Saudi Arabia's King Fahd has died.

Oh, joy. There's a new reactionary party in Germany:

BERLIN, July 27 - You could almost say that a specter is haunting Germany, and while it is not the specter of communism, as Marx and Engels had it in their famous Manifesto, it is the specter of former Communists - along with a scattering of idealistic socialist reformers and a larger number of defectors from the governing Social Democratic Party of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

All of those groups have come together to form a new party in Germany, the Linkspartei, or Left Party. While it is new and still small, it could have a major impact on the national elections set for Sept. 18.

Sleep tight.

"I have dreams of Tim Robbins on fire."

Jimmy Carter knows all about disgrace:

"I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.," he told a news conference at the Baptist World Alliance's centenary conference in Birmingham, England. "I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts."

You know what else is disgraceful?

When a former US President gives him stamp of approval to a fraudulent election:

"After an arduous negotiation, the Electoral Council allowed the OAS [Organization of American States] and the Carter Center to observe all aspects of the [Venezuelan] election process except for the central computer hub, a place where they also prohibited the presence of any witnesses from the opposition. At the time, this appeared to be an insignificant detail. Now it looks much more meaningful."

Carter has "given impetus and excuses" to potential dictators around the world. How's that for disgrace?

Oh, you want more?

Then how about a former US President who refuses to give his stamp of approval to two free and fair elections in the world's oldest continuously-functioning democracy:

It was obvious that in 2000 these basic standards were not met in Florida, and there are disturbing signs that once again, as we prepare for a presidential election, some of the state's leading officials hold strong political biases that prevent necessary reforms.

Carter there gave "impetus and excuses" to those who would claim this country is no better than the brutal dictatorships it opposes.

You want even more?

Then let's hear it for a former US President who tried to conduct his own, private foreign policy while his nation prepared to oppose a conquering madman:

During the buildup to the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, Carter unsuccessfully worked to undermine the foreign policy of America's democratically elected president, George Bush. Carter behaved as the Imperial Ex-President, conducting a guerrilla foreign policy operation that competed with the actual president's. What's disturbing about this behavior is not that Carter opposed war with Iraq. Many Democrats opposed going to war, and they worked within the American system to try to prevent a war that many predicted would be bloody (which it was, for Iraq). But Carter went further than merely lobbying Congress to oppose military action or speaking out in an effort to tilt popular opinion against the coming war. He used his status as a former president to engage in foreign policy, a deliberate effort to subvert the democratic process.

That time, Carter gave "impetus and excuses" to none other than Saddam Hussein.

"But wait," as Ron Popeil says, "there's more!"

How about a former US President who has been linked with Oil-for-Food scandal figure Samir Vincent:

In 2000, Vincent led Iraqi religious leaders on a tour of the United States to push for an end to sanctions against Saddam. Among the people who the group met with was former President Jimmy Carter.

Did Carter give "impetus and excuses" to the people profiting from starving Iraqi children? You make the call!

Of course, Carter also had a softer side. So soft, he had nothing but praise for Yassar Arafat:

He was the father of the modern Palestinian nationalist movement. A powerful human symbol and forceful advocate, Palestinians united behind him in their pursuit of a homeland. While he provided indispensable leadership to a revolutionary movement and was instrumental in forging a peace agreement with Israel in 1993, he was excluded from the negotiating role in more recent years.

That's right: Carter gave "impetus and excuses" to the followers of the man who almost single handedly invented modern terrorism.

You want even more? Look. I've got a computer. I have an internet connection. I know how to use Google – we could go on like this all day and all night. And even then, we'd only cover Carter's career as an ex-President.

Even so, if our actions at Gitmo truly are shameful, Carter would know. After all - if there's just one great expert on shameful American activities, it's got to be Jimmy Carter.

Painkillers just don't agree with me. Spent a week taking the minimum dosage, and that only at night. But I'd still wake up each morning with a hangover the likes of which I hadn't felt since college. Grumpiness doesn't make for good blogging.

Whether I can sleep or not – and I should; feeling much better now – I'm going off the Vicodin a week early. Lack of sleep and a little pain, I can deal with. Being a permanent grouch, no way.

Regular blogging resumes.

So how are the ribs? Still a couple sore spots, but nothing like two weeks ago. And about the Alcohol Related Incident, I should clarify. It wasn't my ARI for once. Whilst camping, I made martinis. I shared them with a stranger. Said stranger didn't know how to pace herself, and ended up knocking me off my chair and into a picnic bench.

Lesson learned: Don't make martinis for strangers, or anyone else you've never seen drink.

Well, that and don't take the chair with its back to the picnic table.

Don't think I'll do any blogging tonight. My best friend's sister was in a horrible accident, and things looked grim. Grim Reaper grim. We just now found out that she's not going to die, and that she didn't suffer any brain damage. Broken bones, scrapes, whatever - all that she can recover from. Important thing is, she's going to live, and as a full human being.

It's hard to gripe about the news, after hearing news like that.

Via Drudge:

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Sony Pictures is negotiating to acquire film rights to the first novel from Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism expert who accused the Bush administration of ignoring the terrorist threat before the Sept. 11 attacks.

His novel, "The Scorpion Gate," will be published in October by Putnam Adult. The studio hopes the film adaptation will be the first in a series of John Clancy-style political thrillers. The project will be produced by former studio chief John Calley.

John Clancy?

Growing up on old movies, I wanted to grow up to be Cary Grant. Needless to say, in that sense puberty was a big disappointment. Not tall enough. Too skinny. Good chin, but uncleft. And try as I might, I still sound too Jewish to be as WASPy as Cary. So I set my sites comfortably lower, and aimed for William Powell.

Was Powell suave? Sure - but still a little goofy. That, I could handle. Even better, I got to marry a very 21st Century version of Powell's frequent costar, Myrna Loy.

But we were talking about Cary Grant, weren't we?

Want to know exactly why, all these years later, Grant is still the coolest cat who ever was? Start here, and scroll up until you're done.

I'll be speaking Saturday, August 27 at The DaVinci Insitute's Blogger Boot Camp.

Melissa will be home that day, so don't even think about taking my TV while I'm gone.

Jeff Goldstein has his own thoughts (nothing new there) on last Friday's Required Reading. But in a new twist, the comments are the best part of Jeff's post.

Good stuff.

NOTICE: This Ramble will be ramble-y-er than usual. Bruised a bunch of ribs camping the weekend before last in an A.R.I.* Endured the pain for a week, then finally visited a doctor today. I've got just enough Vicodin to let me sleep the next ten nights. You've been warned.

A couple times each week, I visit Apple's movie trailer site - and I watch all the news ones. I watch the trailers for movies I've already seen, for movies I've never heard of, and even the trailers for movies I know I wouldn't watch for free on network television. I just like movie trailers.

The trailer for "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo" had been up for a couple days, but I just couldn't bring myself to click on the link. Rob Schneider is not now nor has he ever been funny. It's not that I don't enjoy lowbrow stuff - far from it. Give me a couple beers and some Three Stooges, and I'm a happy man.

But Farrelly Brothers-style comedy just isn't funny. There's enough humor in the human condition as is, that I find it impossible to laugh with (or even at) characters who don't behave like real human beings, responding to impossible situations.

Case in point: "There's Something About Mary." The hair gel scene is empircally not funny. Semen doesn't just hang there, and women don't grab random blobs of "is that hair gel?" off of people's ears, then apply to their own hair without so much as a mirror. You want funny? Watch Bill Murray's flower-golfing scene in "Caddyshack."

But back to Deuce Bigalow's European Vacation or Whatever.

Finally, I succumbed to my Watch All the Trailers Rule, and loaded it up. There wasn't so much as a grin to be had. Halfway into the trailer, for reasons I don't understand, a fat American woman in a bad dress is shown speaking practically to the camera. She says "Give thanks to America for bringing freedom to Iraq" or words to that effect.

And then a brick flies in from off camera and hits her in the face.

I know Hollywood doesn't approve of the Iraq campaign. I don't expect serious debate in a Rob Schneider movie - and if there was some, I'd hold it in contempt. But just what the hell is going on here? Making a political statement with a thrown brick? That's supposed to be funny? That's supposed to have a point?

That's in a Rob Schneider movie?

What the hell?

I know the audience for these films - young folks without enough real-world experience to appreciate just how funny real-world behavior can be. I know, because I used to be one of them. We all were once: It's called "youth."

So it's come to this: Hollywood now feels the need to propagandize - with a brick! - in a summer teen flick. Or maybe "need" is giving too much credit. Maybe "audacity" is a better word for it. Whatever the case, at least we know where they stand.

Me, I'm not standing anywhere. I'm sitting in front of the laptop computer - having earlier tonight attacked my desktop monitor with a brick.



*A.R.I. = Alcohol Related Incident.

True story.

Summer of '76, I'm seven years old and spending my days at Camp Pegnita. My Uncle Bill Macon is 17, and working his first political campaign. Nothing glamorous – pushing doorbells and handing out pamphlets for the Right to Work campaign. We share the same house.

I didn't know it then, but the summer of '76 was a long, hot one.

"Right to Work" – a referenda initiative to allow non-union workers in union shops – failed in Missouri that year. Uncle Bill put a lot of work into a failed effort, but maybe it was for the best. Right to Work did pass in Arkansas – where one of the campaign workers was gunned down leaving a victory party on election night. With that in mind, it's safe to say that some people were a little unfriendly to the initiative, no matter what you or I may think about it.

Anyway.

Bill's car – a brown Jeep Cherokee, if memory serves – was always parked in the driveway. He needed a police escort each morning to get safely from the garage to his car, a distance of maybe 20 feet. There were two goons waiting for him at the foot of the driveway. They'd just stand on the public street, looking menacing. When Bill drove off, the goons would get in their car and follow. Sometimes, after Bill had pushed some doorbell and talked to some housewife, the goons would pay her a visit, too.

It didn't take long for Bill to get smart and learned how to ditch the goons. Across Geyer Road from us, there was the Orthwein Farm. It was private property, but Gus Orthwein's young right-hand man, Clay Otto, was a classmate of Bill's. The goons didn't know it, but the Orthwein's "driveway" went all the way through to Lindberg Boulevard. Bill would drive up from Geyer, open the gate, drive through, close the gate – and leave the union goons wondering when the hell he was ever coming out. Meanwhile, Bill was cruising up Lindberg to his appointments.

Cute story, no? Well, not quite.

One morning, while the police helped Uncle Bill get to his car, one of the goons shouted, "How's your nephew Stevie enjoying day camp?"

You don't have to watch The Sopranos or The Godfather every week to know what was meant by that question. To get a 17-year-old boy to stop pushing doorbells during his summer vacation, the union goons were willing to threaten a 7-year-old boy.

It was years before anyone told me that story – but needless to say, I've had a problem with unions ever since. Or at least a problem with the way unions are run. So it's with no small sense of schadenfreude that I read this:

The AFL-CIO succumbed to division Sunday, with its largest union deciding to bolt the 50-year-old federation and three others poised to do so in a dispute over how to reverse organized labor's long slide.

The four unions, representing nearly one-third of the AFL-CIO's 13 million members, announced Sunday they would boycott the federation's convention that begins Monday. They are part of the Coalition to Win, a group of seven unions vowing to reform the labor movement - outside the AFL-CIO if necessary.

Unions had their time. Way back when, workers were treated as chattel, or worse. Unions gave a negotiating voice to those without one, and (sometimes) a mailed fist to hit back at the Pinkerton goons some businesses used to keep their workers oppressed. But those days are long gone, and so is most of the unions' utility.

Most delicious, however, is the closing line:

Others said competition might be good for the labor movement.

Would competition be good for the union movement? Undoubtedly. But it's also sweet, sweet justice for a particular labor union which tried to all but outlaw competition for labor, itself.

Clear, unbiased reporting from The New York Times on the London Police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes:

When Mr. Menezes began to enter the station, witnesses said, he was surrounded by plainclothes officers who shouted at him to stop.

According to the police accounts, the officers identified themselves and were suspicious partly because he was wearing a bulky jacket in the summer weather, suggesting that he was concealing something.

Mr. Menezes ran. He jumped over the turnstile, ran down an escalator and stumbled into a train, where he fell face down. Witnesses said the police then shot him five times in the head and neck, killing him.

Of course, you had to read down to the eighth graf to get to the part I quoted. Before that, you get lines like:

...Friday morning, Jean Charles de Menezes became another innocent casualty of London's terrorist wars...

...the incident brought fresh horror to Londoners who look at Mr. Menezes and see their sons, their brothers or themselves.

"We are not safe here."

Mr. Pereira described his cousin as friendly, open, fluent in English, hopeful about life in London and busy with work.

"He would never have done anything to anyone."

And how does the story end? Like so:

"I feel it's unfair if a person is nervous and feels unsafe and sees so many police with guns and stuff," she said. "Something can happen just because you're in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Well, no. "Something can happen" if you run from the police, just days after a terror bombing, right towards the terrorist's favorite target.

Nowhere does reporter Sarah Lyall talk to the police, not even to tell us if they refused to comment. Instead, they're painted as faceless killers, silent except to institutionally "express regret" for the "tragedy."

Indeed, this is a tragic story. But Lyall chose to tell only one side of it - and that as virtual hagiography. Lyall sandwiched a dry version of what "police accounts" say happened, in between lurid quotes from the victim's friends and family.

Of course, Lyall got help from two other reporters (one in London, one in Rio de Janeiro) and an untold number of editors. Best guess? At least five people were involved in putting together one seriously flawed story. Maybe it's time for the NYT to fire a few editors, and put a single blogger on the payroll.

There's a larger point here, and it's this: the press takes stories like this one, and reports them like this, and then wonders why we don't think they're on board with this war. They wonder why we're watching Fox News. Say what you will about Fox's many faults, but at least FNC acts like an American company during wartime. Meanwhile, the NYT is doing its damnedest to paint Tony Blair's Britain as a fascist police state.

Thanks for the help, fellas.

Reuel Marc Gerecht has an article on Europe's homegrown Islamists for the Weekly Standard. A sample:

What was once unquestionably an import has gone native, mutated, and grown. Some of what the Europeans are now confronting--and for the United States this is very bad news--is probably a locally generated Islamic militancy that is as retrograde and virulent as anything encountered in the Middle East. "European Islam" appears to be an increasingly radicalizing force intellectually and in practice. The much-anticipated Muslim moderates of Europe--the folks French scholar Gilles Kepel believes will produce "extraordinary progress in civilization," a new "Andalusia" (the classical Arabic word for Moorish Spain) that will save us from Osama bin Laden's jihad--have so far not developed with the same gusto as the Muslim activists who have dominated too many mosques in "Londonistan" and elsewhere in Europe. Moderates surely represent the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Europe, but like their post-Christian European counterparts, they usually express their moderation in detachment from religious affairs.

Though Europeans often fail to see it, the secularization of the Muslims living in their midst has been, by and large, a great success. It explains why Muslim activists gain so much attention, be they arch-conservatives, like the devotees of the Tabligh movement in Britain and on the continent who espouse segregation in Europe, or "progressives," like the Switzerland-based intellectual Tariq Ramadan, who refuses forthrightly to declare the Muslim Holy Law null and void as a political testament for Muslims in a European democracy. The moderates have abandoned the field. They have become European. The militants, who perhaps should be seen as deviants from a largely successful process of secularization, are the only ones left ardently praying.

We're still a long way off from Eurabia, and that day may never come. If enough of Europe musters the will to fight the radicals, and to keep turning the majority of Muslims into Europeans.

Anyway, read the whole thing and all that.

The summer heatwave finally hit Colorado Springs. While the A/C struggled to keep the upstairs below 80, I sat in my cool, cool basement, looking for something light & tasty and very Italian for dinner. Found something nice at Epicurious, then changed it up a bit.

Heat Wave Penne

You'll need:

Four Roma tomatoes, chopped and seeded
About a half cup of fresh basil, chopped
8oz fresh mozzarella (the round kind you get in the water-filled container), sliced into 1/2" strips
4oz Prosciutto, sliced the same way
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Enough penne for 2-4 people
Salt & pepper

Got everything chopped and sliced according to the directions? Then the hard work is done. Take everything but the pasta and mix it together in a bowl. Season to taste with salt & pepper. Let it sit out on the counter for an hour while you enjoy a gin & tonic.

Boil the penne for 13 minutes, strain, then pour back into the pot. Throw the tomato/basil/cheese/Prociutto mixture in with it, and gently toss.

If you're feeling really ambitious, you could make a salad, too. One head of butter lettuce, cleaned, torn, and chilled. Make the dressing by beating together a tablespoon or two of olive oil, 2 teaspoons or so of balsamic vinegar, 1 crushed clove of garlic, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, a pinch of salt and three turns of the pepper mill. If there's any basil left over from the pasta, throw it in the dressing. You can put the salad together while the pasta is boiling.

Enjoy with a slightly chilled Chianti, and try to ignore the heat.

Finally found a mic I'm happy with and at a price I can live with.

So now I need a little advice on podcasting software...

The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen finds John Roberts an agreeable Supreme Court pick. Writing for The New York Times, Rosen says that

based on his record throughout his career, he does not appear to be a rigid Constitutional "originalist" in the tradition of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. These men believe that the Constitution should be strictly interpreted in light of its original understanding; they are willing (to different degrees) to overturn years of Supreme Court precedents in the name of constitutional fidelity.

Having spent decades arguing before courts rather than sitting on them, John Roberts has never embraced one grand legal theory to the exclusion of all others. On the contrary, he has been trained to cast a wide net in order to reach a convincing result.

Read the whole thing.

Richard Cohen has, I guess, taken the Maureen Dowd Method Seminar. In it, columnists learn from The Mistress Herself how to take two icky things at random, and paste a column together around them. Read and learn how it's done:

Another hanging chad has dropped. His name is John G. Roberts Jr., and he undoubtedly will turn out to be opposed to abortion rights, affirmative action, an expansive view of federal powers and a reading of the Constitution that takes a properly suspicious view of the state's embrace of religion. In these and other matters -- the death penalty, for instance -- he is expected to substantially reflect the views of George W. Bush, the man who nominated him to the Supreme Court, because that was what the election of 2000 and its sequel were all about. You hang enough chads, and you get to change the Supreme Court.

I'm not going to fisk Cohen, but one little bitty teensy tiny little detail does need pointing out. The results of the 2000 election became moot on November 7, 2004. In the four year prior, Bush - hanging chads or not - didn't appoint a single Supreme Court justice. The Democrats had a chance to unseat Bush in 2004, but failed - and without a single dangling chad.

However, Cohen is using the Dowd Method. Hanging chads were icky. John Roberts (or Robert Johns or whatever) is icky. Therefore, hanging chads and Robert Johns (or John Roberts) must be somehow related.

Wouldn't Cohen have been smarter to blame it all on Ohio, which decided the most recent election?

Smarter? Sure. But far less Dowdy.

Anne Applebaum rips new ones for Microsoft, Yahoo! and Cisco.

A day of blogging is like an evening of strong cocktails and loud conversation. Somebody says something that moves you; you say something back. There's a lot of good give and take, and there's some acrimony, sure – but oftentimes you reach a consensus and there are always a few laughs along the way. Blogging works much the same, only it's just me, my computer and whatever I happen to read on it. Blogging is cocktail party debate in the form of a website - the news hits, and I hit back. Fun.

There's no fun to be had with John Roberts. Look at his picture, and he could be an orthodontist giving a commencement speech. Hell, even his name is dull. But what about his legal stuff? You got me.

From what I've read (here and here and here), Roberts is against reining in police power, except for when he isn't. He doesn't seem to believe in the broad application of government power, except for when he does. He may or may not support abortion rights, but if he does, he doesn't do so in the context of Roe v Wade - unless, that is, he does.

In short, Roberts is a cipher. While no one seems to doubt his intellectual or forensic abilities, how he'd actually rule from the bench is a mystery.

Bush got what he wanted – a Supreme Court nominee too unobjectionable to be filibustered. I wonder if Bush knows to be careful about getting what he wished for.

NOTE: Blogs for Bush has a roundup of conservative blogger reaction to Roberts. The response is almost uniformly positive. Correction – almost uniformly ecstatic. What's all the excitement about? Meanwhile, the usual crackpots are cracking the usual pots. What are they so upset about? Meanwhile, saner people are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Yeah, I'll have something on John Roberts here before long.

In the meantime, here's the short version: Who?

This is the funniest eBay ad I've seen since the guy who was selling his ex-wife's wedding dress for beer money. Better yet, it's for a pretty neat item, a home-made subwoofer shaped like the Death Star (that's no moon--it's a subwoofer!). Be sure to check out the Q&A at the bottom of the ad.

Blogosphere triumphalism moment: a bit on this got posted to Slashdot this afternoon, resulting in over 170,000 additional hits to the ad--and the bid price has doubled.

Ten years later, Richard Holbrooke asks if Bosnia was worth a war:

This was Clinton's most important action in regard to Europe -- an action opposed, incidentally, by most of his political advisers. It was a classic commander-in-chief decision, made alone, without congressional support and with only reluctant backing from the Pentagon. But it worked: Without those 20,000 troops, Bosnia would not have survived, 2 million refugees would still be wandering the face of Western Europe, a criminal state would be in power in Bosnia itself -- and we would probably have had to pursue Operation Enduring Freedom not only in Afghanistan but also in the deep ravines and dangerous hills of central Bosnia, where a shadowy organization we now know as al Qaeda was putting down roots that were removed by NATO after Dayton.

Eight years from now, someone may write something very similar about Iraq.

A little history, some sharp analysis, some even sharper invective... that adds up to Required Reading:

Behind the scenes, the single most important reason for the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson farce is that CIA Director Porter Goss has finally started to clean house at Langley. Goss's long-overdue shake-up is clearly backed by the White House, the top levels of the Pentagon and State Department, and the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte.

Judging by Director Goss's remarks at his Senate confirmation hearings, those whose jobs are most in danger include the CIA "experts" in WMD proliferation – Valerie Plame's outfit – who completely failed to anticipate the Indian and Pakistani nukes, and just couldn't figure out what was going on with Iraqi WMDs. Valerie Plame's bosses are facing the axe for decades of failures.

And it's about time, because Iran is within sight of its first nukes. You don't suppose that has anything to do with the Plame/Wilson publicity stunt, do you?

Read the whole thing - it's required.

(Hat tip to the invaluable Frank Martin.)

RELATED: Here.

When Paul Krugman isn't being a partisan hack, he still knows how to ask some good questions:

Those with a downbeat view of the jobs picture argue that the low reported unemployment rate is a statistical illusion, that there are millions of Americans who would be looking for jobs if more jobs were available. Those with an upbeat view argue that labor force participation has fallen for reasons that have nothing to do with job availability - for example, young adults, recognizing the importance of education, may have chosen to stay in school longer.

That's where Dr. Bradbury's study comes in. She shows that the upbeat view doesn't hold up in the face of a careful examination of the numbers. In fact, because older Americans, especially older women, are more likely to work than in the past, labor force participation should have risen, not fallen, over the past four years. As a result, she suggests that there may be "considerable slack in the U.S. labor market": there are at least 1.6 million and possibly as many as 5.1 million people who aren't counted as unemployed but would take jobs if they were available.

There's both good news and bad news in that assessment. The good news is that the economy probably has plenty of room to expand before inflation becomes a problem (which implies that the Fed's decision to start raising interest rates was premature).

I haven't read Dr Bradbury's study, so I don't know if she's factored for the self-employed. More and more folks are working from home, and don't always show up as part of the Department of Labor's employment statistics. Surely, they account for some of the "slack." If Bradbury's lower figure is correct, then I'd guess that some large fraction of her slack figure is employed, just not in a way measured by the DoL. If Bradbury's bigger number is closer to the truth, then it's difficult not to conclude that our economy is not yet robust enough to employ everyone who wants to work.

And that brings us to Krugman's conclusion:

The bad news is that it's hard to see where further expansion will come from. We've already had four years of extremely loose fiscal and monetary policy. Tax cuts have pushed the federal budget deep into the red. Low interest rates have helped generate a housing bubble that has lifted real estate prices to ludicrous heights in major parts of the country.

If all that wasn't enough to give us a full economic recovery, what will?

Let's not nitpick here. Yes, it's true that tax cuts aren't the only thing to blame for all of Washington's red ink, as Krugman insinuates. There's also our spendthrift Republican Congress, and a President who has never once taken a good, hard look at his veto pen. Yet the fact remains that Washington has run up an awful lot of debt. And that all that Federal spending ought to be pushing up aggregate demand enough to stimulate job growth.

The problem, of course, is that it's almost impossible to measure the true size of the labor force. The DoL's methods are antiquated, but Bradbury's work gives us only a snapshot of a fast-moving picture.

So what's really going on? Has the Fed moved too quickly? Should Washington provide even more stimulus, and drive us even deeper into debt? Are the self-employed really taking up enough of the slack?

See - I can ask good questions, too. Problem is, nobody knows the answer. What should impress you, however, is that even Paul Krugman implicitly admitted that he doesn't know, either.

And after spending three-plus years picking on Krugman, it's my duty to let you know when he gets one right.

Now that all the "Rove leaked it! " furor has passed, it's looking more and more like I've been Rove-a-doped.

My bad. Sorry.

Not being entirely dense, I took some advice from Lileks and picked up a bottle of Frïs on our way home from dinner tonight.

I don't know if Frïs really is the "perfect playmate" -- I've always been partial to brunettes. But I can tell you this much: it makes a gotdam fine martini.

How do you spell "Anglosphere?" N, S, S, P:

India and the United States on Monday formally announced the completion of discussions on the Next Stage of Strategic Partnership (NSSP) with both President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh committing themselves to promoting a broad-based strategic partnership.

Addressing a joint press conference at the White House after a one-on-one in camera meeting, President Bush said that both countries were the world's two great democracies, and had the onerous responsibility of being committed to work together for a better and safer world.

"The Governments of India and United States are working together to safeguard our interests. We are introducing new steps in our defence relationship, recently signed framework. That will help our two nations to achieve our common security objectives. We are working together on terrorism, which will help us protect our people and make the world a safer place. We are also committed to increasing the prosperity of people of India and America alike. We have completed (the process of) Next Steps in Strategic Partnership. Completing this partnership will help us further enhance our cooperation in areas of civil nuclear, civil space, and hi-technology commerce," Bush said.

Very few articles in the local rag have given me as much sincere happiness as this one. It's an account of a spate of whining from NPR blowhard Garrison Keillor, who put on a "Prarie Home Companion" performance at Atlanta's Chastain Park Amitheatre last week:

When Neil Young and Michael Stipe openly chastised noisy Chastain Park Amphitheatre audiences from the stage several years ago, the chardonnay-sipping conversationalists flicked away the criticism like a fly circling too close to the potato salad.

After all, Young has a well-honed reputation for crotchetiness and Stipe is a bit eccentric.

But when you receive a public spanking from "A Prairie Home Companion" host Garrison Keillor, a guy many suspect has green tea pumping through his veins --- that's something to talk about.

So when the coolers and candelabras are hauled into the venue Saturday for the India Arie concert, music fans can expect that talking will be a topic of conversation.

Chatty Chastain-goers are nothing new --- the venue's long-standing notoriety for noise has frustrated patrons and performers alike for years. For many, the quirky 7,500-seat, 61-year-old amphitheater can be either one of country's most enjoyable --- or confounding --- places for a concert.

The issue came roaring to the forefront after Keillor posted critical remarks about the audience following the public radio host's June 24 performance.

"The show was troubled by a large number of loud drunks sitting in the expensive corporate seats down close to the stage," Keillor said on the show's Web site. Calling the Classic Chastain performance "a joyless affair," he added: "If Chastain Park were par for the course, I would've quit years ago."

I laughed on and off for a good half-hour after reading that.

Chastain is one of the best things about living in Atlanta. The result of a 1930's make-work project, it's an outdoor venue that's as unique in its own way as Colorado's Red Rocks or Seattle's old Pier 62/63 (which is now apparently and unfortunately closed to music events). Chastain is nearly unique in my experience, a concert site where patrons are (usually) allowed and even encouraged to bring in their own food and drink. The floor and several rows of the ampitheatre are filled with six-seat tables, and over the years people have gotten more and more elaborate with their concert spreads, bringing in tablecloths and candelabras and all manner of consumables to go with them. You have to see it yourself to really appreciate the charm and laid-back joy of the place.

As the article notes, Keillor is hardly the first performer to be taken aback by a Chastain audience. Most first-time players at Chastain are visible taken aback at not being the center of attention, and more than a few of them make nasty wisecracks about interrupting dinner with a concert--but those who can get over themselves and soak up the atmosphere of the place keep coming back, year after year.

Harry Connick, Jr. was completely stunned the first time he played Chastain, and griped about people chatting during his ballads, but since then he's become as comfortable with the "Chastain scene" as any Atlantan, and he never plays fewer than two dates there on summer tours. We've got tickets to see Lyle Lovett at Chastain in a couple of weeks, and Lovett always makes a point to talk about how much fun he has playing a genuinely different venue after endless weeks of bland civic centers and generic outdoor sheds.

Now, I can already hear the complaining out there--"the audience should show respect to the performers." Balderdash. The audience is playing the performer's grocery bills, and the payees ought to appreciate that first, last and always. And at any rate, respect-to-the-performer would be a legitimate point if we were talking about Itzhak Perlman, or even Lovett and Connick--legitimate, accomplished artists. Garrison Keillor is a glorified novelty act by comparison.

Given Keillor's reputation for being, well, a jerk, I'm not at all surprised that he couldn't handle an audience that wasn't composed entirely of fawning "public" radio fans. I particularly got a kick out of his whining about "expensive corporate seats" (ah, Garrison, they're the same price as anybody else's tickets in the forward section--and you're the one who set those prices in the first place). I guaran-damn-tee you he didn't make any connection to the taxpayer funding for NPR and CPB that came, in part, courtesy of the people who also paid for those tickets, whether they liked it or not.

Ah, what fun. Every year, some pompous performer gets his knickers in a knot because a Chastain audience won't pay complete attention to him. How much more delightful, then, when this year's Chastain laughingstock is a pure-blue jackass offstage as well.

Anastasia of The Liberty Belles explains the Freakonomics of Love.

Jeff Goldstein has four steps to addressing the root causes of terrorism.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

Emails are running overwhelmingly in favor of the "abusive and degrading" treatment of detainees, as cited in the Schmidt report. And they are in favor of narrowing the definition of torture to the extremes that the Bush administration has done.

Sully goes on to quote (in toto, it appears) one of those in-favor-of emails. Want to read it? Click on over and read Sully's post - no need to republish it here. It speaks well of Sully that the email he chose was well-reasoned and well-written.

The moral of the story:

I fear this [support for Gitmo "torture"] is the popular view. America is not the America it once was. But a couple of points: much of this is against the law, unless you believe that the president can change the law as he sees fit in wartime. Most do. As another emailer put it, "The Bush Administration will not be harmed by these reports of torture. The country has spoken and it does not mind. The pictures and actions are very American."

I read earlier this week that, at 42, Andrew has now spent exactly half of his life in America. Maybe by the time he's 63, he'll get it. What I mean is, this is how America once was, and how America is, and how - I hope - America will always be. Let me quote from Walter Russell Mead's "The Jacksonian Tradition":

Indeed, of all the major currents in American society, Jacksonians have the least regard for international law and international institutions. They prefer the rule of custom to the written law, and that is as true in the international sphere as it is in personal relations at home. Jacksonians believe that there is an honor code in international life — as there was in clan warfare in the borderlands of England — and those who live by the code will be treated under it. But those who violate the code — who commit terrorist acts in peacetime, for example — forfeit its protection and deserve no consideration.

You don't have to be a native-born American of Scots-Irish descent to be a Jacksonian American - although it probably helps. However, being a Cambridge-educated Briton living on the East Coast is almost certainly a hindrance. Sully just doesn't get it.

I don't begrudge Sullivan his opinion. It's his, and I've watched him ably create and defend it. However, when he claims that our rough treatment of rough characters "is not the America it once was," he's displaying an almost-willful misunderstanding of America's wartime mores. In WWII, German POWs were accorded proper respect. Those few Japanese who surrendered were largely not.

Why the difference? Germany declared war on us before attacking; Japan didn't. When a German soldier showed the white flag, he usually meant it; a Japanese solider usually didn't. Germany treated American POWs according to the Geneva Conventions. Japan treated American POWs to the Bataan Death March.

Today we're faced with an enemy who never signed onto the Geneva Conventions. An enemy who hides in plain clothes among civilians, who wages war against civilians, and who began this war with a surprise attack.

While reading that last paragraph, maybe your mind wandered. Maybe your brain recoiled, and was haunted by questions. "Do we live perfectly by the Geneva Conventions?" "Don't our soldiers sometimes hide in civilian homes?" "Weren't we asking to be attacked?" "Didn't they attack us by the only means at their disposal?"

If you asked yourself those things, you're certainly no Jacksonian.

But millions of Americans - probably a wartime majority - do hold by Jackson's traditions. We try to play fair, and mostly we succeed. But we will not play fair with those who refuse to honor the rules of the game. In fact, we think it speaks pretty well of us that those Gitmo prisoners are being treated as well as they are.

Sometimes, we even wonder if maybe we've gone a little too soft - if maybe we shouldn't be taking prisoners at all.

The immigrants I know are pretty darn Jacksonian. Now, I don't know many immigrants very well, and most of them tend to be, well, sort of stereotypical. There's the Korean couple who own the corner liquor store. And the other Korean guy who owns my dry cleaner. The soldier originally from Taiwan. The Air Force officer from Puerto Rico. And... well, you get the idea. They weren't born here, but they're solidly middle class, patriotic without being weird about it, and from what I can tell from our waiting-by-the-cash-register conversations, hard-nosed Jacksonians, each and every one.

Then again, these are people who - better than I ever will - really know what it means to be an American. They know it in their bones.

Sullivan, despite the many things as we agree on, only knows being an American in his brain. In his gut, he's still the British whiz kid, more concerned with the niceties of decency, rather than the sometimes-brutal application of it. If we want to maintain a civil - a decent - society here at home, then we cannot be decent with our enemies abroad who consider decency to be a weakness.

Fortunately, we haven't gone so soft that most Americans have forgotten that fact. If we've degraded ourselves by codifying harsh interrogation methods, it's because the other guy forced us to. Most Americans know that as a fact, too.

Maybe someday we'll read about something truly horrifying going on at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib. You know, thumb screws or lashings or Chinese water torture. If and when that day comes, my first thought will be, "Now that's wrong. That's un-American, and it's got to stop." My second thought will be, "I wonder what those guys did to deserve it?" My third thought will be, "It's still wrong, and it's got to stop."

At the first sign of semi-torture, Sullivan stopped himself at the first thought. When he has the other two, that's the day Sully will understand Americans, right down to our bones.

Now in Screed form.

Couple weeks back, I tried to wind down at the end of a long day by watching "The Machinist." Made a similar mistake Thursday night, "relaxing" to "Million Dollar Baby."

Missed it on the big screen, but read just enough about it to avoid reading any spoilers. Still, I went in thinking "Baby" was a boxing movie. Yeah, and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" is all about civil engineering in Thailand. Melissa didn't want to see it, so she went upstairs to the little TV, while I took over the big HD screen downstairs.

I opened a Coke. Popped some popcorn. Got ready for a good time. Had one, too. 40 minutes in, I was so entertained that I just had to pause the movie and run upstairs to tell Melissa something.

"Honey, remember how after we watched 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,' I decided that at least one out of every five movies should be set in Savannah?"

"Yes…"

"Well, now I think that one out of five should star Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman together. Oh, and there should be some overlap with the Savannah Rule."

Needless to say, at least once each movie night my wife looks at me funny.

Then again, am I really crazy, just because I'd like to see an Eastwood/Freeman movie set in Savannah? What'd be even better is if they were the oldest members of Michael Corleone's Georgia crew. And had lightsabers.

If you've seen "Baby" already, you know what happens about 2/3rds the way through. If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it for you. But I do know that the two most powerful movies I've seen in the last year ("Million Dollar Baby" and "Mystic River") were both directed by Eastwood. The man is good.

Anyway, I wasn't shocked by the Big Shocking Scene. Eastwood planted his clues in exactly the right places, and always in the context of the characters. What happens from there follows naturally, perfectly, dramatically, tragically. If "Baby" isn't the perfect feel-good sports movie, it's almost certainly the best feel-something sports movie.

Topping it off was Freeman's voiceover. Oftentimes, I find voiceovers distracting. Unless you're one of those people God talks to out loud all the time, you just don't hear voiceovers in real life – so I find they can remind me I'm just watching a flick. But Freeman's easy rumble sounds right anywhere. If your life could have a narrator, you'd probably choose Morgan if you could afford him.

The one surprise I didn't see coming was the nature of Freeman's voiceover. That little tidbit isn't revealed until the last line of the movie, and makes for the perfect capper.

Anything else of interest going on in the world? Hell if I know. I'll scan some headlines, sip a bit at my post-movie cocktail, and see if I can't find something.

Donuts. Is there anything they can't do?

Briant Erst emailed this story:

ROCKPORT, Mass. (Reuters) - An ice-cold tumbler of vodka garnished with two speared pearl onions made history on Tuesday as the first alcoholic drink sold since 1933 in the coastal town of Rockport, Massachusetts.

"It's a great day for Rockport," toasted a beaming Peter Beecham, who led the effort to lift the town's ban on the sale of alcohol. "And this," he added, raising his $7.50 glass of Grey Goose vodka on the rocks, "is very good."

Ah, the sweet taste of success.

Here's a head-scratcher from the New York Times:

A sudden and mysterious drop in China's oil consumption helped to push down the International Energy Agency's estimate on Wednesday of global demand for this year.

After growing 11 percent in 2003 and 15.4 percent last year, China's overall oil use declined 1 percent in the second quarter from the comparable quarter a year earlier, the agency said.

If China's economy really has stalled, then it's time to move an Aircraft Carrier Battle Group or four just east of Taiwan. Let me explain.

In a mature, liberal-market economy like ours, the economy grows because people do things they want to do, and enough of us do those things profitably to keep things movin' on up. Our government profits only to the extent that if feels safe spending our tax money.

In an immature, post-Communist economy like China's, the economy grows because the government has decided to let people be just free enough to do a few approved of things to keep things humming. That government profits to the extent that if forestalls the inevitable collapse, be it economic or political.

Of course, in unfree countries, political and economic collapse generally go together like Mao and little red books. And that's pretty much my whole point here.

China's communist leadership wants to have it both ways. They want the power (and money) that results from freedom. They also want the power (and more power) that comes from having, well, power.

In a mature, multiparty nation like ours, when things turn sour we can turn the bastards out. In an immature, single party nation like China… well, it isn't said that "the peasants are revolting" because they smell bad.

So long as China's economy is growing quickly and so long as it's growing quickly enough to find profitable private employment for all those unprofitable State jobs the government has to eliminate, then everyone is happy. The people have jobs and money, and so do the Communist Party bosses.

But what happens if China's economy tanks? Well, they'd probably do what most dictatorships do: Send in the tanks.

Usually, one of two groups gets attacked:

1) Some unpopular locals
2) Some unpopular neighbor country

And in that order, too. Hitler went after Germany's Jews long before he struck out at Poland. The Soviets dealt with their kulaks before establishing hegemony over Eastern Europe. When things are bad at home, you persecute some minority to keep The People happy. When that fails, you wage some foreign war to keep them distracted.

Now, here's a telling bit of trivia – China has been attacking their unpopular local people for months now. Attacks on Japanese merchants and businesses began in earnest back in April.

If - if - China's economy really is stalling, today's oil figures reflect things as they were starting back in April. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but that's one hell of a coincidence.

And when Beijing runs out of Japanese to run out of town? If history is any guide, then Taiwan will be the next target.

Of course, all of this speculation rests on a single report on a single-quarter decline in oil consumption. That kind of thing happens all the time to economies like ours, or Britain's, or Germany's. Also, considering that these days we really can't afford the distraction, I sincerely hope that things are all well and good in China.

But I'd feel even better knowing that Taiwan has kept its powder dry, and that the US Navy is rested enough for another surge.

Let's get something straight. There are only two issues I take seriously: The security of this country, and the liberty of its people. Anything else, I take with a cocktail. Or, as happens some days, I just shop the Victoria's Secret catalog.

So let me make a point I thought I'd made yesterday, but this time with a little more force and clarity. I wrote:

"The truth will out," it's said - and the WSJ argues that Rove merely helped it along. But do we really want the truth outed in intelligence matters? No matter the political cost, aren't these things best handled quietly if only for the peace of mind of other, better agents?

I don't care if Valerie Plame had a cover or not. I don't care if her husband was a lying prick. (Although, to his credit, he certainly seemed to know how to enjoy adult beverages in foreign countries on somebody else's dime.) I don't care if anyone had a secret agenda. I don't care if that agenda was at odds with Administration policy.

What I care about, first and foremost, is the security of this country during time of war. By extension, I care about our intelligence services being able to do their jobs. By further extention, I care about our intelligence officers not having to fear public reprisals.

Private reprisals? Certainly. Including getting fired? But of course. (And starting, I wish, with George Tennet on 9/12/2001.) However - no matter what the circumstances are, no matter who the players are, and no matter which party they belong to, these are matters to be settled privately.

America's intelligence community is already hobbled by shortsighted laws and Mr. Magoo rules. Some of them are asked even to put their lives on the line, and do so even when the odds (and Washington) are stacked against them.

Did Plame deserve what Rove seems to have leaked? Almost certainly. There are hundreds of other agents who don't deserve that kind of treatment - but who may now fear it.

That's bad for our intelligence community. That's bad for America.

We clear?

The guys over at the Wall Street Journal argue that

...Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.

"Thank you, Mr. Rove" is taking things a bit too far for my tastes.

Even if Rove didn't give out Valerie Plame's name (which appears, for now, to be the case), it also looks like he pointed a pretty bold arrow her way. That kind of leak is breaking the rules, and that's a bad thing.

Now, as I understand the law regarding intelligence officers, Karl Rove didn't do anything illegal. But was he right to leak? Or was he to be, as the WSF editors did, to be congratulated? My gut tells me no on both counts.

As a practical matter, leaking classified information has usually been treated as a matter of discretion for higher-ups - and Rove's actions might fall under that historical leeway.

Even if Plame wasn't covered by the law, and even if her husband was a lying ass, and even if Rove was acting within the tradition discretion accorded someone in his position... Rove's leak - at the very least - sent a bad message to other intelligence officers: "Toe the line or we'll out you."

Well, I don't see how that kind of thing can be good for "company" business.

"The truth will out," it's said - and the WSJ argues that Rove merely helped it along. But do we really want the truth outed in intelligence matters? No matter the political cost, aren't these things best handled quietly if only for the peace of mind of other, better agents?

Finally, my thoughts come down to this. Republicans have complained since 1975 that Congress gutted our human intelligence -- and it's a fair cop. Between Congressional meddling and Clinton rule-making, Republicans are right when they say our human intelligence resources have been gutted. But those complaints seem less justified - and more hypocritical - when a high-ranking Republican treats an agent's identity with anything less than perfect circumspection.

Man, I hate slow news days.

Busy day, but it was planned around the blog. There were some phone calls to make, some furniture to move, some painting prep to do. All in all, I figured six or seven hours of real work – leaving at least a couple hours for the kind of half-assed blogging readers here should be used to by now.

So what happened? Nothing. Nada. Nix. I read the headlines. I kept up with InstaPundit and Drudge and GoogleNews. And at the end of the day, I'd written squat, except for the S and the Q and the U and the A and the T.

What else happened? Not much. Ashley Kindergan's Gazette story on local bloggers (no link) got relegated to Page Five (sigh) of the Saturday (cough, gag) edition of the paper. On the other hand, I was described as "rakish," and, hey, cool.

Then again, slow news days are exactly what the doctor ordered. We've got a bombing in London, a war being openly fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, the same war being fought quietly in other places, an economy not even Alan Greenspan can understand, and… well, you get the idea. Given all that, it seems nicer somehow to not find anything to write about, rather than the usual blogging routine – which is to use global catastrophe for shameless self-promotion.

In fact, the only thing to grab my full attention the last couple days is my Search for the Perfect Pizza.

We got spoiled in London. We were there for 12 nights. Three of them were spent over at Perry Dehavilland's lovely home, drinking his booze and eating lovely dishes prepared by the even-lovelier Adrianna Cronin. Three others we dined at Luna Rossa on Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill. Before we went over there, I had a minor running joke. "What are you going to do in London?" people would ask. I'd reply, "Same as everyone else – look for good Italian food."

Well, we found it at Luna Rossa. And ever since, I've been trying to find it here in Colorado Springs. Let me tell you, it'd be easier to find a virgin in an MLB locker room. Growing up with easy access to The Hill in St Louis (you won't find better Italian food outside Italy), I got spoiled. Spending three nights at Luna Rossa only made things worse. Now, if a pizza doesn't come out of a wood-burning brick oven, with a thin, crunchy crust, and sauce that started off the day as Roma tomatoes still on the vine…

…Sigh…

…that kind of pizza just doesn't exist in my neck of the woods. Hell, it isn't even anywhere near the tibia.

I don't mean to sound bitter or cynical, but today I just can't help thinking that the world can keep on going to hell until I find a real marinara that I don't have to make myself. I've also been sketching out a brick oven, measuring where on the back patio it would fit, and sending emails to random Italian people asking what kind of wood burns the hottest and smokes the least.

I'm a man on a mission, you see.

Maybe Tuesday will be better. Maybe a horrible disaster will strike someplace, and I can write some fabulously bitter prose, trying to make sense of it all – taking just enough time away to provide you with the latest links to the latest stories covering the latest ickyness.

Or maybe I'll just find a good pizza.

Oh, this is great.

Couple of kids from the termite company came out today to treat my house. They just did the garage and crawl space because of the weather. We got home from work and discovered we had no hot water. I couldn't get the pilot to re-light, and when I checked out the heater, it looks like they banged against the pipes and shook one of them loose. The ground around the heater was saturated with water. And the little bastids took off like bats out of hell when I pulled up at the house at lunchtime (all the note on the door said was, "finished garage and crawl space").

I'll lean on the termite company to pay for it, but either way, it looks like I'll be needing a new water heater. Anybody have any suggestions for a natural gas model? With apologies to Hank Hill, we don't have propane service, and I'd rather not rewire for electric. Any experience with these tankless jobs?

Here's Christopher Hitchens in the Weekly Standard, on the July 7 bombings. The finale:

[F]rom now on, we must increasingly confront the fact that the war within Islam is also a war within Europe. It's highly probable that the assassins of 7 July are British born, as were several Taliban fighters in the first round in Afghanistan. And the mirror image also exists. Many Muslims take the side of civilization and many European fascists and Communists are sympathetic to jihad.

These are not the bright, clear lines that many people fondly imagine to be heritable from a heroic past. But the nature of the enemy is somewhat similar. Like the fascists that they are, the murderers boast that they love death more than we love life. They imagine that this yell of unreason is intimidating and impressive. We shall undoubtedly go forward and put these grave matters to the proof but, meanwhile: Death to them and Long Live London!

Have a hundred words to spare? They're needed over here.

This is interesting:

AL-QAEDA is secretly recruiting affluent, middle-class Muslims in British universities and colleges to carry out terrorist attacks in this country, leaked Whitehall documents reveal.

A network of “extremist recruiters” is circulating on campuses targeting people with “technical and professional qualifications”, particularly engineering and IT degrees.

Remember, the root cause of terrorism is poverty.

I'm hearing from friends in south Alabama and the Florida Panhandle that thus far, Dennis has done much less damage than anticipated. "Nothing like Ivan" is what I'm hearing from several people. That's no consolation to those who did get severe damage, though, and I'm sure there are plenty of them. The beaches in Destin and Walton County are said to be extremely eroded by the storm surge.

My folks (in Alabama) didn't even lose electricity, for once. After Opal in 1995, it was out for over a week.

William Rehnquist has reportedly just turned in his resignation letter.

Despite our two-month long cool, rainy spell here in Colorado Springs, it's looking like a long, hot summer.

New-to-me blogger Colin Samuels takes on Paul Krugman, stupid cops, and... well, just read it.

But here's a small hint: Somebody needs to put Krugman on double secret probation.

Is the "flypaper effect" working? According to data being (inadvertently) pimped by Mark "Kos" Zuniga and uncovered by James Joyner, it very well may be.

James did some fine work putting his post together - read it all. Kos, less so.

Back-Up Emergency Co-Blogger Will Collier can't blog right now, but he was able to email me this link:

Dennis is now the most intense June or July hurricane on record, beating out Hurricane Audrey of June 1957, which was a Category 4 storm with 145 mph winds and a central pressure of 946 mb at its peak. Audrey killed 390 people in Texas and Louisiana when it came ashore, making it the sixth most deadly U.S. hurricane on record.

Today will be the worst day in Cuba's modern history. Dennis is a worst-case hurricane following a worst-case path for the island. The storm is already punishing Cuba as it moves parallel to the island, subjecting much of the island to hurricane force winds and rainfall totals of 10 - 15 inches, and destroying much of the rich sugar cane fields and other crops. The situation will get much worse tonight when the storm makes landfall, pushing a storm surge of 20 feet or higher onto a long section of the coast. Dennis will pass near Havana, the most heavily populated part of the island. Although loss of life will be low thanks to Cuba's excellent civil defense system, the destruction of buildings will probably be the worst in Cuba's history. Building collapses are common in Cuba without having hurricane winds battering the cities. Dennis will damage or destroy hundreds of thousands of buildings, leaving a large percentage of Cuba's population homeless. Lack of fresh water and electricity will be serious problems, and Cuba's political stability could well be threatened by the scope of what is likely to be its greatest disaster in modern history.

Florida's poorer Panhandle communities are in trouble, too.

Solidarity: FUCK YEAH!

...Roger Ebert practically fisked the new Fantastic Four movie:

Are these people complete idiots? The entire nature of their existence has radically changed, and they're about as excited as if they got a makeover on "Oprah." The exception is Ben Grimm, as the Thing, who gets depressed when he looks in the mirror. Unlike the others, who look normal, except when actually exhibiting superpowers, he looks like -- well, he looks like the Hulk, just as the Human Torch looks like the Flash, and the Invisible Woman has some of the same powers as Storm in "X-Men."

Is this the road company? Thing clomps around on his Size 18 boulders and feels like an outcast until he meets a blind woman named Alicia (Kerry Washington) who loves him, in part because she can't see him. But the Thing looks like Don Rickles crossed with Mt. Rushmore; he has a body that feels like a driveway and a face with crevices you could hide a toothbrush in. Alicia tenderly feels his face with her fingers, like blind people often do while falling in love in the movies, and I guess she likes what she feels. Maybe she's extrapolating.

That last line might just be the funniest thing Ebert has ever written. Don't get it? Think about it.

NOTE: I don't much care for Ebert's politics, but we have very similar movie tastes. He's one of the few critics I can usually trust.

Niall Ferguson writes that when he "heard the news of Thursday's events, my first thought was that people have bombed London before, and some have lived to regret it."

You'll especially enjoy his conclusion.

Ralph Peters explains what the terrorists lost yesterday:

* Instead of intimidating the the heads of state at Gleneagles — from South Africa's Thabo Mbeki to Mexico's Vicente Fox — the terrorists reminded them all of the need for unity. If you catch a rerun of Tony Blair reading their joint statement, study the worried face of Jacques Chirac. He knows it could have been Paris.

* The terrorists expect a repeat of Madrid, with British support for free Iraq collapsing. But Londoners aren't madrileños. During the Blitz, they withstood massive Nazi terror attacks night after night. They've endured decades of IRA bombings. The English intelligentsia will find a way to blame America, but the British people will not yield to terror.

* They've spoiled the party for all those sympathizers in the West who had turned their attention away from Abu Ghraib for five minutes to demand more aid for Africa. As President Bush pointed out, the terrorists disrupted a summit focused on poverty. Africans watching events unfold will realize that their continent stands to lose far more than London did. Even a rock star or two might figure this one out.

* Despite the drama of the attacks, it's revealing that the terrorists couldn't do more. 7/7 wasn't 9/11. It wasn't even Madrid. Not every attack can be prevented, but Britain's tough anti-terror efforts clearly limited what the terrorists could achieve.

As always with Peters, read the whole thing.

What follows might not prove to be a full frontal fisking, but certain things have to be said. Also, my humor isn't exactly in the best of spirits right now. I made some fast and fine friends in London six weeks ago, and I spent the first half of the day worrying about their safety.

That said, here's Joshua Micah Marshall on the 7/7 attack:

First a thought, or perhaps an affirmation. The only response to acts of indiscriminate murder such as those today in London is implacable resistance -- and such resistance means not only retaliation against those responsible and guarding against all possible similar acts, but implacable resistance to terrorists' desire and aim to disrupt the rhythm of our daily lives and our civilization itself.

Amen, brother. Joshua is a good liberal, and I don't mean that as an oxymoron or a putdown. As I wrote in a well-received essay last year, "We didn't beat the Soviets by establishing our own Five Year Plans, and we won't beat the children of oppression by becoming oppressors." Life must go on – and as exactly as before as we can manage. Josh and I have no disagreement here. After 9/11, we cleaned up, mourned our dead, and we survivors got back as best we could to living the lives we once had. Britons will, I think, do the same.

Today we've had a reminder of what we face. But let's be clear what we're seeing. In more venues than I'd care to admit I've seen posts and speechifying which say, in so many words: 'For all those who've gone wobbly on Iraq, see, you got complacent! But terrorism is real!'

Whoa. Maybe that first paragraph was nothing but perfunctory filler. Josh gave exactly 62 words of condolence and "affirmation" to liberty and Londoners before bait-and-switching to an attack on the Iraq War.

Also notice that Josh has set up a straw man. Yesterday's attack, his straw man says, was due to "complacency." And yet as the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns have proven (even if you don't agree with one or both of them), the Anglo-American policy is anything but complacent.

Well –

Guess what, Josh? The bad guys shoot back. Even in a cause as noble as the D-Day landings, the bad guys shot back. So effectively, in fact, that we suffered 10,000 casualties that day. Let me repeat: We suffered 10,000 casualties that day. The bad guys shot back in North Korea, too – to the tune of 36,000 dead Americans. They shot back in Vietnam for twelve years, until we finally got sick of the whole mess and let the bad guys take over.

Guess what else, Josh? Today, the frontline crosses Madrid and London, and it crosses New York City, too. We don't have twelve years to dick around, and we don't have the luxury of pulling out. We have to take the offensive.

We have to go on the offense. Cities are burning. We have to take the initiative, and we have to try and keep it - even after a terrible day like 7/7/05, when the bad guys shot and hit the center ring.

The real threat we face isn't in Iraq. And being in Iraq isn't diminishing it. The real threat is painfully low-tech but yet highly-lethal acts of terror committed -- in most cases -- in the great metropoles of the West. And I suspect we'll find, as we did in 9/11, that the immediate perpetrators were neither people who were minding their own business before we invaded Iraq nor even people who have their main base in the core countries of the Arab Middle East, but rather recruits from the disaffected and deracinated diaspora of Muslim immigrants in the West -- a tiny fraction out of the millions who are making their homes in our country and in those of Europe.

Josh seems to have forgotten that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia and not from the Muslim diaspora. However, he's correct on the larger point that the main threat is to our cities and those of our allies. On the other hand, I don't recall the Iraq War being sold as a way to diminish the bombing threat. Rather, we were told it was better to deal with Iraq before it became a more-typical nation-state type threat. Now, reasonable people may reasonably disagree over whether our actions were correct, even in hindsight. But hindsight hardly bestows upon Mr. Marshall the power to rewrite history.

Certainly, it's no accident that the two acts of terror in Europe in the last three years happened in America's two main Iraq war allies, though I agree with Ed Kilgore's point that the proximate message here is to the G8. That notwithstanding, what I take from all this is the fundamental irrelevance of Iraq to what happened today.

If Iraq is irrelevant, then why bring it up on a day when our thoughts should be aimed "like a laser" towards Britain?

The threat of terrorism is very real, especially in major cities. But with respect to the folks who want to lasso this into a pillar of support for a disastrous policy in Iraq, frankly, we already knew terrorism was real. Most people are sick to death of our bumbling in Iraq because it's distracted us from actually defending ourselves.

Now that's just silly. The Army is in Iraq, not our local police forces. The CIA is focused on Iraq, not the FBI. The Air Force is patrolling Iraqi skies, not the Department of Homeland Security. Is Marshall really advocating we use the military and our foreign intelligence service to protect us and watch over us here at home?

If that's the case, then JMM is advocating a surrender of civil liberties that would make Pat "Round Up the Darkies" Buchanan blush.

The immediate answer to this is to hunt down the people immediately responsible, root out the primarily-non-state terror networks that support, plan and make these attacks possible and start getting about serious homeland defense -- port security, rail security, nuclear power plant security.

I'm going to repeat myself here, because it's a point I cannot repeat enough: Sometimes the bad guys shoot back. We're at war, and getting shot at is half of what war entails. And who says we aren't serious about homeland defense? Britain suffered an attack yesterday. Spain suffered an attack last year, and Indonesia before them. All bad jokes aside, we've been doing pretty well here at home since 9/11. I don't mean to preclude another massive attack on our soil, but events the last three years have shown that al Qaeda thinks other nations are easier marks than ours. By that measure, has the Bush Administration really been such a failure?

On that last count, what we've accomplished in the US over the last few years has been painfully inadequate, largely because of our focus on nation-states that have only a tenuous connection to this threat -- a lot of lies, mumbojumbo, and scurrilous and dark motives by the usual suspects notwithstanding.

Remember, Iraq is "irrelevant" – except for when it isn't.

Finally, I think we should look very closely at what actually happened today. It took a lot of coordination and it took a lot of lives. But it was extremely low-tech. It didn't take mad scientists or proliferated technology. And in a way that makes it all the harder to prevent.

So Iraq is irrelevant after all?

Beside the threat we face from the bacillus of Islamic terror, President Bush has created a great running wound on the whole country in the form of the mess he's created in Iraq -- a wound bleeding blood, treasure and a scourge of national division which is now impossible to ignore but which we can ill-afford.

Oops – my bad. Iraq is way relevant. But I gotta tell you, my neck is killing me right now.

Even now his cheerleaders are trying to enlist this outrage in the battle to prop up their folly in Iraq.

Um… which cheerleaders? No, really - I want to know. I've ignored the "nuke'em all and don't even let God sort'em out" blogs today (as I always do), so I haven't read anything from anyone saying that London and Iraq are somehow connected. Actually, I have – but it's all been stuff on sites far, far to the left of Talking Points Memo. Point your finger the other way, please, Josh.

If anything our folly in Iraq has made the immediacy and intensity of this basic threat worse. But let's not be blinded by our outrage at that folly or distracted from thinking concretely, together and resolutely, how we defend our innocents from such religious fanaticism and the violence it spawns.

Allow me to paraphrase:

Iraq is sooooooooo relevant, no matter what I said before. So, so, so, so, so relevant that we're all in danger if we don't pull out right now and turn the place over to the radicals from Syria and Saudi Arabia who are literally dying to take over the place.

Sorry about that last graf, Josh - that was rude of me. I didn't mean to put words in your mouth while your foot was in there.

Today, I didn't write a single word about Iraq. I didn't use today's deaths to further my chickenhawk agenda. Today, my thoughts and words were with my friends - and with millions of strangers - in London.

Joshua Micah Marshall took a different path. Even though on many issues I'm as lefty a liberal as he is, right now Josh has me wondering if "good liberal" isn't an oxymoron after all.

Or in the broader sense, maybe what Marshall wrote today is relevant – unless, of course, it isn't.

If I have the energy - and drink one glass less of wine than is left in the open bottle - then you'll have a brand spanking new fisking here later tonight.

Or maybe if I switch from less wine to more vodka.

UPDATE: Smart guy that I am sometimes, I switched to vodka. If you aren't wearing your VodkaPundit Decoder ring, "switched to vodka" decrypts to "I started the fisk already."

Of course, it also means exactly what I said. You can't have a fisk without a martini, my friend.

Richard Combs has a stronger stomach than I do. While I was looking at bloody pictures from London, he was reading the Democratic Underground.

And, no, I wasn't trying to be funny or ironic.

From ABC News:

U.S. authorities tell ABC News that British police have recovered two unexploded bombs from the scene of the terror attacks in London.

In addition, British investigators say that parts of timing devices have been recovered from the blast scene that would have been used to detonate an explosive device. This could provide evidence that would help determine who was behind the attacks, sources told ABC News.

Uncropped photos of London's bloody BMA building can be seen here, here, and here.

Tim Peters has some thoughts on the London attack:

One of the root causes of terrorism has not and is not being addressed either by the MSM or by the G-8. That's Saudi Arabia and it's financing of these terrorists. Despite all the protestations to the contrary by the Saudis and averyone else, including Bush, Saudi is the main funder and supporter of AQ and it's international terrorist network(s). When will we acknowledge the obvious and deal with it?

Good question. Got one I can answer?

The AQ network in Iraq also executed a kidnapped Egyptian envoy today. They're learning a little since they didn't video his beheading. Can anyone at this point even jokingly sympathize with their "cause" anymore?

Well, sure - hasn't George Galloway pretty much already done so? Although I haven't (yet) read any idiots asking "Why did they bomb London, where so many anti-war people live? They should have gone after Midland, Texas or some evil Red State place."

I am willing to bet a bottle of the best vodka around that after the perfunctory professions of horror and detestation, the left, both here and abroad will be blaming Bush and any allies we have for bringing this upon themselves. Just give it about 5 days to a week and see.

Five days? Try five minutes. Head over to DailyKos (no link, sorry) to see what I mean.

I just hope that this horrible tragedy wakes up many Britons who were kidding themselves about this war and the nature of their enemy. Appeasement is no solution. As Churchill said and Steyn reiterated, "appeasment is just hoping that the crocodile eats you last."

Amen.

Hitch:

It will be easy in the short term for Blair to rally national and international support, as always happens in moments such as this, but over time these gestural moments lose their force and become subject to diminishing returns. If, as one must suspect, these bombs are only the first, then Britain will start to undergo the same tensions—between a retreat to insularity and clannishness of the sort recently seen in France and Holland, and the self-segregation of the Muslim minority in both those countries—that will start to infect other European countries as well. It is ludicrous to try and reduce this to Iraq. Europe is steadily becoming a part of the civil war that is roiling the Islamic world, and it will require all our cultural ingenuity to ensure that the criminals who shattered London's peace at rush hour this morning are not the ones who dictate the pace and rhythm of events from now on.

Read the whole thing.

Buddy Brian Dubravac emailed this pair of pictures, the first one from London after the attack. The second I assume you've seen before.

Eerie.

Joe Goat emails:

REPORT: One UK Homicide Bomber Was Recent GITMO Release

7 July 2005; 12:54 ET: Preliminary reports from a source inside the Pentagon indicate that one of the operatives involved in this morning's bombings in London was recently released from the prison at Guantanamo.

The link is here, but it's not a permalink. Scroll down to the second (for now) story.

If true, then the Pentagon has made a terrible mistake. And even if it isn't true, I hope those anti-Gitmo yammerheads will finally take a hint.