DARFUR UPDATE:

President Bush sat down yesterday with a Sudanese rebel leader whose forces are accused by refugee advocates of killing young men and raping women in the northern part of Darfur.

Bush met for about 40 minutes in the Oval Office with Sudanese Liberation Army leader Minni Minnawi. He was the lone rebel leader to agree in May to a U.S.-brokered peace accord to end what the United States calls genocide in western Sudan. . . .

Bush told the rebel leader that his forces must refrain from violence and pressed him to forge an alliance with other factions in Darfur to broaden support for a peace agreement, Jones said.

I’m skeptical that diplomacy — or the UN — will save many lives here, but I suppose it’s worth a try.

APPARENTLY, it’s still blog sweeps month at Samizdata.

ILYA SOMIN notes a major victory for property rights in Ohio.

MALIKI’S SPEECH WASN’T BAD: I’d rather have had him say he proudly stood with Israel’s democracy and against the Islamo-Fascists of Hezbollah, but no Arab politician, elected or otherwise, can say that yet. And if he did, he’d be denounced as a Bush puppet, probably by a lot of the same people complaining about the speech he actually gave.

James Taranto notes the hypocrisy of people criticizing Maliki while giving a pass to Kofi Annan, though he’s rather too generous to Kofi Annan. Meanwhile, I agree that the Bull Moose has it right:

A recent Iraqi leader launched real, deadly missiles against Israel. An earlier ruler of Iraq paid the families of suicide bombers a princely sum after their relatives strapped explosives to their bodies and killed and mutilated Israelis. Perhaps, these Congressmen who lament the words of the new Iraqi leader, will now celebrate the fact that Saddam is behind bars instead of issuing verbal orders to kill Israelis and slaughter his own people.

The Moose harbors no illusions about a dramatic transformation of Muslim attitudes toward the Jewish state. But, it is a dramatic improvement when words cannot kill.

It will be a great day when Arab leaders unambiguously denounce Hezbollah as a pack of murderous terrorists. But then, it would be nice if we could count on European leaders, or Kofi Annan, to do the same.

UPDATE: A response to Howard Dean’s criticisms: “So it’s the usual anti-war position, with a new spike of rhetoric… that doesn’t seem likely to appeal to anyone.”

PATRICK HYNES has learned that it’s better to disclose up front. Jim Geraghty busted him for ripping Romney while working for McCain without mentioning it on his blog. Hynes takes his lumps here, and Daniel Glover has a roundup that hits him for levelling charges of paid shilldom at Markos et al., but observes: “He was as forthright and honest with me as any source I’ve ever interviewed, and he was not at all defensive even though I was asking pointed questions. That was definitely a new media approach to talking with a journalist/blogger.”

Hynes acted as go-between on our podcast interview with John McCain; I didn’t realize he was actually being paid by McCain’s PAC. Not sure it would have mattered, really, but I would have liked to know.

AUSTIN BAY wonders if 21st century Islamo-Fascism will play out like 19th century anarchism.

AMAZON’S STOCK IS DOWN, and this report from the investor’s conference call suggests that there are limits to just how far down the Long Tail Amazon can afford to go.

I notice from the transcript that a lot of people are worried about Amazon’s grocery business because it’s low margin. I hope that this succeeds — as I said before, if anyone can make the Internet grocery business work, it ought to be Amazon. Then again, I haven’t actually ordered anything from their grocery service yet, and I’m a huge Amazon customer. Anybody out there used them? What has it been like?

UPDATE: Reader Antoinette Aubert emails:

have ordered some things from Amazon grocery, not a lot but things I have difficulty finding in my local grocery stores. For some items it only takes a few days, but the specialty tea I ordered took 2 weeks. I didn’t mind because I can’t find that tea anywhere else this side of the UK pavilion at EPCOT center. So for that sort of thing they are very useful.

Because they can’t stock perishable items mostly only sell in bulk they aren’t good for regular grocery service. Therefore I can’t use their grocery service except as a supplement so I don’t know if they are going to be able to make a profit. If they could come up with a regular milk delivery service like a good milk man I would LOVE that. But I am probably wishing for the moon on that one.

Tom Holsinger emails:

I ordered a half dozen boxes of banana bread mix from Amazon just before Christmas as my local stores were out of it. Amazon’s delivery from a New York grocery chain was immediate – two days as requested, and I baked a bunch of loaves for my family in time for Christmas.

I’ll use Amazon again for groceries when I need something not in my local stores.

BTW, Chicago pizzerias have delivered to other states for years.

Maura Seger writes:

I’ve used Amazon Grocery about half-a-dozen times so far for bulk (carton or more) purchases. Ordering is easy, the selections are good and delivery is fast, especially on the two-day, all–you-eat prime deal. I’m really hoping this venture succeeds for Amazon. Backed up by a local grocery delivery service, also on-line, this means I may never have to set foot in a supermarket again.

On the other hand, David Caplan emails:

I ordered some Jay’s Potato Chips from Amazon on June 1 and today I got the third (I think) notice that there was a delay in the shipment. I suspect they’ll never send them. I can understand running out of stock in various consumer items, but potato chips? It seems as if something else is going on here.

But Grace Nunez writes:

I recently ordered dishwashing detergent tablets at a competitive price. I had to order 5 packages at one time, but that was no big deal.
And shipping was “free” using Amazon Prime.

I anticipate ordering much more. What’s not to like – I don’t enjoy grocery shopping, shipping is free, clicking items with my mouse is way easier than a pushing a cart down the store aisles and I’ve been very pleased with Amazon’s service. I’m surprised that more people are not using this new feature.

I guess I’ll have to try it.

ANOTHER NON-HELLISH CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE: Installed a new wireless router, and had some trouble getting it to talk to the modem. BellSouth customer service was nice, but told me it was a Linksys issue. Talked to the Linksys guy — he said his name was “Joe” but he was somewhere in India, I think — and though it took a while we figured it out. He seemed pathetically relieved that I just went through the steps politely and didn’t yell at him.

AN “INTRIGUING TALE OF SENATE CHICANERY” — though alas, not a terribly surprising one.

A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY:

Grumbling and slamming the phone on a reporter – it just didn’t sound like Bill Gardner, New Hampshire’s secretary of state. But that’s how it seemed in Sunday’s New York Times, in an article about the Democratic Party’s plan to move Nevada ahead of New Hampshire in the presidential nominating calendar.

Adam Nagourney, the top political reporter for the Times, included this sentence in a paragraph about Gardner’s potential to buck the Democratic plan and enforce New Hampshire law:

“Reached at home on Saturday to see what he might do, Mr. Gardner responded, ‘do not call me here,’and hung up the telephone.”

The problem was, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner hadn’t spoken to Nagourney since 2004. The man the reporter called was an unrelated William Gardner, who apparently lives in Rochester.

Hey, the NYT can’t even tell the Contras from the Sandinistas. . . .

UPDATE: But hey, no reason to single out the Times:

Daniel Schorr is used to producers popping into his Washington, D.C., office at National Public Radio to ask, on deadline: Which war came first, Korea or Vietnam?

Jeez. What do they teach them in school these days?

“DIPLOMACY is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ while reaching for a stick.” Condi is saying ‘nice doggie.’ Israel is the stick.

One may disapprove of this strategy, but complaints that Condi isn’t accomplishing anything merely indicate that the complainer doesn’t know what’s going on.

IT’S A PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH LEBANESE BLOGGERS DOHA AND RAJA over at PoliticsCentral.

RANDI RHODES GETS a bad review from Ed Cone:

She was ranting about Israel’s “genocide” in Lebanon.

Genocide? Whatever Israel is doing, however bad you may think it, it’s not the mass systematic extermination of a people. She piled on, saying that people who talk about the world’s last genocide (which, of course, the Holocaust was not) should never do it themselves.

She also said, wrongly, that “thousands” of people had died in Katrina.

It was pretty damn bad.

Of course it was. I’ve noticed a lot of antiwar people accusing Israel of “genocide.” Once you realize that in lefty newspeak, “genocide” is a code word meaning “self-defense” it all makes sense.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

WITH BLACKOUTS IN ST. LOUIS AND NEW YORK, and hurricane season still looming, it’s time to talk disaster preparedness again. Here’s a blackout survival guide from Popular Mechanics, and here are some guidelines for safe home generator usage. Still more on disaster preparedness from the PM folks can be found here.

Here’s a disaster survival kit put together by Target and the American Red Cross, and here’s a somewhat more comprehensive one, though both lack sufficient food and water. I’ve got this emergency radio and it seems to be pretty good. You should have at least a week’s worth of those. There’s some good advice on other items — and be sure to keep a stash of cash in small bills — from Amy Langfield, too.

For general knowledge, you can’t do better than the U.S. Army Survival Manual, though it’s not really adapted to disaster recovery. There’s lots of good information here, though. I haven’t read this book, but it sounds pretty good. There are also a lot of useful recommendations from the American Red Cross. And here’s more from Winds of Change.

I will stress, though, that as important as having adequate supplies is, it’s not enough to buy stuff. You’ve got to think ahead, and acquire the basic skills to get along in times of trouble. The books help, of course, but there’s more to it than that. With luck, any effort you put into this will be entirely wasted. If you’re unlucky, you’ll get to use it. But that’s still a lot luckier than needing those supplies and skills, but never having bothered to acquire them.

Meanwhile, some earlier posts that you may find useful are here and here.

UPDATE: Here’s a worthwhile post from Les Jones, and here’s some useful information from the Mormons, who take this subject seriously.

MICKEY KAUS: “Did I miss the meeting at which the Dem-MSM steering committee decided to make income inequality a big issue in time for the midterms? … It’s certainly a legitimate effort, but at some point the Dems are going to have to see that it leads directly to a contradiction with their Latino base.”

A CHRIS MATTHEWS MELTDOWN: Transcript and audio available here. He has a rather shaky grasp of reality, judging by these comments. I can’t do better than quote Don Imus’s observation: “That is really just an…that is just an absurd, ridiculous position. I’m just…I’m almost embarrassed that you’ve said that.”

UPDATE: Indeed: “When next the elders of the MSM tribe gather to moan the loss of civility in politics, I hope somebody brings along this tape.” Though the problem is less a lack of civility than a lack of coherence.

BINGEING ON DOING GOOD: Duane Freese looks at the latest efforts of the fat police.

He sounds a lot like Michael Zemel in last week’s podcast.

A HUGE UPGRADE to TTLB’s Mideast tracking page. And, of course, there’s lots of ongoing coverage at Pajamas Media.

I’m very glad to have these two places doing the aggregation on this stuff, so I don’t have to. My goal is to see the blogosphere render me entirely obsolete!

MEDICAL DATA LEAKAGE:

The issue emerged when Perry configured a new laptop for a small doctors’ office, and encountered problems downloading software updates for Medisoft. In search of a work-around, Perry dove into the software’s components, where he found an internet address, a login name and a password for a server operated by InstantDx, a Medisoft partner.

Using the password, Perry connected to the server with a file transfer program and listed the contents of the directory — hoping to find the software updates that prompted his digital sleuthing, he says. Confounded by the obscure file names that popped up, he executed a command that sucked down the entire contents of the directory — which he describes as 2 GB of files.

When he looked at one of the files, titled GUHmedpts.csv, he was shocked to see thousands of entries for patients in the Washington, D.C., area — far from his client’s office. He Googled “GUH,” found it was a common abbreviation for Georgetown University Hospital.

This sounds eerily like a plot device in an unpublished novel that I wrote with Fritz Fiedler. Are any members of Congress being blackmailed. . . .?

PAT BUCHANAN: “Ex-conservative?” I always saw him as more of an idiotarian — one of the prototypes for that term — anyway.

HERE’S MORE on the Tesla Roadster. I remain skeptical, but I also remain willing to accept one for long-term test purposes. . . .

ALLAH IS RANKING BLOG-SCANDALS, and Glenn Greenwald’s doesn’t really make the cut. Naturally, further scandal ensues.

ANOTHER CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY IN CONGRESS:

The House voted Tuesday to prevent law enforcement officers from confiscating legally owned guns during a national disaster or emergency.

Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana lawmaker who sponsored the bill, said firearms seizures after Hurricane Katrina left residents unable to defend themselves.

“Many of them were sitting in their homes without power, without water, without communication,”he said.”It was literally impossible to pick up a phone and call 911.”

The House voted 322-99 in support of the bill. Senators voted 84-16 earlier this month to include a similar prohibition in a homeland security funding bill.

The limitation would apply to federal law enforcement or military officers, along with local police that receive federal funds.

There’s also this: “Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., repeatedly called the bill ‘insane.'” Apparently he thinks that many of his fellow Democrats, who joined the crushing majorities in favor of this provision, are certifiable. But in fact, I think you’d have to be certifiable to oppose this legislation, unless you were from the bluest of blue-state regions.

JOE WILSON is turning up everywhere.

BILL WHITTLE has posted the first chapter of his new book.