Well, maybe.

Of course, I've always felt that Reynolds does a pretty good job, considering the fact that he has a family and little that part-time law-professor thingie. And the podcasts. And the freelance photography. And the tech reviews. And the cooking. And the book-writing. Also, he's a person, rather than a web-spider, which has to cut down on efficiencies of scale.

And he cannot link every worthy cause, and every bitchin' little boutique blog (though of course he should link me just a bit more often, because I'm so fabulously wonderful, and most certainly first-among-equals for those who only get 250 hits a day).

Furthermore, Mr. Bloody Protein Shakes did eventually link a Malkin-site/See-Dubya post on the subject. I also think the crew at Jawa has been pretty supportive of Jane's work on behalf of the Yemenis, and Ace most certainly has been, so there's no call to get mad at all the "big dogs" of the 'sphere. Unless we want to.

But, yeah: I can see the temptation to compare Glenn with Goliath rather than with David. It was inevitable that that would happen at some point. I'm sure he'll see the compliment in there.

(FWIW, I still get more traffic from an Instalanche than I do from a mention on CNN, a link from the NYT, or prominent placement on Memeorandum. Glenn is, indeed, a one-man force of nature, or perhaps he's some other mixed metaphor I can't quite think of right now.)

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These are the people who distributed Mine Your Own Business and The Singing Revolution—and helped Evan Coyne Maloney's Indoctrinate U gain a lot more traction than it otherwise would have.

Here's an interview by Sonny Bunch at DoubleThink that discusses the new short, and also gives some more background on MPI, one of the most professional indie production companies around (and certainly the most libertarian-minded).

Harrison Bergeron is a terrific story all by itself, vaguely reminiscent of Brad Bird's The Incredibles. (Well. I mean that the other way around, of course. It's just that the last two times I watched The Incredibles I couldn't remember what it was tickling in the back of my brain. And now I know. "If everybody's special, then nobody's special." Uh-huh.)

The MPI version is supposedly going to be the best adaptation of the story ever, though I thought the 1995 production with Sean Astin, Eugene Levy, et al. was nicely done. I do like the fact that MPI will be changing the name, since I've always had a mental block about it. (The reasoning? The Vonnegut fans will watch it anyway. And Harrison Bergeron is hard to spell. Yup.)

Anyway, keep a lookout; it's always going to be hard to find a screening of a short movie like this; I do hope it'll be out on DVD at some point. And I hope it brings the crew at MPI to a new level.

MPI: Call Bruce Willis and Michael Yon. They might have an idea for you to kick around . . . something about an outfit called Deuce Four, as I recall.

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And I love "California Uber Alles." I even like, G-d help me, "We've Got a Bigger Problem Now," which of course wasn't 100% flattering to Ronald Reagan.

But I'll bet Michael Savage didn't play the latter on the day Reagan's diagnosis was announced. And to play the DKs yesterday was just cold and uncalled-for.

Of course, my Michael Savage tolerance is lower even than my Bill O'Reilly tolerance. Lower than my Dr. Laura tolerance. When I'm driving north and he comes on the radio, it's a question of how quickly I can get my hand to the radio to change the station: I've become lightning-fast in that regard.

There is such a thing as human decency, and some of these radio idiots ought to look it up.

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1 That's the kind of thing we expect at the Daily Kos or Air America. Unfortunately Mr. Savage chooses the same low road. Actually, he speaks from deep inside a dank pothole on that low road. I wish these talk show hosts and pundits on both sides would back away from the strategy of rhetorical vandalism and focus instead on explaining their positions on the issues. Juan Williams is a superb example of what I mean. He's as liberal as the day is long, and I do not often agree with him, but I respect and admire his ability to clearly articulate his position and perhaps more importantly his ability to listen to the other side rather than trying to talk over them. On a completely unrelated note, that is one very special hat you are modeling in the sidebar. Trailer trash? I'm thinking more like a waitress in a diner frequented by the Ice Road Truckers .

Posted by: BobM at May 21, 2008 09:00 AM (WMlGq)

2 I love that hat. Thanks!

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 21, 2008 09:23 AM (Hgnbj)

3 Conservatives cannot run away from Michael Savage. He is their animal, kept on the air and in print by their dollars. Even here, he gets his message across via a link. I've never been to Daily Kos, but have listened Air America, and nothing I heard on their air is even remotely similar to the filth and vitriol spewed by Savage, Hannity and similar creatures. Sidebar: Why do people think Juan Williams is a liberal? Listen to him speak, read his stuff. He is right of center on most issues.

Posted by: SR at May 21, 2008 11:53 AM (yvYFN)

4 No, S.R. Really--I like you, but if you're going to hold me responsible for everything said or done by so-called "conservatives," then fuck you very much. The fact is, I'm not a conservative except on issues of Federalism, economics, personal liberty and the war. But anyone who's in favor of the war these days is generally called right-of-center, so I accept that. I don't like it, but I accept it. I didn't link to Michael Savage; I wouldn't give that man traffic. I linked to a story about him. And I hadn't been aware that he had a message, beyond "here's a bunch of saliva that is coming out of my mouth as I yell into a microphone." A lot of these cocksuckers aren't even conservatives as much as populists. O'Reilly, Huckabee--they're just populists. Lowest-common-denominator men. If you can slap a label on me based on what some asshole on the radio says, then I can do the same to you WRT any idiot lefty/mild-mannered Jew/aging film buff proclaims. Walk softly, my friend.

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 21, 2008 12:04 PM (Hgnbj)

5 Little Miss Attila - your response was great. But I'm really writing this because I don't know what "WRT" means in your post. I'm lousy with things like that.

Posted by: SR at May 21, 2008 06:54 PM (vORtC)

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It's real. And it's magnificent.

First, he quotes Talisman Gate:

The author, writing under the pseudonym ‘Dir’a limen wehhed’ [‘A Shield for the Monotheist’], posted his ‘Brief Study on the Consequences of the Division [Among] the [Jihadist] Groups on the Cause of Jihad in Iraq’ on May 12 and it is being displayed by the administration of the Al-Ekhlaas website—one of Al-Qaeda’s chief media outlets—among its more prominent recent posts. He’s considered one of Al-Ekhlaas’s “esteemed” writers.

The author tallies up and compares the numbers of operations claimed by each insurgent group under four categories: a year and half ago (November 2006), a year ago (May 2007), six months ago (November 2007) and now (May 200 . He demonstrated that while Al-QaedaÂ’s Islamic State of Iraq could claim 334 operations in Nov. 06 and 292 in May 07, their violent output dropped to 25 in Nov. 07 and 16 so far in May 08. Keep in mind that these assessments are based on Al-QaedaÂ’s own numbers.

The author also shows that similar steep drops were exhibited by other jihadist groups [Â…]

So. What we have is jihadists virtually conceding defeat, while the leading Democratic candidate for president essentially campaigns on a way to turn that defeat into a victory by removing the obstacles to jihadi success.

To which I say, keep your chin up, al Qaeda in Iraq! After all, O! is promising hopeyness and changitude! — though for a while there, he had me convinced he was directing that message at the US electorate.

Instead, turns out he’s just pitching it toward our adversaries and the uninformed here at home — and of course, to those who feel that shows of US military strength are just part and parcel of an unsavory US international hegemony, one that needs to be thwarted so that we’ll learn our lesson about crass interventionalism (defined as interventionalism in our own national interests, rather than the kind that smacks of showy altruism); stick to ourselves, culturally speaking; and concentrate on important things, like how best to have the government regulate our thermostats, our medical care, our eating habits, etc., as well as how best to “put every American to work” in the service of the State — a small offering, if you will, to the Secular Godhead and His cult of personality.

Somewhere, Mussolini chuckles.

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1 Dear Attila; Is it just my two browsers, or is there something screwy with your blog currently? Because the columns are all frelled.

Posted by: Gregory at May 20, 2008 09:59 PM (cjwF0)

2 Is it better now?

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 21, 2008 07:22 AM (Hgnbj)

3 All better, thank you

Posted by: Gregory at May 21, 2008 05:42 PM (cjwF0)

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And he's still here.

It feels as if everyone's pulled out their file obituaries, changed some tenses, grabbed a few fresh quotes, and run with that. I don't want to read about the man's brothers; I want to read about him. I don't want Camelot and the tragedy of John-John or Joe or anyone else. What is it about the "K" word that makes journalists insane?

There's too much fiddle-faddle going on.

My heart goes out to the Kennedys, but the coverage of Ted's illness seems almost as absurd as everything else written about this troubled family. Here's a random quote from the WaPo article:

Theodore Sorensen, JFK's speechwriter and alter ego, observed yesterday: "Only the Adams family in the earliest days of the republic had the kind of stature, respect and impact on public life as the Kennedys."

Wasn't there a family in the late nineteenth century and early 20th century that had an even larger impact on public life? Name started with an "R," if I recall. Pure silliness, and one more blurring of the man with the "dynasty."

And, yes: I'm still upset about the wind farm dealio, but today isn't the day for that. Today is for prayer. Respect for the good that the man did (and tried to do) by his own lights. And hopes that he'll stick around—that the news isn't as bad as it appears to be right now.

That is all.

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Iowahawk carves up our congresscritters once more, exposing their ooky innards for the world to see. Revolting. Disgusting. Beautiful.

All this, and classic cars. Thank you, Sir.

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Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.:

I'm sure that you have had this experience before, or something similar to it. You are sitting at lunch in a nice restaurant or perhaps a hotel. Waiters are coming and going. The food is fantastic. The conversation about all things is going well. You talk about the weather, music, movies, health, trivialities in the news, kids, and so on. But then the topic turns to economics, and things change.

You are not the aggressive type so you don't proclaim the merits of the free market immediately. You wait and let the others talk. Their biases against business appear right away in the repetition of the media's latest calumny against the market, such as that gas station owners are causing inflation by jacking up prices to pad their pockets at our expense, or that Wal-Mart is, of course, the worst possible thing that can ever happen to a community.

You begin to offer a corrective, pointing out the other side. Then the truth emerges in the form of a naïve if definitive announcement from one person: "Well, I suppose I'm really a socialist at heart." Others nod in agreement.

On one hand there is nothing to say, really. You are surrounded by the blessings of capitalism. The buffet table, which you and your lunch partners only had to walk into a building to find, has a greater variety of food at a cheaper price than that which was available to any living person — king, lord, duke, plutocrat, or pope — in almost all of the history of the world. Not even fifty years ago would this have been imaginable.

All of history has been defined by the struggle for food. And yet that struggle has been abolished, not just for the rich but for everyone living in developed economies. The ancients, peering into this scene, might have assumed it to be Elysium. Medieval man conjured up such scenes only in visions of Utopia. Even in the late 19th century, the most gilded palace of the richest industrialist required a vast staff and immense trouble to come anywhere near approximating it.

We owe this scene to capitalism. To put it differently, we owe this scene to centuries of capital accumulation at the hands of free people who have put capital to work on behalf of economic innovations, at once competing with others for profit and cooperating with millions upon millions of people in an ever-expanding global network of the division of labor. The savings, investments, risks, and work of hundreds of years and uncountable numbers of free people have gone into making this scene possible, thanks to the ever-remarkable capacity for a society developing under conditions of liberty to achieve the highest aspirations of the society's members.

And yet, sitting on the other side of the table are well-educated people who imagine that the way to end the world's woes is through socialism.

. . . . . . . . . .

Whatever the specifics of the case in question, socialism always means overriding the free decisions of individuals and replacing that capacity for decision making with an overarching plan by the state. Taken far enough, this mode of thought won't just spell an end to opulent lunches. It will mean the end of what we all know as civilization itself. It would plunge us back to a primitive state of existence, living off hunting and gathering in a world with little art, music, leisure, or charity. Nor is any form of socialism capable of providing for the needs of the world's six billion people, so the population would shrink dramatically and quickly and in a manner that would make every human horror ever known seem mild by comparison. Nor is it possible to divorce socialism from totalitarianism, because if you are serious about ending private ownership of the means of production, you have to be serious about ending freedom and creativity too. You will have to make the whole of society, or what is left of it, into a prison.

But other than that, socialism is a fine idea.

h/t: Hackbarth, who loves the idea of a buffet table as a symbol of capitalism's success. This was part of today's economics linkfest, and those are always fun: one-stop shopping for the brain.

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Michael Goldfarb has the video:

I can't say I'm surprised that Time magazine and the Obama campaign managed to miss this clip which completely undermines their shared narrative. But now we have a new narrative: Obama intends to meet with Ali Khamenei, the man with the real power in Tehran, because even though Obama pledged to meet with Ahmadinejad, and said it was a "disgrace" that Bush had not, he never had any intention of meeting with Ahmadinejad, and McCain is a liar for saying different.

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. . . do their part for the environment and energy independence. Via a Go-Kart. Tough work, boys—but I suppose someone has to do it.

h/t: Insty.

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Yes; when I say that I usually mean Jane Austen.

But today the toast of the blogosphere is Jane Novak, the unlikely crusader on behalf of the Yemenis, whom The New York Times finally got around to noticing.

Jane is, as usual, too modest. She is, indeed, a journalist and analyst. She has been for years—but it happened so gradually, she didn't notice.

Thanks for your efforts on behalf of free speech and the Yemeni people, Jane.

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Um. Let me think . . .

Be an ingredient in a real martini?

Hey. If I'm going to use spirits around the house, I should use ones that contain botanicals; I'm pretty sure it makes Mother Earth happy. I know it makes juniper farmers happy. And I'm absolutely certain that it makes me happy.

h/t: (where else?) Vodkapundit.

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1 Erm? I know not what brand of vodka you use (it had better not be Absolut, that's all I'm sayin), but I'm pretty sure vodka is made from botanical stuff. Potatoes, iirc. Or did I completely misunderstand your post? The sun being under the yardarm, it's now verra hard for me tae tell...

Posted by: Gregory at May 20, 2008 02:32 AM (cjwF0)

2 Be an ingredient in a real martini? Don't be an Obama. It is very unbecoming.

Posted by: I R A Darth Aggie at May 20, 2008 05:12 AM (1hM1d)

3 Gregory: I'm referring to the flavoring agents in gin vs. vodka. Darth: I happen to be very passionate about my martinis. But everyone is. You know the story about the Canadian Mounties, right?--part of their survival gear is an itty-bitty kit for making a martini, because when you're lost in the Yukon and might be a goner, all you need do is get off your horse and start to make a martini: someone will appear out of nowhere to tell you how you're doing it wrong.

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 20, 2008 05:40 AM (Hgnbj)

4 Ah, now it makes sense... Well, if it's good enough for James Bond, it's good enough for me, I guess.

Posted by: Gregory at May 20, 2008 04:53 PM (cjwF0)

5 No, no, I think those are St. Benards with the itty-bitty kits.

Posted by: I R A Darth Aggie at May 21, 2008 06:29 AM (1hM1d)

6 But that's in the Alps, right?

Posted by: Attila Girl at May 21, 2008 01:13 PM (Hgnbj)

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. . . has one data point—if that—in common with this one.

Via Althouse, who clearly has Radar Love on hers. Now we're talking.

Mine will have a fast segment and a slow segment ("Hijera," by Joni Mitchell; "Fast Car," by Tracy Chapman; "True," Concrete Blonde).

I mean, I'm not adverse to rocking out, and I don't mind if the title or chorus is "on the nose" in the lyrics department. For instance, "Life in the Fast Lane" is not out of the question. But "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A."? Puhleeze. If you want musical junk food, why not something like "Ballroom Blitz"?

Or maybe something that reminds you to get liquored up for the Road? Try "Red Wine and Whiskey."

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I've been running my body on coffee for years.

Well. Earl Grey tea with a bit of whole milk in it. "Let's stick to the facts." And I suppose it's a bit more of a big deal when one is powering an entire car.

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Sure. I'll give it a shot.

Clockwise, from the high heels: Rachel, David, Jonathan, Eric.

Do I get a prize?

Via Eric, this time around.

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Over the past five years I've run the gamut from excellent entertainment-industry health insurance . . . to no insurance . . . to amazingly sucky, exorbitant coverage that costs us thousands more a year than it "really" costs, because we have to continue A the H's production company in order to qualify for it, when we'd really like to let that go and slash our overhead.

And most of my friends are freelancers; I suspect they, like me, would be thrilled to get something decent for a semi-reasonable cost that wouldn't be pulled out from under them every time they changed jobs or careers.

I realize that a lot of people "expect" employers to pay for health care, but (1) a that number will decrease as people no longer "expect" that they'll necessarily be working staff jobs, and (2) a lot of people, given the choice by their companies, would prefer to take the cash versus the benefits. Or some of the cash, versus the benefits. Or having the flexibility to work anywhere they want to, rather than being "married" to one company or another due to some "pre-existing condition."

I remember sitting in my publisher's office in 1990 when I was living on $16,000 a year in West Los Angeles, with a commute to Burbank and a diet that consisted largely of macaroni and cheese.

This publisher was trying to convince me that, at the age of 28, I should purchase health insurance through the company. The problem was that it would have cost me a lot of money that I simply didn't have.

But of course my publisher thought I should be covered. He didn't want this enough to pay his staffers salaries we could actually live on, but he wanted it. Sort of. At least, he wanted to lecture me endlessly on the point while I was scrambling to make his deadlines.

At some point I just told him that I'd gotten insurance through one of my parents. He knew I was lying, but what could he do?

Save me the paternalism. Just give me the cash.

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According to Barack Obama—"when one of my political opponents uses a term, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."

The question is, which is to be master?—that's all.

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McCain is the only goddamned candidate out there with a sense of humor; he should play to his strengths.

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Michael Yon on the difference between a technically illegal—yet acceptable—lifting of a photo, and Michael Moore's theft of one of his own signature image (the one that, by the way, graces the cover of his Yon's new book, which I just bought):

When someoneÂ’s grandmother disseminates the photo of Major Beiger cradling a dying girl in his arms, I allow the usage because I feel she is trying to share the human tragedy. When Michael Moore puts that same photo on his web site, alongside images of George Bush, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, the clear implication is that FarahÂ’s death is their fault.

That is a misrepresentation of the facts on the ground, as well as the story of the photo. Farah was killed by a suicide car bomb in Mosul on May 2, 2005. Major Bieger and other soldiers literally risked their own lives to save many children and adults that day, but Farah didnÂ’t make it.

Michael Moore apparently does not understand – or refuses to acknowledge – the moral distinction between a man who would murder innocent people, and a man who would sacrifice himself to save them. The photo, as I took it, is the truth, but Moore uses it – illegally – to convey falsehoods. His mind is that of a political propagandist who sees Farah’s death not as a human tragedy, but a tool.

Yon is one of the great journalists of our age. He points out to his angry readers that this situation must be handled in a legal fashion, but I have no problem citing this as one more example in which Moore uses powerful images to tell flagrant lies.

This—like splicing together words from different Charlton Heston speeches to make it sound like he said things he never said—reflects upon Moore. Not on whatever topic he has chosen to lie about that day.

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It's the party of the Klan, and the party of black separatism. I actually don't see much of a contradiction, here.

But I would invite my friends of color to get off the Dems' plantation, and embrace the party of the Great Emancipator.

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Today brings us

Next from Bruce Ramsey: The Khmer Rouge -- Misunderstood Warrior-Poets

A few weeks ago I read a few lines from Ace aloud. At least a couple of posts were represented.

"What the hell?" I wondered. "Am I delighted, or appalled?"

"Yes," suggested A the H. "But he's just as brutal with himself as he is with the rest of the world."

"Maybe," I replied. "He's no rifle crank; that's for sure."

"Nope."

"I mean, he isn't spending untold hours sightin' anything in."

"He's a shotgun man," A the A responded. And he turned the page the book he was reading.

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