JULES CRITTENDEN ON REGULAR FOLKS and elitist, pointy-headed types.

VIDEO: Healing the rift between blacks and jews, on Holocaust Day.

UPDATE: Wrong link before. Fixed now. Sorry!

OBAMA AND “THE WEATHERCOUPLE:” Are reporters telling less than they know?

Related thoughts from Jules Crittenden.

UPDATE: As long as Elizabeth Wurtzel is back in the news, might as well recycle this savage Jim Treacher clipart parody one more time!

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Treacher link isn’t working right for some reason, but he’s reposted the Wurtzel strips here.

CAMEL DEMAND SOARS IN INDIA, in response to higher gas prices.

RANDY NEAL’S EXPERIMENT IN HYPERLOCAL JOURNALISM has been frustrated by the usual Internet dumbasses. Plus a few of the non-Internet variety.

IN THE MAIL: Ain’t Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry. Including many cool photos.

UPDATE: Sorry — link was bad before. Fixed now.

MICHAEL BARONE LOOKS AT Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, and the polls. ” Is the bottom falling out for Barack Obama? It’s too early to say that, but there are some disturbing signs.”

DOG BITES MAN: “Robert Reich Demagoguing on Taxes.”

A LOOK AT THE BRITISH ELECTIONS:

U.K. voters resoundingly rejected the Labour Party in local elections last week. It was no capricious shift, but a citizen revolt against trendy carbon and nanny-state taxes that empower only bad government.

For Labour, it was the worst election in 40 years. In a massive turnout, the Conservative Party took 256 seats in parliament, along with control of 12 town councils and 44% of the vote. Labour and moderate Liberal Democrats got to split the remains, and even the Liberal Democrats ,with 25%, won more than Labour.

Britain is ripe for change, it seems to me, though it’s not clear how much actual change the Tories will deliver.

UPDATE: Reader Nick Walmsley points out that, contra the quote above, the seats were council seats, not parliament seats, an error I’d missed due to seeing what I expected instead of what’s there.

IT’S PLEDGE WEEK at The American Thinker.

YOU CAN NOW pre-order Firefly on Blu-Ray. Now if they’d just make another season . . . .

AS WELL HE SHOULD:

The federal minister in charge of Canada’s multiculturalism file cautioned an anti-racism conference Friday against exploiting the power of human rights commissions to silence offensive speech.

Addressing the annual gathering of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) in Calgary, Jason Kenney, a Cabinet member and Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, labelled “dangerous” the “illiberal tactics” employed by some activists in the name of tolerance.

Indeed.

THE DISAPPEARING MIDDLE CLASS: In Europe. “I blame Bush.”

INDEED: “Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear.”

I’m going with “because he thought it was worth a shot.” (Via Sonic Frog).

IS MRS. CONYERS smarter than an eighth grader?

KNOXVILLE OPERA FESTIVAL rivals U.T. football for turnout. Somebody tell Jeremiah Wright.

TOM MAGUIRE: Such language from a “Baptist Minister!”

KATIE GRANJU ON the value of a few skinned knees.

TOM ELIA: Is Obama in bigger trouble than anyone thinks?

WHOOPING COUGH, MEASLES, POLIO: Diseases making a comeback because of anti-vaccine hysteria.

That’s what happens when you neglect the advances that have produced fewer dead babies. As a commenter says: “Lucky, hell! Maybe it’s the direct result of improvements in basic hygiene, waste collection and disposal, water treatment, vaccinations, medical improvements and, yes, much better environmental living conditions.” All the stuff that people, and politicians, take for granted.

UPDATE: Reader Kevin Menard emails:

Those anti-vaccine folks need to talk to some one who has been a medical missionary. There are still place sin the world where all these diseases still kill people or cripple them for life. Any tendency you have to buy the crap goes right out the window with the horror stories of what measles, chicken pox, polio etc do to people.

Of course, that might mean they might have to talk to a Christian or a Mormon as most missionaries I know are led to it by faith…

Indeed.

HMM: Futures Traders Bet on Dollar Gain For First Time Since 2005.

ANDY MCCARTHY WAS INTERVIEWED on Limbaugh today about his new book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. The transcript is here.

STRICTER CREDIT CARD REGULATIONS: “The Federal Reserve and two other banking regulators are set to unveil today one of the most aggressive efforts in decades to crack down on the credit card industry, prohibiting practices such as arbitrarily raising interest rates on outstanding balances.”

These industries operate as what Scott Adams calls “confusopolies,” taking advantage of complexity to bilk customers. I’d prefer transparency to outright regulation, but that’s probably hard to accomplish.

TIM MONTGOMERIE has a roundup on “Red Ken” Livingstone’s defeat at the hands of Boris Johnson. Overall, a good election for the Tories, though whether that will translate into actual improvements in Britain is less clear. Plus, a defeat for Islamic extremists? Those are always good.

UPDATE: Roger Kimball is happy: “Boris Wins! And so does London.”