HAPPY ALEX BEAM DAY!!!

WOW. Over 300 gigabytes of bandwidth this month. Good thing I get a deal on it.

DODD HARRIS HAS AN INTERVIEW with cartoonist Chris Muir, author of the excellent Day by Day cartoon strip. It’s a must-read, just like the strip.

RATS LEAVING THE SINKING SHIP?

A Royal Marine told of a grenade glancing off his helmet and another told of how an Iraqi colonel driving a car with a briefcase full of cash refused to stop and was shot dead. “I didn’t know what to do with the money so I gave it to the kids, bundles of the stuff,” the Royal Marine said.

If the colonels are bugging out, well. . . .

UPDATE: But there’s plenty of room at the Hotel California!

COLUMBIA’S GROUP BLOG THE FILIBUSTER has become De Genova Central. Just keep scrolling.

UPDATE: Read this, too. And Erin O’Connor has multiple posts.

STEFAN SHARKANSKY HAS ARRIVED: He’s being savaged in The Guardian. Stefan, however, has the last word, noting suspicious similarities between the Guardian piece on protester Rachel Corrie and items published by the anti-semitic National Vanguard Network.

Corrie wasn’t a “peace activist” — she was just on the other side. Like, apparently, John Sutherland, author of the Guardian piece. You can read more about Sutherland’s shoddy and dishonest assault on the blogosphere, which conflates chat-board comments with blogging in order to sustain its thesis, here and here.

UPDATE: I wonder what Sutherland would say if someone gave him a shot of truth serum?

(Link via Judicious Asininity).

STEVEN DEN BESTE says that there are things we don’t need to know right now.

LATEST GALLUP RESULTS:

Public support for the war in Iraq remains steady at roughly the 70% level, little changed over the past week. . . .

The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted Saturday and Sunday, shows 70% of Americans in favor of the war and 27% opposed, virtually identical to the support measured last week. . . .

Currently, 33% of Americans say the war is going “very well,” about the same as the percentage measured March 24-25. Optimism had been much higher two days earlier. The latest results suggest a stabilization of perceptions at the lower level.

Still, more than 8 in 10 Americans currently believe the war is going at least moderately well, about the same as last week. Relatively few Americans, 14%, believe the war is going either “moderately” or “very” badly, up slightly from the March 22-23 poll (8%).

Three-quarters of Americans, 74%, say the United States and its allies are winning the war, unchanged from March 24-25, though down 10 points from the poll two days earlier.

The public seems somewhat less excitable than the journalistic community.

UPDATE: Comparing one poll to another is always iffy, but this poll would seem to indicate that the British public is feeling quite positive too. Guess all that negative spin on the BBC isn’t working.

PETER ARNETT’S PHILOSOPHY OF JOURNALISM is explained over at Fraters Libertas.

TIM BLAIR is on a roll. I mean, even more than usual.

MORT ZUCKERMAN IS ALL OVER THE FRENCH:

This is all part and parcel of Saddam’s incestuous political and commercial relationship with the defense, business, and political elites of France that will undoubtedly be exposed after the war. As the Weekly Standard reported, Saddam threatened to expose what he saw as France’s betrayal in the 1991 Gulf War, saying, “If the trickery continues, we will be forced to unmask them, all of them, before the French public.”

The French fan dance with Iraq dates to the 1970s, when Chirac was the point man in selling nuclear reactors to Iraq, including the Osirak plant bombed by Israel in 1981. (The plant, incidentally, was known as the O’Chirac reactor.) It was Chirac who signed the treaty with Iraq allowing for the transfer of French nuclear technology and specialists. It was this same Chirac who lavished praise on Saddam as a “personal friend,” a “great statesman,” and who invited him to his home. And, yes, it was the very same Chirac who has led the French efforts to sell arms to Iraq, some $20 billion worth. Today, France remains Iraq’s biggest European trading partner. Those who believe the United States went to war against Iraq inspired by oil are looking in the wrong direction. Try Paris.

Seems that Zuckerman isn’t alone. David Carr has more dirt on oil money and French politics.

FROM EDWARD BOYD’S BLOG to Donald Rumsfeld’s ear. Well, yeah.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH SAYS THAT IRAQ IS VIOLATING THE LAWS OF WAR. Glad someone’s noticed.

(Via The Volokh Conspiracy).

ROBERT FISK AND THE MAGIC ROADBLOCK: A true story, according to Tom Paine.

JOHN TABIN OBSERVES:

CULTURE WATCH: Just seen on the bottom of the CNN Headline News screen:

Gary Hart Cyber Campaign Starts blog on possible 2004 presidential bid

Delightful, isn’t it, that they felt no need to explain what a blog is?

Yes, it is.

BOY, WHEN YOU LOOK AT THIS GRAPHIC OF WHO SOLD WEAPONS TO IRAQ, that whole Security-Council thing sure gets easy to understand.

IS SADDAM STILL ALIVE? The Iraqi Ambassador isn’t saying.

LIFE DURING WARTIME: Bill Whittle has a new essay, offering some historical perspective that’s sadly lacking from, well, most everything you’ve been reading on the war.

HERE’S ANOTHER MILITARY BLOG (a Marine blog, actually) that you should be reading. Excerpt:

Umm Qasr is essentially a void now in the daily briefings of the Iraqi disinformation minister. His last mention of Umm Qasr was a vow that it would never fall into the hands of the “pirates” (arrrrrrrgh) and “gangsters” (mama mia!) of the coalition. This is essentially true, in that the coalition is devoid of either. American and British troops did take the city, though, and are in the process of… doing nefarious things like public works projects.

There has to be as many aid workers and civil engineers running around the coalition-occupied territory of Southern Iraq as there are fighting troops now. And the last I checked, the pirates of the Caribbean were not especially concerned with the welfare of those they invaded.

And I’m short a parrot, damn it.

I’d take up a collection to send one, but I don’t think the Corps would let it through.

And read LT Smash’s response to an Iranian emailer.

UPDATE: And there’s a lot of great stuff over at Sgt. Stryker’s today, starting with this post.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This is good, too.

HERE’S A DELIGHTFUL dissection of Michael Moore — who, come to think of it, directed the System of a Down video that nobody likes, didn’t he? Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

A memorable performance, to be sure. It’s just that Moore gave the impression of having been somewhat miscast. He deserved an Oscar for alienation – a phenomenon best explained as dislike for, or hatred of, an individual’s society and its leaders. Alienated types tend to be relatively well-off and well-educated men and women who enjoy the freedoms and riches provided by Western societies and use their status to dump on politicians and, by implication, those who elected them.

Moore’s entertaining Bowling for Columbine makes some telling, if unoriginal, criticisms of the gun culture prevalent in parts of the United States. Above all, this is an exercise in alienation and, at times, self-hatred. The documentary says the US is responsible for most – if not all – of the world’s problems. Moreover, it kicks down most of Moore’s fellow citizens who appear – many of whom are of modest means and scant education. Action, as Moore mocks a black policeman. Laugh now, as he attempts to make a white, female clerical worker look foolish. What (alienated) fun. Only to be enjoyed by those who can afford to pay cash at the cinema door and/or who buy the book.

Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men (Penguin, first edition 2001, new edition 2002) is perhaps the alienated tract of our time. He refers to “the evils of America”, maintains that “we are now in a budding police state formerly known as the USofA” and describes Americans as “stupid and oppressed”. All this in the introduction. Later on Bush is depicted as both a “functional illiterate” and an “alcoholic” and the US is bagged as a nation which “goes out of its way to remain ignorant and stupid”. This last assertion is made in capitals for effect. How helpful.

Some members of the intelligentsia – and the super rich (like Moore) – enjoy wallowing in such self-hatred. Stupid White Men includes a chapter called “Kill Whitey”. This is from an author who expresses understandable concern at the high homicide rates in the US. Sounds bizarre. But not so to the American heartland, as the Oscars demonstrated. Moore’s alienated rage was applauded by a few members of the Hollywood tinsel town audience, although not by Oscar nominees and their guests who chose to remain silent. Not so those of lesser means, and status, who occupied what are termed the “cheap seats” who exhibited their disgust at such alienation – at a time when US forces are at war – by booing loudly.

To Moore I’d say — just try and lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Then maybe you’ll finally understand. . . . Hey, didn’t somebody already say that?

MAARTEN SCHENK has thoughts on unilateralism. And scroll up for the latest bizarre political happenings in Antwerp.

WORLD PEACE THROUGH SHARED POPULAR CULTURE? I’m not so sure that this works — but Gilligan’s Island couldn’t help but have a civilizing effect.

RUSSIANS AND IRAQI INTELLIGENCE: Interesting stuff via Oxblog.

BJORN STAERK WRITES:

Nowadays I’m focusing on the deeper, more fundamental conflict: American entrepreneurship vs. the European social welfare state. I think that is the root conflict that causes such a disparity of opinion between the US and Europe.

And, I think, Europeans feel threatened by the American model, especially as that model is the root cause for American wealth and power, and the European model has not been able to keep up.

Yep. Europe is governed by the New Class, and America’s model ensures that the New Class will always be comparatively marginalized.

THIS RARE FISKING BY JEFF JARVIS proves that the genre is alive and well, and that Jarvis saves his efforts for only the most idiotic of targets.