SNOW TREASURE: A story of the Norwegian resistance in World War II.
Archive for 2007
April 30, 2007
TIM BLAIR MEETS JOHN MALKOVICH, who asks: “What’s the story with Margo Kingston?â€
PUSHING A BARBIE CAR beyond its limits.
“WE SHOULD VIEW AGING AS CURABLE:” Well, we probably will, once there’s a cure. Which is not to undercut the point being made.
DO WE NEED A BIGGER MILITARY? Austin Bay and Phil Carter debate the topic in the Los Angeles Times.
EXPANDING OFFSHORE DRILLING: Better to get our oil from America than from Iran, Venezuela, or Saudi Arabia.
DARFUR UPDATE: “More than three quarters of Muslim respondents in six nations surveyed said they believe Arabs and Muslims should be equally concerned about the situation in Darfur as they are about the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to the results of a recent poll unveiled at the Arab Broadcast Forum in Abu Dhabi. Results ranged from a high of 95% in Morocco to 76% in Turkey.”
50+ YEARS OF MAD MAGAZINE on two DVDs. Yeah, of course I’m going to order it. Well, maybe — some of the reviews suggest resolution issues. Anybody know?
Thanks to reader Paul Music for pointing this out.
THE POLAR ICE CAPS are melting fast. I blame Halliburton.
LESSONS FROM ANBAR.
OKAY, THIS IS JUST SAD: N.J. Gov. Jon Corzine has a terrible accident after going 91 mph without a seatbelt in the rain. On the way home from the hospital today, still wheelchair-bound, he speeds: “No one in the motorcade used emergency lights, as his driver had been doing at the time of the accident. They kept to a pace of about 70 miles per hour, even though the posted limit is 55 on the stretch of Interstate 295 that leads to Drumthwacket, the governor’s official mansion in Princeton, where Mr. Corzine will spend the next stage of his recovery.”
Nice example. I mean, 70 in a 55 isn’t huge, but under the circumstances. . . .
DAVID BRODER STANDS HIS GROUND:
David Broder said he wouldn’t change anything in his April 26 column, which angered many readers and caused 50 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus to write a letter criticizing Broder in Friday’s Washington Post.
In that Thursday piece, Broder criticized Harry Reid for saying the Iraq War is lost militarily, compared Reid to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and concluded: “The Democrats deserve better, and the country needs more, than Harry Reid has offered as Senate majority leader.”
“I still think the Democrats can do better, and should do better,” said Broder, when reached today by E&P. . . . Broder, who’s syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group, isn’t sure if he’ll use a future column to address the reaction his April 26 piece stirred up. Rather than looking back, he said, “I try to keep dealing with new topics.”
UPDATE: Reader James Somers emails: ‘If, in 2005, 50 Republican senators had written a letter to the New York Times excoriating Paul Krugman for criticizing Bill Frist, and conservative blogs had incited their readers to bombard the Times with angry e-mails complaining about Krugman, wouldn’t this have just been one more example of the RethugliKKKans’ crushing of dissent?”
Well, yeah.
ANOTHER BLOW for abstinence.
UPDATE: And another, I guess, with the sex-boosting slimming pill for women.
THE BLOG PRIMARY: “If blogs have any power, Thompson is in the catbird seat.”
But do they?
AN ARMY OF ALBERTOS? “A group of ex-CIA officials call on Tenet to give back his medal of freedom, branding him ‘the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community.'”
First Harry Reid, now this. I fear, however, that we’ve had a government of Albertos — in all branches — all along.
MICHAEL YON HAS POSTED THE SECOND PART of his photo essay from Iraq.
CAMERAS DO NOT EQUAL SECURITY: “Britain risks ‘committing slow social suicide’ by allowing the Big Brother state to take over its citizens’ lives, the leading privacy watchdog will warn tomorrow.”
CHALLENGING A PHOTO ERROR by a blogger.
CHALLENGING BARACK OBAMA to join the One Billion Bulbs Campaign.
He’s got a long way to go if he’s going to catch up with InstaPundit readers.
Or even with Stephen Green!
THE LAST WORD ON GEORGE TENET? “My conclusion: an inept organization was led by a stupefyingly inept man.” I can understand not firing him immediately after 9/11 — we were in crisis mode and too much turnover might have been disruptive. But he should have been let go as soon as possible after the Afghanistan invasion was over. (Later: See this post from 2002 on the need for heads to roll, though I didn’t specifically mention Tenet.)
Of course, Tenet might hope that the above is the last word — because this is even harsher. I think he would have been better off keeping his mouth shut. That’s what spymasters are supposed to do, isn’t it?
UPDATE: But even a spymaster needs a confidant. “I’m all for feelings, and talking about them. But there’s a place and time. This sort of thing rightly belongs in a therapist’s office. But sometimes it seems as though the whole world has turned into a therapist’s office.”
A LOOK AT mental health commitments and the Virginia Tech shooting. “It’s impossible to make sense of the debate, though, without understanding the extent to which we’ve dismantled our mental health system in this country. Brick-by-brick, cell-by-cell, we deconstructed what was once a massive mental hospital complex and built in its place a huge prison.”
PEOPLE KEEP SENDING ME LINKS to Stephen Milloy’s piece on mercury and compact fluorescent bulbs. I already posted on that. I’m trying, by the way, to arrange a followup featuring actual lab experimentation.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE U.S. PULLED OUT OF IRAQ? Michael Totten asks a Peshmerga colonel.
HERE’S A STRONG REVIEW of Evan Coyne Maloney’s film Indoctrinate U. Excerpt:
This film hits you in the gut, in a way that no column or blog post can. Seeing the faces of the protagonists in these campus conflicts, and hearing their stories in their own words, makes it seem as if you’re learning about the problems of campus bias and tyranny for the very first time. After the screening, audience members had a chance to question Maloney. I particularly remember a woman who said she was almost too shaking with anger to speak. . . .
Will Indoctrinate U get seen? I don’t think there’s any doubt that a significant audience for this movie exists. But to overcome their own pressures of political correctness, distributors need to be reminded of that. So to prove that there is in fact an audience for this film, a website has been set up where you can register your interest in seeing Indoctrinate U. There you can also catch a trailer of the film.
I hope it gets seen.