Last year, there were 409 tornadoes:

"So far some 730 tornadoes have touched down this year, more than double the number for all of last year."

—ABC's Bill Weir on yesterday's Good Morning America, who--of course--blames the "more than double" increase on global warming.

I doubt Cindy Crawford would argue with those calculations.

(Nor would this fellow, but for different reasons.)

Ann Althouse--with an assist from the maestro behind Operation Chaos--reflects on Bob Novak's report that Michelle won't let Barack nominate Hillary as his veep:

Do powerful women hate to see other women succeed? Do they want to be the only woman? Or do you think "sisterhood is powerful" at the highest levels? Surely, Michelle Obama has plenty of reason to hate Hillary, but don't you think she wants to be the First Lady? If a woman is Vice President, that woman seems to be above the President's wife. She'd be the first lady.

Michelle would even have competition as the top spouse of the land, what with a former President roaming in and about the VP mansion. He'd catch the spotlight, project the glamour.

And speaking of Bill Clinton... Hillary certainly made it her business over the years to keep other women down whenever those women interfered with her plan to ascend to power via the spousal role. There was no powerful sisterhood then. And now: turnabout! Turnabout is... a bitch.

Heh.

As the Mirror Universe equivalent to the history of the American left that Kathy Shaidle reviewed today, Orrin Judd has an lengthy post with multiple reviews of leftwing author Rick Pearlstein's new book on Richard Nixon, including George Will's take:

Perlstein repeatedly explains Nixon’s or other people’s behavior as arising from an Orthogonian resentment of Franklins, including establishment figures as different as Alger Hiss and Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon “co-opted the liberals’ populism, channeling it into a white middle-class rage at the sophisticates, the well-born, the ‘best circles.’” By stressing the importance of Nixon’s character in shaping events, and the centrality of resentments in shaping Nixon’s character, Perlstein treads a dead-end path blazed by Hofstadter, who seemed not to understand that condescension is not an argument. Postulating a link between “status anxiety” and a “paranoid style” in American politics — especially conservative politics — Hofstadter dismissed the conservative movement’s positions as mere attitudes that did not merit refutation. Perlstein, too, gives these ideas short shrift.

As the pollster Samuel Lubell had already noted before the 1952 election, “the inner dynamics of the Roosevelt coalition have shifted from those of getting to those of keeping.” Perlstein keenly sees that some liberals “developed a distaste” for the social elements they had championed, now that those elements were “less reliably downtrodden” and less content to be passively led by liberal elites.

The masses bought television sets and enjoyed what they watched. But Newton Minow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (and formerly Adlai Stevenson’s administrative assistant) declared television a “vast wasteland,” thereby implicitly scolding viewers who enjoyed it. When New York was becoming a lawless dystopia, with crime, drugs and homelessness spoiling public spaces, August Heckscher, the patrician commissioner of parks under Mayor John Lindsay, sniffily declared that people clamoring for law and order were “scared by the abundance of life.”

A Newsweek cover story on Louise Day Hicks, who led opposition to forced busing of school children in Boston, described her supporters as “a comic-strip gallery of tipplers and brawlers and their tinseled overdressed dolls ... the men queued up to give Louise their best, unscrewing cigar butts from their chins to buss her noisily on the cheek, or pumping her arm as if it were a jack handle under a truck.”

Perlstein deftly deploys such judgments to illustrate what the resentful resented. Unfortunately, he seems to catch the ’60s disease of rhetorical excess.

Orrin--who knows a thing or two about book reviews himself--also makes a great observation:

I'm only in the early stages of reading Friend Perlstein's book but am struck by a potentially fatal flaw in his thesis that's implied in the review above. With his expected honesty, Mr. Perlstein initially identifies Nixonland as the sort of Red America that the Adlai Stevenson eggheads found themselves stuck in ad unable to comprehend in the 50s. That this part of the metaphor endures--is indeed a seemingly innate part of the culture--is reflected not just in his own essays about contemporary politics but in books by his friends and fellow Brights, like Thomas Frank's unintentionally hilarious, What's the Matter with Kansas.

On the other hand, the sort of violent divisiveness that he associates with Nixonland rather conspicuously developed at the exact time that Richard Nixon was not a central part of the national political scene. Inner-city riots, assassinations, student demonstrations, radical Left terrorism--all of these social plagues arose during the Johnson/Great Society years, the pinnacle of the Left's ascendancy. Even the initial violent reactions were led by Democrats--like LBJ sending federal troops into Detroit or Mayor Daley breaking up protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention. If anything, as Mr. Douthat suggests above, the return of Richard Nixon --a liberal Republican--in 1968 might be seen as an attempt by American voters to restore the social calm and consensus of earlier eras. Richard Nixon, at least in his final incarnation, should probably be considered an effect of the social breakdown of the Liberal 60s, rather than a cause of anything much. [That's consistent with this Time article from January of 1970--Ed]

Of course, this perspective does tend to undermine the thesis that the consensus was never retrieved, but consider too that Nixon was followed by a Democrat who ran to the Right of where he and Gerald Ford had governed. The only other Democrat elected president since 1964 was likewise an Evangelical Southern governor. And, while Carter and Clinton only won very narrowly, several Republicans since have run up pretty big margins. The problem would seem to be a reluctance on the part of Mr. Perlstein and company to accept that the consensus has been restored but has shifted back to where it was pre-Depression, fairly far to the Right side of moderate. Thus, even when Democrats won back Congress in the 2006 midterm they've ended up governing little differently than Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay did.

It is instructive also to look at where the most divisive point in our politics is today: the racial/tribal divide between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. This is an entirely predictable function of the identity politics that still characterizes much of the Left, although Mr. Obama tried desperately to run as a cipher, lest voters discover his pastor and his politics and, inevitably, reject him as just another Northern liberal too far out of the mainstream to elect president.

Orrin writes that he'll be posting a more detailed review soon.

Carol Platt Liebau makes an interesting observation--that while "Democrats and Barack's friends in the media will attempt to portray any opposition to his candidacy as nothing more than racism...Obama's troubles attracting white votes seem to postdate the Wright imbroglio":

Everyone knows that Democrats and Barack's friends in the media will attempt to portray any opposition to his candidacy as nothing more than racism. But Stuart Taylor makes an important point -- that Obama's troubles attracting white votes seem to postdate the Wright imbroglio, noting that Barack "easily won the caucuses in overwhelmingly white Iowa on January 3 and, over the next seven weeks, captured the white male vote in Maryland, Virginia, and Wisconsin and as many white male voters as Clinton did in South Carolina."

Here's the question: Would Americans be offended if a white pastor had blamed 9/11 on The United States? Yes -- in fact, the regrettable former rector at my church did the same thing, and his congregants were appalled. Would some (at least) Americans be taken aback at the news that a candidate's close confidant (and spiritual advisor) had said, "God d**n America"? Of course.

All this has taken a toll. One anecdote: A close friend of mine, a moderate Republican who was initially receptive-to-enthusiastic about the Obama candidacy recently wrote me, "I'm rethinking it after this Wright thing. And his wife is now proud to be an American for the first time? Forget her." If some white voters are turning from Obama, it's not because of his skin color. It's because of the views of those closest to him -- and what they suggest about the candidate's own views.

Just for the record: It's not Obama's Republican opponents who have made an issue of his race -- or who have most damaged his candidacy. It's his closest compatriots (like Wright and Mrs. Obama) and his intra-party competitors (like Clinton).

Much like John Kerry thought he would get a pass in 2004 on his early 1970s Winter Soldier salad days, Obama seems to have thought he'd get one as well from the MSM for his own radical chic past. (And he essentially did: note that the far left directed their outrage not at Rev. Wright himself, but at Sean Hannity, who originally exposed his rhetoric a year ago.) Little did Obama know that Rev. Wright craved the national spotlight almost as much as himself.

Richard Brooks of the Times of London writes that Tom Cruise's Valkyrie is being pushed back a year:

The fortunes of Hollywood actor Tom Cruise have suffered a blow with the news that his next big film has been postponed until 2009.

The release of Valkyrie, which tells the story of the 1944 assassination plot against Hitler, was first postponed from this summer to the autumn and is now not expected to appear until next year.

“We were originally expecting the film to be released in June,” said a senior executive at one of Britain’s leading cinema chains.

“I know there have been all sorts of problems with this production and we will not be screening it at all this year.”

The film is not only a blow to Cruise as an actor but in his more recent incarnation as a movie mogul at United Artists (UA), the studio which made the film.

One critic in Hollywood has declared “Valkyrie is dead”, with another arguing that the film’s problems could also wreck the revival of UA.

Not to mention totally bumming out these fellas.

At Pajamas HQ, Kathy Shaidle, who blogs at Five Feet Fury, has an article-length review of Daniel Flynn’s A Conservative History of the American Left:

The Left boasts enthusiasm and energy to spare, but its inability to learn from the past is its fatal flaw. As Flynn explains in the book’s introduction, “because of the suspicions of tradition inherent within radicalism, [the Left] largely ignores that past.” After all, visionaries “preoccupied with the triumphal future cannot pause to learn from the mistakes of the past.”

This refusal to check the rear-view mirror is reflected in the Left’s compulsion for coining extravagant, inapt, and frequently offensive historical analogies: these days, every conservative leader is “Hitler”, every war is “Vietnam,” and every petulant protester is the new “Rosa Parks.”

As Flynn points out to devastating effect, the sheer stupidity of such comparisons should, by rights, be enough to cripple them as rhetorical devices; alas, widespread historical illiteracy and an aversion to criticizing “protected” identity groups render healthy mockery almost impossible.

Read the whole thing; as Kathy notes, Flynn’s book sounds like it would make an exceptional double-feature alongside Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, which itself is a potent centennial history.

Update: I should add Benjamin Wiker's 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help to make the above titles into a pretty nifty troika.

Roger L. Simon writes:

I am trying to figure out more about Barack Obama because I think there is something strangely disconnected about the man. One theory I have... and I welcome others... is that he doesn't take religion seriously at all--not just for himself, but in general. It is only something to be exploited. Therefore he thinks the words of Jeremiah Wright are "just for show" and he is free to cherry-pick what he wants and finds useful. Simultaneously, he doesn't believe Ahmadinejad or Hamas, thinks their religious principles are baloney, just like Jeremiah Wright's, and that they are simply exploiting them. Since it's all a schuck, the Islamofascists can be reasoned with. I couldn't imagine a worse man for our times.

Meanwhile, Stanley Kurtz reads through multiple back issues of Trinity United's newsletter (started by Rev. Wright in the early 1980s) and comes to the obvious conclusion: "What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?--I answer, Obama knew everything, and he's known it for ages."

(Or else he sure slept through a lot of sermons...)

As Obama tacks back to the center-left, the New York Times goes right along with the flip-flop; Walter Duranty could not be reached for comment.

While I'd call it an attempt at airbrushing, Ace has a much more colorful--and appropriately scatological--description.

Yet another Hillary supporter uttering quotes that would be right at home at the MRC--in this case, Hillary herself!

ABC News' Eloise Harper reports: An adoring group of more than 1,000 people greeted Sen. Hillary Clinton and her daughter today at a fundraiser in New York City. She thanked them for their support and later told the group that she is going to finish the nominating process.

"I want you to know how grateful I am for your support and how much you have sustained me throughout this campaign," she said. "But it has been a joy. Now I know that may be hard to believe, but if you just take the advice that I give to my own mother, and that is: Just turn off the television."

Hillary and her supporters are complaining that the media is in the tank for the candidate further to the left than she is. But hey, remember six years ago when her husband's former vice president was saying this?

And speaking of vice-presidents, at this rate, how long before Hillary or her supporters start calling the media--which kept their presidency alive in the 1990s--nattering nabobs of negativism?

Father Coughlin could not be reached for comment:

"All we're doing is going into the basket and saying, 'Damn, what did they do in '32, what did they do in '34, what did they do in '36,' and we're pulling them out, dusting them off, giving them a paint job, correcting the fenders a bit, and we're using them," Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) said. "To get us through the horrendous problems we may have over the next several years, we've got to make these old programs work, and we've got to be as inventive as hell."

Nice to know that with the Dow Jones about 12,700 points higher than it was in 1932, the left still sees nothing but Hoovervilles into eternity.

From Clinton-aide Lanny Davis's interview with the Politico yesterday:

Davis said he told a producer several times before getting on-air that he wanted to offer a counterpoint to CNN’s panel, which he thinks is too pro-Obama.

How can Davis say that? Why, other than literally swooning over him, they're completely objective and neutral!

Wow:

Another dividend from Operation Chaos, and Hillary's concurrent scorched earth final campaign days; I hope Team McCain puts together ads as potent as this one. (Or these ads that the GOP is rolling out, which apparently haven't been endorsed by the McCain camp.) On the other hand, salt this one away for the fall, where it's sure to be pressed into service again.

Another pleasant boomer/Gen X collective childhood memory ruined by postmodern Hollywood:

MAYBE every generation gets its own "Tron."

"Speed Racer" comes to us from the creators of "The Matrix," and as my cerebral cortex was reeling from the onslaught of its jelly-belly colors and "Lucy in the Sky" graphics, I wondered if there was some parallel universe where it might be considered an entertaining experience. Maybe Japan?

This adventurously awful film is awful in many ways at once.

Or to paraphrase this extremely perceptive media critic duo, this film sucks--but it sucks in ways we've never seen before. It sucks in new and unusual ways--especially once you get past its Tron-on-acid visuals.

I think Jonathan Chait is actually pretty astonished himself, when he writes:

People who thought they knew Hillary Clinton have gazed in astonishment: What has she become? The answer is, a conservative populist.

Orrin Judd looks back on her husband's two successful elections won with endless conservative populist rhetoric and wonders: What took her so long?

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg notes that Hillary's rhetoric may sound populist in the (presumably) waning days of her campaign, it's certainly not conservative.

Astonishingly, via the Huffington Post:

We may now understand why Barack does not wear a flag lapel pin. He's afraid that Bill Ayers will stomp on him.

Heh. You know, some blogger should make a video exploring all of that ancient Radical Chic rhetoric coming home to roost.

Keeping wide swatches of nearby sources of oil off-limits to drilling only ensures that Americans will be paying the Pelosi Premium for some time to come.

As Jim Geraghty writes, this would be a slam-dunk issue for John McCain to exploit--so naturally, don't hold your breath waiting for him to take it on.

Paging Theodore Dalrymple: Grist for your next essay on the decline and fall of western civilization is waiting right here.

John Brummett of the Arkansas News Bureau writes that because "Bill Clinton has behaved ineptly and inanely" on the campaign trail, "His wife has taken to sending him to small towns, like the Republicans did to conceal Dan Quayle in 1988."

But Bill may not be the only one making Quayle-esque gaffes on the campaign stump:

Victor Davis Hanson writes, "Almost imperceptibly to the McCain campaign, I think Obama has already established quite new messianic rules of engagement that will be difficult to overturn". But "the eventual downside for Obama is that the loftier the prophet, the more transparent his all-too-human transgressions."

Update: John Hinderaker is on a similar wavelength:

This is much worse than anything Dan Quayle ever did. Needless to say, these bizarre moments won't be promoted by the media as evidence that Obama is stupid. But they'll be worth keeping in mind in the fall, when every time John McCain misspeaks, the Democrats' whispering campaign will suggest that he's getting senile.

Win or lose, come November, McCain may wonder why he spent so much time cultivating the MSM, as they inexorably turn on him.

Just to follow on from my post from this morning, here's yet another article that would easily have fit in on Newsbusters, except that its chief source of quotes is a liberal who is complaining about the partisan nature of CNN's political coverage:

When Clinton supporter Lanny Davis appeared on CNN during primary night, shortly before 10 p.m., there was a peculiar exchange with host Anderson Cooper.

Cooper: Lanny, let me start off with you. We haven't heard from you tonight. Your take on Barack Obama's speech earlier?
Davis: You haven't heard from me tonight. And I'm not sure — I’m not sure you want to hear from me tonight but —
Cooper: We heard from Paul Begala. This is your big chance.
Davis: Well, actually, I don't think we heard very much from Paul Begala. We did hear an awful —
Cooper: All part of the conspiracy against Hillary Clinton, I suppose.

During the Election Night broadcast, there was palpable tension between Davis and CNN reporters and panelists on camera — and apparently, with producers off camera.

Looking back, Davis said by phone this afternoon, he considers it “the worst experience I ever had on television.”

What bothers Davis most is that CNN is the network with which he’s had the longest relationship, where he’s maintained close friendships through the years, and that he's always considered middle-of-the-road in its coverage. But in his opinion, CNN has not treated Hillary Clinton fairly in the ’08 race.

Formerly special counsel to President Bill Clinton, Davis admits wholeheartedly to being a partisan and strongly supports Clinton against Obama.

So what happened on Tuesday night?

Davis, by his account, was invited to appear on the CNN panel in New York but declined because of a family commitment — his son’s baseball practice in Maryland. Instead, he opted to participate by remote from the network’s D.C. studio.

He was instructed to arrive around 8:30 p.m., he said, in order to take over the pro-Clinton position once Paul Begala left. So Davis left the baseball practice early in order to arrive at the studio on time, but he didn’t make it on air until almost 10 p.m.

A CNN spokesperson said that Davis was scheduled to go on-air at 9pm, but CNN didn't go to him or any commentator during Sen. Obama's speech in the 9pm hour, just as no commentators were on-air during Sen. Clinton's speech later the same night.

Davis said he told a producer several times before getting on-air that he wanted to offer a counterpoint to CNN’s panel, which he thinks is too pro-Obama.

Regarding the panel's make-up, Davis said that he believes Gloria Borger, David Gergen, Donna Brazile and Carl Bernstein are all tougher on Clinton than on her rival. And he maintains that Roland Martin is definitely a “partisan for Obama.” (Martin has not official endorsed Obama and is not labeled as such on the network,)

According to a post found via Protein Wisdom and Hot Air, Martin is apparently quite a partisan for Reverend Wright, in any case.

More from Davis:

Regarding CNN’s competitors, Davis said that MSNBC is “shameless about their bias toward Obama,” and Fox has been the fairest — which is saying a lot coming from a self-described member of the Democratic Party’s left wing.

“Fox, no matter how much you might criticize an ideological bent, in this campaign, they have been religiously middle-of-the-road, point-counterpoint,” Davis said.

And that’s what Davis said he expects from CNN, the network where he’s had “the longest history, best friends, and most respect.”

And that's the rub, isn't it? Like most in old media or who orbit closest to it, they don't object that it's partisan anymore--they're merely upset when it's stacked against their politician.

This could make for one of those cheesy guilty pleasure National Enquirer-type surveys:

Choice of Hillary Metaphor

Reveals Your Inner Personality!

Is Hillary:

• Norma Desmond?
• Your psycho ex-girlfriend?
• Richard Nixon?
• Don Corleone?
• Big Brother?
• Or is she simply everything you hate about yourself?

You make the call!

Update: This one arrived too late to make the initial cut: Is Hillary Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction?

More: This was inevitable, and in highly questionable taste, to be honest

Travis Kavulla notes that last night, "Apparently a laser light show – or, rather, a piece of 'illumination art' – was projected onto the National Cathedral" in Washington, DC:

Last night, [Gerry Hofstetter, a 45-year-old artist from Zurich] ran a series of glass plates through a 6,000-volt projector and said artisty things like "Light is hope, fire is energy. These colors mean hope and energy."

Light is hope? I only wish more in the artistic class still believed that.

James Taranto writes:

For all the hype about Barack Obama being some new kind of politician, in one respect he is very similar to recent Democratic presidential nominees: He takes criticism very badly, responding to it by getting both defensive and nasty. It is a most unattractive quality.

And remember, he's the optimistic one in the family:

Michelle Obama: …working in some of the toughest neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago, worked for years in neighborhoods where people had a reason to give up hope, because their jobs had been lost, steel mills shut down, living in brown fields left by those closed steel plants, unsafe streets, schools deteriorating, grandparents raising grandkids. Barack spent years working with churches, busing single mothers down to City Hall to help them find their voice, building the kind of operations on the ground, just like he’s doing in this race, block by block, person by person. Now you tell me whether there’s anybody in this race who can claim to have made the same choice with their lives. You tell me. But I think that Barack Obama is the only person that can claim that kind of choice…so trust me, we’ve seen it all. Barack has seen it all.

Hugh Hewitt: Mark Steyn?

Mark Steyn: (laughing) Well, you know, that’s…I don’t know…Chicago doesn’t sound like part of America. It sounds like we need to fly in some U.N. relief agency. They should all pull out of Burma and fly into these derelict parts of Chicago. The fact is, community organizer is a bogus term. She ought to knock it off. Real people…one of the most pathetic aspects of this race is that somehow, a guy like Mitt Romney, who runs successful companies, he’s regarded as Mr. Bloated Plutocrat like the guy in the top hat on the Monopoly board. A guy like that actually makes a contribution to people’s lives, to generating the great wealth in corporate America that pays for everything else. And a community organizer, which most functioning communities in the United States don’t have the need for, is an entirely bogus term. She is becoming, I miss Teresa Heinz Kerry.

HH: (laughing)

MS: God bless here. I used to love going to John Kerry events, and John Kerry would be droning I say to George Bush, bring it on, and Teresa used to stand there next to him looking board out of her skull. God bless her. She was a, you know, she’s a genuine, a very genuine woman. And Michelle Obama by contrast seems to have all the condescension of Teresa Heinz Kerry, plus this weird bitterness and anger. I think she’s a very strange woman.

Ascending towards the eschaton, one is always likely to get the vapors.

From Peggy Noonan's fingers to this terrific video on YouTube:

Operation Chaos: the gift that keeps on giving. At least until it doesn't.

Good question. Let's ask Bill Ayers next time we see him, or any of these folks.

(H/T: IP)

On Wednesday night, as I was mixing down the elements for this week's PJM Political (which you can listen to here--and yes, I did get far too silly writing the headline)--I listened to some of the audio from Rush Limbaugh, the first time I had done so in a while. As a result of Operation Chaos, he's clearly having more fun than he's had in quite some time and this essay in Slate by Jack Shafer is one of the many inadvertent byproducts of it:

My intention here is less to light a candle for the Clinton candidacy—which remains the long shot it was even after her Pennsylvania primary win in late April—than to give Russert and company the hot foot for their dramatic exuberance.

Whether covering politics, the stock market, or sports, television reporters live inside the moment, and the fundamental questions before them are always "who's winning, who's losing, and why" (which just happens to be the tag line of Slate's "Politics" department). If a TV reporter can peg a winner, he will. If no winners are in attendance, he'll identify a loser. If no winner or losers can be found, he'll drum up that somebody has "gained" momentum. The medium doesn't reward procrastinators or qualifiers.

Although TV reporters may expect thing X to happen while they're on the air, they plan for contingencies Y and Z. Before going on camera, they stuff their cheeks with a huge assortment of pithy insights so that, no matter what happens, they have something smart to mouth. The most excitable of the TV news chipmunks was usually Dan Rather, whose election night scripts—"Bush is sweeping through the South like a big wheel through a cotton field"—covered events that ultimately may have occurred only in parallel universes.

When Russert exclaimed the inevitability of Obama's nomination, it was an act of recall, not an act of cognition. At the moment he bestowed the nomination upon Obama, his network had yet to call Indiana for Clinton. Shuffling his mental notes and calculating the possibility of an Obama victory in Indiana, how could he resist speaking the words he had composed in his head two months ago?

Russert of course, a former aid to Mario Cuomo, came to NBC via the revolving door between Democrats and old media (See also: Stephanopoulos, George; and Matthews, Chris). Jeff Jarvis and James Wolcott, who have each openly declared for Hillary, have also recently clung bitterly to similar opinions. I don't know if Shafer is a Hillary or an Obama man (perhaps he's a McCain backer, but I would tend to doubt it, based on where he's writing), but when the above could have been written for National Review Online, or Brent Bozell's Media Research Center, (including its subsidiary, Newsbusters), it's been fascinating to watch the center-left turn on their own mass media, as a result of this extended primary season.

Mark Hemmingway asks, "How bad are things in the newspaper industry? See prayingforpapers.com."

I know there are no atheists in fox holes and unemployment lines, but I wonder what these people would say about that site?

They call it witchcraft...Or the reality party, depending upon who you talk to.

"The way the Japanese could tell they were losing WWII was that the great victories reported by their media were getting closer and closer to home. Our media problem is like a fun-house mirror version of this - the way we can tell we are winning is that our crushing defeats are happening less often and to different enemies."

Elsewhere, Cindy Crawford discovers her inner General Jack D. Ripper:

According to Crawford and the “Thirsty for Change” Web site, Americans use 50 billion water bottles a year.

“Fifty billion in America and only 50 percent are recycled,” Crawford said. “So that’s like 38 billion that aren’t recycled.”

The Exurban League explores the new math:

Let's see... 50 Billion x 50% = 25 Billion, subtract the loss factor, add in the safety margin, carry the missing supermodel brain cells... yep, 38 billion!

Do we know if Cindy has any thoughts on fluoridation?

(And don't even ask her about toilet paper...)

Update: Liberty Peak Lodge crosses the streams: check out the caption on the photo above this post.

With his rapidly becoming infamous quote Tuesday night on CNN that Democrats couldn't win in November with a coalition of “eggheads and African-Americans,” Paul Begala inadvertently reveals his inner-Stevenson.

But what would President Merkin Muffley Say?

Extreme Mortman has some thoughts on--to coin a phrase--democracy, whiskey, sexy:

Happy 60th birthday, Israel!

Democracy. Military might. Strong, reliable ally of America. Front-lines in the global war on terror.

But more important, as CNN put it, “Israel is hip, sexy, and fun.”

Or as P.J. O'Rourke once wrote:

"We're not being sexist here," my friend insisted. "It's not that looks matter per se. It's just that beautiful women are always on the cutting edge of social trends. Remember how many beautiful women were in the anti-war movement twenty years ago? n the yoga classes fifteen years ago? At the discos ten years ago? On Wall Street five years ago? Where the beautiful women are is where the country is headed."

All of which makes quite a contrast to the original No Fun League.

In the Atlantic, Ross Douthat writes, "the GOP is now a working-class party":

There are two important points to be made about these numbers, and the deeper reality they reflect. The first, which you hear around these parts a lot, is that the GOP is now a working-class party (with class defined by education and culture more than income, just to be clear; there are plenty of skilled craftsmen who make more money than teachers and journalists and academics), and that it needs to start acting like one if it's going to rebuild its shattered majority.

If the first half of that equation sounds familiar, it should: it's a theme that we wrote about four years ago when the GOP, and its incumbent president were riding high. After the midterms--and with more trouble potentially on the way--Douthat adds:

The second is that the GOP can't only be a working-class party; just as the famous Judis-Texeira emerging Democratic majority is built around the mass upper class and the poor but depends on winning some working-class votes to put it over the top, so any future "Party of Sam's Club" Republican majority is going to need to win back at least some of the mass-upper-class votes that the party has hemorrhaged during the Bush years.

Hopefully it won't take another Carter-esque extended economic malaise this time.

Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos", which featured voters from one party crossing over--perfectly legally--to vote in the other party's primary elections. The resultant furor from Democrats has led to unintentionally hilarious comparisons to"radio broadcasts that incited violence in Rwanda and Kenya". And journalists from the original Blue State chiming in (translation here). And even former presidential candidates saying stuff like this:

David Plouffe and a series of big gun endorsers are holding a conference call to stress the scale of last night's victory.

"He clearly did more than he had to and she did not achieve what she had to," said Senator John Kerry.

Both Plouffe and Kerry stressed the importance of the Limbaugh Effect.

"Rush Limbaugh was tampering with the primary," Kerry said "If it was not for Republicans taking Democratic ballots, he would have won," he said of Obama.

So we won't be reading any articles like this in 2012, right?

Of course we will. But the spittle-flecked hypocrisy generated this year when the Florsheim is on the other foot will be fun to look back on when we do.

Tim Graham looks at Tim Russert, spin-meister:

Drudge focused the World Wide Web on Tim Russert's arrogant "Arise, Sir Loin of Beef" declaration that the Democratic race is over and "no one's gonna dispute it." The first words out of Russert's mouth this morning on NBC were "I cannot find an objective Democrat who does not think this race is over."

Tim Russert is a Democrat, but not an "objective" one. This declaration is spin, not reality, especially when we know the Clinton Chutzpah Express can avoid the "reality" obstacles that cause every other political family to call it quits. I don't recall Russert telling the country that the Clinton presidency was "over" in 1998, and that only the Clintons didn't realize it, that "no one's gonna dispute it."

Regardless of where political reality lands, what people should see in that Drudge clip and the NBC clip this morning is Tim Russert asserting himself as President of the News. People should see that this is an intensely political press that calculates every word it says and every story it covers and every poll it commissions. Russert and his colleagues don't want to just observe. They want to run the country. They want to have the power to make and break presidents. They want to tell the people to follow their robotic orders and deeply drink of the "conventional wisdom" they manufacture. "Objective" is not an adjective to them; it is a noun. Their objective today is to clear the path and get the Democrats back in the White House.

Compare Russert's firm, Kent Brockman-like The Race Is Over statement with the endless interjections and biases from a fellow MSM'er when he couldn't believe the race was over in 2000.

"It's got to hurt when George McGovern says you can't win."

Update: Jim Geraghty waxes nostalgic for "the good old days when you could buy a politician, and they would stay bought":

Why does anybody trust George McGovern?

He just turned on Hillary, rescinded his endorsement of her, endorsed Obama, and called on her to leave the race.

And he does it after the Clinton family foundation gave $25,000 to support the McGovern Library and Center for Leadership and Public Service in Mitchell, South Dakota in early 2007.

Ingrate.

Heh.^TM

The Black Panthers and Weathermen (aka Weather Underground) were anarchistic paramilitary far left groups from the late 1960s, whose ties crossed at least once in 1970. They're resurfacing again though in a surprising place: each has been referenced via Barack Obama's presidential campaign, particlarly the latter group. Back in February, the Politico's Ben Smith noted:

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious — and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.

Now, as Obama runs for president, what two guests recall as an unremarkable gathering on the road to a minor elected office stands as a symbol of how swiftly he has risen from a man in the Hyde Park left to one closing in fast on the Democratic nomination for president.

“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.”

Obama and Palmer “were both there,” he said.

Obama’s connections to Ayers and Dorhn have been noted in some fleeting news coverage in the past. But the visit by Obama to their home — part of a campaign courtship — reflects more extensive interaction than has been previously reported.

And Tom Maguire also uncovered another connection:

The Obama/Ayers soundbite is this: Obama and Ayers (a professor of education) worked together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge for several years in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to reform Chicago's public schools. The extent of their relationship is not clear, since Obama has been opaque on this topic both in a televised debate and at his website. However, Ayers was instrumental in founding the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Obama was the group's first chairman, so there is something being concealed there.

And it's not like Hillary Clinton is without sin in this department, herself.

(Earlier Silicon Graffiti videos can be found here.)

One great thing about election years in the post-9/11 era: the MSM really isn't afraid to let it all hang out. As Kathryn-Jean Lopez noted last week:

CNN’s “news” coverage on Sunday night went out of its way to be as unfair and unbalanced as possible. They aired Wright live. During the fiery speech, Wright plugged CNN “anchor and special correspondent” Soledad O’Brien and “long-term friend” CNN analyst Roland Martin. Both O’Brien and Martin appeared on-air after the event, discussing how funny and effective Wright was. As they explained to viewers how to understand Wright’s infamous “God damn America” comment, evening anchor Rick Sanchez insisted viewers keep watching replay after replay and apology after apology for Wright. “I would imagine the people watching [on TV] would say, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize the guy had two masters degree and a Ph.D. I didn’t realize he spoke five languages.’ ” And that changes “God damn America” for you, doesn’t it? That appears to be CNN’s hope. O’Brien continued raving about the speech, “It was very funny. It was hilarious at times.” And in the morning, O’Brien was back, calling Sunday night a “homerun” for Wright.

Which you can watch here. As I wrote shortly afterwards, the media will have to go into backwards-reverse-somersault Olympic-level fip-flops to go from gushing over Wright to tossing him under the bus.

And here you go! The CNN anchor who interviewed O'Brien for her "home run" moment last Monday, is today telling Obama that his network is a "Wright Free Zone".

In the tank? Just a tad.

"1984 -- A user manual for lefties; a warning for the rest of us":

Just as Jack Torrance was trapped in the Overlook Hotel for all eternity, Stephen King appears to doomed to relive "Jon Carry's" gaffe from 2006.

Need to raise your blood pressure in a hurry? Just check out the photo that Marathon Pundit found of Bill Ayers--in whose home Obama launched his first political campaign in 1995--dancing on top of a crumpled American flag.

(Via Hot Air.)

From New York magazine comes a piece titled, "About That Crush on Obama: If Barack is out of touch with America, then the media must be too."

As Orrin Judd writes, "Holy Master of the Obvious, Batman!"

When Saturday Night Live is more in touch with reality than you are, it might be time to get out of midtown Manhattan a bit more often. Maybe visit an Outback Steakhouse, and have some red meat in a Red State, if only for anthropological research purposes.

Update: Dean Barnett writes--and this isn't breaking news anymore, of course--that " the old media are dying":

One of the things that is killing them is their dual pretense of objectivity and neutrality. If Dan Rather was fairer or more objective than the Huffington Post, he had me fooled.

So what will rise from the ashes of the old media castles? What we'll likely have is a Wild West of information where news consumers will have to seek out truth on their own. This isn't unprecedented. After the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tombstone's two newspapers gave starkly different accounts of the affair, one championing the Earps and the other the Clanton/McLaury faction.

Horace Greeley ran for president at the tail end of his career and invented Andrew Jackson's most famous quote at the start of it ("John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"). Newsmen with an agenda are nothing new under the sun. And the market will reward those with a fidelity to the truth and punish those who demonstrate the opposite. Please see the pathetic Mr. Rather currently toiling away on something called HDNet for comforting evidence of that fact.

The prospect of not having a newspaper or news source of record may frighten some people since it would be new territory for the modern era. But far more frightening is a thankfully bygone era when a media powerhouse like Walter Cronkite could call the Vietnam War lost because he didn’t understand what had happened with the Tet Offensive. Worse still, so impeccable was his credibility that the country would believe him.

Better to have a nation of citizens actively engaged in finding the truth than assuming they're getting the truth from what's in fact an unreliable source.

Exactly.

(Via Maggie's Farm.)