Posted 3/13/2004 08:55:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
ESPIONAGE ON THE CHEAP: Ten grand was allegedly all it took for Saddam to pay off former Democratic congressional staffer and journalist Susan Lindauer. H.D. Miller writes, "Who knew you could buy these peaceniks so cheaply? (I mean, who knew other than Saddam and Sons?)"

Posted 3/13/2004 05:55:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
I CAN VOUCH FOR THIS: Whenever I'm on the east coast, I take Amtrak from Penn Station in Manhattan to the New Jersey station nearest to where my parents live. And even after 9/11, security is extremely lax. Which is why the lead to this CNS News article doesn't surprise me:

In light of terrorist attacks in Spain that killed nearly 200 people, two Republican members of Congress Friday urged Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to re-examine security measures involving the U.S. rail system. And a noted counter-terrorism expert gave U.S. passenger rail security a grade of "F."

Last month, I saw one serviceman (who with his M-16, camo fatigues and beret looked a bit like John Amos in Die Hard II) standing on the main floor of Penn Station, and none standing near the actual tracks. After this past week, I hope that changes--and fast.

Posted 3/13/2004 05:11:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
SOON TO BE APPEARING AT A GLUE FACTORY NEAR YOU: When I first saw the trailer for Hidalgo around Christmastime, when it ran prior the last Lord of the Rings movie, I said to my wife, "Swell--it's Lawrence of Arabia meets Seabiscuit". And made by Disney and starring anti-Bush wag Viggo Mortenson, to boot. Flak's Andy Stilp writes, "Hidalgo emerges barely worthy of being called Seabiscuit II. In the movie, [Mortenson] rides the little mustang that could to improbable victory against the finest Bedouin thoroughbreds in a life-or-death Cannonball Run". Meanwhile, Jami Bernard of The New York Daily News says:

The title character of Hidalgo is a handsome, feisty horse, a white-splotched mustang that emerges in the first few frames from a landscape of brown earth and frost, like a chunk of the old American West come to life. I have nothing bad to say about that gorgeous beast and the several stand-ins that double for him.

"The movie on the other hand", she writes, "is a horse of a different color". And unusally bad history, even for Hollywood.

Posted 3/13/2004 02:58:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
CHECK THE WEATHER CHANNEL PLEASE, for Hell must have surely frozen over. Roger Kimball writes:

"the biggest thing you would notice is freedom" Thus quoth Dan Rather on the Larry King show on March 12. I, too, was amazed. Dan Rather, the dyed-in-the-wool, Saddam-Hussein-interviewing liberal. What happened? Mr. Rather went back to Baghdad. He looked around. And he liked a lot of what he saw.

Oddly enough, maybe that's why Senator Kerry is ahead in this new poll.

Posted 3/13/2004 02:49:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
CLARENCE PAGE: "It's not easy to be black. Just ask John Kerry".

Posted 3/13/2004 02:26:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
FRITZ EYE FOR THE BLOG GUYS: "On the Fritz" is doing extreme blogspace makeovers. He's got some suggestions for Mission Control.

Posted 3/13/2004 01:44:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
TWO WORLDVIEWS: Mel Gibson versus Tom Wolfe, Christ versus Epictetus. (Via The Brothers Judd Blog.)

Posted 3/13/2004 01:13:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER: Peter Robinson of National Review bumps into Al Gore in Palo Alto last night, and feels sorry for him.

Posted 3/13/2004 10:31:13 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE KERRY CAMPAIGN: redefining nuance, even by his staffers!

Posted 3/13/2004 12:40:29 AM by Edward Driscoll
SPACE GEEK NIRVANA: I had requested review copies of Apollo 11: Men On The Moon and their upcoming disc on the Saturn V from Spaceflight Films, and while I'll have a more detailed review eventually online, my first impression is that if you're at all a fan of the space program, run, don't walk to your local store (I saw them at Target this past weekend), or buy them online from Amazon. This is absolute space geek nirvana. The Apollo 11 package arrived today, apparently, they'll be shipping the review copy of the Saturn V disc as it gets closer to its release. I was just young enough to not remember firsthand much of the Apollo missions, with the exception of the last one, Apollo-Soyuz. But I certainly devoured lots of books on the subject, as well as the DVDs of For All Mankind and Apollo 13. But watching Apollo 11: Men On The Moon, I felt like that whole period was right before me. Probably because it was! This set of three DVDs was assembled by a small organization run by Mark Gray, a 20 year TV veteran, whose father was worked as a NASA contractor. The discs are distributed by 20th Century Fox. Gray and his team basically assembled all of the 16mm and 35mm film and video that NASA shot to document the mission, beginning with the incredible footage of the Saturn V being assembled, all the way through to the moon landing. (And to the landing back on Earth, but I haven't gotten that far yet!) In a way, it really reminds me of the stately pacing of 2001: A Space Odyssey. On the one hand, this is staggering footage of one of the most important events in mankind's history. On the other hand, because it's largely raw and unedited, it sort of reminds you why the Apollo missions quickly lost the interest of the American public: the pace of a lunar spaceflight, given the enormous distances involved, is waaay too slow to be television friendly. The Saturn V assemblage at the beginning of the film is just astonishing. Seeing the components with men from NASA and Rockwell standing next to them to place them into scale, it's a bit like Mies van der Rohe was asked to make one of his skyscrapers fly: the individual stages of the Saturn are that huge, and the Vehicle Assembly Building they're mated together in is even bigger. And seeing non-stop footage of the tank-treaded platform that hauls the whole thing to the launch pad is equally astonishing: how many skyscrapers move? This isn't Ron Howard's Hollywood version of Apollo 13, so there are only glimpses of the personalities of the Apollo 11 crew, but it's interesting: watching Neil Armstrong on the ground, he seems to have a slight smirk on his face, a slight cockiness. But hey, if I was a hotshot former X-15 test pilot and Gemini astronaut who was about to become the most famous explorer since Christopher Columbus, I'd probably be a little cocky too. It's also an amazing contrast watching the crew in both their white spacesuits, and their off-duty togs: Buzz Aldrin's powder blue turtleneck and cardigan, and the Ban-Lon short-sleeve sportshirts worn by the other two men are just too much. (It reminds me that in a way, the future--our future--is in the past: the space program should be decades ahead of where it is now. We've wasted so much time piddling around with the Space Shuttle.) The DVD also contains the crew's postflight debriefing, and it's interesting to compare their no-nonsense tone talking among fellow NASA personal with their much more jovial attitude when they knew their statements were being beamed back to Earth for live, worldwide consumption. After posing for PR photos, the three men then hop into their space capsule atop the Saturn V, and the whole shebang is launched into orbit. Which is covered by 15 synchronized cameras. That you can click through and choose with your DVD player's remote control. The multi-angle function of DVDs is rarely taken advantage of, and this is a tour-de-force of what it can do. Of course, the whole package is a tour-de-force of what DVD can do. I'll have more thoughts later, or when I upload my actual review. But God, I'm loving what I see so far. If you're a casual fan of the Apollo missions, this in-depth, full immersion treatment may be a bit overwhelming. I'd suggest watching Apollo 13, From The Earth To The Moon, or Criterion's painfully underrated documentary DVD, For All Mankind. But if want to feel like you're actually onboard with Neil, Buzz and Michael, this is your DVD. (Also on Blogcritics.)

Posted 3/12/2004 03:27:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
IT'S HARD TO TELL, but I don't think James Lileks really is looking forward to seeing the remake of Starsky and Hutch. Similarly, we watched Finding Nemo last night. All I can say is: political correctness? You're soaking in it! OK, two other things: now that Pixar has broken off from Disney, hopefully they'll return to making fun buddy pictures, such as the Toy Story films, and Monsters Inc, rather than something like Nemo, which felt far more like it had Disney's uber-PC stamp on it than Pixar's. And you know digital animation has come of age, when you realize a film looks incredible, but you still hate it, and wish it were cut up into millions of digital guitar picks.

Posted 3/12/2004 01:51:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY comes from a reader of James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today". Taranto sets it up by writing:

Somewhat surreally, the bombing, on the semianniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, comes as one of the major American political parties has just nominated a presidential candidate who believes terrorism is principally a law-enforcement matter rather than a war. Reader Andrew Fox pithily puts things in perspective:

Maybe we can send Spain some state troopers or something to help them clean up the mess. Maybe a team of FBI agents to plot trajectories, determine chemical compositions and give the Spanish national police force lessons on how not to profile ethnically. Or we could tell them that the 101st Airborne Division will remember their families, too, when the time comes to deliver justice.

Amen to that.

Taranto also has several links concerning the bombing, Reuters' unending equivocating bobs and weaves, and Susan Lindauer.

Posted 3/12/2004 01:01:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
AL FRANKEN AND JANEANE GARAFALO? WHERE DO I SIGN! Sgt. Stryker writes:

A new liberal radio network, called 'Air America Radio' and featuring Al Franken [and] Janeane Garafalo, is coming to an AM Station near you. No word yet on whether the networks' founders are aware of the irony in having a liberal radio station named after an illegal and undercover CIA operation during the Viet Nam war, as well as a mediocre Mel Gibson film.

Heh. I'm sure Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Rush Limbaugh and other conservative broadcasters are shaking in their Florsheims drooling in anticipation of the new material they'll soon be making sport of.

Posted 3/12/2004 11:30:53 AM by Edward Driscoll
"SPYING ON THE LIBERAL MEDIA": Ranck And File and the Mudville Gazette each have great roundups of links on how the media has handled the discovery that a Democratic staffer and former journalist was apparently on Saddam Hussein's payroll. And Media Research Center examines how television in particular handled reporting the news (badly, in a nutshell). Clay Ranck wrote, "I am amazed at how blatant the media spin on behalf of the Democrats has become". I agree. I'm not sure if the combination of relentless criticism by organizations like the MRC, books by Bernard Goldberg, and the Blogosphere have caused them to finally admit that the jig is up, but since last August during Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign, any former pretense of objectivity has been eliminated. What's a curious new element is that more and more big media journalists are willing to admit it.

Posted 3/12/2004 11:12:25 AM by Edward Driscoll
DRAMATIC PHOTOS of today's silent march in Washington to honor those killed yesterday in Spain, on InstaPundit.com.

Posted 3/12/2004 09:09:37 AM by Edward Driscoll
MORNING IN AMERICA UPDATE: Jerry Bowyer uses a dramatic graph to compare the Bush Boom with other periods of economic growth.

Posted 3/12/2004 08:54:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
BBC WHIPLASH: A reader of National Review's "Corner" Weblog watches the BBC turn on a dime in their coverage on our war on terror--and terror's war on us.

Posted 3/12/2004 08:21:18 AM by Edward Driscoll
FROM THE HOME OFFICE OF...ME: Next to the media room, in the past ten years, for many, the home office has emerged as the most technology-laden room in the house. While the concept of telecommuting has been around as early as the 1970s, when Alvin Toffler wrote about it in his seminal 1980 classic, The Third Wave, it was only in last decade that it began to explode in popularity. Add to it the ever-increasing number of self-employed in the US, and you’ve got a lot of people working from home. And that number is only going to increase in the 21st century. Which is why my latest "Ideas For Every Room" newsletter for Electronic House magazine is on that very topic.

Posted 3/11/2004 03:43:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
NOT SURPRISING: Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher writes, "One other thing I learned about Jayson Blair from interviewing him that I haven't seen anywhere else: He changed his name from Jason to Jayson in eighth grade, but gave no reason why. He said he did not change it legally so, in a sense, even his very name is a lie". Figures. UPDATE: As does this quote by Blair, the latest nominee for Andrew Sullivan's Sontag Award:

"I could not help but think about the hurt and fear that would cause a group of men to commit suicide by flying planes into the World Trade Center buildings. Anger as a byproduct of hurt and fear was not a foreign concept to me." - Jayson Blair, identifying with the mass-murderers of 9/11 on the day it happened, in his new book, "Burning Down My Masters' House."

With an attitude like that, no wonder the Times hired him!

Posted 3/11/2004 03:37:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
PASSION UPDATE: Yesterday, we linked to a story that said Mel Gibson could make $100 million from The Passion. CNN says double that amount.

Posted 3/11/2004 02:58:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
LOOSE LIPS SINK CAMPAIGNS: Balloon Juice rounds up a variety of Kerry gaffes, flip-flops and obscenities, C.D. Harris illustrates things graphically, and Hugh Hewitt shows us how Old Media have fumbled the ball, and thus have clearly taken sides in the 2004 election. And speaking of taking sides, note how it was to a blogger who reads the L.A. Times to nudge the paper into providing some balance to one of its stories.

Posted 3/11/2004 01:49:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Because of the terrorist bombs in Spain, which killed nearly 200:

...we now know that the only people in the world who believe that the liberation of Iraq was George Bush's unilateral action are the people who seek to replace him in the Oval Office.

"BoiFromTroy", via InstaPundit. UPDATE: Roger L. Simon writes that the number of people murdered in the Madrid tragedy is nearly as bad as 9/11 based on percentages of population of the countries involved.

Posted 3/11/2004 01:25:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
IT'S CALLED "THE CHEESEBURGER BILL", but it's actually designed to eliminate frivolous lawsuits against the food industry by obese consumers. And it passed today in the House. John Banzhaf, call your office.

Posted 3/11/2004 11:23:59 AM by Edward Driscoll
DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL AIDE ARRESTED AS IRAQI SPY: Instapundit has several links to the story, and writes, "Many in the blogosphere have been speculating about Saddam making payoffs in the U.S., but this is the first case to materialize. It's likely not the last." UPDATE: David Cohen of The Brothers Judd has lots of additional links.

Posted 3/11/2004 10:52:16 AM by Edward Driscoll
US CHIPMAKERS STOP WI-FI SALES TO CHINA, after the Chi-Coms demand their own encryption algorithm. (Via Fierce Wireless.)

Posted 3/11/2004 12:49:22 AM by Edward Driscoll
ALL THE COOL KIDS IN THE BLOGOSPHERE are posting photos of where they blog, and since they're not jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, I figured I might as well join them. After all, I posted photos of my frickin' bathroom here a month ago, so why not my den as well? While I occasionally blog from my patio via 802.11, often blog when traveling, and I have a study/guest room equipped with a computer and my library of books (you remember those, don't you?), most of my writing is done in my den. It's appeared in a couple of magazine articles I've written, and shortly after 9/11, I wrote about what it was like to experience that horrific day from here, but I don't think I've posted photographs of the room on my Website. So here's Mission Control: the side by side computers, since my wife often joins me at night in here, and we often simultaneously surf the net, while watching DVDs or TV via the media room cabinet at the front of the room. The desk is on a platform, allowing much of the wiring to be run underneath. It also raises the desk above the chairs for guests. (On Super Bowl Sunday, this room often has about 10 to 15 people packed in it.) And yes, those guitars get a workout from time to time as well.

Posted 3/11/2004 12:24:40 AM by Edward Driscoll
I CAN'T SAY I WAS EVER A SPALDING GRAY FAN. I had nothing against him, and I remember watching Swimming To Cambodia in the late '80s. (I forget if I rented the tape, or watched it on cable. Probably the latter.) He was one of those performers whose work never clicked with me, even during my artiest phase in the late-1980s, probably for the same totally random reasons that other artists of the era happened to. But Chris Ott of Flak Magazine has a sensitive memoriam to the late actor, writer, and monologist.

Posted 3/10/2004 11:14:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
OUT OF THE MATRIX: I just spent an hour doing major Photoshop brain surgery. Those of you who are veterans of this Website know that my wife and I had our home remodeled last year. Right around this time a year ago, I was blogging out of a nearby hotel room, because our house had the plumbing turned off, a front entryway that consisted of plywood sheets, and the lawn sported a couple of crater-sized depressions where the new concrete would be poured for the new entryway and a new walk-in closet. This year, among other, more modest improvements, we're thinking of changing the front fence, which is very rustic-looking, unlike our actual house, which is a fairly sleek looking rancher (after the architect, contractors and painters had their way with it last year). Unfortunately, the fence, due to years of weathering is now too rustic looking and is due for either replacement, or scrapping. Since it's purely cosmetic (as it is now, it won't keep any kids or critters in the front yard, nor keep anybody out), we may very well pull it out, or perhaps leave just a line of fencing in the front, and none on the sides. So I said to my wife, "Hey, I'll fire up Photoshop, and see what the house looks like with no fence!" Easier said than done. What was the line that Joe Pantoliano said in The Matrix? Staring a screen full of Kanji symbols and green gibberish, he tells Neo, "All I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead". Having stared at a bunch of green pixels that represents my front lawn at 700 percent the size of the photo, sliding bits around to fill in where the fence was, I know how he feels. It's a bit like when I'm recording music, editing digital audio and sliding little chunks of sound around to get it all in time. Both processes turn a computer into a device that feels a bit like an electron microscope, as you make what feels like subatomic manipulations of a photo or layers of sound. On the other hand, it probably would have cost several hundred dollars to have an artist airbrush an 8X10 glossy of the front of the house. In The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler talked about how technology allows consumers to do many of the functions that professionals normally do, and is changing how we interact with them. And often eliminating the need for them. What he didn't mention is how many different hats it would allow the average person to wear, and how strange it sometimes feels to put a new one on from time to time, perform brain surgery, and then return to your normal life. Anyhow, just wanted to post some thoughts before the red pill wears off...

Posted 3/10/2004 08:12:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE VENTURE CAPITAL INDUSTRY REBOOTS, says Tech Central Station, which is obviously a very, very good thing. However, as the Washington Post noted, an unintended consequence of the Sarbanes-Oxley bill may be preventing further growth, along with new jobs.

Posted 3/10/2004 06:44:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
KERRY'S LATEST GAFFE: Hugh Hewitt compares it to Bush's infamous quip about Adam Clymer. Andrew Sullivan wrote last June that "The one thing that knowledgeable people have told me about John Kerry is that he doesn't know when to stop. He has no controlling mechanism when he goes on the attack." How long can the press keep covering for him? I don't know. But Will Collier asks:

Just what will it take before a major, non-conservative media figure and/or outlet describes Kerry's charges as "mean" or "nasty", without the ritual reference to "both sides," particularly when the Bush side's rhetoric doesn't even register on the vitriol scale compared to Kerry's? If not this, then what? Is there anything that Kerry could say that's worthy of media criticism, or even scrutiny?

As Michael Graham wrote today, "If the coverage of the presidential race continues at its current, egregious pace, this may be the year when the media finally end the pretense that they are not dominated by liberal interests".

Posted 3/10/2004 06:18:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
THAT PESKY NEOCON EPITHET: Whenever I see anyone outside of National Review, The Weekly Standard, or a handful of other publications who have some working knowledge of the right use the word "neocon", I get suspicious. It isn't always anti-Semitic, but all-too-often, it's code for it. Lawrence F. Kaplan of The New Republic writes:

One of my colleagues and I have a running bet: Who can find the dumbest reference to 'neoconservatism'? Until last week, the honor was Tina Brown's. In a Washington Post piece last year, she recalled 'the New Deal for which neocons of the '30s bitterly reviled FDR as 'that man''--the problem, of course, being that 'neocons' did not emerge until 30 years after FDR's death, and the movement's founders vigorously supported the New Deal. But, in a new play, Embedded (opening later this week at New York's Public Theater), film star and director Tim Robbins outdoes even Tina Brown. Embedded, moreover, is not only dumb. It is poisonous, a production-length conspiracy theory guilty of the very sins it attributes to the 'cabal' that it claims to expose.

Read the whole thing, before pacifist Robbins threatens to "find" and "hurt" you, as he did a Washington Post reporter last year.

Posted 3/10/2004 02:49:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN CITY: Fascinating book review on the New Partisan Website. It makes a nice bookend with this Reason interview with Jane Jacobs from 2001. UPDATE: And speaking of the decline (if not quite fall) of an American city, the New Partisan also has a not-so-glowing look at the first term of New York's Mayor Bloomberg.

Posted 3/10/2004 12:39:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
HISTORY DOESN'T REPEAT, BUT IT DOES RHYME: The Washington Times notes:

John Kerry would be the first presidential candidate to visit a war zone since the failed bid of Sen. George S. McGovern, if the presumptive Democratic nominee decides to visit Iraq on a fact-finding trip. In September 1971, Mr. McGovern, the liberal South Dakota senator, visited South Vietnam, where he declared President Nixon's policy a "glaring failure" and called for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. Mr. Kerry, a four-term senator from Massachusetts, said this week that he is considering a trip to Iraq, although he left open the possibility that he might ask a group of congressional colleagues to conduct a fact-finding mission for him.

I suppose he could always ask Jim McDermott and David Bonior...

Posted 3/10/2004 12:01:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE PASSION IS PRINTING MONEY FOR MEL: Hollywood Reporter runs the numbers, and finds that Mel Gibson could easily walk away with $100 million in the bank from his movie. Two weeks ago, the New York Times was quoting Hollywood executives saying that Mel would be blacklisted for making a conservative film about Christ. It now seems far more likely that he'll emerge as the next George Lucas, with the vast profits from his low (for Hollywood) budget film giving him the power to make any future films he wants. As I posted on Sunday, that's far more than Orson Welles could ever say.

Posted 3/10/2004 11:31:51 AM by Edward Driscoll
MAN WHO SUED THE WORLD UPDATE: Last June, we wrote:

There's a new Website, called John Banzhaf Watch, aimed at monitoring "the trial lawyer who dreamt up the tobacco lawsuits that drained billions of dollars from a legal industry and made lawyers like JB billionaires. That's billionaires with a B!"

Today, Jacob Sullum of Reason writes:

But now that Congress is considering a ban on lawsuits that blame food makers and sellers for making people fat, Banzhaf admits he may have exaggerated a bit. In a press release issued yesterday, he says the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act "is surely premature, because there has been only one obesity lawsuit, and it was dismissed by a federal judge." Before Congress passes legislation like this, he says, "there should be a real history of abuse which must be corrected, not orchestrated panic based upon one failed lawsuit and some quoted-out-of-context rhetoric." Having orchestrated the panic and provided the rhetoric, Banzhaf knows whereof he speaks.

Meanwhile, in other legal news, The New York Times is threatening Bloggers. I guess if you can't beat 'em, beat 'em.

Posted 3/10/2004 11:03:22 AM by Edward Driscoll
RAGE AGAINST THE VOTE ROCKERS: Jonah Goldberg looks at the silliness passing as outrage over those "Voting Is For Old People" T-Shirts.

Posted 3/10/2004 10:47:35 AM by Edward Driscoll
KERRY ADMITS TO VIETNAM ATROCITIES: In The Nation, Kerry is quoted as telling Meet The Press, "I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of others", including shooting in free-fire zones, search-and-destroy missions, and burning villages. Rich Lowry of National Review asks, "Will Kerry stand by his contention that he committed atrocities, or flip-flop?" Is there video or audiotape available of Kerry's statement? Or have Meet The Press' archives become suddenly lost?

Posted 3/10/2004 10:31:00 AM by Edward Driscoll
YOU DON'T SAY: The New York Times reports:

Study Finds That Teenage Virginity Pledges Are Rarely Kept Based on that headline, the Times seems surprised! This is right up there with the study a few years ago that astoundingly reported that teens with tattoos get involved in more crime than teens without them. Gee, there's a shocker. Human behavior isn't that difficult to understand, and isn't as pliable as the left thinks it is. Why do they always seem so astonished when studies turn up findings your grandmother could have told you?

Posted 3/10/2004 10:12:37 AM by Edward Driscoll
WRITE YOUR OWN KERRY CAPTION, here.

Posted 3/9/2004 11:46:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
WELL, I SUPPOSE we should have seen this coming.

Posted 3/9/2004 11:41:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
RUSSELL KIRK: Ten Conservative Principles.

Posted 3/9/2004 11:36:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
HEY, IT BEATS THUMB WARS: Entropy House Productions Presents...Lord of the Peeps! (Via Who Tends These Fires.)

Posted 3/9/2004 11:33:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
LINGUISTIC CRIMES: Pejman Yousefzadeh asks, "How much do Noam Chomsky and his acolytes know about anti-Semitism"?

Posted 3/9/2004 08:00:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
RAY HARRYHAUSEN AND UFO: My review of two fun new books, titled, "Guilty Pleasures of the Large and Small Screen" is online at Blogcritics.

Posted 3/9/2004 01:05:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
TERRORIST ABU ABBAS DIES: Naturally, Reuters once again managed not to use the T-word when describing a Palestinian, although I suppose we should be thankful for small favors: they at least mention that he hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985. Because he died in US custody, Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review writes, "Expect the media emphasis to be on in U.S. custody not terrorist".

Posted 3/9/2004 11:19:14 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE NEW YORK POST PUTS ALL THE PIECES TOGETHER concerning the recent "outrage" over President Bush's 9/11-themed ads. Glenn Reynolds writes, "The blogosphere knew this, but it's nice to see the mainstream press noting that the "furor" over Bush's 9/11 ads was entirely manufactured". As much as I like The Post, I'm not sure if in this case, "mainstream press" is entirely accurate. When The New York Times picks up the story, and then Dan and Tom and Peter report it on the evening news, then I'll believe that word is getting out.

Posted 3/9/2004 10:21:15 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE POLL RESULTS YOU HAVEN'T SEEN, via Byron York. As for the poll results you have seen, Hugh Hewitt has some thoughts. In other polling news, Gallup says:

Americans see international terrorism as the most critical threat to the United States, according to a new Gallup Poll that suggests that unless a candidate is seen as strong in the war on terror, voters will not view his campaign as credible. According to the survey, 82 percent of Americans said international terrorism is a "critical threat" to the vital interests of the United States, and 75 percent said the spread of weapons of mass destruction is also a critical threat.

Great timing, Mrs. Kerry!

Posted 3/9/2004 10:14:49 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE NEW YORKER DOWDIFIES* A VICTOR DAVIS HANSON QUOTE: Why doesn't that surprise me? (Via Charles Johnson.)

Posted 3/8/2004 09:26:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"It's only a matter of time before the Middle East is stable and democratic. It's also only a matter of time before it's armed with nuclear weapons."

Michael J. Totten, in his Tech Central Station essay, "Liberalism in the Balance".

Posted 3/8/2004 08:57:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT'S NEXT--LULLABY THE VOTE? In yet another sign that the mere presence of Governor Schwarzenegger is driving California Democrats absolutely insane, a state senator has introduced legislation to allow 14 year olds to vote.

Posted 3/8/2004 08:22:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
WELL, THAT ONLY TOOK FOUR OR FIVE DECADES: Ayn Rand's books are being printed in her native Russia. Can't understand what the delay was...

Posted 3/8/2004 08:01:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
JEFF JACOBY LOOKS AT the courage of Muslim moderates.

Posted 3/8/2004 07:42:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
FROM SPECTRE, WITH LOVE: Eccentric Cinema looks at one of the very best of the Bond films, From Russia With Love. (Via the newly reconstituted Protein Wisdom.)

Posted 3/8/2004 07:36:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
BACK! FINALLY!! Protein Wisdom lives again!

Posted 3/8/2004 07:28:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE PASSION OF THE SOUNDTRACK: Matt Rowe of MusicTAP reviews John Debney's soundtrack for The Passion of the Christ. As I wrote in my review of the film, I wasn't crazy about its score. Matt enjoyed it far more, giving it three and a half stars.

Posted 3/8/2004 07:12:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
OUR WOULD-BE "SECOND BLACK PRESIDENT": Civil rights group seeks Kerry apology.

Posted 3/8/2004 03:34:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
SUZANNE FIELDS TAKES AIM at the arms suppliers of the culture war.

Posted 3/8/2004 03:10:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
A NATION IS REBORN: Iraqi Council signs interim constitution. If you're reading this at the time of this post, Hugh Hewitt is doing the intro to his radio show on the subject. Click here to listen live. UPDATE: Stephen Green has some thoughts. ANOTHER UPDATE: Steven Den Beste writes that the constitution "contrasts rather sharply with the proposed constitution of the EU, which is phone-book length and is unlikely to be ratified. Perhaps the Europeans should travel to Iraq to learn how it's done". On the other hand, Scott Ott "reports" that it's already been overturned by that pesky Ninth Circus Circuit Court!

Posted 3/8/2004 01:22:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
FOR MUCH OF THE LEFT, 9/11 NEVER HAPPENED, Andrew Sullivan wrote in January, which explains how those repressed images of the WTC caused them to go absolutely nuts when President Bush used them to kick off his reelection campaign. Lee Harris picks up the theme in his latest Tech Central Station column.

Posted 3/7/2004 11:36:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE TERRELL OWENS/NORMA DESMOND CONNECTION, as revealed by Skip Bayless. UPDATE: Gene Upshaw of the NFL Players Union is interceding on Owens' behalf. Peter King of Sports Illustrated says Upshaw "sounds insane to me", and compares Owens' image to Ryan Leaf. ANOTHER UPDATE: In today's column, Bayless writes:

The Washington Post reported Sunday that Upshaw is threatening to file what's called a "special-master case'' to try to get the trade rescinded and Owens declared an unrestricted free agent. But several league sources said Sunday that this appears to be so much sword-rattling by Upshaw, who simply wants to look as if he's "doing everything he can'' to support a high-profile player who believes he was wronged. Upshaw's reputation among many players is that of a politician as concerned about keeping the league as happy as the union he represents. Yet if this case does go to special master Stephen B. Burbank, who's in charge of settling disputes arising from the collective bargaining agreement, Owens surely won't have a leg to dance on.

Bayless says that it's possible that Owens could end up back with the Niners!

Posted 3/7/2004 10:33:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
DID KERRY JUST JUMP THE SHARK? As early as April of last year, Jay Nordlinger was writing comments about what a pistol Teresa Heinz-Kerry is. He described her as "a Martha Mitchell for our time", who's "going to be a big story in the '04 campaign". Boy, was he right. Matt Drudge links to the official John Kerry for President Blog, which has this story in it:

When Teresa Heinz-Kerry arrived, she handed me a pin that read in the center: “Asses of Evil” with “Bush”, “Cheney”, “Rumsfeld” and “Ashcroft” surrounding it. She met, greeted and talked to a jam-packed room of Kerry supporters and others who came for the MoveOn documentary. Many were curious, others undecided, or belonging to other candidate camps.

Hillary Clinton in 1992 was infinitely more politically savvy than to do something that stupid. Likewise, picture any potential first lady of either party handing out a badge like that. Further, all it does is illustrate the chief weakness of her husband's campaign: his not taking the war on terror, or heck, foreign affairs in general, seriously. Incidentally, you might want to download and save a copy of that page. Chances are it will be gone rather quickly. The popular "Jump The Shark" Website isn't about when TV shows end, it's when their freshness date expires and the inevitable rot begins to set in. This might just be the moment the Kerry campaign has left the ramp to go into midair. The subsequent landing may not be a smooth one. John Hawkins has a photo of what's more than likely the button Mrs. Kerry was handing out. As he says, "Can you imagine Laura Bush handing out something like that at a campaign event?" Nope. But then again, as I said, I can't picture Hillary doing such a thing. Or for that matter, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, or Nancy Reagan. All three women were too classy and too smart to do anything that would have jeapordized their husbands' chances of getting elected.

Posted 3/7/2004 08:18:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: We're watching it right now on DVD; my wife wanted to see it. It's innocuous enough, and Johnny Depp's performance as Keith Richards the lead pirate is certainly a riot. David Frum pointed out the Karen Allen-like performance of the heroine, as part of the usual revisionist elements that Hollywood insists on inserting into its films, but it's got enough Earl Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks atmosphere to overcome them. And every establishing shot at the start of a new scene seems to be from the Disneyland ride. There's even a potshot at the French midway through the film. There are also some great Dolby EX rear speaker effects periodically throughout the film, if you've got the proper decoding rig and rear speaker(s). I'm kind of sorry I didn't see it in the theaters--it's perfect Saturday matinee fair. UPDATE: Spoiler alert: highlight the text below with your mouse if you've already seen the film (or just don't care about the ending). The ending was terrible: a British Navy captain willingly letting a pirate go? And a governor letting his daughter marry a professed pirate? C'mon. I could see Depp, his sidekick and the girl escaping, as Depp is rescued from the hangman's noose. But that was a dreadful ending the filmmakers chose for an otherwise enjoyable amusement park ride (so to speak) of a film.

Posted 3/7/2004 05:27:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
GREAT MOMENTS IN RESTAURANT REVIEWS: The Four Seasons it ain't, but according to this critic, this large regional chain offers "a unique dining experience", however, he "does not recommend it for a first date. Not if you are planning on a second date."

Posted 3/7/2004 05:18:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
JOHN F***ING KERRY: The saga continues.

Posted 3/7/2004 04:51:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
CITIZEN GIBSON: The Passion has now grossed $212,034,000, according to Box Office Mojo. One reason why a lot of "Old Hollywood" (to coin a Rumsfeldian-sounding phrase) may hate Mel Gibson is that he broke the cardinal rule in Hollywood--never spend your own money on a project--and his $26 million risk paid it off for him, in spades. That's more than Orson Welles could ever say. As I wrote a couple of years ago:

Welles was far from blacklisted--a far, far too loaded a word to describe what happened to his career post-Kane. He worked constantly in movies, both in front of and behind the cameras. He just couldn't come to grips with the seemingly obvious fact that movies have to turn a profit, which means they have to connect with a mass audience. Even Kubrick, the most avant-garde of American directors, knew instinctively that he had to build his films around large, popular themes - nuclear hysteria, outer space, horror, Vietnam, and sex. (His one film that didn't have a theme that a large audience could immediately tap into, Barry Lyndon, failed to turn a profit in the US. He wouldn't make that mistake again for the three films he had left in him.) Welles couldn't find a plot or protagonist that a mass audience could bond with.

Not that The Passion is on the same level as a film as Citizen Kane is--but Welles had the best studio technicians at RKO working on it, and Herman Mankiewicz and John Houseman to help him with the screenplay. Without the access to craftsmen of those caliber again, Welles would spend most of the money he made as an extremely in-demand Hollywood character actor to make his own films, but never live up to Kane's potential. In contrast to Welles, in terms of finding a character and a story that connects with an audience, Gibson's movie, funded by his own efforts as an extremely in-demand Hollywood actor, has certainly accomplished everything its maker set out to achieve. But will Hollywood get the message?

Posted 3/7/2004 12:30:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
BACK ON TUESDAY, we wrote, "Appeasement seems to be the order of the day with Colonel Sanders". Andrew Stuttaford says that McDonald's is doing some appeasing of their own.

Posted 3/7/2004 12:05:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE ADS AND THEIR AFTERMATH: Newsday reports, "More than a dozen families who lost relatives in the Sept. 11 attacks released a letter Saturday declaring their support for President Bush and his use of images of the destroyed World Trade Center in campaign ads". Meanwhile, John Kerry personally believes that they're "inappropriate". (And to prove his point, Kerry will stop using references to his own war service in his speeches and advertising....right?) The press really tipped their hand to their partisan nature shortly before Schwarzenegger's election to the governership of California, and then left no doubt when they jumped all over Bush's National Guard record. Was the concentrated and immediate nature of the press's attack on President Bush's 9/11 ads launched by a coordinated response by the DNC or Kerry's team? If so, it deserves to backfire, and badly. If we're lucky, this most recent attack by the press may have just woken up the Red States, and the many good people on the left side of the aisle, who think that the war on terror is one that's worth fighting. President Bush didn't start it, but he deserves to finish it.

Posted 3/7/2004 01:15:36 AM by Edward Driscoll
MATT DRUDGE BEGS TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED: Just as when the Professor went on vacation and left a holiday snapshot prominently displayed on his Website, somebody's going to have a lot of fun with this picture of Drudge.