Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The trailer looks pretty excellent.

Edward Jay Epstein

Notices this little tidbit in his piece on Blu-Ray technology:

In addition, the Blu-Ray will allow Sony to reissue its movie titles in high definition. In fact, part of the stated justification for acquiring MGM was the profits to be realized from reissuing the 4,100 films in MGM's library in the Blu-Ray format.

In the coming hi-def DVD format war, I've been banking on Toshiba's HD-DVD over Sony's Blu-Ray, but Epstein figures differently:

I predict that the Blu-Ray will prevail for three reasons. First, Sony has a critical mass of movies that it can release on Blu-Ray. Aside from its own titles, Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Lions Gate have agreed to release their titles on Blu-Ray. Next, almost all of the leading computer manufacturers, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple, are committed to using Blu-Ray. So, if a studio wants its high-definition DVDs to be playable on personal computers—or for that matter on PlayStation 3—it will have to issue them in the Blu-Ray format. Finally, the situations of Sony and Toshiba are not symmetrical. For Sony, the Blu-Ray is an integral part of its overall strategy. For Toshiba, the HD-DVD is just another product they manufacture. If the company reached an accommodating deal on licensing fees, it could also make money by manufacturing the Blu-Ray DVDs.

I'm convinced.

Matt Labash, Hottest Off-Air

Second place? It feels like first.

An Open letter to Terrell Owens

From Galley Friend B.W., a letter to TO from a "little boy" named Jeremy:

All I want is for the Eagles to win the Super Bowl. Before you came, the Eagles couldn’t even get to the Super Bowl. Then you came, and we were the best Eagles team I had ever seen. We got to the Super Bowl and almost won. You were awesome! I decided that with just a little more practice this year, we could win it all.

But then my dad told me that you might not be on the team anymore. I was really upset and cried. Then I watched the news and saw that you were crying too! This made me cry even more! You said you needed to feed your family. I asked my mom if maybe we could help feed your family so that you would stop crying and help us win the Super Bowl. My mom told me that the Eagles gave you over 9 million dollars last year and that you can afford to buy your own food. I told her that you were crying and maybe you had spent it all already. She told me you were going to get 3 million more dollars this year. I asked her how much a hot dog costs. That’s my favorite food! She told me they were 25 cents unless you buy them from the Eagles in which case they cost 5 dollars. I asked if she thought you could afford to buy enough hot dogs to feed your family . . . I asked her how many hot dogs you could buy and she told me to figure it out myself. I had to get my calculator to do it and the answer was 12 million hot dogs! That’s a lot of hot dogs! But then I was thinking maybe you buy your hot dogs from the Eagles in which case they cost 5 dollars. So then I was thinking maybe you had more than 12 million people in your family. Do you? We have 4. 5 if you count my turtle. His name is Donovan McTurtle.

Then I saw you doing sit-ups in front of a mall. My dad told me that it was your house. So I asked my dad if 12 million people could fit in that house and he said “probably”.

Yeah, we start them young in Philly.

Those Drunken, Whoring Saudis

This exploration of Saudi Arabia's position vis-a-vis women is profance and will no doubt offend many people. It's also terribly funny:

Around the 1950s, about the time oil was being discovered in the Gulf, many Muslim nations were relatively liberal by today's standards. Alcohol flowed freely, women went uncovered and there was lively public debate about "Ataturk's way", the separation of Islam and state, modernisation, and dialogue with the West. The Middle East seemed to be going in the right direction.

Saudi oil changed all that. Why oh why, critics ask, was oil found there? Why not somewhere more conducive to global progress, like Taiwan or Holland? But no, Saudi it was – the home of Wahhabi Islam, the most fiercely anti-Western, autocratic, intolerant and warlike of all Islamic cults. The combined possession of oil and Mecca quickly gave Saudis, previously an insignificant mob of goat-herders and woman-beaters, delusions of grandeur. Having no education other than what the mullahs told them, they didn't understand the world beyond the campfire, and they didn't like it.

Oil meant that the Saudis now had the means to change the world to more resemble them. The mountain would come to Mohammed. Their mission, their warped religion told them, was to change the world to be like them, except that they had Mecca and would thus be the most important women-beating goat-herders in the world.

Dail Kos and the DLC

There's no real way to put a nice gloss on this:

Ultimately, this is the modern DLC -- an aider and abettor of Right-wing smear attacks against Democrats. They make the same arguments, use the same language, and revel in their attacks on those elements of the Democratic Party that seem to cause them no small embarrassment.

Two more weeks, folks, before we take them on, head on.

No calls for a truce will be brooked. The DLC has used those pauses in the past to bide their time between offensives. Appeals to party unity will fall on deaf ears (it's summer of a non-election year, the perfect time to sort out internal disagreements).

We need to make the DLC radioactive. And we will. With everyone's help, we really can. Stay tuned.

Of course, with everyone's help, Markos Moulitsas was going to make Howard Dean president.

Bonus: I notice that the New York Times seems to be intermittently running this ad at the bottom of the Daily Kos RSS feed. They sure know their target demographic!

From the Blog-Crush

Too good:

The internet is world of magical possibilities where all your dreams come true, and for some of you, another one of those gets crossed off the list today. Cause here's a video of Eva Longoria kissing another girl, from a movie called Carlitas Secret. And just to illustrate how weird Hollywood is, it's from 2004. So Eva was doing movies with the production value of a snuff film 30 seconds before becoming one of the most recognized women in the world.

Lost Technologies

How great is this list of C-Net's favorite lost technologies? Hint: #2 is Kozmo.com.

Labash in Mexico

If you haven't already, check out Matt Labash's immensely good piece on immigration, North of the Border. It's a work of quiet, serious genius. The best thing Labash has written in a couple years. And that's saying something.

Media Alert

I just got the following email alert from one of Washington's foremost conservative women's organizations, the Independent Women's Forum:

Barbara Comstock will be a guest this morning on WDAY radio's "Hot Talk with Scott Hennen." Barbara will be discussing the looming battle in the Senate over the president's nomination of Judge John G. Roberts to the United States Supreme Court.

Network: WDAY (Fargo, ND)

Show: Hot Talk with Scott Hennen

Time: 11:45 a.m. ET

Date: August 19

IWF Personality: Barbara Comstock

To listen live this morning please click here.

Just thought I'd pass it on; if you hurry, you can probably still catch the end of the interview.

Get Your Fresh CulturePulp!

Mike Russell goes to the Drive-In.

Coming Soon to Law & Order

Excellent story about Judge Joseph Force Crater, who's been missing for 75 years:

Crater —who vanished mysteriously 75 years ago—was killed by a city cop and his cab-driver brother and buried under the boardwalk in Coney Island, according to a handwritten letter left behind by a Queens woman who died earlier this year.

"Good Time Joe" Crater was a dapper, 41-year-old judge known for his dalliances with showgirls and his ties to corruption-ridden Tammany Hall—until he got into a cab in Midtown Manhattan one evening in 1930 and disappeared . . .

Read the rest of the article for the amazing story of the days leading up to his disappearance and this very sweet tidbit about Crater's wife:

Crater's wife remembered his disappearance every year for the rest of her life by visiting a bar in Greenwich Village on Aug. 6.

She'd sit by herself, order two drinks and down one—after saying, "Good luck Joe, wherever you are."

Hope on the Democratic Side

At a moment where Markos Moulitsas is coyloy suggesting that Joe Scarborough might be a murderer (a real murderer, mind you, not a metaphorical murderer, the way all Republicans are), it is reassuring to read Ed Kilgore's smart thoughts on why America should not have a fixed date of withdrawal from Iraq and ideas on what a good withdrawal should look like:

1) Publicly announce the United States is abandoning any plans for permanent military bases in Iraq to make it absolutely clear our presence is temporary.

2) Publicly announce benchmarks that will trigger withdrawal of American troops, including approval of a constitution and election of a permanent government; specific levels of trained Iraqi troops and other security forces; and renunciation of demands by major Iraqi communities that are incompatible with a stable and pluralistic regime (e.g., Kurdish right to secede, Sunni Arab privileges in a strong central government, Iranian-style Islamic Republic).

3) Initiate direct negotiations with insurgents.

4) Renounce any public or private-sector U.S. designs for control of Iraqi natural resources

5) Launch an internationalized reconstruction effort which explicitly renounces U.S. exclusive privileges, with special attention to assistance from Sunni Arab countries

The goal would be to leave Iraq with a half-decent chance of maintaining a sustainable government without civil war, foreign domination, or a permament base of operations and recruitment for al Qaeda. The main strategy would be to convince, through carrots and sticks, the Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shi'a to step back from their maximalist demands, while creating trans-communal political and security institutions. The philosophy would be to dramatically invest Iraqis with complete responsibility for their common future. And while they would not provide a guaranteed, fixed date for final U.S. withdrawal, the benchmarks would immediately create tests for Iraqis that would either lead to greater stability in the country . . .

If only Kilgore got as much attention as Kos.

Dogtown, Maryland

Is this going too far?

Guests of DogTown each stay in a heated and air conditioned private house with a bed or cot. Each house has paneled walls, a padded tile floor, and two windows that look out to the common exercise area. Music is provided, and TV is available for an additional fee. Some of the houses even have skylights!

Don't miss the pictures. Courtesy of Galley Friend A.L.

Steyn on Sheehan

He's very, very good:

Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing.

His next line is the really, really mean part:

I get many emails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes as if she’s auditioning for a minor supporting role in Sex and the City. The infantilisation of the military promoted by the Left is deeply insulting to America’s warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd’s purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that ‘of course’ they ‘support our troops’, because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

For the last year or so, I had been under the impression, thanks to a tip from a former colleague usually well-versed in such matters, that in the great divide over Irish whiskeys, Catholics supposedly drink Bushmills while Protestants prefer Jameson. But as of yesterday, it was pointed out to me that I have it reversed, since Jameson is distilled in Cork while Bushmills comes from the north. No doubt Galley readers, drinking connoisseurs all of you, can confirm this. But if true, it will be hard to switch labels.

For as the saying goes, Once you go Black Bush, you never go...

No Joke

I just turned on The Golden Girls and found a baby-faced Don Cheadle guest-starring.

Who knew.

Update: With Cheech Marin! In the same episode!

Fatwa Frenzy

Joe Loconte has the line of the day on the subject of recent anti-terrorist fatwas:

Others complain that the rulings don't come from the centers of gravity of the Islamic world--from authorities in Mecca or legal scholars at al-Azhar University in Cairo. Mamoun Fandy, a fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, puts it dryly: "A fatwa from Brooklyn or the National Press Club--that's not where Muslims go to get their fatwas."

I imagine a sign over a mosque in The Simpsons proclaiming "Where Muslims go to get their fatwas."

Kos on Scarborough

More from the most powerful blogger in America:

As a reminder, Scarborough was a Florida congressman who cheated on his wife and ultimately led to his divorce (and unexpected resignation in 2001). That part is just typical hypocrisy from a "family values" Republican. This part isn't:

Around the time of the Condit/Levi craziness, another congressional intern/aide died under mysterious circumstances -- Lori Klausutis. The press generally ignored it for obvious reasons -- her boss was a Republican. Congressman Scarborough, to be exact. This summary is from a Wikipedia entry Scarborough successfully got deleted:

Nearly two months after announcing his resignation, on July 10, 2001, one of Scarborough's aides, Lori Klausutis, was found dead in the congressman's office in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. The official cause of death was a heart failure, although her initial autopsy suggested severe fractures in the skull. The investigation was never pursued further, and Scarborough was never implicated in Klausutis' death. Two suspects, Theopholis and Steve Salmon were initially questioned by police. Both men have been released, but are still considered "persons of interest".

My bet is that there's nothing libelous here, but surely this goes far, far beyond the bounds of any conceivable notion of propriety, no? I mean, do elected Democratic officials really want to associate themselves with this?

Separated at Birth?

I'm sure others have noticed this, but don't they look an awful lot alike?

Entertainment or News?

TVNewser catched Katie Couric in a small, but telling faux pas. Puffing a guest on the Today Show, Couric introduced Donny Deutsch as being the host of a "highly-rated" CNBC show. I'm sure she didn't mean anything by this--it's like Jay Leno introducing Ben Affleck as a "big star."

But the facts are a little inconvenient. As TVNewswer points out, the previous night Deutsch's show grabbed 54,000 total viewers. That's a pretty low rating, even by garbage cable standards.

If Couric were Jay Leno, no one would care, but isn't Today supposed to be run out of the news, not the entertainment, division?

Hugh Hewitt points us to this James Lileks piece, which is incredibly funny, even by his own standards:

According to the hard left's script, Israel was created when some Europeans (hisssss) invaded the sovereign nation of Palestine, even though we all know the Jewish homeland is somewhere outside Passaic, N.J. Then for no reason Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza -- which for some reason had not been set up as New Palestine by the Egyptians and the Jordanians, but never mind -- and made everyone stand in line and get frisked. Those who joined the line in '67 are just getting through now. Evil Zionists. . . .

The companies the church wishes to pressure include Caterpillar, which makes bulldozers purchased by the Israelis for the sole purpose of knocking down innocent homes of gentle lamb herders, and Motorola, which among other things sells night-vision goggles that give the Israeli Defense Forces an unfair advantage over people who want to smuggle in bombs to encourage the social-justice dialogue.

Lost Predictions

If you're a Lost junkie (I'm not), you might get a charge out of these theories about the show from the cast.

Beldar's Big Loss

Beldar apparently hasn't gotten the memo yet: In a trial you can't judge success by how the jury votes--you need to judge success every day.

And it sounds to me that, since the expert witnesses were stacked against him, he totally beat the spread.

Envy

I just finished Karl Zinsmeister's Combat Zone, his real-life stories of troops in Iraq. Zinsmeister is the editor of The American Enterprise, so there's no real shock that he would have reported and written a story like this. The twist is, it's a comic book..

Penciled by Dan Jurgens, it's a pretty gorgeous graphic novel--imagine CulturePulp, sent abroad, and done up big and glossy.

I can't recommend Combat Zone enough.

Super-Secret Obsessions

This entertainment story contains so many plots and subjects that it could be an Altman film. Although ostensibly just a puff about Fiona Apple's new album, Extraordinary Machine, it's also about:

* The intersection of the internet and art

* The bizarre ego economics of the recording industry

* A Deep-Throat-style whodunnit

Also, it touches on legal semantics. While Apple's album is just now in stores, 11 of the songs from it surfaced online nearly a year ago:

Many of them posted links to the MP3s songs on their personal web pages. Others released the entire album -- including some homespun album cover art -- over the Bittorrent file-sharing network.

Nadja Dee Tanaka of Seattle posted all 11 of the "Extraordinary Machine" MP3s on her Web site. . . .

Tanaka begrudgingly took the links down after receiving a notice from the Recording Industry Association of America.

"I was scared. I was angry," Tanaka said.

She might have been a bit confused as well. At the time it was made, no one would confirm Apple had even made the recordings, much less delivered them to the label.

If no new Apple material existed, what were downloaders being asked to stop downloading?

And it remains unclear if the RIAA went after the original album leaker with the same vigor it went after Tanaka and other Apple fans . . .

Bonus Obsessive Angle: Since the 11 tracks appeared online a year ago, Apple has split with her long-time producer, Jon Brion. Brion used to produce Aimee Mann. Mann's husband is Michael Penn and both of them have worked closely in the past with movie director Paul Thomas Anderson. Who was once (and may still be, for all I know) Fiona Apple's quite serious beau.

What could this all mean for future collaborations between Mann, Penn, and Anderson? If only there was a high-brow version of Us Weekly.

Lefty-Blogs and Big Papi

A commenter on yesterday's Electoral-Based Community post has a very perceptive point:

The point spread comment is telling in another way: political partisanship has become as fundamentally irrational as rooting for your team in sports. One of the joys of sports rooting is saying "Ortiz stinks!" when clearly as a rational matter he does the opposite of stink. But the localizing of all problems in this country with the rival political party is equivalent to actually believing Ortiz stinks just because he is on the other team. The Dem blogger litmus test which focuses so much on hating the Pres and the Republican party is about as constructive for the country as beginning a sports discussion with a red Sox fan by asseting that Ortiz stinks; it contains not only a false premise, it precludes anything approaching dialogue, compromise or consensus. that's no harm when sports are the issue, but the ascendence of this type of thinking/strategy in politics means that we are in danger of having a society being run by the "face-painters" among us. That's not good for anybody.

Update: It is "Papi," of course, not "Poppy." What am I, John F. Kerry?

Sports Editor, INQ. is a blog run by Jim Jenks, the sports editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. For those interested in such things.

Following the Bloggers Off the Cliff?

Over at the Swing State Project we learn that Bob Brigham--the fellow who wants Democrats to "stop judging success on Election Day"--just had dinner with John Podesta and a Democratic governor (Brian Schweitzer).

And you can guess who was giving advice to whom.

Kos Kuotes

This smart blogger has kept a running list of quotes from Daily Kos that should be instructive to any mainstream Democrat wanting to know about the site.

Harry Potter Update

Galley Friend C.M.O. has this interesting theory about the vile Professor Umbridge:

She's not that competent, true--but look at who she targeted to kick out of the castle: Trelawney. What is Voledemort trying to do in Book 5? Get the prophecy. He can get it through Trelawney if he can get her out of the castle, where she has been protected by Dumbledore for 15 years. I don't think that's a coincidence. And notice what a fit Umbridge throws when she is stopped from kicking Trelawney out of the castle--Dumbledore says she may be able to sack Trelawney but Trelawney can stay in the castle and Dolores is NOT HAPPY about that one. Why? I think because she's just been thwarted in her effort to help Voldemort get the prophecy. (She also targets Hagrid, who is one of Dumbledore's most faithful people. Of course, he's also a half-breed, so that could explain it as well.) Note also that the first time he had detention, Harry's scar burned when he looked at Umbridge, and we never hear any explanation for why that is. And, Umbridge is a big fan of the Slytherins, especially Malfoy, and she hates half-breeds. Definitely Voldemort-like. I think she is his highest-placed spy at the Ministry.

Pretty convincing.

I think I was one of five Republicans troubled by President Bush's landing on the Lincoln back in 2003, but this story positively creeps me out.

Is there any conceivable reason for a Russian head of state to be on a bomber which is firing test missiles? I mean, any reason that isn't very, very worrisome?

Ripped from the Headlines

The Smoking Gun has a wild picture up. An inmate in Florida hired what he thought was a contract killer to off his wife. It was actually a police sting. They staged photos of his wife's "execution."

Wasn't this an SVU episode?

The Electoral-Based Community

Responding to Dean Barnett's piece on lefty-blogs' new litmus test, lefty blogger Bob Brigham contributes this bit of perfection. First, Brigham quotes Barnett's piece as saying:

In the aftermath of a shocking election night, one that was widely described by left-wing bloggers as "colossal" and "tidal," Bill Schneider bestowed his "Play of the Week" award on Brigham and his peers. The only downside from the Democrat party's perspective is the inconvenient fact that Hackett lost.

Brigham then responds:

No, we won. It was a 70-30 district, we beat the spread by a healthy margin. Democrats need to stop judging success on Election Day, we need to judge success every day.

Get that? Politics now has a handicap, like golf or bowling. Stop judging success by how many votes you get! Start judging it by, uh, other stuff! (Preferably non-falsifiable stuff, please.)

I'd make more fun of this, but I'm a Philadelphia sports fan and I understand this psychosis all too well. In my heart I know that the Sixers shellacked the Lakers in the 2001 Finals, even if they didn't--technically--"win" the "championship."

Iron Mike, Porn, Jenna Jameson

Oh just click this link already. Nothing I can tell you about the story could possibly make it sound more interesting, could it?

Fine, I'll give you a tidbit from Brian Moore's excellent piece:

Tyson told a correspondent for Britain’s Zoo magazine that he’d chatted with “a gentleman called Jimmy who’s involved with Jenna Jameson. They (sic) said they were interested in getting me involved in the adult film industry.” . . .

Tyson’s sexual appetite is gargantuan--he’s like King Henry VIII at a Shoney’s – so working in porn would be a sort of reverse busman’s holiday for him.

Hollywood on 9/11

A further indication that Hollywood may not be as in love with terrorism as some would suggest: we now have word that Paul Greengrass is going to direct a film based on Flight 93.

This seems, to me, an incredibly seductive, but risky project. While I hope that Greengrass does well with this picture, the event itself is so big and frought with dramatic tension that it's difficult to imagine a movie which, at this point, could do it justice.

If I were a filmmaker looking to do a 9/11 movie, I might examine this amazing story from USA Today about how the FAA landed 4,500 planes in 4 hours on September 11.

It's not nearly as sexy as Flight 93--in many ways it's a story about the dog who didn't bark. But it's a relatively unknown corner of 9/11, it's packed with its own, very real, tension, and it would allow you to come at an event which is not yet wholly digested at an off-angle.

(Mind you, all of these factors would also argue for the Oliver Stone project about the rescue at Ground Zero--if you had, say David Lynch directing, instead of Stone.)

You know you want it: The latest Snakes on a Plane update.

Liberal Courage

Repeat after me: The Daily Kos is Democratic, but Democrats are not the Daily Kos. The Bull Moose has a courageous post on Israel and Cindy Sheehan which, I suspect, represents the broad mainstream of Democratic sentiment. Not that you would ever know it from reading the left-wing blogs or watching the media coverage.

No, the only time you ever see proof that the majority of Democrats are more like the Moose than the Kos is when you look at election results.

Mick's Signals

Much to my disappointment, the upcoming Rolling Stones album A Bigger Bang does include the track "Sweet Neo Con." And despite earlier reports that it wasn't specifically targeted towards Bush, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse makes clear that it's hard to miss the message:

You call yourself a Christian / I call you a hypocrite / You call yourself a patriot / I think you're full of shit... / It's liberty for all / democracy's our style / unless you are against us / then it's prison without a trial.

But who knows, maybe the rest of the album is nice.

If you hate blogs as much as I do--and I promise that you don't--it's good to acknowledge when they do things well. This exchange between Patterico and Rick Hasen began over an op-ed Hasen wrote for the Los Angeles Times and then migrated over to their respective blogs. It's high-toned, smart, civil, and, I would argue, vastly superior to any sort of analogue one might find in other media formats. Advantage: Blogosphere.

Sigh.

Props to British Airways

I narrowly escaped the chaos that ensued over the weekend with the British Airways strike. Our plane actually left Heathrow on Sunday and was still on time. The flight crew apologized for what they called an "industrial action." And to make amends for the lack of food on board (the caterers are the ones on strike), we each received £10 vouchers. We could use them anywhere in the airport. And so, like the winners in a supermarket shopping spree, the Mrs. and I pillaged the nearby Pret a Manger. I hear the ones in New York are pathetic. But the Pret at London Heathrow was exquisite--there was nothing (at least at that time) that hit the spot better than my bacon-lettuce-tomato-egg sandwich.

It was the flight going to Europe that proved more challenging: A heavy-set woman in her sixties boarded our plane and from the get-go expressed her anxiety about flying. She was also loud. And she wanted to talk to the pilot. And she told the flight attendants she took half-a-valium.

Little did we know how nervous she would be. As soon as the plane hit a bump in the air, she started howling like a dog:

Ohhhhhhh! Ohhhhhhh! Ohhhhhhh!

And with the next little skips in turbulence:

Whoa! and What's happening!

This occurred every time the plane hit even a minor bump for the entire flight.

She had questions too. Such as "How can the pilot fly through the clouds if he can't see?"

But it was that howling that will haunt me forever. My compliments to the flight crew of BA 216 for not letting the panic spread, for holding this woman's hand, for explaining that turbulence is normal and having to explain what turbulence is, over and over. Her husband, meanwhile, just sat there and ignored her the entire time.

Perhaps the toughest part about returning from a week's vacation is catching up on emails. Namely, more than 1,100 of them. But only now, at 3 in the afternoon, do I finally get to "Dating site for sexaholics."

(More on my trip to Vienna, Austria, later.)

A Grieving President

This Newsweek story is probably the most sympathetic snapshot of Bush that I've ever seen.

Correction

I note this error in the New Yorker not out of any sense of superiority, but out of admiration for how rare it is to ever find an error--or even a typo--in America's greatest magazine. So here's Galley Friend C.L. noting a big mistake in Peter Schjeldahl's piece on Winslow Homer:

Schjeldahl writes: "In the second-one of Homer's last works-two foreground ducks taking off from turbulent waters are hit by a distant hunter's double-barrelled buckshot; one has flipped upside down, and the other is transfixed with neck straining and wings spread, startled by death."

Anybody who's ever hunted ducks knows that you would never, ever, ever use the word BUCKSHOT. Buckshot (like the name pretty much says) is intended for big game; birdshot (like the name pretty much says) is intended for birds. If you hit a duck with buckshot--that's a huge if, by the way, since putting a single slug on a flying mallard at normal range would
challenge even a fantastic shooter--the thing would evaporate. You might as well shove a stick of dynamite up its ass. More to the point, a bird hit with buckshot wouldn't look like the birds in Homer's "Left and Right." It would look like a puff, and a few floating feathers.

There it is. We probably won't see a mistake in the New Yorker again until March 2007.

New Republic Archives

Unless you deal with these things on a day-to-day basis, it's difficult to understand exactly how impressive the New Republic's new comprehensive archives are. Ninety years of content, all online and searchable.

Hats off to TNR.

A Germany Divided

Paul Belien has a long, interesting post about the coming German election. Belien believes that we could be heading for a German crack-up--and that that's a good thing. I'll be interested to hear Vic's thoughts on the situation when he returns from Vienna.

Power Line News

My home-boys at Power Line have re-vamped Power Line News and it's now working quite nicely, even on Firefox. It's a great idea--a blog that is its own RSS aggregator--and I think it'll be a model that lots of big media companies attempt in the future.

How great is Power Line News? I recommend it even though it doesn't link to Galley Slaves!

Josh Chafetz has left the building.

Via the Blog-Cruch

It seems Rachel Nichols, almost formerly of The Inside, may replace Beniffer 2.0 on Alias.

Seriously, everyone Tim Minear touches turns to gold.

On a totally non-related note, did you catch the snippet during the commentary track on Arrested Development where it was made clear that Bateman, Hurwitz, and Arnett are TV Without Pity readers? Pretty excellent, no?

C. Rosen on Videogames

Christine Rosen's high-minded and engaging indictment of videogames in the New Atlantis is, as usual, great reading. In addition to being a wonderful writer, Rosen may also be the premier techno-scold of our time. Now, if I could only convince her to write about blogging . . .

In defense of videogames, however, I will say that the aspect I most enjoy about them is what Rosen sees as their biggest problem: It's a playground of the self. For example, had I been born in slightly different circumstances (ie someplace where I was surrounded at an early age by car people), I could easily have fallen into the tuner culture. As it is, I'm fascinated by it--just not fascinated enough to spend thousands of hours and dollars pimping out my own ride. But a game such as Need for Speed: Underground gives me enough of that world to sate my appetite.

That can't always be a bad thing. Unless you're over 30 and have a real job and real responsiblities. Oh. Wait.

Never mind.

The New Litmus Test

Don't miss Dean Barnett's truly excellent piece on the new relationship between left-wing blogs and Democratic candidates. Fantastic stuff.

Discrimination at Work

This earnest story about the Denver Fire Department's quest to hire people who reflect the diversity of the area is pretty chilling. Leading this charge--amazingly--is the chief of the Department, Larry Trujillo.

Trujillo recently demanded that the area's Civil Service Commission stop its testing of candidates because he believes that the current regime of testing is racially biased. Also, he wants to do away with the Department's current policy of disqualifying candidates with felony or drug convictions. His reasoning: "It sickens me that they're penalizing people for what they did in their past."

It's an amazing example of the utter and complete victory of the diversity movement in American culture.

On Mischa Barton:

She would probably be considered really hot as just another sorority girl at a college somewhere, but she's on the OC with girls like Olivia Wilde, and that has to be pretty humbling. It's like how being Aqua-Man would be pretty cool. Unless you're hanging out with Superman. And then you just kind of feel like a dork in his underwear.

Hollywood Loves Terrorists?

It's time for a visit with an old friend. You may recall Jason Apuzzo from our previous encounter with him--he's the big-C Conservative "filmmaker" who has trouble reading bylines accurately and correcting his mistakes honestly.

Yesterday Apuzzo published a column at Townhall.com decrying the rise of "terrorism chic" in Hollywood. Apuzzo warned readers that "Hollywood has finally come around to contributing what it can in the War on Terror: namely, glossy, star-studded movies that sympathize with the enemy."

Apuzzo then went on to list 10 films in various stages of production which he asserts are part of Hollywood's attempt to, well, sympathize with the enemy.

Normally it's not worth talking back to places like Townhall.com--really, one might as well shout at the sea--but Apuzzo's cri du coeur seems to have taken in my good friend John Hinderaker. You see, Apuzzo, never one to let facts get in the way of a good Conservative argument, may be overstating matters a bit. Here are some of the films he warns readers about:

"V For Vendetta." From Warner Brothers and the creators of "The Matrix" comes this film about a futuristic Great Britain that's become a 'fascist state.' A masked 'freedom fighter' named V uses terror tactics (including bombing the London Underground) to undermine the government - leading to a climax in which the British Parliament is blown up. Natalie Portman stars as a skinhead who turns to 'the revolution' after doing time as a Guantanamo-style prisoner.

"Munich." Steven Spielberg directs this film about the aftermath of the 1972 Olympic terror attacks that killed eleven Israeli athletes. "Munich"'s screenplay is written by playwrite [sic -JVL] Tony Kushner ("Angels in America"), who has been quoted as saying: "I think the founding of the state of Israel was for the Jewish people a historical, moral, political calamity ... I wish modern Israel hadn't been born." The film focuses on the crisis of conscience undergone by Israeli commandos tasked with killing PLO terrorists - rather than on the barbarity of the terrorists themselves.

"Syriana." Starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, this Warner Brothers film - set during the first Bush administration - features a plot by American oil companies and the U.S. government to redraw Middle East borders for greater oil profiteering. The film even depicts a handsome, 'tragic' suicide bomber driven to jihad after being fired by an American oil company! The film's climax comes with the jihadist launching an explosive device into an oil tanker as American oil barons and Saudi officials look on.

Sounds pretty dreadful, doesn't it? And it would be, if Apuzzo's descriptions were on the level. But it isn't clear that they are.

V for Vendetta, for instance, is based on a 1980s comic book by Alan Moore. The project was set up at Warner Bros.--with Joel Silver producing--by 1994. The Wachowski brothers were, as Variety reported "hot" to adapt Moore's book, "but then set it aside as they were consumed by their massive Matrix trilogy." Whatever liberal paranoia V for Vendetta may hold, it long predates the GWOT.

As for Spielberg's Munich, Tony Kushner is only one of the three writers listed on the project, and based on the credits of the other two (Eric Roth and Charles Randolph), and the leanings of Spielberg that we've seen regarding Israel and the plight of Jewry, I'll be very surprised if this is an anti-Israel movie. Look, for instance, at the long list of Holocaust and WWII projects that he's produced in recent years. Or consider his ongoing work with the Shoah Foundation. Does this sound like the background of a man who's been planning to make a movie that sympathizes with terrorists who killed innocent Jews?

And then there's Syriana. The plot summary Apuzzo gives is radically different from what's listed on IMDB, which says:

Robert Baer (Clooney), a 21-year veteran of the CIA, spent his entire career investigating terrorists around the globe. As the dangers of terrorism increased, Baer watched as the CIA's funding was cut, politics overtook judgment, and warning signs were ignored. But the struggle becomes personal when an oil executive (Damon) and his wife (Peet) are faced with a family tragedy…

Again, I haven't seen a script, but given that the writer/director is Stephen Gaghan (most notable for Traffic), I'd be surprised if what makes it to the screen is closer to Apuzzo's summary than what's on IMDB. Don't forget, Gaghan adapted James Webb's Rules of Engagement, the closest thing we've seen to a Hollywood apologia for America and the military in recent years.

Who knows about the rest of Apuzzo's list--an Oliver Stone-helmed 9/11 movie sounds like trouble. But surely this is enough to raise questions about Apuzzo's overarching premise.

There is no doubt some truth to the worry about the sympathies of Hollywood filmmakers--I'm the guy who wrote the story two years ago about their unwillingness to do movies based on the war on terrorism. But Jason Apuzzo isn't a particularly reliable guide to the industry and his alarmism about a fleet of movies specifically designed to "sympathize" with our enemies seems, at best, overwrought.

Peter Jennings and the Last Anchorman

It's no surprise that people have rushed to declare the "end of an era" in the wake of Peter Jennings's passing, but in at least one important way, it's true: We have reached the end of the era of the network anchorman.

For two generations Americans have grown accustomed to having their network news anchors act in loco deus--they may have just been newsreaders, but they functioned as the Voice of God: solid, grave, assuring, authoritative.

People who've never been on television have a tendency to dismiss the talents required to be a news anchor. On the one hand, yes, anchors are talking heads. They do not, as a rule, possess much reportorial skill. They are, if you can imagine, more pompous than they appear to the naked eye.

But they are not just heads. Reading the evening news on a day-to-day basis may not take much, but anchoring an event--like a presidential election night, or the crashing of a space shuttle, or even a State of the Union night--requires an enormous reserve of charm, stamina, quick-thinking, and above all, gravitas.

Whatever else there is to be said about the recently departed generation of anchors--Brokaw, Rather, and Jennings--they were archetypes of the network anchor.

And they may have been the last of their breed. The same syndrome that David Ansen noticed in our current crop of leading men is true for our news anchors:

There's a fundamental difference between the big American male stars of Gen X and their predecessors. The icons of the past were men. Paul Newman, Robert Red-ford and Warren Beatty were young and beautiful at the start of their careers, but they were never "boys." Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Will Smith and Cruise, not to mention Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio, are defined by their boyishness. They began their careers as kids and, even as they move into their 30s and 40s, have never fully lost their dew.

Think, then, about the next generation of anchormen: Matt Lauer, Bill Hemmer, Shep Smith, Brian Williams, John Roberts. Without passing any judgment on their skills as journalists, as anchors they're of a completely different species--pretty, fluffy, pleasant, boyish. They might do fine reading the news Monday to Friday, but if I were a network executive, I wouldn't have wanted any of them in the chair on September 11.

As it happens, there are only two thoroughbred anchormen working today--Aaron Brown and Brit Hume. They each evoke, in their own way, the solidity, the seriousness, the manliness that we came to expect from the succession of Cronkite, Brinkley, Rather, Jennings, and the other anchors who made the nightly national news broadcast part of American life. But both of them are confined to cable, where they ply their trade away from the eyes of the diminished, but still significant, crowds who make up the audience for the evening news.

This is neither good nor bad and the change probably carries no larger meaning for the culture. But it is change, nonetheless. And for that reason alone, it's fitting that we pause for a moment to note what really is the passing of an era.

Economics and the NFL

A fantastic and illuminating column by Phil Sheridan on the plight of Brian Westbrook and how circumstance and NFL economics can combine to cheat a player:

Westbrook really has been shortchanged by the NFL's system. Because he was a third-round pick, he didn't get a big signing bonus in his rookie contract. Because he played for the minimum salaries in his first three years, he truly "outperformed" his contract, to borrow a phrase from Drew Rosenhaus. And because the Eagles still have the right to slap a franchise tag on him next winter, Westbrook may not get to unrestricted free agency until 2007 or even 2008.

You can see why the man is frustrated. He could go his entire career without getting the big guaranteed bonus that establishes his financial security. And it's all because of where he was drafted and the position he plays.

Consider his fellow members of the Eagles' 2002 draft class. Lito Sheppard was a first-round pick, so he got nearly $4 million in his rookie year, even though he barely played behind Troy Vincent and Bobby Taylor. Last year, Sheppard signed an extension that featured an $8.7 million signing bonus and $15.1 million in salary through 2011.

So Sheppard has already banked nearly $12 million. For a first-round cornerback, life is sweet.

Second-round pick Sheldon Brown got paid $2.25 million from his rookie contract before getting a $7.5 million signing bonus on an extension last year. That means he has banked roughly $10 million.

Westbrook, taken one round later, has made a total of about $1.3 million in bonus and salary. He is scheduled to make $1.43 million on his restricted free agent tender this season.

That sounds like a lot of money to the average person, and it is. But for a guy who has been the second-most important offensive player on a championship-caliber team, behind only the quarterback, it's a pittance.

If ever there was a time to side with a player over management, this is it.

Industry Criticism from Brendon Donnelly?

If I was the editor of Movieline or GQ or Foreign Affairs, I'd hire Brendon Donnelly to do Hollywood industry analysis. Today's defense of Scarlett Johansson is pretty excellent:

"The actress was too good" might be the laziest excuse for a movies failure ever. It's like saying "I could have won Daytona if only my car had been slower."

Volcanic Coffee?

Has anyone out there tried a Bodum vacuum coffee maker?

I'm a sucker for kitchen gadgets and while, strictly speaking, I don't need a new coffee maker, I'm always open to new things.

"Tell Me Are You a Christian Child?"

Sad, disturbing news: The great Marc Cohn was shot over the weekend after a concert in Denver. Poor guy. Not only does he have to endure watching his best songs turn into hits only when they're covered by more famous acts, but now he gets carjacked and shot.

Pour one for him tonight.

Ferguson on the Mall

Andy Ferguson's long piece on the many problems afflicting the National Mall is smart, sad--and funny! To wit:

The Park Service's ultimate desire was made public, indiscreetly, by John Parsons, associate regional park director for the mall. In 2000 Parsons told the Washington Post he hoped that eventually all unauthorized traffic, whether by foot or private car, would be moved off the mall. Visitors could park in distant satellite lots and be bused to nodal points, where they would be watered and fed, allowed to tour a monument, and then reboard a bus and head for another monument. "Just like at Disneyland," Parsons told the Post. "Nobody drives through Disneyland. They're not allowed. And we've got the better theme park."

Anyone who has tried to visit the Mall recently will experience a shudder of recognition at these words. But then Ferguson moves onto a cultural problem:

When the [Vietnam] memorial was finished, the interest groups only metastasized. The sculpture, once installed, faced charges of sexism. Why, among the three soldiers, were there no women? The memorial's sponsors pointed to the granite inscription, which dedicates the structure to the "men and women" who served in Vietnam. Some nervy officials even dared to mention that of the 58,000 military dead in the war, only 8 were women, and that the 10,000 women who served in Vietnam constituted 33/100 of 1percent of the total American force. Needless to say, there is now a Vietnam Women's Memorial too, in a stand of trees thirty yards off to the side.

Place this profusion next to the Iconic Law of Longevity and you've got real problems:

These things are eternal. A memorial placed on the mall nowadays, no matter how initially offensive or widely criticized, can never be undone. Before too long it takes on the neutrality of the familiar. Then it becomes popular, then beloved, and then, inevitably, beyond criticism; the unavoidable word is "iconic." In time, the original criticism will even be used as proof that any criticism of a new project must be misbegotten, too. (Hard to believe, but even the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was controversial when it was first proposed . . . ) Both the World War II and Vietnam memorials are fully as obtrusive and tasteless as their early critics feared. But they're here to stay.

It's a wonderful piece of work when a writer can educate you, paint a picture of unavoidable catastrophe, and still give you laughs along the way.

That's Ferguson for you. God bless the mainstream media.

The Quiet Dignity of Britney

From my blog crush:

Oh, I know, I hadn't heard about it either, but these pics lead me to believe that Britney might be expecting. She's a bit of a recluse who prefers to live her life with a quiet dignity rarely seen today, so I'm not surprised news on her has been hard to come by. These pictures perfectly illustrate her famous understated humility. I can only imagine what brilliant witticism she's regaling her party with here. Although, if I know Britney - and I like to think I do - they probably chartered this 100 foot yacht to find a quiet spot and share their feelings about the passing of Peter Jennings.

Follow the link to see the pictures to experience the full funny.

Media Matters

I'm just saying that the headline "MONROE DISAPPOINTED BY SEXUAL ENCOUNTER WITH CRAWFORD" really misses the newsiness of the story, which is:

Monroe said, "We went to Joan's bedroom... Crawford had a gigantic orgasm and shrieked like a maniac.

"Next time I saw Crawford she wanted another round. I told her straight I didn't much enjoy doing it with a woman."

I mention all of this not out of prurience, or a desire to point out that the Babe of the Century tried out the hot girl-on-girl action, but simply because I'm shocked at the poor of news judgment you see today out there in the MSM. It's called burying the lede.

Where's CJR when you need them?

TV Newser is suggesting that Peter Jennings has taken a turn for the worse. Keep him and his family in your prayers.

Bobby Knight to host reality show

No, really. Galley Friend R.S. sends us this link:

Bob Knight will give one Texas Tech student the chance to play on his team in a reality show hosted by the Hall of Fame coach.

Sixteen students will attend “Knight School,” the name of the show set to air on ESPN in February, and Knight will whittle the class to one during six one-hour episodes. Filming will begin in late September.

What could possibly go wrong!

The New Left, Dumbledore, and the Reichstag

Galley Freidn B.W. sends along this link which is clearly too good to be true. But still:

So saturday, Matt, Erin, myself and a few others went to DC to crash a rally held by those loonies that think that 9/11 was caused by the US Gov't in order to steal our freedom. Yeah.

So I covered my hat in tinfoil and drove off to matt's place where he'd constructed two large signs. Mine said "The CIA killed Dumbledore!" and had a picture of a wizard, while his said "Dick Cheney is a Giant Communist Robot!" and had a picture of some sort of crazy queen of france arm'd robot.

Certainly, we thought, we'll be yelled at - people will get angry at us very quickly. Not the case...

They took us seriously... They asked to have their pictures taken with our signs. They invited us to the day's events. They gave us a large sign they'd made too! Oy... Here are a couple of exchanges we had while there. . . .

I'll let you read the rest yourself because, like I said, I just can't believe this is for real. Even the pictures can't convince me.

Family Values on ABC

The other night I noticed that Cruel Intentions starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillipe, and Reese Witherspoon was on cable. Of course all sorts of movies appear on cable television, though I happen to notice the station logo in the bottom right corner said ABC Family. Of course, Cruel Intentions is a family movie. Gellar plays step-sister to Phillipe, whom she also teases with the promise of anal sex should he do as she tells him to. And there's nothing un-family about Gellar's saliva-string kiss with Selma Blair, who plays the dumb innocent in this teen remake of Dangeorous Liaisons. ABC Family Values ... for the post-family era.

Now this email has been spreading like wildfire: It is a voicemail apparently left by a Burger King superviser somewhere in the South (he seems to be headed to Dallas). He happens to witness a fender bender involving another man and four elderly women. There's also something heart-warmingly genuine about his laugh (and the way he says "umbrella"). Just listen for yourself and enjoy.

Scopes

Galley Hoss Chris Levenick has an outstanding piece in the Wall Street Journal on how the Scopes trial reshaped the relationship between science and religion:

At the time of the trial, the nascent progressive movement drew much of its strength from the perfectionist impulses of evangelical Protestantism. That alliance began to dissolve at the trial, when two lions of the American left turned on one another.

Leading Scopes's defense was Clarence Darrow, a champion of progressive causes and an outspoken agnostic. Among the prosecutors was William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a stalwart defender of traditional Christianity. The two had long worked together for social reform, but in Dayton Darrow treated Bryan with contempt. In the trial's climactic scene, Darrow called Bryan to the stand, where he sneered at the witness for "insult[ing] every man of science and learning in the world because he does not believe in your fool religion."

And so the culture war came. For the first time, coastal elites descended on small-town America, calling its citizens stupid and their beliefs backward. And though fundamentalism may have looked worse at the time, the longer-term damage was to progressivism; it was at Dayton that the movement began to lose its popular appeal.

Bryan, after all, was to the left of most Democrats today, but his followers found that they could not keep company with those who so disdained their faith. Nowadays, when liberalism's leading strategists wonder what's the matter with Kansas, they could do worse than to look back to Tennessee--and to their own caustic dismissive of serious Christians.

Good stuff.

Next up, million-dollar trailer lots

Now I’m convinced the housing market is insane. Have you seen the $640K "mobile home" in Arlington, VA?

Treehouse of Dreams

Galley Brother B.J. sends along this link about Jack Barnhart's treehouse:

An accomplished woodworker, Barnhart dreamed of building a treehouse - but not one of the scrapped-together versions the word conjures up in most people's minds.

The cozy little cottage he was envisioning would put the Swiss Family Robinson to shame, with two staircases, built-in closets and cabinets, a wet bar, high-quality insulated windows, water and electricity, cable TV and a rooftop patio - not to mention table service for six.

And instead of climbing a ladder from the ground, his treehouse would be accessible by a soaring footbridge, connected to the deck of his home some 65 feet away across a ravine.

Scroll down to see a great picture of the finished product.

Sixers Notes

I don't really dig on Anchorman, but Bill Simmons does, and he's funnier than me. He has an excellent NBS offseason wrap-up, and has this to say about the '76ers:

To Philly GM Billy King, who continues to hemorrhage money like a drunken stockbroker in the champagne room at Scores. Over the past four summers, King spent $68 million on an aging Dikembe Mutombo; $40 million on Kenny Thomas; $35.5 million on Aaron McKie; $29 million on Eric Snow; $20.7 million on Brian Skinner; $18 million on Greg Buckner; and an astonishing $15 million for Kevin Ollie (which was especially memorable because, at the time, I spent 15 minutes on the phone with my buddy House trying to get him to guess how much money Ollie had signed for, before House came up with the exact figure). And don't forget, King traded for C-Webb's bum knee and the $66 million remaining on C-Webb's contract last February.

So if you're Billy King, what do you do for an encore? You spend $45 million for the next six years on ... (drumroll please) ... Kyle Korver and Willie Green! Are you kidding me? It's amazing that King didn't get in on the Brian Scalabrine bidding. Anyway, I think King is clearly preparing for his next job -- Hollywood movie executive. Couldn't you see him spending $18 million to lock up Rob Schneider for "Deuce Bigalow 2?" He'd be perfect out here.

Eagles Play Hardball

The national media is obsessed with TO, but Eagles fans are more worried about Brian Westbrook, who has yet to show up at training camp.

How tough is the Eagles management when it comes to handling personnel issue? This tough:

Just yesterday, quarterback Donovan McNabb called Westbrook "our ultimate weapon." You had to be there to hear it, though, because the complimentary quote from McNabb's news conference was the only one not included in the transcript handed out by the team's media services and posted on the official Web site for thoughtful digestion by you, the fans.

The Greatest Film of All Time?

You be the judge.

Wonderfalls on TV! Right Now!

Reader CC writes in with great news: Tim Minear's Wonderfalls--the best TV show in recent memory--is airing on the LOGO channel right now (11:00 a.m., est). Set your TiVos accordingly.

Hunting Horcruxes

The incomparable Janet Batchler has a long, excellent post on Horcruxes.

Just how far off the deep end?

Why do I get these emails and why do I bother to read them rather than just delete them? This particularly sad and unhealthy one (not to mention delusional) just came into my mailbox:

Hi,
I'm not sure whether this is true, but hope springs eternal.
Terri

Joined: Sep 18, 2003
Posts: 197
Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 11:53 pm Post subject: BUSH AND CHENEY INDICTED!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOMFLOCCO.COM

BUSH AND CHENEY INDICTED

A Chicago grand jury has indicted the President and Vice-President of the United States along with multiple high officials in the Bush administration

Chicago -- August 2, 2005 -- TomFlocco.com -- U.S. federal prosecutor
Patrick Fitzgerald's Chicago grand jury has issued perjury and obstruction of justice indictments to the following members of the Bush Administration: President George W. Bush, Vice-President Richard Cheney, Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, imprisoned New York Times reporter Judith Miller and former Senior Cheney advisor Mary Matalin.

There were no indications given as to whether the President and his top staff members would appear publicly before cameras at the grand jury proceedings, given the gravity of the charges.

Besides the Valerie Plame CIA leak case, the Fitzgerald probe is reportedly far-reaching and expanding much deeper into past White House criminal acts involving Bush-Clinton drug money laundering in Mena, Arkansas to White House involvement in 9.11; but also for sending America's young people to their deaths or to be maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan under false pretenses.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair was indicted for obstruction of justice and is reportedly consulting with members of Parliament and legal aides regarding how to avoid appearing in the U.S.A. for interrogation before Fitzgerald in Chicago.

The revelations emanated from sources close to the grand jury who spoke with federal whistleblower Thomas Heneghen in California who said White House Senior Advisor to the President Karl Rove was also indicted for perjury and was reportedly involved with Mary Matalin in a major Bush administration document shredding operation to cover-up evidence.

Heneghen had reported over ten days ago on a TruthRadio.com broadcast [Every Monday and Tuesday evening from 8-9 pm EST--www.truthradio.com--special briefing on Wednesday evening August 3 at 8 pm EST]] that his sources close to the grand jury said former Secretary of State Colin Powell had been subpoenaed and had testified against President Bush, telling the citizen panel that the President had taken the United States to war based upon lies--a capital crime involving treason under the United States Code.

Heneghen also reported a week ago that Gonzalez and Card had been subpoened and that Tony Blair had defied his subpoena after the response time limit had expired.

Sources close to the investigation report that members of the House, Senate, 9.11 Commission and other members of the media are also under investigation as potential targets by a grand jury regarding obstruction of justice and other oversight failures linked to the 9.11 attacks--indicating that citizen panelists working with Fitzgerald may be seeking a wholesale cleansing of what many have said is a crime-wracked White House and Congress.

Also last Monday, the whistleblower reported that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts was planning to obstruct justice by calling Fitzgerald for Senate hearings to question the prosecutor's motives for the far-reaching investigation.

This, giving rise to questions as to whether Roberts and other Republican legislators--some now under secret investigation--would join President Bush in seeking to fire Fitzgerald in the same manner that President Nixon had fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in order to obstruct justice and cut off further investigations into White House crimes.

Two weeks ago Heneghen said he had talked to sources just ten minutes prior to French and U.S. intelligence agents intercepting British intelligence agents who were attempting to bomb the subway underneath the Dirksen Federal Building where Fitzgerald was presiding over grand jury hearings.

Serious questions can also be raised as to whether intelligence forces linked to President Bush and Tony Blair had participated in a failed attempt to scuttle the Fitzgerald probe by literally blowing it up--at a time when UK reports reveal that military-grade explosives were used to blow up the London subway on July 7.

Sources say the alleged Chicago subway bombing attempt has been attributed to an underground and closeted enmity involving warring intelligence and military factions within the United States government.

Moreover, reports indicate that the disturbance occurred at the same time that the Chicago Tribune and local web blogs had reported that the subway had been evacuated for 45-50 minutes regarding a "suspicious package" late on Monday afternoon, July 18.

Also confirming the under-the-radar-screen hostilities involving agents loyal to the administration and others who are disturbed about the cover-up of government involvement in the 9.11 attacks was a recent contact made with this writer by a major New York media outlet which called seeking "names of those who could confirm its own reports of warring factions within the government which were threatening the safety of U.S. citizens."

developing.....please link or copy--and distribute widely.

Death at the Amusement Park

New York's Playland is have a bad summer with it's second death in three months.

Reminds me of the old Great Adventure.

Is Hitch the new Andrew?

Ramesh Ponnuru delivers a DDT, a piledriver, and a Stone Cold stunner to Christopher Hitchen's feeble --yet magisterial!--grasp of Catholicism:

Let's review: Hitchens wrote a confused rant about Catholics and the Supreme Court; I noted its sloppiness and illogic; he claimed that my description of him as "invincibly ignorant" was itself ignorant of "the meaning" of the phrase. He now allows, without noting the concession, that there are multiple meanings of the phrase and therefore that I made no error. Indeed, this appears to be his method in this conversation: He drops every point on which he's been called and brings up new irrelevancies.

You don't tug on Superman's cape.

Brooks on BoJis

I'm going to go out on a limb and claim BoJi (Bohemain-Jihadist) as the term of art should David Brooks's column on the roots of Islamic terrorism prove to be correct. Brooks writes:

In other words, the conflict between the jihadists and the West is a conflict within the modern, globalized world. The extremists are the sort of utopian rebels modern societies have long produced.

In his book "Globalized Islam," the French scholar Olivier Roy points out that today's jihadists have a lot in common with the left-wing extremists of the 1930's and 1960's. Ideologically, Islamic neofundamentalism occupies the same militant space that was once occupied by Marxism. It draws the same sorts of recruits (educated second-generation immigrants, for example), uses some of the same symbols and vilifies some of the same enemies (imperialism and capitalism).

Roy emphasizes that the jihadists are the products of globalization, and its enemies. They are detached from any specific country or culture, he says, and take up jihad because it attaches them to something. They are generally not politically active before they take up jihad. They are looking to strike a vague blow against the system and so give their lives (and deaths) shape and meaning.

In short, the Arab world is maintaining its nearly perfect record of absorbing every bad idea coming from the West. . . .

The first implication, clearly, is that democratizing the Middle East, while worthy in itself, may not stem terrorism. Terrorists are bred in London and Paris as much as anywhere else.

Second, the jihadists' weakness is that they do not spring organically from the Arab or Muslim world. They claim to speak for the Muslim masses, as earlier radicals claimed to speak for the proletariat. But they don't. Surely a key goal for U.S. policy should be to isolate the nationalists from the jihadists.

Third, terrorism is an immigration problem. Terrorists are spawned when educated, successful Muslims still have trouble sinking roots into their adopted homelands. Countries that do not encourage assimilation are not only causing themselves trouble, but endangering others around the world as well.

In many ways, this is a more comforting picture of modern terrorism, if only because it gives us a sense of familiarity. But I have to admit that I'm not entirely convinced.

If the BoJis are the real problem, then it means the rich Saudi potentates who have been bankrolling al Qaeda have misjudged the constituency they're trying to placate. The BoJis may be Islam's right fist of fury, but surely the data we've seen from opinion polls in the Middle East suggest that great masses of people either support or are sympathetic to their terrorism. I don't think there was a similar level of unspoken, grass-roots support for the Weathermen.

Which would suggest that there is something peculiar about Islam as practiced in large swaths of the Middle East that lends itself to terrorism, something that isn't strictly comparable to Marxist radicalism.

Poll Watch

I missed Dean Barnett's excellent post on the Pew Research Center's poll on religion in America. Very good stuff. Best part:

When asked whether Islam was more likely to encourage violence than other religions, incredibly only a miniscule 36% of the respondents said yes. This is pretty amazing. Is it really a slam on Islam if you happen to notice that the vast majority of terror incidents committed over the past several years have been committed by the religion’s practitioners?

While I really shouldn’t have to say this, in the interests of self-preservation I will: Obviously not all Muslims are terrorists. Obviously only a teensy-tiny portion of Muslims are terrorists. But, and the following is not really deniable, a high percentage of terrorists are Muslims. Facts are facts.

The Pew respondents must have bee thinking about that wave of Unitarian suicide bombers we've heard so much about.

Quote of the Week

"I'm about to do the doo."

Whitney Houston expressing to her husband--and a camera--her need to relieve herself during a taping of Being Bobby Brown.

Self-Parody Watch

"PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW what I think about . . ."

Say what you want about the MSM and the Old Media, but you'll never see David Remnick--or, heck, even Maureen Dowd--start a sentence that way.

Christians and the Death Penalty

If you haven't read it yet, Joseph Bottum's piece on capital punishment in First Things is exceptional.

Bottum makes a series of complicated, important arguments about the death penalty, and how Christians should understand it, but the most interesting is this one:

a state has a responsibility to enforce positive law and exact punishment. This is true even in the case of victimless crimes, and it is perhaps particularly true in the case of crimes with victims. All political theories note that ancient legal systems began with the outlawing of private revenge, but the state does not thereby become a sort of hired agent or substitute avenger. That is what a theory of civil harms is for, and such torts are addressed not in criminal but civil courts, where the plaintiff, not the government, collects the monetary damages. Genuine crimes, in a modern setting, are instead committed against society and its laws—just as, in medieval England, all crimes were crimes against the king. In strict legal theory, the victims are incidental; the entire body politic is injured by a crime, and the social disorder of that crime is what a government’s criminal-justice system must address.

Sometimes this requires educating the public about the wrongness of the crime. Often it aims at rehabili tating the criminal. Always it must keep the central promise of rightly operating government: the pledge that law-breakers will prosper less than law-abiders. And, again, under certain extreme circumstances, these legitimate purposes of social justice could require the death of criminals.

In other words, both a government’s right of self-defense and its duty to preserve the normal justice of the social order can potentially issue in executions. But neither of these gives the state a license to attempt either revenge or the high justice implied in the story of Michael Ross. Capital punishment may occasionally be necessary in a modern democracy, but it is never right, for the death penalty is not in a line with other punishments. A five-year sentence and a twenty-year sentence, even a life sentence, are related as more or less severe forms of imprisonment. Execution belongs to another order of punishment.

Indeed, most arguments for the essential justice of the death penalty admit this point—and even insist upon it. If murder is not like other crimes, if the spilling of innocent blood is uniquely horrifying, then the punishment of death, as the spilling of guilty blood, must also belong to a higher species of justice: not simply a more extreme version of other punishments that seek to correct social disorders, but an entirely different thing that aims at restoring the universe and matching a deadly crime with a similarly deadly punishment.

Under any Christian understanding of political theory, where does the legal system of a modern demo cracy gain authority to act on this high level? Cer tainly, many different kinds of governments over many centuries have claimed and exercised the power of life and death. But history is no explanation for why the State of Connecticut should continue to have, in this one case, a license to break free from the social aims of normal justice and pursue closure for a story of high, cosmic justice.

This is just one strand of Bottum's very elegant and persuasive argument; you'll be doing yourself a disservice if you don't hunker down for the full ride.

Sienna Miller as Gung-Ho

From my blog-crush:

Miller and Law split following Law's admission he slept with Daisy Wright, but "they reportedly met in private in England for secret talks in a bid to rescue their relationship."

The "met in private for secret talks in a bid to rescue" makes this sound a tad more important than it really is. Unless Siena Miller is secretly in the Delta Force, they were basically on a date, not training to topple a Panamanian strongman. I'm guessing at no point did someone pull off their glasses in front of a huge electronic map of the globe and say, "We've got six hours gentlemen...". The problem is that Jude Law would have sex with a porcupine if it made eye contact, not that freedom and liberty as we know it is threatened.

Swords Are Cool

The Cake Editrix sends us to a page with video of guns being fired at Samurai swords. I couldn't get the machine gun video to load, but in this video a 9mm is fired at a Katana. The bullets get sliced in two.

Ferreals.

The Bankruptcy of the Left

While serious liberals like Peter Beinart and Ed Kilgore are trying to rebuild the Democratic party and create a liberalism for the post-9/11 era, Markous Moulitsas is intent on reducing the Democratic party to rubble. I note this, not triumphantly, but with some worry: A faltering Democratic party merely provides room for Republicans to get by without doing the intellectual heavy-lifting. I think most of us would agree that the marketplace of ideas works best when we have two healthy, intellectually vibrant political parties.

So read this "litmus test" for Democratic candidates from Daily Kos:

Does candidate 'distance himself' from the party and/or its leaders, or is he proud to be a Democrat?

Does he talk like a bureaucrat or like a regular person?

Does she make it clear that she opposes Bush and the Republicans?

Does she back down when the corporate press/media or Republican pundits attack him, or does she stand by her words?

Does he sleepwalk through the campaign, or does he act like he wants to win?

Kos goes on to add, "Notice the complete lack of ideology."

It is this lack of ideology, of which Kos is so proud, that spells certain doom for Democrats if the Kos-wing of the party is allowed to continually cow the party establishment, despite their minority status. The far-left has waged an anti-intellectual assault on liberalisms best thinkers, which has lead to this tyranny of obstructionism-as-ideology.

Note the wording of this litmus test: "Does she make it clear that she opposes Bush and the Republicans?" Oppose Bush and which Republicans? Tom DeLay? John McCain? Oppose them on what? The principles of preemption and democratization? Energy policy? Support for the Texas Rangers? Opposition to steroids? Everything?

And oppose them with what, exactly.

The fringe of the Democratic party isn't interested in any of these questions. But if the Democrats want to return to power, eventually this fringe will have to be cut loose, and not wooed.

Headline of the Year II

From ESPN:

Young Boys Wankdorf erection relief

Kennedy the Papist

Ramesh Ponnuru has another outstanding rebuke to Hitchens's veiled anti-Catholicism. Best line:

Hitchens's piece is only seven paragraphs long, yet somehow feels padded. And padded with the most mindless dreck I've ever read from Hitchens, whose coverage of religious issues has been getting lazier by the month. The Ten Commandments, he informs us, do not condemn genocide. (I guess Hitchens is a very strict constructionist.)

Oh, it gets meaner . . .

I Like You In That Way

I know, you need your fix:

I know I keep saying the same thing, but there's no shame in losing a guy to Angelina Jolie. The deck is stacked against you, and that's okay sometimes. It would be like if an army of monkeys took on the regular army. No matter what cute tricks the monkey army can do, like riding a skateboard and clapping, the regular army can do that too. Plus they have enormous guns. And looking cute in a suit and fedora isn't gonna make you any less likely to explode when the bullets hit you. So Jennifer Aniston is exactly like an army of monkeys.

Hello Lenin!

On the heels of the dismantlement of Checkpoint Charlie, a few senators in Berlin now want to bring back to the city a 60-foot statue of Vladimir Lenin. Do I see a pattern here?

The statue, recently seen in the wonderful movie Good Bye Lenin!, is currently resting in pieces in a nearby park outside the capital. Reuters quotes one tourism official as saying, "The Communist period is the most asked-after period by tourists in Berlin."

Just great.

Catholics Need Not Apply

Not so great in Slate is Chris Hitchens's piece Catholic Justice. Says Galley Friend C.L.:

If I'm not mistaken, Hitch is subtly calling for the institution of a "No Catholics Need Apply" policy for Supreme Court nominees with this piece. Funniest bit: He calls Kennedy--ANTHONY KENNEDY--"strong in the faith."

And what then to make of his vote on Casey, Hitch? Kinda shitcans your entire premise, no?

Yes, yes, everyone in the world is barking about Jack Shafer's bludgeoning of Richard Posner this morning, but don't miss the fine print at the bottom of the article where Shafer refers to Posner as "the prolific bastard." Yow!

Seth Stevenson: Genius

All sorts of undeserving writers go on to greatness (you know about whom I'm talking), but when will someone give Seth Stevenson the ample rewards he deserves? Stevenson does Slate's ad report card, consistently the magazine's best feature. Today he has a piece on the new Dove campaign. Sample genius:

The [Dove web]site also has a link where you can donate money to Dove's "self-esteem fund" for young girls.

If the women in these ads lacked self-esteem, they wouldn't be up on a billboard in their skivvies. Hey, good for them. I even have a favorite Dove chick: Stacy (the student). She's the one who poses with her backside to the camera, showing off her ample bottom. I see Stacy every day—she's on the bus stop shelter next to my house. "Check out this fiiiiiiiine bedonkadonk," she seems to say to me, grinning slyly over her shoulder. I think I may have a crush on her. But I've said too much already. . . .

The interesting thing here is the risky bet Dove is making. Beauty-product marketing has almost always been aspirational: I wish I could look like her … perhaps if I buy this lip gloss, I will! But Dove takes a wildly different approach: That chick in the ad sort of looks like me, and yet she seems really happy and confident … perhaps if I buy this Dove Firming Cream, I'll stop hating myself! . . .

But there's a dirty little secret here. Because, in the end, you simply can't sell a beauty product without somehow playing on women's insecurities. If women thought they looked perfect—just the way they are—why would they buy anything?

Out of the park.

Depends on What the Meaning of "Take" Is

Rafael Palmeiro, it turns out, is dirty. The best piece I've seen about Palmeiro's steroid use comes from Tom Boswell:

Palmeiro has been caught, suspended and has actually admitted to using steroids this season. Palmeiro simply claims that he has no idea how they got in his body.

Abducted by aliens? Sat too close to Canseco at the hearing? Got a package in the mail that was intended for Jason Giambi?

Add Palmeiro to the list of those who did not "knowingly" cheat. Just 17 days ago, he was being celebrated for his 3,000th hit. Now, in one day, he's the tag line to every cynical wisecrack. The quip circulating among writers who vote on the Hall of Fame is that, someday, Palmeiro may be left out of Cooperstown, but not "knowingly," just by collective accident. . . .

Palmeiro and his agent, as well as the Orioles, repeated many times that they could not go into details about Palmeiro's steroid blunder because of some "confidentiality" issues. "I would love to tell what happened to me so that everyone would understand," said Palmeiro, "but under this confidentiality agreement, I cannot get specific."

Unfortunately, what we may have here is a Stupidity Test. As in: How stupid are we? Whose "confidentiality" is being protected? Palmeiro's, of course. If he wanted to explain more, who could stop him from defending his good name? The union and baseball have a confidentiality agreement that prevents them from releasing information. But that doesn't put masking tape over the player's mouth. If Palmeiro had a compelling story, who could force him to stay silent? . . .

For two years our sports culture, right up to Congress, has been building a huge Steroid Trap, just waiting for a famous star to get caught inside. Somebody was going to get nailed, become the symbol and carry the weight. All the more fitting if the culprit was a shocker, perhaps somebody who shook his finger in the face of Congress and demanded his right to the benefit of the doubt. Too bad it turned out to be Rafael Palmeiro. It could have been so many bigger rats.

Boswell takes a very nice line between total indignation and sympathy, not an easy course to chart.

What has surprised me most during the steroid hunt is the ease and facility with which many players lie. Sure, Barry Bonds has never been particularly convincing, but if you go back and look at the tape of Jason Giambi and Palmeiro's denials, they are accomplished, forceful liars. I might argue that this gift for lying about a big and important issue is more worrisome than the weakness of having used steroids.

I don't have many illusions about professional athletes. We all know that many of them are jerks. But I would have liked to believe, at least, that they were big, proud, manly jerks.

Using steroids makes a ballplayer a cheater. Lying like a common politician makes him small and contemptible.

More on Harry Potter

I'm embarrassed to have posted my silly thoughts on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when there is Janet Batchler. I mean, really, why bother?

All Batchler has done is assemble the three most thoughtful posts on Harry Potter that you're likely to read between now and book 7. This stuff is good.

First, Batchler takes on the question of who dies next. Then she tackles the matter of Draco's attempt to kill Dumbledore. And finally, there's her tour de force on Snape.

Batchler's analysis is careful and very, very smart. And can only add to the fun of waiting for the final installment.

Galley Friend R.S. (who pointed me to Batchler) also has an interesting theory about Snape: That he was bound to Dumbledore by an Unbreakable Vow, perhaps a vow to protect Harry at all costs.

Throw that one on the fire.

Whedonesque

Gigantic, wide-ranging interview with Joss Whedon that is a must for not only geeks, but anyone interested in the entertainment industry. Best bit:

Graham Yost [who received the sole screenplay credit for “Speed”] has always been very polite to me and very sweet but he did say to me, “You would have done the same thing.” And all I could say to him at the time was, “Well, I guess we don’t know if that’s true.”

Who Is Blanche Knott?

My friend Brendan Conway has a terrific piece in the new issue of Doublethink (which of course I edit) on those Truly Tastless jokes books your mother, if she was like mine, took away from you when you were, like, ten years old. Turns out all those scatological zingers were written by a woman, a woman who's gone from being a key resistance fighter against the beginnings of political correctness to being an outspoken progressive and touchy-feely liberal. Conway also looked into the books' comic heritage and has some hilarious quotes from various comedy experts, some of them real (an Onion editor), some of them not (I shouldn't say).

Truly Tasteless Expose

CulturePulp for Charity

If you love your CulturePulp, you'll want to take advantage of this sale of beautiful CulturePulp prints. All proceeds to benefit the trust fund for Timber Jim's granddaughter.

It's beautiful and reasonably-priced (I daresay cheap) art.

Goodbye to All That

Having finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I have some spoiler-filled thoughts. Highlight the inviso-text below.

Like everyone else, I was shocked by the climax of Half-Blood Prince. I've expected Dumbledore's death since the first book, but I never thought Snape would be the one to do him in. (Actually, I thought it a fair chance that Harry might kill him.)

What's more, I've always been soft--not to say completely enamored--with Severus Snape. How enamored? I wrote not so long ago that "My pet theory is that Snape, not Harry, is the true hero of the series." I'll put that up on the shelf with my prediction in the summer of 2000 that America was about to enter a era of Democratic political dominance. Oops.

So disaffected am I by Snape's treachery, that I hereby renounce the House of Slytherin.

That said, let me add that I still believe it possible that we will see Snape redeemed. Rowling has left enough ambiguity that we might wonder if Dumbledore was secretly imploring Snape to finish him in order to spare Draco, or why Snape made a point of preventing Harry from using an unforgivable curse outside the castle, or why, back in Prisoner of Azkaban, Snape thrust himself between the werewolf Lupin and Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Snape was a double-agent; he now appears to be a triple-agent. There seems to be the smallest possibility that he is, in fact, a quadruple agent.

All of this, I suspect, will turn on the identity of "RAB." I note that the only wizarding surname we've been exposed to so far is "Black." A careful review of the tapestry section of Order of the Phoenix might prove helpful here.

On the hierarchy of Harry Potter books, I'd put Half-Blood Prince just a half-step below Order of the Phoenix, which itself is just a half-step below Goblet of Fire. We could hardly have asked for anything more from Ms. Rowling. In a world filled with disappointments, Harry Potter has always exceeded my wildest hopes by a factor of three. I will be very sad to see the series end.

Which leads me to one final thought: When Rowling finishes the series there will naturally be a clamor for her to give us more Potter somehow--a spin-off featuring Hermione, or Fred and George, perhaps. My own hope is that she will instead settle down and write Hogwarts: A History.

Top 10 Videogames--Ever

This list leaves something to be desired--particularly the Top 10 slots. I'll buy Super Mario Bros. at number 1, but the Nintendo 64 bias is a little tough to take. A Legend of Zelda sequel ranked far ahead of Ms. Pac Man? (Heck, Metal Gear Solid ranked above Ms. Pac Man?)

Discuss.