On speechwriting, and writing

Ann Althouse plows through a gushing WaPo article about 27-year-old Obama speechwriter Jonathan Favreau and suggests we should be jealous of Favreau. I'm not.

When I hear bad speeches, like the ones President Bush has stumbled through the past eight years, I sometimes think I should have been a speechwriter. But after reading Matthew Scully's account of the Bush speechwriting shop -- and reading the insipid goo written by Michael Gerson over the past several months -- I realize I'm temperamentally unsuited for that kind of gig. Speechwriting seems to require a combination of masochism and extreme earnestness that I lack.

When I was 27, I was a sports editor at a twice-weekly newspaper in Calhoun, Ga. Except on football Fridays, I wrote practically every word in the sports section -- often more than a dozen bylines a week -- and also took most of the photos. Being a one-man sports section sort of accustomed me to working solo. I became utterly addicted to the byline and the proprietary sense of authorship the byline implies -- my story, damn it.

Cranking out thousands upon thousands of words week after week teaches you to write quick and forces you to discover every possible shortcut in reporting. And meeting deadline after deadline fills you with a certain fearless bravado as a writer: "What can I do? Ho-ho! What can't I do?"

Fame? If you've never been a small-town sports editor, buddy, you don't know what fame is. Tom Wolfe in all his white-suited glory was never adored like I was in Calhoun, Ga. Get habituated to that at age 27, and it becomes impossible to be satisfied writing without credit, as the speechwriter necessarily must.

Fast-forward a decade. Having gone to a daily, turned my attention to politics, conquered about every journalistic mountain within reach and won a national award, I came to Washington an accomplished 37-year-old -- and discovered I was nobody.

Whatever you did before you got to Washington may have been good enough to get you to Washington, but Washington is not impressed by your mere presence. Being the top speechwriter for the incoming administration elevates Favreau several notches above my own lowly sphere, but he's nobody in Washington, either. And he's just five years out of college.

Envy him? No. Pity him. If Favreau lasts two years in this vicious town, he'll have so many knives in his back he'll feel like a pin cushion. Worst of all, he's a True Believer. The falsehood and cruelty of Washington can shock even a thoroughgoing cynic, but what it does to True Believers . . . oh, pity him.

UPDATE: Tom Smith: "I think the speeches sound like they were written by a twenty something with a knack for writing speeches but who doesn't really know much. If [Favreau] is responsible for Hope, he has a lot to answer for." BTW, Tom, it wasn't Peggy Noonan who wrote "Tear down this wall," it was Peter Robinson.

UPDATE II: James Fallow, ex-wunderkind, objects to a factual error.

Crippled war-hero Democrat harassed

No, not Republicans hounding Max Cleland:

Protests at The New School, where a student uprising over the leadership of the university’s president, Bob Kerrey, led to clashes with the police and at least one arrest on Thursday morning, took another wild turn later in the day.
A little after 11:30 p.m., Mr. Kerrey emerged from a university building on Fifth Avenue south of 14th Street to a sea of a few hundred protesters chanting for his resignation. As Mr. Kerrey walked down Fifth Avenue toward 12th Street, about 30 protesters began following him, some of them shouting insults.
As the crowd’s pace quickened, so did Mr. Kerrey’s. Then, Mr. Kerrey, who lost a part of his leg in Vietnam and wears a prosthesis, broke into a run. The protesters gave chase. . . .
The student demonstration began Wednesday evening in the ground-floor cafeteria, with about 50 of them staying overnight citing a list of grievances with the Kerrey administration, dating back to his early support of the Iraq war.

Impeach Hope!

Dear President Obama . . .

. . . I need a federal research grant in order to conduct intensive investigation of findings recently reported by the University of L'Aquila.

Science! (H/T: Tigerhawk.)

What's the hottest part of the sun?

Page Three!

(Hat tip: Pirate's Cove. Joke: Benny Hill.)

UPDATE: More Christina Hendricks, because the blogosphere demands it.

Quote of the day

"We could find pictures of Obama spooning Blagojevich on a bed of cash and the MSM would respond by launching a hard-hitting investigation to find out exactly which pairs of Sarah Palin's pumps were purchased by the RNC."
-- Stephen Kruiser

Boreal supremacy

A phrase I coined several years ago, to describe that prejudice which assumes the superiority of all things Northern, applies perfectly to Michael Lind's proposal for the compulsory unionization of the South.

At AOSHQ, Dave in Texas pauses -- between moonshine-inspired reveries about his sister -- to ponder the ways of Yankee enlightenment. Jonah Goldberg remarks that Lind's "insinuation that the South isn't sufficiently 'American' is revealing." Indeed, this puts me in mind of an appropriate anecdote:

In his elegant memoir, Destruction and Reconstruction, General Richard Taylor recalled the occasion in 1865 when the duty fell to him to surrender the last Confederate army east of the Mississippi River. At Union headquarters, a German, wearing the uniform of a Yankee general and speaking in heavily accented English, lectured General Taylor that now that the war was over, Southerners would be taught "the true American principles." To which General Taylor -- the son of Zachary Taylor --- replied that he regretted that his grandfather, an officer in the Revolution, and his father, President of the United States, had not passed on to him these "true American principles."

UPDATE: Unionized prostitution? (Via CG.)

Thank you, Glenn Greenwald

Greenwald throws me some traffic with a response:

For obvious reasons, the most blindly loyal Bush followers of the last eight years are desperate to claim that nobody cares any longer about what happened during the Bush administration, that everyone other than the most fringe, vindictive Bush-haters is eager to put it all behind us, forget about it all and, instead, look to the harmonious, sunny future.

This is amusing. Greenwald is demanding war crimes prosecution of Bush administration officials and yet I am "desperate"? Frankly, I don't even give a damn. If I turned on the TV sometime next year to see Paul Wolfowitz in the dock at the Hague, I'd shrug in mute acceptance, and if I blogged about it, would do so in an insouciant way.

But that's never going to happen, which is why I can merrily mock Greenwald's frothing outrage. Nothing, not even a New York Times editorial, can turn this madness of the fanatical fringe into a "mainstream" project. The Democrats would never allow it, no more than they would allow Obama to withdraw too precipitously from Iraq.

The political winds have blown, and the system has encompassed that wind, directing it toward the recent resurgence of the Democratic Party, and smart Democrats know that the surest way to lose that favorable breeze would be to overplay their hand by pandering to the monstrous appetites of Greenwald and his ilk. Obama, Pelosi and Reid will all answer this idiotic demand in the only way it deserves to be answered: Fuck you, Glenn Greenwald.

UPDATE: Politics is about majorities. Politics is about the future. Greenwald's idiotic crusade aims to incite a passionate few about the past. In my original response to Greenwald, I tried to make this point by comparing his latest anti-Bush jihad to the way some on the Right spent years pushing conspiracy theories about the 1993 death of Vince Foster, long after it became clear to all sensible observers that -- like Oakland -- there was no there there. Judging from the comment field, some of Greenwald's readers are unaware of just how foolish they look now, let alone how foolish they'll look six months or a year from now.

If it makes you self-styled progressives happy to howl at the moon, don't let me stop you. Howl until dawn, sleep all day, then rise to howl again tomorrow night. The American majority has spent its fury at the Bush administration and does not share your passion for endless hindsight recrimination. The leadership of the Democratic Party understands this and -- just as they refused to satisfy your bloodlust against Joe Lieberman -- they will not support you in this mad effort to exhume the corpse of the Bush administration so that you may inflict posthumous injury upon the remains.

Do not, however, think for a moment that I mind being today's proxy scapegoat. Nor should you let my mockery of your madness shake you into sanity. Go, lemmings -- your cliff awaits you. And when you find yourself plunging downward, accelerating at 32 feet per second squared, remember who told you so, you damned fools.

UPDATE II: Jules Crittenden has fun at the expense of the New York Times.

UPDATE III: Just watched the end of "It's A Wonderful Life" with my wife and kids. Remember: Every time you hear a bell ring, a blogger gets an Instalanche!

UPDATE IV: God bless 'em: "If Obama Fails to Prosecute War Crimes, Is He A Criminal Too?" High crimes and misdemeanors! We eagerly await the Left's next bumper sticker: "Impeach Hope."

UPDATE V: Jules Crittenden offers helpful advice on how to deal with Greenwald, if you must. I think the key factor involved is the extreme self-seriousness of the man. And this is a habit he shares with many others on the Left. A lot of lefties don't get the self-deprecating humor of my mock braggodocio ("bon vivant and raconteur") and will make comments suggesting that I am actually being boastful. They simply can't conceive of someone not taking themselves seriously, because they are so very serious about their own selves.

An excessive concern with how one is perceived by others -- trying to conform the perception of others to your own self-perception -- is not "ego," but rather evidence of a damaged ego seeking some sort of validation. And being unable to joke about yourself is a characteristic trait of this brittle type of personality.

UPDATE VI (Sat. 12/20): Greenwald is like the gift that keeps on giving. Today, Instapundit links Crittenden, and I get yet another cascade of traffic.

Paul Weyrich, R.I.P.

Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation and later led the Free Congress Foundation, has died at age 66. As a writer, one of Weyrich's greatest contributions was his 1999 declaration, in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, that conservatives had lost the culture war:

In truth, I think we are caught up in a cultural collapse of historic proportions, a collapse so great that it simply overwhelms politics.

Weyrich's courage and wisdom will be missed. Michelle Malkin is among those paying tribute to a great leader of the conservative cause.

UPDATE: I met Weyrich while I was working at The Washington Times, and referenced his "cultural collapse" thesis in a column I wrote for the newspaper in 2001. One aspect of the collapse Weyrich decried was the rise of the celebrity culture, wherein the famous people on TV exercise more influence over our attitudes than do the ordinary people in our own real lives. And one incidental encounter with Mr. Weyrich a couple years ago highlighted how celebrity culture now pervades the conservative movement.

It was at Conservative Political Action Conference in 2006, and Weyrich had just received the Ashbrook Award for his contributions to the conservative cause. Weyrich and his family were leaving the ballroom where the award had been presented, and were attempting to negotiate the wheelchair ramp, Weyrich having been rendered paraplegic by an accident several years previously. Part of the difficulty that Weyrich and his relatives had their hands full with gift bags and other encumbrances and so, when I offered to assist, my task was to carry the large award plaque.

Honored to be of such assistance, I accompanied the Weyriches upstairs, through the lobby and to their car -- and returned to the banquet, shaking my head in disbelief. For you see, CPAC was crowded with College Republican kids who eagerly lined up to get autographs and have their pictures taken with conservative "superstars," the famous faces you see on Fox News. Yet there, in the crowded corridor outside the main ballroom, was one of the true giants of the cause, utterly unrecognized by these youngsters. Any of them might have spotted Weyrich's difficulty at the ramp and rendered assistance, but all they saw was an old man in a wheelchair.

The effects of the fame factor are strange and troubling, and since that incident with Weyrich, I've noticed it frequently. Ann Coulter can't go anywhere without security and her appearances at CPAC always draw a packed house. Yet I have seen many great leaders pass through the lobby and corridors of the Omni Shoreham all but unnoticed.

Last year, for example, I had the honor of meeting Phyllis Schlafly in the hotel hallway, as scores of young activists shuffled past without paying her the slightest attention. I'm sure Coulter herself would see this as an outrage -- my God, where would conservatism be had it not been for Schlafly? -- and yet such is the influence of TV-created fame that because Schlafly isn't a frequent guest on Fox, she is less known to young conservatives than, inter alia, Dick Morris.

And thus does the "cultural collapse" continue.

UPDATE: Linked at American Thinker. Thanks.

Dems scheme to raise California taxes

If it moves, tax it:

California's Democratic leaders were planning a vote today on a brazen proposal to raise gas, sales and income taxes through a series of legal maneuvers that would bypass the Legislature's minority Republicans.
The Democratic gambit, announced Wednesday, would raise $9.3 billion to ease the state's fiscal crisis by increasing sales taxes by three-fourths of a cent and gas taxes by 13 cents a gallon, starting in February. The plan would add a surcharge of 2.5% to
everyone's 2009 state income tax bill. . . .
Both the Assembly and Senate planned to vote on the package today. Late Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers were negotiating with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over items he wanted included in the proposal before he would support it.
Inside the Capitol, the strategy is considered revolutionary, because it would sideline the GOP. Though Republicans are a minority in both houses of the Legislature, they have repeatedly blocked tax increases and thwarted budgets they did not like, because California is one of only three states mandating a two-thirds vote for both budgets and tax increases.

You will see similar fights in almost every state legislature, as the slowing economy reduces revenues, leading to budget crises.

'Slinging Sammy' Baugh, R.I.P.

An all-time NFL great, dead at 94:

While he was noted for his passing, Baugh was one of the best all-around players of his day. One season he led the league in passing, defensive interceptions and punting. In one game, he threw four touchdown passes and intercepted four passes. He threw six touchdowns in a game -- twice -- and kicked an 85-yard punt.
"There's nobody any better than Sam Baugh was in pro football," said Don Maynard, a fellow West Texas Hall of Famer who played for Baugh, in a 2002 interview. "When I see somebody picking the greatest player around, to me, if they didn't go both ways, they don't really deserve to be nominated. I always ask, 'Well, how'd he do on defense? How was his punting?"'

What used to be called a "60-minute man."

Ex-child star woes

Jody Sweetin, who used to be one of those annoying kids -- her tag line was "How rude!" -- on "Full House," has lost custody of her child because of her booze and meth habits.

So, I guess it's a good thing John Stamos' plans for a "Full House" remake didn't work out. Can't you see the plot summary in TV Guide? Stephanie sells the Tanner family's TV at a pawn shop in order to pay for some meth; Jesse and Joey go to pawn shop to buy back the TV before Danny finds out; hijinks ensue when Stephanie's tattooed deadbeat ex-husband Cody shows up!

How did Sweetin spend her residuals? My guess: Paying a plastic surgeon for the super-deluxe implants:

If you need more celebrity schadenfreude to make you feel better about your pathetic existence, try "Hollywood's Ugliest Divorces."

Nationalizing Chicago

A legacy of failure:

In 2007, only 17 percent of eighth graders tested at or above grade level in reading in Chicago Public Schools -- the school system administered by Arne Duncan since 2001.
President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday tapped Duncan to become secretary of education in the upcoming administration.

(Via Ace.) Of course, all urban public schools suck, and anyone claiming to be able to perform a miracle in public schools is full of it. In 2004, I wrote an article exposing George W. Bush's "Texas miracle," the supposed magic of "standards" that was the theoretical justification for No Child Left Behind. A cruel hoax.

PTA mom caught with 13-year-old boy

Long Island, N.Y.:

A prominent PTA official is facing some serious allegations involving a teenage boy. Police arrested Joan Tuckruskye after allegedly finding her in the backseat of a parked car with a 13-year-old boy on Friday night. Both of them, police said, were partially unclothed. . . .
It was in the rear of the elementary school parking lot where patrolling officers said they noticed the foggy and steamed windows of an SUV. They approached and knocked on the window."They observed a woman in her 40s and a boy who appeared to be a teenager. They were not clothed from the waist down," said Lt. Kevin Smith of the Nassau County Police Department.
At first, police said, the boy said he was 18. Later at the hospital, though, he admitted being 13 but claimed he and the PTA mom were only kissing.

Via AOSHQ Headlines.

A Snowman in Publishing Hell

Bob Eckstein wrote a book called The History of the Snowman. He got a $35,000 advance and spent $15,000 in research. The book went through five editors, and the cover design went through 35 revisions. Then Eckstein was sent out on a seven-state promotional tour, during which he sold 41 books.

And you thought your life sucked.

Speaking of books, don't forget the 2008 Holiday Book Sale.

White guys need not apply

The Washington Post is looking for a liberal columnist, preferably female or minority:

Exciting news: The Metro section is looking to add a columnist.
We want a columnist who becomes a must-read feature in the paper and on the Web. We want a columnist who can offer a compelling and provocative read twice a week, who is an exceptional reporter, voiced writer and deep thinker. We want a columnist who has a lot to say and really looks forward to saying it. . . .
This is an opportunity to add something new. We want to hear your vision for that -- be it traditional or nontraditional, roving or from your desk, character-driven or comment-driven. The column could be aimed at singles or families, emotion-oriented or consumer-oriented, the voice of a professional or of Joe or Jane the Plumber. That is, what kind of columnist would add the most to the Metro section at present? What new adventures on the Web could it bring? This is an opportunity to invent something new online and in print.

That's from an internal staff e-mail obtained by Fishbowl DC. So if you're a female or minority liberal looking to add more useless tedium to a newspaper with dwindling circulation and ad revenue, this is your big chance!

Friedman vs. minimum wage

Duane Lester explains why minimum-wage laws are bad for the poor, and includes this classic video of Milton Friedman arguing against the minimum wage:

Duane also recommends Minimum Wages, a new book by David Neumark and William L. Wascher.

Videos vs. Keynesian economics

Dan Mitchell of Cato:

Michael Moynihan of Reason:

O'Reilly vs. Kelly, the rematch

In one corner, an idiot, in the the other corner, a well-informed hottie. It's no contest:

Via Hot Air.

Secular outrage & the Sugar Daddy

Via Hot Air, this column from Melissa Beech (a pseudonym, I presume) who describes herself as "a college student in suburban Pennsylvania" who finds herself in a "mutually beneficial arrangement" with a man she describes as being "in his early 30s, single, and successful." Miss Beech describes the reaction:

The response to the piece was far more critical than I expected. Its feedback section quickly overflowed with righteous indignation. The blogosphere released a storm of negative, judgmental analysis of me and my boyfriend.

I agree with Miss Beech that this criticism is most unfair. How is her relationship with her Sugar Daddy less respectable than any of her classmates, routinely giving it up for some shaggy Teke with chin pubes?

Sin is sin, and despite the evaporation of social outrage toward non-marital sex, sinners still feel the need to justify their sin by making invidious comparisons to the sins of others. In Miss Beech's case, she is involved with a man who is (a) older and (b) rich, and with whom she makes no pretense of being in "love." Horror!

You see that Miss Beech's critics have substituted their own moral standard for God's moral standard. Rather than being shocked at people having sex outside marriage -- they are not puritanical prudes, you see -- they instead are shocked that a young woman would become involved with a man a dozen years her senior who lavishes her with gifts. What offends them, I perceive, is the intrinsic inequality of a relationship in which Miss Beech is content to be dependent on her lover's generosity.

The critics' outrage would not be quelled if Miss Beech became Mrs. Sugar Daddy. To the modern egalitarian mind, even marriage cannot legitimate such a relationship. True love, the modern believes, requires an approximate equality between the lovers. And even where true love is not a consideration, the presumption of equality remains. Miss Beech might go off for a holiday in Cancun, get drunk in a bar and hook up for a one-nighter with another college student, and her critics would be silent, because the two partners are equal. Yet if she flies off to Cancun at the expense of a 30-something businessman, this is unforgiveable, as the partnership is clearly unequal.

Equality is the new righteousness, and inequality the new sin, and Miss Beech's critics are a lot of latter-day secular Pharisees.

Criminal 'Change'

The Smoking Gun has posted its "20 Best Mug Shots of the Year," including a gallery of perps busted while wearing Obama T-shirts.

The outrage merchant

You know Glenn Greenwald's about to write something particularly stupid when his first line includes a descriptor like "extremely pro-war, neoconservative." (Why not just "pro-war"? Why must it be bookended between "extremely" and "neoconservative"?)

In the case of Greenwald's latest emission at Salon, the elaborate descriptor is applied to the defunct New York Sun, two of whose former staffers have recently contributed to the New Republic. One of them, Jacob Gerhsman, published an article expressing surprise toward Eliot Spitzer's early attempt at political rehabilitation. This article -- "a finger-wagging sermon," per Greenwald -- inspires a counterblast comparing Spitzer's crimes (hiring high-priced call girls) with the crimes alleged against Dick Cheney who, Greenwald says, "literally admitted, brazenly and unapologetically, to committing war crimes; blithely justified the atrocities that were committed as part of our attack on Iraq; and glorified the whole slew of illegal surveillance programs he ordered."

Greenwald's a one-trick pony. Being outraged at Republican "war crimes" is his shtick, and God knows how he'll fill his days when the Bush administration leaves office. The man certainly doesn't get work on the basis of his engaging prose. A single sentence as sample:

The reason the American political establishment tenaciously refuses to acknowledge the devastation and crimes that have been unleashed during the Bush era is obvious: aside from the generalized belief that Americans are inherently good and thus incapable of meriting terms such as "aggressive wars" and "war criminals" no matter what they actually do (those phrases are applicable only to lesser foreigners), most of the establishment supported these crimes and the criminals who unleashed them.

Seventy-four words, in case you were counting, and not much real meaning except: "Boy, do I hate Bush!" If you share Greenwald's outrage, perhaps it's satisfying to watch him reiterate it endlessly -- a sort of online Olbermann rant to tide you over until you can go home and watch "Countdown." If you aren't outraged, however, there's no reason to read Greenwald except as a species of grim duty.

Anti-Bush indignation is his stock in trade, and the sell-by date of that particular commodity has probably already passed. No one, however, has told this to Greenwald. He's like one of those guys who got on the "who killed Vince Foster?" bandwagon in 1993 and kept peddling it long after the public had lost interest.

Expect Greenwald to keep chasing his idee fixe. He won't change his tune, he'll just look for new excuses to sing it. Some member of the Obama administration will be caught in a minor scandal, and Greenwald will trot out his obligatory column saying that whatever the administration official did, it can't possibly be compared to "the devastation and crimes that have been unleashed during the Bush era."

By 2010, this method of argumentation will be known as the Greenwald Defense, and will be widely employed throughout society: "Yes, officer, I realize I was doing 83 mph in a 55 mph zone, but is this really worth a traffic citation, when you consider the devastation and crimes that have been unleashed during the Bush era?"

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: Linked at Instapundit. Thanks! And with only a week left until Christmas, this would be a great time to remind everyone of the 2008 Holiday Book Sale.

UPDATE II: The New York Daily News has more on the Spitzer career rehabilitation project.

UPDATE III: Greenwald links, and I respond.

'Stop me before I hurl a shoe'

Michelle Malkin has had just about all the Dubya she can stand in this lifetime.

Which seems like a good cue to remind everybody: Not too late to buy a T-shirt!

Drunk CIA director rants about Jews

Well, George Tenet was a holdover from the Clinton administration, so this figures.

Scarborough earns his pay

Ace calls this "Four of the Most Satisfying Non-Pornographic Minutes of Internet Video You'll Ever Watch":

(Via Hot Air.) Scarborough points out the double standard between how Obama was covered and how Sarah Palin was covered. And watch how John Harwood justifies the New York Times sending legions of reporters and researchers to Alaska to dig up dirt on Palin.

Let's insult the animals!

Thanks to Ace for alerting us to one of the funniest blogs ever. Why is the blog so funny? I think part of the joy of saying rude things about furry creatures is the fact that, in real life, you can no longer insult people without risking a career-destroying accusation of some kind of "ism."

Politics is one of the last safe excuses for insults. I can call Bob Shrum a "thievish lying whore" and, hey, that's just politics. And it's also true. Fortunately, Shrum is a middle-aged white guy. If he was a woman, it would be sexist to insult him, and if he was, say, a Latina lesbian, I'd be accused of racism and homophobia even for mentioning it.

So, in order to vent our inner resentment, we are forced to get our jollies by insulting animals -- like squirrels or, as I prefer to call them, forest rats.

PC TV sermons

"Momma's Boys," another stupid "reality TV" series, premieres tonight and features a bit of PC morality featuring the "nightmare momma from hell":

Each mother and son made an introductory video for the women to watch prior to the moms' arrival. One of them, mother to a young man named Jojo, comes right to the point when describing the girl she wants for sonny-boy: No blacks, no Asians, no Jews, no Muslims, and nothing on the order of a "fat-butt girl."
Momma, who herself looks like a wide pink planet when she arrives at the mansion, declares: "It has to be a white girl . . . just like me. Just like Momma . . . A nice Catholic girl who's not from a divorced family." . . .
[A] contestant with the exotic name of Misty Alli says of the racist mom, "Even the dumbest people knew how ignorant this was."

Momma the Racist -- isn't that special? How nice of reality-show producers to favor us with this didactic opportunity.

UPDATE: Just did some Googling on Misty Alli, whose screen credits include such roles as "Spoiled Diva," "Hot Chick," "Hooker," "Dancer," and "Brothel Girl #3." For the purposes of reality-television, however, she plays the role of Moral Arbiter. Oh, yeah, did I mention the show is produced by that 21st-century Gandhi, Ryan Seacrest?

JoJo's mother, BTW, is a native of Iraq, so maybe we can excuse her mistaken belief that, in America, she has the right to her own opinions about who her son should marry.

Sentimental fools?

Liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias warns against "sentimentality" toward "a criminal enterprise launched by madmen cheered on by a chorus of fools and cowards."

I am opposed to losing wars, even wars I don't like. This is not "sentimentality," nor folly, nor cowardice. Our enemies view our acceptance of defeat as a sign of weakness, and weakness is not good policy.

Arne Duncan + Bill Ayers?

Obama's pick for Secretary of Education has been pallin' around with terrorists, says E.M. Zanotti:

Arne Duncan is Bestest Buddies with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In fact, he worked with the Annenberg Challenge to program curriculum in Chicago Public Schools. . . .
Stanley Kurtz carefully outlines how [Bill] Ayers served on the board of and influences the activities of the Annenberg Challenge. According to Kurtz, Ayers had much more control over the direction of the project than either then Annenberg Challenge or Duncan will ever be willing to admit. And the Annenberg Project, according to Education Week, which is a go-to resource on all things curriculum related in public schools, had a heavy influence on Duncan’s curriculum agenda.

Via Michelle Malkin. BTW, a couple of weeks ago, friends and I were out for an evening in D.C., walking down the street when we passed Miss Zanotti, who was instantly recruited to join us for cigars at Shelley's Back Room Tavern. A weird and spontaneous happenstance.

Madoff swindle hits Jewish charities

Los Angeles Times:

Wall Street financier Bernard L. Madoff's alleged $50-billion Ponzi scheme appears to have extended deeply into Southern California's Jewish community, with millions of dollars in losses tallied Monday by charitable organizations, Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and a foundation bankrolled by director Steven Spielberg.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles were on a growing list of victims emerging in the wake of Madoff's arrest in New York.

This will have severe consequences. Megan McArdle tries to explain how Madoff got away with it.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin calls Madoff "the Ken Lay of Democrats."

Whatever Bob Shrum says . . .

. . . do the opposite:

The Republicans' behavior on the auto industry bailout could easily be dismissed as childish if only it weren't so dangerous.
Their vote reflected a black-and-white ideology of free markets versus government—seasoned by a knee-jerk enmity to organized labor. . . .
Republican Senators also engaged in a bout of short-term populism that reflected the polling of the moment: Voters disaffected by the $700-billion bailout of Wall Street said they were against $14 billion more for the auto companies. The voters’ attitudes could change instantly, of course, if the Republican ideologues were actually to get their way. As General Motors, then Chrysler and probably even Ford was forced into bankruptcy, the likely outcome wouldn't just be a restructured industry. Markets would collapse, companies and jobs would be annihilated across the Midwest and a second Great Depression might well descend on the globe. . . .
Can Republicans bail themselves out of their past and their own pre-conceptions? Can they bring themselves to cooperate? That's what John McCain suggested this weekend. . . .

Fuck you, Bob Shrum. Who's paying you to say this? Does New York University's Wagner School of Public Service know that you're being paid to lobby for the bailout? Because I know for damn sure you're not doing this for free, you thievish lying whore.

UPDATE: What Shrum is doing, in case anyone doesn't get it, is to try to push enough Republican votes so that the outgoing Congress and the Bush administration can take the blame for the bailout, which is unpopular with voters. Just like John McCain's support for the $70 billion Wall Street bailout destroyed his campaign, Shrum knows that if Obama and the Democrats get stuck with the bailout, it will hurt them politically. The more Republicans vote against it, the worse the Democratic damage will be, since the GOP will be positioned to reclaim its mantle of fiscal responsibility and can take credit for opposing corporate welfare. Bush's support for the bailout represents his own political bankruptcy.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin reminds you to call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414.

Iowahawk turns 5

My, how he's grown.

Or should that be, "Groan"? It's hard to choose a favorite Iowahawk, although "The Pandagon Papers" and "My Fair Blogger" were classic.

Senator Princess

Caroline Kennedy wants a Senate seat and -- as Rod Blagojevich said -- a Senate seat is "a f---ing valuable thing."

Allahpundit:

We really should consider setting aside a permanent seat for the Kennedys. . . . Give them their own spot, fully inheritable, to be filled by whomever the family designates, and you might just placate them enough to discourage other members of the brood from running.

Better idea: Give them a bus, with Ted at the wheel.

Majority oppose bailout

Republicans almost accidentally find themselves on the winning side of a big issue:

Most Americans continue to oppose a government-backed rescue plan for Detroit's Big Three automakers as majorities blame the industry for its own problems and are unconvinced failure would hurt the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Overall, 55 percent of those polled oppose the latest plan that Chrysler, Ford and General Motors executives pitched to Congress last week.

The "irresponsible" majority, as Dana Perino might say.

Open-borders Obama

Could we possibly get a president who's worse than Bush on immigration? Yes We Can!

One of President-elect Barack Obama's top immigration advisers oversaw a Clinton-era program that awarded U.S. citizenship to thousands of convicted criminals and failed to conduct adequate FBI background checks on foreigners during a push to reduce a backlog of naturalization applications.
T. Alexander Aleinikoff, former executive associate commissioner for programs at the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service, staunchly defended the program, Citizenship USA (CUSA), before Congress a decade ago, although the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General concluded in 2000 that the program failed to address weaknesses that pushed the immigration system beyond its limits.
CUSA saw 1.2 million foreign nationals become U.S. citizens in 1996. Many of them later were identified as convicted criminals. The program was endorsed vigorously by President Clinton but attacked by critics as an election-year ploy to speed naturalizations for political gain, noting that the program targeted INS districts in heavily Democratic Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City and San Francisco.

This is not change we can believe in.

Limbaugh vs. Colin Powell

Rush went off on Powell yesterday:

So General Powell, let me explain something. The fact is Republicans did not listen to me. They listened to you. They have not been listening to me for years. The Republican Party nominated your ideal candidate. They nominated your guy, a moderate, who's willing to buy into an endless array of liberal causes. . . .
As long as you are a Republican, but you buy into an endless array of liberal causes, global warming to amnesty for illegals, and somebody who has the same fetish for compromising principles that you do, then they are going to love you. Then you turn around and you stab this person in the back by endorsing the most liberal Democrat candidate ever nominated days before the election, General Powell? You want to lecture me about how the Republican Party needs to stop listening to me when they are not? They are listening to you. I also have to question something here. How can he say he's a Republican? He gets the perfect Republican nominee, exactly the kind of candidate he wants, it's McCain, and then he sabotages McCain a few weeks before the election by endorsing Obama. How can you even claim to be a Republican, General Powell?

Good question.

UPDATE: Video via Hot Air:

Gay animal rights?

Political correctness at a Chinese zoo:

A pair of gay penguins thrown out of their zoo colony for repeatedly stealing eggs have been given some of their own to look after following a protest by animal rights groups.
Last month the birds were segregated after they were caught placing stones at the feet of parents before waddling away with their eggs.
But angry visitors to Polar Land in Harbin, northern China, complained it wasn't fair to stop the couple from becoming surrogate fathers and urged zoo bosses to give them a chance.

Zoo officials have been unsuccessful, however, in their efforts to get the gay penguins to turn down their disco music.

'NUTS!'

Today is the 64th anniversary of the beginning of the final German offensive in World War II that became famous as the Battle of the Bulge. Jules Crittenden remembers.

Blago on SN(F---ing)L

Second luckiest man on Earth

Geoffrey Arends is marrying Christina Hendricks.

Why does that make him the second luckiest man on Earth? Because I'm married to my wife.

Obama's lawyer: No scandal here!

Why didn't Nixon think of this?

President-elect Barack Obama said Monday a review by his own lawyer shows he had no direct contact with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich about the appointment of a Senate replacement, and transition aides "did nothing inappropriate."
Obama said he is prepared to make the review public, but decided to hold off because prosecutors asked for a delay and "I don't want to interfere with an ongoing investigation."

In unrelated news, attorneys for Britney Spears released a report concluding that she is not a crazy skank.

Palin church arson update

The latest from Alaska:

Whoever torched Gov. Sarah Palin's home church tried to start fires in several places around the building, the federal agency assisting in the investigation said today.
Accelerants were found in multiple locations on the outside of Wasilla Bible Church, including around entrances and exits, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

No word on motive:

Palin's ties to the church have sparked widespread speculation about whether the person who lit the fire was motivated by that connection. However, Central Mat-Su Fire Department Chief James Steele said that idea remains in the realm of pure speculation.
"At this point, there is no information that we have that even points in that direction," he said.

Because there could be any number of motives for such a crime, any speculation is ill-advised. Certainly no conservative should suggest a political motive at this point because -- if such speculation eventually proves unjustified -- the Left will then have a field day claiming that this demonstrates right-wing paranoia. Obviously, if BATFE is involved, the feds are taking this seriously, so be content to let the investigation run its course.

Obama walks back 'no contact'

Now, it's no inappropriate contact:

An internal review shows aides to President-elect Barack Obama had no "inappropriate discussions" with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich or his staff concerning the search for a Senate replacement from Illinois, a spokesman for the presidential transition office said Monday.

H/T: Ace. Associated Press notes that Team Obama will delay releasing their "review" of staff contacts with the governor's staff until next Monday --- three days before Christmas, when nobody will be paying attention to the news.

'Stop oppressing my cleavage!'

The misogynistic patriarchy has reached a new low: Requiring women to keep their boobs inside their clothing at the office!

It's another one of those Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't situations that political correctness continually foists upon us. This supervisor sent an email to his female employee suggesting that she was revealing too much cleavage, and thus is condemned as an oppressor swine. On the other hand, if he had sent a note complimenting the woman on her wardrobe choices -- "Hey, love that low-cut top! Enjoying the show! You've got a great rack!" -- this, too, would have offended feminist sensibilities.

UPDATE: Welcome, AOSHQ Morons!

UPDATE II:

Q. How does a radical feminist screw in a lightbulb?

A. That's not funny!

UPDATE III: Coincidental news in New York. I'm trying to think up a joke about the Giants' offensive line and Peyton Manning getting sacked in Dallas, but nothing immediately springs to mind.

Diversity in drag

Young America's Foundation has published its Top 10 list of campus outrages for 2008 which includes two revealing incidents:

• Conservative columnist Starr Parker was banned at the University of St. Thomas, while "transgendered activist" Debra Davis was permitted to speak.
• The U.S. Military Academy at West Point featured a guest lecture by transgendered former officer Allyson Robinson.

It's not hard to determine what values are extolled, and what behaviors encouraged, by progressive academics. Conservatives are constantly accused of trying to impose their values, but when progressives impose their values, this is called "diversity," and if you complain about it, you're a bigot.

Gay haters

No, not people who hate gays. Gay haters: "Pat yourselves on the back, tolerance bullies."

How to get linked

Some tips from How to Blog. I'm not sure how much of this stuff I've done myself. I basically do it the old-fashioned way.

A liberal and his money . . .

. . . are soon parted:

Daily News owner and real-estate mogul Mort Zuckerman is one of the investors ripped off by swindler Bernard Madoff, it was reported today. . . .
The Journal further reported that powerhouse movie director Steven Spielberg's charity, Wunderkinder Foundation, also got burned, investing roughly 70 percent of its money with Madoff. . . .
And New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg's family charity also took a bath, investing most of its $14 million trust with Madoff, his lawyer told The Record of Bergen County.

Jammie Wearing Fool notes that "Madoff was very generous to Democrats with his political contributions, notably to New York's senior Senator Chuckie Schumer and shady Congressman Charles Rangel," and USA Today reports:

He was politically active, donating $25,000 a year to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as well as recent races by New York Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.

So, good news two ways: Rich liberals get ripped off, and a big Democratic donor is probably going to federal prison. Merry Christmas!

When in doubt, tax

The liberal philosophy of government exemplified by New York Gov. David Patterson, whose response to a $15 billion deficit is to impose $4 billion in new taxes on everything from soft drinks to shoes. (H/T: Amanda Carpenter.)

Obama the promise-breaker

On Fox News opposite of Townhall's Matt Lewis, Kristen Powers says: "Most people don't expect him to deliver on everything."

David Gregory sucks

This guy's got no business doing "Meet the Press."

Satan's sleigh bells

My latest American Spectator column:

Mike Huckabee was doing an audience-participation segment on his Fox News Channel program last week when he was asked to name his favorite Christmas carol. "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," he answered. Then he asked his questioner to name her favorite Christmas carol.
"Winter Wonderland!" she answered cheerfully.
Huckabee smiled and said he liked the song, too. But surely the former Baptist minister must have been thinking the same thing I was thinking: "Winter Wonderland" is not a Christmas carol.
There is not a single reference to Christmas in the entire song. Snow, yes. Sleigh bells, yes. Christmas, no. Written in 1934 by Richard Smith and Felix Bernard, "Winter Wonderland" is a typical example of 20th-century "holiday" songs that have nothing to do with Christmas.

Please read the whole thing.

Sean Avery, victim

This is just wrong. Sean Avery's ex-girlfriend, actress Elisha Cuthbert, appears to be sleeping her way around the National Hockey League. Avery made a derogatory reference to this fact -- "it's become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds" -- and that one remark has now resulted in Avery being dropped by the Dallas Stars.

Is it Avery's fault that Elisha puts the "ho" in "hockey"? First it was Mike Komisarek, now it's Dion Phaneuf and next, for all we know, she'll be doing the Zamboni driver. And what was Avery's crime? That he used the term "sloppy seconds"? Maybe he would still have his job if he'd just called her an "ice slut."

And please: Hockey fans who find "sloppy seconds" offensive? Hockey fans are among the most barbarous sports fans on the planet. They make English soccer hooligans look civilized by comparison. NASCAR fans are aristocratic dandies compared to your typical hockey fan.

That Avery should have lost his job over this is absurd. And you know why it happened? Because the NHL commissioner thinks he's got a shot at Elisha Cuthbert. He may be right.

Silliest argument of the day

Planned Parenthood is pro-life, says a "pragmatist" blogger:

Parenthood, on net, prevents more abortions than it provides, from the massive amount of birth control, family planning and emergency contraception they provide.

Uh . . . no. Jonathan Schwenkler and Ross Douthat engage, but they don't really get down to the fundamental error involved in this argument. Here is the dirty little secret of the pill-and-condom industry: Contraception causes abortion.

Here's how: Every method of artificial contraception has a failure rate, and the contraceptive user who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant is a prime candidate for abortion. Even if the failure rate of any particular method is 1% or less, the law of large numbers means that, with tens of millions of people using contraceptives regularly, there will inevitably be several hundred thousand unplanned pregnancies.

Beyond this statistical fact, the contraceptive mentality teaches people to think of pregnancy as an unlikely outcome of sex -- even though, biologically speaking, pregnancy is the purpose of sex. With this life-changing consequence shoved off into a mental corner, there is a hell of a lot more extra-marital sex than there would otherwise be, which swells the number of extra-marital pregnancies, and thus provides a ready-made clientele for the abortionist.

Contraception is unnatural -- humanity at war with its own biology -- and results in social distortions, with the natural relationships of love, marriage, sex, reproduction and family artificially divided, then patched back together as a sort of Frankstein's monster: Test-tube babies, sperm donors, surrogate motherhood, gay adoption, etc., etc.

The entire contraceptive regime is anti-life and anti-family, and Planned Parenthood perhaps does as much moral harm by promoting contraception as it does by performing abortion. Douthat and Schwenkler are allowing the question to be framed as, "How best can society accommodate fornication?" At some point, how about social conservatives live up to the judgmental stereotype and condemn something?

UPDATE: A liberal blogger accuses me of being anti-woman -- and anti-fact. I think Mahablog must be one of those "women's rights women": "The fantastical project of yesterday, which was mentioned only to be ridiculed, is to-day the audacious reform, and will be tomorrow the accomplished fact."

UPDATE II: Suddenly, I'm a cause celebre with the Left:

I don’t think it is uncharitable to say that McCain is proposing a view of sex in which its pleasurable or emotional aspects are subordinate to its biological function. This strikes me as a very limited view of sex. By definition, sex involves a level of intimacy which quite often is a means through which two people can achieve a deeper level of emotional engagement.

What Jamelle never explains is how contraception enhances "emotional engagement" or the (ahem) "pleasurable . . . aspects." As a married father of six, I think I'm doing OK in both departments.

UPDATE III: Freddie the Pragmatist has a clever retort: "[P]eople enjoy having sex and are not going to stop anytime soon. " Well, thanks for passing along that news.

UPDATE IV: Linked by CrankyCon, who is impressed by the stunning logic of pro-choice commenters.

'Meet the Obama Defenders'

David Gregory and friends -- evidently eager to prove Rush Limbaugh right -- rush to defend Barack Obama against any taint from BlagoGate:

The Grinch Who Stole Fitzmas

That's the tag the Weekly Standard's John McCormack hangs on colleague Matt Continetti, who writes for NPR:

Obama is popular, and his agenda is, too. A recent poll found that 60 percent of respondents support Obama's plans for massive infrastructure spending. Voters may be split on whether or not to bail out the Big Three auto companies. But they will not like Republicans anymore -- trust me on this -- if the GOP drives those companies into bankruptcy and is indirectly responsible for massive layoffs.
The GOP's problem is that it obstinately refuses to address the problems facing those Americans who do not listen to conservative talk radio. Also, the party is tied to the legacy of the most unpopular president since the advent of polling. Democrats were able to invoke Herbert Hoover's legacy for decades. How long will they be able to invoke George W. Bush's?

Continetti is an excellent reporter -- his account of the Abramoff scandal was wonderful -- but he's another of these Young Turks who inspire me to grumble, "I've got T-shirts older than you, kid. Now, go get me a cup of coffee." He's just five years out of college, and I get weary of 20-something pundits telling us What It All Means.

On the other hand, I don't mind Young Turks so much when, as with Jennifer Rubin, their version of What It All Means agrees with my own:

Pundits and prognosticators forget that politics isn't played in the abstract. Columnists can debate the future of conservatism all they like but back in the real world actual bills (e.g., the car bailout) and real politicians (e.g., Blago) test how skilled and effective each side is in getting its narrative before the public.

Which is to say, "Don't overthink it." Intellectuals are too easily mesmerized by "trends," extrapolating from recent events a Big Picture narrative arc that, in their view, requires some major readjustment. And so you have pundits saying that the GOP is too religious, that it needs to reach out to Hispanics, that it suffers from a lack of intellectual firepower, etc., ad infinitum. In fact, the party's problems are more prosaic -- fundraising, candidate recruitment, communications -- and it is incompetence at these political basics that generates the "trend" that pundits (in a reversal of causality) see as the cause, rather than the effect, of failure.

Events create trends, far more than trends create events. But the intellectual's love of abstraction always causes him to obsess over trends, which allow more play for abstract thinking.

Obama's Bert Lance

Liberals are complaining bitterly about press coverage of the Rod Blagojevich scandal. "[T]he media have tried to shoehorn Barack Obama into the Rod Blagojevich scandal," as Jamison Foser of Media Matters put it in a 2,900-word tirade Friday:

Most telling is the tendency of many journalists to speculate that the Blagojevich scandal may ensnare Obama without acknowledging that the complaint against Blagojevich contained absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing by Obama . . .
Associated Press reporter Liz Sidoti set the standard for pointlessly speculative news reports with an "analysis" piece declaring that "President-elect Barack Obama hasn't even stepped into office and already a scandal is threatening to dog him." . . .
We cannot afford to be distracted from serious problems by overheated conjecture and baseless insinuation masquerading as journalism.
That's how the media behaved the last time we had a Democratic president. They devoted wall-to-wall coverage to invented "scandals," ignored exculpatory evidence, saw evidence of guilt everywhere, took people out of context in order to accuse them of lying, and generally behaved like a pack of wild animals who couldn't tell right from wrong or truth from fiction -- or who simply didn't care. As a group, they behaved without ethical standards and without regard for the truth.

Foser is correct that nothing now known indicates wrongdoing on Obama's part. However, the revelation that Obama's choice for chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was in communication with Blagojevich -- sending him a list of potential Senate replacement appointees acceptable to Obama -- undermined Obama's press conference claim that "no representative of mine would have any part in any deals related to this seat."

Foser compares the press coverage to how the Whitewater scandal dogged the Clintons, but a more accurate analogy would be to the scandal that felled Jimmy Carter's OMB director, Bert Lance. A Georgia banker and influential figure in state Democratic Party politics, Lance was forced to resign eight months into the Carter administration by revelations about his financial dealings. Lance was never convicted of any crime, and the scandal involved no suggestion of wrongdoing by Carter, and yet the swirl of accusations damaged -- if it did not entirely destroy -- Carter's image as a squeaky-clean reformer. Perhaps most importantly, the Lance scandal brought an early end to whatever honeymoon Carter had enjoyed with the Washington press corps.

The scolding of Foser and other liberals won't undo the damage that the Blagojevich scandal has already done to Obama, and more damage is likely. The Republican National Committee has issued a Web video aiming to cement in the public mind the idea that Obama (a) is a close ally of Blagojevich, and (b) has been dishonest in his responses to the scandal:

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: Linked at Hot Air, where Ed Morrissey points to Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times:

What's puzzled some people and raised suspicions among others is Emanuel's refusal to talk about it (reportedly physically pushing one reporter's tape recorder away and having a verbal altercation with another) and the delay on Obama's part in releasing the promised diary of contacts.
From a practical point of view, if everything is above board, what's to hide?

It's the appearance of impropriety, which would make a great book title, BTW.

UPDATE II: The Instalanche -- what every blogger wants for Christmas. And, of course, it was the professor's book, The Appearance of Impropriety, that I had in mind. Speaking of books and Christmas, now would be a great time to shop the 2008 Holiday Book Sale, and let's go ahead and plug two great books about political scandal:

UPDATE III: Obama's staff has experience in dealing with scandals.

UPDATE IV: Chigago Democrats and the Mob, also accusations of a Blagojevich-Mob connection.

Christina Hendricks wants you

She wants you to click her picture:

Thanks to her close personal friend, VodkaPundit.

Ruh-roh: Arson at Palin's church

Motive unknown, but definitely a crime:

No one was injured in the blaze at the Wasilla Bible Church, which started late Friday. . . .
Several well-known Valley residents attend the church, including Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Wes Keller, R-Wasilla. . . .
"The possibilities are so wide and variable," [the pastor] said. "Someone intentionally did it, but we don't know who and why."

I'm not leaping to any conclusions, but let's keep an eye on this investigation. (Just imagine the media furor if there were an arson attack at Trinity Church in Chicago.)

The presumption of bias

Salon has a big article suggesting that Republicans from Southern states opposed the Detroit bailout because their states have foreign-owned auto plants -- as if no one could possibly oppose the bailout on principle.

Here's an idea, Salon: Next time you want to look into an angle like that, how about taking notice of the millions that AFSCME gives to Democrats to push for expanded government? AFSCME -- a conspiracy against the American taxpayer -- is No. 2 on the "Heavy Hitters" list at the Center for Responsive Politics.

TiVo vs. TV

The digital video recorder (DVR) throws network TV executives into panic mode, as NBC moves Leno to 10 p.m.:

NBC framed the decision in terms of competitiveness and cost-effectiveness, because it defuses the risk of Mr. Leno’s move to another network and saves untold millions of dollars a year. But it also reflects the increasing irrelevance of the network schedule.
The irrelevance is partly because of digital video recorders, the bane of many a television executive. Viewers in the 28 percent of homes with DVRs are recording programs at 8 and 9 p.m. and playing them back later in the evening, hurting the 10 p.m. hour. Of the 10 prime-time programs that gained the biggest audience from DVR usage this year, none were on at 10 p.m.
The biggest gainers from DVR viewership were dramas. According to statistics on time-shifting released by Nielsen Media Research on Friday, the NBC series "Heroes" benefited the most from DVRs, with a 35 percent increase in its audience after seven days of time-shifted viewing. The new Fox drama "Fringe" experienced a 26 percent increase, and the ABC series "Lost" had a 25 percent increase.

I stopped watching network TV years ago, and I certainly never watch cheesy TV dramas. Life is too short.

Hit it, or else

Todd Stewart is 35. He's got a 19-year-old girlfriend -- and you know how 19-year-olds are, nudge, nudge.

Well, 19-year-old Brittany Phillips wanted some action, Todd wasn't in the mood, so . . . she beat him up. Brittany was charged with simple battery.

Dan Riehl: "You'd have to kill me before I agreed to have sex with that." Uh . . . I'd hit it, but then again, I've always had a strong instinct for self-preservation. Which is why I don't have a 19-year-old girlfriend. I couldn't keep up with one. It's hard enough keeping up with my 44-year-old wife (who would kill me if I had a 19-year-old girlfriend).

UPDATE: Dan thinks I'm insane. And he's right. But there is an important principle involved in setting the "I'd hit it" threshold rather low: It's the only way to prevent pretty girls from becoming tyrannical. Let's face it, only about 10 percent of women are really hot, and they know it. So if you aren't capable of contentment with a not-so-hot chick, you've essentially made yourself a hostage of beauty, and next thing you know, you're getting jerked around by some chick who treats you like her personal plaything, because . . . well, that's what you are.

Excuse me for lacking the masochistic streak necessary to enjoy that game. There is a counterintuitive Zen thing involved here. People are always impressed when they meet my wife: "Man, how did you rate her?" It involves a certain nonchalance about beauty. I pursued my wife with tremendous ardour, but the alternative to success was not solitude. There are 3 billion women in the world.

As much as I admire beauty (hello, Christina Hendricks) I'm not going to be tyrannized by beauty. And cutting yourself off from the Brittany Phillipses of the world -- passing up the chance to "make a 10 the hard way" by nailing two 3s and a 4 -- is like delivering yourself in shackles.

Besides, Brittany's got nice blue eyes:

Matthews: 'A Bridge Too Far'

A liberal reaches his limit:

Matthews is a bridge too far. I could never vote for, raise funds for or in any other way help Chris Matthews become a member of the Senate and if it came down to it, if I lived in Pa, I'd probably support Specter. If we thought Lieberman was perfidious and unreliable, we haven't seen anything yet. Matthews is very nearly nuts as far as I can tell.

He's no more nuts than Barney Frank or Nancy Pelosi, but that is damning him with faint praise.

Ecuador defaults

Deadbeats:

Ecuador is to default officially on billions of dollars of foreign debt it considers "illegitimate", says President Rafael Correa.
Mr Correa said he had given the order not to approve a debt interest payment due on Monday, describing the international lenders as "monsters".
The president said that some of Ecuador's $10bn debt was contracted illegally by a previous administration.

That's OK, we'll just repossess Miss Ecuador:

Call it a down payment on that "illegitimate" $10 billion.

Is God 'moderate'?

An evangelical spokesman has resigned after telling NPR he supports civil unions for gays. This prompts a liberal to ponder:

Maybe over time enough people in the religious right will moderate their views to the point where people like [James] Dobson lose their influence.

The real question isn't the influence of Dobson, but rather the influence of God, and if you're waiting for God to moderate his views, I suspect you'll be waiting a long time.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

Glenn Greenwald on TV

Launched under "false pretenses"? Keep your day job. And your socks.

Rahm 'Let's Make a Deal' Emanuel

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy:

Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama's pick to be White House chief of staff, had conversations with Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration about who would replace Obama in the U.S. Senate, the Tribune has learned. . . .
Obama said Thursday he had never spoken to Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy and was "confident that no representatives" of his had engaged in any dealmaking over the seat with the governor or his team. . . .
Emanuel delivered a list of candidates who would be "acceptable" to Obama, the source said. On the list were Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, Illinois Veterans Affairs director Tammy Duckworth, state Comptroller Dan Hynes and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Chicago, the source said. All are Democrats.
Sometime after the election, Emanuel called Harris back to add the name of Democratic Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan to the approved list, the source said.

Michelle Malkin notes an ABC report that Emanuel is "pissed" about negative press coverage of his role in the scandal.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey:

[N]o one would be surprised to hear that Emanuel and Obama had enough interest in the latter’s replacement to get in contact with the man who would normally make that appointment, Governor Blagojevich. . . .
However, Barack Obama and his team chose not to give that honest and common-sense explanation. Instead, they issued categorical denials that Obama and his staff had contacted Blagojevich or his staff about the succession. It’s a mystifying claim, and one that will apparently get proven false fairly easily.

It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

Feliz Navidad

Playboy decides to wait for the eve of the Feast of Guadalupe to release its Mexican edition of the magazine with a cover photo depicting the Virgin Mary nude. You stay classy, Hef! (H/T: Pirate's Cove.)

Stimulus: $1 trillion

The price tag of the Obama stimulus has now reached $1 trillion:

President-elect Barack Obama's economic team is considering an economic-stimulus program that will be far larger than the two-year, half-trillion-dollar plan under consideration two weeks ago, people familiar with the team's thinking tell The Wall Street Journal.
The president-elect is expected to be briefed on the broad parameters of the plan next week, with aides still hoping for Congress to pass a bill by the time Obama takes office Jan.20.
With the unemployment rate now expected to hit 9 percent without aggressive intervention, Obama aides and advisers have set $600 billion over two years as "a very low-end estimate," one person familiar with the matter said. The final number is expected to be significantly higher, possibly between $700 billion and $1 trillion over two years.

Michelle Malkin: "Give me your over/under that it’ll double by the time it gets to the Spreader of Wealth’s desk next month." And it won't work.

UPDATE: Pick a number! Any number!

Christina Romer, who will lead Mr. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, is also surveying economists, trying to build political consensus around a larger number before it is presented to Congress in early January.
People familiar with the discussion say Lawrence Lindsey, President George W. Bush's first NEC director, has counseled $800 billion to $1 trillion in stimulus over two years. Harvard University economist Martin Feldstein, a Reagan White House economic adviser, has raised his initial, one-year, $300 billion figure to at least $400 billion.

That's got to be a cool job: Sitting around a table with a bunch of experts, offering multibillion-dollar estimates of how much taxpayer money to flush down the toilet in make-work schemes and welfare giveaways.

UPDATE II: "Remember when $1 trillion was a big number?"

Cizik ousted at NAE

I first heard about this controversy a week ago, and now it's come to fruition:

A prominent evangelical lobbyist resigned yesterday over his remarks in a National Public Radio interview, in which he said he supports permitting same-sex civil unions.
The Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), later apologized for the remark . . .
More than two dozen evangelical leaders -- including James C. Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council -- complained in a letter last year to the NAE leadership that Cizik was "using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time," which they defined as abortion, homosexuality and sexual morality.

Some evangelicals would rather be "relevant" than right. But this is how the mainstream denominations drifted away from the Bible decades ago, and it's sad that some evangelicals think it's a smart idea to follow them.

What the Obama campaign can teach the Republican Party

Lloyd Grove has an interview with Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, some of which is happy horseshit, but some of which is very interesting. Consider this exchange about campaign salaries:

L.G.: How did you discipline salaries and compensation? Because traditionally, if you look at, say, Mark Penn [Hillary Clinton's chief strategist], I don't know how much Mark was pocketing but you see that they had outstanding bills approaching $10 million to him.
D.P.: People on the campaign could not make more than a certain amount -- $12,000 a month. There were salary bands, so there wasn't a lot of eventfulness about what people got paid. If you were a deputy you got paid X, if you were an assistant, you got paid Y. We were very aggressive with our consultants in terms of their piece. From a fiscal management standpoint, Obama was very clear that he did not want to end up with a debt in the primary or the general, so we just planned accordingly. We didn't spend beyond our means.
L.G.: So the highest salary on the campaign was $12,000 a month?
D.P.: Pre-tax, yeah. In other campaigns, they can make a lot more than that, and people working in Senate races and governor's races made a lot more than that.
L.G.: You've made more than that.
D.P.: No doubt, it was a financial sacrifice for many on the campaign, but I think it helped. There wasn't any drama around compensation.
L.G.: What about percentages of ad buys?
D.P.: We had a cap, an aggressive arrangement -
L.G.: What did you cap it at?
D.P.: Well below industry standards.
L.G.: Because arguably, somebody could still get a very handsome fee. Say for the sake of argument, you spent $350 million on advertising. Even a niggling 1 percent of that is $3.5 million.
D.P.: That's why you have caps, so that people can't make more than a certain amount. So that if your spending does increase, their profits don't increase.
L.G.: What was the cap on that?
D.P.: I can't remember -- it differed by firm based on what they were doing. But we made sure to protect ourselves. That ended up being, I think, wise, because we obviously raised a lot of money but the firms did not make more. My view of this is that working on a presidential campaign is obviously arduous but it's a unique opportunity. My view is you shouldn't have to pay market rate for people's services. And that's the general approach, and it seems to have worked out well.

This extraordinarily thrifty approach -- $144,000 as top annual salary in a presidential campaign! -- is something that GOP candidates ought to learn to emulate. Otherwise promising Republican campaigns are routinely bled dry by overspending.

One particularly memorable episode: In late 2006, former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore decided to run for president. He made some contacts in Iowa and New Hampshire, got a little bit of cash together, did a solid YouTube video rollout, got some press for slamming "Rudy McRomney" at CPAC. Then, less than two weeks later, it was announced that Gilmore had hired three top campaign consultants plus a deputy campaign manager, and leased the entire 12th floor of an office building in the Virginia suburbs of DC. Four months later, Gilmore was out of the race and, it was learned, his campaign was more than $67,000 in debt: The campaign had raised $182,000 in three months but apparently spent about $250,000 during that time period.

Now, I'm not saying that Gilmore was ever a likely contender, but he could have stayed in the game a few more months if he hadn't let himself be talked into that "Big Dog" style of campaign. Why does a paid staff of four need the entire 12th floor?

That kind of stuff doesn't just happen to little guys. Remember that John McCain was basically broke by late summer 2007 -- his campaign burned through $20 million in the first six months of 2007. It appears obvious that Republican campaign operatives, collectively, have developed some very bad habits. The Republican Party raised $900 million in the 2008 cycle, and what do they have to show for it?

Scandal, explained

"When it's a Republican scandal, the press become prosecutors. When there's a Democrat scandal, the press become defense lawyers."
-- Rush Limbaugh

Zimbabwe: Hell on earth

A corrupt socialist tyranny plunges its people into misery, then blames a "racist" scapegoat:

The cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe which has left hundreds dead was caused by the UK, an ally of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has said.
Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu described the outbreak as a "genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British".
On Thursday, Mr Mugabe said the spread of cholera had been halted.
But aid workers warned that the situation was worsening and the outbreak could last or months.
In his comments to media in Harare, Mr Ndlovu likened the appearance of cholera in Zimbabwe to a "serious biological chemical weapon" used by the British.
He described it as "a calculated, racist, terrorist attack on Zimbabwe".

The British are to Mugabe what the Jews were to Hitler. Mugabe is a 21st-century Pol Pot, and what he's done to Zimbabwe is crime against humanity.