Infinite Monkeys

Personally, I'm A Dinty Moore Man...

Evidently, Top Ramen is like crack cocaine in the UK. A "pro-noodle" site offers a simulation to help addicts stash their stuff. Conceal your Cup-o-Noodles, or your crazy English girlfriend will go nuts on you. As the site warns, if you don't have broadband or sound, find someone who does.

(Warning: it gets a bit, uh... naughty.)

(Hat tip: F-Rock)

InstaMonkey: The police as "standing army"

Here's something I've given virtually no thought to.

InstaMonkey: Buckley on Pot

Legalize, he says. And good for him.

Getting in touch with my feminine side

It appears I've been found out. My charade is over. Kind of a relief, really.

InstaMonkey: But Seriously...

I don't know how I missed the original post, but Joe posts a nice follow-on to his discussion about the relationship of the Pledge of Allegiance to both Christianity and our "civil religion". In it, he links to an excellent piece by John Coleman. Read it all, and when you do, consider who or what we actually owe our allegiance to.

Warning: Coleman's article includes an unflattering quote by That Tyrant Lincoln.

Handover of (editorial) power

I know it turns off some of our readers when any Monkey brings up the neo- vs. paleo-con war of terms and definitions. It gets in the way of our steady delivery of... well, hmmm...

Anyway, William F. Buckley, Jr.'s divestiture of his control of National Review to a board of trustees is almost surely going to be spun by paleocons as "Look! See? I told you National Review has lost touch with its old school conservatism. The magazine has been so completely hijacked by the neocons that Buckley's officially cut himself off from it!" Well, as the New York Times reports,

...his decision, Mr. Buckley said, had more to do with his own mortality [than with any current events]... "The question is choose some point to quit or die onstage, and there wouldn't be any point in that," Mr. Buckley said, recalling his retirement from his television program "Firing Line" a few years ago. "Thought was given and plans were made to proceed with divestiture."

[...]

Mr. Buckley, whose syndicated column will continue to appear in the magazine, said he did not expect changes in the contents of the magazine.

All of this case to my attention this morning while reading what could almost be called a post by Power Line's fourth contributor of late, Dafydd ab Hugh. What he points out might upset the orthodoxy of some folks' views of who are and who aren't "neocons."

Bill Buckley happens to be good friends with my pal and occasional collaborator, Brad Linaweaver... and there are some interesting things about Buckley and National Review that are rarely mentioned.

First of all, nearly half the charter members of the magazine's staff were ex-Communists. When this was pointed out to Buckley one day by some puckish interviewer, Buckley flashed his trademarked grin and responded, "yes... EX-Communists!"

("Mad props," as the kids say, to The Big Trunk.)

Joe! I thought you were a friend!

A true friend doesn't post lists on their website. It's like taking Ted Kennedy to a bar. Now I will neglect all family and business responsibilities responding to the list, and constructing my own. It's just not charitable. Have pity on me, your weaker brother, and eat no more meat sacrificed to idols.

Okay, enough of that. Here's the short version: Too much Peter Weir.

Rum & Pork Soda

We may not have the fiscal conservatism we were hoping for, but hey, at least the feds are giving tacit acknowledgment and support for the Summer of Rum. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

oldthinkers unbellyfeel plastic turkey upwise yellowcake

I can't believe this post currently has only one trackback. As for Hindrocket's question at the end, the answer is that it doesn't fit the goodthink.

Dashing off Copy

One of the things I love about James Lileks--and there are many--is that when he writes a Bleat, he isn't kidding. It's dashed off at the kitchen table. It's pure, from the top of his brain to the bottom of...well, I don't know where to go with that metaphor. I was going to say "the bottom of your browser," but that's kind of lame even for a blog entry extolling the virtues of impromptu writing. And "to the bottom of your heart" is way too "Little House," even regarding a writer in Minnesota. Let's just say "to your bottom," and leave it at that.

Take, for example, Monday's Bleat. Only Lileks could get away with a movie review--a good one, I should add--that doesn't mention the name of the movie (it's "Spartan"--the movie I mean, though the review is too). And you know he didn't do it on purpose--that's just what the Bleat is about. He is capable of writing polished, professional columns, and if that's what you want, he's got 'em for you. But the Bleat is pure blogging--purer than most blogs, while still better than almost all of them. Maybe all of them. All of them.

It's my daily addiction. And, like Hugh Hewitt, I take advantage of the time difference, and indulge the simple pleasure nightly. So should you. Your bottom will be happy.

No, I don't know what that mean. Don't need to.

Whÿ I love Wikipedia

Recently the free online encyclopedia highlighted as its frontpage featured article the topic of the "Heavy Metal Umlaut." Be sure to read not just the term's definition and history, but also the section Other musical usages of gratuitous diacritics. It's a hoöt.

Evangelical Input

Joe Carter had a few comments about my recent post suggesting a new funding option for the war. Excerpts and my comments follow:

Point #1 – You monkeys really need to open the comments up more often.

We'll get right on that. But first, I need to finish painting the sign inviting random homeless people to move into my basement.

Point #2 – “…would be fairer than paying for them with tax money gathered from people who will never benefit from those roads.”

Everybody benefits from roads. Last I checked, most people aren’t getting their goods shipped in by train (unless they’re hobos). Even people who don’t ride in vehicles at all (a group that consists of three hippies in San Francisco) gain more than they pay in taxes from having access to roads. Besides, when you come down with the monkey pox you don’t want the ambulance to have to take the bike path, do ya?

I don't disagree that virtually everybody benefits from roads, but we benefit to varying degrees. Tolls would better ensure that the people who benefit most pay the most. For example, if trucking companies had to pay for road use, they would pass that cost on to (eventually) the consumer of the product.

This is not a big issue for me, it's just an example. I think, as social programs go, the Interstate Highway system is a pretty kick-ass federal amenity. That said, I think a move toward privatization would still be better in the long run.

Path #3 – “So let's fund all of our meddling in the "Cradle of Civilization" with import and consumption taxes on middle-eastern oil.”

Dude, until the feds start handing out Prius’ with the government cheese, the poor will be the main ones affected by higher gas taxes. If we are going to finance this war let’s just hold a bond election or sell the naming rights like we do when we build new stadiums. For example, we can change the name from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” to “Operation Nike.” (Potential slogan: “War? Just Do It.”)

I have personal compassion for the poor, but I do not think the government should set policy based on its effect on ANY group. The market should control costs and right now the federal government is artificially suppressing the actual cost of keeping middle eastern oil flowing into the U.S. by funding our Middle Eastern adventures from the entire tax base. It's not unlike payroll taxes: If everyone had to write a check every month to the Federal government for their entire tax burden, we might not continue to vote for people who want to steal our money and squander it. Similarly, if we had to pay at the pump (and through the higher cost of goods) we might think twice about spending hundreds of billions of dollars "bringing democracy" back to Islamic nations.

I do like your "naming rights" idea. "Welcome to the Exxon-Mobil War on Terror - and annoying engine pings!"

Path #4 -- “And while we're at it, let's set aside a few billion of those dollars to build some FARGING NUCLEAR REACTORS so we can stop buying this stuff.”

First of all, my Dodge Neon will not run on nuclear waste. I tried it once and had to have my fuel pump flushed by the Dept. of Energy. Second, most power plants not run on Arabian oil but on coal. You don’t want all those men who sacrificed their lives when we invaded West Virginia to have died in vain, do ya? Third, the only thing a nuclear reactor is good for is to keep the lights on when the zombies take over . But, then again, you talk a lot like a Democrat so maybe that’s what you have in mind. Is that your plan? Are you some kind of zombie-loving monkey?

As I mentioned in my e-mail, I prefer vampires to zombies. But I have no beef with the zombies, as long as they're not receiving federal brain subsidies.

The nuclear solution is not a short-term plan, but here's how it goes:

1. Nuclear energy = cheap electricity
2. Market forces = expensive gasoline
3. Expensive gasoline + cheap electricity = increased demand for electrical vehicles (by both individuals and larger transit providers)
4. Increased demand for electrical vehicles = increased production and quality of electrical vehicles
5. Increased production and quality of electrical vehicles = decreased cost of electrical vehicles
6. Decreased cost of electrical vehicles = reduced demand for (and use of) petroleum producing vehicles
7. Reduced use of petroleum producing vehicles = less demand for petroleum
8. Less demand for petroleum = less dependency on foreign oil

In the meantime, we should be drilling in ANWR and working with the Canadians to extract the huge quantities of frozen petroleum that exist beneath the tundra.

The Dance of Death

Oh, come on. Powell's presentation was clearly intended to convey that the intelligence was plentiful, the sites were large and numerous, and that they were simply "moving them around" to avoid the inspectors. He also clearly conveyed that there were stockpiles of weapons, as in this quote from the same speech, "If we consider just one category of missing weaponry -- 6,500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war -- UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be in the order of 1,000 tons. These quantities of chemical weapons are now unaccounted for." The subtext? OH NO! THERE ARE 1,000 TONS OF CHEMICAL AGENT UNACCOUNTED FOR!!! THEY COULD BE ANYWHERE!!!

Also, as the Powerline guys are quick to point out in both of the posts you linked to, the administration and their apologists have been quick to agree that they didn't find what they were expecting - they've been spending all of their time blaming the intelligence, which implicitly acknowledges the claim. Or are they lying about this? They've gone out of their way to point out that Iraqi scientists actually "tricked" Saddam - taking his money for the programs but not producing the goods. Are they lying about this?

I never said, nor do I think it is smart for anyone to say, that there were "no WMDs" in Iraq. But "some WMDs" was not the justification given by the administration. "Assloads of chemical weapons destined to seep through the poorly duct-taped windows of North America" is closer to the claim.

Also, I should remind y'all that my opposition to the war is not based on a desire to see John Kerry become President (although I'm no more afraid of that possibility than I am of a second Bush term), nor is it pacifistic (I'm all for killing in defense of our borders and in response to certain other kinds of attacks). It is also not based on the fact that the administration lied about the justification for war, because the justification itself was not valid. Invading Iraq was not our business.

I point out the WMD (and several other) issues to reinforce my assertion that our leaders are liars. They may consider their lies to be "noble", but they are lies, and we cannot trust liars to lead our country. We continue to elect liars because we believe we are voting for the "lesser" of liars, and we fear the greater liars. We should reject that fear, and reject those liars, even if it means voting for someone who "can't win", or withholding our vote because a man of principle is absent from the field.

What is this, The Corner?

The first thing that strikes me about the assertion that its reasonable to hold to a "BUSH LIED!"® worldview in light of an absence to date of a "big WMD meth lab bust" of Saddam's stockpiles is...

...the difference between static and dynamic scoring of economic plans. (No, I'm not trying to imagine how Kudlow would look at the situation.) To cite Powell's speech as an example of stockpiles just waiting to be uncovered, one must take a static view of the situation, ignoring the same speech's talk of "housecleaning." This static view would only hold if we had invaded without delay, and yes, Virginia, there was a long long delay in our push toward war. Enough time in fact for the situation on the ground and in the weapons bunkers to go "dynamic." (For the sake of brevity, I'll refrain from walking through the rest of the scon metaphor.)

Now, that could be written off as theoretical save for the fact that Iraqi ballistic missile pieces-parts (just like in Powell's speech) have recently been found in, say, Jordan. A World Tribune article cited by Power Line (WT-link's changed since their original post) reports:

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

The Baghdad missile site contained a range of WMD and dual-use components, UN officials said. They included missile components, reactor vessel and fermenters – the latter required for the production of chemical and biological warheads.

Hindrocket adds, "Actually, banned Iraqi weapons, and the equipment for making them, are turning up all over--not only in Iraq, but in Syria, Jordan, the Netherlands and Sudan. People are tripping over them in scrap metal yards."

In September '03, the BBC was reporting that '"according to [the Iraq Survey Group's interim report], its inspectors have not even unearthed "minute amounts of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons material". They have also not uncovered any laboratories involved in deploying weapons of mass destruction and no delivery systems for the weapons.'

The Kay Report showed that to be far from accurate, but the media's handling of the story sent Andrew Sullivan into frenzy of clarification.

Fast forward to earlier this month, David Kay was using slightly different terms, saying that Iraq didn't have "stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction." Granted, my examples are thrown together rather quickly, but they're representative of the things I've read/heard that have given me the impression that the goalposts of the "BUSH LIED!"® crowd are not static.

Perhaps we could call on Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost to walk us through the logical problems like Appeal to Belief, and the validity of the no-WMDs universal negative proposition once a single exception has been introduced.

As for where the Administration's goalposts are purported to be, I will yield the rest of my time to Glenn Reynolds. In this short post containing small collection of links, Reynolds closes saying, "focusing on the failure to find 'stockpiles' now is wilfully[sic] obtuse." The post's update includes words from Instapundit reader Daniel Aronstein who reminds us "that Security Council Resolution 1441 doesn't talk about 'stockpiles' but about 'any' and 'all' weapons (and programs and facilities for developing weapons) of mass destruction."

Goalpost Location Reminder

Just a reminder - the goalposts are where they always were. Right here where Colin Powell put them:

Let's look at [one of the satellite photographs]. This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji. This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapons shells.

Here you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.

How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The arrow at the top that says "security" points to a facility that is a signature item for this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker. The truck you also see is a signature item. It's a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong. This is characteristic of those four bunkers. The special security facility and the decontamination vehicle will be in the area, if not at any one of them or one of the other, it is moving around those four and it moves as needed to move as people are working in the different bunkers.

. . .

At this ballistic missile site on November 10th, we saw a cargo truck preparing to move ballistic missile components.

At this biological weapons-related facility on November 25th, just two days before inspections resumed, this truck caravan appeared -- something we almost never see at this facility and we monitor it carefully and regularly.

At this ballistic missile facility, again, two days before inspections began, five large cargo trucks appeared, along with a truck-mounted crane, to move missiles.

We saw this kind of housecleaning at close to 30 sites. Days after this activity, the vehicles and the equipment that I've just highlighted disappear and the site returns to patterns of normalcy. We don't know precisely what Iraq was moving, but the inspectors already knew about these sites so Iraq knew that they would be coming.

The reason people still believe that "BUSH LIED!!!" [apologies to James Taranto] about WMD is because of high-profile speeches like this, where the expectation was set that we would march in and find large facilities teeming with biological weapons and ballistic missiles. Everyone's still waiting for the big "WMD meth lab bust" that was implied by these speeches leading up to the war. THAT is where the goalposts are, and the administration put them where they are.

Instamonkey: Time to move the goalposts again?

Reports on the discovery of around a dozen sarin and mustard gas artillery shells in Iraq are slowly beginning to surface. I saw this of the FoxNewsChannel yesterday at the gym, but couldn't find anything on the web when I got home. Thankfully, Power Line has the goods.

Well, at least now we can rest easy about the other shells we assumed might exist after the first two sarins and the one mustard gas rounds were discovered. We've obviously found them all now. Obviously.

Is that what makes 'em "faster" now too?

I've long ruminated over how teen girls these days seem to be more developed than they were in my day. Of course, today's fashions could have something to do with it; one sees a lot more of what's there than one used to see. Pressed for an explanation, I'd adopt a Grandpa Simpson voice and exclaim authoritatively, "it's all those hormones in the meat."

Now science has not proven me wrong; just incomplete. Turns out that there's rocket fuel in the milk too. (Well, at least in what could be described as strong Monkey territory.)

One can only wonder about the future ramifications of McDonalds' recent announcement:

McDonald's is launching Milk Jugs . . . in Happy Meals . . . McDonald's White Milk is now joined by a new Chocolate Milk offering. Both are in fun, kid-friendly new packaging designed to resemble more of a bottle rather than the traditional milk carton, which McDonald's formerly used. Both contain eight ounces of one percent milk, and are an excellent source of Calcium and Vitamin D and a good source of Vitamin A.

Oh yeah, and rocket fuel.

DISCLAIMER: I know what you're thinking. Hey, I'm just trying to get into the running for guest blogger at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Medved!

Michael Medved makes me crazy. He seems to go out of his way to humiliate callers who disagree with him by asking them irrelevant questions just because they won't know the answer.

Today's example: A caller (admittedly clueless) was complaining about some shenanigans with power companies in Pennsylvania. She was fuming about Cheney's energy meetings and somehow started spewing a list of neoconservatives who had an unreasonable amount of influence on the administration.

This is where Medved blew it. Rush, as fans of his show know, usually just lets idiots keep talking, giving them enough rope to hang themselves. But Medved's ego is too big for this - he has to go the extra mile, interrupt, and show that he's the smartest guy in the room. In this case, rather than actually attacking a salient point, he decides to trip her up on why she refers to certain people as "neo-cons". Specifically, he asked the question, "What makes Gary Bauer a neo-con? He's been a conservative all his life!"

As a listener, I was both embarrassed for the caller AND angry with Medved for choosing to humiliate her in this way. Medved knows damn well that the label "neo-con" is referring to a particular agenda and not to when someone became a conservative. I'm sure he also knows that Bauer has willingly aligned himself with that agenda. Probably the most powerful neo-conservative think tank and lobbying organization is the Project for the New American Century, about which I have spat bile quite recently on this weblog. Virtually everyone on the caller's "list" of neo-cons is a signatory on the PNAC's "Statement of Principles" - including the aforementioned Gary Bauer.

It was "disagreement day" today on the show, so I called to take Medved to task for this error, but his call screener declared the topic "too boring" and sent me on my way. So there you have it - I'm officially too boring for the Michael Medved show. Call screeners beware - I am Arbitron poison. Is Arbitron still around, by the way? Mitch?

Having A Wonderful Time, Wish I Were There

Terry Teachout sums up his vacation this week: "Who knew that a three-day trip to nowhere in particular could be so full of delight? I didn’t—but I do now."

Man, I hear you. I did something almost exactly like this two weeks ago, before which I hadn't taken a proper vacation since... since when? Since before I got married, I guess. So my wife, son, and I took off for Palm Desert for three days (with an unplanned fourth added last minute). I brought my laptop, but only turned it on once. Got a bit of reading done. Wrote a little. Drank a couple of breakfast martinis. Smoked a couple cigars. Played mini golf for the first time in 10 years. It was marvelous.

Love it or leave it

Ah, the United States. Shining beacon on a hill. An example to other nations. The very model of civilized behavior. I couldn't be more proud of my government.

Instamonkey: Moore's PR Coup

Less than a day until Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" arrives at a multiplex near you. Can you feel the excitement? Says Hinderocket: "the last cultural phenomenon to receive this kind of hype was Air America."

We're So Vain, We Probably Thought The Book Was About Us

One of the best parts of my job—aside from the large weekly ration of booze and the hot- and cold-running chicks, I mean—is receiving dozens upon dozens of books in the mail every week from publishers, for free. Granted, most of these are not, if you will pardon the cliche, worth the paper they're printed on. Even though I've grown accustomed to disappointment ("Oh great, the new Chalmers Johnson is here..."), I don't think a day has gone by in the last four years when I haven't felt at least a little twinge of excitement over the latest arrival.

Hugh Hewitt's new book, If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat, arrived today, a week before it's due to hit store shelves, and I must admit that I was excited as a kid on Christmas morning. "Splendid! Who will Hugh slander now?" I wondered aloud to nobody in particular.

To which nobody in particular replied: "Slander is spoken. When it's in print, it's called libel."

"Yes, of course, quite right," I said. "Now pipe down, or it's back to the cornfield with you!"

"Now, see here...!," Nobody cried, stopping short with a choking gasp as I struck him hard with my palm, right in the Adam's apple...

But I digress.

The subtitle of Hugh's book is "Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It." That is, I think you will agree, a pretty bold statement. It is something of a departure, too, from his previous book, which instructs Christians on how to make their way in this rough-and-tumble world of ours. But, despite Hewitt's reputation for shucking and jiving, the title is fitting. We are at war, after all. The War on Terrorism is a real war, not one of those fake wars Americans have grown so cynical about, like the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, or the Spanish-American War. As Hewitt writes in the introduction,

The book's premise is quite simple: there are millions of people who would like to see the United States destroyed, or if not destroyed, then deeply wounded and humbled. Among these millions are the tens of thousands of terrorists or would-be terrorists actively engaged in an effort to inflict such injuries upon the United States so as to unhinge it or cower it...

...we are entering a political season unlike any other in the country's history. Never before has a presidential election been conducted in the course of a war the very reality of which is denied by a significant portion of the population.

...The war in which we find ourselves is likely to continue for many election cycles. It is the single issue on which the campaign of 2004 ought to be conducted, and almost certainly the single issue on which the campaigns of 2006, 2008, and beyond ought to be conducted.

There you have it. The 255 pages or so that follow are devoted to hammering that point home. Since I only got the book this afternoon, I can't pretend to have read much more than a few dozen pages. Like Hewitt's last book, In, But Not Of, most of the chapters are very short, and read fast. He urges Republicans to set aside some of their more strident positions in favor of defeating Democrats. "This isn't a policy wonk book," he writes at the beginning of his chapter on "Abortion, Guns, and the Environment." "It is about winning elections in a time of war when bad electoral results can disable a war effort and result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Because the focus is on winning elections, it is necessary to look at particular issues from the perspective of whether they advance the cause of electing candidates who will defend the country vigorously and effectively." Single-issue "absolutists" don't fare will in Hugh's book. "The time and money that gun absolutists spend attacking GOP politicians who embrace the consensus position [on gun control, i.e., banning so-called assault weapons] are wasted. Put the effort into strengthening the party across the board." And so on.

I'll confess to looking first for the one chapter I knew would be of special interest to me, and to my fellow monkeys. It comes about two-thirds of the way through the book, under the heading "Controlling the Information Flow, Part 4: Using the Blogosphere." He also includes an appendix, which he calls "A Beginner's Guide to Blogs."

It's... well, it's exactly what I've come to expect from Hugh. Did you know he's an attorney and a former employee of a certain Richard Milhous Nixon? I'm not saying that makes him a bad guy. On the contrary, I'm simply suggesting that he would stick a shiv in you if it served his purpose. But at least he'd be good enough to look you in the eye when he did it. He might even smile.

Anyway, here's what Nix..., er, Hewitt, has to say about blogging. "The two most annoying blogs in the world are Fraters Libertas, and Infinite Monkeys. Read them only with extreme caution."

And that's basically it. Oh, there's some other general stuff about how blogging is a growing and important medium, blah-de-blah-de-blah. "Blog is short for 'Web log,'" he usefully informs us. "There are millions of blogs..." And so on. You get the idea.

But enough about that. Let's get back to those "annoying blogs."

Annoying? Annoying?!? That's Messrs. Annoying to you, Nationally Syndicated Talk Show Guy! Call us vain, if you like. And pompous. And drunk. But, please, do call us.

One last thing: Hewitt needs to find a better publisher. I'm sure the people at Nelson Books (a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers) are fine, upstanding human beings. But the book is printed on very cheap paper—slightly better than paperback quality for a hardcover book. I mention this because, despite Hugh's cheap shots and typically smug assertions, the book deserves to be read, if only for the quotes at the beginning of each section. However, it's difficult to read when you've spilled your rum-and-cranberry juice cocktail on pages 188 through 209 (hypothetically speaking, of course; your spills may vary...).

If It's Not Close... is due to hit bookstores on July 1. Read it, but, by all means, exercise "extreme caution."

A vote for WHO?

NRO's Cathy Seipp was on Dennis Miller last night, and she threw out one of those annoying axioms, and she should have known better:

"A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush."

This is simply not true. First of all, it depends on the assumption that every Nader vote is coming out of the vote count of John Kerry, Bush's closest competitor. Even if that assumption were correct, the statement would still be false - a vote for Nader would really be 1/2 of a vote for Bush. There would be one less Kerry vote, but the Bush vote count would not increase.

But the assumption is silly. Yes, many of Nader's votes will be coming from people who would vote for Kerry, but I think it's safe to say that a lot of his voters will be either people who wouldn't vote at all, or who will vote for another fringe candidate if Nader doesn't run.

No, I'm not voting for Nader, but I'm not voting for King George, either. I'll either vote for the Libertarian candidate (Michael Badnarik - assuming the Arizona Libertarian Party has its act together enough to get him on the ballot), or I won't vote at all. So, I guess that's 1/2 a vote for Kerry, then? I won't lose any sleep over that...

Get Ready For "Kill Bill Vol. 3"

Quentin Tarantino tells reporters in Madrid that he plans "to do a third version of this saga"... in about 15 years.

According to Australia's Herald-Sun: "Tarantino said part three would centre on a girl named Nicky, daughter of a hired killer that Uma Thurman's character bumps off as part of a spree of revenge killings."

If you saw "Vol.1," you know the scene: After the Bride kills Vernita Green, she tells Vernita's daughter, "It was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that I'm sorry. But you can take my word for it, your mother had it comin'. When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I'll be waiting."

Sounds dopey, but who knows? Barring a bad turn in the war or other acts of God, Uma Thurman would be in her mid-40s and, I imagine, in pretty decent shape. The bigger question is whether Tarantino will still be around, working behind the camera, or back in the video store hawking . . . well, whatever they're hawking in 15 years. Holodiscs? Neural implants? Beats me.

I've seen "Vol. 1" twice. The first time was in the theater, the second time was on DVD about two weeks after I saw "The Passion of the Christ." The first time, I compared "Kill Bill" to pornography. The violence can be described accurately as prurient. Several years ago, I recall reading an interview with one of Tarantino's actors—I think it was Michael Madsen—who said something along the lines of, "Tarantino totally gets off on the violence of his movies." (Or words to that effect. Unfortunately, I can't find the interview in my heaping stacks of old magazines and I've never been able to locate any reference to this on the web. Take my word for it, though: somebody said it. More or less.)

Tarantino would be hard-pressed to disagree. At the end of the Herald-Sun story, we read:

Asked if violence seduces audiences, Tarantino said: "You better believe it. I mean that's one of the reasons why it's so cinematic. It can be very enthralling. I've always said Thomas Edison invented the movie camera to show people killing and kissing."

I should add that I liked Vol. 1 much better the second time, and I didn't like Vol. 2 as much. Not sure what that says about me, or the condition of my soul, but it cannot be good.

"Mmm, this is good Pizza-in-a-Cup"

Low-carb pizza – in a bucket.

Some local pizza shop owners and some smaller chains have already moved to meet low-carb dieters' demands. [...]

In Louisville, Kentucky, Bearno's Pizza, a small chain, offers a crustless pizza on the usual circular baking pan.

And in Escondido, California, John Pontrelli, owner of Pit Stop Pasta, offers what may be a traditionalist's worst nightmare: "pizza in a bucket." It has all the pizza toppings placed in a crock or, for takeout customers, a metal can.

"They put that other pizza-in-a-cup place out of business."

(Hat tips / apologies for intellectual property theft to posters OffensiveLineman and DrSamba on IMDB)

Happy Burfday, R.B.

A big "happy birthday" to Monkey Brad, born in the same "Year of the Monkey" that caused the Beatles to break up. A real friend would take you out and get you "Girl Drink Drunk", but I've got to watch the kids tonight. Maybe next time!

"Sweet, sweet booze!"

Slammed

Denny's doesn't do the free meal on yer birthday thing anymore. Just found that out the hard way.

Instamonkey: Your one-stop shop

Hard as it may be to believe, there are a few folks who report not reading any blogs other than this one. For their sake I am linking to this review of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 by Christopher Hitchens, who, by the way, is far from being any kind of right wing partisan.

Past link on Moore's older work: Quacking for Columbine

UPDATE: Dale Franks at Q&O notes the latest development in Moore's altruistic stance.

Republican Government?

Remember the summer of 2001? A lot of conservatives were saying, in so many words, "What the hell is the matter with George W. Bush?" His domestic agenda was thought out badly. No Child Left Behind? The farm bill? Terrible, just terrible.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, many of us decided to put aside our criticism of the administration's domestic policies and focus on the War. But the domestic stuff was never too far from our minds. Three words: hydrogen-powered cars. That was far from the worst of it, but, in my opinion, it (rather than certain widely held delusions) nicely summed up this Republican administration's ambitions. Bush is a big-government guy, pure and simple.

So I wasn't the least bit surprised to read this quote from President Bush in The New York Times yesterday:

[T]he role of government is to stand there and say, "We're going to help you." The job of the federal government is to fund the providers who are actually making a difference.

No. It. Isn't.

(Hat tip: QandO)

Instamonkey: Ouch, Babe

I'm in the late stages of making corrections on the forthcoming issue of the little poltical quarterly on which I work. After the thing has been read three, four, even five times, I'm making fixes. There is blood on the page, man. So I guess I shouldn't feel bad when I read Louis Menand's dissection of Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Here's the lead:

The first punctuation mistake in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynn Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” presents itself as a call to arms, in a world spinning rapidly into subliteracy, by a hip yet unapologetic curmudgeon, a stickler for the rules of writing. But it’s hard to fend off the suspicion that the whole thing might be a hoax.

(Hat tip: About Last Night.)

New Military Funding Options

How about funding the Iraq war with a gas tax? (Thanks to Fingers for the idea)

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Michael Medved bloviate about how we "need" Middle Eastern oil enough to justify all of the meddling we do over there. The coddling of the Saudis, Egyptians, etc. Not to mention both Palestinian AND Israeli terrorists.

I've always believed taxes should be directed at the consumers of goods and services - as much as we'd hate the experience, toll roads would be fairer than paying for them with tax money gathered from people who will never benefit from those roads. So let's fund all of our meddling in the "Cradle of Civilization" with import and consumption taxes on middle-eastern oil.

And while we're at it, let's set aside a few billion of those dollars to build some FARGING NUCLEAR REACTORS so we can stop buying this stuff.

Feat per second & beats per minute

Privatized space travel keeps getting better and better. Rand Simberg reports that the night before SpaceShipOne's historic launch, the "young people" who had gathered in great numbers there in the Mojave Desert threw a rave.

Bm-ch bm-ch bm-ch
Bm-bm-bm-ch bm-ch bm-ch
B-bm-bm-ch bm-ch bm-ch bm-ch

Neeer-noit-noit
Mnyeer-choit-koyt
Ssseeert-noit-noit-geeert
Peee-deet-deeert-chooot nyeert-noit

Two DIY cultures merge.

My Favorite Democrat

Lawrence O'Donnell always has something smart and thoughtful to say, even when I disagree with him, which is frequently. On last week's McLaughlin Group he made a very interesting point about travel bans:

MR. O'DONNELL: It's time for executive action. There should be a travel ban on Americans in Saudi Arabia, travel and work ban. This is a country that is nuts enough to ban travel to Cuba, one of the safest places in the world --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The United States.

MR. O'DONNELL: Yes -- an American could possibly go, and allow and, in fact, help funnel people into these ridiculous jobs in Saudi Arabia, not one of which is worth doing, not one of which is worth losing a life over. They have oil to sell. We can buy it. We don't have to send people there to feed their bodies, literally, to the al Qaeda propaganda machine. This is an al Qaeda recruitment tape, this beheading.

MR. BUCHANAN: That's a victory for the terrorists if you tell Americans they can't go over there and they can't work there. That's exactly what --

MR. O'DONNELL: Because we cannot guarantee their safety. We've always done that.

MR. BUCHANAN: But Americans have got to be free to go there. You give them a warning and stuff like that. But you drive all the Americans out of there -- this is exactly what these guys wanted that beheaded that fellow.

MR. BLANKLEY: The State Department did put a warning out sometime ago, a warning about traveling there. But, look, Saudi Arabia can't get its oil out of the ground without German and American and other western petrochemical engineers.

MR. O'DONNELL: Let the Germans do it. They're not angry with the Germans.

While I don't agree with O'Donnell's conclusion that we should ban travel to Saudi Arabia (or anywhere else, for that matter), he makes an excellent point about our insane Cuba policies, not to mention our rampant hypocrisy in encouraging civilians to take jobs in countries crawling with Jihadists.

Borg Babe refuses kinky sex with Tom Clancy hero

That was the conclusion I reached when I simply scanned over this article instead of reading the whole thing.

You got your spaceflight in my candy post

In my previous post about SpaceShipOne successfully ushering in the privatized space age, I thought it fitting to highlight the entrepreneurial spirit involved by making the main link a write-up from the Financial Times. As a bit of light fluff, I also added a quote from another story in which the pilot of the craft, Michael Melvill, spoke just after touchdown about opening a bag of M&Ms inside the cockpit as he entered weightlessness just across the edge of space.

Well, now that emotions have calmed down a bit, it would appear that heads wearing those old fashioned bankers' visors are prevailing. In the press conference later in the day, the M&Ms had become simply, "candy-coated chocolate pieces, of many colors" [close paraphrase]. See, the floating candies on today's television coverage made for a familiar point of reference by which those of us at home could recognize the achievement of weightlessness. And it's not hard to imagine repeats of the release of hard shell candies in the cabin at the apex of each of the two upcoming heavily publicized "money shots" – two trips into space carrying the equivalent of three passengers using the same craft within a span of two weeks – for the $10 million X Prize. Apparently, somebody involved has thought of a way to increase the total take: hold out on naming the confection involved and auction off the right to be recognized as the high profile floating candy of choice. (It's sort of like musicians taping over the manufacturers' names on their amps and instruments on stage, holding out for a compensatory contract instead of passively endorsing the brand names to their captive audience of fans.)

In fact, M&M/Mars have a history with (almost) advertising to the the outer space demographic. Ubiquitous and familiar, M&Ms were written into the script of Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial as the candies used to lure and reward the namesake character. But the M&Ms folks weren't comfortable with associating their feel-good product with a creepy looking alien Christ figure. I mean, they're the Mars company, for cryin' out loud, but they just didn't feel right about it. And so the lucrative product placement fell to Hershey, who used the platform to promote their newly released but poorly selling Reese's Pieces candies. According to Snopes:

Hershey did not pay to have Reese's Pieces used in E.T., but it did agree to do a tie-in between the movie and the candy after the film was released. A deal was inked wherein Hershey Foods agreed to promote E.T. with $1 million of advertising; in return, Hershey could use E.T. in its own ads.

Within two weeks of the movie's premiere, Reese's Pieces sales went through the roof. (Disagreement exists as to how far through the roof they went: Sales were variously described as having tripled, experienced an 85% jump, or increased by 65%). Whatever the numbers, though, Reese's Pieces — up until then an underdog confection only faintly known by the U.S. candy-consuming public — were suddenly being consumed in great handfuls. And all thanks to a shy little alien lured from the bushes and into America's hearts by a trail of peanut-butter-in-a-candy-coated-shell confections.

Thus is the potential power of product placement. When it's done right, it can make a product.

In the same way that certain methods of travel have their traditions, like the bottle of champagne and the successful hot air balloon flight, little shelled candies upon zero-G might become de rigueur for the space tourist. Will it be M&Ms? Skittles? Will Reese's Pieces move to corner the space market? Who knows? This is all speculation on my part. But if I were a candy mogul... mmmm, caaandy mogulllll.... w-what what I talking about again?

Instamonkey: Customer Service, A Contradiction In Terms

Lisa goes to a bookstore, where much ignorance ensues. If he were dead, E.D. Hirsch would be rolling over in his grave! (Hmmmm... Or would he?)

Saudis Involved With Johnson Kidnapping, Murder

My question the other day seems to have been answered. Hardly surprising, and useful to keep in mind as we read dispatches such as this one from the sexed-up BBC (see also: "Living in a Bubble", NRO, June 18). Generally speaking, it's always a good idea to read past the headline ("9/11 probe clears Saudi Arabia"), the lead ("The United States enquiry into the 9/11 attacks says it has found no evidence the Saudi government funded al-Qaeda"), the routine quotes from interested parties claiming vindication ("'The commission dispels two outrageous myths about Saudi Arabia,' said Saudi official Adel al-Jubeir.'"), and get into the guts of the piece. There we often find something like the following:

The report identifies Saudi Arabia as the primary source of al-Qaeda funding.

"Al-Qaeda found fertile fund-raising ground in the kingdom, where extreme religious views are common and charitable giving is essential to the culture and, until recently, subject to very limited oversight," the report says.

Saudi Arabia has always denied being soft on Bin Laden's organisation—but US officials it has only started cracking down on funding terrorism since a concerted al-Qaeda bombing campaign began in the kingdom in May 2003.

Wait a minute: how is it that the first paragraph of the story says the 9/11 Commission found "no evidence the Saudi government funded al-Qaeda" and then claims the exact opposite nine paragraphs later? Because, like the Iraq-Al-Qaeda funding story that broke last week, the story is quite a bit more complicated than the networks and others in the press would have you believe. The Commission, which is anything but "non-partisan", is doing a wacky kabuki dance. Sure, the Saudis are in cahoots with al-Qaeda, just as Saddam Hussein's regime certainly was. But, the Commission says, there is no evidence at this time that either the Saudis or the Iraqis had anything to do with aiding al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. Ah, well . . . great. I don't know about you, but I feel much better now.

The Saudis need to know, and the rest of the world should understand, that American civilians cannot be killed on foriegn soil with impunity. And so the burden should be on the Saudi government: fix your terrorism problem, or we'll fix it for you.

On the question of what victory in this war should look like, the liberals and neo-cons both seem to miss the point. Fostering democracy in Iraq, with all that it implies, while a nice idea, is not a legitimate policy goal. Neutralizing Iraq as a threat to U.S. interests, with all that it implies, is. To quote Angelo Codevilla (to whom I've linked in the first sentence of this paragraph):

Our problem is that many of today's Arabs, like yesterday's Germans, like the (unlamented) Soviets, and unlike today's Frenchmen or Germans, have set up regimes that are living, breathing, spawning expressions of hate against us. True, we had something to do with establishing those very regimes. To that extent, Arabs have a legitimate beef against us. But we cannot do anything that would force them to hate us less. Even if, God forbid, we were to fulfill their most strident demand—turn ourselves into raging Jew- haters, and destroy Israel for them—we would earn not less hate but even more contempt.

Contempt is the active ingredient of anti-Americanism. And others' contempt for us is entirely our fault. People have contempt for those they consider impotent. The deadliest contempt is reserved for those who have, or seem to have, great power but somehow cannot use it. Contempt is the bite that the jackal inflicts on the stricken or befuddled lion. It is a cheap substitute for courage. Contempt for America makes vile European intellectuals feel like men. Flouting America with impunity, declaring moral superiority over it, bribing its businessmen and politicians, allows Arab dictators—whether they call themselves kings or presidents—to pretend that they are world statesmen instead of bandits of the desert. And it is our fault, because we let them get away with it.

Terrorism is not a militarily serious matter. All the world's terrorists combined cannot do as much damage as one modern infantry battalion, one Navy ship or fighter squadron. Nor is terrorism such a bedeviling challenge to intelligence. It is potent only insofar as terrorism's targets decide to deny the obvious and pretend that the terrorists are acting on their own and not on behalf of causes embodied by regimes. Terrorism is potent only against governments that deserve contempt. The U.S. government earned the Arabs' contempt the hard way, by decades of responses to terrorism that combined impotent threats, solicitude for the terrorists' causes, outright payments to Egypt and the PLO, courting Syria, a "special relationship" with Saudi Arabia, and a pretense that Islam was as compatible with American life as Episcopalianism. Killing individuals who do not count engenders hatred, while sparing those who do count guarantees contempt.

Victory against terrorists requires precisely the opposite approach: expend little or no energy chasing the trigger pullers and bombers. Rather, make sure that any life devoted to terror will be a wasted life. This means leaving no hope whatever for any of the causes from which the Arab tyrannies draw such legitimacy as they have: people who give their lives for lost causes exist more in novels than in reality. It means discrediting and insofar as possible impoverishing (rather than paying for) Arab regimes that foster opposition to America. It means using military force to kill the regimes—the ruling classes—of countries that are in any way associated with terrorism.

Such regimes cannot be other than matrices of terrorism; they are riding tigers. Should the people who run them try to change, they would perish at the hands of internal enemies. America cannot possibly reform them. The choice is to suffer them, their causes, and their terrorist methods — or to kill them.

Instamonkey: Bradbury Still Angry At Moore

This story, of course, is not news, and even may not be as interesting as what the great novelist said about the anti-American propagandist several weeks ago. But, hey, at least it's in English.

Slipping the surly bonds of gov't agency

Rutan & Melvill (along with Paul Allen's money) did it! SpaceShipOne is in the history books as the first private craft to have lifted a man into space. Google News is crawling with stories. Here's a decent one. A few exceprts from others:

Just last Thursday, [the launch site of] Mojave won a US government license making it the first private, commercial spaceport.

[SpaceShipOne pilot] Melville said he released a bag of M&Ms chocolates to see if they would float in the cockpit.

"It was amazing, these M&Ms were going around everywhere," he said.

InstaMonkey: Mom! Saddam's touching me!

Who doesn't love a good pretext?

The Joys of Pre-Ordering

You know you will buy it. Go buy it now.

No, we don't get a cut (too lazy to set up that Amazon partnering). It's just a public service. So go order one. Or, as Monkey Brad does with Lilek's Regrettable Food, buy a bunch so you'll have gifts on hand.

(Note to readers of this blog who have received The Gallery of Regrettable Food from Monkey Brad: it doesn't mean he doesn't love you and just gave you a spare gift from the closet. No, it means he loves you very much. Too much, probably. You might want to change your phone number. He'll be calling all the time. "Wasn't that a great book?" he'll say, and you'll feel awkward. But it is a great book, so it's you who has the problem, see? So leave Monkey Brad alone, you ungrateful bastard. Man, I've got to quit drinking port this late at night. I'm starting to sound like one of those paranoid Fraters guys.)

Skyrockets in Flight (early morning delight)

It's not the first stage of Scaled Composite's SpaceShipOne's run at the Ansari X Prize like I thought it was, but it still should be history in the making. CNN may be covering the launch and re-entry tomorrow morning on television. It should take about an hour and a half overall.

(Hat tip: Belmont Club)

Channeling Monkeystein

Monkey Brad's post on his, um, "self-gratifying" experience with candy reviews reminded me of something I've been thinking about for a long time.

Something I've noticed from shows on Food Network and from magazines like Martha Stewart's Living is that the tight focus close ups and the lavish spreads make much of the food appear more real than real; hyperreal; stylized; airbrushed; perfect; like softcore porn. Food porn. That's what a lot of it is. It looks better than it ever could in real life. Much of it plays on deep-seated maternal psychological issues. It's perfection is unattainable for most mortals. These All-American tarts or saucy exotic foreign dishes' settings are idealized. They're manipulated, frosted, soft-focused, made up, touched up, cropped, and photographed from angles and distances not reproducible in polite company.

Next time you're at the store, pick one up, glance through it. Look at the pictures. Think about it. It's Food Porn. (I'm not even gonna go into the recipes sent in by readers: Dear Bon Appetite, I never thought these recipes were true until it finally happened to me. I'm a sous chef at a small midwestern culinary school. I've never considered myself a gourmet, but my friends have told me I'm good at cooking...)

Hmph. Should have known. "Food Porn" is already so ubiquitous a term on the web that it shows up in several online dictionaries. The first two pages of Google's results don't even appear to have any regular-porn-with-food hits (if you exclude all but the first of the Sponsored Links) and after that it's far from exclusive. There's even a link between food porn and monkey blogs.

Mmm, Caaandy

Having been seriously committed to losing weight for the last 9 months, I have developed ways to live vicariously through the culinary exploits of others. (Though it was pretty much a happy accident that I ran across the story on the White House pastry chef yesterday.) This afternoon I was putting away dishes and I turned on the radio to see if the pre-game show had started yet. Nope. So it was over to the local food/restaurant review show. Turned out they had on a guest: Steve Almond of the website and new book CandyFreak. It was sublime. At one point he was ruing the loss of the Caravelle bar. One of the hosts asked if the 100 Grand bar filled the void. Almond's description of the Caravelle's unparalleled candy engineering soared to glorious heights. The failings of the lesser 100 Grand were quickly categorized and it was dismissed like so much boxed wine. (Well, that's not really fair. Almond is passionate about his subject, but not haughty.)

Almond's descriptions of various candy bars were so engrossing, and I was so caught up in the vicarious sensuality that I couldn't bring myself to leave the room and risk missing a minute in order to bring my wife in to hear the show. (The voice in my head is asking in George Costanza's voice, "Was that wrong?") My wife's book club recently read The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars. She loved the book; the whole book club did. As soon as the segment was over, I found her and offered mea culpas.

Almond's site isn't full of the candy reviews I expected, but it does have a small excerpt from his book. Turns out that the English teacher's writing gives slight hints as to what his spoken expositions sounded like.

And when I say I think about these bars I am not referring to some momentary pulsing of the nostalgia buds. I am talking about detailed considerations of how they looked and tasted, the whipped splendor of the Choco-Lite, whose tiny air pockets provided such a piquant crunch (the oral analogue to stomping on bubblewrap), the unprecedented marriage of peanuts and wafers in the Bar None, the surprising bulk of the Reggie Bar, little more than a giant peanut turtle, but round — a bar that dared to be round! Or, at the other extreme, the Marathon Bar, which stormed the racks in 1974, enjoyed a meteoric rise, died young, and left a beautiful corpse. The Marathon: a rope of caramel covered in chocolate, not even a solid piece that is, half air holes, an obvious rip-off to anyone who has mastered the basic Piagetian stages, but we couldn't resist the gimmick.

[...]

Oh where are you now, you brave stupid bars of yore? Where Oompahs, those delectable doomed pods of chocolate and peanut butter? Where the molar-ripping Bit-O-Choc? And where Caravelle, a bar so dear to my heart that I remain, two decades after its extinction, in an active state of mourning?

I thought that I had seen Almond on some show on the Food Network. Perhaps it was someone else who ran a free site that served as a database of candy reviews. Or... perhaps Mr. CandyFreak has taken down the free stuff to package as a marketable book. The descriptions and reviews on Amazon make me doubt the assumption.

Ah, well... It's been nice thinking about dark- and white-chocolate Kit-Kats, hearing about one man's surgical isolation of the nougat in a Snickers to confirm its cinnamon undertones, getting recommendations for triumphs of confection like the 5-Star Chocolate Bars, and finding links to hard-to-find candies of the past.

InstaMonkey: One Less Savage Bastard

The Pentagon is confirming earlier reports that Saudi security forces have killed the leader of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, who claimed responsibility for Johnson's savage murder.

Well, The Bastards Killed Him

Al Qaeda beheaded kidnapped American Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia. In a statement, the animals who did it said something about Johnson getting a taste of what Arabs have been getting from long-range. What, I wonder, will be the price for the murder of another innocent American on foriegn soil? These are questions of power and justice, about which more later...

Update: "Al Qaida Leader Reported Killed in Saudi Arabia." So, is this retributive justice or the Saudis' effort to clean up a mess of their own making?

Cobbler Gobbler

This story on the White House pastry chef reminded me of Monkey David. What's that? You don't remember any Monkey David?

Aside: Good to know that Chelsea C. is a member of Team Cobbler Gobbler. (story starts here)

InstaMonkey: The Right Stuff

Since I (only too recently) discovered Wretchard at Belmont Club, I've been impressed by his smarts and his willingness to tackle extensive subjects from unique angles. But it struck me tonight; Wretchard can also efficiently turn a phrase. This character can really write. (Read the first, but note well the second paragraph.)

InstaMonkey: Talk Radio Blows

So says P. J. O'Rourke. I agree, most of the time.

(hat tip: Boar's Head Tavern)

Monkey on the mend

Everyone around here has been asking for an update on my arm/elbow. It's official: a radial head fracture. Good news: No surgery needed and I can even stop wearing the sling they've had me in for 13 days. Back to the orthopedist in two weeks to see if I'll need any physical therapy.

Lackluster post? Sorry. Best I got today. Well, okay... If it'll make you feel better, here are some x-rays. Here's a monkey. In this one you can see the monkey's elbow better. And this one is just a monkey's arm.

UPDATE: I forgot to shout-out "mad props" to Monkey Robb for cutting my steak for me at the PCS fundraising dinner the night I busted my arm. What a friend...

None So Blind...

Matt Drudge is reporting that Frank Rich's next column will compare the Reagan mourning to the O.J. hype.

According to Drudge, Rich writes

The dirty little secret of the week: The outpouring didn't live up to its hype. 'There was this kind of extraordinary outpouring not by the public but by reporters who should know better,' as Morley Safer told Larry King after it was over.

I talked to a woman who went to see Reagan in Simi Valley. Her reflections match those of Peggy Noonan.

Although sometimes the mood was somber, people were mostly happy, telling stories. Some were telling stories about Reagan.

As I said to the woman who told me something similar, "Reagan loved stories--that's a perfect tribute to the man." This was real, and it was the best of America.

I think I'm going to make a new catchphrase: whenever I hear someone in the media elite make a comment totally out of touch with the reality of America, I'll say "...as Morley Safer told Larry King..."

InstaMonkey: VDH goes sardonic

I'm glad I caught this bit of fun over at Victor David Hanson's site. It's "what our generation might have said a month" into the campaign after the invasion at Normandy. The piece is dated June 7th, 2004; but it's as fresh today as... well, you get the picture.

InstaMonkey: Wait, I mean, "Darling Pet Monkey"

This could have been our logo.

Note also: while some are inspired by the InfMonk color scheme, others abandon the yellow.

Ooops!

Nevermind.

Instamonkey: Aaiiieeee!

Oh no! Angry bees!

Meanwhile, John Doe has asked Eowyn for his records back

I'm very confused. I just drove about 8 hours and I'm very tired, but I could SWEAR I just read a Smoking Gun article that said that Exene Cervenka is asking for larger child support payments from ex-husband Viggo Mortensen. Can someone else read the article and tell me if I'm hallucinating?

Aragorn, how could you?

The really troubling thing for my road-addled sleep-deprived mind is imagining how in the world they got together. I mean, I'm all for freaks falling in love and all, but Exene wasn't exactly Hindrocket-fodder in her heyday, and I saw X twice last year and the second time, I was TOO CLOSE to the stage. I don't say that often. Definitely too close. [shudder]

Reaganism Defined. . . Poorly

I have a confession to make. Sometimes, when I post an "Instamonkey" item, I haven't always read very carefully the piece to which I'm linking. More often than not, I've read it quickly, at the expense of taking on the larger argument, in search of an interesting observation or quote. (You can't tell me you don't do this, too, Mr. and Mrs. Blogger!)

Case in point, my post linking to this Wall Street Journal op-ed on Reagan's conservatism by the British authors of a new book on the American Right. An old friend of mine called me today and gently chastised me about my endorsement of the piece. He pointed out several problems, most notably—indeed, crucially—this one:

Traditional conservatism was based on six principles: a suspicion of the power of the state; a preference for liberty over equality; unashamed patriotism; a belief in established institutions and hierarchies; a pessimistic, backward-looking pragmatism; and elitism. This was the creed that Burke shaped into a philosophy in the 18th century—and that most famous conservatives, from Prince Metternich to Winston Churchill, understood in their bones. Mr. Reagan's conservatism exaggerated the first three of Burke's principles and contradicted the last three.

Fine as far as it goes. The problem? It doesn't go very far. In brief: American conservatives aren't tories. Never have been, and despite the late Russell Kirk's best efforts, we never will be. America's founders were essentially whigs. So you cannot easily apply Burkean standards to American conservatism. It is, as my political philosophy friends like to say, problematic. Not that Burke and Kirk aren't worth reading. Kirk, however, was mistaken about "The Roots of American Order." Which is why, to get back to my point, the WSJ article doesn't really hold up so well on closer reading. This is all grossly oversimplified and half-digested, but I hope it's at least clear. I'll certainly approach Messrs. Micklethwait and Wooldridge's book more critically. Thank you, and good night.

Update: I tinkered with the text a bit. I didn't alter the substance much. Upon reflection, I realize that this post requires—nay, demands!—elaboration, which I will endeavor to do as soon as work dies down. But I make no guarantees.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco's neck is still sprained

Hugh Hewitt is reporting that Producer Duane ("Generalissimo") sprained his neck during an in-studio air-guitar move. Our task: deduce the song or album to which Duane was a-rockin' when he went down.

My suggestions:

Wring That Neck by Deep Purple

St. Anger ('round my neck) by Metallica

Protect Ya Neck by Wu-Tang Clan

Why Can't We All Just Get A Long Neck? by Hank Williams, Jr.

Neck Uv Da Woods by Outkast

Neck Bones by Eve

Anything by the fok-punk band called Neck (probably the single "Topless Mary Poppins")

Something off the album Neck & Neck by Chet Atkins with Mark Knopfler

Swallow On My Neck by Morrisey

Please add your suggestions in the comments below.

Sentiment and silliness after Reagan's services

The phone rang while I was watching the Reagan funeral service. It was my mom. All she said was, "Are you watching?" I knew what she was talking about, even though I have never thought of her as a staunch political conservative. But she's a patriot of the highest rank. Her whole family is and was.

As we kept talking about what we were seeing as the casket was being loaded back into the hearse, I said, "I'm just so thankful that Lou-lou [my grandmother] insisted on taking me to the National Cathedral those times." Despite growing up predominantly in Mississippi, my mom's family came from the Washington D.C. area. We took a few trips there to visit relatives, and my grandmother Lou (Louise) treated seeing the important sites in D.C. as a sort of quite catechism.

My mother agreed that we could only guess at how much she had added to our ability to feel connected to the sights and sounds of the National Cathedral for having been there. It was also more poignant in that Lou was an Episcopalian. I could even see the little pointed pitched-roof house-like building in the garden next to the cathedral that housed the gift shop from which I brought back a few mementos for my wife. Now that I think of it, that trip was for the Arlington funeral of a family member. Only a few years later I would be back in D.C., back for Lou's internment in Arlington National Cemetery, next to the marker for her husband, her one true love, who made it through WWII but was lost early in Korea and was never recovered. And so, the military aspects of President Reagan's services also hit close to home.

Random observations of the week's services: Of those servicemen selected to carry the casket, I've noticed that the Marines are almost exclusively Lance Corporals or PFC's (E3 or E2), and rarely a Corporal (E4). The Army soldiers are often Staff Sergeants. How are these guys chosen, and why the predominance of higher grades for the Army personnel, and lower for the Marines? (I can't make out rank on the dress uniforms of the Navy, Air Force, or Coast Guard folks to save my life, so I don't know where the rest of the service members fall.)

I was floored by the music during the Recessional (The Mansions of the Lord) at the National Cathedral funeral service. It was hauntingly beautiful. I finally found out what it was in the music-specific program for the service.

I can only imagine what the music must have sounded like there live. The natural reverb was so thick, but not "wet" the way that much analog (spring or plate) or digital processed reverb added on in a studio would come across.

The last paragraph of Michael Reagan's eulogy was very touching, and in my opinion, one of the most appropriate uses possible for such an occasion. I've predicted that when our pastor gets back from the youth's summer camp, we'll be hearing about it the next Sunday. My wife predicts that our pastor will play the video of the entirety of Mike Reagan's eulogy. I think she's right.

I love C-SPAN. I've heard some complain about the commentary of some of the networks' during the ceremonies. If one has cable, I just don't see why anyone would put up with less than a pure feed. The picture was even clearer and sharper. (I'll admit that while there was nothing more happening than the motorcade being covered by a helicopter, I'd tune in to the nets to see if they were passing on anecdotes or historical factoids.)

I've never heard anyone hold a drum roll longer than the poor drummer at the California internment ceremony. As the band played the same song over and over and over... I kept checking back in on C-SPAN and would call out to my wife, "He's still going." Even after they finally stopped, it was amazing how long into the night they stayed with the coverage of the attendees paying their respects at the casket in groups of ones, two's, and three's. (Oh, and Pat Sajak looks strangely like Dan Quayle, or vice versa.)

I'm more than willing to accept Ron Jr.'s line about politicians wearing their faith on their sleeves and the difference between a responsibility and a mandate. But the line about the difference being profound, particularly its intonation, seemed to me to really detract from the solemnity of the occasion. Disturbingly, Ron Jr. reminds me of myself when I was about seventeen.

Lastly, I am convinced that it's not just bias that leads me to assert once again, there simply isn't anyone anywhere who compares with the Marine Band.

Instamonkey: Steyn on Reagan

From his column yesterday in the Chicago Sun-Times:

What is an ''intelligent'' person? As defined by the media, it seems to mean someone who takes the media seriously. Someone wonkish on the nuts and bolts of particular topics of interest to media types, and able to sit around yakking about them till 3 in the morning. Ronald Reagan had a much rarer intelligence—a strategic intelligence. In 1977, he told Richard Allen, ''My theory of the Cold War is that we win and they lose.''

Cute. So few politicians talked like that a quarter-century ago that I'd have been content if it was just a neat line. But Reagan figured out a way to make it come true. Within 10 years. That's strategic thinking.

You should, of course, read the whole thing.

Bill Clinton's Memoirs Under Wraps

Bill Clinton's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, says it won't distribute review copies of the former president's memoir, My Life, due to hit stores later this month. I'm sure Knopf has its reasons (e.g., the book is still being edited). Still, I couldn't help but think this is a bit like when a movie's producers won't hold any press screenings because they know they have a stinker on their hands.

Instamonkey: Reaganism Defined

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, writers for The Economist, describe Ronald Reagan's enduring brand of conservatism in the Wall Street Journal today:

The fundamental fact about American conservatism is not just that it is conservatism but that it is "American." Reaganism has survived in so much better shape than Thatcherism because it went with the grain of American culture, tapping into many of the deepest sentiments in American life: religiosity, capitalism, patriotism, individualism, optimism.

Messrs. Micklethwait and Wooldridge are authors of The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, which is sitting on my desk at home. With any luck, I'll get around to reading it sometime after the election. I know almost nothing about it, except that P.J. O'Rourke gave it a nice blurb. This Journal piece leads me to think it's probably not too bad.

Instamonkey: Debunking Reagan's "Decade of Greed"

UC Irvine's Richard McKenzie takes apart six prominent myths about Ronald Reagan's economic record in the O.C. Register on Sunday. (Link requires registration, I'm sorry to say.)

McKenzie concludes: "The Reagan years were not the best of times, and the Gipper made strategic policy mistakes. But Ronald Reagan can rest in peace. The economic record of the 1980s—not what his critics continue to say about it—stands as a testimonial to the basic rightness of his policy course."

(Hat tip: Col. Slanders)

Instamonkey: High Court Punts On Pledge

The Supreme Court dismissed the Pledge of Allegiance case today, ruling that plaintiff Michael Newdow "could not sue to ban the pledge from his daughter's school because he did not have legal authority to speak for her."

Reports the Associated Press: "At least for now, the decision—which came on Flag Day—leaves untouched the practice in which millions of schoolchildren around the country begin the day by reciting the pledge."

The really good news is that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joined Chief Justice Rehnquist in saying that, even if the justices had decided on the merits, the Pledge is constitutional anyway. Hers was the questionable vote. Now we know.

Monkey Fight: The Aftermath (UPDATED)

Well, the comments have settled down for now. There may be more once the week starts up again. But we did get some interesting feedback from a reader named "Gerry", who sent several e-mail messages with links and a few comments advising us (and I assume he means me, since I'm the heretic here) to "take that post down."

The first note sends a list of ten URL's for entries at a weblog called McKinley's America. Here they are: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

All of the entries refer to a Capitol Hill Blue story that, in its original form, credited a source named Terry Wilkinson as corroborating several claims. What neither Gerry nor the weblog mention is that CHB corrected the story, and the author issued this apology.

That's not to say that CHB is therefore reputable - I'm still trying to determine that, and will remove the parenthetical link to their article if they prove to be unreliable.

Anyway, back to Gerry. After getting done with Capitol Hill Blue, he sets his sights on Joe Sobran, "As for Sobran, he has lost his mind and now is a featured speaker at the IHR-- a holocaust 'revisionism' organization that denies the holocaust occurred (or at least, anywhere near as normally depicted)." The implicit claim being, as far as I can tell, that Sobran is both unreliable and an anti-Semite. He then forwarded this link where, as I read it, Sobran defends himself against this claim quite aptly, although I expect Gerry considered this article (along with this one) to be admissions of guilt on Sobran's part.

He wraps up his fourth e-mail with a link to a web archive of the PNAC site, for which I am most appreciative. His final quote, "I am really interested in seeing what is so 'evil' in what they have written."

It seems (surprise!) that I cannot rely on everyone to draw the same conclusions when they read the material on the PNAC site, so I will attempt to do some "mini-Fisks" of currently available PNAC articles over the next couple of weeks. No promises - my work schedule won't permit me to make them. But I will try.

I will also attempt to throw together a post on Sobran, the IHR, and "anti-Semitism" that will be sure to get me burned at the stake for heresy. But for now, let me say I stand by my words and my appreciation of Sobran’s opinions.

UPDATE: Gerry very politely takes me to task for my tone, and for erroneously claiming that the weblog doesn't mention the CHB correction and apology. He is correct and I apologize for both my failure to completely read the article and the errant accusation.

I apologize, as well, for being pissy. I can be a real bastard when I'm not trying to suppress that instinct.

Diplomats Against Bush (Updated)

Well, this settles it: 26 retired career diplomats and military men sign a letter saying Bush must go, and it makes the front page of the L.A. Times. The president should just throw in the towel right now.

Recall the similar attention the press gave to the Vietnam vets who denounced John F. Kerry. What's that you say? It wasn't similar at all? Quite right. (Although, when googling for stories, I did find an amusing if overheated account of Kerry "giving the bird" to an organizer of VVAJK at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. last month.) The difference, you see, is this: diplomats are supposed to know things that you and I don't know. Who are you going to believe? The former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a former member of the Joint Chiefs or a bunch of partisan grunts? These men may or may not have fired a shot in anger, but they have had intimate dealings with foriegn leaders, and understand the nuances of diplomacy.

Furthermore, their credibility is supposed to be enhanced by the fact that several of the signatories worked for the late President Reagan and the first President Bush. What's more, we are assured that this ad hoc group, Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, are not endorsing Kerry "explicitly"—even though several have endorsed him individually. In any event, as William C. Harrop, George H.W. Bush's former ambassador to Israel, told the press, "it more or less goes without saying" that the group is backing the Junior Senator from Massachusetts.

I was particularly taken with this statement from Jack Matlock, former ambassador to the Soviet Union under Reagan and Bush:

Ever since Franklin Roosevelt, the U.S. has built up alliances in order to amplify its own power. But now we have alienated many of our closest allies, we have alienated their populations. We've all been increasingly appalled at how the relationships that we worked so hard to build up have simply been shattered by the current administration in the method it has gone about things.

Matlock must be referring to Germany, France, to a lesser extent Russia, and perhaps Saudi Arabia. What this statement shows, however, is the way in which many diplomats become co-opted by the spirit of internationalism, and lose sight of the best interests of the United States.

Alliances, let us never forget, are not and should never be permanent arrangements. They are combinations in pursuit of common interests. When those interests diverge, then the alliance must necessarily come to and end. "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations," Thomas Jefferson said in his First Inaugural, "entangling alliances with none."

Diplomats are inclined to play it safe, to smoothe over differences, to make peace. It's become a cliche, but it's worth repeating here: the world, America's world, changed on September 11, 2001. What we've seen in the years since is a growing chasm between those people who see that reality, and those who remain mired in what is aptly called a "September 10th mindset." For more than two decades, it was the stated policy of the United States government to never negotiate with terrorists, and our de facto policy to capitulate time and again. Failure rests on the shoulders of four administrations, two Republican and two Democrat. Members of "Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change" bear no small responsibility for their complicity in that failure.

We will argue for a long time about this war, about the way it was waged, about its goals. But there can be no doubt that the Bush Administration, however imperfectly, has gone a long way to correct the gross errors of a quarter century of American foriegn policy.

Update: Patterico has an excellent post today that expounds further on the mentality of diplomats.

Monkey Fight!

Here, in the comments.

Roger Waters: Dumber Than A Brick In The Wall

Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters discusses his departure from the band 20 years ago in the latest issue of the UK music magazine, Uncut. Some interesting stuff there for Floyd fans (the interview, alas, is not yet online), but I don't think it will enhance Waters's reputation very much. Waters, who currently lives in New York City, was (apparently) otherwise occupied on September 11, 2001. He has some fantastically idiotic things to say about war, The War, Thatcher, Reagan, Bush, and America generally. Here's an excerpt:

The Final Cut is described as "a requiem for the post-war dream." Is the post-war dream the same as "The Gunner's Dream," where he hopes that the world can one day become a safe and peaceful and compassionate place for everyone?

That's exactly what it is. The post-war dream... we experienced the beginning of the Welfare State in 1946. The government introduced all that new legislation. At the point where I wrote The Final Cut, I'd seen all that chiselled away, I'd seen a return to an almost Dickensian view of society under Margaret Thatcher.

The album opposes war in general, and is specifically fired by your feelings about World War II. To what extent were your lyrics driven by other conflicts such as the Falklands?

I felt then, and I still feel today, that the British Government should have pursued diplomatic avenues more vigorously than they [sic] did, rather than steaming in the moment that the Task Force arrived in the South Atlantic. Some kind of compromise could have been effected, and lots of lives would have been saved. It was politically convenient for Margaret Thatcher to wham Galtieri because there's no way she would have survived another six months without the invasion of the Falkland Islands.

Some critics have said that your references to Thatcher, Reagan and other world leaders have dated the work. But it could be argued that, although the names have changed, it remains relevant today. Would you agree?

Absolutely, yeah, in the face of the invasion of Iraq. I wrote some songs last April which I haven't managed to release yet, and maybe they will date in some way. ...It's so easy for us to develop enmities for people in other countries whom we know nothing about, people we can identify as a potential threat. Most of them are just ordinary people. Most people over the world are moderate, and our lives get destroyed by extremists of one kind or another. My theory has always been that the problem is exacerbated because of the demands of commerce.

As we saw with the invasion of Iraq.

Absolutely.

Now, at this point, many readers are probably saying something similar to what I said when I first read this the other day: "What?? Jebus Aloicious Crisp! Are you stupid?" (Or words to that effect.) Take a breath. Have a cup of coffee.

Better? Good. Now, here we have most of the naive anti-war cliches: all misunderstandings can be resolved through diplomacy; diplomacy must be exhausted (which it never is) before force is even considered an option; we're all just nice people at bottom; whatever the politicians may say, behind every war is a lust for power and greed.

As if that wasn't bad enough. But Waters isn't finished. Oh, my goodness, no...

The jingoism and colonial ambition that you rail against on The Final Cut is probably more appalling now than it ever was.

It seems to be. It seems to have got worse, and it's terrifying. I'm living in New York at the moment, and it's absolutely terrifying what a slight grasp of foreign politics and of the facts the American public has in the face of the onslaught of the Murdoch media [sigh], Fox News [double sigh], and CNN [Wha...? Well, I guess that makes some strange sense]. It seems to amount to a conspiracy in the media to defraud the population. It's quite terrifying out here. [Yes, Roger, you've made that abundantly clear.] What happened in the aftermath of 9/11 was absolutely frightening and it still is, although it's just beginning to change now.

Is it changing because of the information emerging about military intelligence and so on?

Exactly. [Why, it's almost as if the terrorists never flew those planes into those towers!] Also, people are beginning to see a little bit more. Bush's domestic policy is fleecing the poor to pay for the rich, and people are just beginning to get that as well.

Would you say that the American public is more gullible than the British?

There's a solid Tory vote in the working class based on an attachment to the jingoism of the past and the empire and the flag. It's true in Republican America as well, particularly in the Midwest, where they're very very God-fearing. In the Bible belt, even if you're working class, blue collar, a farmer or whatever, there's about half the population who are prepared to believe that if you're successful you must have got something right—"Oh look, they're rich and they're powerful, they obviously know what they're doing, so let's vote for them," rather than, "They're rich and powerful, they're stealing all our money and spending it on themselves, so let's vote against them." Democracy seems to be the best chance we have at the moment, but it's by no means a perfect instrument.

There was no freedom of speech about 9/11, no habeas corpus. They'd thrown away a lot of their notions of civil liberties—arresting Muslims and imprisoning them without trial, with no access to lawyers. Everybody [Yeah, everybody!] was saying "Hey, so what? Kill a few, torture a few, so what?" I don't think they realise just how slippery that slope is.

There is more, including a fascinating sidebar about Waters's father, Eric, who was killed at Anzio in 1944, when Roger was only five months old. His father's death explains a great deal about his anti-war stance, but it hardly justifies it. I'm a great Pink Floyd fan, and I even like some of Waters's solo material, but he is—like so many celebrities with a little knowledge and large opinions—a fundamentally silly man.

Ray Charles, RIP

While the nation mourns the loss of the 40th President, let us not forget the passing of one America's greatest soulmen, Ray Charles. The Big Trunk over at Powerline pays tribute to Brother Ray, complete with pictures! My friend Rick Henderson sang the praises of Ray Charles and XM Radio in an e-mail earlier today:

My XM subscription more than paid for itself yesterday and today. The 50s channel played nothing but Ray Charles (all eras, all genres) for several hours. Through the weekend, every other song will be one of his. I'm delighted we got to see him perform with an orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl a few years back; I'm kicking myself that we didn't take advantage of one of his many visits to the small, off-Strip rooms in Vegas, where he no doubt wailed with his own band.

(An aside: Rick, an old friend from my daily newspaper days, recently left the Las Vegas Review-Journal for the Riverside Press-Enterprise, which is not far from where I live. Riverside's gain is the the Blogosphere's loss, however, as anyone who followed the link above will discover. Too bad. Here's hoping the Deregulator will return some day soon.)

I, for one, am kicking myself for never seeing Ray Charles perform live at all. Thank God for recordings (and XM). May he rest in peace.

Reagan: Expanding the Frontiers of Freedom

The Claremont Institute has a speech President Reagan delivered in 1991 to a conference it co-sponsored (with the Tawain chapter of World League for Freedom and Democracy) marking Captive Nations Week. Here, I think, is the most poignant passage, which comes at the conclusion of Reagan's remarks:

Those who preach the supremacy of the state will be remembered for the sufferings their delusion caused their peoples. It is my hope that in the 21st century, which is only 9 years away, human dignity will be everywhere respected; that the free flow of people and ideas will include not only the newly freed states of Eastern Europe, but those republics which are still struggling for their freedom to the east.

America's solemn duty is to constantly renew its covenant with humanity to complete the grand work of human freedom that began here 200 years ago. This work, in its grandness and nobility, is not unlike the building of a magnificent cathedral. In the beginning, progress is slow and painstaking. The laying of the foundations and the raising of the walls is measured in decades rather than years. But as the arches and spires begin to emerge in the air others join in, adding their faith and dedication and love to speed the work to its completion. My friends, the world is that cathedral. And our children, if not we ourselves will see the completed work—the worldwide triumph of human freedom, the triumph of human freedom under God.

Ann Coulter has two settings

"Exaggerated fawning praise for Republicans" and "Shrill, bitter venom for Democrats"

Here's an example of the former:

America's greatest president has gone home. God worked through Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) on Earth and now He's taken him back. Reagan is survived by his wife, three children, and the hundreds of millions of people he saved by winning the Cold War. Thanks to him, the United States of America never ceased to be, as Reagan said, "a place to escape to" -- the last stand on Earth.America's greatest president has gone home. God worked through Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) on Earth and now He's taken him back. Reagan is survived by his wife, three children, and the hundreds of millions of people he saved by winning the Cold War. Thanks to him, the United States of America never ceased to be, as Reagan said, "a place to escape to" -- the last stand on Earth.

And of the latter:

No thanks to liberals, I might add. More enraging than their revisionist history of Reagan, is liberals' revisionist history about themselves. Now liberals claim they liked Reagan at the time. This is extremely believable – aren't we all fond of someone who regularly exposes us as liars, cowards and hypocrites? It's just human nature.

Not surprisingly, these are consecutive paragraphs from the same article.

Oh, and for those of you who thought my kind words for Joe Sobran were hyperbolic, try this on for size:

"Only authentic Americans loved Reagan."

Ann, you ignorant slut. Rhetoric like this makes debate seem worthless.

InstaMonkey: They're really out there

LT/Citizen Smash is still fighting the good fight, but this time with the keyboard and some polite clever questions. Read this and this.

InstaMonkey: Cliché Alert

Ten-thousand-plus blogs out there. As of today, Technorati shows that thirty-one just couldn't resist.

InstaMonkey: Reagan v. Bush (UPDATED)

Joe Sobran has a great column on the colossal difference between President Reagan and King George.

And no eulogy would be complete without my favorite Reagan quote, "...government is not the solution to the problem. Government IS the problem."

UPDATE: Monkey Brad rightly indicates (see comments) that "great" is probably a hyperbolic description of Sobran's column. My pleasure with the column is probably derived from a lot of other articles I've read recently, and the fact that Sobran, who has been quite critical of Reagan in recent years, nonetheless was able to offer true praise for The Great Communicator and clearly distinguish the man from the current occupant of the White House so concisely.

The less gracious truth is, George W. Bush is a raging (and increasingly unstable) moron, and he surrounds himself with evil men who couldn't tell the truth if their own soldiers attached electrical wire to their testicles.

And Bush's inability to speak is not "superficial", it is revelatory: This man is the leader of the free world, and he can't assemble a coherent sentence - even if someone else writes it for him! Bill Clinton could make up a lengthy and articulate speech while simultaneously stealing the Grand Canyon from Arizona, selling military secrets to China, and receiving a hummer from an intern.

Reagan made plenty of mistakes, but I've ceased believing that our current President is a well-meaning but ill-informed CEO. To twist the words of C. S. Lewis, this man is either crazy or truly evil, but he is not God.

Reagan: why we're moved

Right now radio man Hugh Hewitt is giving an account of C-SPAN's coverage of the national vigil, wishing that some tv producer/director would just turn a team loose along the line of people waiting for hours to get into the rotunda to pay their last repects to Ronald Reagan. The hope was that they could just be repectfully asked, one after another, after another, simply, "Who are you. Why are you here? Why are you moved?" It is after all, a moment for the people.

Well, you know who we Monkeys are. We can't be there, but we're here. And I've selected a picture (below) to summarize why we're (well, at least I'm) moved.

Some may use the same photo to cast aspersion upon the former actor, but to me it symbolizes the impact he had on so many my age. (No, not in any nanny-state sort of way, though I know that those of you would would argue so are out there.) No, I just mean it in the very best of ways. Ronald Reagan shaped who we are.

What's a little torture between friends?

Boy, it's a good thing we don't do stuff like this here in the "greatest nation on God's green earth". Oh, wait, looks like we do.

Breaking radio silence - WWII stylie

Mitch is asking for your entries: best WWII books and movies you've read or watched, that nobody else has. I was particularly appreciative of commenter Tim reminding me of Hope and Glory. I'll go a similar route and mention 84 Charring Cross Road. No, the whole movie doesn't take place during the war years, but it gives perspective on the home front that I hadn't seen before. It's a fun movie for lovers of books and letters. And I don't care what anybody says, I liked Spielberg's Empire of the Sun. (But, hey, what do I know... I also liked his "comedy" 1941. Come on, I was young. I make no claims about how it would hold up today.)

In the made-for-tv genre (which I don't think fits Mitch's theme), I'd nominate the British Channel 4 production 1940s House. Of all the historical reality shows (PBS's 1900 House, Frontier House, Colonial House, etc.), it seemed to have to most lasting impact on its participants. Similarly, it's the one that hits closest to home, with so many of us still having living relatives who were around through the period recreated. The changes between now and a time not so far in the past are noteworthy.

Lastly, I'm not sure how to categorize at VHS tape series, but I have to mention what I saw more than once while I worked at Tower Video early in college. During my lunch breaks, I would take advantage of my free-rental benefit and zip home to watch part of an episode of The World at War while I scarfed down some food. I'm sure there were other series in the History section that I watched in full, but TWAW is the one that stands out.

Oh, and I ought to point out Lileks' Bleat yesterday, in which he details the newly released Walt Disney Treasures - On the Front Lines.

UPDATE: Books. Most I've read would fall into the yeah, everybody's read those category. But I should mention that while they may fall outside of Mitch's idea of the guidelines, I learned a TON of stuff from reading bound collections of firsthand accounts written by Marine correspondents who were like today's embeds, only further in harm's way. They often went in with the regular Marines, even in first and second waves of assaults, tasked predominantly with utilizing their pen and pad rather than their weapon.

Other things that can be found in good university libraries are unit histories. For example, I have my grandfather's, titled, Ours to Hold It High: The History of the 77th Infantry Division in World War II, by The Men Who Were There. (That's really the author credit.)

Ronald Reagan R.I.P.

If ever there was a day I wished I could be listening to a web-feed of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, this would be the day. Who better to comment on the passing of Fmr. Pres. Ronald Reagan than Mitch Berg and the esteemed gents that make up the rest of the crew?

I will also look forward to reading what Peggy Noonan has to say.

UPDATE: The best parts of the tv coverage so far have those minutes when they just play clips of Reagan himself, delivering one after another of those memorable quotations. Second best are the parts when people tell tales of what Reagan said to them directly in candid moments.

And whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way. - Ronald Reagan, Speech at the National Republican Convention, 1992

Reagan's 40th Anniversary of D-Day Speech at Pointe du Hoc

Reagan's 40th Anniversary of D-Day Speech at Omaha Beach

Ronald Reagan

A few more quotes:

From President Bush:

He always told us that for America, the best was yet to come. We comfort ourselves in the knowledge that this is true for him, too. His work is done, and now a shining city awaits him. May God bless Ronald Reagan.

From Ronald Reagan, from his letter announcing his Alzheimer's disease:

When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future.

I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.

As heard on the Hugh Hewitt Show

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Album Review, 20 Years Too Late

I love The Smiths. They were one of my favorite bands. I can't wait for Morrissey and Johnny Marr to reconcile and do the reunion tour thing. (Not possible? Tell that to The Pixies and Camper Van Beethoven.)

But "Meat Is Murder" SUCKED. I speak relatively, of course, but it is by far the least of their albums. In particular, the original European version sucked, as it was not rescued by the last-minute inclusion of "How Soon Is Now?" as the American version was. Give me "The Queen Is Dead" any day of the week.

That said, it does contain my absolute favorite Smiths song, "What She Said". It is inexcusable to me that this song was omitted from the two-disc "Best Of" set, which included such duds as "Oscillate Wildly" and "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore". Inexcusable.

So I bought "Meat" on CD anyway, just to get "What She Said". Sigh.

Instamonkey: Question for O.J. 10 Years Later

When it's late at night and the demons come, what do you see? Judging from this story, I'd bet you see a lot of red.

Instamonkey: Pope Warns Americans Risk Surrender to "Soulless Vision of Life."

Pope John Paul II met privately with President George W. Bush and U.S. bishops on Friday. Shortly after the meeting, in a public statement, the Pope "denounced the acceptance of abortion and same-sex unions as 'self-centered demands' erroneously depicted as human rights," according to this Associated Press report. Today's comments followed a similar pronouncement last week, in which the Pontiff "warned another group of U.S. prelates that American society is in danger of surrendering to a 'soulless vision of life.'" No dismissive comment yet from Andrew Sullivan.

Brad minus 50

Yep, as of sometime last week I'm down 50 pounds since September. Getting from 45 to 50 has been the toughest 5 pounds to lose so far. To tell the truth, I've been allowing for a few mini-binges and a few freak-outs lately, so I'm not surprised. A lot of travel has made it tough too.

In my 45-lost post I promised something more noteworthy when I hit -50. Well, I don't have anything profound. Nor do I have any more tips than I had in my -40 post. But I do have pictures. No, not before and after pics. I wouldn't subject you to that. But check these out.

These are my pictorial representations of diet related things that weigh 50 pounds.

I noticed the other day as I carried these weights from one room to the next that I was carrying exactly 50 pounds; the very amount of weight that I had just lost. The notable stress that carrying that around put on my feet inspired me to make the weights my first photo-representation of 50 pounds. But being so dense, they didn't look that big, that impressive. So I headed off to the store...

50 pounds of sugar. This tower of the treacle has been in my mind since I hit the -25 pound mark. I imagine making a belt of these. That's what I used to carry around.

These two 25 pound sacks of flour are larger than bed pillows. I should have put something in the picture for scale. Again, I imagine stuffing one of these in the front of an old 2XLT shirt and the other up the back and then trying to tie my shoes. That's what I used to carry around.

PLUS...
I couldn't convince the lady behind the deli counter to pull an entire 50 pounds from the case if I wasn't going to buy it. So, here's about 25 pounds of cheese on the scale, plus 25 pounds of cheese in the deli case. That's what I used to carry around.

I've been asked when I'm going to stop the weight loss. Well, 50 pounds was a good goal. But I'm not done yet. But... I'm done with weight-based goals. I'm switching to body fat percentage. See, I used a chart in a book using measurements of the waist and the wrist. It said I was at 22% – "typical American male." I doubted the accuracy of such a test, particularly since I'm 6'5" and, having narrow wrists, may be too freakish to fit the standard. So I had the lady at the YMCA use the calipers on me. OUCH! hey... I was surprised to be pinned at 21.8%. Man, that's some chart in that book.

On the one hand, I'm happy to have come back down to "typical" since I was beyond that for years. (Gollum would have called me "the fat one.") On the other hand, I'd much prefer to keep my momentum and shoot for the books' and charts' version of "ideal" – 15%. So my next goal seems modest: get below 20%. We'll see if that's as easy as it sounds. I haven't done the math, to convert that into pounds. I don't know if I can come up with any worthwhile photos of 1.8 – 2% of something, but we'll see.

Rum

I'm mainly writing this to prod Ben to do the right thing, ignore his work and family, and do more booze blogging.

I called Ben the other day, and told him, "you're like the opposite of my A.A. sponsor--I call you when I want to drink, and need a recommendation." I had just purchased some Gosling Black Seal Bermuda rum, so Ben suggested the Dark & Stormy. I actually made it with the rum on top, because it looked cool and I didn't know any better.

This afternoon, I decided to knock off work early, and based on one of my favorite drink menus (sadly, no longer live on the site--that's a Wayback link) have a natural Daiquiri--3/4 oz lime juice, 1/4 oz simple sugar syrup (I used a strong one I found at Williams-Sonoma), and 2 oz good white rum, shaken and strained into a cocktail glass (I actually didn't strain it, because I like the ice, and I did a floater of some dark rum, because I like it, and it's the Summer of Rum).

Instamonkey: Michael Moore is "a Horrible Human!" says Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is peeved that Michael Moore appropriated the title of Bradbury's most famous novel for his latest propaganda effort. Speaking to a Swedish daily, Bradbury said, "[Moore] stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission." I'm a bit skeptical about the translation, but the sentiment couldn't be more clear.

(Hat tip: No Left Turns.)

Hint, hint

Gee, I can't imagine that anybody would want this for Father's Day, or an upcoming birthday. (Found via a Blogad at Right Wing News.)

Heads up BFL & California readers

Dennis Prager is not an activist talk show host. Only on two or three occasions have I heard him call for traditional activism among his listeners. But the idea of removing the cross from the seal of the County of Los Angeles has the jewish radio host steamed. Prager is asking folks in California to email him if they might be willing to attend a hastily organized get-together in order to register everything from disbelief to dissent to disgust over the ACLU's preposterous demand.

I saw the idea pop up last week. I thought the county Board of Supervisors would at least have the intestinal fortitude to mount a defense. But I learn this morning that I was mistaken.

So, all you California Monkeys, all you Bear Flaggers... it might be fun and worthwhile to get on the hasty mailing list. I'm pretty sure you can trust Dennis with your email address. (dennisprager@dennisprager.com) For more details, see his site.

Connected (No, not the Stereo MC's)

Heard Stephen Hayes talking about his new book The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America on Dennis Prager this morning yesterday while trying to get my grades turned in (got over half done now – summer, here I come!). A lot of what Hayes mentioned during the brief radio segment can be found in his current Weekly Standard article.

Now now, I know... all articles that trace connections from one shadowy-unknown-figure to reportedly-important-yet-still-unknown figures start out dry. Most of them continue on that way. And yes, this Hayes article starts out with the threat of leaving some dust in your mouth. But it's the second section, on the second page that really clicks. Check out what Hayes does with past quotes from those who now so vociferously chant the "no connection" mantra: Newsweek, ABC News, NPR, AP, the Washington Post, George Tenet, and Richard Clark.

Not having a good feel for how to best excerpt an article of this scope without putting off the publishing of this post for another day, let's not and say I did. Consider your interest piqued, mm-kay? Read the article.

Oh, and on the new Hayes book, Power Line's Hindrocket observes, "It is a sign of the times that leftists have wasted no time in attacking Hayes' book, even though they can't possibly have read it. As often happens on Amazon, left-wingers have tried to drag down the book's average on-line rating by giving it the lowest possible score--sight unseen."

Well, alright... maybe I do want to reference the Stereo MC's. Keeping the Hayes assertions in mind, check out some of the lyrics to their notable single.

But Rocket Man does it too!

Okay, this post includes an implicit admission that I'm not entirely comfortable with, but here's a very unflattering photo of the new Miss Universe. You wonder how this one made the cut.

In case you missed it, here's the liveblogging of the event over at Power Line.

VDH on WWII's Lessons

My Memorial Day post just below ended with a quote from Maj. Richard Winters (Ret.), "Pass these lessons that we learned along. Don't forget them. They were hard lessons to learn." Yesterday I ran across something on Victor Davis Hanson's website that addresses some of those lessons. It's from the Response to Readership section of his site, but this particular question and answer are still on the site's frontpage, and not yet in the official Question Log. So, I'm taking the liberty of reposting that entry here.

On this Memorial Day weekend and with the upcoming 60th anniversary of D-Day, and at a time in-which we are engaged in a war, what lessons can we learn from WWII and more specifically D-Day that can be applied to the present day conflict?

We should remember that WWII and D-Day itself were fraught with uncertainty. Today's media would have gone ballistic to hear about the Deppe Raid, or the deathly consequences of the bad weather on June 6th, 1944, or the December surprise at the Bulge. The worst year of the war in some ways was early 1945-the horrific fighting in January and February to clean out the Bulge, or the 90-day nightmare of Okinawa just months before the Japanese surrender. Yet the difference between our generation and our fathers' was that they realized that they were just human and did their best, with full appreciation that we err and then go on to learn from it. And so then they went on and won.

In contrast, we are spoiled utopians; and if we can't have our way - paradise right now on earth - we become demoralized, turn on each other, and give up. This year in Iraq is not nearly as hellish as one day on Iwo, nothing like a night over Schweinfurt, or a few hours at Normandy. And our now demonized "neoconservative" planners haven't made half the errors of a prior generation's naive trust in Stalin, turning over Eastern Europe to totalitarians, not bombing the death camps, or attacking head on 100,000 dug-in Japanese on Okinawa. Add in the Japanese relocations, the carpet bombing of the Normandy train centers on the eve of D-day, or the March 11 fire-raids, and it would have been easy for the greatest generation to unleash the NewYork Times, Senate hearings, and Hollywood to demand an end to the bloodletting and bring the troops home in shame.

Yes, we can learn from WWII and D-Day about courage and audacity; but far more importantly, we can grasp from that generation something about quiet confidence in our civilization, a lack of arrogance about obtaining perfection, and a quiet trust in doing what we can according to our station and time. It sounds reactionary and trite to say that as a general rule I like those folks better than my own generation (I was born in 1953), but I confess I do and so might as well as admit it.