Hi, I’m Ed Driscoll. You may remember me from such informational kiosks as Welcome to Nordstrom’s Casual Shoe Department, and The Inner Light: You and Your Proctologist.

And from sitting in at Instapundit this week. It was certainly fun sitting in the cockpit of the big 747; but it’s also nice to be back at the controls of our little P-51, ready to take to the skies look for bandits at 12:00 high.

Which we’ll do in just a bit, as soon as we get the propeller cranked, and approved for takeoff.

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Greetings from a secure, undisclosed location. But all I can say is that, wow, when you guest-blog at Instapundit, you really go first-class!

Actually, that photo was taken at the George H.W. Bush Library at Texas A&M in College Station, TX. We went down there last month, as my wife has a client who’s a regent of the college and a patron of the presidential library. I also finally got to meet Bryan Preston  in person during that same trip, to discuss video blogging war stories. While Bryan is now the impresario behind Pajamas’ new Tatler group-blog, as I’ve mentioned before, Bryan’s production skills at creating Michelle Malkin’s “Vent” videos for Hot Air in late 2006 and 2007 are what got me into producing my own “Silicon Graffiti” series of videos starting the following year.

And speaking of Hot Air, it was certainly fun to guest-blog there this past week while Ed Morrissey was visiting Europe. A big thanks to Ed and Allahpundit for inviting me to sit-in. They do their blogging out of the Batcave:

Actually, that’s Bronson Canyon, from a trip to PJM HQ in Los Angeles in March. I wonder how many people who watched the old Adam West Batman TV series in 1966 knew back then that every time Batman and Robin burned bat-rubber tear-assing out of the Batcave, that Gotham City was located so close to Los Angeles:

Between Hot Air, Instapundit, my work here at PJM, and my occasional blogging at John Hawkins’ Right Wing News, I feel like a cross between James Brown and Joey Bishop — but then, doesn’t every man from time to time? The hardest working man in the Blogosphere*, and at least at the moment, Guest-Host for hire. I’m hoping to work my way up to sitting in for Merv and Johnny Carson by the time the summer is out…

* At least it felt that way for a time on Friday, getting up to the speed that Instapundit churns out posts seemingly every ten minutes. No wonder it takes four of us to replace him when he’s on vacation!

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Back in 2007, I reviewed Robin Aitken’s then-new book, Can We Trust the BBC for Tech Central Station, now known as Ideas in Action.tv. As I noted back then:

Somewhat similar to conservative criticism of Reuters, complaints of bias in the BBC were given much more conclusive proof after 9/11. For Reuters, it was Stephen Jukes, their global news editor’s remarks immediately after 9/11 that “We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Aitken says that the BBC has a very similar worldview when it comes to the Palestinians.

“My view is that the Palestinians and the Palestinian leadership is the architect of its own misfortune in many ways. Whereas, what comes across from the BBC’s presentation of events in Palestine and the Middle East generally, is that in some ways, the Palestinians are a put-upon victim minority, and it’s the beastly Israelis who are doing the dirty to them.

“And you know, that is not a fair presentation of the position. Because the Israelis are militarily strong and successful, and the Palestinians aren’t, I think the BBC allows that too much to play at its judgment, so that what comes across is too much sympathy, if you will, for the Palestinians, too little appreciation of the rights of Israel, and also too little recognition of the fact that Israel is a functioning democracy in a way that Palestine isn’t, and nor is any Arab-dominated Middle Eastern state, and not enough credit is given for that in my view.”

Similarly, another BBC bias is obvious from their tone of Iraq War coverage. During the war’s early days, Aitken was still affiliated with the BBC, via its “Today” radio show. While Aitken viewed the Iraq War, at least in its early days of liberating Ba’athist Iraq, as a positive turn of events, his opinion was an outlier in the halls of the BBC. “Now, you can take whatever view you wish of the Iraq War. But it isn’t the BBC’s place to have a view in that sense of such a thing. Now, of course this view is never made explicit, I should hasten to add: the BBC doesn’t come out and say, ‘We think the Iraq War is Wrong.’ But the tone of the coverage, the negativity, of the coverage, the starting point for all the discussions about the war” tacitly demonstrates those biases. “I think it took a clear editorial view, from the very first, that the Iraq War was mad, bad, and dangerous,” and thus filtered that opinion to its millions of listeners, all the while, feigning objectivity.

Flash-forward to today; the London Daily Mail reports, “The BBC could be part of a ‘propaganda media network’ for al-Qeada, according  to U.S. files published by Wikileaks:”

A phone number of someone at the BBC was found in phone books and programmed  into the mobile phones of a number of militants seized by the Americans.

The number is believed to be based at Bush House, the headquarters of the BBC World Service.

‘The number is associated with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).’

To be fair, that puts the BBC one up on Reuters, where terrorists shoot motivational videos for the venerable “news” “service.”

Oh and speaking of Wikileaks, they red-line the irony meter with this quote:  “’Do not challenge leadership in times of crisis’ became Assange’s favorite slogan.”

George Orwell, call your office.

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If you were out having a life this weekend, you may have missed some of our posts from over the weekend. If so, click here for:

• ‘Obedience Through Terror’ Kills 11 in Afghanistan
• Let’s ask the New York Times: say, whatever happened to that “Piss Christ” guy?
• Video: When Bill Buckley met Saul Alinsky
• The Five O’Clock Follies
• NBC-Chicago reported on Wednesday that “3 ‘Strange’ Men Cause Flight Diversion — at least one man of ‘Middle Eastern descent’ got into a fight with an attendant, passengers say.”
• Scary-Ass Charts of the Day
• Go Midwest Young Man
• The Bookworm Turns
• Politico journalist tells Howard Kurtz, “We’re supposed to be openly skeptical…We will stipulate that [Obama is] the greatest orator of modern times, but now we’re looking beyond that in every speech for what he’s actually telling us.”
• In the Land of the Rococo Intellectuals
• Does America Have a De Facto State Religion?
• What a Half-Century of Reprimitivization Looks Like

Or just click here and start scrolling.

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Nick Kronos writes, “Obama’s Libyan adventure smacks of 1988 Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis:”

The comparisons of Obama to Carter have been numerous, but I don’t think Libya is a place Carter ever would have gone. Instead Obama’s Libyan adventure smacks of 1988 Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. In an attempt to prove he was a tough leader and militarily capable, Dukakis infamously donned a helmet and climbed into a tank…where he proceeded to look ridiculous. Likewise, President Obama was pushed into this war–dragging America with him–by a feeling that not acting was leaving him looking weak and a second banana to the more bellicose Sarkozy. The wives of the two leaders seem to have a rivalry, so perhaps the competition has spilled into the affairs of the men as well.

In any case, he’s there now — and we with him — and it’s a fine mess indeed.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy as the second coming of Iron Mike Dukakis? Who could have expected such a thing?!

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After getting the Tatler, the new PJM group blog up and running, Bryan Preston is taking a well-deserved couple of days off, and has asked me to help hold down the fort there, which is why posting was light back here on good ol’ Ed Driscoll.com today. (That and having to fly back from L.A. this morning.) But if you missed any of my posts at the Tatler today, click here for:

• It’s Been Said Lawrence, That You Have a Funny Sense of Cynicism
• The Japan Syndrome
• How the White House Bullies the Media
• The Broken Window Fallacy

And that’s in addition to the posts that went up today by the fine cast that contributes to the Tatler every day.

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Back on February 5th, Howard Rotberg gave a sneak preview of “Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address” at Pajamas, where he predicted:

“My move today is to recognize that Americans cannot roam the world imposing our particular notions of liberty and democracy on the world. The world is composed of many people who find their liberty depends on a religious supervision of all aspects of their daily lives. Although we in America have traditionally embraced a separation of church and state, it is time to acknowledge that our way is not the only way.

[Applause and standing ovation]

“To prove this to the world, we are modifying one of America’s most lasting symbols, the Statue of Liberty. We recognize that not all people in the world accept our notions of liberty. That is probably the underlying reason that the United States has been expelled from the United Nations. To demonstrate that we have learned that tolerance is the most important world value, and not a narrow definition of liberty, we are changing the name of the great statue just off the shore of New York from the Statue of Liberty to the Statue of Tolerance.

[applause, cheering and standing ovation]

“And to absolutely prove the seriousness of our tolerant new order, I have exercised my jurisdiction to order an alteration of the statue, so that instead of a crown on the statue’s head, there will be a hijab.

[applause]

“The site of the new Statue of Tolerance, with its hijab, will be a fitting symbol for what Time magazine has recently called the “Century of Islam” and our tolerance as a people. This will show the world true American greatness.

[Applause and standing ovation]

“May God, Allah, Jehovah, Waheguru, Yahweh, Akamba bless America.”

[applause and standing ovation]

I created an accompanying thumbnail of the Statue of Liberty wearing an hijab to illustrate the story:

Flashforward to this item at the Blaze, which notes that “‘Shariah4America’ Group Calls for Burkha on Statue of Liberty:”

According to the group’s website, the Statue of Liberty “elevates the command of man over the command of God” and public veneration of the statue amounts to idol worship strictly prohibited by Islam. “This has forced sincere Muslims to develop realistic plans that will aid in the removal of the Statue of Liberty.

“Due to the scale of the task at hand, it is highly likely that rigorous safety checks will need to be employed before the demolition of the Statue of Liberty can commence; thus as a temporary measure, it is proposed that a large burkha is used to cover the statue, thereby shielding this horrendous eye sore from public view as well as sending a strong message to its French creators,” the site reads.

Click over to the Blaze to see Shariah4America’s own statuesque Photoshoppery, about which Meredith Jessup asks, “Are They Serious?”

Reality? Satire? Who can tell these days, where it’s only a matter of time before real life outpaces even the most skilled satirist. (Trust me — it’s the law.) But to the extent that we set the (wrecking) ball rolling, I’d like to formally apologize for my role. It’s not so much thoughtcrime as Photoshop crime, but what the heck; I hear the rates for an extended stay at the Ministry of Love are quite reasonable this time of year. And the meals are now halal!

Update: Canadian blogger Kate McMillan of the great Small Dead Animals blog comments below that the Shariah4America Website is, not surprisingly, likely satire.

Well, at least for now…

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The Blogfather writes:

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: The administration’s pathetic, dithering response to the Arab uprisings has been both cynical and naive.

I think what we’re seeing is a sort of John Birmingham-lite scenario. In Birmingham’s page-turner books Without Warning and After America, the mysterious disappearance of most of the United States causes all sorts of economic and security chaos to unfold, once America is no longer there to keep the lid on things.

Whether deliberately or accidentally, the Obama Administration has substantially reduced the United States’ military and economic leverage over the past couple of years. The result is that we’re seeing a lot of stuff bust loose. America hasn’t vanished. We’ve just become, as Hitchens says, about as important as Switzerland.

18 Doughty Street is no longer on the Interwebs, but was sort of the Tory prototype for PJTV. I wrote a profile of the pioneering British Internet TV channel for Tech Central Station in mid-2007. In those early days of video, when just getting a video on YouTube seemed like a major accomplishment, they really seemed to put all the pieces together to create a virtual TV network; sadly it couldn’t sustain itself, however.

Back in 2007, 18 Doughty Street did a video that asked viewers to imagine “A World without America” — not knowing at the time how quickly our stature and presence would be diminished. At one point, the narrator intones, “A world without America would be a world without Israel” — which I imagine lots of people would listen to and think, “Ah–a twofer!”*

Fortunately, it’s still up at YouTube; click here to watch:

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* Speaking of twofers…

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Reprinted from November 9, 2005:

Back in September 2003, I toured the Reagan Library and was surprised to see a 707-sized aircraft wrapped in plastic protective sheathing, which happened to be Air Force One number 27000. As I wrote back then for Tech Central Station :

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum in Simi Valley California hosts a 3.5 by ten foot segment of the Berlin Wall. If all goes according to schedule, in mid-2004 it will open a pavilion that houses the Air Force One that flew President Reagan into Berlin, where he gave his legendary “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech. The aircraft, sporting tail number 27000, was Reagan’s primary Air Force One, in which he logged 631,640 miles and 1,288 hours of flying time. It also flew Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter to Cairo in 1981, to represent the US at the funeral of Anwar Sadat. In 1986, #27000 was used to take Reagan to Reykjavik for his summit meeting with Gorbachev, in which Reagan refused to bargain away SDI, and in so doing, began the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

When the two modified Boeing 707s that served as Air Force One were replaced by a pair of even more heavily modified 747s in 1989, the 707s eventually became backups, and used for jaunts to runways where the much larger 747 couldn’t land.

Eventually, #27000 was decommissioned in the summer of 2001. “In July of 2001, word got out that the US Air Force Museum was going to get the retired aircraft,” Melissa Giller, the library’s director of communication says. “The Air Force Museum already has #26000 on display, and they were looking to see if someone else might perhaps want #27000. They were looking at both us and the Smithsonian, and when we got word of that, we actively sought after it.

“The story goes that President Reagan once said that he wished that his library could have his main Air Force One. So with that, and since we had the room, and the Smithsonian didn’t, the US Air Force thought it would be a great fit for us.”

And it is.

It took a year longer than expected to complete, but the giant exhibit designed to house Air Force One finally opened in late October (with President Bush cutting the ribbon) at the library–a fitting final resting place for the Air Force One most used by President Reagan.

Here a few photos of the plane and the exhibit that houses it. (Full disclosure: It was terribly overcast yesterday. and the library doesn’t permit the use of flash. So to avoid uploading a bunch of dark muddy images, I’ve color-corrected and/or pushed the exposure on the photos.)

The entry hall to the “hangar”; only the nose of the plane is initially visible, in an impressive–and seductive–bit of stagecraft and composition.

(more…)

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How fabulous are we?

OK, I’m not sure we could handle being that fabulous.

But we’ve made Doug Ross’ 2010 Fabulous 50 Weblog Awards List under “Best Media Analysis,” and we’re in some pretty good company:

• Best Political Blog: Michelle Malkin
• Best Political Analyst:Ed Morrissey, Hot Air and Erick Erickson, RedState (tie)
• Best Conservative News Blog:Weasel Zippers and Gateway Pundit (tie)
• Best Op-Ed Website: American Thinker
• Best News Analysis Website: American Spectator
• Best Talker’s Website: Mark Levin
• Best New Media Family of Sites: Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, et. al.
• Best Group Blog: Right Wing News
• Best Media Watching: NewsBusters
• Best Media Analysis: Ed Driscoll
• Best Media Analysis Story of 2010: Verum Serum, “The Pigford Case and Why the NY Times Doesn’t Want to Talk About It”
• Best Linker: Instapundit
• Best Law Blogger: William A. Jacobson, Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion
• Best News Aggregator: Drudge Report

And numerous others. There are rumors that the ceremony will be held at Studio 54, where Truman and Warhol will be handing out the awards. We’re still sorting that part out.

But in the meantime, and in all seriousness, a big thanks to Doug Ross of the Director Blue Weblog for including us on his list; it’s very much appreciated. And please stop by his blog early and often.

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If by chance you wanted to O.D. on multimedia Ed, you were certainly in luck last week, when I really made the rounds. via Webcam, I dropped by Tony Katz’s PJTV show to discuss WikiLeaks and the NFL. (No I’m not sure how we segued between topics that diverse, either) Though audio-only, I was also on Jimmie’s Bise weekly podcast for an hour-long chat along with my partner in crime on Sirius-XM, Steve Green. And speaking of which, the last two PJM Politicals are now online, one of which features my interviews with Roger Kimball, James Lileks, Rob Long Michael Walsh. (Much shorter video versions are also online.)

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Yes, blogging was a bit slow last week. After being waylaid by two seafaring men in red and blue polo shirts and sailors’ caps who asked me if wanted to attend a brief tour of the Caribbean last week, I’m finally back, ensconced once again in Stately Ed Manor. Look for much more on National Review’s post-election cruise in the coming days, and also much more frequent blog posting as well.

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Ed  Morrissey asks, “Is Obama stuck in the 80s?”

“I personally came of age during the Reagan presidency,” Barack Obama wrote in his first book The Audacity of Hope, and Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl wonders whether Obama hopped a DeLorean DMC-12 equipped with flux capacitor from that time directly to the present, at least in terms of foreign policy.  Obama now wants to push hard for a treaty that addresses a Soviet nuclear threat that no longer exists, and at the same time has disrupted what little progress stood to be made in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by pressing for construction freezes in areas that hadn’t really been in serious dispute until Obama’s intervention.  Obama’s world view appears trapped in a Cold War paradigm last relevant 20 years ago.

Huh. Never noticed, myself:

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The unedited version of my interview with William McGowan, taken from this past weekend’s edition of PJM Political on Sirius-XM’s POTUS channel is now online. McGowan’s new book, Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of The New York Times Means for America is due out today. But if you’re waiting for the FedEx truck or the Kindle download to get yours, don’t miss my conversation with McGowan to get a sense of how Pinch Sulzberger made hash of his family’s most important asset. (And thus created a huge opening for alternative media, just to tie this item in with the previous post.)

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Welcome to the fifth anniversary of our humble little experiment in Web journalism, Pajamas Media. Here’s the boss’s take:

Sometimes I think Jonathan Klein was right.  Klein was the CBS exec who inadvertently gave Pajamas Media its name by dismissing bloggers who questioned the veracity of his network’s anchorman Dan Rather as amateurs “in their pajamas.”

Of course, Rather has long been out of his job and PJM is today celebrating its fifth anniversary — but like the former anchor, we’ve made more than our share of mistakes.  We just try to own up to them.

In fact, I remember the opening week of our new media/blog alliance in mid-November 2005 as one giant fiasco.  For reasons that elude me now — some version of being thought serious, probably — we had decided to call ourselves OSM Media (for Open Source) only to discover, mid-way through our gala launch at New York’s “W” Hotel, that the name had already been taken by a relatively obscure online radio program.

My co-founder Charles Johnson and I — not to mention our principal partner in crime Instapundit Glenn Reynolds — were embarrassed.  In order not to appear the new bullies on the block, we instantly reverted to Pajamas Media, a name we should never have abandoned in the first place.  But that didn’t prevent us from being the object of massive Internet ridicule.

For a flashback to the Internet equivalent of the Longest Day — certainly one of the craziest — click here for my blog posts live blogging and recapping the events of the day.  And then go back and finish Roger’s post. As Roger concludes:

What’s next? We certainly have ideas, which will be disclosed in due course. But we are ever-mindful of one of the rare smart things said by John Lennon:  “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

I will close with another inevitable rock and roll cliché:  “What a long strange trip it’s been!” Of course that trip has not been nearly as long as the Grateful Dead’s.  (Whose could be?) But I like to think we’ve only just begun.

From my vantage point, it certainly seems like one heck of a trip — and at times certainly a strange one! Thanks for coming along for the ride, and for those who’ve commented, whether in the blog comments or via email, thanks for participating as well.

Insert silly obligatory Stan Lee/Al Gore by way of “South Park” Excelsior! line here.

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“The Making of a Pop Star 2010″ was an article I wrote for Tech Central Station (later TCS Daily, now the video-oriented Ideas in Action Website) back in 2004, in which I predicted that the pop star of the future would be even more synthetic than the average made-for-MTV product of the past:

Max Headroom was an amusing mid-1980s look at what an entirely electronic newscaster of the future would be like. Eventually technology caught up with the fantasy, and in the late 1990s, Websites such as Ananova began to use a combination of digital animation and speech synthesis to have their own virtual newsreaders. [who by 2010 would eventually go the way of all pixels, apparently -- Ed]

There will always be humans making music, but just as flesh and blood anchormen have been joined by Max and Ananova, human singers may very well be eventually joined by synthetic counterparts. It’s entirely possible that within ten or twenty years, teenagers will be worshiping entirely computerized pop stars: digital video animation will create their looks, programs such as Vocaloid will create their vocals, and a combination of pre-recorded loops of sound, crack studio musicians and software synthesizer programming will create their backing tracks. There have been plenty of rock videos shot for MTV that have been built around digital animation — building them around entirely digital singers seems like only the next logical step.

(One suspects that even with entirely digital video artists, wardrobe malfunctions will not remain a thing of the past, of course…)

For decades, Mick Jagger sang, “Time Is On My Side.” before eventually, it began to catch up with him. For the virtual pop star of the future, aging will be much less of a concern. And if she ever gets into a contract dispute, there’re always the control, alt and delete keys.

At least for the moment.

What I hadn’t considered was the role that live performance would play in these synthetic singers. Not surprisingly, given their culture’s obsession with robotics and its own (very much related) concerns with aging and demographics, the Japanese now have that covered.

Or as Allahpundit writes, “Japanese holograms now giving pop concerts or something.” Click over for the video.

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Glenn Reynolds rounds-up a number of recent comments from pundits and readers comparing the World’s Biggest Celebrity to the world’s best-known fictional ad man and identity thief, including this comment from reader Dodd Harris:

I don’t think that analogy is entirely fair — to Don Draper. This last season was about the harrowing of Don Draper, just as this political season was the harrowing of Obama. But Don at least experienced it before not really changing. He was tortured, pushed to his limits, and forced to at least acknowledge his past failures. In the end, he chose the easy fix, but he at least plumbed the depths of his own manufactured past before doing so.

I’ve seen no sign Obama has done any of that. He’s still blaming everyone but himself.

I’d just like to point out that I may have been the first, or at least one of the first to note the comparison between the two men — certainly a negative comparison between the two men — way back in July of 2008:

“A man is whatever room he is in” — that’s a remarkably timely phrase right about now, isn’t it?

In retrospect, it certainly appears that way. Like Don Draper, Obama at his best was a master salesman. But in real-life, the best ad men know that the product has to be equal to the ad campaign, or customer disappointment will be palpable. Or as Mad Men advisor Jerry Della Femina wrote 40 years ago in his classic book on advertising, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War:

There is a great deal of advertising that’s better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster. There have been cases where the product had to come up to the advertising but when the product fails to do that, the advertiser will eventually run into a lot of trouble.

But then in 2008, Obama and his campaign staff, non-official and otherwise, were far more interested in making the initial sale than in providing a product that would keep customers satisfied over the long haul. And as was known forty years ago by Draper’s real-life counterparts, the advertiser eventually has run into a lot of trouble now that it’s been rather strongly established that the product in no way matches the ad campaign.

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In 2008, John McCain’s YouTube producer was clearly the best part of his campaign, and we’re not just saying that because he appeared to “burrow” one of our video clips for his candidate. While McCain himself crashed and burned as a presidential candidate in the fall of 2008, not surprisingly, he’s still cruising to reelection as a senator representing his home state of Arizona. Perhaps because McCain’s producer was bored with his candidate cruising to reelection in November, he cobbled this fun clip together of McCain’s hapless opponent:

embedded by Embedded Video

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Say what you will about his chops as an opera singer, but clearly, Rodney Glassman does a far better job of phoning in his opera gigs than he does his campaign calls.

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I’m willing to chalk Doug Mainwaring’s new Washington Times op-ed up to a case of “Great Minds Think Alike,” or perhaps he simply filed away one of my blog posts from January into the back of his mind, and then forgot about it. But get a load of his opening paragraph:

On Feb. 7, 2009, the cover of Newsweek magazine proclaimed, “We Are All Socialists Now.” Since then, much has transpired, including the sale of Newsweek (the business entity) to the highest bidder for $1. Now, 1 1/2 years later, a more poignant cover story might be “We Are All Tea Partiers Now.”

Yes, it would, which is why I created this Photoshop back in January, immediately after Scott Brown won in Massachusetts:

More from Mainwaring:

The Tea Party is the leading edge of a “Great Awakening” in America. In many ways, it appears to have the force and vitality of one of the religious awakenings that have occurred throughout our nation’s history. It is more than a populist movement. It is more than a reactionary group expressing voter dissatisfaction and anger. It can’t be boiled down to election results. It will not be co-opted neatly by the Republican Party. It is something much, much bigger.

The Tea Party as the Next Great Awakening? That was the theme of an op-ed Glenn Reynolds wrote for the Washington Examiner back in February:

I attended this past weekend’s National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, and I came away feeling that I had seen something important.  The Tea Party movement is part of something bigger:  America’s Third Great Awakening.

America’s prior Great Awakenings, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, were religious in nature.  Unimpressed with self-serving, ossified, and often corrupt religious institutions, Americans responded with a bottom-up reassertion of faith, and independence.

This time, it’s different.  It’s not America’s churches and seminaries that are in trouble:  It’s America’s politicians and parties.  They’ve grown corrupt, venal, and out-of-touch with the values, and the people, that they’re supposed to represent.  So the people, once again, are reasserting themselves.

Yes it’s true. We here at Pajamas Media live life six months into the future.

Now if only we could predict the teams and the point spread for the Super Bowl in February…

(H/T: Hot Air)

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“Republicans, take a lesson from Ronald Reagan: just plaster the country with the question, ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago, when the Democrats took control of Congress?,’” Kyle-Anne Shiver writes on the PJM homepage, along with a little Photoshopped assistance from your humble narrator:

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