IF YOU MISSED IT ON SIRIUS/XM RADIO THIS WEEKEND, the latest PJM Political is online.
Archive for 2010
March 8, 2010
BRAD SMITH: In Defense Of Political Anonymity. “Campaign-finance disclosure rules have encouraged harassment of donors and coarsened public debate.”
ROGER SIMON: What happened to liberal Hollywood?
The 2010 Academy Awards may not have marked the end of “liberal Hollywood” as we know it, but they certainly put a solid dent in it. With the pro-military “The Hurt Locker” winning over the enviro-pabulum of “Avatar” and Sandra Bullock garnering the Best Actress Oscar for a Christian movie, the times are a-changin’ at least somewhat, maybe even a lot.
Meanwhile, Ann Althouse winds up her thoughts on the ceremony with a Leonard Pinth-Garnell flourish:
Wow. I did not enjoy that show at all. Surely, nothing made me want to go see a movie — or even look for it to come up on my cable Video on Demand. The actresses with their hard, frozen faces and their sinewy bodies encased in lavishly ruffled dresses showed that movies are no longer a source of fresh inspiration about beauty, femininity and womanhood. And frankly, I’m not sure what Mo’nique meant by “It can be about the performance, and not the politics.” . . . That was the only memorable thing that anyone said last night, and it’s just a Rorschach test.
The movie industry just isn’t important like it used to be. Videogames are more important. And profitable.
CAR LUST: Was at the local VW/Audi/Porsche dealer and spent a few minutes looking at the Porsche Panamera in the showroom. Too pricey for an impecunious law-professor type (or, heck, even a fairly pecunious law-professor type) but very, very nice.
ED DRISCOLL: Tea Partiers Better Hope That David Brooks Is Right.
TONY WOODLIEF: “Macbook, iPhone, moleskin notebook. I have now fully become the guy I used to quietly mock in Starbucks.”
REP. MASSA CLAIMS leadership railroaded him.
SO I FINISHED SCALZI’S The God Engines the other night. Er, and started it, too — it’s more of a longish novella than a full-length novel. Very different from the Old Man’s War universe, but a very enjoyable read. Scalzi demonstrates his versatility without seeming to, you know, try to demonstrate his versatility. At first I thought the ending was a bummer, but I’ve decided that it was redemptive.
TAKING THE “TOWN HALL” PROTESTS TO DC: “If members of Congress won’t come to their constituents, their constituents will come to them.”
Plus, Ohio Tea Party folks going after their Congressional delegation.
GENDERCIDE: The worldwide war on baby girls.
HOPE AND CHANGE SAME: ACLU Ad Shows Obama Morphing Into Bush.
THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED THIS WEEKEND:
My Sunday Washington Examiner column on The Consent of the Governed — And the Lack Thereof.
Jim Moran and earmark quid pro quos.
An increasingly grim deficit picture.
Rick Perry and the Tea Party movement.
Iceland’s rejected debt deal.
How to handle sudden unintended acceleration.
California’s Pension Mess. And more on California here.
Michael Barone: Low-Tax Texas Beats Big-Government California.
Michael Yon: Moving Heaven And Earth.
CrockPot cookery.
GEERT WILDERS speaks.
MORE THAN 600 ATTEND a Tea Party rally in . . . Marin County?
MICHAEL YON on problems with coalition partners in Afghanistan.
CHUCK TODD BLASTS DRUDGE-DRIVEN JOURNALISM. And yet, if he had a book to push I guarantee he’d be angling for a Drudge link. I just noticed one formerly friendly journalist dissing me in the comments on a lefty blog, and when I checked my email I noticed that the friendly messages stopped right after I plugged his book. I’ll bet it’s a lot worse for Drudge . . . .
Related thoughts here.
UPDATE: Prof. Stephen Clark emails:
The sound of whining in the morning: it sounds like, VICTORY!
It will only get worse for poor Chuck. Soon to be: Retracto-driven journalism. Well, a man can hope.
Competition is a bitch.
Heh. Indeed.
THE COMPLETE LIST OF Oscar winners and nominees.
HEY, REMEMBER PORKBUSTERS? So I was talking to a reporter about the Tea Party movement yesterday, and he asked why nobody was complaining about spending under Republicans. Well, I remarked, there was the whole PorkBusters movement, whose biggest target was probably Trent “I’m damned tired of Porkbusters” Lott. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I had forgotten about that.”
So here’s a reminder. And a few other items here and here. And I noted to him that CNN was a lot more interested in having me on back when I was criticizing Republicans for spending . . . .
UPDATE: Reader Karl Egenberger writes: “And, don’t forget, the PorkBusters logos was done by Karl Egenberger, send him some work!”
(Bumped from Feb. 12th, because apparently people still need reminding.)
WHY WRITING IS HARDER THAN BLOGGING: “Oddly, Eggers is motivated by his sense of how short life is. All that time getting going and thinking about how short life is? Oh, the pain. Blogging, by contrast, is the continual relief from that pain.”
Writing books and other long pieces is harder than blogging — I think you have to load a lot more stuff into RAM before you can really work on it. When I was writing my last book (Army of Davids) I worked solely at the computer in my study, and kept my browser closed when I wasn’t actually doing research. I do the same thing, generally, when I’m writing law review articles.
A SPACE SUMMIT: Obama to push White House vision for NASA in April. “President Barack Obama will outline his administration’s vision for space agency NASA and an eventual trip to Mars during a conference in Florida in April, the White House said on Sunday. Obama has had to defend his commitment to the space agency in the politically important U.S. state after submitting a budget to Congress that would cancel a program to return U.S. astronauts to the moon.” I favor Obama’s plan here, but I can see why losing 23,000 jobs in a recession isn’t playing well with Floridians. This damage-control effort suggests that the White House wasn’t prepared for the reaction, though.
TIM CAVANAUGH is not buying Robert Shiller’s thesis.
“ANGRY-MOB UNPOPULAR:” Saturday Night Live on ObamaCare.