic White House official had written this book, his head would be on a pike somewhere.”
Well, now a Democrat HAS written that kind of book. So it’s funny to see how quickly the Democrats have rediscovered the irrelevance of fiction writing. If voters are not bothered by Webb’s work, fine….but it’s not a ‘smear’ to cite the public record that Webb himself talks about in commercials, interviews and on his campaign website.
It’s true that the Dems have gotten mileage out of steamy Republican novels in the past. Though “steamy” isn’t quite the term I’d use here.
UPDATE: Ann Althouse thinks it’s stupid to judge a candidate by his fiction writing. Well, if Olbermann does it, that’s a strong argument . . . .
Amusing line from Althouse’s comments, where there is much interesting discussion:
Republicans who write about sex and murder are depraved, fucked-up sickos who write about grisly repressed fantasies. Democrats who write about sex and murder are artists, flowering the world with beauty and challenging our perceptions.
Christ, don’t you people understand how it works?
Yes. Kind of like this: “When Republicans appeal to rural, white, socially conservative voters, they are Neanderthals. When Democrats do it, they are shrewd tacticians.” I’m beginning to sense a pattern here!
MORE: Matt Rustler writes:
I hate to break it to you, folks, but the military — especially the Marine Corps, the service that Webb knows best — is largely composed of macho young men with foul mouths and an unhealthy obsession with all things sexual. It’s a giant locker room. No one who’s been in the naval service beyond boot camp — especially back when Subic Bay was still open — hasn’t heard a story or two about a Filipino stripper dicing a banana with her vagina. . . . I admit that I don’t see the point of some of the rather bizarre, homoerotic scenes mentioned in Allen’s press release. But they’re presented entirely out of context. And I’ll bet that if I read those books, I would see the point.
He’s voting for Webb, though he was before. I think that Allah captures both sides of this story best, with two passages. First: “Have we actually reached the point where Senate seats now turn on the sex scandals of fictional characters?”
But also: “If George Allen had written this book, not only would the left be going berserk, they’d be circulating lists of characters in his other books whom they suspect of being gay.”
Yes, it’s that bad.
MORE STILL: Novelist Bill Quick weighs in.
Meanwhile, the DSCC isn’t elevating the tone: “GOP Conservatives’ Library Features Bestiality & Pedophilia.”
JIM CHEN writes that the New Jersey gay marriage case is just like Loving v. Virginia. I think he’s right, which is why I think that it’s wrong to call the New Jersey decision a compromise. It’s a flat-out win for gay marriage advocates.
AT BLOG WEEK IN REVIEW, Austin Bay and his guests get Kinky — Friedman, that is.
THE CARNIVAL OF CARS is up!
LASHAWN BARBER is liveblogging from GodBlogCon.
POPULAR MECHANICS lab-tests digital camcorders.
They really liked this Panasonic, which looks like it would be a cool videoblogging tool, too. I have to say, though, that for videoblogging the video capabilities of digital still cameras are looking pretty good. My little Sony pocket camera shoots 640 x 480 30fps video, with shockingly good sound. And I shot all the video for this piece using still pocket cameras — a Sony and (for the underwater parts) an Olympus.
There’s even one that shoots in HD (1280 x 720 pixels). That’s overkill for videoblogging, of course, but it’s sort of cool.
Maybe I’m racially insensitive, but I don’t get the uproar over the ad in which a hot chick says she met Harold E. Ford, the Tennessee Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, at a Playboy party and asks him to call her. A Vanderbilt expert on political advertising says it “makes the Willie Horton ad look like child’s play.” Really? It’s worse for voters to think that beautiful women want to have sex with you that it is for them to believe that you let a dangerous criminal out of prison to commit rape and murder? I think Michael Dukakis would disagree. He could have benefited from this sort of slander, if anyone would have believed it.
I agree. As I’ve said before, I think the Playboy thing helps Ford more than it hurts him.
UPDATE: Reader Janice Lyons says it’s not about the bimbo:
By focusing on the blonde the Dems are either being really really clever, or are really really dumb.
It’s the WHOLE AD that has the bang. It is not only hilarious, it’s points to Ford’s positions (I assume, since I’m not a Volunteer), which when voiced in their implications, are pretty damning.
Perhaps by calling race! sex! – and – gasp! bimbo! they are trying to divert attention from the problem of Ford’s positions (the actual content of the ad, not his sex life) with [self righteous] indignation.
Surely more than a few people see the ad, snicker at the blonde, and wonder if Ford really does think they own too many guns, it’s no big whoop that the family farm which has now become a developer’s (and the tax office’s) dream can will be lost to the family because of property and death taxes, that people who produce stability in the society pay higher taxes, that the US should stop trying to slow down the nuclear train to hell, and that people committed to blowing up as many Americans and as many America ideas and things as they can should have the right to be treated as citizens, and better.
That’s what the Dems are really worried about. Or should be anyway. That’s the message of the ad the Dems are trying to distract from while “whining” about the bare shouldered blonde.
Well, of course, the complaints just caused many, many more people to see the ad. Smart? We’ll see.
And I think Dukakis would have picked up at least 3 states if it had come out that he’d partied with Playboy bunnies . . . .
The U.S. Department of Defense is now taking its requests for corrections public through a website known as For the Record (located at http://www.defenselink.mil/home/dodupdate/index-b.html). Here, the Department of Defense is openly calling for corrections from major media outlets, and even noting when they refuse to publish letters to the editor.
The most recent was this past Tuesday, when the DOD published a letter, that the New York Times refused to run, which contained quotes from five generals (former CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, current CENTCOM commander John Abizaid, MNF Commander George Casey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, as well as his successor, Peter Pace) that rebutted a New York Times editorial. This has been picked up by a number of bloggers who have been able to spread the Pentagon’s rebuttal – and the efforts of the New York Times to sweep it under the rug – across the country.
They’ve got a long way to go on the information-war front, but at least they’re getting into the game.
CNN: “Most Americans do not believe the Bush administration has gone too far in restricting civil liberties as part of the war on terror, a new CNN poll released Thursday suggests.”
I like Bob Owens’ spin: “CNN says Bush failed, America not completely fascist yet.”
INTIFADA IN FRANCE: Richard Miniter interviews Paul Belien of Brussels Journal.
IT’S A BLOGFEST: Now Michael Yon is on C-SPAN, following up Virginia Postrel and Sally Satel.
Our podcast interview with Michael Yon is here.
There are hundreds of websites featuring dozens of professionally produced videos of violence against US forces in Iraq. Dubbed with loud monotonal music for an extra creepy effect, at the point of the attack, the filmers usually erupt into cries of “Allahu akbar!”
The US might film its own missions for forensic or debriefing purposes sure, but that is a far cry from reveling in them. So what might motivate someone to be so twisted as to film and celebrate death?
One answer: recruitment. . . .
This mobilization is real. It has tangible impacts. Look no further than what is now being called “the YouTube jihad.”
Read the whole thing.
BILL ROGGIO: It’s decision time for Maliki.
KIDNEY TALK: Virginia Postrel and Sally Satel will be on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal at 8 am Eastern this morning, talking about kidney transplants.
And here’s an oped by Sally, and one by Virginia, on the subject, plus a sidebar here.
And we did a podcast interview with Virginia on the subject a while back, too.
I DIDN’T KNOW THEY HAD A MOVEON CHAPTER DOWNUNDER:
After emerging from Friday prayers at Lakemba Mosque today, Sheik al-Hilali was asked by a media pack whether he would quit over a speech in which he said scantily-dressed women invited rape.
“After we clean the world of the White House first,” the sheik said.
Supporters of the sheik cheered and applauded loudly at the comments, which were directed firmly at US President George W Bush.
All sins are pardonable, apparently, so long as one is sufficiently anti-Bush. It’s a religion that transcends religious divisions. Bush: A uniter, not a divider!
DIRTY PASSAGES IN JIM WEBB’S NOVELS: Not that big a deal to me — they’re novels — but I suppose the Foley business has given this sort of thing more resonance than it would otherwise have. That sort of blowback doesn’t seem all that unfair, though it’s just another indicator of how lame the Webb/Allen race has been ever since Macacagate.
UPDATE: Tom Bevan: “Given that Drudge is currently splashing the details of some bizarre, sexually explicit passages from Jim Webb’s books on his site, the first line of this big profile of Webb in today’s Washington Post is timely, but probably not helpful: ‘James Webb will tell you that he is first a writer, with several best-selling novels to his name.’ Oy. . . . It’ll be interesting to see how the mainstream media handles this story – if they cover it at all – and how the notoriously prickly Webb responds.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Surprisingly, Imus doesn’t like Webb’s writing.
MORE: Radley Balko thinks this whole story is unfair to Webb:
This is nothing like Foley. I agree that the Foley attacks were blown out of proportion. But it’s also clear that Foley was a sexual predator. Jim Webb was writing about a remote, foreign culture. The two aren’t remotely comparable. Nor is it legitimate to say there’s some sort of “unseemliness equivalence” between chastising the GOP for Foley, and implying that Webb is a pervert because of passages from his books.
The scene everyone’s up in arms about isn’t remotely titillating or sexual. It depicts two Americans in an exotic and foreign locale. The penis-kissing incident involves a native man and his son in a remote, rural part of South Asia. It’s clearly scene-painting, and both characters are shocked and troubled by it, and return to it later in the book.
The genital-kissing custom, by the way, is fairly common in many parts of the world, including Southeast Asia. It isn’t sexual. Yes, it seems odd to Americans (there have been several cases where Asian
adults in America have been prosecuted for it — none have been upheld, with courts clearly finding the practice customary, not sexual) — and it seems clear from the book that Webb thinks it’s odd, too. It isn’t as if he made it up as part of some latent perversion.It’s entirely likely that Webb saw this happen while he was in Vietnam, was struck by it, and is relaying what he saw in the book.
I wasn’t suggesting that Webb is some sort of pervert — as I said, it’s a novel — but only that this would be likely to play badly. I like Webb, and my earlier impression of Allen as a bit of a dim bulb has been amply borne out by this campaign. Nonetheless, when you get down in the mud, as the Webb campaign has certainly done, you get dirty too. And if Imus thinks it’s bad, then it’s likely to hurt him.
MORE: Reader Brian Wiegand emails:
Radley Balko is mostly right. I interviewed Jim Webb this morning and he said that he saw the genital kissing while he was in Thailand, not Vietnam. As Balko says,it was not at all a sexual act. This story is being grossly misrepresented, much like the story about the noose that used to be in George Allen’s law office was. What was that you were saying about getting down in the mud?
Indeed.
MORE THAN 5 YEARS AFTER 9/11, they’re still finding human remains at Ground Zero.