Posted 7/5/2003 01:20:40 AM by Edward Driscoll
IT'S A BULL MARKET, "but with an asterisk", reports AP.

Posted 7/4/2003 12:01:12 AM by Edward Driscoll

Happy Fourth of July!

Posted 7/3/2003 01:20:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
OH, THAT LIBERAL MEDIA: Happy Fourth of July from NBC.

Posted 7/3/2003 12:54:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
CALIFORNIA, IT'S A MAGICAL PLACE--at least when it comes to its politics, writes Virginia Postrel. UPDATE: Speaking of California, Jay Bryant has some thoughts on the efforts to recall Gray Davis--and the surprising reluctance of the Bush administration to join in. UPDATE: Incidentally, the Davis recall group says that they've reached their goal of over 1,000,000 signatures. UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg writes that "few politicians in America today more in need of an atomic wedgie than Gray Davis". But "Californians must be punished. If they're not punished now, we all will be later."

Posted 7/3/2003 11:49:47 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE L-WORD IN 2004: Fred Barnes says it stands for landslide. But Ramesh Ponnuru is also afraid it stands for leftward:

One of the reasons that parties benefit when the other party becomes extreme is that it allows it to hug the center. But if Republicans are moving to the center and Democrats to the left, that means both parties are moving leftward-that the center of gravity of American politics is moving leftward. Isn't that, too, part of the story of 1972? * * * And there's another issue. People ask me sometimes whether I'm happy about the Democrats' current predicaments. But let's rephrase the question. Should we be happy that one of our two major parties is going off the deep end? I don't think so.

After watching the Robert Evans documentary on TV a couple of times last week, I started re-reading Easy Rider, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind's look at the "New Hollywood" of the 1970s. At several points in the book (just as Todd Gitlin--another leftist author--did in his look at the TV industry during this time), he moans about the "incipient movement of America to the right" (that's a paraphrase, but a pretty close one). Did America move to the right in the 1970s, or did the leadership of the Democrats simply move so far to the left that they lost their voters? FDR, Harry Truman and JFK weren't perfect, but at least in terms of attitude and jaunty confidence, they seemed far more in tune with most Americans. But Johnson's leftward lurch with the Great Society (the New Deal--Texas size!) coupled with McGovern's pacifism and anti-Americanism seem increasingly far removed from the ideals of the typical American voter. And politics is a symbiotic tug and pull of leadership and listening. The Democrats are listening to their base right now--as they did in the 1970s--but they don't seem willing to listen to the rest of the nation. Which leads back to Barnes' article. As for my take, here's what I wrote back in February.

Posted 7/2/2003 01:35:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
WATCHING DEFLATION IN ACTION: P.J. O'Rourke--as only he can--takes the air out of Hillary's gasbaggery-laden opus. RTWT.

Posted 7/2/2003 01:02:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
LET'S RIFF ON THIS ONE FOR A WHILE, shall we? "Pig Iron--it's what's for dinner!" "Can I get fries with this?" "You have to be careful when you come between a bear and his Nimitz-class dinner!" "Hey, is that Ernest Borgnine in Ice Station Zebra?" "Awright Gentle Ben--put the sub down and move away slowly--and no one will shoot your lilly white furry butt!"

Posted 7/2/2003 12:56:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
AL DAVIS GIVES GOOD JURY: At least that's what Mark Purdy of the Mercury News says. Given the percentage of his life that's he's spent in court rooms, he certainly should have at least as much practice at it, as his Raiders do on the gridiron.

Posted 7/2/2003 12:16:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
EU PRESIDENT VIOLATES GODWIN'S LAW, EUROPEAN UNION FORCED TO DISBAND: AP reports that "Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi provoked an uproar during a Wednesday speech to the European Parliament by telling a German critic he should star as a Nazi concentration camp guard in a movie." UPDATE: On a serious note, Michael Ledeen is very impressed with Berlusconi. As he says, "That whining you hear indicates a victory."

Posted 7/2/2003 11:44:28 AM by Edward Driscoll
HOLLYWIERD: "Sgt. Mom" of Sgt. Stryker's group blog looks at all the places that Hollywood and its surrounding area doubles for--sometimes very, very poorly.

Posted 7/2/2003 11:15:02 AM by Edward Driscoll
LESS IS MORE: Marian L. Tupy of Tech Central Station compares the 260 page, 70,000 word-long EU Constitution to the 4,500 word, 17 page American Constitution, and dubs the EU's document "Socialism's Farewell Note". Let's hope so--but that level of rot may take a very, very long time to decay.

Posted 7/1/2003 08:07:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
FRANCE: As always, a class act. "Group Captain Mandrake" has details--and photos. UPDATE (7/03/03): And a revised post--apparently no malice was intended by the French this time around.

Posted 7/1/2003 07:55:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
"PROTESTING INTO THE WIND": President Bush comes to the Bay Area. Silliness ensues. Russell Wardlow has the details--and a photo that's worth--if not a thousand words--maybe a couple of hundred.

Posted 7/1/2003 06:18:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
IT'S ABOUT TIME: New Jersey state lawmakers voted today to eliminate the position of poet laureate of New Jersey, after Amiri Baraka used the position to write an anti-semetic tirade suggesting Israel had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks:

The Assembly approved a bill Tuesday that passed the Senate in January. Gov. James E. McGreevey, who cut off the $10,000 annual stipend that goes to the poet laureate after Baraka refused to resign, intends to sign the bill, according to a spokesman. Abolishing the position was the only way to remove Baraka because the governor and Legislature cannot fire the poet laureate. Baraka was criticized after reading his 60-stanza poem "Somebody Blew Up America" at a festival last summer. It included the lines: "Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day?/Why did Sharon stay away?" After Tuesday's vote, Baraka said he would sue the state for violating his First Amendment rights and for slander. "Very few of those people have even read that poem," Baraka said. "I can't have a differing opinion about a foreign state?"

Click here for a flashback to what Stanley Crouch and Michele Malkin had to say about Baraka.

Posted 7/1/2003 05:00:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
"CBS EVENING NEWS RATINGS HIT NEW LOW". Clearly, there's only one thing to do: Replace the aging Dan Rather with someone new and different. Someone with bold ideas. A fresh thinker. Someone who's controversial, instead of the same kind of whitebread liberal anchors the networks always churn out. CBS needs a firebrand. A rebel. Gentlemen, I have your man: Phil Donahue, tanned, rested and ready. What he did to for MSNBC, he can do for your network as well. (For information about the classic photo of "Captain Dan the Newsman" on the left, click here.) UPDATE: Scott Ott strikes a similar note.

Posted 7/1/2003 04:47:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
JUST SUE, BABY! It's the NFL offseason, and you know what that means: Al Davis is in court again; the guy must live there.

Posted 7/1/2003 04:43:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
JAMES LILEKS ON JOURNALISTS' UNIONS:

Humor is irrelevant when the situation is dire. And it's always dire. It's the sort of constant direness you find in the mind of someone who drives a 10-year old Volvo with bumperstickers that say "If you want peace, work for justice" on the left side and "If you want justice, work for peace" on the right, with a faded sticker in between from a 5,000 watt progressive radio station that features New Sounds in Congolese Drumming every Sunday night before signing off with an Emma Goodman quotation. This isn't to say I don't like unions - no. When management shivved me a few years back over an utterly trivial and preposterous issue, the union stood by my side and helped me out. I pay my dues without complaint, I applaud their actions on the workers' behalf. But I don't get all jangly inside when I consider that I belong to a UNION!, because I do not feel I am the spiritual inheritor of some grimy-handed laborer who just wants to put bread on his family's table, and is repaid for his work with the boot of a Pinkerton operative in his ribs. But honest to God, so much of the union rhetoric I get in the mail seems to think that Woody Guthrie will soon descend from the clouds with his fascist-killin' geetar and start singing against the Greatest Injustice of Our Era, namely, the proposed 17% interest in the dental co-pay.

Around 1999 or 2000, I belonged for a year to the National Writers' Union. A friend recommended it for the leads, and I seem to recall getting an assignment or two out of it. (Incidentally, before, during and while I was a member of the NWU, the vast majority of assignments I've gotten by mailing--up until recently, snail-mailing--cold query letters, and lots of them. There's no substitute for hard work and aggressive marketing). But the day the NWU sent out an email celebrating "Native Americans' Day" on Columbus Day, the first of an endless series of the type of shrill leftist agitprop that Lileks derides in his "Bleat" today, I decided I'd simply quietly let my membership expire, and never renew.

Posted 7/1/2003 03:59:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
FLASHBACK: Back on March 7th of this year, we wrote (and also provided pretty good photographic evidence to back up our argument):

WAS IT P.J. O'ROURKE WHO SAID that you could tell which party was winning, based upon who had the better looking women? (Or something like that. See this recent David Frum post, and this John Derbyshire essay from a couple of years ago for the basic gist).

Check out these two lovelies, protesting against England's attempted ban on fox hunting. I don't know if they're going to actually win the argument, but it's obvious (at least to me!) they're on the right side of it:

Posted 7/1/2003 03:34:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Found in the comments section on this Reason post about Fox canceling their broadcasts of Charlie Chan movies:

Anyone who thinks that applying the moral standards of today retroactively to persons or cultural artifacts of the past means something should have their university degree taken away, at the least.

Exactly. Whatever happened to simply turning the channel if you don't enjoy a show? Haven't we learned anything from Speedy Gonzales?

Posted 7/1/2003 01:46:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE: So did I enjoy this bio-pic of Paramount's Robert Evans? Absolutely. Would I watch it again? I've already watched about two and half times since I recorded it off the satellite dish. Would I recommend that you see it? If you dig Hollywood history, you bet your *** I would, baby.

Posted 6/30/2003 10:53:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
HAVEN'T WE BEEN DOING THIS SINCE ABOUT 1942? Guardian headline: "America to build super weapons".

Posted 6/30/2003 08:37:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
NASA HIRES CONSULTANT ON SHUTTLE INSULATION: Scott Ott has the details.

Posted 6/30/2003 08:28:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
ENDGAME: CNSNews reports "Push to Recall California Governor Enters Final Week".

Posted 6/30/2003 08:06:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
WIN ONE FOR THE SWIMMER: Check out this howler from Ted Kennedy:

"I'm not sure where Arnold [Schwarzenegger] gets his political instincts. People often say that for Kennedys, it's in the water."

Chutzpah, thy name is Teddy.

Posted 6/30/2003 03:18:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS: Stephen Green has a worshipful obituary of Katherine Hepburn. Meanwhile in Mark Steyn's obit of Strom Thurmond, Steyn describes his own "light petting session" with Thurmond, an ex-Southern Democrat who made Bill Clinton's sexual exploits look like amateur hour. And also in the sublime to the ridiculous category, "Mean Mr. Mustard" has a side-by-side comparison of Hepburn and one of today's female stars.

Posted 6/30/2003 01:22:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
INSTAPUNDIT UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds, as everyone reading this blog probably already knows, is on vacation this week. He sent me a photograph of some of his sightseeing though. Here's a version I cropped to fit on this page. Click on it for more detail....

Stephen Den Beste has another holiday snapshot of Reynolds, and links to even more.

Posted 6/29/2003 09:41:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
ASK AND VERILY, YE SHALL RECEIVE: Last week, I posted, both here and on Blogcritics:

Considering how much James Lileks raved over Spider-Man last year (and rightly so), I'll be very interested in reading his take on The Hulk, the textbook example of how not to make a film of a comic book character.

Lileks' review of the film (actually, more a review of the comic book, but why carp?) is the subject of his latest "Strib" column.