Posted 8/1/2003 11:46:07 AM by Edward Driscoll
ON THE ROAD AGAIN: I'm in the Big Apple this weekend--blogging will be sporadic, and even occasionally intermittent.

Posted 7/29/2003 01:07:44 AM by Edward Driscoll
IS THIS ANOTHER NEW FIRST FOR THE TIMES? Hope's obituary was written by the great Vincent Canby....whom Matt Drudge notes has been dead since 2000!

Posted 7/28/2003 02:03:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Bob Hope died today. I can think of no better tribute than Mark Steyn's column marking Hope's recent celebration of his 100th birthday. Meanwhile, Chevy Chase is pitching explicitly anti-American products in Turkish commercials--when he isn't defending murderous dictators, of course.

Posted 7/28/2003 01:43:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
PUT BLIX ON THE CASE! Back in March, Hans Blix was quoted as saying--without a shred of irony, five minutes before the war in Iraq broke out, "I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict." Today, a British scientist is quoted by AFP as saying:

Human induced global climate change is a weapon of mass destruction at least as dangerous as nuclear, chemical or biological arms, a leading British climate scientist warned. John Houghton, a former key member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Monday that the impacts of global warming are such that "I have no hesitation in describing it as a weapon of mass destruction." He said the United States, in an "epic" abandonment of leadership, was largely responsible for the threat. "Like terrorism, this weapon knows no boundaries," Houghton said. "It can strike anywhere, in any form -- a heatwave in one place, a drought or a flood or a storm surge in another"

C'mon Hans--disarm those pesky storm surges!

Posted 7/28/2003 11:45:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
ALTERNATE REALITY: Following up on Randy Barnett's alternative reality theme, Mark Steyn writes:

The BBC, CBC and most of the European media have constructed an alternative universe and are content to frolic on its wilder shores. Time stands still in this world: Even though the confidently predicted civilian death tolls and humanitarian catastrophes never arrive, nobody minds. There's no reason why reality should ever intrude. Unfortunately, Dean, Gephardt and about half the other Democratic candidates still live in the real world--or, more to the point, their would-be constituents do. These candidates are obliged to be, in Bill Clinton's words, ''politically viable.'' At the BBC and Le Monde and the Sydney Morning Herald, anti-Americanism is the New Universal Theory: It explains everything; it's the prism through which every event is viewed. But it's an unlikely strategy for American electioneering. One anti-Bush Democrat at a protest the other day carried a sign reading ''FRANCE WAS RIGHT!'' That's not a winning slogan, even in Vermont. What happened this week is a foretaste of what the party can expect in the next 15 months: Reality will keep intruding, and if the Dems keep moving the goalposts ever more frantically, pretty soon they'll be campaigning from Planet Zongo. This week, Tom Daschle insisted that Odai and Qusai were all very well, but where was the Big Guy? Why hadn't that slacker Bush caught him yet? Well, yes, Saddam's gone the Osama route, releasing audio cassettes every couple of weeks. Why is that? These days, a compact camcorder's as easy to smuggle in as a Walkman, and video would have far more impact. Could it be that Saddam isn't in such great shape for the cameras? Not quite ready for his close-up? Wherever he is, he's dependent on a dwindling band of aides and, after the way his sons were sold out, he's gonna be a bit twitchy if Ahmed's trip to the 7-Eleven seems to be taking a little too long. So suppose there's another firefight and they pull his mustache from the rubble? What's Tom Daschle going to say then? Right now, of the 55 faces on the Iraq's Most Wanted playing cards, the Americans have killed or captured 37. Democrats, by contrast, have yoked their fate to bad news. So they need to ask themselves, realistically, how much is likely to show up.

As Orrin Judd recently wrote, "on the day the Dow tops 10,000 again, the Democratic cloakrooms on the Hill are going to look like the compound at Jonestown."

Posted 7/27/2003 09:33:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
LIFE IN A BLUE STATE: Went shopping with my wife this afternoon at Valley Fair Mall, an upscale enclosed mall in San Jose. Inside, holding fort in the middle of the ground floor (where there are always lots of peddlers, small carts, and the odd table for insurance salesmen, financial planners, and the like) was a fellow at an anonymous table with a large sign on it with the wording "Have you considered Islam?". He didn't seem to be attracting any takers. Outside, as we left, we passed a half dozen protestors with both large American flags(!) and signs reading "Bush Lied", "No Blood For Oil", etc. Apparently they're there every weekend. I didn't realize that for some people, it would be September 10th so quickly again in San Jose. UPDATE: As ususal, James Lileks helps put things in perspective.