Posted 11/22/2002 03:47:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
SEE ANOTHER MOVIE: Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard really, really hated Die Another Day, the latest James Bond movie. Will my wife and I go see it? Probably. But it doesn't sound like we'd be missing much if we didn't:

If nothing else, "Die Another Day" will be remembered for this bit of ingenuity: The producers found a way to get product placement for three different cars. Jinx gets a Ford Thunderbird, the villain gets a Jaguar, and Bond gets his Aston Martin. The negotiations for how the duel between these machines was to proceed must have been dizzying. So where does "Die Another Day" fit in the hierarchy? Somewhere beneath "Moonraker" and above, say, "Casino Royale."

Ouch. UPDATE: On the other hand, Roger Ebert liked it. I like Ebert (we've exchanged a handful of emails, and he's always been gracious), but he can be--shall we say--merciful at times: I don't think my wife ever forgave him for giving the excrementally awful Buffalo 66 three stars.

Posted 11/22/2002 03:23:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
WILL BAGHDAD RESEMBLE STALINGRAD? Probably not, but Victor Davis Hanson has some interesting comparisons.

Posted 11/22/2002 02:36:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
MY KIND OF RANT: I've always thought political bumper stickers were silly, long before I moved to the Bay Area, where every other car has a bumper sticker exclaiming their political views and issue du jour (by the way, do you really want to admit that your politics can be filtered down to a bumper sticker slogan?). "Big Arm Woman", stuck behind "a 40 year old Toyota that seemed intent on violating every emissions standard EVER. Pasted to the back of this charming vehicle was a red bumper sticker with a heart motif and white writing which read, 'Better a bleeding heart than none at all.'" has unloaded a 64oz economy size can of whoop-ass in her blog:

Listen to me, you tin-headed little s**t. You are not my moral superior because you ooze emotion over every single example of unfairness on the planet. In fact, you are the opposite, because you obviously lack the judgement necessary to make the tough decisions which will result in material aid to the disadvantaged. I'm sure it makes you feel fabulous to wail, moan and gnash your teeth about environmental injustice while you drive the Pollution-mobile, but I don't see your ass biking to work every morning to spare us your greenhouse gases--the very ones that are now filling my vehicle. The fact that you have bought into the idea that empathy is an either/or enterprise doesn't fill me with optimism about your reasoning skills, either. Either a bleeding heart or none at all, eh? Ummm, no, you freaking moron. The application of logic to emotionally charged issues isn't easy, but it is necessary, and a little more effective than that glib slogan on sticky paper that appears to be holding your vehicle together. You suck.

There's more--click on over to read it. Not exactly a level of invective I can work myself up into on a regular basis, but the sentiment is very much appreciated. (Link found via Joanne Jacobs.)

Posted 11/22/2002 02:12:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
POT CALLING KETTLE DEPARTMENT: Germans call Churchill a war criminal.

Posted 11/22/2002 02:06:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
GEE, HERE'S A SHOCKER: "Top Kyoto Minister Admits He Has Two SUVs". Of course. And how many black Secret Service Chevy Suburbans did Al Gore employ,and how many tens of thousands of gallons of jet fuel did Air Force Two expend, whenever he gave speeches? By the way, speaking of Gore, David Frum writes that Gore's new book, Joined at the Heart, does for families what Earth in the Balance did for the environment.

Posted 11/22/2002 11:55:13 AM by Edward Driscoll
REPUBLICANS WHO WANT TO SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY would be wise to adopt FDR's vision, according to Duane Freese at Tech Central Station. By the way, this quote is a classic:

But many in the party appear frightened by shadows, such as Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, who dismissed the bipartisan commission's findings as "classic Chicken Little politics."

Something McAuliffe and many of his party are experts at.

Posted 11/22/2002 12:42:26 AM by Edward Driscoll
EBAY HAS THE PERFECT STARTER GUITAR: Ever wanted to learn how to play? This is one is guaranteed to be easy to play, no matter what your skill level. I'd bid on it myself, but I'm just not sure where I'd keep it when it wasn't it use.

Posted 11/20/2002 07:45:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
NOW THIS IS A MOVIE REVIEW: Orrin Judd links to a staggering review of the 1983 film Ghandi by Richard Grenier, who portrays the Indian leader in a much more realistic light than Richard Attenborough's film. This is one knockout of an article: long, but hypnotic and well worth reading.

Posted 11/20/2002 06:01:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
TORTURE BY AIR CONDITIONING? That's Peter Jennings' latest complaint, as the Media Research Center documents:

Leave it to ABC’s Peter Jennings to highlight the plight of a Pakistani who survived being detained at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. After Jennings on Tuesday night helpfully noted how “human rights organizations have complained the U.S. is violating the prisoners’ rights and acting without regard for international law,” reporter Bob Woodruff narrated a story about the prisoner’s claims of mistreatment, including the “torture” of air conditioning. Woodruff empathized with how the man, who is now back in Pakistan, was “swept up in the chaos of the war, he was handed over to the U.S. and flown to Cuba, blind-folded and tied.” The Pakistani charged that “once gave a call for prayer, and after that, we were punished...They beat us, they hit us on the head, grabbed us by the neck.” The man, “who had never seen air conditioning before, thought it was a kind of torture,” Woodruff related before the man complained about how “they pumped cold air from a hole in the ceiling. This was the punishment. The air was very cold.” Most of the residents of Cuba outside the U.S. naval base dream of such a “punishment.”

I always assume Peter Jennings will take the anti-American stance on any topic, but doesn't he have enough common sense to realize how silly this must sound to the average viewer? Couldn't he have killed this story instead of broadcasting it on TV?

Posted 11/20/2002 04:20:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
LUNCH, CIGARS, AND THE FINAL SOLUTION: My review of HBO's 2001 movie, Conspiracy is now online at Blogcritics.

Posted 11/20/2002 04:11:21 PM by Edward Driscoll
WIDOWS AND ORPHANS: Donald Luskin says that the financial media is just as guilty as the analysts in cranking out tainted research and bogus stock picks.

Posted 11/20/2002 02:25:21 PM by Edward Driscoll
WELL, I WAS BORN IN AUGUST:

"God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity he would be senseless."

You are Augustine! You love to study tough issues and don't mind it if you lose sleep over them. Everyone loves you and wants to talk to you and hear your views, you even get things like "nice debating with you." Yep, you are super smart, even if you are still trying to figure it all out. You're also very honest, something people admire, even when you do stupid things.

What theologian are you?
A creation of Henderson (Link found on Group Captain Mandrake's Weblog.)

Posted 11/20/2002 02:19:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
JUMPIN' JIM JEFFORDS: The Washington Times reports:

According to a senior Senate leadership source, the election results were barely in before Mr. Jeffords' office put out feelers to his former party's leaders. The message? That the Vermonter would be happy to caucus with the GOP — so long as he retained his committee chairmanship. Republican leaders rightly rolled their eyes.

Orrin Judd has more on America's jumping, jiving, hip-hoppingist Senator.

Posted 11/20/2002 10:40:48 AM by Edward Driscoll
DEFINING OUR TWO WARS: Daniel Pipes makes a great point. We're fighting two wars at the moment--or (depending upon how you want to look at it) were fighting one war and about to fight a second war--at the moment. But one war is sharply defined and easy to grasp, the other isn't:

When the subject is Iraq, the U.S. government is proactive, articulate and specific. But when it comes to militant Islam, officialdom is reactive, awkward and vague. Take the issue of preventive security. To stop Iraqi sabotage and terrorism, The New York Times recently reported, Washington tracks thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans who might pose a domestic risk. It even has plans in place to arrest Saddam Hussein's sympathizers suspected of planning terrorist operations. No comparable program exists in the war against militant Islam. (I define militant Islam as not Islam, not terrorism, but a terroristic reading of Islam). Fearful of being accused of "profiling," law enforcement treads super gingerly around those who back this totalitarian ideology. Thus, the airline security system randomly harasses passengers instead of looking for travelers known to sympathize with the likes of Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden. Immigration officials focus on superficial characteristics (nationality, criminal record) and ignore what is truly relevant (ideology). The White House would not consider inviting apologists praising life in Iraq to festive functions. But it welcomed many of militant Islam's sympathizers at a Ramadan dinner hosted by the president earlier this month. Or consider this: When did you last hear praise for Saddam's regime on an American television talk show? It does not happen. But media outlets routinely offer a platform to those promoting militant Islam. If "war on Iraq" is easy to say, "war on militant Islam" is not. Instead, the Bush administration adopted the euphemistic "War on Terror." Why the readiness to confront Iraq head-on but reluctance to do so when it concerns militant Islam?

Read the rest of it for the answers.

Posted 11/20/2002 08:35:36 AM by Edward Driscoll
LOVE BOAT: THE NEXT GENERATION: New York City is considering using cruise ships as homeless shelters.

Posted 11/20/2002 08:16:48 AM by Edward Driscoll
MICHAEL MEDVED DEBUNKS "the vast conservative media" meme that's the excuse du jour for the November elections.

Posted 11/19/2002 03:33:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE ROGER AILES-BOB WOODWARD SMACKDOWN: The Brothers Judd have details. (Be sure to check out the comments as well.)

Posted 11/18/2002 11:33:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
JAMES COBURN DEAD AT 74. He died of a heart attack while listening to music with his wife in his Beverly Hills home. Coburn's career, derailed in the early 1980s by crippling arthritis, was coming back, with strong performances in recent films such as Payback. He won his only Academy Award in 1998, playing an abusive father in Affliction.

Posted 11/18/2002 11:10:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
GO INSIDE SADDAM HUSSEIN'S email account--it sounds like he even gets offers from Nigeria!

Posted 11/18/2002 06:13:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE HIGH TECH TIN-FOIL HAT: Perfect for keeping the alpha waves from those pesky UFOs, black helicopters, and other paranormal strangeness out.

Posted 11/18/2002 11:15:20 AM by Edward Driscoll
COLIN POWELL SHOULD RESIGN: That's what David Frum writes in his daily diary in National Review Online.

Posted 11/18/2002 10:28:59 AM by Edward Driscoll
MORE PROOF THAT THE VAST CONSERVATIVE MEDIA CONSPIRACY IS WORKING: USA Today reports that "Phil Donahue most likely to exit, stage left".

Posted 11/18/2002 10:07:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS: The Segway goes on sale on Amazon.

Posted 11/17/2002 08:25:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING: Ayatollah Khomeini grandson joins protest in Iran. (Link found via NRO's The Corner.)

Posted 11/17/2002 04:11:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
I WAS GOING TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT this article, but then I remembered Porphyrogenitus' comments to me. UPDATE: File Jimmy Carter's recent comments in the same folder as well. ANOTHER UPDATE: But evidently, David Limbaugh (Rush's brother, who's an attorney) hasn't gotten the message.

Posted 11/17/2002 03:09:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE MSN BUTTERFLY: Maybe I'm sore from having to reinstall Windows 2000 on my main computer (which is where I do the lion's share of my writing, surfing, blogging, and home music recording), but it certainly takes a lot of chutzpah for Microsoft to be using a bug to sell their ISP.

Posted 11/17/2002 02:48:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
NOW FOR SALE ON EBAY: The very first Les Paul guitar--you can tell by its serial number. It's too rich for my blood, but some lucky fellow's going to get one nice axe...

Posted 11/17/2002 02:26:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
A MODEST PROPOSAL TO A NON-EXISTENT PROBLEM: on Thursday, I posted about "Conservative media bias" and practically blew my server out due to InstaPundit delivered traffic. Joanne Jacobs links to a modest proposal designed to solve this non-existent problem.

Posted 11/17/2002 02:22:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
THEM: Liberals preach tolerance. But there's one group to whom no quarter is ever shown. Peggy Noonan has the details.

Posted 11/17/2002 02:18:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
EL AL GUARDS FOIL HIJACK ATTEMPT on a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul. But then, they're good at that! UPDATE: National Review's Rod Dreher has more details. Start here, then scroll up to his next comment.

Posted 11/17/2002 02:13:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE TWO FINGERED SALUTE: I had always assumed that England's two-fingered salute had the same meaning as America's middle finger gesture. But it's apparently much older, and with a far subtler meaning. Samizdata tells all, complete with WWII photos of Winston Churchill.

Posted 11/17/2002 01:03:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
BEING CONDOLEEZA RICE: Yesterday evening, Matt Drudge's lead story mentioned that "In his new controversial book BUSH AT WAR, Bob Woodward reveals interior monologues of key newsmakers, including a description of National security adviser Condoleezza Rice's thoughts -- as she watched television alone..." I know Matt thrives on controversy, but I'm not sure if this qualifies. If Woodward interviewed Rice, and she was willing to discuss what was going through her head during this particular moment, then it shouldn't be all that difficult for Woodward to recreate that moment as a scene. Tom Wolfe does that sort of thing all the time, and has been doing so since the early 1960s. Of course, if Condi says she never spoke to Woodward, then all bets are off, and Woodward cooked the books.