Posted 10/25/2003 02:10:21 AM by Edward Driscoll
BIAS BY OMISSION: Check out this AP story, about anti-war rallies this weekend (against a war that's already over). The article correctly describes Free Republic as "an independent grass-roots conservative group", who's planning a counter-protest. But no mention anywhere of the communist ties of ANSWER, the chief anti-war group mentioned in the piece. Me? I was with this crowd back in January, and I'll be there again today... UPDATE (10/26): "Belligerent Bunny Blog" has photos of the lame Washington DC rally.

Posted 10/24/2003 03:57:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
"THERE IS A TIME BOMB TICKING IN THE MIDDLE EAST", writes Victor Davis Hanson, but this time, "it is in Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh":

A successful consensual government in Baghdad will serve as a glimpse of what life can be like amid the economic and political stagnation of the surrounding Arab world. More importantly, it will confront radical Islam with a competing ideology that possesses a far more revolutionary message than the Islamists' tired old culture of death that ruined Afghanistan and Iran, wrecked the economy of the West Bank, tore apart Algeria, ended the tourist industry of Egypt, brought international scorn on Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, turned the president of Malaysia into an international laughingstock, nearly made Pakistan an outlaw regime — and led to the reckoning after 9/11. Holdover Soviet-style Baathism didn't work; Islamic fascism was a failure; tribal dictatorship and monarchies are no better; Pan-Arabism was a cruel joke. The Arab world is running out of alternatives to democratic governments and free markets. A free Iraq will place a terrible dilemma on the governments and elites of these closed Arab societies who must explain to their own poor and oppressed how satellite pictures of voting Iraqis, Internet cafes, and raucous debates on television are really fabricated images concocted by the American-Zionist international consortium. There is a time bomb ticking in the Middle East, but it is in Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh, where corrupt elites can only pray that things don't calm down in Baghdad and thereby prompt al Jazeera to switch from tailing dead-end Baathists to interviewing Iraqi parliamentarians.

Needless to say, read the whole thing. UPDATE: Afghanistan will compete in a beauty contest (including the swimsuit competition) for the first time in more than 30 years, two years after the fall of the Taliban regime. James Taranto has details--and photos. I wonder how that's playing in Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh? UPDATE (10/26): Glenn Reynolds ran a photo of Afghanistan's contestant, and got a few surprisingly negative comments.

Posted 10/24/2003 03:20:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
SEVEN PERCENT GROWTH?? Wow, check out this quote from an AP piece on the recent drop in jobless claims:

The economy, which grew at a decent 3.3 per cent rate in the second quarter is expected to show a blistering seven per cent pace in the third quarter, economists predict. The government will release the economic growth figures for the third quarter on Oct. 30.

That's staggering, if it's true. Can't wait to hear what the actual numbers are!

Posted 10/24/2003 01:50:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
BAD WEEK FOR DEMOCRATS, according to John Podhoretz. He didn't mention it, but this issue didn't help them, either.

Posted 10/24/2003 12:57:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
ONGOING WEIRDNESS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES, as documented by Andrew Sullivan.

Posted 10/23/2003 12:08:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
DONALD, DUSTIN AND DAVE: The Rumsfeld--Tootsie connection, as spotted by David Frum.

Posted 10/23/2003 09:23:18 AM by Edward Driscoll
MYSTERIOUS STRANGER ENTERS DEMOCRAT RACE: Happy Fun Pundit has the, err, "details".

Posted 10/23/2003 08:41:23 AM by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Jonah Goldberg writes, "this is the normal state of things for the last forty years. We protect Europe, the Europeans think they solved their problems through chit-chat."

Posted 10/22/2003 11:47:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
"DOMINATE. INTIMIDATE. CONTROL." That's the TSA's motto according to this Washington Times commentary by James Bovard, who writes that the agency does a fine job of dominating, intimidating and controlling average American travelers, but does a lousy job of actually doing what it should be doing: detecting security threats.

Posted 10/22/2003 03:49:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE ROSETTA STONE OF RECORDING: I first began experimenting with multi-track music recording in the mid-1980s. This speech by Brian Eno, titled "The Studio As Compositional Tool", was the Rosetta Stone for me, opening my eyes as to the incredible possibilities of multi-track recording. I was in the process of OCR'ing my old photocopy of it, when I found someone had already typed and uploaded it to the Web--which is fine by me. One minor correction to the piece: it's subhead says, "From Downbeat [magazine], probably 1979". It's actually from two issues: July and August of 1983. For anybody who's thinking about home music recording and has never experimented with it, this article is an eye-opener. Everything that Eno describes as possible in a commercial recording studio is now available to the home recordist with a PC and a decent soundcard. All he needs to get started is a program such as Cakewalk's Home Studio or Sonar or Sony's Acid, and it's off to the races. (Also on Blogcritics, where I'm a regular contributor.)

Posted 10/22/2003 01:31:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
BIG BAD BIG BOX: Interesting discussion in the comments section about Oakland's city council turning away Wal-Mart on Reason's "Hit & Run" blog.

Posted 10/21/2003 11:29:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I’ve no reason to say this, but: my antennae are twitching. I have this feeling that 2004 is going to feel a lot like 1968. But it’s just a feeling."--James Lileks Election year? Check. War in foreign country? Check. Lots of angry leftists? Check. Look out.

Posted 10/21/2003 11:06:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
"IF ADVENTURE HAS A NAME, IT MUST BE NEW JERSEY DRISCOLL!" No, that's not right--but the Indiana Jones box set certainly is. Nina and I watched the film tonight. We'll probably watch the third film and the bonus disc tomorrow. As to why we'll take our time before watching the second movie, James Lileks summed it up best.

Posted 10/21/2003 01:02:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
FROM ONE COWBOY TO ANOTHER: Might Jimmy Johnson replace Dan Reeves as the next head coach of the Atlanta Falcons?

Posted 10/21/2003 12:58:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
REASSESSING THE NEW DEAL: Did it prolong the Depression? The great Robert Bartley of the Wall Street Journal has some thoughts. (Link via Orrin Judd. And yes, I asked the above question strictly rhetorically.)

Posted 10/21/2003 12:26:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
AP'S LOSING IT: Congress may very well pass a partial birth abortion ban. President Bush may very well sign it. But check out this headline on my Yahoo News page:

"Congress Near Passing Abortion Ban Bill" Gee, I don't remember headlines when the bill outlawing so-called "assault weapons" that read "Congress Near Passing Bill Banning Guns". So why the scare headlines this time around?

Posted 10/21/2003 11:06:54 AM by Edward Driscoll
NO GOOD DEED DEPARTMENT: H.D. Miller writes that "Wal-Mart is selling the heck out of Michael Moore's latest shoddy diatribe". But check out how Moore returns the favor!

Posted 10/21/2003 10:43:42 AM by Edward Driscoll
IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME! While we applaud President Bush speaking directly to Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad concerning Mahathir's rabid anti-Semitism, this is the man who should finish the job. Mahathir would never know what hit him. UPDATE: Mahathir's speech is (sorta kinda) defended by Paul Krugman! Krugman writes that Mahathir's "remarks were inexcusable. But they were also calculated — for Mr. Mahathir is a cagey politician, who is neither ignorant nor foolish." Ah yes, the "but"--the Copperhead Conjunction rears its ugly head again. UPDATE: Instapundit (back after another denial of service attack at Hosting Matters) has links to others angry over Krugman's Copperhead convulsions.

Posted 10/21/2003 10:38:22 AM by Edward Driscoll
WELL THIS CLEARS IT UP: ESPN's clear, precisely written answer to the Volokh Conspiracy certainly explains, in copious detail, why Gregg Easterbrook was fired.

Posted 10/21/2003 10:27:17 AM by Edward Driscoll
KEITH BURGESS-JACKSON (a Nader man!) tracks the natural history of Bush-Hating at Tech Central Station. UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds also has some thoughts, in his MSNBC column, on what happens when the chattering class grows fangs.

Posted 10/20/2003 08:29:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
MORE ANTI-SEMITISM FROM MAHATHIR: Whatever happened to the good old days, when the CIA would quietly put a Mickey in the coffee of somebody like this?

Posted 10/20/2003 07:04:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
LET THEM PAY CAR TAXES: In the Washington media, a popular euphemism for a politician moving to the left is that he's "evolved as a politician". Joan Didion's "evolution" from her early days at National Review and a key part of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and '70s, to her current leftist politics can be summed up with the quote that Andrew Sullivan discovered. It's priceless--and speaks volumes about why the Democrats are no longer the party of the working man.

Posted 10/20/2003 05:49:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
NOPE, NO MEDIA BIAS HERE.

Posted 10/20/2003 04:55:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
MORE ON EASTERBROOK, from James Taranto:

Those who've commented on the Easterbrook kerfuffle fall, roughly, into two camps: those, like Foxman, who believe his original posting was an expression of classic anti-Semitism, and those who don't know what to make of it. An example of the latter is blogger Josh Marshall: "What Easterbrook said was weird and something a hair's breadth short of ugly. . . . Try as I might to explain to myself how Easterbrook could have unwittingly walked into such an unfortunate formulation, I still find it a bit difficult. What was he thinking? I go back and forth. I'm not sure." Well, allow us to explain. Easterbrook's essay was an expression not of anti-Semitism but of a lesser, though still insidious, form of prejudice. Call it liberal condescension. This sentence from his apology reveals all: "How, I wondered, could anyone Jewish--members of a group who suffered the worst act of violence in all history, and who suffer today, in Israel, intolerable violence--seek profit from a movie that glamorizes violence as cool fun?" "Members of a group": This is the language of liberal identity politics. And note that this is a philo-Semitic prejudice, not an anti-Semitic one. Easterbrook's premise is that the suffering of the Jewish people ennobles Jewish individuals--or should--even if those individuals have not themselves suffered. Thus he presumes to hold Jews to a higher moral standard by virtue of their Jewishness--though in fact all he's doing is asking them to agree with his highly debatable opinion (does it really make any sense to liken stylized Hollywood violence to the Holocaust?). Ideologically, Easterbrook's earnest criticism of Jewish studio executives is of a piece with Maureen Dowd's racist rant against Clarence Thomas. Because Thomas is black, Dowd, like other liberals, expects him to conform to liberal orthodoxy and thus treats his conservatism as a far greater offense than that of, say, Antonin Scalia. This kind of prejudice may not lead to pogroms and lynchings, but it's divisive and often ugly all the same.

It's Taranto's lead post today. Scroll down below it for a look at how President Bush took on Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad face-to-face for Mathahir's rabid anti-Semitic remarks last week. And don't miss how Reuters headlined the story!

Posted 10/20/2003 12:27:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
MUST SEE TV: Evan Coyne Maloney has an amazing piece of guerrilla QuickTime video titled, "When Protesters Attack".

Posted 10/20/2003 11:16:28 AM by Edward Driscoll
"THE DESIRE NAMED STREETCAR": Reason's "Hit & Run" Blog looks at "The Top 10 Reasons to Forget Light Rail". Or as James Lileks recently wrote:

Heading into the office today I was startled to see the poles - ten per block, tall and gray, ugly lumps hanging from the wires that laced the poles together. The final step of the light-rail project: the electrical wires are back. And so the bad idea finally showed its ugly mug. The ads for the light rail system are cool - they borrow 30s / 40s rail iconography, which is clever. The stations are quite impressive, including the immense, lovely, and utterly nonfunctional assemblage across from the Metrodome. Fifth street downtown has been screwed beyond belief - from three lanes to one until you hit the Government Plaza, at which point the street is closed to thru-traffic. Brilliant. But I think some people believed that the trolleys would just . . . move on their own accord, gliding on the rails. No one reminded us that we’d have to string wires in the sky again. And so the intersections now have these latticework constructs, these anal-retentive dreamcatchers, these tic-tac-toe puzzles pasted over your view of the sky. Wonderful. Eight hundred million. As I have said elsewhere, somewhere, I am not opposed to mass transit. I see the double-segment busses trundle past at rush hour, filled to the gunwales, and I’m glad: congestion would be worse without the busses. And even if the effect on congestion was limited, I’d still support it; people need to get around. When I was a poor college student I took the bus. When I was an entry-level 20something downtown drone I took the bus. I believe in dedicated bus lanes. I think poor people should get vouchers to take them to jobs in the outer burbs. Eight hundred million dollars for a trolley that goes from the bar district to the Mall of America! I keep thinking of some old guy coming downtown for the first time in years, looking up at the poles and bright string, and shouting: what are you doing? Do you know how pleased we were to see the sky when the wires came down? That’s why we welcomed the busses, you idiots! They were air conditioned, they went everywhere, they pulled over to let people out, they didn’t clog traffic - now you’re bringing back the old ways? What’s next, four-aisle supermarkets? Radios without FM? Black and white newspapers? TVs without remotes? You idiots!

The Desire Named Streetcar, indeed.

Posted 10/19/2003 10:49:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
FROM BOTTOM TO TOP: Numerous times on this site, we've commented that the protestors against the war in Iraq were essentially aiding Saddam Hussein, and hurting the Iraqi people, by wanting to keep him in power. (George Orwell made essentially the same argument 60 years ago, during World War II.) Diana West writes that the same holds true for presidential candidates as well:

Soon, the burning question Democrats must answer will be not what they think is wrong with George W. Bush's policy, but what they, as members of the antiwar elite, would do in his place. This is a tough question. It forces members of the antiwar elite to admit they would have left Saddam Hussein and his murderous regime in place -- not exactly a surefire policy to make either Iraq or the world safe for democracy. And now that most of the Democratic presidential candidates have come out against the president's $87 billion funding request to stabilize and democratize the terror-torn, debt-laden country, they are taking themselves and their party to a new extreme. Indeed, being anti-Bush and antiwar, Democrats now pack a double political whammy that, in effect, bolsters Baathists and vitiates victory. And it leaves the American Left prone to increasingly weird contradictions.

No kidding!

Posted 10/19/2003 10:28:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
MARK STEYN CONNECTS THE DOTS, and does not like what he sees--and neither should you.

Posted 10/19/2003 07:19:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
EASTERBROOK FLASHBACK: By now, you've read that the New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook has been fired from his part-time gig as a columnist on ESPN's Website. Glenn Reynolds has as thorough a round-up of links as can be imagined, and here's a flashback to my thoughts on Easterbrook, Limbaugh, and ESPN, from a couple of weeks ago.

Posted 10/19/2003 07:08:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
SENATORIAL SMACKDOWN: Sean Hannity and Ted Kennedy mix it up in an impromptu radio showdown--for charity!

Posted 10/19/2003 06:39:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
PUNISHING SUCCESS: Terrific essay by Thomas Sowell:

Name some of the things that make us so much better off than Americans of just a couple of generations ago. One of the most important things are new medicines that not only prolong life but leave us vigorous at ages when old folks used to sit around in rocking chairs. Airplanes have put the whole world within our reach. Computer operating systems have enabled people with no understanding of the science and technology of computers to use them nevertheless to do innumerable things. You might think that those who created these things would be among our heroes. On the contrary, they are demonized in the media, harassed by the government and sued by lawyers.

Read the whole thing, as somebody once said.

Posted 10/19/2003 02:38:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
FROM SADDAM HUSSEIN TO BURGER KING: Iraq now has its first Burger King. Hopefully many more will follow. If there had been Burger Kings in 1947, and one opened in Berlin, I wonder what Life would have thought about it.

Posted 10/19/2003 12:00:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
ROOT CAUSES: Howard Kurtz explains why outright hatred of Bush has become so prevalent on the left. UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg has a few thoughts on the subject.