The 'Salt' Identity

Interesting piece, from Luisita Lopez Torregrosa, at LAT:

[Angelina] Jolie, who made her action-hero mark as the leather-clad archaeologist Lara Croft in the box-office hit "Tomb Raider" movies, has turned the action up several notches as an icy-hot American operative accused of being a Russian sleeper agent. She had joked about wanting to play James Bond but may have gotten something better: a role originally written for Tom Cruise. Jolie transforms the testosterone-and-octane Salt into a more compelling and intriguing character than any of the action-hero boys could've done — yes, even more exciting than Jason Bourne, on whom Salt is pretty much modeled ....

Are these women the new models of millennial femininity? Do they sacrifice being "real" women — with boyfriends, husbands, kids — to fit a male fantasy ( Phillip Noyce's, the director of "Salt," and Larsson's, respectively)? Or are Salt and Salander the right ideal: brainy, independent, physically and emotionally tough, sexual but coldblooded? The movie critic Owen Gleiberman declared them "the new normal." But are they?

While a Tom Cruise action character could have a wife and kids, Evelyn Salt could not. Mothers define attachments; they aren't free to run for their lives. No mother would walk on a narrow ledge way above the ground or jump from a bridge railing onto a speeding truck below or wipe out a gang of Russian killers without breaking a sweat, mowing them down like a row of toy ducks at the country fair, after she watches them kill her husband with a shot to the head. Evelyn Salt had to be childless and a widow. Among reviewers and bloggers and commenters and my friends, women are split on this thing about Salt and Salander. Men swoon over Salt and back up Salander, but women are not so sure. Some adore Salander and, to a lesser extent, Salt. Some see them as weird, narcissistic and heartless, putting their careers — killing (mostly) bad people, saving the world — above the gentler pleasures of womanhood. And many women, while applauding Salt's guts and Salander's sang-froid, take it all in as just pulse-racing entertainment, a Saturday matinee fantasy.

Salander is Lisbeth Salander, who stars in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," directed by Stieg Larsson.

Billy Idol Tonight at Pechanga

Don't know if I'll post any more today. Gonna be with my wife tonight for Billy Idol in concert (and I'm gonna enjoy some bourbon while we're out).

Below: Billy Idol, Billy Morrison, and Steve Stevens in Zermatt, Switzerland (via Twitter).

Back online later ...

Pamela Geller Beats New York M.T.A. on Mega Mosque Advertisement

At New York Times, "With Anti-Mosque Ad, M.T.A. Is Reminded of Its Limited Powers":

In 1904, New Yorkers nearly rioted when they learned that advertisements would be plastered on the tiled walls of the city’s gleaming new subway system. “Cheap and nasty,” one official scoffed.

Today, advertisements on buses and trains are so ubiquitous that the average straphanger is quite likely to forget that they are there at all: the injury lawyers and Dr. Zizmors are only a blurry backdrop to the daily voyage.

Until, that is, this week, when a debate over a provocative advertisement reinserted the Metropolitan Transportation Authority into a fierce public debate over what should be allowed in the transit system — and to what extent the authority has the right to decide that at all.

At issue was an advertisement submitted by a group opposed to the construction of a mosque and Islamic center near ground zero. The advertisement includes a photograph of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, one tower aflame, the other moments away from being struck by an airplane. A headline asks, “Why There?” And an arrow points to a rendering of the proposed mosque.

The authority’s advertising firm initially rejected the advertisement as unsuitable, repeatedly requesting changes to the photograph of the twin towers, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week by the advertisement’s sponsor, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and its leader, the prominent right-wing blogger Pamela Geller, who argued that her right to free speech had been infringed.

On Monday, the authority relented, saying it would allow the advertisement to run in its original form. It is expected to appear next week on more than 20 city buses.

More at the link.

Free speech-basher CAIR is obviously not pleased.

See also, "MTA Caves: Ground Zero Bus Campaign Will Run."

'Ground Zero Mosque is Radically Insensitive' — But the Developers 'Have Been Bridge-Builders', Blah, Blah...

No one should be surprised that the editorial board at the New York Times has been totally in the tank for a victory mosque a stone's throw (and plane parts) away from the hallowed ground of the WTC attack zone. And as Pamela Geller wrote yesterday, "New York Times Soils Itself Again with Ground Zero Bus Coverage."

So I'm intrigued that the paper is using the front-page to at least appear critical of the backers. I won't be as cynical as others, so readers can judge for themselves: "For Mosque Sponsors, Early Missteps Fueled Storm." I will say that it's a pathetically squishy piece. The Times argues that Daisy Kahn and Imam Rauf are "bridged-builders." Clearly they are not, but at least the Times helps point out the utter mendacity of folks who thought it'd be cool to put up a victory mosque at the symbolic heart of America's fight against Islamist extremism. So, FWIW:

Joy Levitt, executive director of the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, remembers her first conversation with Daisy Khan around 2005, years before Ms. Khan’s idea for a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan morphed into a controversy about Sept. 11, Islam and freedom of religion.

“Strollers,” said Ms. Levitt, whom Ms. Khan had approached for advice on how to build an institution like the Jewish center — with a swimming pool, art classes and joint projects with other religious groups. Ms. Levitt, a rabbi, urged Ms. Khan to focus on practical matters like a decent wedding hall and stroller parking.

“You can use all these big words like diversity and pluralism,” Ms. Levitt recalled telling Ms. Khan, noting that with the population of toddlers booming in Manhattan, “I’m down in the lobby dealing with the 500 strollers.”

Clearly, the idea that Ms. Khan and her partners would one day be accused of building a victory monument to terrorism did not come up — an oversight with consequences. The organizers built support among some Jewish and Christian groups, and even among some families of 9/11 victims, but did little to engage with likely opponents. More strikingly, they did not seek the advice of established Muslim organizations experienced in volatile post-9/11 passions and politics.

The organizers — chiefly Ms. Khan; her husband, the imam of a mosque in the financial district; and a young real-estate investor born in New York — did not hire a public-relations firm until after the hostility exploded in May. They went ahead with their first public presentation of the project — a voluntary appearance at a community board meeting in Lower Manhattan — just after an American Muslim, Faisal Shahzad, was arrested for planting a car bomb in Times Square.

“It never occurred to us,” Ms. Khan said. “We have been bridge builders for years.”

I have my doubts about that (considering all the reporting I've done already, and not to mention the Imam's scheduled tour to Saudi Arabia on the State Department's dime). So what is it? An attempt to make Little Miss Daisy look the innocent? Either way, lax oversight or not, the Ground Zero Mega Mosque is a mistake. The development has done nothing but polarize America, and the terror-enabling left sees this as a chance to win some points while going down for the count in November. Most of all, we've got a year of tremendous historical significance coming up, and if somehow, some way, Bloomberg and his surrender-chorus succeed in getting this thing built, there's going to be political hell to pay.

I wish I was in New York.

Added: Terror-apologist Adam Serwer has a piece up taking NYT to task for descending into ...

... a kind of "liberal" media known-nothingism when it comes to how this became a controversy, suggesting that " a combination of arguable naïveté, public-relations missteps and a national political climate in which perhaps no preparation could have headed off controversy." This is a remarkable formula that manages to place the blame everywhere except where it belongs -- on a right-wing smear machine that went into overdrive in an effort to portray Rauf and Khan as terrorist sympathizers, an experience no one outside of contemporary partisan politics could have possibly been prepared for. The conservative media lied about the location of the project, they lied about Rauf's background, they lied about the project's funding, they lied about when the project would be built, and they lied about Rauf's political beliefs. And it would have been one thing if it had just been a small group of people lying, but they had an entire cable news station to lie for them, and politicians who were willing to amplify their smears. This controversy isn't about the "political climate." It's the fruit of a conscious, deliberate, and sustained effort.

Whoa.

It's like I said: This thing has become THE political event heading into the 9th anniversary of 9/11. The leftists are really getting extreme in their pushback, and Serwer's allegations of "lies" reveal a level of desperation I've not seen for some time, and that's saying something.

More at NewsReal, "Ground Zero Mosque Fraud Exposed."

Charlie Rangel — 'I'm Not Going Away'

Top video c/o Left Coast Rebel:

And according to Doug Feaver:

Rangel's speech -- a combination of defense, apology, refusal to resign and appeal for an early trial -- is seen by readers of both parties as good news for the GOP in its hopes of recapturing the House in the mid-term elections.

RELATED: Ruth Marcus, "Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters and the House culture of entitlement." And Doug Powers (at Michelle's), "Charles Rangel: I’m Not Going Away!"

And if folks are wondering about Adam Clayton Powell IV, who has promised to "take out" Rangel in the district's Democratic primary next month, well, check Business Week, "Rangel Ethics Case Leaves Voters in New York’s Harlem Unfazed."

Three Things

Three surprising things you probably didn't know about Islam.

Via Nice Deb and Moonbattery (c/o Memeorandum):

Sarah Palin Calls Ted Stevens 'An Alaskan Hero'

From Matt Lewis. And you can hear it at the clip (at about 4:00 minutes):

Democrats Use Stevens Tragedy to Wish Death on Palin

It's pretty awful, but no surprise whatsoever. Full post at Conservatives for Palin:

This is just a small sampling of the sort of hatred that the left and the Democrats dished out towards Governor Palin and her family in response to the nation losing one of it's most well-known senators. It is to their shame that nobody on their side has displayed the sort of leadership it would take to get that kind of hatred under control within their ranks. I do believe they are spiraling into a very dark place because nobody told them to STOP! Knock it off! No, nobody on their side calls them out at all. It is accepted behavior therefore they have allowed that hate to fester and grow.

This is who these people are. These are not marginal freaks. This is the mainstream of the Democratic Party. I report this stuff all the time.

Blogging in Retreat

Perhaps. See the analysis at "Take This Blog and Shove It!":

Tech writers continue to tout social media as a transformative phenomenon in its infancy. That’s certainly true for such sites as Facebook, which boasts more than 500 million active users, or Flickr, which hosts some 4 billion photos. YouTube also shows no sign of slowing down. But those sites offer clear benefits to users, including the ability to easily stay in touch with friends, indulge in a game of Mob Wars, share baby pictures, or watch videos of fashion models falling down, in exchange for their time and efforts.

Many other elements of the user-generated revolution, meanwhile, are beginning to look sluggish. The practice of crowd sourcing, in particular, worked because the early Web inspired a kind of collective fever, one that made the slog of writing encyclopedia entries feel new, cool, fun. But with three out of four American households online, contributions to the hive mind can seem a bit passé, and Web participation, well, boring—kind of like writing encyclopedia entries for free.

Evidence of this ennui is everywhere. Amateur blogs, the original embodiment of Web democracy, are showing signs of decline. While professional bloggers are “a rising class,” according to Technorati, hobbyists are in retreat, and about 95 percent of blogs are launched and quickly abandoned. A recent Pew study found that blogging has withered as a pastime, with the number of 18- to 24-year-olds who identify themselves as bloggers declining by half between 2006 and 2009. A shift to Twitter—or microblogging, as it’s called—partly accounts for these numbers. But while Twitter carries more than 50 million tweets per day, its army of keystrokers may not be as large as it seems. As many as 90 percent of tweets come from 10 percent of users, according to a 2009 Harvard study. The others are primarily “lurkers”—people who don’t contribute but track the postings of others. Between 60 and 70 percent of people who sign up for the 140-character platform quit within a month, according to a recent Nielsen report.

Citizen journalism also has stabilized. Fewer than one in 10 Web users say they have created their own original news or opinion piece, according to Pew, and comment sections on blogs or mainstream media sites, which were supposed to turn the old one-way media model into a two-way street, are often too profane, hateful, or off-point to attract people. Only one in four Web users has left a comment—probably no more than wrote letters to the editor in decades past, says Brian Thornton, a University of North Florida professor who has studied the history of the letters page.

Image Credit: Doc Weasel. (NSFW)

JetBlue Attendant 'Banging His Boyfriend When the Cops Showed Up'

This guy's getting a cheery write-up in People Magazine, "In His Own Words: JetBlue Flight Attendant Steven Slater's 20 Year-Career." And local news reports say he's out on bail, "Fed-Up Flight Attendant is Out of Jail." And Towleroad has the background, "JetBlue Flight Attendant Steven Slater Held on $2500 Bail."

But it's far left-wing Gawker that picks up on the oft-missed angle, "Cranky Flight Attendant Was Banging His Boyfriend When the Cops Showed Up":

Yesterday we heard how the disgruntled flight attendant's altercation with a passenger (which was related to a suitcase and/or overhead bin bonking Slater on the head) culminated in him announcing over the plane intercom, "To the fucking asshole who told me to fuck off, it's been a good 28 years. I've had it. That's it," then grabbed two beers from the galley, activated the jet's inflatable slide, and bolted off the job. The content of Slater's rant remains in dispute: Some say he called the passenger a "motherfucker" instead of an "asshole," and others dispute who told whom to "fuck off." (And although he seemed to suggest he'd been working as a flight attendant for 28 years, he started working for the airlines 20 years ago.)

Either way, the word "fuck" occurred twice, and the act of fucking occurred once: As soon as the surly steward arrived at his beachfront home in the Rockaways, he jumped into bed with his boyfriend, and was mid-coitus when the police arrived to arrest him for reckless endangerment and trespassing. The New York Daily News reports the scene of the arrest:

He boasted to skeptical cops that he really did escape by chute with his carry-on luggage.

"Oh, yes, I did! I threw them down first and I went down after," he told cops, sources said.

He was grinning as police walked him in handcuffs to a squad car. "He left with a big smile on his face," said neighbor Curt Karkowski.

The New York Post adds that Slater told authorities he was HIV-positive. During his arrest Slater was photographed in a sage green t-shirt and madras shorts. Many outlets have noted that Slater's MySpace profile (which we raided yesterday) testifies to a history of "alcoholism and substance abuse." Did a life crisis predicate the haughty high-flier's mid-tarmac meltdown? ...

More details at the link.

Actually, seems like a nice guy. But I can't help thinking of the gay hookup culture, reported last night. (And while gays are in the spotlight with the Prop 8 ruling, out in the real world it's like they're showing up for a job interview drunk and cursing. Those applications get thrown in the trash.) And if you missed it, you might need a drink while you're reading Out Magazine's, "Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?"

Manhunt is rarely mentioned in newspapers or magazines. Occasionally it shows up in stories about public-health crises (of which more later). A little more often, reporters discover the Manhunt profiles of public figures, who are subsequently embarrassed, or worse. The mayor of Spokane, Wash., and the chairman of the school board in Richmond, Va., for instance, both lost their office after their Manhunt profiles were made public. Last year, a 24-year veteran of the Norwalk, Conn., police department was arrested for having sex with two 15-year-old boys and trying to arrange to meet a third -- all of whom he found on Manhunt. Nude pictures from profiles reputed to belong to Thomas Roberts, the former CNN anchor, and American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken, were circulated on blogs and mentioned in gossip columns. And yet Manhunt members still seem to think they can get away with anything there: The profile of one of the world’s most powerful entertainment executives includes full-length naked photos of him, clearly showing his face, having sex with another man. Another famous master of industry advertises on Manhunt as a hung top, with a headless version of a widely published portrait of himself. God only knows how many more ticking time bombs lie among the profiles.

But the most powerful secrets that live on Manhunt aren’t the ones we keep from the outside world. The most powerful secrets on Manhunt are the ones we keep from ourselves. Practically every gay man has his own version of this secret, which we learned to keep while growing up in the closet: the secret fear that, if we were truly known, we would never be loved.

And speaking of the gay hookup scene, I guess TBogg's felicitous readers are on the inside (with respect to Greg Gutfeld's Muslim gay bar initiative):

Closeted homocons won’t go there because there are too many people around with cell phone cameras, and in general gay bars have been closing across the nation, including in NYC, because it’s easier to hook up online. On the plus side, that means Greggie & “friends” will be throwing their money away.

It's always something kinky at freaknozzle TBogg's.

RELATED: See Heather Robinson, "I Was an Eyewitness to Flight Attendant Steven Slater's Rant on Jet Blue #1052." (Via Memeorandum.)

Leftists Smear Andrew Breitbart With Goat Bestiality Video

At King Charles' Twitter page, "Breaking: Video Surfaces of Breitbart in Compromising Position with Goat":

I guess this is a variation on the "goat-f**king Republican" smear, at Daily Kos:

Andrew Breitbart is a scare mongering lying fuck, but he is an effective scare mongering lying fuck. Now if you all think this latest controversy about Andrew and Fox News is going to change what these folks do you are crazy. Standing up and calling them liars is not going to stop them or stop them from being effective. These folks play on the emotions of people. The emotion of fear, and they are good at it. Our side needs to remember that the truth and facts do not win you the hearts and minds of people, it is irrational emotional arguments that rule the day. We need to stir up our own shit and rile up people and cause all sorts of crazy to happen...

Or we need to stop rising up and getting all pissed at these morons and just marginalize them and stop taking anything they say seriously. We need our leaders to just ignore Fox News, no need to announce they are doing it, just do it. Ignore them, don't answer their questions, don't go on their shows, don't even send them press releases. Just stop dealing with them.

Next, choose one right wing nut as your enemy. Every good guy needs an enemy so choose one and fight with him and ignore the rest ...

Also, "Out-Of-Context Snippet Makes Andrew Breitbart."

Patricia Neal in 'The Fountainhead'

Patricia Neal died Sunday at her home in Martha's Vineyard. She was from my parents' era, but "The Fountainhead" is a classic for the ages, and I do believe I enjoyed that book more than "Atlas Shrugged."

LAT has the obit, "Patricia Neal dies at 84." She had a difficult life.

Portia de Rossi Takes Her Hus — , Er, Wife's, Name

I'm missing something. Either that, or Portia de Rossi's gone badly off the radical feminist reservation:

If you take your husband's name, you must be dependent and incompetent. If you don't, of course, you're a ball-busting feminist — or that even more pitiable creature, someone without a husband at all. And, in most cases, you still have a name that came down to you patrilineally anyway. Luckily, there is one woman who's thrown off the chains of the nomenclature patriarchy and received only praise for it. I speak, of course, of Lady Gaga.

Sheesh.

Gaga's an open-borders extremist so what does she know? Anyway, the screencap's to The Daily Caller, which links to The Daily Mail, "Portia de Rossi to become Mrs DeGeneres as she takes Ellen's name."

These two make one high-profile Prop 8 couple, dontcha know? (They were married August 2008, months before the November election, in Beverly Hills). But I'm wondering if this is some statement on the consolidation of the post-feminist world. Things do change:

Taking your husband's surname, traditionally, makes you an auxiliary, an adjunct, the cute female sidekick, a spinoff, a derivative, Mrs. Him. But for some women now, it's an assumption, rather than a loss, of power -- shared power. "Instead of feeling like I 'belong' to my husband now that I have his last name, I feel like we are on equal footing, says Amy Owings, 34, a executive assistant in Overland Park, Kan. "We are both Owings, so now I claim him as much as he claims me."

Still, I'm out of the loop on lesbian culture. Is it a pathbreaking thing for gay women to adopt the dominant cultural identification of the patriarchical Mr. and Mrs. nomenclature? No doubt Catherine MacKinnon's steaming over this: "Feminism stresses the indistinguishability of prostitution, marriage, and sexual harassment."

RELATED: "Portia de Rossi: A Gay Staunch Feminist."

Heads Explode on Memeorandum

Via William Jacobson:

God, it's like a treasure-trove of leftist piranhas going after their own. I love Jane Hamsher's post, "Tribalism is the Last Refuge of Political Scoundrels, Including Robert Gibbs."

Spiro Agnew — sorry, Robert Gibbs — says “the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.” Well, the Obama in the White House is not representative of the Obama who organized, campaigned, raised money and ran for office, so I guess it’s a wash.

Read the whole thing. I don't think Jane will admit she campaigned (shilled) for a liar, a loser, a hypocrite, and a likely one-termer.

And at Daily Kos, our other commie blog bellwhether (and this is from Comrade Markos himself), "Inartful":

If the White House thinks their problems are reserved among a handful of progressive critics, then I'm afraid, because it tells me they're really out of touch with the undercurrent of discontent faced by Democrats this year.

And from my favorite overrated left-wing analyst (now going to the overrated unofficial newspaper of record) Nate Silver, "As Liberals Lose Hope, the White House is Losing Its Cool":

One problem that Obama is having -- and not just on the left, although it might be most acute there -- is the dissonance between the grand, poetic narratives of the campaign trail and the prosaic and transactional day-to-day grind of governance.

Gee, you think, Nate?

Well, maybe LGM's Scotty Lame-ieux's got the plan:

We need our own Ari Fleischer; even if he can’t be as accomplished a liar, at least he’d know to keep his focus on his actual enemies.

This president's a liar, Scott (even Snooki says so). The press secretary can't fix that. And thanks for confirming that, yes, sadly, we are enemies.

Billy Idol ‘Live and Loud’ at Pechanga

My wife and I will be there:

Only a few tickets remain for what promises to be a seriously rockin’ night when 80s rock rebel Billy Idol takes the stage at 8 p.m. on Aug. 11 and 13 at Pechanga Resort & Casino’s Showroom Theater.

Featuring longtime partner and guitarist Steve Stevens, fans can expect some new tunes, along with favorites like “Rebel Yell,” “Mony Mony,” “White Wedding” and “Dancing With Myself.”

James 'We're About to Die Down Here' Carville Sucks Up Obama Slams in Time for Midterms

Well, when it gets to the point where Democrats WON'T run on their record, it's understandable that even harsh critics of the administration are sucking it up in hopes of minimizing the carnage.

Here's James Carville hilarious taking back his "folks are dying down here" rant from April, "Obama played his cards right on BP":

My mother, Ms. Nippy Carville, was a woman of many talents. Two in particular stand out. She was a superb cook (the author of a successful cookbook), and she was an excellent bridge player.

She always cautioned me that it was important that one "review the bidding" before the play. Now that it's becoming apparent that the efforts to cap the well at Deepwater Horizon are going to be successful, we should pause and pay homage to Ms. Nippy's advice by reviewing the bidding.

Any fair assessment would have to conclude that in spite of some people's criticism of the early response, (and by "some people" I mean Ms. Nippy's firstborn son James), one also must give credit to a much improved and vigorous response to the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf.

RTWT.

Haley Barbour's already claimed that Obama's done "more right than wrong" on the BP spill (highly questionable), so I guess that wasn't too hard for Carville.

Love the clip, in any case.

Melodi Dushane Video: Woman Punches McDonalds Worker Over McNuggets

According to Mediaite, "This Woman Really Likes McNuggets. A Lot." And my wife and I agree the funniest part is when the next driver in line pulls up and gets his order like clockwork:

The incident occurred early on New Years Eve Day but the dramatic security camera footage has only reached the internet yesterday where it can now be enjoyed by McNugget fans everywhere. While all of the punching and window smashing in the clip are fun, I really think my favorite part is the truck that pulls up after Dushane speeds off. While I’m assuming the guy probably stopped to help, I like to imagine that he just said, “Hey, you guys look busy but can I get my Sausage Biscuit now? I’m in a hurry.”

Also, "Crazy Security Footage Is Best McDonald's Viral Ad Ever."

The lady was drunk, by the way. Picture here: "Melodi Dushane Punches McDonalds Worker Over McNuggets."

Post-Anti-Americanism?

I'm sure Howard Fineman is a good guy (hardly a netroots freak), but seriously, he should read some of the scholarly literature on hegemony and U.S. power. Signs in Europe of a post-post-9/11 anti-Americanism simply signal that continent's ever increasing irrelevance in great power international politics. See, "Europe can’t even be bothered to hate America any more":

I got on a recently completed three-week trip to Italy, Greece, Turkey, and the Black Sea. America is no longer admired, imitated, or feared. We remain—for now—a safe haven for dollars (of which there are too many in the world). But we increasingly are seen less as a model or as an empire than as a cautionary tale of national neglect and decline.

Some Europeans can’t quite hide their schadenfruede. The British—whose publications and personalities are increasingly (and annoyingly) influential in the colony they lost 227 years ago—are global leaders in condescension (think Simon Cowell). But for America they add a special twist of bitter lemon to their analyses. It’s the triumph of the doddering older brother who no longer has to be grateful to his junior. Memories fade, and the Brits no longer feel they have to be kind out of homage to our having saved them from Hitler.

A couple of examples from the genre. Writing in the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash sees a Third World shabbiness when he visits the United States. “Every time I come back to the United States,” the Oxford don writes, “the airports, the roads, the public spaces look more tattered, battered, old-fashioned. Modernity is no longer self-evidently here.”

Edward Luce, a brilliant and diligent reporter for the Financial Times, surveyed the American landscape and came up with a mournful portrait that echoes, in equal measure, Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, and Robert Altman. Citing incontrovertibly bleak statistics about the struggles of middle-class Americans, and the growing disparity between the really rich and everyone else, he concludes that the U.S. is losing its essential character: it is no longer the land of opportunity and upward mobility; no longer the place where the future will surely be better, and more prosperous, than the past ...

Oh God ... tha's all I can read.

Folks are better off reading Michael Mandelbaum, "The Downsizing of American Foreign Policy." And Mandelbaum's no declinist, by the way. Let's get this economy pumping (ahem, President Obama), and we'll get America back on top in world public opinion (hope and change ain't doin' the trick).

RELATED: "Do States Ally Against the Leading Global Power?"

Rand Paul News — 'Aqua Buddha' and Jack Conway

Mostly fluff, but interesting.

From Ben Smith, "Paul campaign attacks GQ reporter." The reporter in question is Jason Zengerle, who's also with The New Republic. Focus on that angle, not legal threats. Hang the JournoList albatross around GQ's neck. (More on this at Memeorandum.)

And related, "Democratic Operative Busted Smearing Rand Paul at Fancy Farm":

Too bad people cannot deal openly and honestly with real issues and argumentation. Actually, it’s a good thing: these kinds of antics actually show them for what they are: liars. Jack Conway and company will have to do better. Furthermore, this confirms what tea party goers have claimed elsewhere, as this Fox article reports.

Also at Mediaite, "Jack Conway Supporter Caught Disguising Himself As Racist Rand Paul Fan." And R.S. McCain, "Fake Republican, Real Hate: Democrat Tries Moby ‘Racist’ Smear on Rand Paul."

Victor Can 'Rot in Hell' While Ross 'Pulls Out Even When He Masturbates' — Just Samples of Yesterday's Leftist High Brow Blog Commentary...

Freaks. Yeah, but standard on the left.

Instaputz literally wishes death upon Victor Davis Hanson (for his comments on Hugh Hewitt's), and TBogg uses disgusting sexual slurs to attack Ross Douthat for his commentary on gay marriage.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Perhaps next we'll see Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman blog Representative Paul Ryan in blackface? (Jane Hamsher's never been honored in Oslo, so no doubt a Krugman turn at that kind demonology will lend leftists even greater credibility with the genre.)

RELATED: "The Smart vs. the Dumb." And, "Fire Paul Krugman. Now."

Celebrating Lifelong Heterosexual Monogamy as Unique and Indispensable

I've dealt with these arguments over and over again, but I must say Ross Douthat's piece yesterday was an extremely clever analytical outing. He makes the case that marriage not only is entirely unnatural, but has virtually collapsed as a social institution as well. The clincher is the last couple of paragraphs where he describes marriage is a civilizational ideal that's "unique" and "indispensible," and concludes:

That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

I've read around the horn quite a bit, and Douthat was certainly successful in firing up the masses. With the exception of the Steve Chapman piece (excerpted with additional commentary at Protein Wisdom), it's mostly howling gay bloggers who're up in arms about it. Glenn Greenwald's piece appears to have little familiarity with actually law (or at least moral foundations of the law), but Andrew Sullivan in fact wrote a pretty good essay. Click on Memeorandum to sample some of the responses.

And I suppose it's a good thing that Sully and Rick Ellensburg et al. are pushing for marriage, considering how the gay hookup culture --- despite its murderous health and safety risks --- is still pretty much the rage, at Gawker:

Sonja Schmidt Reports on the Immigration Debate From Phoenix

Click the image to watch:

Meet the Women of Hezbollah

At The New Republic:

Since the 1980s, the Shia terrorist group Hezbollah has not been given to blunt public moralizing about the need for women to wear the veil. It originally made no secret of its desire to convert Lebanon into a Shia Islamic state—the organization’s 1985 manifesto called for the establishment of “Islamic government” and the conversion of Christians to Islam—but these efforts proved exceedingly unpopular, given Lebanon’s plurality of Christian and Sunni Muslim citizens. So when its leader, Abas Musawi, was assassinated in 1992, his successor Hassan Nasrallah refrained from offering explicit support for theocracy in Lebanon—and largely backed away from efforts to impose conservative religious traditions on Hezbollah's female constituents. But now, suddenly, the organization is again behaving in a way that evinces deep insecurity about the decorum of Shiite women.

Here's one example. Two months after Israel interdicted the Mavi Marmara, another aid flotilla is preparing to set sail toward the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory of Gaza. This Lebanese fleet, slated to depart in the coming weeks, is led by the Miriam, a vessel manned solely by females. The idea behind this creative and progressive staffing is to raise the negative impact on Israel if it tries to enforce the blockade against a boat full of sympathetic ladies.

Yet it turns out that not all Lebanese women are welcome on the cruise. In June, the Kuwaiti daily As Siyassa reported that the curvaceous Lebanese diva Haifa Wehbe—perhaps the most famous woman in all of Lebanon—tried to sign on, but was rebuffed by Hezbollah. Why? Apparently Hezbollah was concerned that Wehbe’s “immodest” attire would “harm the reputation of all the women participating in the trip.”

More at the link.

I'm not seeing a caption, but that looks like Haifa Wehbe at the screencap. Either way, what a sweetie.

Gen. David Petraeus Plans Three-Week Media Blitz to Build Support for Afghan War

At Politico:

After seven silent weeks, Gen. David Petraeus begins aggressive messaging on Afghanistan: David Gregory announced yesterday that he will broadcast “Meet the Press” from Kabul next Sunday, with Petraeus’ first U.S. interview since he took command in Afghanistan. That will launch a spate of appearances that are being spread out over three weeks so Americans will be more likely to hear his message, even during the August doldrums. This week, Petraeus will begin communicating with the Afghan people. Then after “Meet,” the general will do the BBC later that week. The following week, Petraeus has sit-downs with “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric, then Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, who’s returning from breast-cancer treatment. At month’s end, George Stephanopoulos will take “Good Morning America” on the road to see the general. Major U.S. and European print and radio outlets will be sprinkled in. Then in the weeks that follow, the general plans to keep up a strong battle rhythm of engaging with the media and making his case.

Impeach Obama Van Patrolling Streets of Chicago

The new hope and change, via Founding Bloggers:

Prop 8 Ruling Barely Registers in California

My latest essay at Pajamas Media, "Candidates tiptoe around hot button issues while an amateurish flip-flop on immigration gets the GOP gubernatorial hopeful in trouble":

Check the Pajamas homepage for lots more great commentary and analysis.

Eye-Rollgate: Stay Classy, LSM — And Shannyn Moore!!

Eye-Sarah Palin responds to Eye-Rollgate:

I'd say Palin handled it pretty well, so no wonder the eye-roll's the thing. Freakin' lefties are jonesin' for something, anything, to keep the demonology alive.

See William Jacobson, "Palin Eye Roll Derangement Syndrome."

RELATED: Allahpundit suggests Shannyn Moore's a "Palin-hater." You think?

Obama-Rama at Jersey Shore — That's RAAAAACIST!!

I love the fact that you can almost take out Obama and Osama at the same time. But seriously, I'd say the leftist outrage is a bit much, since everything from guillotines to Bush assassination movies greeted the 43rd occupant of the White House. Well, at least it gives desperate lefties another chance to scream RAAAAACIST!!

RELATED: "Death Threats Against Bush at Protests Ignored for Years."

BONUS: "Hate-o-Crat Eliminationism: Leftists Move to 'Get Rid of Republicans Entirely'."

UPDATE: Also blogging, Doug Ross, "'Horrible' Jersey Shore Boardwalk Carnival Game Doesn't Depict Bush 43 Being Hung, Defecated Upon or Set Afire," and Left Coast Rebel, "(VIDEO) Obama-rama Boardwalk Fair Game at The Jersey Shore (Seaside Heights, New Jersey)."

And Blazing Cat Fur too! ... "Obama at the Jersey Shore."

Interview with Caroline Glick

At Accuracy in Media:

“On a psychological level, I think we’ve seen, over the past generation or more, 40 years or more, that Israel has been the victim of a campaign that grows stronger with each passing year to isolate it and to delegitimize it internationally, to try to argue that Israel has no right to exist and no right to defend itself. For the past decade or so, the United States has really been the last stalwart who has refused to engage in this kind of demonization of Israel. So from psychological perspective, Israel feels very dependent on the United States as its only ally in this political war that’s being fought against it, that’s being fought against the very notion of Jewish nationhood and of Jewish national rights in the land of Israel. And so the idea that the United States will abandon Israel—and the Obama administration almost continuously has this threat over Israel’s head, like a Sword of Damocles, saying, ‘If you don’t do what we demand that you do, then we’re going to stop vetoing anti-Israel resolutions in the U.N. Security Council, and a whole host of other areas where the United States has traditionally sided with Israel, in the U.N. and other international forums…’”

Lots more at the link, and a podcast too.

Why Does President Obama Refuse to Secure Our Borders?

Via NewsReal:

RELATED: "Arizona’s Fight – America’s Fight."

Human Rights Groups Slam WikiLeaks

At WSJ, "Rights Groups Join Criticism of WikiLeaks":

A group of human-rights organizations is pressing WikiLeaks to do a better job of redacting names from thousands of war documents it is publishing, joining the list of critics that claim the Web site's actions could jeopardize the safety of Afghans who aided the U.S. military.

The letter from five human-rights groups sparked a tense exchange in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange issued a tart challenge for the organizations to help with the massive task of removing names from thousands of documents, according to several of the organizations that signed the letter. The exchange shows how WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange risk being isolated from some of their most natural allies in the wake of the documents' publication.

The human-rights groups involved are Amnesty International; Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, or CIVIC; Open Society Institute, or OSI, the charitable organization funded by George Soros; Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission; and the Kabul office of International Crisis Group, or ICG.

The groups emailed WikiLeaks to say they were concerned for the safety of Afghans identified as helping the U.S. military in documents obtained by WikiLeaks, according to several of the groups. WikiLeaks has already published 76,000 of the documents and plans to publish up to 15,000 more.

Some of the already published documents included names that critics including the Pentagon claim could lead to harm for Afghans seen as helping the U.S. war effort. The Pentagon last week demanded that WikiLeaks hand over all the classified Afghan war documents it has.

"We have seen the negative, sometimes deadly ramifications for those Afghans identified as working for or sympathizing with international forces," the human-rights groups wrote in their letter, according to a person familiar with it. "We strongly urge your volunteers and staff to analyze all documents to ensure that those containing identifying information are taken down or redacted."

In his response to the letter signed by the human-rights organizations, Mr. Assange asked what the groups were doing to analyze the documents already published, and asked whether Amnesty in particular would provide staff to help redact the names of Afghan civilians, according to people familiar with the letter.

An Amnesty official replied to say that while the group has limited resources, it wouldn't rule out the idea of helping, according to people familiar with the reply. The official suggested that Mr. Assange and the human-rights groups hold a conference call to discuss the matter.

Mr. Assange then replied: "I'm very busy and have no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses. If Amnesty does nothing I shall issue a press release highlighting its refusal," according to people familiar with the exchange.

Later, WikiLeaks posted on its Twitter account: "Pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist review. Media won't take responsibility. Amnesty won't. What to do?"

In an email Monday, WikiLeaks declined to comment on the exchange with the human rights groups.

Taliban representatives have said publicly that they are searching the documents and plan to punish people who have helped U.S. forces.

Freakin' Assange has blood on his hands. Folks should give him up to the Taliban.

Mia Farrow's Blood Diamond Testimony Contradicts Naomi Campbell

At LAT, "Farrow Contradicts Campbell on Diamond":

THE HAGUE — Actress Mia Farrow told a war crimes court on Monday that she had heard supermodel Naomi Campbell say she had been given a "huge diamond" by Charles Taylor when he was Liberia's president.

Campbell told the Special Court for Sierra Leone last week she had been given "dirty looking pebbles" after a 1997 dinner in South Africa, but did not know if they were diamonds from Taylor, on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In court on Monday, Farrow said the British model had joined a group of guests at breakfast after the charity dinner, hosted by South African president Nelson Mandela, and had started relating something that had happened overnight.

"She said in the night she had been awakened by men knocking at her door and they had been sent to her by Charles Taylor, and they had given her a huge diamond," Farrow said, adding that Campbell had been "quite excited" about it.

Farrow told the court Campbell had said she would give the diamond to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, adding that "it was a sort of an unforgettable moment".

Taylor is charged with 11 counts of instigating murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers during wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone in which more than 250,000 people were killed. He denies all the charges.

Defence lawyer Courtenay Griffiths questioned Farrow's recollection and also her impartiality, because of her active campaigning for justice for the victims of Africa's wars.

The former manager of Mandela's Children Fund charity, Jeremy Ratcliffe, has said he received a number of uncut diamonds from Campbell, and handed them to South African police on Thursday after Campbell's testimony.

Prosecutors are seeking to link the gems to Taylor to prove allegations, which he denies, that he received diamonds from rebels in Sierra Leone and used them to buy weapons.

Prosecutors showed Farrow Campbell's testimony from last week and a U.S. media interview in which she denied saying the diamonds were from Taylor, or denied getting diamonds at all.

RELATED: At Wall Street Journal, "Doth Naomi Campbell Protest Too Much?‎"

Michelle Malkin Gets Hate Tweets

Unreal, but to be expected from Barack Obama supporters. As I've said many time, Obama really needs to work on his inner city education agenda. These be some illiterate mo-"fukers", yo!

American Volunteers Devoted to Helping Others in Afghanistan

At LAT:

They were a disparate group of American altruists who had long cared for the poor and ailing, thrown together on a mission to provide medical help in the most daunting and needy of places.

Last week, the six Americans were among 10 volunteers shot to death in a remote swath of Afghanistan while returning from an aid mission, a tragic end to their years of risk-laden service in the war-ravaged and impoverished nation.

Tom Little [pictured above], for one, remained in Afghanistan through its brutal civil war in the 1990s, talking his way through checkpoints manned by various ethnic militias, and saving the lives of co-workers who might otherwise have been dragged from the car and killed.

Colorado dentist Thomas Grams often traveled with a bodyguard and told friends how he'd persuaded a tribal leader to bring his mother in for a dental exam by agreeing that she'd peel back as little of her burka as possible.

"He was just there out of kindness," Katy Shaw, a friend of Grams, said Sunday, her voice catching. "I can't get my arms around why someone would do that to a group of people trying to be helpful."

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the ambush in a rugged, isolated valley, which also killed two Afghan men, a German woman and a British woman working with the International Assistance Mission. The Taliban accused the Christian group's volunteers of proselytizing and spying for Western military forces, which the charity vehemently denied.

The charity team, which had been providing eye care and other health services to villagers, had hiked over a steep mountain pass into neighboring Nuristan province, where insurgents had been battling Afghan and Western forces. Police theorized that the assailants might have followed them back from there.

Two other Afghan members of the group escaped the massacre: an interpreter who had left before the ambush and a driver who told police he recited verses from the Koran as he pleaded for his life. Afghan authorities are still questioning the driver about his account of the incident, and police said it would take two days for investigators to reach the scene of the killings.

The Western military condemned the attack as part of a pattern of insurgent behavior that exacerbated the suffering of Afghan civilians.

"This is something the Afghan population has to face," said Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force. "Because of these brutal, indiscriminate and absolutely deranged tactics and activities of the Taliban, international aid workers and nongovernmental organizations can't do their job, which is so necessary for this country" ....

Another victim, Cheryl Beckett [pictured above], 32, was a former senior class president in Ohio with a sharp sense of humor and a strong Christian faith, said her grandmother Jean Fink. Both characteristics helped the aid worker power through the last six years, with Beckett educating Afghan villagers in nutritional gardening and mother-child health, and herself in the local languages.

RELATED: "Afghan driver for slain aid volunteers being held by authorities." More at Blazing Cat Fur, along with the press release from the International Assistance Mission.

Judge Vaughn Walker Ruled That President Obama is a Bigot

It's true. Everybody's a bigot who doesn't surrender to the gay marriage ayatollahs, says George Mason University Law Professor Nelson Lund:

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that President Obama is a bigot. And not just the president. Joe Biden as well, and Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sandra Day O'Connor. And maybe you, too.

The judge didn't put it that way, of course. Technically, he ruled that an amendment to California's Constitution violated the U.S. Constitution by defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman. That amendment was approved by voters after a state court declared that a similar statute violated the state Constitution. The amendment then was challenged in federal court as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

This was a strange ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1971 that an identical challenge to the traditional definition of marriage was meritless. Nor has the Supreme Court ever suggested that its 1971 decision was wrong. Wednesday's ruling relied primarily on a constitutional doctrine that forbids laws having no conceivable rational purpose or no purpose except to oppress a politically unpopular minority group. After a lengthy trial, the judge found that the people of California must have adopted the traditional definition of marriage because of moral or religious contempt for homosexuals and their relationships.

It was a strange charge to make against the people of California. California has the most progressive domestic partnership law in the nation, which gives same-sex couples all the same substantive rights and privileges available to married couples. Why would the judge think that the only possible reason for favoring the traditional definition of marriage was bigotry? He reasoned that every other possible explanation for the voters' decision was so ridiculous that only anti-gay feelings were left.

Great essay. More from Ed Whelan at National Review.

The Nukes We Need

Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, previously at Foreign Affairs, "Preserving the American Deterrent":

The success of nuclear deterrence may turn out to be its own undoing. Nuclear weapons helped keep the peace in Europe throughout the Cold War, preventing the bitter dispute from engulfing the continent in another catastrophic conflict. But after nearly 65 years without a major war or a nuclear attack, many prominent statesmen, scholars, and analysts have begun to take deterrence for granted. They are now calling for a major drawdown of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and a new commitment to pursue a world without these weapons.

Unfortunately, deterrence in the twenty-first century may be far more difficult for the United States than it was in the past, and having the right mix of nuclear capabilities to deal with the new challenges will be crucial. The United States leads a global network of alliances, a position that commits Washington to protecting countries all over the world. Many of its potential adversaries have acquired, or appear to be seeking, nuclear weapons. Unless the world's major disputes are resolved -- for example, on the Korean Peninsula, across the Taiwan Strait, and around the Persian Gulf -- or the U.S. military pulls back from these regions, the United States will sooner or later find itself embroiled in conventional wars with nuclear-armed adversaries.

Preventing escalation in those circumstances will be far more difficult than peacetime deterrence during the Cold War. In a conventional war, U.S. adversaries would have powerful incentives to brandish or use nuclear weapons because their lives, their families, and the survival of their regimes would be at stake. Therefore, as the United States considers the future of its nuclear arsenal, it should judge its force not against the relatively easy mission of peacetime deterrence but against the demanding mission of deterring escalation during a conventional conflict, when U.S. enemies are fighting for their lives.

Debating the future of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is critical now because the Obama administration has pledged to pursue steep cuts in the force and has launched a major review of U.S. nuclear policy. (The results will be reported to Congress in February 2010.) The administration's desire to shrink the U.S. arsenal is understandable. Although the force is only one-fourth the size it was when the Cold War ended, it still includes roughly 2,200 operational strategic warheads -- more than enough to retaliate against any conceivable nuclear attack. Furthermore, as we previously argued in these pages ("The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy," March/April 2006 [1]), the current U.S. arsenal is vastly more capable than its Cold War predecessor, particularly in the area of "counterforce" -- the ability to destroy an adversary's nuclear weapons before they can be used.

Simply counting U.S. warheads or measuring Washington's counterforce capabilities will not, however, reveal what type of arsenal is needed for deterrence in the twenty-first century. The only way to determine that is to work through the grim logic of deterrence: to consider what actions will need to be deterred, what threats will need to be issued, and what capabilities will be needed to back up those threats.

The Obama administration is right that the United States can safely cut its nuclear arsenal, but it must pay careful attention to the capabilities it retains. During a war, if a desperate adversary were to use its nuclear force to try to coerce the United States -- for example, by threatening a U.S. ally or even by launching nuclear strikes against U.S. overseas bases -- an arsenal comprised solely of high-yield weapons would leave U.S. leaders with terrible retaliatory options. Destroying Pyongyang or Tehran in response to a limited strike would be vastly disproportionate, and doing so might trigger further nuclear attacks in return. A deterrent posture based on such a dubious threat would lack credibility.

Instead, a credible deterrent should give U.S. leaders a range of retaliatory options, including the ability to respond to nuclear attacks with either conventional or nuclear strikes, to retaliate with strikes against an enemy's nuclear forces rather than its cities, and to minimize casualties. The foundation for this flexible deterrent exists. The current U.S. arsenal includes a mix of accurate high- and low-yield warheads, offering a wide range of retaliatory options -- including the ability to launch precise, very low-casualty nuclear counterforce strikes. The United States must preserve that mix of capabilities -- especially the low-yield weapons -- as it cuts the size of its nuclear force.

More at the link.

VIDEO HAT TIP: William Jacobson.