PLUS ME, WHO DIDN’T BOTHER TO EMAIL: 20,000 people express email interest in buying a Chevy Volt.

NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME: Congress, the Bush Administration, and disaster planning.

DUDE, WHERE’S MY RECESSION? (CONT’D): “U.S. unemployment lines got shorter last week, as the number of people filing for the first time for unemployment benefits fell by 18,000 to 365,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis in the week ended May 3, the Labor Department reported Thursday.” Somewhat related item here.

UPDATE: In my backyard? This is more a problem of overspending — we were running huge surpluses a couple of years ago, and the state budgeted up to them instead of socking the money away as some suggested — than of recession. Unemployment in Knox County, where I live, is at just over 4%. Also, I think we’re starting to see the usual budgetary posturing used by second-term governors in Tennessee who want a state income tax. We had the same thing under Gov. Don Sundquist.

[LATER: “Backyard” link above was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!]

AN EMBARRASSMENT FOR THE STATE DEPARTMENT: “It has surfaced that the US State Department can’t account for up to about 1,000 laptops, perhaps as many as 400 of which belonged to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program.”

NASRALLAH SPEAKS: More on Lebanon from Noah Pollak.

SATELLITE IMAGES of devastation in Burma.

MY INITIAL GUESS WAS “NO:” Does Sarbanes-Oxley Foster the Existence of Ethical Executive Role Models in the Corporation? But read the whole thing to see if I was right.

JOHN TIERNEY: Why superstition is logical.

IN THE MAIL: Robert Kagan’s The Return of History and the End of Dreams. Blurbed by John McCain and Joe Lieberman. They make a good pair. Hmm . . . .

GETTING READY FOR A BIG PUSH IN SADR CITY, and a media-related prediction: “This will likely take weeks to complete. Once the battle starts, expect to read and hear plenty of media reports emphasizing civilian deaths, setbacks in the battle, defections in the Iraqi Army, and statements of defiance from Sadr. What we won’t hear is progress by Maliki and the US in finishing off Sadr’s forces until it suddenly becomes impossible to ignore it — and then we will hear about how inept the Iraqi forces were in achieving victory. Call it the Basra Narrative. Just because it failed in Basra doesn’t mean the defeatist media won’t use it again, and again, and again.”

The basic rule of press coverage is that if there’s fighting, we must be losing. All wars produce ups and downs, bad news and good. It’s interesting, though, that our press seems mostly interested in making things look bad, though they’re not even very good at reporting the bad news that matters. Some related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Reader Walter Boxx emails: “The way the Japanese could tell they were losing WWII was that the great victories reported by their media were getting closer and closer to home. Our media problem is like a fun-house mirror version of this – the way we can tell we are winning is that our crushing defeats are happening less often and to different enemies.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader in Iraq whom I regard as reliable says to watch for some bad news from Basra in the next few days, though no specifics are included. Well, war generates good and bad news, so stay tuned. I have little doubt that the big-media crowd will be ever so swift in delivering it once it becomes public.

DEBUNKING Peak Oil catastrophism.

OBAMA IS RIGHT (CONT’D): Bread, Circuses, and Gas-Tax Holidays.

GEORGE SHULTZ ON PUTTING OUR ENTITLEMENTS IN ORDER: Something you can be sure no elected official will do unless absolutely forced. But maybe some of them will read Shultz’s new book.

OBAMA THE ANSWER MAN: “As an example of Obama’s leadership style it is not encouraging.”

MORE ON THE NEW G.I. BILL at The Mudville Gazette. Greyhawk thinks the Democrats are setting things up to kill the G.I. Bill while blaming the GOP.

DEMOCRATIC FAMILY FIGHT? Or license to hate?

THOUGHTS ON husbands, wives, and “push presents,” in the latest Ask Dr. Helen column.

JOHN MCCAIN ON The Daily Show.

MISSISSIPPI DRUG WAR BLUES: A short documentary on the Cory Maye case.

JULES CRITTENDEN: “Hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Hillary’s in for the long haul.” Ted Kennedy went to the convention in 1980 with a lot smaller share of the vote.

MORE ON HEZBOLLAH THUGGERY IN BEIRUT, including an ironic photo.

THOUGHTS ON ENERGY POLICY: “With the world’s largest reserves of coal, after creating the nuclear power industry ex nihilo, and with billions of oil still under our soil and waters, it makes no sense to produce less energy while blaming and taxing those who produce what we have, rather than drilling, digging, and saving, as we find ways to transition to the alternate energies. . . . A postscript: I’m not sure that, ecologically speaking, drilling oil in about 2000 acres in the north of Alaska is all that different from dotting our mountain ridges and coasts (ask the Kennedys et al) with enormous windmills or creating vast acres of solar panels throughout our fragile deserts or covering our roofs with panels and pipes and assorted gadgetry.”

SAM HARRIS ON Western wimpiness in the face of radical Islam: “It is time we recognized that those who claim the ‘right not to be offended’ have also announced their hatred of civil society.” Exemplified, among other places, by the Washington Post, which commissioned but then refused to publish Harris’s views. (Via Charles Johnson).

DUKE PROFESSORS ARE FEELING THE HEAT FOR THEIR PROMOTION OF THE DUKE RAPE HOAX. K.C. Johnson responds to their efforts at self-justification, and Jim Lindgren observes: “Why do these Duke professors bother to write about the Duke lacrosse hoax if they are not going to deal with their own actions honestly? If they can’t simply face the truth, they should put down their shovels and stop digging.”