Posted 8/9/2003 10:31:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
WKRP IN KABUL: uBlog has details of the first radio station to broadcast live 24 hours a day went on air in Afghanistan. It makes for nice listening, while surfing the 'Net from here.

Posted 8/9/2003 04:36:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
MEMO TO AMERICAN WOMEN: Just because they worked for Mary Tyler Moore, doesn't mean they'll work for you, writes Liz Khalil in Flak magazine.

Posted 8/9/2003 04:32:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
MEMO TO DICK GEPHARDT: "Just because it worked for Herbert Hoover doesn't mean it will work for you", writes Steve Chapman in The Washington Times

Posted 8/9/2003 01:36:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
BACK TO THE FUTURE: Michael Valdez Moses of Reason looks at the continuing popularity of the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter franchises.

Posted 8/9/2003 12:27:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
ONE WORD, IF IT'S TRUE: Oy. On the other hand, he has pretty much lost all credibility, right?

Posted 8/8/2003 06:00:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
IT'S LILEKS-A-GO-GO over at John Hawkins' site, where he assembled the best quotes from James Lileks' Newhouse columns.

Posted 8/8/2003 12:10:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
NBC FORCED TO CANCEL ALL NEWS SHOWS, after Katie Couric violates Godwin's Law. Orrin Judd notes that for Arnie, Nazism really is a family affair. (Scroll down if link does work--the Blogspot archive bug may be at work again.) UPDATE: Here's more on Arnie's family affair with Nazism.

Posted 8/7/2003 10:10:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
GET GOVERNMENT OUT OF GDP: Too many good points to single out and quote in this article on economics by Stephen Moore and Phil Kerpen--so RTWT, as the hip supply siders like to say.

Posted 8/7/2003 08:37:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
"OPEC IS A CRACK DEALER"..."Windmills, solar power, horses, rickshaws, these are the power sources of the future!" Scott Ott and John Hawkins provide IM-based Fisking of Al Gore's latest speech.

Posted 8/7/2003 03:23:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
LIFE IMITATES WOODY ALLEN: In Sleeper, there's a hilarious scene when Woody's Miles Monroe character, defrosted 200 years into the future, is shown a clip of an endlessly droning Howard Cosell:

Historian: We weren't sure at first what to make of this, but we developed a theory: we feel that when people committed great crimes against the state, they were forced to watch this. Miles Monroe: Yes. That's exactly what it was.

In the future, when people commit great crimes against the state, they'll be forced to read passages by Jacques Derrida. By the way, there's a great comment to Matt Welch's post, about 14 comments down, which has a bit of fun with one of Derrida's typically portentous statements:

Only in retrospect will we be able to understand if the symbolically suffused collapse of the capitalistic citadels in lower Manhattan... Would it ruin his day to know they were socialistic citadels?

Heh.

Posted 8/7/2003 03:05:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
CPO SPARKEY NOTES that some lessons are never learned.

Posted 8/7/2003 12:31:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
FLASHBACK: Boy did I fumble the ball:

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 Posted 11:12 PM by Edward Driscoll I DOUBT THIS WILL AMOUNT TO MUCH, but Gray Davis is the target of a California recall effort, according to the Washington Times.

It does prove that Muggeridge's Law* is awfully immutable, though. UPDATE: Speaking of which, AP reports that Darrell Issa, "the millionaire congressman who largely funded the effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis abruptly pulled out of the race to replace him Thursday, a day after actor Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped in." ANOTHER UPDATE: California Supreme Court declines to intervene, thus clearing the way for an October recall election. Hey, would you want to stop the Terminator??

Posted 8/7/2003 12:25:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
DID ARNIE HANG DICK RIORDAN OUT TO DRY? Matt Welch poses the question on Reason's Hit & Run Blog. It would explain why this headline was visible on Drudge:

Speculation: Arnold will run on a ticket with Riordan as Lt. Gov.

...for about 15 minutes before it vanished forever.

Posted 8/7/2003 01:08:34 AM by Edward Driscoll
HEY, MAYBE IT REALLY IS MORNING IN AMERICA: Back in late February, I posted:

It's waaaaaay too soon to say this with any certainty, but there's a very good chance that it's Morning in America for George W. Bush. Unlike his father, who inherited an astoundingly robust economy that was coming to the end of its (to coin a phrase) seven fat years and whose long overdue, and extremely mild recession occurred just as he was running for reelection, Bush 43's timing could be spot-on perfect: a quick victory in Iraq, followed by overwhelming proof that Hussein really was the Stalin-like tyrant he's been accussed of being all these years, followed by a long overdue rally in the stock market, and several years of growth whose peak coincides perfectly for Bush's reelection, made all the easier because of Al Sharpton's corrosive presence, either in some prominent role with the Democrats, or as Sullivan speculates, a third party, Nader-like spoiler. This is all pure speculation on my part, and a lot could happen to make 2004 a very, very different scenario. But Bush is in the driver's seat here. Fortunately, he knows it. And unlike his father, he knows what to do with it.

Writing in the Washington Times today, Donald Lambro says:

No matter what Mr. Bush's prospective challengers may say about the state of the economy, people can read the economic indicators. They saw their 401(k) and other stock portfolios rise in the last quarter. They know an economic turnaround is in progress. And Mr. Bush, his chief advisers and Republican leaders are not going to play into the Democrats' hands in the months to come. They are going to be on the road talking up the economy and promoting their growth agenda. "Morning in America" ads are being prepared for the coming campaign. Meantime, House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas has drafted a bill to cut the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 32 percent. It's aimed at small businesses with $10 million or less in taxable income who produce most of the jobs in this country. In short, the once-sputtering economy is showing signs of new life, as it did in 1983, just before the 1984 election when President Reagan buried Walter Mondale in a 49-state landslide.

Emphasis above mine. I don't know if Lambro is speaking metaphorically or not (why not dust off the old slogan? It certainly worked well once), but it's nice to know we may have been right, even as many on the left felt that things couldn't have been darker.

Posted 8/6/2003 09:39:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
"THE TRASH NANNY": Has a meme just been born...?

Posted 8/6/2003 05:47:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
HE'S IN. As James Lileks recently wrote:

If he runs, he will get ten bazillion Jesse voters. First-timers - only timers, really - who will vote for Arnie because it?’s fun to vote for Arnie. This is not a constituency Schwartzenegger would feel compelled to court after the election, incidentally. They?’re like bee stings. You can only use them once, then politically they?’re dead.

All I can say is--if he wins (and he'll very likely be the early front runner based on superstar name recognition alone), I hope he governs closer to an earlier ex-actor who once governed California, than Jesse "The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste" Ventura. UPDATE: Lileks, whose Website is back from a Benthic Petroleum tanker truck-sized crash, has much more on Arnold.

Posted 8/6/2003 04:26:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
"PLAYING DIVERSITY FOOTBALL": John Leo of USA Today and David Harsanyi of the Wall Street Journal each have some thoughts on the NFL's recent $200,000 fine against the Detroit Lions for hiring Steve Mariucci, the best available coach, without first talking to black candidates. For our previous coverage on what Rich Lowry once dubbed "racial parody" in the NFL, click here.

Posted 8/6/2003 04:02:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON IS PLANNING TO RUN FOR GOVERNOR in California. Virginia Postrel, typing with stylish blue nail polish, has some thoughts, writing:

This is what you get when you combine the Progressive faith in unmediated democracy--which, in this case, includes mass candidacy--with a state in which "rational ignorance" has reached an all-time high (except on the passionate fringes, including mine): a high probability that Californians will elect a joke candidate or, the next best thing, a celebrity with a lot of glib opinions and minimal nuts-and-bolts knowledge. Yikes.

Yikes indeed. Orrin Judd has some additional thoughts on unmediated democracy, here.

Posted 8/6/2003 03:15:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
JOHN HAWKINS HAS A FEW PET PEEVES with the media--and he's not afraid to share them with you.

Posted 8/6/2003 12:24:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHOOPI GOLDBERG, LIBERTARIAN: Well, at least when it comes to smoking!

Posted 8/6/2003 10:47:18 AM by Edward Driscoll
"THE REAL INTELLIGENCE FAILURE": Francis Fukuyama looks at who dropped the ball, if it turns out Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction. Fascinating article, which I read on dead tree while waiting for the plane yesterday. I'm glad to see it's online as well.

Posted 8/6/2003 10:29:15 AM by Edward Driscoll
GOIN' BACK TO CALI, TO CALI, TO CALI: Well, actually I'm back. LL Cool J (remember him!?) was the celebrity on the cover of the American Airlines magazine, so now I've got that song stuck in my head. Oh well.

Posted 8/3/2003 11:31:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
MUGGERIDGE'S LAW* IN ACTION DEPARTMENT: This quote from the Times is a classic. There's no way any parody writer (well, maybe Tom Wolfe on a very, very good day) could make stuff like that up.

Posted 8/3/2003 11:14:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
READY, AIM, DESTROY: James Bowman reviews Buffalo Soldiers and eviscerates it, as only he can.