BARACK OBAMA: More popular than Jesus?

MICHAEL FUMENTO CONTINUES TO blog from Ramadi.

WENT OUT TO SEE MY BROTHER’S BAND, COPPER, OPEN FOR SHINE DOWN at the Tennessee Theater last night.

It was a good show, and they played to a packed house, most of whom seemed to know the lyrics to their songs well enough to sing along.

Copper has been on the brink of record deals for a while, talking with a bunch of big labels.

I hope they’ll manage to bring one of them off. They’ve certainly paid their dues, touring all over the country and playing lots of places.

But I think that rock is a shrinking sector within a shrinking industry, which makes it pretty hard.

One of the popular stereotypes of musicians is that they’re lazy. The fact is that the average halfway decent guitarist or drummer or bass player has put in thousands and thousands of hours of work to get good enough to play live with some degree of ability. (Of course, by dedicating so much time to that, they sometimes let other things slip, which may be what gives them the reputation for laziness.)

It’s a hard life, and the source of lots of jokes — “What’s the difference between a musician and a large pepperoni pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.” — but what’s amazing is how many people give it a go anyway. Most don’t get as close to making it big as my brother has, and yet even those who get signed by big record labels usually don’t make all that much money, really. A few get pretty rich, but most, even among those with record contracts, don’t make enough money to justify all the time and effort they put into it.

Is this because people are irrationally optimistic about their own prospects?

Or is it because they enjoy the process enough that it’s worthwhile even when the likely payoff is small?

I think the answer is both.

A CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY IN OHIO — where the Republican Governor was opposed to civil rights, and Democrats supported them. “In practical effect, the Ohio bill is the most significant roll-back of gun control that has ever been enacted by a state.”

OVER AT CHICAGOBOYZ, a look at the Allende myth.

THIS FILM is likely to be interesting, but it’s hardly “unique.”

FLYING IMAMS UPDATE: A Muslim criticizes CAIR’s response.

I DON’T THINK WE’VE GOTTEN RID OF the culture of corruption.

MICHAEL BARONE: “Lobbying and the way the world works.”

THANKS TO ALLERGIES, we don’t have cats any more. But we had ’em long enough that when the Insta-Wife ran across the Litter Robot self-cleaning litter box I was pretty impressed. That’s nearly as cool as the robot lawn mower!

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST ON OLDER SOLDIERS, Ed McNamara emails:

Thanks for the link to the WaPo article Glenn. I ship out to Fort Benning as an active duty Infantry rifleman on January 9th. I’ll be 41 in May. I’ve been trying to join since 9/11 but the army cutoff at the time was 35, and I was already past that. They finally raised it past my age and I signed up. I’m in the best shape of my life and looking forward to a most exciting adventure. The idea of serving in an institution that was once headed by Gen. George Washington is still sinking in.

I’ll be posting to my ‘blog as much as they let me, probably not much during basic training.

Probably not. Good luck, Ed!

WHAT’S MORE FUN THAN “ABUSIVE LAB TESTING?” Putting it on video! And wouldn’t you like the job title of “Product Abuser?”

HERE’S MORE FROM BILL ROGGIO, who’ll be staying in Fallujah a while longer.

Meanwhile, Michael Yon — currently writing on Cambodia — emails that he’s having problems with the embedding process. Bill Roggio reported that his went smoothly; I don’t know what’s holding things up for Michael, but I hope the Pentagon moves things along.

MORE ON ALTERNATIVE-FUEL CARS: Bring it on, I say, though I don’t think we’ll see massive progress soon. The latest AvWeek — I get it all the time, but this issue seems especially attuned to my interests — has a look at alternative fuels for jets, too. Jets really, really need the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels, which means that they should probably be the last to convert to something else (a hydrogen-fueled plane has to be big to hold enough fuel, and still won’t go as far on a tank).

I think that rich celebrities who crusade against global warming, though, should have to use synthetic kerosene made out of biofuels as they jetset around. Or at least extinguish a coal fire or two!

A LOOK AT libertarian voters in 2006: “In the past, our research shows, most libertarians voted Republican—72 percent for George W. Bush in 2000, for instance, with only 20 percent for Al Gore, and 70 percent for Republican congressional candidates in 2002. But in 2004, presumably turned off by war, wiretapping, and welfare-state spending sprees, they shifted sharply toward the Democrats. John F. Kerry got 38 percent of the libertarian vote. That was a dramatic swing that Republican strategists should have noticed. But somehow the libertarian vote has remained hidden in plain sight.”

PEOPLE ARE STILL RESPONDING to Charles Rangel’s dissing of the troops.

SOME GOOD NEWS ON THE COMMERCIAL SPACE MARKET, from Aviation Week:

A private spaceflight industry, dubbed “new space” by some of its proponents, is steadily emerging from the dusty desert hangars and closely guarded office-park high bays that incubated it, ready to leap off launch pads across the globe into a role self-consciously reminiscent of civil aviation 80 years ago.

Private spending on space-related activities already exceeds that of governments, mostly for building, launching, operating and using commercial communications satellites, according to a new Space Foundation report that found only $70 billion of the $180 billion in worldwide space revenues comes from governments.

Other articles, not available online, talk about the growth of dedicated commercial-space suppliers. Bring it on!

Plus, some related good news, from Rand Simberg.

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

JONAH GOLDBERG: “If Mayor Bloomberg or Senator Clinton wanted an easy Sista Souljah target, surely this is it.”

ENERGY SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND LIVING OFF THE GRID: Some first-hand experience.

FUNNIEST POLITICAL QUOTES of 2006.

JOSH MANCHESTER looks at standard narratives and the grunts.

VARIOUS PEOPLE WANT ME TO RECOMMEND KIDS’ BOOKS, but my chief exposure to those has come from my daughter’s reading, and she’s now moved on to Anna Karenina — which she liked. But in response to these reader requests, I called in someone with more expertise — the Insta-mom, who’s an elementary school librarian. Here are her recommendations:

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For the preschool set:

Mommy? by Maurice Sendak, Al Yorinks, and Matthew Reinhart. Scholastic, 2006.

This high-tech pop-up book features a typical monster-taming Sendak protagonist, a toddler who wanders into a suitably spooky-looking house calling “Mommy?” and proceeds to de-“bolt” a Frankenstein monster, nip the knickers off Wolf Man, and unwind a mummy’s wrappings, until he finds a suitably maternal monster at last.. A slightly macabre take on Are You My Mother?, this book has some sly fun for the adults who will undoubtedly have to “read it again!”

For the Kindergarten-Grade Two reader:

Cha Cha Chimps by Julie Durango. Illustrated by Eleanor Taylor. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Ten bed-bound chimps slip out to cha cha the night away at Mambo Jamba’s, where they count down from ten to zero as they hokey-pokey with a hippo, macarena with a meerkat, and belly-dance with a cobra, until a hip Mama Chimp “hustles” them home to jam in their jammies with a sitter while she boogies the night away. Kids hearing this story will pick up the refrain “Ee-ee-oo-oo-ah-ah-ah, ten little chimps do the cha cha cha” by the second time around.

Bats at the Beach, by Brian Lies. Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Bats break out the moon-tan lotion and frolic on a moonlit beach, doing all the things kids love doing by day on the sand. Rhymed verse dances through enchantingly dark but luminous night time fun. (See if the kids notice that the author is hanging upside down on the “About the Author” back flap!)

For the sophisticated not-too-old-for-picture-books set (and anybody else who’s still alive):

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich and Other Stories You’re Sure to Like, Because They’re All About Monsters, and Some of Them Are Also About Food . (You Like Food, Don’t You? Well, All Right Then.,.) by Adam Rex. Harcourt, Inc., 2006.

A real tour-de-force by author-illustrator Adam Rex, with rhyming spoofs of the lifestyles of such monsters as Wolfman (hair clumps in his roommate’s drain), Dracula (spinach in his teeth), Invisible Man (can’t get a decent haircut), Yeti ( “Don’t call me BIGFOOT!), and the Phantom of the Opera, (has writer’s block because he can’t get “The Girl from Ippanema” and other ditties off his mind.) The copyright page even features a snow angel left by The Invisible Man. A book for all ages (even those old enough to KNOW the tune to “Girl from Ipanema”!) [GLENN ADDS: I like the cover on this one, too!]

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Hope these are helpful. I’ve been trying to talk her into starting a children’s book-blog of her own.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, the Insta-wife points out a book written by a kid.

AN ARTICLE IN THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR profiles Bill Roggio’s blog-reporting from Iraq, but worries that his readers are getting a one-sided picture if they don’t follow traditional Big Media coverage, too. True enough, though the Big Media coverage is hard to avoid unless you actively try to.

Of course, they might be eschewing Big Media coverage because of things like CNN’s admitted sucking-up to Saddam, Reuters’ various fauxtography scandals, AP’s Jamil Hussein problem, and the like. And aren’t the Big Media consumers getting a one-sided, agenda-driven picture, too? That would seem to be a bigger problem.

THE WHITE HOUSE IS trying to revive the Doha Round trade talks, but the Wall Street Journal (free link) reports that it’s an uphill battle. The “Lou Dobbs Democrats” are a problem, but other Democrats are siding with the Bush Administration: “Some old-line Democrats, such as Rep. Charles Rangel of New York and Montana Sen. Max Baucus, could emerge as allies of the administration and its free-trade agenda. The two lawmakers, who will take over the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, respectively, share traditional Democratic concerns, but have records that support free trade. This past weekend, they joined Republicans to rally support in Congress for a Bush-backed trade package, which included legislation lifting Cold War-era economic restrictions on Vietnam.”

Larry Kudlow was pretty harsh last night, saying that Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan are idiots, as are all protectionists. I’m inclined to agree, but I’m not sure the polity does.

UPDATE: Link was bad before, fixed now. Sorry!