JASON DAVIS EMAILS: “McCain has a ready made commercial from Hank Williams Jr. He could simply run this unedited against Obama and watch the votes roll in from the key battleground states.” Well, possibly.
UPDATE: Reader Matt Johnson recommends this song: “I admit Hanks song is perfect commentary on Obama’s gaffe. A little more contemporary is Trace Adkins’s ‘Songs about me’ — while I would bet a million dollars that nearly everyone one of Obama’s bitter constituents would say hell yeah that song is about me, I can imagine Obama wouldn’t have the first idea what in the world Trace is talking about.”
OBAMA ON HILLARY: “She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley! Hillary Clinton’s out there like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday, she’s packin’ a six shooter! C’mon! She knows better. . . . I want to see that picture of her out there in the duck blinds.”
MICKEY KAUS: “Hillary Clinton had apparently stopped losing ground in PA polls before Obama’s ‘cling’ fling in Frisco. It’s a bit unfair to say that ‘Obama had been gaining ground until …,’ though I think I’ve heard that nascent myth being spread at least three times today. … P.S.: Obama’s lead on Rasmussen (11 points a week ago) has gone and disappeared. Note that the slide began pre-gaffe.”
WHAT HILLARY WISHES SHE COULD SAY: “She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama’s likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naïve Democrats just don’t see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps won’t tell the story. . . . Obama has serious problems with Jewish voters (goodbye Florida), working class whites (goodbye Ohio) and Hispanics (goodbye, New Mexico.) Republicans will also ruthlessly exploit openings that Clinton—in the genteel confines of an intra-party contest—never could. Top targets: Obama’s radioactive personal associations, his liberal ideology, his exotic life story, his coolly academic and elitist style.”
CONFESSIONS OF A BIONIC MAN: “In 2005, I got new software that made music sound brighter and clearer. The software’s improved frequency resolution enabled me to distinguish between tones that had sounded identical before. It was a simple upload; no surgery was necessary. . . . I’ve gotten used to the idea of having a quarter of a million transistors in my head — now it’s just part of my normal life. I boot myself up in the morning, and when my transmitter attaches itself magnetically to my implant, it takes only a second or two for it to begin sending data.”
Just don’t tell the Robophobes among us! It’s best to “pass” whenever you can.
HMM: Hurricane Expert Reassesses Link to Warming. “The new study, in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is hardly definitive in its own right, essentially raising more questions than it resolves. But it definitely rolls back his sense of confidence about a recent role for global warming.” Of course, now that we know global temperatures are down from their 1998 peak, the relative paucity of hurricanes over the past couple of years makes sense . . . .
UPDATE: Brendan Loy has comments, and emphasizes this passage:
This should put to rest a lot of the nonsense about a global warming conspiracy among scientists. Emanuel, faced with new evidence, has moderated his viewpoint. That’s what responsible scientists do, and most are responsible. The amount of scientist-bashing when it comes to global warming is generally quite deplorable.
The journalists, as usual, are less responsible than the scientists — though in fact, some of the public spokescientists have gotten ahead of the science, and others at least have muted any criticism of, say, Al Gore’s stretching of the truth. When you allow your work to be politicized, politics follow.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Eric Soskind emails:
I think you said: I’ll treat it like a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.
The latest example, in Maryland:
Feb. 19, 2008:
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (expressing support for a bill requiring Maryland to reduce emissions by 90%):
“The climate crisis is real, and we must act now to reduce global climate change…”
A BIG FAT BEER TAX IN CALIFORNIA. Reaction: “Do the Democrats want to throw Califreakinfornia to the Republicans?” 30 cents a bottle is nothing to sneeze at.
What would happen if a person charged with murder ended up before a tax court judge?
No doubt it would have many repercussions — a review of how prisoners are handled in the court house, most likely, and certainly the accused would be sent back to await trial before a criminal court.
It is unlikely that the judge would issue a ruling saying: “I have not heard any evidence, but the accused sure looks guilty — and there are a lot of other killers out there just like him.”
But that is just what happened this week in Ontario.
Except that you have to be smart to be a Tax Court judge. And more here:
The Ontario Human Rights Commission seems to like it both ways.
It declines to prosecute columnist Mark Steyn for an allegedly Islamophobic piece published in Maclean’s, as its legislative mandate doesn’t cover publications.
Then, its chief commissioner Barbara Hall calls Steyn’s article an example of how media portrayals of Muslims made “Islamophobic” attitudes more prevalent, “including an unwillingness to consider accommodating some of their religious beliefs and practices. . . . Explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and promotes prejudice towards Muslims . . .”
It’s as though the witchfinder-general has identified the witch, but with no pyre upon which to burn him, is thereby aggrieved.
Poor old Steyn. If his case had gone to a tribunal, he wouldn’t have had much of a defence: Human rights tribunals don’t regard truth, or fair comment. But, he could have raged against the proceedings with his customary wit.
In this drive-by mugging, his response isn’t even a matter of official record.
And here’s more from The Toronto Sun: “We have a different suggestion for Premier Dalton McGuinty. Premier, isn’t it time your government reined these folks in?”
I’m glad to see the Canadian media focusing on the thuggishness of these so-called “human rights” commissions. The witch-hunt analogy seems about right. In fact, I believe I’ve found the model for the “human rights” commissions.
Of course, according to Nicholas Kristof, it’s all because of global warming: “Here’s a forecast for a particularly bizarre consequence of climate change: more executions of witches.” Forecast? It’s already starting!
What Obama implicitly regards (in both his statements) as signs of disintegration, as reflections of popular frustration, are in fact examples of a thriving culture. . . . Yet Obama’s approach betrays a very suffocating vision of the state as the be-all and end-all of political-cultural behavior. Outside the confines of the state there is no salvation, only resentment. This is nonsense, but it also partly explains why Obama is so admired among educated liberals, who still view the state as the main medium of American providence.
SO I JUST FINISHED MICHAEL CHABON’S The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, and it was, well, okay. Given all the great reviews it’s gotten, I was a bit disappointed. The premise is interesting — the founding of Israel failed in 1948, and the U.S. offered a chunk of the Alaska panhandle as a substitute homeland — but Chabon doesn’t really do much with that, considering. Has the Alaska setting changed the people who move there? Not a lot, it seems, or at least Chabon doesn’t show us beyond relatively minor occasional references. Anyway, it’s not bad, but I couldn’t help but think that Harry Turtledove could have done a lot more with the setting. It was one of those books I picked up and put down over a couple of weeks, not one that sucked me into the story. But if you follow the link and look at the reviews you’ll see that a lot of people liked it more than I did.
Her lower lip bulging from a dip of Skoal, Sen. Clinton put her Bible in her handbag, and drew out her own Para Ordnance Warthog .45 caliber pistol.
As reporters looked on, the Democrat presidential candidate emptied one 10-round magazine after another, with fair accuracy, at a human silhouette target.
It’s actually easy to picture Hillary as a good shot, though I would expect something more like a Walther PPK/s.
JUST WORDS — that are hard to find. “You know things are getting really bad when you have to go to the Free Republic to find the text of what’s on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer!”
Plus, “it’s not about the bitter!” “Over the last twenty-four hours though, Sen. Clinton has refocused her attacks on the faith angle, on which Sen. Obama is vastly more vulnerable.”
UPDATE AND BUMP: I just finished the book. It’s terrific, and if you care about the war you should buy it, and read it.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Liz Eagan emails: “May I suggest that in your reviews that you should also suggest that readers should contact their local libraries to encourage them to buy it. In my library system (metro ,Oklahoma City), there is a ‘suggest a title’ page. You can include a web reference for the book. I just suggested Michael’s book – hey it increases book sales…..”
Good idea. Or just donate one.
MORE: Various librarian-readers suggest that you’re better off requesting it than donating it, at least where public libraries are concerned.
THE REACTION TO THIS WILL BE FUN TO WATCH: Pope will pray for terrorists at Ground Zero. “The pontiff will call for terrorists to convert to Christianity, saying: ‘Turn to Your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred.’”
Not being as good a Christian as the Pope, my feelings are more along these lines. But this is funny: “The prayer is likely to further incense the Muslim world.” There’s no pleasing some people.
A REVIEW OF THE MARINES’ NEW MRAP COMBAT VEHICLE, and it’s kinda lukewarm: “On the good side, it is obviously better equipped to resist blast-type mines and IEDs than any other vehicle in the inventory. On top of the increased protection, the MRAP has a fantastic communications system installed, much better than what we had in our Humvee. . . . For a motorized infantry mission, however, the MRAP’s shortcomings are many. . . . The MRAP is a vehicle that is well-suited for a particular niche, but due to pressure from people such as our lawmakers in Congress, it has been pressed into service in roles that it is not suited for.”
HERE’S MORE ON THE DUMB Colorado College censorship affair. An obvious parody is a “threat.” Feminist flyer on castration, okay. “The whole process was a punishment. I was subjected to an ideological witch hunt and interrogated about my political beliefs beyond what was in the satire.”
Much has been said about (and several Saturday Night Live skits have lampooned) the media’s infatuation with Barack Obama. But sometimes a gaffe is so revealing and so encapsulates a candidate’s underlying fault lines (â€I actually did vote for the $87M before I voted against it.â€) that a sympathetic media can’t spin it away.
This seems to be the story line: “A political tempest over Barack Obama’s comments about bitter voters in small towns has given rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a new opening to court working class Democrats 10 days before Pennsylvanians hold a primary that she must win to keep her presidential campaign alive.”
Though the “bitter” bit is the least of it. Obama’s self-contradiction on trade, guns, and religion is really the more damning part. And Taylor Marsh comments: “I’d say Obama made an amateur slip of the tongue, however, something about this statement, the glib nature of it combined with its specificity, makes me believe he actually feels this way.”
OBESE FEEL MORE DISCRIMINATION: On the one hand, since they’ll soon outnumber the rest of us, that’s hard to believe. On the other hand, we’re more likely to elect a black president than a fat one. I don’t think William Howard Taft would have a chance today.
UPDATE: Reader Don Wolff writes:
If you look at photographs from a hundred years ago, you’ll see the rich, powerful and elite were often overweight. The poor and working class, then synonymous, were thin. The social critics of the day were outraged by this divide demanding justice to resolve it. America applied itself to correct that issue. Today, the rich, powerful and elite are thin. It is the working class and poor who are overweight. The critics are still unhappy.
SCIENCE FICTION RECOMMENDATIONS: My bleg the other day in response to a reader question produced a number of responses. Here are some.
Reader Merrijane Rice emails: “My all-time favorite sci-fi author is Orson Scott Card, beginning with his Hugo and Nebula award winning Ender’s Game. It’s a really good read for teens and adults alike. Card not only creates engrossing characters and storylines, but has the knack of presenting complex scientific ideas in easy (or easier) to understand ways.” Yes, it’s a good book. We had a podcast interview with Card last year.
Reader Eric Roush emails: “I would add Lois McMaster Bujold to your list. Although perhaps not as ‘hard SF’ as many of the authors you have already mentioned, she is an excellent storyteller and does a good job at exploring the ramifications of the potential technologies that she does focus on, such as uterine replicators.” Yes, her Barrayar books — Shards of Honor and Barrayar start the series, then Miles Vorkosigan appears to carry the ball — are good fun, and her Sharing Knife fantasy sequence, starting with Beguilement, is top-notch.
Reader Tom Grant emails: “Everyone will say that you have missed out on a number of ‘BEST’ science fiction, but I will also add my two cents: Armor by John Steakley. (one of the best ever — ‘You are what you do, when it counts.’) The Dosadi Experiment another one of the same caliber.” Yes, I’ve been meaning to reread The Dosadi Experiment, whose legal innovations I think I’d appreciate in a different way now than when I read it for the first time, serialized in Galaxy.
David Masceri writes:
I whole-heartedly recommend the “Book of the New Sun” series by Gene Wolfe. It’s a science fiction/fantasy series divided into four volumes spread over two books: “Shadow and Claw” and “Sword and Citadel.” I would go so far as to say that it ranks as one of my favorite novels of all time; I would definitely consider it my favorite science fiction book. My recommendation to sci-fi newbies would come with this disclaimer: This is not an easy read. The narrative is first-person and lacks explanation of the dominant technology, politics, or the society as a whole, and Wolfe will use an alien word and never explain it. If a reader likes his/her science fiction prose encyclopedic is in specificity, they won’t the “Book of the New Sun.” If he/she really enjoys the ability of good science fiction to confront its readers with a completely unheard of reality, I would say “you need to go get this book…now.”
I had an idea for a piece on legal education based on a Gene Wolfe story that’s a subset of the above — The Shadow of the Torturer, in which the education of apprentice-torturer Severian struck me as surprisingly similar to the education of budding lawyers, right down to how the professional ethics involved seem to have little to do with client welfare . . . . I had a lengthy conversation with Janet Halley about that some years ago and then never got around to actually writing it. I was busy with Is Democracy Like Sex? then, I think.
Hank Shelton offers a reminder: “Don’t forget the Internet Top 100 Science Fiction Books list, (Link). It’s been dead for five years or so, but I found a lot of great books there I’d never read. ”
Meanwhile, Mark Whittington has his own list of recommended science fiction — recommended for the Presidential candidates. I certainly agree with his inclusion of Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Starship Troopers. And Poul Anderson’s Van Rijn stories are good, though I suspect few politicians would appreciate them.
Reader Solomon Foster emails:
he most interesting new project I’ve been following is Shadow Unit: http://www.shadowunit.org
It’s a completely on-line shared world writing project, with old pros Emma Bull and Will Shetterly joined by relative newcomers Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, and Amanda Downum. It’s done TV series style, with a series bible and all — in Emma’s words, “A mystery/suspense show, a cop show, a profiler show–but with a science-fictional problem at its heart.” They’ve released four novellas to the web so far this year, all great reads, with three more and a novel scheduled in the next two months.
Also highly recommended is Elizabeth Bear’s recent novel Dust, technology that’s hard to distinguish from the usual fantasy tropes. And Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, whichi s basically Patrick O’Brien with dragons added.
Yeah, but that moves us more into the fantasy realm. Good books, though — I’ve read ‘em all, and that nutshell description is about right.
Several readers point to Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End — and we had a podcast interview with Vinge, too, a while back, and that has links to other works of his that are worth your time.
Also, unless you’re a robophobic type like Matt Yglesias, Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot is still good — the InstaWife, who doesn’t care that much for science fiction, liked these stories a lot. And, of course, the Foundation trilogy, despite having allegedly inspired both Osama bin Laden and the Aum Shinriyko cult, is still a classic. And while we’re talking classics, there’s always Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End.
That’s probably enough for now. I’ll try to put up some more later. And if you missed it, there are more links to recommendations here.
UPDATE: Up for like two minutes and I’m already getting criticism. M. Simon emails:
Any list that does not have at least one of the Dorsai novels is not serious.
The Tactics of Mistake is a good one.
Yeah, it is. I met Dickson once — I think it was when he was guest of honor at Satyricon in Knoxville — and he was a nice guy, though obviously not too healthy even then.
TOM MAGUIRE: A TYPICAL SORT OF FLARE-UP: “Hmm, how typical is it for a candidate to characterize a huge swath of his target voters as bigoted, gun waving religious fanatics?” And a big roundup from James Joyner, who observes: “Class bias works both ways. Urban elites tend to view rural America, especially Southerners, as a bunch of yahoos. Rural Americans, meanwhile, think big city types are elitist snobs who don’t love America. There are similar resentments between rich and poor, educated and not, and even Ivy League -State College. In private gatherings, where people think they are among the like-minded, one hears shocking bigotry along those lines.”
And sometimes it’s recorded and circulated on the Internet.
INVISIBLE HOMOPHOBIA: “It’s not just homophobia from conservatives we have to worry about. Liberals can be just as baldly antigay — often without reproach.”
ABC News’ Sarah Amos reports that at North Carolina Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, N.C., Clinton campaign North Carolina chieftain Tom Hendrickson, a former state party chair, made much hay out of the “small town” comments made by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
Hendrickson was introducing former President Bill Clinton.
“I normally just come and talk about President Clinton and Senator Clinton at these, but today Senator Obama was out at a fundraiser at I guess a brie and chardonnay crowd in San Francisco,” Hendrickson said. “But his quote talking about small towns in Pennsylvania — and which applies to small towns across eastern North Carolina — which is why it is relevant to this tour we are doing today. And his quote is ‘and it is not surprising that they cling to guns and religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant or anti-trade as a way to explain their frustration.’
“I listened to that quote and I got mad,” Hendrickson said, “and I wanted to reach out to Senator Obama and say senator, we are from the rural part of eastern North Carolina. We are very proud of our heritage, we are proud of who we are. We are not frustrated. We are not bitter. We turn to our faith because we believe, and we hunt and fish because it is part of our culture and we enjoy it.
Complaints about the drilling bans in ANWR and offshore are a staple of right-wing talk radio. But I remember Malcolm S. Forbes, back in the 1970s, saying that we should drill as little domestic oil as possible. Pump the Arabs’ oil as long as it lasts, then — when oil has become really scarce and valuable — we’ll be the only ones with any left!
MORE: Heh. Hicks nix clique’s shticks. “If you’re running as a glamorous blank slate on which people project their own utopian fantasies, you’ve got to be very careful not to give the game away – especially when the game turns out to be the usual cliched elite disdain for the great unwashed.”
More at Talkleft: “Is he digging himself into a deeper hole? Clinging to anti-immigrant sentiment isn’t a bad thing? Isn’t he still saying PA voters harbor anti-immigrant sentiment that have been passed down to them through generations?”
BILL ROGGIO: Fighting in Sadr City. Meanwhile, InstaPundit correspondent John Tammes sends this: “Just a quick follow up – it is game on down here, and the early results are good. A high ranking Iraqi officer said to me that they ‘struck some gold.’”
ANN ALTHOUSE: “How odd that Pennsylvania got set apart in time from all the other primaries. What luck for Clinton. All this time for something to go wrong for Obama and for exploiting it — like that awful quote everyone’s talking about. . . . I must say that the original statement sounded like a typical law-school-liberal remark. I think it was quite sincere, and I’m rather sure he believed he was being admirably intellectual and raising politics to a new, higher level. Within a liberal law school environment, that statement would be heard as a thoughtful, compassionate insight. Some of your colleagues might think you were excessively, squishily tolerant of what they see as ignorant, bigoted people, but I don’t think they’d push you to be more understanding of the alien culture you were observing.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: More here: “Moreover, even assuming for the sake of argument that some voters do vote values over economics, Obama may want to explain to such voters why they should do otherwise, given that he has spent the last 20 years in a church known for disavowing ‘the pursuit of middleclassness.’ . . . In addition, if Obama thinks these voters are clinging to anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment because of US economic policy, he ought to explain why he is exploiting anti-trade sentiment on the campaign trail, but advocating lax policies on illegal immigration, including (but not limited to) providing government benefits like drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens and allowing criminals to become citizens. Once he does that, Obama can explain how he squares his stated position on trade with the advice of his top economic adviser. And when he does that, Obama can explain how his stated position on immigration squares with his labor-induced vote that killed the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill last summer.”
CONGRATULATIONS: Michael Yon’s book is currently up to #470 on Amazon, and it’s not even officially out yet, though it has started to ship. I hope it’s widely read. Buy a copy for each of your Senators!
So now, Duke University wants to keep certain people from saying certain things about the disproven rape allegations against the school’s lacrosse players.
Now that lawsuits accuse Duke of having helped inflame campus sentiment against the team, this is a good time to be quiet about the whole thing, it seems.
Well, that is a turn of events.
This is the same school where faculty and students loudly demanded jailing — and worse — for the young men; where administrators canceled the team’s season and fired the coach to try to quell the mob. That same school is now trying to punish players’ lawyers for inviting the news media to write about what the school allegedly did wrong.
In response to a suit filed by 38 current and former lacrosse players at Duke, lawyers for the university accuse the players’ attorneys of ethics violations in speaking publicly about their case.
Merely insuring, of course, that we’re all reminded of how badly Duke behaved. Hey, it’s good for Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson.
“A PROVOCATIVE MASKED BALL SET IN THE RUINS OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER:” They do this because they know we won’t behead them. Such is the bravery of artists. (Possibly NSFW, though not in any sort of appealing way).
UPDATE: Bryon Scott emails: “The irony of this play isn’t that it uses World Trade Center imagery. It’s that the point of it is to expose the cruel disparity between the rich and poor in America. This coming from a country who’s unemployment rate has been close to double that of the US for the last fifteen years.”
The real irony is that if you staged a similarly nasty opera about modern German in America, nobody would care, because Germany doesn’t matter that much. And they hate that.
SOUNDS LIKE YOU’VE HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD: “The Olympics are a vulgar, ruinous hullabaloo the chief functions of which are to facilitate graft on a spectacular scale and to act as a vehicle for the promotion of despotic values. They are, at best, unedifying and, at worst, intolerable.”
And, from the comments: “I think you’re being entirely too kind.”
MORE ON OBAMA’S SMALL-TOWN SCREWUP, from Tom Maguire.
Plus this: “Obama To Rural Pennsylvanians: Vote For Me, You Corncob-Smokin’, Banjo-Strokin’ Chicken-Chokin’ Cousin-Pokin’ Inbred Hillbilly Racist Morons.” That’ll sell. Can’t anybody play this game?
Barack Obama has done what Democratic candidates for president invariably do — he has revealed the profound sense of unearned superiority that is the sad and persistent hallmark of contemporary liberalism. Obama’s statement today that small-town folk “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations†may be the most distilled example of this train of thought I’ve ever seen.
I still think that knocking the anti-trade stuff is pretty hypocritical given Barack’s own position. And wasn’t it just the other day he was telling us he’s the pro-gun candidate?
I once saw Alan Dershowitz argue an appeal back when I was a law clerk. He made clear from the beginning that he thought he was the smartest guy in the room — which, as one of the other clerks remarked later, proved that he wasn’t. He lost. Must be a Harvard Law thing . . . .
I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances–welfare and immigrants were “scapegoats,” part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. …
And follow the link for Michael Lind’s comment: “Hunting is part of working-class American culture. Does Obama really think that working-class whites in Pennsylvania were gun control liberals until their industries were downsized?” How would he know otherwise?
Plus, “Let’s have a national dialogue about egghead condescension!” It’s got to work better for Obama than the dialogue about race has . . . .
If you respect the NAACP’s heritage, you will be disgusted to learn that the organization’s Detroit chapter plans to honor a man who says that AIDS is a U.S. government plot to kill black people and that the Sept. 11 attacks were “America’s chickens . . . coming home to roost,” and who declares: “God damn America.” . . .
This appears to be a case of circling the wagons: Wright, a black man, is under attack, so the NAACP, an organization that seeks the advancement of black people, is defending him. In doing so, the NAACP is committing an analytical and moral error. Wright is under attack not for the color of his skin, but for the content of his ideas. To defend him is to countenance those ideas. Through its actions, the NAACP is in effect arguing that anti-Americanism is acceptable, so long as its source is black. The association is sanctioning both invidious ideas and an invidious racial double standard.
ROBOPHOBIA: Matthew Yglesias is being busted for anti-android prejudice. I wish to join in saying that robophobia and hatred directed at our cybernetic friends has no place in a civilized polity, and that someone should report Matt to the ASPCR.
UPDATE: Brendan Loy slaps me for “Robot Dhimmitude:” “Glenn Reynolds’s hyperactive sense of political correctness is blinding him to the threat robots pose!”
Does former President Bill Clinton regret his error-strewn defense of his wife’s Bosnia sniper-fire story? Does he regret mis-informing voters in Boonville and Jasper, Indiana? “I regret that people like you care more about that when whether she served the troops,” he told reporters today in Terr[e] Haute, per ABC News’ Sarah Amos.
Meanwhile, reader Aaron Pastula writes: “Have you ever assembled a collection of recommended Sci-Fi reading from your readers? Particularly good places to start for ‘first timers?’”
Yeah, but it’s been a while. Here’s an older post, and here’s another. Plus this.
UPDATE: Owing Austan Goolsbee an apology? “Behind closed doors — among his fellow educated, upper-class liberals — the real Obama sounds very different from the one who threatened to pull the U.S. out of NAFTA.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: The Huffington Posthas audio. And there’s this reaction: “It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking.” But Armando thinks he’ll get away with it. Plus, Obama’s response.
Plus these thoughts on playing both ends against the middle: “Perhaps when Obama returns to Pennsylvania to ask for votes, he will charm the locals with tales of the aging Bay Area hippies who just do not understand how US trade policy is destroying the our manufacturing base and the lives of upstanding Americans in the heartland who bowl better than he does.” Heh.
MORE STILL: Obama had better hope that this reaction isn’t typical:
First of all, Pennsylvanians…especially those of us in the western part of the state, really get irked when we are called “midwestern.” The Midwest doesn’t start until the Ohio border, and unless you’ve lived in both Pennsylvania and Ohio, you wouldn’t get the difference.
Second, the comment about “people who are different” is just so insulting to those of us who live in or around Pittsburgh, an area noted for its ethnicity. I can go 25 miles in any direction from where I live and see churches, temples, neighborhoods, signs, social halls, stores, etc., for many different ethnic groups from every part of the world. I can also pass through many small towns and not notice anyone who is hoping for a remake of “Deliverance.” Honestly, Obama is such a sham. He doesn’t have a clue about anything having to do with real life. What an idiot.
I’M NOT SURE THE DIFFERENT FACTIONS WILL EVERY REALLY GET ALONG: “A teenage driver was killed in a car-to-car shooting at a freeway off-ramp early Thursday in the latest in several recent fatal roadway attacks in California.”
IN THE SHADOW OF THE IPHONE: A roundup of iPhone and other cellphone news. My venerable cellphone will have to be replaced sometime in the foreseeable future, but I don’t think it’ll be with an iPhone.
INSTAPUNDIT’S IRAQ CORRESPONDENT, Major John Tammes, emails:
All of us over here working with the Iraqi Army have been extra busy lately. Your readers are probably aware of events the last few weeks.
What I have seen in the area of Iraq I have been working is an Iraqi Army that is showing that it can adapt and improve. This is a major step forward for them, if you consider their previous Amry’s showings against the Iranians and us. They were inflexible, repeated mistakes and feared reprisals for even suggesting a change. To be sure, the Iraqi Army has a ways to go, but what I have seen lately is encouraging.
One other thing I should mention – the attitude of the units I have dealt with seems a little better than I would have expected. When I met some of the jinood (soldiers) recently, they seemed a bit more focused on the job. Again, they have a ways to go – but it is improving.
The photo is of an NCO and a Warrant Officer in one of the transportation units that had been in action lately. They had taken some losses, but were keeping up on their maintenance and keeping the trucks rolling.
Back in aristocratic days, some aristocrats took real pride, and got real pleasure, from being patrons of scholars, musicians, artists, poets. Today, ordinary people like me can take this pride, and enjoy this pleasure, by supporting you and your work. Thank you for giving me, and many like me, the opportunity to take part in your work by helping to support you financially. I hope this does give you a freedom to think about and write about what you consider most interesting and important.
DO MEN RUN THE WORLD? As Scott Adams says, you shouldn’t get too excited because those are other men.
UPDATE: Okay, here’s the precise quote, worth breaking out:
Men live in a fantasy world. I know this because I am one, and I actually receive my mail there. We men like to think we’re in charge because most of the top jobs in business and government are held by men, but I have a shocking statistical insight for you men–THOSE ARE OTHER MEN. The total percentage of men in those top spots is roughly .0000001 percent of the male population. I’m not one of them. I just draw cartoons and write these stupid books. Chances are, if you’re a man reading this, you’re not running the world, either.
Indeed. It is also the case, as the column linked above notes, that the interests of those men who do run the world are often in some, er, tension with the interests of those who do not.
EXERCISE: “Maintaining aerobic fitness through middle age and beyond can delay biological ageing by up to 12 years and prolong independence during old age, concludes an analysis published ahead of print in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.” If there were a pill that could do this, you’d buy it.
SHOULD HAVE DONE THE SAME HERE: Olympic ‘Thugs’ Rejected By Japan: “Chinese security guards who have been encircling the Olympic flame as it makes its way around the world will not be welcome in Japan.”
INSTAPUNDIT’S IRAQ CORRESPONDENT, Major John Tammes, emails:
