PRO-JIHAD LENINISTS and other reactions to the Sarkozy victory, at No Pasaran!

MICKEY KAUS: “Tom Maguire wonders why Jodi Kantor’s front-page NYT piece on Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, hasn’t generated more controversy. Having now read it, I tend to agree.”

DYSFUNCTION JUNCTION: Indeed.

VARIOUS PEOPLE EMAILED ME LAST NIGHT having problems with the reader survey. It seems to be working properly now.

GLOBAL YAWNING:

Saying you’re not for the environment right now is like saying you’re not for education, children, world peace, Africa or a cure for cancer. These days you would have to be a fool or a lobbyist to dismiss global warming and natural resource issues.

But is it possible that all this marketing is cheapening the cause?

Must every hotel, restaurant, shampoo, detergent and beverage that is environmentally responsible talk so much about it? Yuban “sustainable development” coffee. Paul Mitchell “protecting our planet for generations to come.” Levi’s Eco jeans.

How much green-standing can we stand? It’s enough hot air to melt Antarctica.

In no time, an inconvenient truth has become an obnoxious one.

But from what I can see, there’s as much selling as thinking going on. . . . And cynical as this sounds, how does Vanity Fair, with its May “Green Issue,” reconcile its high-minded battle cry with all those pages selling cars, bottled water, watches, perfumes and clothes?

The “Feiler Faster principle” works for the environment, too. Climate change talk is already becoming tedious, though that’s in no small part due to the relentless tediousness of those promoting the issue. Those who would preach self-restraint should practice it.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY AND I TALK ABOUT THE FUTURE OF MEDIA, over at the L.A. Times site.

BEWARE THE CHICKEN-EATING SPIDER: So, after it eats its first chicken, does it tell its fellow spiders “tastes just like flies!”??

I’ll be here all week. Please tip your waitresses and bartenders generously.

THE ARMY AND THE MILBLOGGERS: Xeni Jardin reports for NPR.

RON BAILEY looks at gas prices. Judging from the traffic — and speeds — that I see daily, gas prices aren’t yet high enough to have much of an impact on people’s behavior.

MORE ON THE DIANNE FEINSTEIN CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST CHARGES, from Bill Allison. There’s a response from Peter Byrne in the comments, and here’s an earlier piece by Byrne, too.

And I should note that while I endorse the distinction between actual conflicts of interest and the mere appearance of a conflict of interest, I should also note — in fact, come to think of it, I have noted, together with Peter Morgan — that Congress doesn’t feel the same way:

The Office of Government Ethics has issued numerous advisory letters and formal opinions on appearance problems since its creation. And when one OGE director sensibly said that the “appearance” rule is merely aspirational, and that consequently “appearance” transgressions, standing alone, do not themselves constitute ethical violations, a Senate oversight committee quickly convened public hearings to interrogate the director, his predecessors who adopted a contrary view, and various “ethics experts.” The OGE subsequently reversed itself.

So I agree with Allison’s point, but, you know, geese, ganders, and all that.

THOUGHTS ON JOURNALISM and splitting the difference.

IS THE PRESS FAILING TO ASK tough questions on Iraq?

SARKOZY: France’s Rudy Giuliani?

BILL QUICK: “It’s a hell of a lot easier to quit meth than either booze or tobacco. I know. I’ve done all three.”

OUT TO LUNCH: An appropriate title for this Grampa-Simpson-like rant against blogs. How 2002.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS UPDATE: Wired Magazine posts an updated disaster preparedness kit.

Some earlier InstaPundit posts on the subject can be found here, and here.

UPDATE: Chuck Pelto emails: “What about 2-3 months of stay-at-home because of a pandemic? And yes, today the health department people are talking in terms of months and not weeks of ‘social distancing’.”

That kind of preparedness is more than a kit. It’s a lifestyle.

Prediction: If that happens, Mormonism will really come into vogue.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some less instrumental things to include.

SO IN THE WAKE OF THE KANSAS TORNADO TRAGEDY, I finally got around to unboxing and setting up the all hazards weather alert radio that I ordered a while back. I doubt it will ever wake me in the middle of the night for an “Avalanche Warning,” but if one is ever broadcast for East Tennessee, I’ll know. More importantly, it will go off if there’s a tornado warning in my area. It lets you set the alerts you want to hear about or ignore (though a few, like “tornado warning” are non-defeatable — who wouldn’t want to know about that?) and it lets you set it to register only for your own county or other limited areas. It was pretty cheap — about 50 bucks — setup was easy, and there’s a battery backup in case the power goes out. Not a bad little gadget.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY DON’T:

Have you noticed yet how so many Washington politicians and bureaucrats are ignoring the last election?

Voters tossed Republicans out of congressional power last November and gave it to Democrats promising to clean up the culture of corruption epitomized by anonymous earmarks, well-connected lobbyists and other influence peddlers.

But the truth is nothing much really has changed and isn’t likely to anytime soon, regardless of which party is in power. Many in the Washington establishment — Democrats and Republicans, elected officials and career civil servants — are determined to keep right on fleecing the American people as if the election never happened.

The Democrats have all but abandoned their campaign promises. Now they hide behind a cynical veil of excuse and delay. The Senate and House approved earmark and other ethics reforms earlier this year. Yet nobody now seems interested in working out differences between the two reform packages, so the new rules can go into effect.

It’s as if those promises to clean things up were just cynical campaign slogans.

JOHN DVORAK ON THE DIGG FIASCO: Blame the lawyers.

JAMES LILEKS has gone from writing about stores to running one!

Some (sort of) background here. And, of course, from Lileks himself. But workplace courtesy demands that he pull his punches. Don Surber, not so much: “Hot type thinking in a digital world.”

UPDATE: National Journal’s Danny Glover — who works at a place that actually understands new media — call sthe Star Tribune’s move “boneheaded.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ouch! “One indicator of bad management is the underuse of assets and the inability to recognize opportunity to use the talent of the employees to their fullest. In this case, management knows what it has in James, and they’re tossing it away anyway. That’s not just bad management; they should keep sharp objects away from these managers and only allow them to use crayons. Please tell me that the men and women who made this decision do not drive to work unsupervised.”

And Dave Barry comments: “This is like the Miami Heat deciding to relieve Dwyane Wade of his basketball-playing obligations so he can keep stats. Sometimes I don’t understand the newspaper business. What’s left of it.”

Glad I don’t own stock.

STILL MORE HERE: “If the Strib had any institutional sense whatsoever, they’d make James the poobah-in-chief of their online division, and turn him loose. They’d have the best online paper in the country in less than a month. What they’re doing now is an idiotic waste of talent. Attention, newspaper publishers with a brain: here’s a guy who can bring in a hundred thousand new pairs of eyeballs in the blink of an, er, eye. You say you’re losing money to the web? Well, he knows more about the online world and how to communicate on it than anybody on your staff.”

MORE CONTROVERSY AT COLORADO: It’s not clear just how much there is to this story, but I hope that people will look into it.

NEWSTRUST UPDATE: Got this email from the folks at NewsTrust:

Thanks so much for spreading the word about NewsTrust, which is much, much appreciated!

Our traffic quadrupled on Saturday, with over 2,000 visitors coming directly from InstaPundit. Of these, about 500 signed up as NewsTrust members, about 250 completed their email registration, and 64 had reviewed on our site as of midnight.

We’re already seeing some changes in our story listings, with publications like InstaPundit, Captain’s Quarters, Gateway Pundit and NewsBusters now showing up regularly in our top 10 lists. This is exactly what we were looking for, to counter-balance the leftward tilt on our site.

More importantly, the response so far has been generally positive, as you can tell from the InstaPundit reader comments below. Your readers are participating well in the review process, and seem to be responding favorably to our welcome message below, which prompts them to review information quality, not just ideological viewpoints.

I’m also pleased to note that your recommended story from Knoxviews on compact fluorescent bulbs is now #1 on our this week’s top-rated independent stories – a clear sign that there are things people can agree on across party lines – and a helpful discovery for me personally.

If you’re interested in participating, there’s a signup sheet for InstaPundit readers right here.

BETA-TESTING Fred Thompson’s stump speech.

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY UPDATE: “Two hundred towering windmills, each so tall that its blades would loom over the U.S. Capitol Dome, could be built in the Atlantic Ocean near one of Washingtonians’ favorite beach retreats, under a plan being considered in Delaware.”

I hope Ted Kennedy doesn’t have a house there.

UPDATE: Jonathan Adler observes: “As the Delaware shore is where many Beltway-types spend their weekends during the summer, this could be a real test of Washington’s willingness to promote — or even allow — alternative energy sources. Sea-based windfarms make eminent sense, yet they have faced regulatory obstacles to date.” Indeed they have. Instead of NIMBY (“Not In My Back Yard”) it’s NIMOV (Not in My Ocean View.)

MIKE GODWIN INTERVIEWS VERNOR VINGE: Well worth your time. Our podcast interview with Vinge is here.