PATRICK RUFFINI sends this video of George Will making “the conservative case for Giuliani.”

Meanwhile, Joe Lieberman may back a Republican.

FORGET BIPARTISANSHIP: Try respect.

PODCASTING ABOUT the joys of podcasting.

HARRY REID, LAND BARON? The Los Angeles Times takes a look at some of Reid’s dealings. (Via Ed Morrissey, who asks: “Will the reformist zealotry of the Democratic majority be brought to bear on Reid? Don’t count on it.” What about all that “culture of corruption” talk before the election?)

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up. So is the Carnival of Wheels, and Radiology Grand Rounds. And, of course, the Carnival of the Cats. Lots more carnivals — and yes, I know, I’ve been pretty lax in noting them lately — over at blogcarnival.com.

And even when I’m lax, the BlogCarnival box in my right sidebar is always on the job — click here and look right.

AIRBRUSHING AT DAVOS? A bit late for that, isn’t it?

MICHAEL YON posts a lengthy essay, with photos, from Iraq.

He emails: “There are two types of media sources covering this war: the ones who are here, and those who are not. The media is Missing In Action, and reporting from afar. Yesterday, for instance, major media reported on an attack in a small village north of Mosul. None of those sources actually visited the village. I did.”

His work would be in The New Yorker, if there were any justice.

UPDATE: Plus, a photo essay from Bill Ardolino, one of those journalists who reports from Iraq.

“THANKS JOHN: You’re a really big help.”

UPDATE: Eric Scheie: “This is not to suggest that Bush is perfect. Far from it. I’m often disappointed in him, and many times I’ve looked back and asked whether things might have been different had Kerry won. The answer is yes they would have. I think they would have been worse. The more I read about Kerry, the more I’m glad I didn’t vote for him.”

Yes. Bush, as I’ve said many times, was a weak candidate. It’s just that Kerry was much weaker.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Heh: “In response to Bill Kristol saying John Kerry shouldn’t have left home to criticize American foreign policy abroad, Brit Hume yesterday quipped: ‘Is it really fair to John Kerry to argue, Bill, that when he’s in Switzerland, he’s away from home?’”

MORE MYTHS: This time it’s five myths about suburbia and automobiles. I had a related piece here.

AT STRATEGYPAGE: Top Ten Myths of the Iraq War. Excerpt:

10- The War in Iraq is Lost. By what measure? Saddam and his Baath party are out of power. There is a democratically elected government. Part of the Sunni Arab minority continues to support terror attacks, in an attempt to restore the Sunni Arab dictatorship. In response, extremist Shia Arabs formed vigilante death squads to expel all Sunni Arabs. Given the history of democracy in the Middle East, Iraq is working through its problems. Otherwise, one is to believe that the Arabs are incapable of democracy and only a tyrant like Saddam can make Iraq “work.” If democracy were easy, the Arab states would all have it. There are problems, and solutions have to be found and implemented. That takes time, but Americans have, since the 18th century, grown weary of wars after three years. If the war goes on longer, the politicians have to scramble to survive the bad press and opinion polls. Opposition politicians take advantage of the situation, but this has nothing to do with Iraq, and everything to do with local politics in the United States.

Indeed. (Via Austin Bay, who observes: “In twenty years its common sense assessment will be the conventional wisdom.”)

UPDATE: Some related thoughts from Robert Kagan:

It’s quite a juxtaposition. In Iraq, American soldiers are finally beginning the hard job of establishing a measure of peace, security and order in critical sections of Baghdad — the essential prerequisite for the lasting political solution everyone claims to want. They’ve launched attacks on Sunni insurgent strongholds and begun reining in Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia. And they’ve embarked on these operations with the expectation that reinforcements will soon be on the way: the more than 20,000 troops President Bush has ordered to Iraq and the new commander he has appointed to fight the insurgency as it has not been fought since the war began.

Back in Washington, however, Democratic and Republican members of Congress are looking for a different kind of political solution: the solution to their problems in presidential primaries and elections almost two years off. Resolutions disapproving the troop increase have proliferated on both sides of the aisle. Many of their proponents frankly, even proudly, admit they are responding to the current public mood, as if that is what they were put in office to do. Those who think they were elected sometimes to lead rather than follow seem to be in a minority.

Perhaps we should abolish Congress and run everything by poll. I doubt there’s much support for that idea in Congress . . . . Read the whole thing, and especially this point: “Of course, most of the discussion of Iraq isn’t about Iraq at all. The war has become a political abstraction, a means of positioning oneself at home.”

And TigerHawk writes: “There are, I think, two groups of people who are afraid that the ‘surge’ might work.”

CLAYTON CRAMER will soon be starting a book tour in support of his new book, Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie. I’m sure that Michael Bellesiles won’t like it.

JUST THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION: Muslims urged to refuse ‘un-Islamic’ vaccinations.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl points out the obvious. (“Actually, Reynolds’ noting the item is far from celebrating it . . . any actions, stupid or otherwise, by parents are by definition built in to any working theory of evolution.” I disagree with Riehl on the HPV vaccine, though; I’d include it with routine childhood immunizations.) And some related thoughts of mine, here and here. As for those who wrote me with the usual anti-vaccination scare stories and conspiracy theories, well, it’s evolution in action for you, too. Me, I keep my shots up.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Light Maleski emails:

One overlooked problem with all people not getting vaccinated is the overall immunity level of the population decreases… not just those that don’t have the vaccine. For vaccines to be truly effective, they have to be administered to as much of the population as possible. So this doesn’t just affect the Muslims, but also the communities they intermingle with. An un-vaccinated person will make it more likely a person with a vaccination will contract the disease. Not an issue to overlook. This is also a problem with parents who want to refuse vaccinations for their kids before they enter school for “Religious” reasons (Christians included). These kids being more susceptible carriers increase the risk of other children getting sick, and thus the parents, and everyone else they come into contact. These kinds of people present a danger to us all.

Yes, this is the standard argument for mandatory vaccination, and I think it has considerable force, especially where, as here, the risk from vaccination is very low.

MORE: One of Dan Riehl’s commenters asks: “Am I the only person in this entire discussion other than Glenn Reynolds who’s read Oath of Fealty?” Heh. Apparently. It’s not like I haven’t used the phrase before.

MORE BUTTER-BLOGGING: So we ran out of the New Zealand butter that won the taste test a while back, and it still was showing as out of stock on Amazon. At a reader’s recommendation, I tried this Amish roll butter instead, though I didn’t fully grasp just how much butter a 2 lb. roll is. . .

The Insta-Daughter — who, delightfully, made me pancakes this morning — likes this stuff better; I find it a bit saltier than I like, but it’s quite good. And I imagine Nina Planck would approve.

UPDATE: No sooner did I post this than I ran across an interesting essay by Michael Pollan on food and nutrition:

But after several decades of nutrient-based health advice, rates of cancer and heart disease in the U.S. have declined only slightly (mortality from heart disease is down since the ’50s, but this is mainly because of improved treatment), and rates of obesity and diabetes have soared.

No one likes to admit that his or her best efforts at understanding and solving a problem have actually made the problem worse, but that’s exactly what has happened in the case of nutritionism. Scientists operating with the best of intentions, using the best tools at their disposal, have taught us to look at food in a way that has diminished our pleasure in eating it while doing little or nothing to improve our health. Perhaps what we need now is a broader, less reductive view of what food is, one that is at once more ecological and cultural.

Read the whole thing.

A REPORT FROM DAVOS:

OK, WE’RE not in America, but a session in Davos today on American energy security would have been a touch more convincing if we hadn’t been sitting in an overheated hotel room with the windows wide open so that this expensively produced heat dissipated into the freezing air outside.

Not to mention all the jetting-to-Davos, sometimes in private jets. Still, this bit sounds right to me: “The eventual answer is a big revamp on the supply side: more nuclear energy, more from existing renewables, more from new technologies. And a smaller revamp on the demand side: less waste, through more efficient cars, smarter building regulations. The state of the union address looked in the right direction.”

THOUGHTS ON politics and human rights.

A CIVILIAN MORTAR ATTACK on a girls’ school.

Plus, other civilians arrested.

BUT IT’S NOT A CIVIL WAR:

Hamas and Fatah gunmen battled each other in the streets Sunday, having sent civilians fleeing from their homes in an increasingly bloody power struggle that left more than two dozen Palestinians dead over the weekend.

An explosion early in the morning rocked the Gaza City home of a bodyguard to Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan, but the guard was not in the building and no casualties were reported. At least eight people were wounded in exchanges of fire between the sides overnight, Palestinian security officials said.

Because it’s only a civil war if you can blame Bush, apparently . . . .

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER at Davos. Plus, Arianna Huffington versus John McCain.

RON ROSENBAUM: The Geico Caveman jumps the shark.

A GOOD WEEKEND for editorials at the Washington Post.

A REPORT from the Code Pink rally.

UPDATE: In Madison, Vive Saddam.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A lengthy report from a reader — click “read more” to read it.

MORE: Another report. And here’s a PJ Media roundup.

LITVINENKO UPDATE:

British officials say police have cracked the murder-by-poison case of former spy Alexander Litvinenko, including the discovery of a “hot” teapot at London’s Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for Polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing.

A senior official tells ABC News the “hot” teapot remained in use at the hotel for several weeks after Litvinenko’s death before being tested in the second week of December. The official said investigators were embarrassed at the oversight.

The official says investigators have concluded, based on forensic evidence and intelligence reports, that the murder was a “state-sponsored” assassination orchestrated by Russian security services.

And yet, Putin pretty much gets a pass for this.

NEWS FROM AFGHANISTAN, courtesy of Major John Tammes.

MORE ON ORGAN DONATIONS: Virginia Postrel reviews Kieran Healy’s new book in The New York Times. Excerpt:

The book’s major shortcoming is its failure to address the fastest growing source of organs: living donors. More than two-thirds of the people on the national waiting list — about 68,000 — need kidneys. There are nowhere near enough brain-dead accident victims to fill that demand, regardless of family beneficence or organizational efficiency. Fortunately, nobody has to die to supply a kidney. They can come from living donors, who can live perfectly normal lives with a single kidney and who now account for nearly 40 percent of all kidney transplants. With the kidney shortage at crisis proportions, the debate over financial incentives is really a debate over whether living adults should be allowed to sell their own organs or, at the least, receive a tax credit or some other indirect compensation.

Although he barely mentions living donors, Healy’s sociological message resonates through that debate. Financial incentives would operate within complex organizational structures, as well as contract and liability law. Bureaucratic institutions, notably hospitals and insurers, would shape the environment in which transplants take place. Many kidney sellers would still have humanitarian motives. “The idea that markets inevitably corrupt,” Healy writes, “is not tenable precisely because they are embedded within social relations, cultural categories and institutional routines.” Commerce isn’t antithetical to culture; it is part of it.

Read the whole thing.

JOHN KERRY does it again. Like Jimmy Carter, he’ll never forgive America for rejecting him, and he’ll console himself with the approval of America’s enemies.

UPDATE: Video here.

Don Surber: “This is the best Massachusetts can send to the Senate?”

Jules Crittenden: “Sorry, I don’t feel like writing any more about this guy right now.”

Ann Althouse: “Anticipated next scene: Kerry proffers some mind-bending explanation of how his use of the words ‘international pariah’ didn’t mean what Fox News manipulated unintelligent plebes into believing.”

WELL, YES: “Google’s decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday. . . . Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: ‘On a business level, that decision to censor… was a net negative.’” And not just on a business level.

This kind of thing is why I’m less pessimistic than Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu regarding the future of Internet freedom.

UPDATE: Big roundup on this at BoingBoing.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Princeton, Berkeley, and Asians.

THE SARAJEVO MOMENT: “Maybe it is already, and the fact is that the fretters exaggerate the impact of the thinkable catastrophe. My lunch companion, for example, argued that a small nuclear weapon exploded in New York, while a horror for the city and its inhabitants, would have roughly the same impact on the financial markets as a moment of delirium on the part of Ben Bernanke.”

HOLLYWOOD’S TERRORISM PROBLEM:

In the history of our time as told by the movies, the war on terror largely does not exist.

Which is passing strange, you know. Because the war on terror is the history of our time. The outcome of our battle against the demographic, political and military upsurge of a hateful theology and its oppressive political vision will determine the fate of freedom in this century.

Television — more populist, hungrier for content and less dependent on foreign audiences — reflects this fact with shows such as “24″ and “The Unit.” But at the movies, all we’re getting is home-front angst and the occasional “Syriana,” in which “moderate” Islam is thwarted by evil American interests. But the notion that this war is about our moral failings is comfort fantasy, pure and simple. It soothes us with the false idea that, if we but mend ourselves, the scary people will leave us alone. . . .

In all fairness, moviemakers have a legitimately baffling problem with the nature of the war itself. In order to honestly dramatize the simple truth about this existential struggle, you have to depict right-minded Americans — some of whom may be white and male and Christian — hunting down and killing dark-skinned villains of a false and wicked creed. That’s what’s happening, on a good day anyway, so that’s what you’d have to show.

Moviemakers are reluctant to do that because, even though it’s the truth, on screen it might appear bigoted and jingoistic. You can call that political correctness or multiculturalism gone mad — and sure, there’s a lot of that going around. But despite what you might have heard, there are sensible, patriotic people in the movie business too. And even they, I suspect, falter before the prospect of presenting such a scenario.

(Via Michael Barone, who has further thoughts.)

UPDATE: Related item here.

EUGENE VOLOKH: “OK, I made up the ‘who are also Firefly fans,’ but the rest is true.”

POLITICIZING THE U.S. ATTORNEYS?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is transforming the ranks of the nation’s top federal prosecutors by firing some and appointing conservative loyalists from the Bush administration’s inner circle who critics say are unlikely to buck Washington.

The newly appointed U.S. attorneys all have impressive legal credentials, but most of them have few, if any, ties to the communities they’ve been appointed to serve, and some have had little experience as prosecutors.

Hmm. But doesn’t that pale beside this?

One of President Clinton’s very first official acts upon taking office in 1993 was to fire every United States attorney then serving — except one, Michael Chertoff, now Homeland Security secretary but then U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, who was kept on only because a powerful New Jersey Democrat, Sen. Bill Bradley, specifically requested his retention.

Were the attorneys Clinton fired guilty of misconduct or incompetence? No. As a class they were able (and, it goes without saying, well-connected). Did he shove them aside to thwart corruption investigations into his own party? No. It was just politics, plain and simple.

That’s because it’s a political office.

BIG MEDIA FOLKS used to make fun of bloggers for wasting time on shallow, superficial reports about their sex lives instead of doing hard news coverage. Now the situation has reversed.

THERE’S LOTS MORE GOING ON in the Duke (non) Rape case, and K.C. Johnson is on top of it.

MYSTERIOUS SOURCE JAMS SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS: “Paris-based satellite company Eutelsat is investigating ‘unidentified interference’ with its satellite broadcast services that temporarily knocked out several television and radio stations. The company declined to say whether it thought the interference was accidental or deliberate. The problem began Tuesday afternoon, blocking several European, Middle East and northeast African radio and television stations, as well as Agence France-Presse’s news service. All transferred their satellite transmissions to another frequency to resume operations.”

REMEMBER KOSOVO, where we’ve had troops for years? Things are finally happening.

LOOKING AT THE FUTURE OF WEB 2.0 in the latest Blog Week in Review podcast.

MICKEY KAUS ON UNRELIABLE NARRATIVES:

The video shows Iraqi troops beating three men who’d been caught with a bag full of mortars in their car. I don’t defend the beatings, which at least one American tries fecklessly to stop, but calling people captured with mortars “civilians” is a bit of a distortion, no?

But, sadly, a typical one.

CORRECTING NEIL LEWIS (“This is deceptive reporting, whether by incompetence or design”) and much more on the Libby trial, at Tom Maguire’s.

RALPH PETERS: “For an enthusiastic visitor to Turkey for three decades, it’s been heartbreaking to watch its society and economy come to life – only to fall prey to Islamist vampires.”

YOUTUBE WILL SHARE REVENUE with video creators.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE reunites his blog. Er, blogs. Or something.

CHINESE CENSORSHIP, AND MORE: My review of Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu’s book, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World, forthcoming in the Stanford Law & Policy Review, is now available online here.

UPDATE: Yes, it’s unusual to use the “F-word” in a law review article. But it fit. (Bumped.)

EXPLOSION IN ISLAMABAD: Roundup here.

BOB OWENS IS TAKING HIS MESSAGE to the top.

SCARY RACIST SYMBOLS, unashamedly flaunted.

ALEX TABARROK explains supply and demand to someone who really ought to know that stuff.

CATHY YOUNG on Jimmy Carter, Brandeis University, and anti-Semitism.

ROBERT GATES: Anti-surge resolution “emboldens the enemy.”

TYLER COWEN on income inequality.

NEWS FROM AFGHANISTAN: “In the south, NATO commandos are having success in finding out where Taliban commanders are, and killing or capturing them. There are about three dozen Taliban commanders in the south, and if enough of them can be taken out of action, this years Taliban offensive will collapse. . . . Sensing weakness, more warlords are publicly denouncing the Taliban, and urging young men not to join up.”

POPULAR MECHANICS WINDS UP its long-term test of the Toyota Highlander hybrid. They like it. I’ve had mine for about 15 months, and about 24,000 miles and I’ve liked it too: Roomy, comfy, and zippy, with excellent mileage. Of course, I paid under two bucks a gallon for gas today, but still . . . .

ANN ALTHOUSE: Is it getting obvious that Sharpton can’t stand Obama?

DONALD SENSING LOOKS AT THE NEW IRAQ STRATEGY, and likes what he sees.

Meanwhile, a question for Chuck Hagel, et al.: “Rather than back a non-binding resolution of disaproval, why didn’t the gutsy Senators, like Chuck Hagel, who are riding the surf of public opinion opposed to the troop surge and taking on a president with approval ratings at the freezing level vote aginst General Petraeus’ confirmation? Their convictions hold that he has endorsed a wholly unjustified escalation and will be leading troops on a futile mission. They want a role in the conduct of the war and with the need to win Senate confirmation of Gen. Petraeus the Constitution has given them one, but they have taken a pass. ” If Petraeus succeeds, they’ll be bragging that they voted for him. If he fails, they’ll note that they opposed the surge. As John F. Kennedy noted, political courage is scarcer than physical courage . . . .

UPDATE: Criticism of the old strategy, here.

IN THE MAIL: Ian Shapiro’s Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror.

$600K FOR FIRED PROFESSOR:

Virginia State University has agreed to pay $600,000 to Jean R. Cobbs, whom it fired as a tenured professor in 2005 and whose claims against the university have been backed by several academic groups.

Cobbs and her supporters have said that she was dismissed for her political views (she is an outspoken black Republican at a historically black college where her views place her in a distinct minority) and for backing other professors (of a range of political views) in disputes with the Virginia State administration. In announcing the settlement of her case, the Virginia Association of Scholars — one of the groups backing Cobbs — said that information obtained by Cobbs’s lawyer showed that the university’s provost, W. Eric Thomas, replaced Cobbs with a woman with whom he is living.

Sounds like a lawyer’s dream.

AN IMMORTAL TURN OF PHRASE FROM DENNIS KUCINICH: “You know how they say, Don’t ever ask how laws or sausages are made? Well, I can attest to the wisdom of that with the exception of kielbasa made with tofu.”

DON SURBER: McClatchy reporter should have questioned Jay’s intelligence.

AN AMUSING Ahmadinejad caption contest.

JOHN MCGINNIS AND ILYA SOMIN: Should International Law Be Part of Our Law?

TOM DELAY WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT?

Well, I want to be an astronaut. And my chances are better than his. . . .

PLAGIARISM CHARGES AIMED AT SAM BROWNBACK: Seems like pretty weak tea to me.

Some thoughts of mine on plagiarism, including a defense of Joe Biden, can be found here. And read this, too.

UPDATE: The “Toqueville quote” is apparently spurious anyway.

MARK STEYN: “The institutional performance of government departments other than Defense has been abysmal. This is one of the greatest failings of United States foreign policy.”

AND WE HAVE A WINNER: I’ve been testing out compact fluorescent bulbs in my house, with not very good results even though I started with high-end, expensive bulbs. But my latest test involved the G.E. “soft white fluorescent 75,” which is fairly cheap. I test these in a fixture over my kitchen table — it’s a pretty severe test because the light shines straight down onto a table with a white tile top, with no shade, etc., to soften it or improve the color. Most bulbs look bad there, but the G.E. bulb looked great — the Insta-Wife, who’s even pickier about light quality than me, couldn’t tell the difference. Actually, switching back to the 60 watt clear incandescent that’s usually in the fixture, you could tell that the fluorescent bulb, despite its claim to be as bright as a 75 watt incandescent, isn’t really quite as bright as the 60. But it’s a minor difference, and the quality of the light is good: warm and natural. By contrast, a Sylvania “soft white 100″ that I bought at the same time is absolutely ghastly. I don’t know what makes the difference, but it’s quite dramatic. Anyway, I’m going to start replacing bulbs around the house with the G.E., because it looks fine.

UPDATE: Various people ask where I got these: I bought mine at Target. Reader Nicholas White says they’re available on Amazon — I bought a four-pack, but these look to be the same. And reader Matt Fisher emails: “I went to Sam’s club last week and bout 2 five packs of GE soft white 100 CFL’s and think they are great. Plus they are only a little more than $2.00 a bulb.” Now that I know where to look, I found those on Amazon, too.

MY MINDLESS MINION JIM TREACHER has joined the Hillarysphere at my command, and wants your help.

A LOOK AT Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher, and their differences.

WORST PART of Hillary running for President? The Clinton scandals are back!

A court-appointed bankruptcy trustee asked a federal judge this week to schedule a new court date in a case against Tony Rodham, the brother of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., accused of failing to repay $109,000 in loans from a carnival company whose owners received controversial pardons issued by President Bill Clinton in the last hours of his presidency.

According to documents filed in the case, Rodham received the loans, before and after the pardons were granted, from United Shows of America, Inc., owned by Edgar Gregory and his wife, who had been convicted of defrauding several banks.

ABC has more, and no doubt all sorts of stuff like this will be popping up over the next couple of years. Oh, well, I got a book out of ‘em last time.

AT THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF ROOSEVELT’S COURT-PACKING SCHEME, Prof. Alasdair Roberts emails that he has collected some political cartoons on the subject from 1937.

BLACKFIVE SEES something afoot in Iraq.

JONATHAN ADLER REVIEWS Chris Mooney’s The Republican War on Science, in Regulation. You can download his review, Don’t Politicize Science (Unless You’re on My Side), for free.

Adler has more on this at The Volokh Conspiracy.

OVER 10,000 PEOPLE have signed Hugh Hewitt and N.Z. Bear’s NRSC Pledge, vowing not to support any Republican Senator who votes against the surge.

Dean Barnett, meanwhile, has posted some FAQs.

UPDATE: A response to critics. I have to note that my own support for this effort is of limited value — I’ve never donated to the NRSC or, as far as I can remember, to any Republican Senatorial candidate. But folks like Hugh Hewitt make up the core of this movement, and they’re quite different.

MOHAMMED SAYS IT’S QUIET IN BAGHDAD: Maybe too quiet.

A REPORT FROM DAVOS:

This year there is a weird imbalance here between thinkers and doers.

Usually you can count on a healthy tension between the dreamy thinkers (for these purposes, anyone who writes or talks for a living, such as economists, journalists and most politicians) and the pragmatic doers (in Davos, business people).

The former come up with wild theories and grand plans. The latter say it will never work in practice.

But now, not least in Davos, it is the eggheads who are fretting and the men in Brioni suits who are looking on the bright side.

In the dinners and the discussions, the journalists and economists and politicians raise all the questions about inequality between winners and losers, deplore the absence of political leadership and compare this age of globalisation gloomily with the one that collapsed with the first world war.

The business people reply, by and large: “Come off it”.

It is not that they are being complacent, the business people say. Far from it. They are realists. They see things from the ground up. They see progress in each shampoo bottle bought in eastern Europe, in improvements to Africa’s health care, in the broadening of choice everywhere.

You see this in the United States, too, where the financial markets are much happier than the pundits. I think — and, even more, I hope — that the business people are right here.

UPDATE: Related item here: “When you pick up a newspaper, turn on the television or radio news you would think by the drumbeat that things are awful: Iraq, Iran, Afgan, Global Warming, America’s loss of status, on and on it goes. Meanwhile the markets day after day vote on the overwhelming economic resiliency and strength and breadth of the economy.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Over at The Speculist, some thoughts on why the world seems to be getting better even as the news keeps seeming worse: part one, and part two.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON SCIENCE: “Shouldn’t gay rights advocates care when they sound like the religious fundamentalists they usually deride?”

BAN KI-MOON’S first coverup?

UPDATE: Reader Ric Manhard emails: “Can we call it ‘Ban Ki panky?’” Why not?

MICAH SIFRY:

It’s taken me a little longer than I had hoped to pull together the data on how the Republican presidential candidates are doing in terms of bottom-up support for their campaigns online, for which I apologize. Here’s the headline: They’re almost invisible on the web. Compared to the Democratic presidential field, which I posted on a few days ago, the Republican contenders* are playing bush league ball online. Not even Triple A.

To give you just one example, if you add up all the friends all the Republican candidates have on their MySpace pages, and compare it to all the friends the Ds have, the totals will amaze you: 4,007 to 51,471. If I take fringe candidates Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo out of that equation, the Republican total drops below 2,000.

Same with total incoming blog links, which for the Republican are woeful in part due to the fact that most of them don’t have serious websites yet.

There are some pockets of excellence, but overall the Republican effort is way behind the Dems.

GREG GUTFELD further embroils the fray by which he rules.

READER BRIAN HALL EMAILS:

The Gulf News here in the UAE has an interesting story about Palestinians being told by Shias to leave Iraq or “prepare to die,” yet the supposedly Jewish controlled American media (not CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NYT, Wash Post) doesn’t report on it. I posted about it here.

Interesting. I don’t know why it hasn’t gotten more attention here.

TURNAROUND IN BAGHDAD? Nibras Kazimi writes in The New York Sun:

The wider Sunni insurgency — the groups beyond Al Qaeda — is being slowly, and surely, defeated. The average insurgent today feels demoralized, disillusioned, and hunted. Those who have not been captured yet are opting for a quieter life outside of Iraq. Al Qaeda continues to grow for the time being as it cannibalizes the other insurgent groups and absorbs their most radical and hardcore fringes into its fold. The Baathists, who had been critical in spurring the initial insurgency, are becoming less and less relevant, and are drifting without a clear purpose following the hanging of their idol, Saddam Hussein. Rounding out this changing landscape is that Al Qaeda itself is getting a serious beating as the Americans improve in intelligence gathering and partner with more reliable Iraqi forces.

In other words, battling the insurgency now essentially means battling Al Qaeda. This is a major accomplishment.

Read the whole thing. I certainly hope this is right.

A LOOK AT KOREA as a source of historical analogy.

I’VE MENTIONED J.D. JOHANNES’ INDEPENDENT IRAQ DOCUMENTARY, OUTSIDE THE WIRE, before, but now he emails that it’s available through Amazon. He writes: “Pretty cool…for me at least.” It’s pretty cool for anyone.

You can see an online trailer here.

A LOOK AT HILLARY’S BLOGAD BUY, from William Beutler.

IN THE MAIL: William Easterly’s The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. I ordered it on Megan McArdle’s recommendation.

A POLITICAL BLOGGING SCHOLARSHIP: I wish they’d had these when I was in school. Of course, we would have had to have had blogs first. And the Web.

IS THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN WORRIED ABOUT ROMNEY? Well, if they’re smart they are. Plus, Dan Riehl looks at Romney.

CANCELLING THE YEAR OF THE PIG IN CHINA, so as not to offend Muslims.

OBAMA QUESTIONS:

The question of how Obama chooses to define and approach race looms large as he moves closer to formally launching his campaign next month. Although he rides a wave of enthusiasm among Democrats who like his vision of a different kind of politics and see him as an alternative to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), it is not clear that his multiracial message can excite black voters hungry for affirmation of their top concerns. . . .

Complicating matters is that Obama appears certain to encounter fierce competition for the black vote from the other leading Democratic presidential contenders. Black Democrats prefer Clinton 3 to 1 over Obama, and four out of five of black Democrats view her favorably, much higher than the 54 percent who have a favorable view of Obama, according to combined findings from two Washington Post-ABC polls taken in December and January. Clinton also enjoys close ties to top black elected officials, and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, remains extremely popular among African Americans.

Indeed. Plus, Howard Kurtz on Kerry’s long goodbye:

Kerry began to talk. And talk.

He talked about Mesopotamia in the year 685, the tribal warfare, how people were beheaded. He trod a long, winding path to today’s Iraq, then detoured to talk about Syria.

As he continued to speechify, CNN cut away, then MSNBC.

Kerry kept talking. He turned to Vietnam, then back to Iraq. MSNBC checked in again, then CNN. Would he now get to the point?

The on-screen headlines said that Kerry would announce his withdrawal, but he did not.

Finally, half an hour later, the Massachusetts senator, his voice breaking, disclosed that he would, in fact, not be a candidate for president in the next election.

A flashback to the often droning, ponderous Kerry of 2004 was impossible to avoid.

I still don’t understand why people thought he was the guy to nominate. And — as I noted back then — it’s a measure of Bush’s own weakness as a candidate that he beat Kerry by such a comparatively narrow margin.

WHY I’M CONSIDERING VOTING FOR HILLARY: Jay Nordlinger says it all:

I have a friend who, in a phone conversation last weekend, said the unsayable. Come to think of it, this friend makes a specialty of saying the unsayable. That is one reason he is invaluable.

He said, “The Democrats have to win in 2008 — I mean, the whole enchilada: House, Senate, and presidency.” You ought to know that my friend is a staunch conservative Republican. “Why?” I said. “Why do they have to win?” He answered, “Because that’s the only way they will be fully onboard the War on Terror. They won’t fully support it otherwise, because they will always be trying to trip up the Republicans. If you want the Democrats onboard the War on Terror, they have to be in charge. Period.”

It’s getting harder to argue with that. And hey, maybe Hillary really will turn out to be “the most uncompromising wartime President in the history of the United States.” Plus, Markos doesn’t like her.

MESSAGE TO SAFETY NAZIS: Life is inherently distracting.

DIEBOLD PUTS PHOTO OF VOTING MACHINE KEY ON WEBSITE: Key made from photo opens machine.

THE SECRET WAR AGAINST IRAN:

With the Shia majority in Iraq now running the country, the Arabs now have to confront Iran directly. And that they are doing. Saudi Arabia is supporting the Palestinian Fatah organization against the Iranian supported Hamas. Saudi Arabia is also using its money to support Sunni Arab, and Christian, factions in Lebanon, against Hizbollah, the Shia minority and its Iranian backers. Saudi Arabia is also giving support to the Sunni Arab majority in Syria. For decades, the Saudis tolerated the Shia minority that ran Syria. No more. The situation has changed, especially with Iran gaining speed in its effort to build nuclear weapons.

The Saudis are even, secretly, cooperating with the Israelis. Iran has always been seen as a greater danger to Israel than the surrounding Sunni Arab nations. Hizbollah, which is a Lebanese Shia organization, made a name for itself during its disastrous attack on Israel last Summer. Although Hizbollah lost by every measure, they won in the arena of public opinion. Both the Israelis and Saudi Arabs (and Sunni Arabs in general) hated that. . . . The Saudis are committing over $100 billion to this battle, and doing it out of the purest of motives; self interest.

Interesting.

K.C. JOHNSON has more on the Nifong debacle.

MICKEY KAUS: “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” is just like the Iraq war.

NANOTECHNOLOGY and misleading symbolism.

SOME DATA ON DIVERSITY, from Tom W. Bell.

POLLING WITH THEIR FEET: Frank Martin observes:

I’ve never understood how on one hand people overseas will tell the pollsters how much they hate America – and Americans, and yet our streets seem to be increasingly filled with people from all around the world who have risked life and limb and broken the law of their country and ours to get here.

I mean, if I dont like a restaurant, I dont stand in line for 4 hours to get in, I just go somewhere else. I sure dont stand in line for four hours and then say how much I hate the place.

I wonder if theres a sort of ‘natural reflex’ to just tell the pollsters what they want to hear, rather than tell them what you actually think.

Think about it, when the western United States was being settled, I dont think there were people saying how much they hated Oregon and California when they were selling everything they had and walking away from Ohio and other parts of the east. ” I hate Oregon, so lets take our life in our hands and try to go there”, followed by headlines that said ” Oregon more unpopular than ever says poll of former residents of Ohio”.

face it, if there is a line of people stretching across to continent walking to oregon, then any poll saying “oregon unpopular…” is clearly based on faulty data, right?

You’d think.

UPDATE: Various readers suggest that the world is made up of two kinds of people: Those who “get” America and those who don’t. The former immigrate; the latter stay home and are polled.

THE STATE OF THE UNION, in three presidencies.

JIMMY CARTER APOLOGIZES.

CENSORING FOR JIMMY CARTER at Brandeis.

I’VE LINKED TO AUDRA AND THE ANTIDOTE on numerous occasions. You might be interested to know that Audra Coldiron has brain cancer, and is now blogging about it. She’s a terrific person, and I wish her the best. Send her your prayers and good thoughts.

Our podcast interview with Audra is here.

FRONT-LINE WARRIORS against Islamic fundamentalism. (LATER: A reader cautions that these photos might be NSFW some places. I’m beginning to wonder if the Taliban fled to corporate HR departments, instead of Waziristan.)