Today, I heard the heartbeat of the 71-day-old creature currently residing inside my wife.

In 32 weeks, I'll finally get to meet the little guy.

Wow.

Will's post on housing prices got me to thinking - "Didn't we discuss something almost like this almost three years ago?"

We sure did.

Admittedly, I was talking about deflation and home ownership rates, and not about stupid people taking on stupid amounts of debt. But the princple remains the same: This hot housing market can't go on.

Did I see Star Wars yet?

Ahem. Excuse me.

Did I see "Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith" yet?

You're damn right I did.

Caught it Monday night, our last in London, with some of the Samizdata gang. Almost as fun as the movie was the experience of four libertarian geeks, walking the streets of Chelsea at midnight, mercilessly dissecting what we'd just watched. On now to the movie itself.

"Sith" was, for all its faults, Star Wars as I remember it.

Admittedly, my standards are low. As I've said here and many other places, I expect only three things out of a Star Wars movie. I want to see some cool stuff I've never seen before. I want to see some wicked lightsaber action. (Really, I just have a weakness for any kind of Hollywood sword fighting.) And I want to see some stuff blow up real good. Sith delivered on those counts, and then some.

The minuses were, as everyone already knows, the love scenes and the writing (and some of the delivery). Um… hello? This is Star Wars. Does no one remember the Tree House Scene in "Return of the Jedi"? Luke, Leia, and what felt like four hours of exposition, explaining stuff we already knew. And with bad dialogue. And worse delivery.

"One thing's for sure – we're all going to be a lot thinner!" That line is a favorite from the original Star Wars, and 28 years ago it generated knee-slapping laughter. But is it really any better than anything in the five films that followed? Please. It's right down there with "I'd rather kiss a Wookiee!" Anyway. We don't go to Star Wars for wit or acting or dialog. We go to see some pretty stuff blow up real good.

A few bits (the aforementioned love scenes) made me laugh inappropriately. Kind of like the "I've got gas" look Luke, um, emoted in Episode VI when Yoda died. But let's not dwell on the bad.

Other scenes got to me more than I could have imagined.

The montage sequence when the Clone Troopers turned on their Jedi leaders was one of those, and one I haven't seen discussed much. It was brutal, heartbreaking, and effective. Watching warriors cut down by their comrades without warning or explanation… that was tough. Every one of those Jedi died with the same expression: Utter confusion. Is there a worse way to die?

The "seduction" conversations between Anakin and Palpatine were almost as good, and would have been better had Ian McDiarmid played both roles. We knew from the last two movies (if, and only if, we were paying very close attention) that Palpatine is a guy who loves playing people, playing with his power. In those scenes he got to do it center stage, and his joy showed through the evil.

Also, I finally figured out why Hayden Christiansen's line delivery was so …off… in both movies he starred in. Listen closely, and you'll realize he's trying to imitate James Earl Jones. His pauses, his inflections, are all pure "THIS!… is C!NN!" Really, he should have played it straight, and let the transformation been made complete by Jones's voice and the breathing machine.

Besides, white Canadian boys just shouldn't try to imitate a Southern-born black man raised in Detroit. They just shouldn't.

Really though, Hayden needed to carry only one scene to sell the movie. Just one. The scene where, triple-amputated and on fire, he curses out his old master. And that scene was perfect. Just perfect. Pure, raw, screaming hatred – the kind you knew was inside of Vader, but he never let loose. Vader couldn't cut loose – he had an Imperial Navy to run. Burning Limbless Vader had to let it all out, and did.

Final verdict? I left the theater smiling and chatting and debating with my friends.

There's not a whole lot more to ask from a popcorn movie.

I'm not sure why I neglected to post this earlier (probably because my own contribution was so sloppily written), but Lance McMurray at Red State Rant offered several bloggers the chance to ask questions of former Senator (and Governor) Zell Miller in a bloggerific group interview. Lance has posted the results in two parts, and it's good stuff--my outbreak of grammar and punctuation dysfunction being a notable exception.

Here's Part 1, and Part 2. Thanks again to Lance for doing all the real work, and for inviting me to participate.

We need a new termite treatment and bond. So I take an hour and a half off of work today to meet with one weasel--uh, I mean, inspector, who sits down at my kitchen table to give me his spiel, including a long and very specific bit about how his company's bond is better than his competitions', because "we don't just cover structural stuff, we cover the contents, too, you know, cabinets, books, anything else that might get damaged, where those guys don't."

Then, after I got rid of the guy, I read his contract, which says, "This Agreement provides for repair of structural damage only. It excludes damage to the contents of the Property."

Do these jackasses assume that nobody's going to read the contract? You don't want to carry some coverage or another, fine. Frankly, I'm not really worried about termites eating my books. But don't sit there in my house and lie to my face.

Sumbitch had the most expensive price, too. Into the trash his quote goes. [/yoda]

Ever heard of Henry Raddick? He's been something of an internet sensation for years now, but I was blissfully unaware of his fame until a friend emailed me this link to his Amazon reviews, which frankly defy description (beyond the word "hysterical," that is). A sample, in this case a review for "Know Your Pug":

An excellent guide which is helping me get to know my pug Grendel, which is not an easy job. My children have taken to attaching surprisingly realistic stick-on ears to his rump and he turned around and bit me recently when I tried to put a piece of cheese rind into what I thought was his mouth.

There are dozens more, and they get weirder and funnier as you go along. Happy grazing...

I've been skeptical about the much-discussed housing bubble in the past. I'm getting less skeptical when I read things like this:

As recently as 2002, only 11% of the new mortgages in the [San Francisco Bay] area were interest-only mortgages. But today 66% of new mortgages in the area are financed that way. While such mortgages are not as common nationwide, the upward trend extends across the country. Fewer than 10% of new mortgages nationwide were interest-only mortgages in 2002 but that has now risen to 31%.

That's from a pithy and rather scary WSJ column by Thomas Sowell, and I'm sorry to say that it tracks with what I've been hearing about in two regions I'm familiar with, namely metro Atlanta and the north Gulf Coast of Florida.

Atlanta first. Driving around here and seeing signs for houses ranging from "upper $400's" to "$750's" and up--and this is not in the fancier sections, mind you--I've been asking for years, "Who the hell buys these places, and what do they do for a living? How can that many people afford the mortgage on a house like that?" The answer may be, "They can't--unless it's floating on a cheap ARM or LIBOR."

I was talking with a friend a couple of weeks ago, whose next-door neighbor is indebted about as deeply as you can possibly imagine: interest-only main mortgage on a very pricey home, a home-equity loan based on its appreciation (meaning he owns absolutely nothing), and various auto loans and personal lines of credit. According to my friend, this guy and his wife are obsessed with 'keeping up with the Joneses,' and have spent every penny of that credit on lavish home improvements, furnishings, electronics and such. Here's the kicker: they're trying to sell off their house to buy a bigger and more expensive one in a supposedly more-desireable subdivision, but they're asking so much (they have to, they're upside down on the house), they aren't getting any bites. And balloon payments on those loans are getting closer every day.

No, wait, that wasn't the kicker. That's just a random data point about one couple who're making spectacularly stupid decisions. Here's the kicker: the neighborhood they're in has a 29% foreclosure rate, according to a local realtor my friend also talked to. This isn't what you'd think of as a high-risk area, either. This is one of the toniest suburbs in the state. There are an awful lot of trailer parks that don't have 29% foreclosure rates.

Second, north Florida. For the last four years or so--beginning roughly fifteen minutes after I sold the house I used to own in Panama City--real estate in the Florida Panhandle has been on a jaw-dropping boom. Lots within smelling distance of the water began to flip at multiples of their original selling prices, and construction has exploded. Panama City Beach alone has over thirty new high-rise condo complexes in various stages of construction--forget the old "Redneck Riviera" scene, it looks like South Beach down there today.

You've heard of "doing land-office business?" That's what's been going on in the Panhandle since roughly 2002. Lots, condos, and houses have flipped and flipped and flipped, from one speculating owner to another, with the price just about doubling every time in many cases--and almost all of them are on interest-only or ARM loans. Housing has gotten so expensive along the once-sleepy coast, home values are being forced up well to the north, as people look to once-backwater burgs like Ponce De Leon and Defuniak Springs for an affordable house.

"So what?" you ask. "Coastal property always appreciates, this is just a previously little-known area that's been discovered and is being bought up." And that's true--except that according to a construction foreman I know in Destin, housing sales plummeted by 28% in April, and May is looking just as bad. He's working on a large project in Destin where five "flips" backed out on deals in just the last two weeks. He also tells me that multitudes of "for sale" signs have popped up all along the coastal roads in the last couple of months, where previously the properties were being snapped up within days or even hours of going on the market.

All anecdotal, to be sure, and Neal Cavuto would argue that we're talking about three particularly distorted markets where speculation is rampant, not the whole country. But all of the above, plus Sowell's numbers certainly suggests to me that there are going to be an awful lot of high-dollar properties defaulting into the hand of lenders over the next couple of years. Opportunities for some, and disasters for others.

I'm hearing quite a bit of chatter through the USAF contractor grapevine that Zarqawi is dead. The only reason I mention it here is, the rumor is apparently rampant at Hurlburt AFB Field, home of the Air Force Special Ops guys, some of whom would be in a position to know such things.

Take it for what you paid for it, but I certainly hope the murderous son of a bitch is assuming room temperature in Hell.

For none other than Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

I've always thought that one of the biggest problems with schools, at any level, is too many of the adults who work there never had any life experiences outside of school. After finishing school, they immediately became teachers, just changing where they stood (or sat) in the classroom. For some of them, never having lived in the "real world" outside of a schoolhouse had the deleterious effect of never really forcing them to grow up, and to set aside their own adolesent hang-ups and insecurities.

If this story is any indication, I'm right.

A suggestion for Principal Holton: grow up.

...Safe and somewhat unsound.

I was pretty much done with "Star Wars" posts, but then I read author Orson Scott Card's review, which is as perfect a take on the new movie as I can imagine:

Even though the characterization is nonexistent, the relationships like a seven-year-old's impression of how grownups act, the politics clearly the product of a mind that has never grasped history, and the science at the "How can rivers flow north?" level, the underlying saga still manages to touch a chord.

Don't misunderstand. I laughed along with the other people in the theater at those horrible moments when the poor actors were forced to say some of the most appalling lines ever spoken on the screen. I could not possibly care about characters who were never for a moment believable as human beings.

But the story itself, the epic that had so inspired Young Mr. Lucas, does have grandeur in it that his own ineptness was unable to destroy. There is power in the sheer ambition of it.

...

Here's the strange thing. Even though that opening day audience largely understood how bad the writing was -- and laughed out loud and even cheered for the absolutely worst lines -- they still got a sense of fulfilment out of watching everything come together.

I'm glad I saw it.

And, incredibly enough, I will almost certainly see it again. And buy the DVD.

Read the rest, and be sorry that Lucas didn't have the good sense to hire somebody who writes as well as Card.

Yet another post-Newsweekgate tendentious defense of the MSM today, this time from Terry M. Neal in the Washington Post. Most of it is now-familiar "fake but accurate" claptrap, and I was about to quit reading halfway through when Neal popped of with this howler:

Some conservative bloggers have suggested that the media should never criticize or raise critical questions of the military in wartime. Some have extended that criticism, conveniently, to cover the president's wartime policies.

Oh, really? Which ones? Can you provide a quote, a link, a reference to a single blogger who's said any such thing, or are did you just prop up an imaginary straw man?

Really great "journalism" there, Terry. Yep, all those editors really came in handy for that one.

Neal gives away the game in the next couple of sentences:

But that's such a different standard than what most journalists are taught. No wonder people think most reporters are liberal. It's because journalism is in itself, as a profession, by definition liberal.

Hey, Terry--here's a suggestion. After you've spent most of your column repeating cant Bush-bashing talking points and inventing non-quotes that no blogger ever actually wrote, it's not real smart to then go off on the old Helen Thomas "Of course we're liberals--all smart, open-minded people are liberals" wacky train. That's a really, really stupid thing to do in a column supposedly about now the press isn't biased.

Just for future reference, you know.

Tigerhawk, via Instapundit:

Bloggers as a group combine two attributes -- the ability to assemble expertise on almost any topic at extreme speed, and the propensity to write at very high velocity. This combination of expertise and velocity comes at the cost, perhaps, of sobriety...

I'll say.

NOTE: Not even gonna try to catch up on the news before we head home tomorrow. We spent three days in Tring, without an internet connection nor even a spare moment to watch the tellie. Er... the TV.

On the other hand, the wedding was perfect and the reception was even better.

More on Wednesday, jetlag permitting.

Best news I've seen all week:

Billionaire developer Donald Trump has officially thrown his support behind a plant to rebuild the Twin Towers at Ground Zero in practically the same form they were in prior to the September 11 attacks with a few safety modifications.

Trump implored Governor George Pataki to discard the plans for the 'Freedom Tower' presently on the table, describing the design as 'the worst pile of crap architecture I've ever seen in my life,' according to a report published in 'Newsday.'

Wednesday, Trump held a news conference at Trump Towers on Fifth Avenue to announce his support for a 'taller, stronger, more beautiful version of the World Trade Center.'

Even the Donald gets one right now and then.

In a word, "Wow."

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time imagining how the original "Star Wars" story would end.

Some of my imagining was half-baked. I was convinced that Darth Vader was lying about being Luke's father, for instance. I figured Vader as a bit player in the final movie, set to be killed off by Luke and "the Other" about halfway through, just a warm-up for the real confrontation with the Emperor ("the Other," by the way, was almost certainly a sprightly young guy of about my age, height, and looks). Luke and the Rebels would storm the Imperial Palace, overthrow the Empire, and have one hell of a party--with no singing teddy bears.

I imagined a vast, sweeping final battle, but instead we got a Death Star rehash and Ewoks. It took another 22 years for something very close to that last adolescent vision to come to the screen: "Revenge of the Sith" is in scope, story, and spectacle, everything "Return of the Jedi" should have been, but wasn't.

It's also something the first two prequels ought to have been: story-rich and emotionally engaging. Where "Episode I" elicited virtually no emotions from the audience beyond disappointment, and "Episode II" only brief delight when Yoda joins the fray, the final film grabs you to the point of being wrenching. Even better, there's not a single utterance from the dreaded Binks in the entire two hours and 22 minutes of "Episode III."

That's probably enough before jumping into spoiler territory; more after the jump. I strongly suggest that you stop here until after you see the movie. I went in almost entirely spoiler-free, beyond knowing what everybody knew from the previous films, and it was worth it. But suffice to say: see it. As I suspected, The Pod is full of crap. At long last, this really is the one we've been waiting for.

Oh, wait, one more thing: the alleged Bush-bashing stuff has been completely overblown. Trust me on this one. If you get offended by this movie on political grounds, you probably also go into a frothing rage when the car in front of you turns on its left-turn signal. If it weren't for the dumb press coverage, you wouldn't even notice the supposed "controversial" bits.

I was going to see Star Wars tonight -- it's just after midnight London time. Then I got busy doing really fun stuff, and put it off until tomorrow.

Well, tomorrow is coming up awfully fast, and we're already making other plans...

There's a slight chance I won't see the movie until after we get back to the States -- the movie I've been waiting to see for 28 years.

But you know what? If I have to wait a week, London makes the wait more than worth it. I'm in love with this town, and with the people even more.

UPDATE: You know what sucks about blogging on London time? I don't get my fresh Bleat until tomorrow morning. That's just unAmerican.

Had a perfect little afternoon.

Lunch with Megan McArdle, followed by some shopping on Jermyn Street. (If you ever find yourself there and in need of a suit, stop in at Roderick Charles. I just bought a charcoal herringbone double-breasted number there, and it's undoubtedly the finest thing I've ever owned. And for a very reasonable price. Anyway.)

Back in the hotel for a bit, because Melissa needed a nap. My perfect little afternoon was nearly spoiled when I read this:

...it was the press's turn to fight back as Bush spokesman Scott McClellan opened his briefing to questions.

[Joined in progess]

Q With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not telling them. I'm saying that we would encourage them to help --

Q You're pressuring them.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm saying that we would encourage them --

Q It's not pressure?

MR. McCLELLAN: Look, this report caused serious damage to the image of the United States abroad. And Newsweek has said that they got it wrong. I think Newsweek recognizes the responsibility they have. We appreciate the step that they took by retracting the story. Now we would encourage them to move forward and do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done by this report. And that's all I'm saying. But, no, you're absolutely right, it's not my position to get into telling people what they can and cannot report....

Q Are you asking them to write a story about how great the American military is; is that what you're saying here?

MR. McCLELLAN: Elisabeth, let me finish my sentence. Our military --

Q You've already said what you're -- I know what -- how it ends.

Yeah, well Newsweek knew how the Flushed Koran story ended, too, didn't they?

This stuff just makes me mad, because the media is acting like an spoiled child. Michael Isikoff and Newsweek screwed up, and people died.

Now, McClellan makes the perfectly reasonable suggestion that Newsweek maybe, possibly take a little more responsiblity than they did on Monday. I'm sorry, but the Modified Limited Hangout wasn't enough for Nixon in '73, and it's not good enough for Newsweek in '05.

Instead... instead we get more of these goddamned Gotcha Journalism games.

Newsweek knows what it ought to do -- exactly what McClellan suggested. But because a government official suggested it, Newsweek (and the entire press in general, it seems) feels free to keep doing the wrong thing.

Why? Because the government said to.

That's the attitude of a spoiled child, who won't do something he or she knows she should (or might even really want to) simply because Mommy or Daddy told them to do it.

Most blogs are more grown up than that -- and most blogs are written by teenagers.

So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to my vacation now and do some grown-up things.

UPDATE: More here from James Dunnigan. Money line: "Newsweek, like most American media, is known to have higher standards than al Qaeda propagandists. But not that high."

I got nothin' on the Star Wars front today. Have to watch the movie to get any more. Meanwhile, Michelle is picking up the slack with her usual flair (15 pieces, minimum), and the fantastic Vader Blog wraps up in style.

UPDATE: Okay, just one more link, from a BBC reporter who liveblogged a marathon of all six movies in London yesterday (and where was Martini Boy while the London Symphony was playing all that soundtrack music in Leicester Square, hmm?).

Whitehall & Trafalgar Edition

I got 101 without even using the shotgun.

Okay, I didn't know how to use the shotgun yet, but still..

P.S. I'd get mad at the Pod for posting bad E3 dialogue in the Corner--but I have to forgive the guy, 'cause I thought the opening wasn't until tomorrow night, and would have wasted my ticket.

No, it is tomorrow night. Stupid Pod.

...coincidence? I wonder...?"

If you know where that quote comes from, then you ought to be reading this site daily. If you don't, then you ought to read it twice a day.

Almost exactly six years ago, I wrote a column about the enduring appeal of "Star Wars" and then-impending release of "Episode I." In the conclusion, I said,

I don't know whether this movie will be everything I want it to be. I don't know if it's humanly possible for any movie to live up to the expectations for The Phantom Menace.

Yikes, was that prophetic. While it did have its moments, "Episode I" not only didn't live up to expectations, it was never remotely as good as that first, wonderous preview trailer that ran in the fall of 1998.

While I'm not a 'hata' of either "Episode I" or the "Star Wars" prequels in general, I'm also quite aware of their flaws. You know the oft-stated complaints: weak dialogue, lack of credible humor, no characters as fun as Han Solo, bloated CGI action scenes, and the cinematic war crime known as Jar-Jar Binks ($1 to Jim Geraghty). I'm sure you can fill in plenty of your own pet peeves.

(Here's one to start with: Haley Joel Osment was turned down for the part of Anakin Skywalker in favor of Jake Lloyd. Just think about that a little.)

But the newer movies have inherent problems, regardless of any of the above, most notably (a) the burden of carrying all the exposition leading up to the original films, and even worse, (b) the audience already knows how they're going to end.

The first problem nearly killed "Episode I," all by itself. Exposition has never been one of George Lucas's strong points, and of necessity, the first new movie was loaded with it. I'd argue that the Senate scenes in both Episodes I and II were needed to set up and complete the overall plot, but I'd also have a hard time disputing those who'd say that requirement didn't make the scenes any less boring and/or inexplicable in an action movie.

Which brings us to the second inherent problem, and this week's "Episode III"--a movie in which 99% of the audience already knows the ending.

Unless you've been living in a cave since 1983, before you even think about watching this movie, you already know that in it, the Emperor wipes out the Jedi Knights while seizing power, Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, and Skywalker's two children, Luke and Leia, are hidden from him before they're born. That's it. That's the story.

All we lack are the details… and how well those details are delivered will determine whether or not Episode III--and by extension, all of the "Star Wars" prequels--were worth the trouble.

Personally, it's not an exaggeration to say that I've been wanting to see the climactic Obi-Wan/Anakin duel for most of my life. If they got that right, I'll be willing to forgive a lot that's come before. The tidbits of reviews I've read so far (I'm avoiding spoliers to a near-manic level, despite, er, knowing the ending) suggest that Lucas may have pulled it off this time.

I hope so. I'd hate for this to be another case of a movie that can't live up to its expectations, or even its trailer.

Talk about closing the barn door after the horse has run away, broken a leg, and been beheaded by a raving mob:

Newsweek magazine, under fire for publishing a story that led to deadly protests in Afghanistan, said Monday it was retracting its report that a military probe had found evidence of desecration of the Quran by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.

Earlier Monday, Bush administration officials had brushed off an apology that Newsweek's editor Mark Whitaker had made in an editor's note and criticized the magazine's handling of the story.

Protests broke out across much of the Muslim world last week after Newsweek reported that U.S. investigators found evidence that interrogators had flushed a copy of Muslim's holy book down a toilet in an attempt to rattle detainees. The violence left about 15 dead and scores injured in Afghanistan.

As of yet, there's been no public word from the bogus story's authors, Mike "Spikey" Isikoff and John Barry. Since I haven't read anybody else saying it yet, I'll jump up and be the first: they should be fired, at a bare minimum. The editors who allowed the bogus story to run should be fired. Richard M. Smith, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, should resign in disgrace, or be fired himself.

Want to know why I think all that? Even if you put aside the sixteen dead people (and you can't, and shouldn't), my own brother-in-law is stationed in Afghanistan, and thanks to the above ass clowns, his job just got a whole lot harder and more dangerous.

Nice work, Spikey. Proud of yourself?

Yeah, all those wonderful credentialed "journalists" and "editors" in the MSM. Great people you got there. Very professional and careful. I'm sure Steve Lovelady and his ilk will be out there defending them all, tooth and nail.

Three years ago, I invented the term "pulling a Fukuyama" to explain why Roger Ebert gave "The Phantom Menace" more stars than "Attack of the Clones":

Ebert has his head so far up his ass, he can lick his own esophagus.

It looks like Roger's cranialrectalotomy was a complete success.

RELATED: The Dark Side is so strong, it seems to have betrayed and murdered George Lucas.

Yes, Newsweek and Michael Isikoff screwed up.

Yes, because of their screw-up, people died.

Yes, the US position in the Middle East and Central Asia was damaged - not fatally, but perhaps permanently.

No - nothing will change in the way the MSM conducts business.

Let me repeat that, just to make myself clear: Nothing will change. No improvements will be made. For the MSM, the lesson learned is not "let's stick to the facts next time." The lesson is, "let's be more careful in how we present what we think the story is/should be."

If there's any kind of tipping point here, it will be in how the public perceives the news. There will be no change, none at all, in how the MSM perceives the news - nor in how it will choose to shape the story.

9/11 changed everything, we keep saying. For the MSM, 9/11 changed maybe a couple things – and even then only for a week or a month or two. The blogosphere, for all our recent power or notoriety or whatever, is still seen by the MSM as something to co-opt/sneer at/ignore – often all in the same story. Those things said, do you think one bad story and 15 dead bodies will make the MSM change its ways, when 9/11 didn’t?

Change will come. Someday, someday, eventually – maybe. But not today. Not over this.

So get over it.

Even though I won’t.

UPDATE: For Jim Geraghty, this time it's personal.

Hitch:

On many occasions, the jihadists in Iraq have been very specific as well as very general. When they murdered Sergio Vieira de Mello, the brilliant and brave U.N. representative assigned to Baghdad by Kofi Annan, the terrorists' communiqué hailed the death of the man who had so criminally helped Christian East Timor to become independent of Muslim Indonesia. (This was also among the "reasons" given for the bombing of the bar in Bali.) I think I begin to sense the "frustration" of the "insurgents." They keep telling us what they are like and what they want. But do we ever listen? Nah. For them, it must be like talking to the wall. Bennet even complains that it's difficult for reporters to get close to the "insurgents": He forgets that his own paper has published a conversation with one of them, in which the man praises the invasion of Kuwait, supports the cleansing of the Kurds, and says that "we cannot accept to live with infidels."

Ah, but why would the "secular" former Baathists join in such theocratic mayhem? Let me see if I can guess. Leaving aside the formation of another well-named group—the Fedayeen Saddam—to perform state-sponsored jihad before the intervention, how did the Baath Party actually rule? Yes, it's coming back to me. By putting every Iraqi citizen in daily fear of his or her life, by random and capricious torture and murder, and by cynical divide-and-rule among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. Does this remind you of anything?

Whole thing here.

Visiting Hamley's toy store is just like spending a day shopping at FAO Schwartz in Manhattan -- only without all those savagely discounted prices.

Jeebus, but London is expensive. There is, however, a trick to staying here without constantly worrying about the expense. (Two tricks, actually, but the first one doesn't count, because I'm not the sole male heir of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.) Anyway, here's the trick.

Accept the fact that you're getting screwed at the time you change currency. Once your dollars have become pounds, do not think of this again. From that point on, try to think of dollars and pounds as being equal.

That 10-pound BLT at the hotel lobby bar wasn't really 20 bucks. It was ten. Sure, that's a lot of money for a sandwich, but still in line with hotel prices. Four dollars for a Coke? No! If you can convince yourself that a pound is a dollar is a pound, that refreshing pause only cost you two dollars. Pricey? Sure. But what did you expect, tourist?

We enjoyed a lovely Italian lunch today, only 45 dollars including wine and tip. I know that's not true, but I got over my anger on Sunday when I changed all those dollars.

Saturday night was my first real night in London, since we can't count Jetlag Friday as any kind of day or night at all. Samizdata's Perry de Havilland threw the Anglosphere Blogger Bash at his lovely Chelsea home, and it was a fine time. I was already in love with London before meeting Perry and his crew (after a three-year wait). But by the time the evening was over, I had several new crushes.

First off, don't let Megan McArdle let you buy that "I'm such a geek!" thing she has going. Not even though Megan believes it herself. In the real world, she's far more hip & cool than she'll ever give herself credit for. Megan was also able to make me feel 15 years old again -- you know, back when the pretty girls still made me feel short.

Jessica is exactly what I expected, even though I didn't expect her there at all. It was only after a second introduction and some pleasant chatter that I placed the face with the blog. I'm pretty sure Jessica holds her liquor better than I hold mine, because I distinctly remember making an ass of myself twice in her presence, and her not even one time at all. That said, if I ever find myself in her hometown of Atlanta, I'm going to: A) ask to crash on her sofa; and B) try not to make any passes. I promise.

Vita Maynard is simply lovely, and will steal your cigars right out of your offering hand. Or something like that. If she has a blog, I didn't catch the name, because I was too busy flirting/trying to get free ballroom dance lessons. Vita also provided us with info on where to get the best - everything - in London, so I expect my first child will be born into a state of extreme poverty.

Samizdata's Adriana Cronin was my first-ever blog-crush (remember that picture with her on the motorcycle from way back when?), and was probably yours, too. In person she's even cooler, funnier, and hotter. Also, she has one of those party-stopping laughs. The kind where everyone stops what they're doing because they just have to get in on the joke.

Rachel Clarke knows her Scotch. In fact, she even knows my Scotch better than I do. It helps that she works for a distributor. It helps even more that she's bright and charming and simply a joy to speak with. If this all sounds like I'm just sucking up to a pretty girl so that I might get a nice bottle of duty free... well, I'm not just sucking up. It's all true, every word.

Oh, there were guys there, too.

The whole Samizdata gang - David Carr, Brian Micklethwait, Gabriel Syme, Robert Clayton Dean, Jonathan Pearce, Michael Jennings - and some others whose names escape me right now. Too many to give individual kudos to, so let me sum up:

These guys can drink you under the table, and talk your ears off once you're down there.

My kind of guys. My kind of party.

Thanks again to Perry the Uberhost. And if you're ever lucky enough to find yourself at one of his famous parties, be sure to ask him about the Cold War history behind his wet bar.

Fair warning: You can look forward to a lot of "Star Wars" content this week. Hey, what did you expect--you're reading a web site whose owner posted pictures of his Lego Star Destroyer. Deal with it.

First up from this side of the pond (I have it on good authority that Steve has already arranged for midnight-premeire tickets somewhere near Picadilly Circus, by the way), there's the reported anti-Bush political content in Episode III.

Short version: I don't much care.

Long version: It's no particular suprise that George Lucas is a leftie. The guy's been marinating in the moonbat stew of San Francisco and Marin County for most of his life, and he's also one of those unfortunate people who romanticizes the Viet Cong. In numerous interviews over the last 30 years, he's talked about how the rebels (and Wookies, and even Ewoks) in "Star Wars" were loosely based on the Communist gurellas from Vietnam, who in Lucas's imagination, 'defeated' a technologically superior enemy. If you go back and look at the very early Star Wars writings, including the first page of the Lucas-directed novelization (actually written by sci-fi hack Alan Dean Foster), it's very obvious that the Emperor was based on Richard Nixon.

That's all pretty funny, at least in my mind. It serves mostly to illustrate that Lucas bought into the post-hippie mythology of the Vietnam War, instead of studying the actual history--otherwise, his rebels' greatest victories would come courtesy of sympathizers in the Imperial Media and dissenters in the Imperial Opposition Party (and that's not even mentioning the postwar Ewok boat people or Wookie concentration camps).

To Lucas's credit, however, he kept this stuff very much down in the subtext for the original three films, and they were all the better for it. Unless you'd heard him talking about it, you'd never have picked up on the specious Vietnam analogy, just to pick one example. When "Star Wars" first premeired in 1977, one of the film's main selling points was its complete lack of political baggage. After a decade of "China Syndromes" and "All The President's Men," or even "Dirty Harry" on the other side, "Star Wars" came as a massive relief to audiences who were sick of being lectured to by movie makers.

Unfortunately, Lucas let his oddball Marin politics creep into the three "prequel" films, with references to the "greedy trade federation" and other villains drawn from the "banking guild," and there are a few other rather silly asides (one villain is named "Noot Gunray"--please, even Al Franken would be embarrased by that one), but even then, the dorm-room political hackery is overwhelmed by the overall story and bombast, and I expect that to still be the case in "Episode III."

Let me put it bluntly: I'm not much inclined to take Lucas's politics seriously either way. He's proven himself to be a pretty unsophisticated political thinker in the past, to say nothing of a raging hypocrite, as Jim Geraghty aptly pointed out a while back. I compare my reaction to alleged Bush-bashing in "Episode III" the same way I viewed the Wachowski Brothers' lame politicizing of the two "Matrix" sequels: the ideological musings of anybody dumb enough to take Cornell West seriously aren't worth getting worked up over.

Ditto for Lucas. Come Thursday (very early), I plan to snicker at the politics and enjoy the moviemaking instead. As Lileks said going into "Episode II," my requirements are simple: just don't suck.

More tomorrow, so like I said, consider yourselves warned...

Remember, a few years back, when a pompous New York Times reporter was asked to give a commencement speech at Rockford College, and wound up delivering a tiresome anti-war harangue instead? The guy's name was Chris Hedges, and he was literally booed off the stage, partly because his message was so tendentious (opening sentence: "I want to speak to you today about war and empire"), and partly because it was incredibly rude of Hedges to spend somebody else's graduation day giving them a political diatribe.

For future commencement speakers, that's how you don't do it. And as another point of reference, here's how you do do it, courtesy of Vice President Dick Cheney, who gave the commencement address at Auburn University (my alma mater) yesterday. Read the whole thing, as they say. It's a really nice speech: short, funny, touching, and enjoyable regardless of your politics.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't quote my favorite section here:

I know you'll always carry with you the Auburn spirit, and fond memories of your time here. You'll remember the Cater Hall call-outs; the Tiger Walk; the flight of the Eagle; and the music of the fight song played every day at noon. You'll remember many challenges as well -- hard work in the classroom, long nights in the lab or library, and all those hours spent circling the campus, looking for a place to park. (Laughter.) You'll remember those special places -- Samford Hall, Jordan-Hare Stadium, the Concourse, Toomer's Corner, the Supper Club. (Applause.) And you'll remember your senior year, for the many fine achievements in academics, research, and athletics, and for a football record of 13 and 0 which sounds a lot like a national champion to me. (Applause.)

War Eagle.

AUDIENCE: War Eagle!

I still can't quite believe the Vice President of the United States actually mentioned the War Eagle Supper Club. My only quibble: I would have noted Auburn alumnus Johnny Mike Spann. But it's still a terrific speech.

We're at the hotel, and we're exhausted. The fun part will be trying to stay awake until 9pm...

Over the last couple of weeks, it's been obvious that one of my email addresses has been harvested by a spammer, and a particularly stupid one at that. I'm getting at minimum five copies of various Nigerian "please help me move millions of dollars" scams a day, as well as a few "you've just won a lottery you've never heard of" announcements sprinkled in.

I generally delete these wastes of bandwidth as soon as they show up, but the latest is a new low, even for spam-scams. Check it out:

Dear Friend,

I got your email address from the Internet and please do
not feel bad about this message more especially as I am
from Iraq. I am a widow of one of the former senior
managers of the Iraqi State Oil Organisation in charge
of the United Nations Oil-For-Food Programme.
My Husband and three of our four children were killed
in the U.S. led military campaign during this crises
period leaving my little daughter. Before the dead
of my husband, he reveals to me that he deposited a
luggage containing 12 million US dollars as family
valuables with a local security company here in Baghdad.
What I want is that I need you to help me
receive this luggage when it arrive Europe.
The security company has agreed to help transfer
the luggage to Europe and that I need somebody
to receive it for me since I am not free to travel now.
Please note that this doesn't involve any risk.
All I need from you is honesty and a promise
not to betray me after you receive the luggage.
Please note that I have decided to take this risk
because the new Iraq government is investigating
all the managers that work at the oil for food
program and I stand to lose the entire fund if I
don't relocate them.
Note that for security reason, I will not disclose
my identity until you respond to this mail. I look
forward to hear from you soon and I will provide
you with more details.
Thank you.

Personally, I think this particular scumbag deserves to get abused. The address is widowhelp22@netscape.net.

Y'all have fun...

Think you're having a tough day? What about this guy:

On a more banal note something has gone wrong with my left leg. For the time being I have avoided limping by overriding the control circuitry with the power of the force, but this is needlessly draining. I have called for a repair droid, but it has been over an hour and there is still no sign.

Later, I will find the man responsible for dispatching the repair droids and crush his trachea with my mind. I also have tentative lunch plans with General Krelcon and his people, possibly in the Corellian quarter.

That's right--Darth Vader has a blog. And it's great.

It took 40 years, but today Pat Buchanan hit bottom on the slippery slope from Young Turk conservative columnist to Nazi Apologist troglodyte.

Here's his latest column for WorldNetDaily, who should have known better than to publish it:

In the Bush vs. Putin debate on World War II, Putin had far the more difficult assignment. Defending Russia's record in the "Great Patriotic War," the Russian president declared, "Our people not only defended their homeland, they liberated 11 European countries."
Those countries are, presumably: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Finland.

To ascertain whether Moscow truly liberated those lands, we might survey the sons and daughters of the generation that survived liberation by a Red Army that pillaged, raped and murdered its way westward across Europe. As at Katyn Forest, that army eradicated the real heroes who fought to retain the national and Christian character of their countries.

So far, so good. Although one doesn't have to exactly ask those sons and daughters – nor appeal to their "Christian characters" – to find out if their nations were actually liberated. Just look at the record. Look at what happened to Poland's pre-war government-in-exile. It, like, never returned, dude. Instead, Stalin put his cronies in power. Stalin integrated the Baltic States into the Soviet Union. The list goes on, in all 11 countries, as most anyone with a passing familiarity with postwar history already knows.

Buchanan goes on in a similar vein for another hundred words or so, and he gets no argument from me. So I snipped all that so that we can get on to the meat:

If Yalta was a betrayal of small nations as immoral as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, why do we venerate Churchill and FDR? At Yalta, this pair secretly ceded those small nations to Stalin, co-signing a cynical "Declaration on Liberated Europe" that was a monstrous lie.

Simple: FDR was dying, and so was the British Empire. Neither had the means to fight Soviet expansion, even if they had wanted to. Besides, this country was not going to go to war with an ally, no matter how monstrous, not after having just concluded three years of war and suffering a million casualties. It was Not. Going. To Happen.

Would this nation have been acting justly, if we had not stopped at the Elbe, but continued on to Moscow? Yes.

Would we have, could we have, asked that much more from our Greatest Generation? Flatly, no. Once, when I was even younger and more foolish, I asked my Grandfather why we didn't do what Patton said -- arm the suriving Germans and fight WWIII right then. He said, "Do you know what we went through? Enough already." This was from a Jew who hated Communism even more than he hated Germans.

More from Goosestep Pat:

As FDR and Churchill consigned these peoples to a Stalinist hell run by a monster they alternately and affectionately called "Uncle Joe" and "Old Bear," why are they not in the history books alongside Neville Chamberlain, who sold out the Czechs at Munich by handing the Sudetenland over to Germany? At least the Sudeten Germans wanted to be with Germany. No Christian peoples of Europe ever embraced their Soviet captors or Stalinist quislings.

Funny that Buchanan should twice use the Christian Gambit, when his main point comes straight from the British Fascist Party's (a neo-pagan/nationalist group) 1938 propaganda. When it seemed that war might break out over Hitler's demand that Czechoslovakia turn the Sudetenland over to Hitler, Oswald Mosley's thugs put out a pamphlet asking, "Who cares if a lot of Germans want to get together?"

Who cares, indeed, Pat?

I mean, the Sudeten Germans wanted Hitler, right? So they were better off than the Czechoslovaks, who had Stalin's tyranny imposed on them. Oops! History tells us that Czechoslovakia was the one nation which democratically installed a Communist government after WWII ended.

Did FDR and Churchill sell out Eastern Europe? You're damn right they did. What Buchanan wants you to forget is, neither man had much choice. And why does Pat want you to forget it? We're getting to that.

More:

Other questions arise. If Britain endured six years of war and hundreds of thousands of dead in a war she declared to defend Polish freedom, and Polish freedom was lost to communism, how can we say Britain won the war?

Politics is the art of half a loaf. War is the art of taking as much as the loaf as you can get away with. Britain – exhausted of manpower, capital, and material – came out of the war with her sovereignty intact. Unlike, you know, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States, etc. I'd call that a win.

And that's another thing Buchanan left out. Of those 11 nations Stalin "liberated," five of them were Fascist nations. East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and (marginally) Finland. They took the wrong side. They, however unjustly, suffered the consequences. And another thing. Stalin never got his way in Finland or Yugoslavia – both turned out to be complete pains in the neck.

Onward:

If the West went to war to stop Hitler from dominating Eastern and Central Europe, and Eastern and Central Europe ended up under a tyranny even more odious, as Bush implies, did Western Civilization win the war?

Well, yes. What has become of National Socialism? Where is Soviet Civilization? One was beaten utterly in 1945; the other took a while longer. But both are on the ash heap of history. Compare either "civilization" with where the US is today – or even where France is! – and you'll know Buchanan is playing you for a dupe.

Worse than a dupe, in fact. Buchanan is trying to play you like that Nazi sympathizer from "The Best Days of Our Lives." If you've never seen the movie (and I can't find it on Amazon or IMDB), it starred a real WWII veteran who lost his hands in the war. In a famous scene, he's confronted by an American Nazi who tries to convince him we fought "the wrong guys" in the war.

Tell me: How is Pat different from the American Nazi in that 1946 movie? I mean, other than his oddly close relationship with his sister?

In 1938, Churchill wanted Britain to fight for Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain refused. In 1939, Churchill wanted Britain to fight for Poland. Chamberlain agreed. At the end of the war Churchill wanted and got, Czechoslovakia and Poland were in Stalin's empire.

How, then, can men proclaim Churchill "Man of the Century"?

Because, unlike certain columnists, they were willing to stand up against Fascism?

True, U.S. and British troops liberated France, Holland and Belgium from Nazi occupation. But before Britain declared war on Germany, France, Holland and Belgium did not need to be liberated. They were free. They were only invaded and occupied after Britain and France declared war on Germany – on behalf of Poland.

Poland, Poland, Poland – Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. By the time WWII ended, it was about a whole lot more than Poland. China ended up a Communist dictatorship, too. Does that mean we didn't really beat Japan? So did Ethiopia – does that mean Italy won the war, too?

When one considers the losses suffered by Britain and France – hundreds of thousands dead, destitution, bankruptcy, the end of the empires – was World War II worth it, considering that Poland and all the other nations east of the Elbe were lost anyway?

I dunno, – let's use Buchanan's Formula For Victory and ask a Briton or a Frenchman. If they answer "Bloody 'ell" or "Oiu!" we'll call it a "yes." And if they reply "Ja!" we'll chalk it up as a "no."

If the objective of the West was the destruction of Nazi Germany, it was a "smashing" success. But why destroy Hitler? If to liberate Germans, it was not worth it. After all, the Germans voted Hitler in.

Not all wars are fought for liberation – ask a Cherokee. Whoops! Something tells me Buchanan isn't ready to turn Florida back over to any of those heathen redskins any time soon.

Seriously though – I am serious. Some wars are fought for no purpose greater than destroying something. Sometimes that something is evil (Nazi Germany), and sometimes it isn't (at least half of our Indian Wars). Pat Buchanan would have you think the Trail of Tears was more just than D-Day.

If it was to keep Hitler out of Western Europe, why declare war on him and draw him into Western Europe? If it was to keep Hitler out of Central and Eastern Europe, then, inevitably, Stalin would inherit Central and Eastern Europe.

Oh for God's sake. At the time France and Britain decalred war on Hitler, he was allied to Stalin, thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which Pat already mentioned.

For that matter, why would Osama strike New York City, when he knew such an attack would invite us in to his home base in Afghanistan? Why would Pat's beloved South secede from the Union, would it would inevitably bring the Union tearing through Georgia? Why would… oh, you get the point. Wars are often started for stupid, self-negating purposes. But defeating fascism was neither stupid nor self-negating.

Was that worth fighting a world war – with 50 million dead?

I don't subscribe to the "body-count calculus" of war. Some evils have to be fought, no matter what the cost. Would Buchanan be bitching about a million dead "Christian" Americans, if we were fighting an invading army of pagans? Two million? Of course not.

Let's look at the world, if the West had chosen not to fight in 1939.

We have two possible scenarios. In the first one, Hitler's Germany beats Stalin's Russia.

Buchanan's beloved Poland? It is stripped of Jews, and then of Poles. Poland, for all of Pat's protestations, ceases to exists. Then something similar happens to Russia. If you don't know, Hitler had grand designs on European Russia. 100 million Russians were to be either killed, deported to Siberia, or used as slave labor. Everything up to the Ural Mountains (including the Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States) was to be incorporated into the Greater German Reich. Anyone not cooperating was, as already described, to be shot, enslaved, or deported.

In this scenario, would it matter if the Low Countries or France had never been invaded? Hardly. Faced with a Empire greater than any even Napoleon ever dreamed of, Western Europe would have become, well, exactly what it became under real-timeline German occupation.

These are historical facts. Buchanan knows them. He's hoping you don't.

And if Stalin won?

Things would have been nearly as bad – but still worse than they were in reality. Instead of an Iron Curtain "from Stettin in the Baltic to Triest in the Adriatic," Stalin would have controlled all of Europe. Perhaps Britain would have remained free, as a Western Cuba off the coast of the Soviet Empire.

And Pat's beloved Poland? Yeah, the Poles would've been free, all right – free to have their faces smashed by Stalin's boot.

These are historical facts. Buchanan knows them. He's hoping you don't.

Please notice that the Hitler Wins scenario - the one for which Pat pines - is even darker than the Stalin Wins scenario. Stalin, for all his evil ways, never made plans to deport entire nations to Siberia, nor did he send entire classes of people to gas chambers. Stalin "only" wanted to impose communism, no matter how many millions of people he had to kill to do it.

Hitler's murderous desires were far greater.

And if Pat Buchanan, the Nazi apologist, has decided to forget that…

…I hope you won't.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll tells me the movie is "The Best Years of Our Lives," which explains why I couldn't locate it on IMDB or Amazon.

THOUGHT: It's been a long time since I've asked for a Google Bomb. So if you decide to link to this piece, use the phrase "Nazi Apologist" in there somewhere.

...before we head off to London.

I'm leaving you with a little parting gift: A full-frontal fisking. Look for it around midnight Mountain Time.

NOTE: Big thanks to Will Collier for subbing for me. Doubly so for getting an early start. Quadruple-y so for doing such a bang-up job of it.

Pac-Man is 25 years old.

I still remember the first time I played it, in an arcade at the old Denver airport. I was on spring vacation with my folks, and I damn near missed our flight home because of hanging around that arcade to play Pac-Man and the gigantic pinball machine they had in there.

Thank goodness for MAME--think I'll have a game right now.

Yesterday, United Air Lines was allowed to dump it's pension plan on the federal government. That's bad news for pretty much everybody except UAL's accountants and execs: employees and pensioners are going to get considerably smaller payments than they'd been promised, and everybody who pays taxes gets to pick up the tab. A number of other airlines, including Delta and US Air, are considering doing the same thing, and you have to think beleaguerd Ford and General Motors bean-counters are also looking enviously at the massive chunk of accounts payable UAL just scratched off its balance sheet.

I don’t mean to tread on Martini Boy's turf here, but the pensions crisis among all of these old-line companies illustrates a great no-no of long-term investing: lack of diversification. In the end, even though they presumably didn't have much choice in the matter, all those UAL employees who've been promised a defined-benefit pension are in the same boat as the Enron and WorldCom employees who voluntarily put all of their 401(k) money in their own company's stock. They bet the house on one horse, and by they time old age caught up with the grizzled nag, there was barely enough left of it to cart off to the glue factory.

I'm not trying to say "I'm smarter than you" here to all those UAL folks, but for myself, I'd be terrified to have the majority of my retirement wrapped up in one company--any company. Not Microsoft, not Google, not Coca-Cola, not Wal-Mart, not anything. What happens if they go broke? (Answer: I go broker.) I try and spread my own retirement investments around as widely as possible, to avoid (as Daffy Duck would say) just such an emergency.

All of which begs the question, why does one of our political parties still insist that everybody in the country ought to be putting 12% of their income into a single rapidly-becoming-insolvent "company" that they have no control over, no ownership of, and no ability to diversify out of?

What is Social Security, if not a giant defined-benefit plan that's outrageously underfunded going forward? And to the lefties who'll yell, "Yeah, but United and Enron had greedy executives who took all the money," my response is, "Sure did--and how is that any different from greedy politicians who spend all the tax money?"

Without reform in SocSec, the outcome will be the same. The beneficiaries will take big cuts, and the taxpayers will get a huge bill. And the people responsible for it all will be (a) insured by their own assets or (b) long since dead.

UPDATE: Reader Tim Higgins points out that the Federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is not currently taxpayer-funded, as I incorrectly noted above. According to the PBGC's site:

PBGC is not funded by general tax revenues. PBGC collects insurance premiums from employers that sponsor insured pension plans, earns money from investments and receives funds from pension plans it takes over. PBGC pays monthly retirement benefits, up to a guaranteed maximum, to about 518,000 retirees in 3,479 pension plans that ended. Including those who have not yet retired and participants in multiemployer plans receiving financial assistance, PBGC is responsible for the current and future pensions of about 1,061,000 people.

I thank Tim for the correction, but I also note that the PBGC's ability to pay out is very likely to be overwhelmed if and when other airlines and/or car manufacturers follow in UAL's footsteps. You can bet the bank (so to speak) that there will be a bailout from the general fund if and when that happens.

Sorry to have been away for a while. Like Steve, I've been busy, with a lot of work, travel, houseguests, and general life going on. Unlike Steve, I'm not about to be a father anytime soon (right, honey?), but I'm quite happy to add my congrats on the impending VodkaRugrat. I'll endeavor (endeavour?) to pop in more often while the happy couple is gallavanting around England.

A dorky item, noted in passing (and you can look forward to several of these, as we're nigh upon a High Holy Week of Geekdom):

John Podhoretz slammed "Revenge Of The Sith" over at NRO. As much as I generally like Pod The Younger's political columns, I've found the guy to be a pretty crappy movie critic. He hates anything associated with comics (and what is "Star Wars," if not a comic writ large?), and wrote six years ago that "The Phantom Menace" was better than either "Return of the Jedi" or "The Empire Strikes Back." As Martini Boy once noted of Roger Ebert in a similar context, that particular opinion is indicitive of having one's head shoved so far up one's arse, one is able to lick one's own esophagus.

And besides, he actually likes watching "American Idol." If that's not a taste disqualifier, I don't know what is...

We're almost ready for London, baby.

About half our clothes are organized, the suitcases are out, the house/puppy sitters have notices and instructions posted, the passports are valid, the travel documents are ready...

We haven't forgotten anything, have we?

Well, there is that Anglosphere Blog Bash on Saturday. That sure won't suck.

I'm bringing the laptop this trip, so expect at least some photoblogging while we're gone. Don't, however, expect any Friday Recipes of English food. I'm just sayin' is all.

For no reason I can pinpoint, I've been missing my old radio days. Got so bad, I decided it was time to start podcasting. You know, talking into a microphone like a have an actual radio-sized audience, then posting the resulting MP3 file for you to listen to.

If I really decide to do this thing, it'll be the unholy offspring of vanity and nostalga. But, hey, who doesn't love a baby?

NOTE: After three-plus years of blogging, a little fact just hit me. When I was doing small-market morning radio for damn near minimum wage, I had a bigger audience than I get here on the internet. And let me tell you: I'm a lazy blogger, but I was an even lazier broadcaster. Puts things in perspective, no? On the other hand, I like you people a lot more than I liked most of my neighbors in Humboldt County, CA.

Anyway, I'm looking for a good mic. Something less than a hundred bucks, yet won't pick up all my popping P's. An inexpensive, yet forgiving, microphone. A cheap hooker with a heart of gold I can talk dirty into without having to pay extra.

Got any advice?

So I was about to say something nasty about The Huffington Daily Gazetter Bugle Post Blog Thingy, but clicked over to Lileks first. Naturally, he beat me to the punch:

...I’m not impressed.

By the Huffblog, that is. Depends on who writes in the future, I suppose – but who cares why Hillary Rosen can’t figure out how to get stuff on her iPod? Who cares if the wife of the guy who brought us Power Rangers wants nationalized pre-school? (The day I listen to anyone connected with Saban lecturing me about children is the day I listen to some named Hanna or Barbera lecturing me about the nuances of backgrounds in animation.) That’s the big problem with blogs, of course: who cares what X thinks? It all depends on the quality of the thought, the uniqueness of the product, the value added. In the blogworld, a celebrity name adds no value whatsoever. If the blog’s good, the celebrity may earn some blogcred (oh, Lord, shoot me now for that one) for not sounding like someone who just emerged from the isolation tank of LA culture. But I really don’t care what Larry David thinks about John Bolton. I care what Larry David thinks about the itchy tags on shirts that scrape your neck, because I know that he can make a 12-part TV series that revolves around that detail, and George Will can’t.

We’ll see.

Not to quibble, Lileks, but I'm not sure we will see.

Huffington sold her ...thing... as a blog. She also hyped it as an alternative to Drudge. Which is a lot like saying you're going to make a great new laundry detergent to replace Windex. Sure, they both get things clean, but they ain't the same beast.

Donkeys and daddies are all pack animals. But that doesn't make me an ass. (Other things make me an ass, I freely admit.)

Back to the topic at hand.

I looked at Huffingtonreportheraldpost today, but I didn't see a blog. What I saw was a mess of screaming headlines (ala Drudge) and snippets of blogposts which I'd have had to take the effort to actually click on to read. Oh, and the design screams "tabloid!" while the hype shouts "blog!" and the content whimpers "I'm being all clever and bloggy, right?"

Huffington is a sort-of liberal who married a sort-of gay, sort-of Republican man who once sort of ran for the Senate. So maybe it should be no surprise her website is such a jumbled mess.

Give me panicked headlines like Drudge (or better yet, like Sploid), or give me up-to-the-next-second blogposts. Don't give me a twisted spaghetti pile of each then expect me to pick out an indivudual strand, just because the bylines are bigger than mine. (Or to follow through on the metaphor, just because one strand looks to have really tasty sauce.)

We're reading the web. We don't want names; we want content. Huffingtonblogwannabepostthingy might have great content -- but being neither fish nor fowl, I just couldn't get into it. I couldn't read through the wreck of something that looked like a tabloid, claimed to be a blog, and read like Wonkette without the anal sex jokes and killer rack.

Huffington had a lot of hype, but no follow through - and that's why celebrity blogs don't work. Or rather, they can work, and some of them do. But celebrity blogs don't work because they're blogs by celebrities. They work because they're good blogs that just happen to be written by celebrities.

Huffington either forgot that, or never knew it.

OK, so I'm writing off Huffington prematurely, and I shouldn't. She has enough clout (or did until Monday) to make a run at this thing, and maybe she'll figure it out. Or maybe her stable of writers will figure out that building a blog audience (I refuse to type "blaugience") is different from writing for Hollywood.

The Hollywood Way is: do one Really Good Thing, hustle to sell it, then build a career on it. The Blogger Way is: write lots of stuff, hope some of it is good, and hope to build an audience with the stuff that somehow sticks.

The Hollywood Way works great for celebrity culture. The Blogger Way is anti-celebrity. Tom Cruise could coast along the rest of his life making millions of dollars on second-rate movies. A blogger has to fight and scrap and scrape every day, every post, for each and every reader. If there's such a thing as inertia in the blog world, it's a short-lived thing. Meanwhile, Chevy Chase is still making movies.

If we ever see "National Lampoon's Blog Vacation" at the multiplex, I expect to see Arianna with a producer credit. But I also expect to see her online efforts generate even less box office than another lame Chevy Chase flick.

Politics is easy, Ari. Blogging is hard.

Melissa is due in approximately 230 days.

Not that we're counting or anything, but I do have a little Excel spreadsheet going.

One of my best friends here in town started a blog months ago, without ever once telling me.

Alex, dude, you've got to network, man!

Anyway, check out SciFiPundit if you like your bloggers even geekier than Will Collier or me.

Steve Lovelady is at it again.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Those are truths, and they are self evident, and I'm just plain tired of defending them against those who believe they are neither, and who cannot – will not – be convinced otherwise.

That attitude makes for a bad blog, doesn't it? It explains a lot of what you (haven't) read here lately, too.

What exhausts me most – and what on bad days, just absolutely disgusts me - is that after three-plus years, I still haven't gotten a single worthwhile point through to a single person who should be my ally already.

I'm talking, of course, about the Terror War. I'm talking, of course, about people who ought to be on the leading edge of the (for lack of a better phrase) propaganda campaign, but aren't.

Not only aren't they helping, they're doing their best to sow discord. To cause confusion. To hamper the effort. Et-goddamn-cetera.

My former Libertarian comrades ought not frustrate me, but they do.

Do I want a world where the US can retreat behind its borders and pursue a foreign policy of peaceful commerce? Oh, dear Whomever, yes I do. We'd all be happier, richer, and in some cases, far less dead. But that day is far off. The Civil War showed that slavery and freedom couldn't coexist in a single country. 9/11 showed that freedom and tyranny cannot coexist on a single planet. It's us or them, baby, and no libertarian daydream can wish that fact away. Tyranny breeds the fanatics who, thanks to modern technologies we created, are empowered to raze our mightiest skyscrapers.

It's us or them. It's our way or theirs.

I like our way better. Call it nothing more than personal bias if you must, but I'll take our system – for all its flaws – over theocratic repression and God-blessed slaughter any day.

My would-be cultural allies are even worse than my old Libertarian friends.

I'm a big believer in liberty. I support abortion rights. I want gay marriage legalized. I think good porn can be quite healthy. I was calling for an end to the Drug War long before I ever took my first hit of pot. I like a little hearty raunchiness on my TV, and nothing frightens me less than the prospect of my child someday catching a glimpse of a boob on the tube.

For all its flaws, for all its occasional nastiness, I still think liberty is the best thing going – even when I disagree with how my neighbors exercise their freedoms. After all, maybe they don't approve of what I do with mine.

But where are my allies?

Much of the pro-choice lobby thinks it's just dandy if half of the Arab world is confined to the abaya. Many of my gay friends have apparently decided that, if some countries want to topple stone walls on top of their local gays, that's not the concern of San Francisco. "Porn for me but not for thee" is the attitude of about every pornographer who has ever expressed an opinion on the Terror War. And the TV and movie moguls make the porn kings look brave by comparison.

Where the hell are my allies?

There are a few, brave liberal souls. Michael Totten. Roger L. Simon. Christopher Hitchens. And… well, this late at night, they're the only three liberals of any consequence I can think of who are full-fledged supporters of fighting the 21st Century's fascism.

Oh, and for all my dislike of her on a personal level, Hillary Clinton gets at least one thumb up. And maybe two in 2008.

But there should be millions more.

Instead…

Harry Browne, the man I once supported for President, called our liberation of Afghanistan a "racist war" to kill "brown people."

Almost every Democrat who implored us to support global "human rights" (a noble cause for which Jimmy Carter gets big kudos from me) in the '70s and '80s, now thinks that this country is a worse offender than Saddam or the Taliban.

Then there are the professional protestors, who I naively counted on to take the side of freedom to be... to do... whatever. Instead, they've made fools of themselves by comparing the liberator of 50 million people to a man who sent millions to the gas chambers. "Bushitler" makes about as much sense "Jefferstalin."

Then there are the influential newspaper columnists who think it's better to be witty and cynical that to support their nation – or their own causes! - in a time of crisis.

I could go on, but it's all just too damn depressing. Besides, I never counted on the hardcore drug legalizers to come to our aid – most of them are too busy getting stoned. On the other hand, at least the stoners are using their liberty in a way they support, unlike everybody else listed above.

What happened? Did I pick bad allies? Are my other causes not worth fighting for, either?

I refuse to believe the former, and the latter is just plain untrue.

So what the hell happened?

I can't answer that question, unfortunately. But the question is the answer to "whatever happened to VodkaPundit?"

It's harder to keep on fighting when your allies desert you. And most of mine never showed up long enough to even be counted as AWOL.

Well… damnit… this country is in this fight without most of its traditional allies (like the Germans, with whom we'd never, ever fought before)…

So do I have any right to get all depressed and moody and un-bloggy, just because my old comrades are aren't even as dedicated as Tony Blair's turncoat allies?

No, not really. Not at all. Or, maybe I have the right, but by my own lights I certainly have the moral obligation to offer you something more than moral exhaustion.

This isn't where I expected this little ramble to go. I titled it "Moral Exhaustion" with the expectation of closing up the blogshop. Not entirely, not permanently – but mostly.

In good conscience, however, I can't do it. I talked myself out of it, writing this sad little essay. Which is strange, because one of my few real talents is talking myself into doing stuff.

I can't be the full-time blogger I once was. Work is grinding more than it used to, and other obligations will undoubtedly keep me away from the keyboard.

And here's where I buried the lede, way deep: Melissa is pregnant. She's due in December. We have a tiny little vodkaswiller on the way, to be delivered undoubtedly by a schnockered stork.

So if I'm still not thrilled with blogging, it's for damn sure I'm thrilled about something.

I'm going to be a daddy.

I can't wait.

And I'll be blogging the whole way through – exhausted or not.

Busy here working off what little ass I have.

Two muni bonds I'd owned for a decade came due, and I'm trying to find something to replace the 6% tax-free income I'd been getting -- and in today's market, that ain't easy. Well nigh impossible.

So I'm working too much, playing too little, and blogging not at all. Not to mention really, really cranky.

Grr.

PS If I haven't answered your email, it's because I've barely looked at my inbox the last two weeks. It's been that kind of time. When you're spending the principal on the mortgage instead of the income, email becomes a luxury. Grr, again.