SPURLOCK ON MINIMUM WAGE:

What’s up on the screen is a simple, hard truth: it is possible for two healthy young Americans (a) to virtually immediately find living quarters and work in an unfamiliar city (b) at or around minimum wage, and (c) to live on same with certain hardships for 30 days thereafter.

Spurlock (Super Size Me) and his producers designed the show as propaganda for minimum wage hikes, socialized child care, and expanded social insurance. The realities of the situation dilute the purity of the intended message in interesting ways.

First and foremost all those minimum wage jobs are scarcer than the producers apparently thought. All the easily-found jobs pay more than minimum wage. Spurlock signs on with a temp agency at $7/hr; his companion Jamieson dickers her wage down to minimum so as to not cheat the show’s premise. (Spurlock quits when he finds deductions bring his take home down to a measly $4.26. This is important. We return to the puzzle of his deductions shortly.)

Read the whole thing, for some questions that other reviewers seem to have missed.

More story ideas for Spurlock, at Michael Duff’s place.

IN DEFENSE OF STARBUCKS, David Adesnik launches a full-frontal Fisking of the Washington Post.

UPDATE: More here.

SKBUBBA UNMASKED: I’ve known who he was for years, and even had dinner with him. I think he’s a good guy even though we disagree on some things (but hey, I disagree with everybody on some things), and I’m sorry to see his anonymity busted.

“JUMPED THE EUPHRATES”?

THE CARNIVAL OF THE CATS is up. Meow!

OUCH:

In the early 1940s, a politically ambitious butcher from West Virginia named Bob Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. After Byrd had collected the $10 joining fee and $3 charge for a robe and hood from every applicant, the “Grand Dragon” for the mid-Atlantic states came down to tiny Crab Orchard, W.Va., to officially organize the chapter.

As Byrd recalls now, the Klan official, Joel L. Baskin of Arlington, Va., was so impressed with the young Byrd’s organizational skills that he urged him to go into politics. “The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation,” Baskin said.

The young Klan leader went on to become one of the most powerful and enduring figures in modern Senate history. Throughout a half-century on Capitol Hill, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) has twice held the premier leadership post in the Senate, helped win ratification of the Panama Canal treaty, squeezed billions from federal coffers to aid his home state, and won praise from liberals for his opposition to the war in Iraq and his defense of minority party rights in the Senate.

Despite his many achievements, however, the venerated Byrd has never been able to fully erase the stain of his association with one of the most reviled hate groups in the nation’s history.

Well, no. As David Gelernter says, we are our history; don’t forget it.

MOTHERS AGAINST DRUNK DRIVING: “Increasingly grotesque.” That seems about right to me.

NEW YORK TIMES: Iranian elections rigged. “The race for the presidency in Iran was thrown into turmoil on Saturday when the third-place finisher accused conservative hard-liners of rigging the election and cutting him out of the runoff vote next week, which will be between a former president and the conservative mayor of Tehran.”

Of course they’re rigged. Nice that people are noticing, though.

BURMA / MYANMAR UPDATE: Democracy activists rally on Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday. Gateway Pundit has photos and video.

SLASHDOT READERS COMMENT on the Los Angeles Times’ Wikitorial experiment.

AMAZON IS GOING TO HOST A FREE CONCERT WEBCAST featuring Bob Dylan and Norah Jones. My earlier thoughts concerning Amazon’s move into original video look to have been right.

UPDATE: Reader John Kranz doesn’t like the host. Well, me neither. But I didn’t think that was the story.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!

MARK STEYN:

Throughout the last campaign season, senior Democrats had a standard line in their speeches, usually delivered with righteous anger, about how “nobody has a right to question my patriotism!” Given that nobody was questioning their patriotism, it seemed an odd thing to harp on about. But, aware of their touchiness on the subject, I hasten to add that in what follows I am not questioning Dick Durbin’s patriotism, at least not for the first couple of paragraphs. Instead, I’ll begin by questioning his sanity. . . .

Every third-rate hack on every European newspaper can do the Americans-are-Nazis schtick. Amnesty International has already declared Guantanamo the “gulag of our times.” But I do believe the senator is the first to compare the U.S. armed forces with the blood-drenched thugs of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Way to go, senator!

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Roger Simon wonders if the Democrats are “breeding a new generation of Father Coughlins.” Actually, I think it was bred 40 years ago; it’s just reaching maturity now.

BlackFive has collected some military reactions to Durbin, too. And here’s another from a Vietnam POW.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A call for the Senate to censure Durbin for his remarks. Reader Monica Moncrief remarks:

I find the censuring idea interesting since Senators would have to vote on it, and therefore take a position on the comments. It would be fascinating to hear the opposing Senators’ positions.

Yes, it would certainly put them on the spot. Meanwhile, Dave Kopel injects a note of critical reason lacking from discussions by Amnesty and Sen. Durbin.

MORE: More on censuring Durbin here.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE has a roundup on the Amnesty International debacle.

CANADIAN ESPIONAGE SCANDALS? For years I’ve been getting emails from Canadian readers about the ineptitude and denial that characterize Canadian authorities’ approach to questions of terrorism and national security. It looks as if the problems are beginning to get some attention.

UPDATE: Oops — had the wrong link before. Fixed now.

JOE BIDEN’S PLAGIARISM SCANDAL was once dismissed by an expert who wrote: “At worst, Biden purloined piffle.”

Now people are saying that the Downing Street memos may be fake, in which case all I can say is that whoever faked them is guilty of faking piffle. You’d think that a fraud would at least contain something interesting.

UPDATE: Some different observations here.

And it’s worth linking this take from Tim Cavanaugh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A similar view from Power Line “If they were fakes, they’d say more.”

THIS IS PRETTY DAMNING:

Several days ago I received a telephone call from an old friend who is a longtime Amnesty International staffer. He asked me whether I, as a former Soviet “prisoner of conscience” adopted by Amnesty, would support the statement by Amnesty’s executive director, Irene Khan, that the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba is the “gulag of our time.”

“Don’t you think that there’s an enormous difference?” I asked him.

“Sure,” he said, “but after all, it attracts attention to the problem of Guantanamo detainees.”

Sorry, but this is corruption. (Via Bill Quick).

JOHN TIERNEY:

Where did we fathers go wrong? We spend twice as much time with our kids as we did two decades ago, but on television we’re oblivious (“Jimmy Neutron”), troubled (“The Sopranos”), deranged (“Malcolm in the Middle”) and generally incompetent (“Everybody Loves Raymond”). Even if Dad has a good job, like the star of “Home Improvement,” at home he’s forever making messes that must be straightened out by Mom.

Ed Cone, on the other hand, thinks dads are getting off easy. But Ezra Klein observes: “If the majority of shows presented other demographics the way they present fathers, they wouldn’t survive a day. Ignorant blacks? Bitchy, materialistic moms? Moronic, accident-prone dads? The whole set fits, but only the last is widely allowable.”

UPDATE: Michele Catalano offers a roundup of wisdom from fictional fathers.

MICHAEL YON has posted new stuff from Iraq. And if you’re interested, here’s his wishlist at BHPhotovideo.

PUBLIUS INTERVIEWS AN Iranian poll worker in the United States.

(No, we’re not home yet. I’m just blogging from the car while the Insta-Wife spells me on the driving for a bit.)

HOWARD DEAN IS CONDEMNING ANTISEMITISM FROM HIS FELLOW DEMOCRATS: Good for him. But it’s a shame that it’s necessary.

Roger Simon wonders: “What’s going on with the ‘liberal’ (what in the world does that mean anymore?) wing of the Democratic Party. First Senator Durbin compares the US military to Nazis. Now this? Did these people have mass lobotomies? Enough!” Indeed.

KAUS ON KUDLOW:

I came unhinged and called Sen. Durbin an “idiot” for his violation of the Hitler Rule, which holds that a politician must never, ever, compare anything or anyone to Hitler or the Nazis, no matter how apt the comparison. Durbin’s comparison was not apt, however. … Mainly I was worried I’d call him Sen. Durkin.

Heh.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF CORDITE IS UP!

GATEWAY PUNDIT has more on developments in Ethiopia.

THE COMMITTEE TO PROTECT BLOGGERS notes the case of jailed Iranian blogger Omid Sheikhan:

Omid Sheikhan, an Iranian student, spent three months in jail last year – including a month of solitary confinement and torture. All because he spoke too freely on his blog. Now, he faces a trial on uncertain charges. In the wake of recent convictions against Iranian bloggers on dubious merits, we aim to put enough pressure on the Iranian authorities that they drop the charges against Mr. Sheikhan before his trial begins on October 8.

Read the whole thing, and sign their petition if you’d like to help.