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Ed Driscoll
The Samizdat Remains the Same
February 15th, 2011 - 2:12 pm
“Was the Fall of the USSR a Good Thing? — University of Chicago Professor Brian Leiter isn’t so sure,” David
Bernstein notes at the Volokh Conspiracy.
35 years ago, propping up the Soviet Union was par for the course in academia, as Tom Wolfe noted in his
article, “The Intelligent Co-Ed’s Guide to America,” published in 1976:
With the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 it had become
clear to Mannerist Marxists such as Sartre that the Soviet Union was now an embarrassment. The
fault, however, as tout le monde knew, was not with socialism but with Stalinism. Stalin was a
madman and had taken socialism on a wrong turn. (Mistakes happen.) Solzhenitsyn began speaking
out as a dissident inside the Soviet Union in 1967. His complaints, his revelations, his struggles with
Soviet authorities—they merely underscored just how wrong the Stalinist turn had been.
The publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973, however, was a wholly unexpected blow. No
one was ready for the obscene horror and grotesque scale of what Solzhenitsyn called “Our Sewage
Disposal System”—in which tens of millions were shipped in boxcars to concentration camps all
over the country, in which tens of millions died, in which entire races and national groups were
liquidated, insofar as they had existed in the Soviet Union. Moreover, said Solzhenitsyn, the system
had not begun with Stalin but with Lenin, who had immediately exterminated non-Bolshevik
opponents of the old regime and especially the student factions. It was impossible any longer to
distinguish the Communist liquidation apparatus from the Nazi.
Yet Solzhenitsyn went still further. He said that not only Stalinism, not only Leninism, not only
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Ed Driscoll http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/
Communism — but socialism itself led to the concentration camps; and not only socialism, but
Marxism; and not only Marxism but any ideology that sought to reorganize morality on an a priori
basis. Sadder still, it was impossible to say that Soviet socialism was not “real socialism.” On the
contrary — it was socialism done by experts!
Intellectuals in Europe and America were willing to forgive Solzhenitsyn a great deal. After all, he
had been born and raised in the Soviet Union as a Marxist, he had fought in combat for his country,
he was a great novelist, he had been in the camps for eight years, he had suffered. But for his
insistence that the isms themselves led to the death camps — for this he was not likely to be
forgiven soon. And in fact the campaign of antisepsis began soon after he was expelled from the
Soviet Union in 1974. (“He suffered too much — he’s crazy.” “He’s a Christian zealot with a Christ
complex.” “He’s an agrarian reactionary.” “He’s an egotist and a publicity junkie.”)
Solzhenitsyn’s tour of the United States in 1975 was like an enormous funeral procession that no
one wanted to see. The White House wanted no part of him. The New York Times sought to bury his
two major’ speeches, and only the moral pressure of a lone Times writer, Hilton, Kramer, brought
them any appreciable coverage at all. The major television networks declined to run the
Solzhenitsyn interview that created such a stir in England earlier this year (it ran on some of the
educational channels).
And the literary world in general ignored him completely. In the huge unseen coffin that
Solzhenitsyn towed behind him were not only the souls of the zeks who died in the Archipelago. No,
the heartless bastard had also chucked in one of the last great visions: the intellectual as the
Stainless Steel Socialist glistening against the bone heap of capitalism in its final, brutal, fascist
phase. There was a bone heap, all right, and it was grisly beyond belief, but socialism, had created
it.
As Orrin Judd writes today, “Nixon was negotiating the terms on which the West would live with a permanent
Iron Curtain. Reagan was negotiating the end of that particular evil.” Curious that to this day, a surprising
number of academicians find themselves on the side of Nixon on a host of issues.
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Bankruptcy: It’s not just for the Coal Industry Anymore

2 of 27 2/15/11 6:40 PM
“Obama’s offshore oil drilling policy kills Texas oil company,” Bryan Preston writes at the Tatler. “Seahawk Oil
experiences Obama style fundamental transformation:”
The first off-shore drilling company in the Gulf of Mexico to declare bankruptcy has blamed the
government-imposed standstill for a shortage of shallow-water permits following the summer’s
massive oil spill. Texas-based Seahawk Drilling, the second-largest shallow-water driller operating
in the Gulf, announced it had filed for bankruptcy Friday and would be selling its remaining assets
to Hercules Offshore.
Flashback to January of 2008 and the headline of the year the San Fransisco Chronicle was too stupid — or too
much in agreement on — not to highlight:
embedded by Embedded Video
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Putting the Toothpaste Back into the Tube, Middle East Edition
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Mark Steyn on “Pharaohs and Fairy Tales:”
Mr Erb seems to assume that simply because “half the Arab population is under 24! that means
they’re “modern”. But look at these four photographs: The female graduating class of Cairo
University in 1959, 1978, 1995 and 2004. The young women of the Fifties and Seventies are little
different from their counterparts at Brown or Brandeis. The 2004 group shot shows a wholly
transformed culture: True, it’s more “modern” than Take Your Child Bride To Work Day in
Kandahar, but that’s about it. As I wrote three years ago:
The other night at dinner, I found myself sitting next to a Middle Eastern Muslim lady
of a certain age. And the conversation went as it often does when you’re with Muslim
women who were at college in the Sixties, Seventies or Eighties. In this case, my dining
companion had just been at a conference on “women’s issues,” of which there are many
in the Muslim world, and she was struck by the phrase used by the “moderate Muslim”
chair of the meeting: “authentic women” — by which she meant women wearing
hijabs. And my friend pointed out that when she and her unveiled pals had been in their
20s they were the “authentic women”: the covering routine was for old village biddies,
the Islamic equivalent of gnarled Russian babushkas. It would never have occurred to
her that the assumptions of her generation would prove to be off by 180 degrees — that
in middle age she would see young Muslim women wearing a garb largely alien to their
tradition not just in the Middle East but in Brussels and London and Montreal.
Whenever I speak about Islam, some or other inevitablist always says, “Oh, but they
haven’t had time to westernize. Just you wait and see. Give it another 20 years, and the
siren song of westernization will work its magic.” This argument isn’t merely
speculative, it’s already been proved wrong by what’s happened over the last 30 years.
Huge majorities of Egyptians are in favor of stoning for adulterous women and of
execution for apostasy. Run the numbers, and then see if you can recite your inevitablist
theories of social evolution with a straight face. The idea that social progress is like the
wheel or the iPhone — once invented, it can never be uninvented — is one of the
laziest assumptions of the western left.
You can also see that at work in these photos of Iran in the 1970s, or even Afghanistan in the 1950s. But does the
western left still think that “social progress is like the wheel or the iPhone — once invented, it can never be
uninvented?” Because in the first decade of the new millennia (as these things were once reckoned in less
enlightened times), they’ve been doing a bang-up job at attempting to roll back the progress of the first half of
the 20th century themselves.
Related: “Egypt: Islamist judge to head new constitution committee,” the London Telegraph reports.
Comments
Bloomberg on the Rocks

Talk about a strange brew — as the New York Post reports, “Mayor Bloomberg likes his beer cold — really
cold:”
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Standing inside the just-expanded Brooklyn Brewery yesterday, the mayor revealed that his
unorthodox approach to drinking beer requires ice.
“I actually put ice in my beer,” the mayor said. “Most people don’t.”
Hearing a gasp from the crowd, he explained: “I know. I’ve always done it. I don’t think it comes
from Boston.”
The only other man I can think of who likes his beer with ice is former Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins
head coach Jimmy Johnson, who at one time enjoyed Heineken on the rocks. (Check the first paragraph of this
Sports Illustrated article from 1989, or repeated references in Skip Bayless’ 1994 book, The Boys.) And while I
don’t know Johnson or Bloomberg, I still think it’s safe to say that Mayor Mike is no Jimmy Johnson.
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‘You are ze Audience! I am ze Author! I Outraaaaank You!‘

February 15th, 2011 - 10:57 am
Don’t worry, I haven’t gone all Krugman on you — that’s but one of the fantastic lines that Mel Brooks gave the
recently deceased Kenneth Mars in The Producers as Franz Liebkind, the writer of the play within the film, the
indelible “Springtime for Hitler.” Another line bellowed by Mars would gain additional pop culture resonance as
the title of one of U2"s best albums.
His introductory scene in the film isn’t too shabby, either:
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(Hat tip: Ricochet, which links to Mars’ classic moment in Young Frankenstein.)
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5 of 27 2/15/11 6:40 PM
Truth or Consequences
Now is the time at Ed Driscoll.com when we juxtapose!
James Taranto, yesterday:
The Times’s description of the event is artfully constructed to be literally truthful while conveying a
false and damaging impression. Facts are omitted that demonstrate beyond any doubt the propriety
of Scalia’s conduct. Also, the formulation “a group of representatives led by Representative Michele
Bachmann of the House Tea Party Caucus” could–but does not–refer to the Tea Party Caucus itself,
of which Bachmann is chairman.
Last week we characterized this passage as follows: “Here the Times deceives its readers in an effort
to defame Justice Scalia.” We chose these words with precision: The Times did not lie outright;
rather, its deception consists in the omission of some pertinent facts and the misleading presentation
of others. And the Times did not defame Justice Scalia, which would require it to make false
statements of fact about him; it merely participated in an effort to do so.
“How can voters be so ill informed [sic]?”
– Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist, yesterday.
(Concept via SDA)
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Bill Maher falls off the Edge of the Earth

“According to Maher, when you go too far to the Left, you end up on the Right,” NewsReal’s Walter Hudson
writes, paraphrasing Maher’s latest sophistry:
It’s not unusual for Bill Maher to accuse his ideological opponents of being flat-earthers. But he
took the concept to a new extreme over the weekend in his analysis of history and the political
spectrum. According to Maher, when you go too far to the Left, you end up on the Right.
“Both [the Russian and French] revolutions got hijacked by the right-wing – and the
Iranian Revolution,” Maher added.
However, Maher explained that you could argue the Russian Revolution was “hijacked
by the left-wing,” but due to the nature of it being that far left, it was really right.
“I suppose people would say the Russian Revolution was hijacked by the left-wing,”
Maher said. “I think when you go that far left – you’re really the right-wing. I consider
Lenin and Stalin right-wingers. Don’t tell Rush Limbaugh.”
Well, that explains some of the crazier rhetoric from Frank Rich and Chris Matthews in recent years. Though as
Andrew Breitbart asked Maher in September, “So you’re officially not a Libertarian anymore, right?”
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Barack is Injurious Yellow

Break out the micrometer: “I’ve marked the Obama cuts in yellow. Repeat: I’ve marked the Obama cuts in
yellow.”
At the Corner, Yuval Levin writes, so much for the recent

MSM-aided “Obama as centrist” smokescreen:
“Until the last few weeks, there might have been room to wonder whether President Obama might
respond to the 2010 elections by moving to the center and seeking some politically advantageous
but meaningful middle ground — offering tax reforms, perhaps even some Social Security reforms,
and orienting the next two years around the question of who can provide a more appealing, more
optimistic, and less painful set of solutions to our enormous fiscal challenge and the coming debt
crisis. This budget puts an end to that possibility. The president appears to have decided to spend the
next two years pretending there is no problem to solve, and therefore that Republican proposals to
rein in spending are just mean-spirited cuts offered up for kicks.
This is, above all, an appalling failure of leadership. When we look back on this period a decade or
two from now, I think we’ll identify this moment — the president’s decision about how to approach
the budget battle of 2012 — as the last real opportunity we had for a gradual bipartisan course
correction. That option now seems closed off, and it is up to Republicans to decide if the alternative
is to march off the fiscal cliff in order to avoid political risks or to propose a gradual course
correction to voters and make the case for why it is sensible, responsible, and essential.
At the Chicago Boyz econ0-blog, Lexington Green writes:
Instapundit responds: “It’s not 1995 anymore, though.” Yes. True. I agree. It is better now. But, is it
better enough? Boehner is not an eccentric visionary like Gingrich, and I cannot see him and
McConnell getting punked by Obama the way Clinton did to Gingrich. Obama is not nearly as good
as Clinton. The GOP members are, I think, much wiser and more realistic than the hopeful but
ultimately naive class of 1994. The new crew is committed to reform, and they have the example of
1995 in front of them. May they learn the right tactical lessons. Plus, things are just way worse now.
There is more at stake.Interesting times, baby.
At Power Line, John Hinderaker diagnoses the madness of King Barack:
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Obama’s game is transparent, isn’t it? He is playing a game of chicken. He puts forward a series of
proposals that he knows are more or less insane; but he also believes that Republicans will come to
his rescue. They, not being wholly irresponsible, will come up with plans to reform
entitlements–like, for example, the Ryan Roadmap. Ultimately, some combination of those plans
will be implemented because the alternative is the collapse, not just of the government of the United
States, but of the country itself. But Obama thinks the GOP’s reforms will be unpopular, and he will
be able to demagogue them, thus having his cake and eating it too. Is that leadership? Of course not.
But it is the very essence of Barack Obama.
“Lenin said there are decades where nothing happens, then there are weeks where decades happen. We are
heading into months where decades are going to happen,” Lexington Green writes at the Chicago Boyz blog,
adding, “Stay tuned.”
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The Ultimate Rube Self-Identifies

“Obama To The Next Generation: Screw You, Suckers,” Andrew Sullivan writes:
To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you
over. He thinks you’re fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama’s cowardice, or
you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts.
He let you down. On the critical issue of America’s fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no
change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end.
“All of us who took Obama’s pitch as fiscally responsible were duped,” Andrew adds. (Meaning pretty much the
entire staff of the Atlantic, among other vast swatches of the MSM?) Of course, it’s much easier for a con man to
swindle someone who’s looking to be duped.
To be fair though, Obama held himself out a man who’s as equally conservative as John Kerry – just ask
Andrew:
Andrew Sullivan in July of 2004:
Kerry may be the right man – and the conservative choice – for a difficult and perilous
time.
Andrew Sullivan, [May 22nd, 2009:]
This speech, to my mind, was a conservative one by a conservative president who seeks
first and foremost to use existing institutions to address the new challenges of the
moment, and then seeks pragmatic compromises, always open to future checks and
balances, in those places where such institutions clearly need reform and adjustment.
But then, conservatism really is whatever Andrew defines it to be at any given moment, of course.
As Andrew’s bete noire would say, how’s that Hopey-Changey stuff working out for you?
Rest easy; Andrew and the MSM will forget all of the president’s flaws and switch back to cheerleader mode as
next year looms closer.
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Update: Or maybe not: James Joyner notes that Andrew “has never supported the same man in consecutive
elections”, and “is poised to continue his streak.”
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No Wonder She Loved Kerry

Yid with Lid wraps up CPAC with this amusing anecdote on old media meeting new:
2) NY Times Columnist Maureen Dowd May Be Suffering From Some Sort Of Dementia. The
blogger’s “lounge” where we worked was very crowded, and people without the proper credentials
were not allowed in the room.
On the second day of the event Liberal NY Times Columnist Maureen Dowd tried to get into the
blogger’s lounge, lacking credentials she was not allowed to enter. Ms. Dowd was not happy and
indignantly asked the person who blocked her entry, “Do you have any idea who I am?”
What a sad picture, here was a woman who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and only 12 years later she
was wandering the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel with no idea who she was. How the mighty have
fallen.
Moe Lane is willing to help MoDo though: “Seriously, Maureen: next time, just call me on my cell and I’ll see
what I can do.”
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‘The Diminished Relevance Of Media Matters’

Center left Mediaite on far left Media Matters:
Last Thursday, Media Matters published an extensive (and somewhat breathless) account from an
anonymously sourced individual that was only identified as a former Fox News Insider. The report
included lots of detail that alleged Fox News’ bias, with pithy quotes like “they’re a propaganda
outfit but they call themselves news” and “stuff is just made up,” and was clearly intended as a
scathing indictment of Media Matters’ mortal enemy, Fox News.
***
Why would such a provocative and interesting piece get lost in shuffle? Perhaps because, in the
current hyper-partisan landscape of opinion media (and watchdogs) it’s difficult to take seriously a
post that alleges that “stuff is just made up” from a story that is unwilling to identify its source.
Boehlert’s lack of a primary focus on journalism (versus agenda) undercuts the story as well as the
fact that his sourcing narrative is often confusing (at one point, it seems as though he’s referencing
two different sources), and he fails to negotiate an attribution that would help the reader judge its
credibility. Was this an on-air personality? An intern? A producer? Did this source leave Fox
recently? Based on Boehlert’s attribution, the source could be Keith Olbermann as far as the reader
knows.
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Boehlert also misses an opportunity to strongly highlight the connection between his source’s
allegations, and the internal documents that Media Matters has published, which would have lent his
source added credibility and helped to “sell” the story.
That is not to suggest in anyway that this story is made up.
Why not?
Elsewhere, the Rhetorican dubs this “A Pot and Kettle Moment For ‘Media Matters.’” And Fox News producer
Jesse Watters has a little fun with a would-be ambush interview courtesy of a “Think Progress” staffer armed
with a cell phone camera — its tiny distorted lens, a nice metaphor for TPM’s myopic worldview. “This is not
how you do an ambush — you’ve got to have a real camera, first of all,” Watters tells TPM:
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Debt On Arrival
Jim Hoft, linking to Matt Drudge, spots “ANOTHER OBAMA RECORD… US Debt Equals Size of US
Economy:”
The US federal debt this year will top $15 trillion, officially equaling the size of the entire US
economy.
The Washington Times reported:
President Obama projects that the gross federal debt will top $15 trillion this year,
officially equalling the size of the entire U.S. economy, and will jump to nearly than
$21 trillion in five years’ time.
10 of 27 2/15/11 6:40 PM
Amid the other staggering numbers in the budget Mr. Obama sent to Congress on
Monday, the debt stands out — both because Congress will need to vote to raise the
debt limit later this year, and because the numbers are so large.
Mr. Obama‘s budget said 2011 will see the biggest one-year jump in debt in
history, or nearly $2 trillion in a single year. And the administration says it will reach
$15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, to reach 102.6 percent of gross
domestic product (GDP) — the first time since World War II that dubious figure has
been reached.
In one often-cited study, two economists have argued that when gross debt passes 90
percent it hinders overall economic growth.
The president’s budget said debt as a percentage of GDP will top out at 106 percent in
2013, but only if the economy booms.
“I still don’t see a sense of urgency from the president about the massive federal debt,”
said Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican. “His budget calls for too much
government borrowing – even though the debt is already at a level that makes it harder
to create private-sector jobs.”
The FCC’s budget is rising via the cost of “new staffers, hybrid Chevy Tahoes,” The Hill notes:
President Obama’s FY 2012 budget proposal includes $354.2 million for the Federal
Communications, up from $335.8 million in FY 2010, the last time Congress OK’ed the agency’s
spending levels.
The reasons for the increase, according to FCC managing director Steve VanRoeckel: about 75 new
staffers, funding for an emergency response center created in 2010, and a request to replace four or
five of the FCC’s Hybrid Chevy Tahoes each year, which the FCC uses for field work.
VanRoeckel said the additional staffers were added after personnel levels have waned since the mid
nineties.
And finally, at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey writes, “Energy Dept to ‘reinvest’ money saved through pay freezes?”
The people who saw their wages frozen by this new policy are not happy — to say the least.
Indeed, they wrote in response to Brookhaven’s Monday Morning Memo (apparently private) that
they were being used as “political pawns,” according to Government Executive’s report.
They’re government workers. Of course they’re political pawns. But then the ultimate goal of “progressivism” is
to make us all that way. Or as James Pethokoukis writes, “Obama budget reveals Obama’s core.”
(Headline via Paul Ryan.)
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You’re So Vain, You Probably Think That Egypt’s About You

“Does the media feel good? Then congratulations are in order!”, Ezra Levant quips:
11 of 27 2/15/11 6:40 PM
Congratulations to Iran, which has for years done its best to undermine Egypt, the largest and most
powerful Muslim counterweight in the region. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hasn’t been a tyrant as
long as Mubarak. But Ahmadinejad proved during Iran’s own rigged elections that a successful
dictator doesn’t let democracy activists rally day after day in the streets — they are immediately
thrown in prison, or just killed. No messy protests are allowed in the Islamic Republic of Iran —
unless their hate is directed at Ahmadinejad’s enemies.
But most of all, congratulations to the journalists of the mainstream media. As always, this
revolution was about them — just ask them. More media attention was given to the fact that CNN’s
dreamy anchor, Anderson Cooper, was roughed up by protesters than was given to investigating the
anti-women, anti-secular, anti-Semitic, anti-western ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, though
they’re the likely victors of any “election” that might be held in coming months.
Most of today’s journalists are too young to have covered the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, so this
was their moment. So they are weepy cheerleaders, not reporters. And they are only too happy to
say “ditto” to whatever Al Jazeera tells them is happening.
The fact that some of Egypt’s protesters use Internet sites like Facebook and Twitter is so flattering
because journalists love those too. Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood also uses Twitter and blogs,
just as Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeinei used audio cassettes in 1979 to spread his Islamic revolution.
And let me congratulate myself for my exquisite hatred of Mubarak, a hatred that predates the
current fad. I savour this moment of jubilation and vindication. And I will wait until tomorrow to
contemplate my new emotion — a deep fear that, like the fall of Iran’s shah in 1979, things are
about to get far, far worse.
Don’t worry, the president also thinks that Egypt is about him as well, as Levant also writes.
Related: Michael Barone on “The Risk That 2/11/11 Will End up Like Iran’s 2/11/79.”
(H/T: 5!F)
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Muggeridge’s Law Meets the Two-Minute Hate

12 of 27 2/15/11 6:40 PM
Back at the start of the site in 2002, I mentioned Muggeridge’s Law, paraphrasing a passage in Tom Wolfe’s
mid-’70s anthology of The New Journalism:
When Malcolm Muggeridge was the editor of the British satirical magazine Punch in the early
1960s, Khrushchev had announced he was going to tour England alongside its prime minister.
Muggeridge wrote up a list of the silliest tour stops he could think of, and then put the article to bed,
ready for publication. When the actual tour list was drawn up, he had to massively rewrite the
article. At least half the tour stops in his satirical piece were actually on Khrushchev and the British
PM’s agenda!
Which is why Muggeridge’s Law is: there is no way that a writer of fiction can compete with real
life for its pure absurdity.
In a way, US Weekly and Time magazine being duped by a satiric Website on Sarah Palin supposedly attacking
Christina Aguilera and her botched rendition of the national anthem at the Super Bowl is a corollary of
Muggeridge’s Law. Once a politician or celebrity has been sufficiently demonized by old media, there is no
satire crazy enough that some of them won’t believe that it’s true if it proves their existing prejudices.
Or as the subject of old media’s Two Minute Hate (now entering its third year) responds:
“Subject: Great job, MSM!
Jay – pls tell your bosses there at Time Magazine thank you for the invitations to attend the
upcoming functions. I’ll sure put a lot of thought into those invitations.
Then, have your editors retract Time’s most recent ridiculous lies about me supposedly giving Sean
Hannity a radio interview wherein I supposedly talked about Christina Aguilera (that I slammed her
for her Nat’l Anthem mistake, and called for her deportation, etc).
You guys were fooled into running a fake story that even US Weekly pulled and apologized for their
blunder. Total lies – and you guys (once again) even put quotation marks around things I have never
uttered. Then, Time needs to run an apology to Christina along with the retraction. (Add Hannity in
your apology, too…those good folks don’t deserve to be in a caustic, untrue story about me.) Thanks
much – keep up the great work, Time Magazine.”
And as virtually every consumer of the legacy media knows, the biases of the MSM have caused them to blow
innumerable stories over the years because they want to believe. Australian journalist Piers Akerman catalogs a
decade’s worth of them, in a piece titled, “Out of Left field come slurs and innuendos.”
13 of 27 2/15/11 6:40 PM
Related: Power Line’s John Hinderaker quips, “Newsweek recently sold for a dollar. At the rate Time is going,
Newsweek may soon be eyeing it as a takeover target.”
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Joshua Goldberg, RIP

“Joshua Goldberg, son of Lucianne, brother of Jonah, and husband of Chantal, died long before his time,
following injuries resulting from a fall,” Thomas Lifson writes a moving post at the American Thinker:
Although he was less well-known than his mother and brother, Josh quietly edited the sites
Lucianne.com, BlogsLucianneLoves, and The Connection, working mostly behind the scenes. That
was his way. Following 911, Josh was one of those New Yorkers who put on his work boots and
walked miles to the WTC site to help go through the rubble looking for survivors and victims’
bodies. That was the kind of man he was, quietly doing the right thing, and never seeking public
credit for it.
For reasons only God knows, Lucianne, Jonah, and his wife Chantal, have suffered deep grief that
will never go away. Our thoughts are with them, and with Josh, who is now with God. May they
find some degree of solace in the condolences of the many, many people who have been touched by
their kindness and by their untiring work.
RIP; Jonah’s eulogy is here.
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It’s George Orwell’s World, We Just Live In It

And that’s true whether you’re living in America, where Doug Powers spots “The Latest Excuse to Oppose
Construction of a Wal-Mart:”
Four Wal-Mart stores are being planned in Washington, DC, and among the concerns will be the
necessary store security. One Advisory Neighborhood Commission member is using that as a reason
to oppose the construction of one of the stores, because… well, you’ll have to read it yourself:
14 of 27 2/15/11 6:40 PM
Brenda Speaks, a Ward 4 ANC commissioner, actually urged blocking construction of

the planned store in her ward at Georgia and Missouri avenues NW partly because of
that risk. Addressing a small, anti-Wal-Mart rally at City Hall on Monday, Speaks said
young people would get criminal records when they couldn’t resist the temptation
to steal.
…Or England: “Shed owners warned wire on windows could hurt burglars.”
As John Hinderaker wrote at Power Line last week, “French President Nicolas Sarkozy [has] joined Germany’s
Angela Merkel and Britain’s David Cameron in pronouncing multiculturalism a failure.”
But as those two headlines indicate, political correctness is still virulently alive. How much longer will its
lifespan be?
In the meantime, the answer to 1984, is 1776:
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Kutcher Crushed by Bush Brush Off

As someone who has been involved with blogging since shortly after 9/11, and welcomed the concept of citizen
journalism anticipated decades ago by futurists as Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler, I’ve long defended it as
a medium, and ridiculed the legacy media when they wrote such spurious statements as:
“Bloggers are navel-gazers,” said Elizabeth Osder, a visiting professor at The University of
Southern California’s School of Journalism. “And they’re about as interesting as friends who make
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you look at their scrap books.”She added, “There’s an overfascination here with self-expression,
with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting.”
On rare occasions though, I’d say such criticism is warranted; this is precisely one of those times.
1 Comment
‘Egypt: How Obama Blew It’

If to govern is to choose, then to govern badly is to not be able to make decisions, as Niall Ferguson writes:
Grand strategy is all about the necessity of choice. Today, it means choosing between a daunting list
of objectives: to resist the spread of radical Islam, to limit Iran’s ambition to become dominant in
the Middle East, to contain the rise of China as an economic rival, to guard against a Russian
“reconquista” of Eastern Europe—and so on. The defining characteristic of Obama’s foreign policy
has been not just a failure to prioritize, but also a failure to recognize the need to do so. A succession
of speeches saying, in essence, “I am not George W. Bush” is no substitute for a strategy.
Bismarck knew how to choose. He understood that riding the nationalist wave would enable Prussia
to become the dominant force in Germany, but that thereafter the No. 1 objective must be to keep
France and Russia from uniting against his new Reich. When asked for his opinion about colonizing
Africa, Bismarck famously replied: “My map of Africa lies in Europe. Here lies Russia and here lies
France, and we are in the middle. That is my map of Africa.”
Tragically, no one knows where Barack Obama’s map of the Middle East is. At best, it is in the
heartland states of America, where the fate of his presidency will be decided next year, just as
Jimmy Carter’s was back in 1980.
At worst, he has no map at all.
And note the cover of the latest edition of Newsweek, aka, “The Daily Beast On Dead Tree:”
16 of 27 2/15/11 6:40 PM
If Obama’s lost Newsweek, then he’s lost anti-America, to paraphrase a great line by Stacy McCain.
Related: Clarice Feldman at the Tatler: “Newsweek actually publishes something worth reading.”
Meanwhile, an Instareader notes:
Last week I had to take my mother to close on a house she sold. While we were waiting for our
lawyer I spied a pile of magazines on a table. I grabbed the Newsweek on top but thought it was an
advertising insert. Nope, it was the whole magazine, just a few pages.
It sounds almost thin enough to be safely flushable at this point.
1 Comment
‘Paul Ehrlich is a Slightly Better Class of Misanthrope’

At Power Line, Steve Hayward quips:
I think it was Shostakovich who quipped that Vivaldi only had one idea, which he repeated 383
times. At least Vivaldi’s one idea was a good one. The same can’t be said for Paul Ehrlich, who has
a new book out, Humanity on a Tightrope that is just like all of his other books going all the way
back to the book that first made him rich and famous, The Population Bomb. Ever since that
infamous book he has come out with a sequel every year or two that repeats his basic Malthusian
outlook on humans and the planet. [QED -- Ed] I suppose at least Ehrlich deserves credit for
recycling.
But note this:
There is one new argument he’s been making in his last few books that deserves a smacking,
though. In today’s Los Angeles Times he gives an interview to Pat Morrison, where he says the
following:
The idea that corporations should have free speech, I think, is insane. The free speech
of the corporations is the petroleum industry and their buddies setting up entire
institutions to lie to the public about fossil fuels and so on. I’m pretty depressed about
that. If you think that corporations should be treated as individuals, then there’s a whole
slug of corporations that ought to be in Guantanamo right now being waterboarded.
Nice. Never mind the flamboyance of his waterboarding quip. The idea that corporations shouldn’t
have First Amendment protections because corporations are not “people” is a popular idea on the
left these days.
I wonder what this corporation thinks about that idea?
4 Comments
Atlas Shrugged: The Motion Picture—Now 10 Percent Less Arch

17 of 27 2/15/11 6:40 PM
I’ll say one thing for the trailer for the endlessly awaited movie version of Atlas Shrugged — it actually feels
slightly less arch than the Gary Cooper/Patricia Neal version of The Fountainhead, so it’s got that going for it at
least. Oh, blink and you’ll miss them, but look for Jimmy Barrett from Mad Men and Quark from Deep Space
Nine in the trailer as well.
But seriously though — how painful are we assuming the movie will be to actually sit through and watch?
According to the IMDB, we’ll know on April 15th, certainly an appropriate release date.
(For my video interview with Ayn Rand biographer Jennifer Burns, in which we discuss, among other things,
The Fountainhead, click here.)
3 Comments
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18 of 27 2/15/11 6:40 PM

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Lifeofthe Mind, Michael J. Totten and 7,644

Bankruptcy: It’s not just for the Coal Industry Anymore

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February 15th, 2011 - 12:16 pm

Mark Steyn on “Pharaohs and Fairy Tales:”

Bloomberg on the Rocks

‘You are ze Audience! I am ze Author! I Outraaaaank You!‘

His introductory scene in the film isn’t too shabby, either:

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Now is the time at Ed Driscoll.com when we juxtapose!

James Taranto, yesterday:

“How can voters be so ill informed [sic]?”

– Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist, yesterday.

(Concept via SDA)

Bill Maher falls off the Edge of the Earth

Barack is Injurious Yellow

At the Corner, Yuval Levin writes, so much for the recent

At the Chicago Boyz econ0-blog, Lexington Green writes:

At Power Line, John Hinderaker diagnoses the madness of King Barack:

The Ultimate Rube Self-Identifies

Andrew Sullivan in July of 2004:

Andrew Sullivan, [May 22nd, 2009:]

No Wonder She Loved Kerry

‘The Diminished Relevance Of Media Matters’

Center left Mediaite on far left Media Matters:

That is not to suggest in anyway that this story is made up.

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(Headline via Paul Ryan.)

You’re So Vain, You Probably Think That Egypt’s About You

Muggeridge’s Law Meets the Two-Minute Hate

“Subject: Great job, MSM!

Joshua Goldberg, RIP

RIP; Jonah’s eulogy is here.

It’s George Orwell’s World, We Just Live In It

Brenda Speaks, a Ward 4 ANC commissioner, actually urged blocking construction of

In the meantime, the answer to 1984, is 1776:

Kutcher Crushed by Bush Brush Off

‘Egypt: How Obama Blew It’

At worst, he has no map at all.

Meanwhile, an Instareader notes:

It sounds almost thin enough to be safely flushable at this point.

‘Paul Ehrlich is a Slightly Better Class of Misanthrope’

At Power Line, Steve Hayward quips:

But note this:

I wonder what this corporation thinks about that idea?

Atlas Shrugged: The Motion Picture—Now 10 Percent Less Arch

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