The 'Unstoppable' Real Life Backstory

Following up on my post yesterday (with Kenneth Turan's review), things turned out and I was able to take my two sons to "Unstoppable." This is one thriller in which the description "non-stop action" is definitely not a cliché. The viewer is totally pumped by the end, and completely satisfied. But is it really a "true story"? Actually, the movie is "inspired by actual events." Even the most faithful dramatic picture throws in a little license here and there, and it's no exception with "Unstoppable." Plot Spoiler Warning: See the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "At Times, 'Unstoppable' Goes Off Track From Reality."

Husband John Puts Kibosh on Cindy McCain's NOH8 Campaign

While I support repeal of DADT, I've always thought Cindy McCain's NOH8 campaign was lame. Husband (and Senator) John McCain thinks so too: "Cindy McCain Tweets Support of John McCain's Standing on Don't Ask Don't Tell, Despite Recent Video."

Cindy's tweet is here.

And New York Mag asks, "Did John and Cindy have some sort of 'talk?'" Plus, leftist dickwipe (ideological if not literal) John Aravosis puts it more bluntly, "Cindy McCain Is a Hater - Reverses Self On DADT 24 Hours After Doing Video Linking the Gay Ban to Gay Youth Suicide." (At Memeorandum.)

RELATED: On the gay suicide media myth: "The 'Suicide Crisis' in the Gay Teen Community."

Myanmar Frees Democracy Leader Aung San Suu Kyi (VIDEO)

The main story's at LAT, "Myanmar Frees Opposition Leader Aung San Suu Kyi." I'm just blown away by the brazen and bankrupt maneuvering of the military junta, which just held the most carefully scripted elections imaginable, the first elections in 20 years. The timing of Suu Kyi's release naturally followed the balloting, if it could be called that. To release her ahead of the vote may well have helped topple the regime in power. See WSJ from earlier this month, "Myanmar's Muted Election: Residents Debate Importance of Sunday Vote, First in 20 Years":

Myanmar, led by a secretive military junta regarded as one of the most oppressive in the world, is holding a closely watched—and controversial— election on Nov. 7. The government says the vote is part of a "road map to democracy" that will replace generals with civilian leaders and give the public more say in public affairs than at any time in decades.

But during a five-day visit to the country recently, across two of Myanmar's biggest cities, the only evidence this reporter saw of the election race was a small campaign poster for an obscure ethnic party hanging on a shopkeeper's wall in a muddy and trash-strewn Yangon outdoor market. Government television stations and newspapers featured some coverage, but it was heavily censored. It included a series of 15-minute segments in which party candidates sat at desks passively reading policy statements approved by government minders.

To the extent anyone discussed the election, it was mainly in the form of quiet whispers in tea houses or in private residences. Locals say there are small gatherings of candidates and voters. The exiled media have reported that campaign signs, mostly for the government-backed parties, appear here and there.

Some were impressed when the largest opposition party, the National Democratic Force, did take out a full-page advertisement in a private newspaper. The simple ad showed the party's logo, a bamboo hat and a giant black check mark. In small type, it reads: "The Hope for Democracy: NDF for the People."

Strict election rules make it tough to do more. Candidates are barred from chanting, marching, or saying anything at political events that could tarnish the state's image. To register to run, they have to pay $500, a huge sum for average Myanmar citizens. Those restrictions—and the government's detention of more than 2,000 critics in prison, according to human-rights groups—have left some candidates unable or reluctant to do more than quietly ask friends and allies for support.

There's also an interactive information feature at the link.

Facing Opposition, Obama Scales Back Expectations

Ace commenter Dennis wrote recently, in response to the criticism against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: "Isn't that what the opposition is supposed to do?" And that reminded me of Martin Van Buren, the great Jacksonian president who is remembered by political scientists as favoring a vigorous opposition party: "Martin Van Buren ... was a realist who argued that a governing party needed a loyal opposition to represent other parts of society."

Well, here's more to that effect, at LAT, "Postelection White House Meeting Underscored Obama's Diminished Sway":

Three days after the midterm elections, senior Obama aides suggested to a gathering of liberal groups at the White House that they might need to scale back their expectations. In the wake of the big Republican win, there would be no new major legislative pushes from President Obama in 2011.

The mood, according to some participants at the meeting, was dour. Although the White House advisors said job creation would be a central goal, they did not lay out a concrete plan for putting more people to work. "There was an undercurrent of, 'Hey, folks. We're going to have to play some defense,'" said one attendee.

Since then, the sense of a president in a crouch has only deepened. Obama was unable to seal a long-anticipated free trade agreement with South Korea during his trip to Asia and was the odd man out at the Group of 20 summit over global economic strategy, where preferences for belt-tightening policies predominate.

When he returns to Washington, he faces an energized Republican opposition. The first issue will be whether to extend George W. Bush-era tax cuts, and Obama is already showing a willingness to compromise on his long-held position that the cuts should expire for families making more than $250,000 a year.

At a news conference Friday in Seoul, Obama bristled at reports that he was caving in to Republican pressure.

"It would be fiscally irresponsible for us to permanently extend the high-income tax cuts," he said. "I think that would be a mistake, particularly when we've got our Republican friends saying that their No. 1 priority is making sure that we deal with our debt and our deficit."

He added, though, that there "may be a whole host of ways to compromise around those issues."

Sneak Peek of Katy Perry's Performance at the 2010 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

The show airs November 30th on CBS:

Obama 'Has Largely Lost the Consent of the Governed'

I don't take these calls all that seriously, mainly because I don't believe that Obama's a cut-and-run president, and while I disagree with him profoundly, that's a good quality to have. He just needs to find a new tack, perhaps become more humble, and more attuned to a centrist style that's genuinely appreciated by Republicans. I don't know if there's a way for that after two years of thinking you know what's best for the country and screw everyone else, but if Bill Clinton showed us anything in 1994 it's that you can be a colossal screw up and still be reelected to a second term. And folks shouldn't get me wrong --- I want Obama to fail, the way Rush Limbaugh wants Obama to fail. It's just that there's no office like the presidency, an institution that's an engine of history. Announcing he'd not seek reelection in 2012 would make him even weaker than is now. He'd be transformed into a lame duck immediately, instead of after 2013 or so, after he'd expended his capital from reelection to a second term. And for what? Lyndon Johnson got a shellacking in the 1968 Democratic primaries. He stepped aside to "devote full attention" to the war in Vietnam. The president who signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is rarely referred to as one of the nation's greatest presidents. Obama not only wants to be remembered as the first black president. He wants to be remembered as the black Lincoln. That's probably out of reach, but he won't even be the black Truman if he announces he won't seek a second term.

In any case, from Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell at WaPo, "One and Done: To Be a Great President, Obama Should Not Seek Reelection in 2012" (via Memeorandum):

President Obama must decide now how he wants to govern in the two years leading up to the 2012 presidential election.

In recent days, he has offered differing visions of how he might approach the country's problems. At one point, he spoke of the need for "mid-course corrections." At another, he expressed a desire to take ideas from both sides of the aisle. And before this month's midterm elections, he said he believed that the next two years would involve "hand-to-hand combat" with Republicans, whom he also referred to as "enemies."

It is clear that the president is still trying to reach a resolution in his own mind as to what he should do and how he should do it.

This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.

To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.

If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.

We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.

The best way for him to address both our national challenges and the serious threats to his credibility and stature is to make clear that, for the next two years, he will focus exclusively on the problems we face as Americans, rather than the politics of the moment - or of the 2012 campaign.

Quite simply, given our political divisions and economic problems, governing and campaigning have become incompatible. Obama can and should dispense with the pollsters, the advisers, the consultants and the strategists who dissect all decisions and judgments in terms of their impact on the president's political prospects.

Obama himself once said to Diane Sawyer: "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." He now has the chance to deliver on that idea.

More commentary from Another Black Conservative and Allahpundit.

Marxists at Brecht Forum in New York

The main story's here: "Where Marxists Pontificate, and Play."

And Lee Doren's got something to say about that:

The Brecht Forum website is here. These are some really, really bad people.

The Bangles

The band's bassist, Annette Zilinksas, used to have my name on the guest list for their gigs in Los Angeles. She later left the band to form her own, Blood on the Saddle. I lost contact with her years ago, but searching around a bit online it turns out she's been working as an account executive for media production firms in L.A.

Jews for Injustice Against Jews

From Melanie Phillips:

No sooner had the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared his principled stand in support of Israel and against anti-Jew bigotry – even at the expense of his country’s seat on the Security Council of the Club of Terror – than he was venomously attacked by... Jews. Specifically, those obnoxious Finklers, the ‘Independent Jewish Voices’ – part of that broader coalition of hatred which should surely be called Jews for Injustice Against Jews.

According to these individuals, rising Jew-hatred is but a figment of Prime Minister Harper’s imagination; any such claim is merely a device to shut down freedom of speech. Quite why the Canadian Prime Minister should wish to shut down freedom of speech, and for a cause to which he has no obvious endemic affinity, and on behalf of such a cause furthermore to court such ostracism in the highest councils of the world community, is of course a mystery explicable only to the Jews for Injustice Against Jews in their parallel universe of pathological moral inversion.

The rest of us look on aghast at the intimidation and racial bullying being directed against Jewish students on campus, for example, which was specifically referred to by Harper – in the US it’s producing this kind of thing, or this at Brandeis – but to which the JfIAJ are of course wholly oblivious because they are signed up to the culture that is producing it.

They also unleashed their venom against Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu during a speech in New Orleans a few days ago, when a bunch of them heckled him over building for Jewish households in East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu accused the protesters of joining those who believe ‘Israel is guilty until proven guilty’. ‘The greatest success of our detractors is when Jews start believing that themselves. We've seen that today,’ he told the assembly of Jewish Federations of North America.

... The hecklers were members of the Young Leadership Institute of Jewish Voice. Rae Abileah, a 28-year-old protester from San Francisco, shouted ‘the settlements betray Jewish values’.

On the contrary: Jewish values embody justice and truth. Along with the rest of the JfIAJ, people like Rae Abileah stand for injustice and lies – and one of the biggest lies is to egregiously misrepresent the Jewish values they presume to appropriate.

What makes these Jews for Injustice Against Jews such an appalling phenomenon is not that they ‘criticise’ Israel. That happens in spades every day within Israel itself. No, it’s that they flatly deny Jewish victimisation and find only malign intent in Israel’s every action. They thus turn Israel into some kind of cosmic evil, uniquely malign and thus deserving of a unique censure – which they certainly do not mete out to the tyrannies of the region or anywhere else. They effectively depict Israel as standing outside the bounds of humanity itself. And that is classic Jew-hatred.

More at the link.

Addressing Our Homegrown Enemies

From Caroline Glick:

To remain free, free societies must shed our politically correct shackles and address this growing menace to everything we hold dear.

*****

This week we learned that Nazareth is an al-Qaida hub. Sheikh Nazem Abu Salim Sahfe, the Israeli imam of the Shihab al-Din mosque in the city, was indicted on Sunday for promoting and recruiting for global jihad and calling on his followers to harm non-Muslims.

Among the other plots born of Sahfe's sermons was the murder of cab driver Yefim Weinstein last November. Sahfe's followers also plotted to assassinate Pope Benedict XVI during his trip to Israel last year. They torched Christian tour buses. They abducted and stabbed a pizza delivery man. Two of his disciples were arrested in Kenya en route to joining al-Qaida forces in Somalia.

With his indictment, Sahfe joins a growing list of jihadists born and bred in Israel and in free societies around the world who have rejected their societies and embraced the cause of Islamic global domination. The most prominent member of this group today is the American-born al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki.

US authorities describe Awlaki as the world's most dangerous man. His jihadist track record is staggering. It seems that there has been no major attack in the US or Britain - including the September 11 attacks and the July 7 attacks in London - in which Awlaki has not played a role.

Sahfe and Awlaki, like nearly all the prominent jihadists in the West, are men of privilege. Their personal histories are a refutation of the popular Western tale that jihad is born of frustration, poverty and ignorance. Both men, like almost every prominent Western jihadist, are university graduates.

So, too, their stories belie the Western fantasy that adherence to the cause of jihad is spawned by poverty. These men and their colleagues are the sons of wealthy or comfortable middle class families. They have never known privation.

Armed with their material comforts, university degrees and native knowledge of the ways of democracy and the habits of freedom, these men chose to become jihadists. They chose submission to Islam over liberal democratic rights because that is what they prefer. They are idealists.

This means that all the standard Western pabulums about the need to expand welfare benefits for Muslims or abstain from enforcing the laws against their communities, or give mosques immunity from surveillance and closure, or seek to co-opt jihadist leaders by treating them like credible Muslim voices, are wrong and counterproductive. These programs do not neutralize their supremacist intentions or actions. They embolden the Western Islamic supremacists by signaling to them that they are winning. Their Western societies are no match for them.

More at the link.

Late Friday Rule 5

Via Theo Spark:

And check Theo's Friday night bedtime totty as well.

Marisa Miller Supports the Troops

At Weasel Zippers, "Victoria’s Secret Supermodel Steps Down to Focus on Projects Supporting the Troops…"

Previously: "Explosive Marisa Miller Rule 5 Roundup!"

BONUS: At Washington Rebel, "I am an AMERICAN."

Viral Footage: Abusive White Woman Gets Black Postal Worker Fired

And that's ALLEGEDLY gets black postal worker fired. Folks can check it out for themselves, at The Blaze, "Woman Goes on Racist Rant, Allegedly Hits Postman Over Mail Delivery," and Mediaite, "Postal Worker Claims He Got Fired For Recording Customer’s N-Word Rant." And at Guyism:

There is no wrath more obnoxious yet powerful than that of an annoying white woman with time to spare. Evidence: This video of a woman verbally abusing a USPS worker and, ultimately, calling him a racial epithet.

And as usual, Gawker's having a load of fun with it: "Postal Worker Secretly Films Customer's Racist Rant."

Newsweek Merges with Daily Beast

R.S. McCain suggests it's The Weekly Newsbeast. Either way, don't expect much change from the far-left Obama-worshipping program of Jon Meacham, which hammered the final nails in the Newsweek coffin. See, The Observer, "Newsweek and Daily Beast to Merge, and at NYT, "Newsweek and Daily Beast Have a Deal." Plus, from Robin Abcarian, "Newsweek, Daily Beast Wedding to Merge Something Old, Something New":

The merger of Newsweek magazine and the Daily Beast website, which seemed to have fallen apart three weeks ago, is back on. The deal, announced Friday by The Daily Beast, is a little like a May-December marriage:

The 77-year-old Newsweek, recently purchased for a dollar by audio pioneer Sidney Harman, gets an infusion of energy and immediacy from the 2-year-old Beast and its irrepressible editor and co-founder Tina Brown.

The Daily Beast, part of media mogul Barry Diller's InterActive Corp., gets the gravitas, reach and stable platform of an old, though fading, media icon. Harman and Diller will co-own the new Newsweek Daily Beast Co.

And Brown, a journalistic trophy if ever there was one, will be editor-in-chief of both. She will become the first female editor of Newsweek.

In an interview Friday with National Public Radio, Brown said the Daily Beast will become the digital operation of Newsweek, while Newsweek will continue as a weekly newsmagazine.

"It means that the Daily Beast's terrific young vibrant team who've created this front line of news and adrenaline of the site, can also take that energy and have a different rhythm when they're producing magazine articles."

The only cloud on this rosy horizon: Neither is profitable. Advertisers have fled Newsweek, and circulation is down to about 1.5 million worldwide, from 3.1 million in 2007.

The symbolic price of $1 came with substantial debt; Newsweek's 2010 operating loss is expected to be $20 million, according to The Daily Beast, which aggressively covered the sale and in August published a leaked copy of the memorandum circulated to potential Newsweek buyers by its owner the Washington Post Co.

The future of Newsweek, said the Daily Beast at the time, "will depend on finding a near-genius editor and an inspired publisher and on their freedom and shared approach, as well as on their bankroll."

Diller, who owns about 30 websites, will not disclose how much the Daily Beast has cost him, but has said the site is working on generating premium rates from high-end advertisers who are unaccustomed to paying print-like prices on the Web.

The merger makes sense to me, although I'm wondering how these folks are going to make money.

RELATED: "The Death of Real News?"

The Death of Real News?

Ted Koppel's on the left, but he nevertheless makes an interesting argument here. I've offered similar comments many times, although I'm not so pessimistic that partisan journalism will bring the decline of the republic (via Memeorandum):

To witness Keith Olbermann - the most opinionated among MSNBC's left-leaning, Fox-baiting, money-generating hosts - suspended even briefly last week for making financial contributions to Democratic political candidates seemed like a whimsical, arcane holdover from a long-gone era of television journalism when the networks considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust.

Back then, a policy against political contributions would have aimed to avoid even the appearance of partisanship. But today, when Olbermann draws more than 1 million like-minded viewers to his program every night precisely because he is avowedly, unabashedly and monotonously partisan, it is not clear what misdemeanor his donations constituted. Consistency?

We live now in a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly - individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.

The commercial success of both MSNBC and Fox News is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's oft-quoted observation that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts," seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.

And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.

More at the link.

I'm also not so worried about this bit about the profit motivations for the news. Seeing how traditional news outlets (newspapers) are in their death throes, it seems that finding a news model that sells would be a plus. Koppel has credibility, of course. I always held him up as the epitome of journalism back in the day, and if I could be up at that hour, I'd rarely miss Nightline. But that's a long ago era. Cable, talk radio, and the Internet have been changing news delivery for decades, so it's not as if we're just now at some new moment in time. And I doubt Koppel even wants to credit blogs as being a positive development in the information universe. That said, his discussion of early network journalism is fascinating. I miss Peter Jennings:

I recall a Washington meeting many years later at which Michael Eisner, then the chief executive of Disney, ABC's parent company, took questions from a group of ABC News correspondents and compared our status in the corporate structure to that of the Disney artists who create the company's world-famous cartoons. (He clearly and sincerely intended the analogy to flatter us.) Even they, Eisner pointed out, were expected to make budget cuts; we would have to do the same.

I mentioned several names to Eisner and asked if he recognized any. He did not. They were, I said, ABC correspondents and cameramen who had been killed or wounded while on assignment. While appreciating the enormous talent of the corporation's cartoonists, I pointed out that working on a television crew, covering wars, revolutions and natural disasters, was different. The suggestion was not well received.

The parent companies of all three networks would ultimately find a common way of dealing with the risk and expense inherent in operating news bureaus around the world: They would eliminate them. Peter Jennings and I, who joined ABC News within a year of each other in the early 1960s, were profoundly influenced by our years as foreign correspondents. When we became the anchors and managing editors of our respective programs, we tried to make sure foreign news remained a major ingredient. It was a struggle.

Biomechanics of Feline Water Uptake

At New York Times, "For Cats, a Big Gulp With a Touch of the Tongue":

And at Science, "How Cats Lap: Water Uptake by Felis catus."

Animals have developed a range of drinking strategies depending on physiological and environmental constraints. Vertebrates with incomplete cheeks use their tongue to drink; the most common example is the lapping of cats and dogs. We show that the domestic cat (Felis catus) laps by a subtle mechanism based on water adhesion to the dorsal side of the tongue. A combined experimental and theoretical analysis reveals that Felis catus exploits fluid inertia to defeat gravity and pull liquid into the mouth. This competition between inertia and gravity sets the lapping frequency and yields a prediction for the dependence of frequency on animal mass. Measurements of lapping frequency across the family Felidae support this prediction, which suggests that the lapping mechanism is conserved among felines.

'Unstoppable' in Theaters Today

I was hoping to see a movie this weekend, but it won't be today. My boys are home from school because of district furloughs, and neither of them wants to see "Unstoppable," at least not right now. I might go tomorrow night, so we'll see. In any case, Kenneth Turan gives it two thumbs up:

"Unstoppable" is as good as its name. A runaway train drama that never slows down, it fashions familiarity into a virtue and shows why old-school professionalism never goes out of style.

With action auteur Tony Scott directing, "Unstoppable" certainly features a lot that we've seen before, from its vehicle-from-hell format to its venerable advertising line: "1,000,000 Tons, 100,000 Lives, 100 Minutes." Yes, they still do make them that way.

This is also the second straight Scott film (after the underappreciated "The Taking of Pelham 123") involving a train and the sixth of his career to star Denzel Washington, here sharing the screen with "Star Trek's" Chris Pine and one very out of control locomotive. But while continually doing the same kind of movie might anesthetize some directors, it energizes Scott, who has gotten better and better at building and sustaining traditional kinds of tension.

RTWT.

Also, an interview with the director: "Q&A: How Tony Scott kept 'Unstoppable' real — at 60 mph."

A Growth Agenda for the New Congress

From Arthur Laffer, at Wall Street Journal:

For now: Extend the Bush tax cuts, repeal ObamaCare, support free trade. After 2012: Enact a flat tax, stabilize prices, balance the budget, give politicians incentive pay.

*****

Since its cyclical zenith in December 2007, U.S. economic production has been on its worst trajectory since the Great Depression. Massive stimulus spending and unprecedented monetary easing haven't helped, and yet the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve still cling to the book of Keynes. It's an approach ill-suited to solving the growth problem that the United States has today.

The solution can be found in the price theory section of any economics textbook. It's basic supply and demand. Employment is low because the incentives for workers to work are too small, and the incentives not to work too high. Workers' net wages are down, so the supply of labor is limited. Meanwhile, demand for labor is also down since employers consider the costs of employing new workers—wages, health care and more—to be greater today than the benefits.

Firms choose whether to hire based on the total cost of employing workers, including all federal, state and local income taxes; all payroll, sales and property taxes; regulatory costs; record-keeping costs; the costs of maintaining health and safety standards; and the costs of insurance for health care, class action lawsuits, and workers compensation. In addition, gross wages are often inflated by the power of unions and legislative restrictions such as "buy American" provisions and the minimum wage. Gross wages also include all future benefits to workers in the form of retirement plans.

For a worker to be attractive, that worker must be productive enough to cover all those costs plus leave room for some profit and the costs of running an enterprise. Being in business isn't easy, and today not enough workers qualify to be hired.

But workers don't focus on how much it costs a firm to employ them. Workers care about how much they receive and can spend after taxes. For them, the question is how the wages they'd receive for working compare to what they'd receive (from the government) if they didn't work, plus the value of their leisure from not working.

The problem is that the government has driven a massive wedge between the wages paid by firms and the wages received by workers. To make work and employment attractive again, this government wedge has to shrink. This can happen over the next two years, even with a Democratic majority in the Senate and President Obama in the White House, through the following measures...

More at the link.

RELATED: Paul Krugman, "The Hijacked Commission," and the additional commentary at Memeorandum.

Blogging Aliteracy

My good friend David Swindle is having a fairly heated exchange with Lisa Graas, a prolific Catholic blogger and contributor at NewsReal Blog. Lisa's Twitter page is here.

The background, with links, is at David's post, "Do Not Blog About Something If You Haven’t Adequately Studied It. Why is This a Hard Concept?" Lisa has been hammering Ayn Rand's theory of objectivism, although she's never read Ayn Rand. To which David tweets:

Sorry Lisa but I can't respect your analysis of Objectivism until you read more of Ayn Rand's books.

Lisa says she's able to form an intelligent opinion based on Ayn Rand's Wikipedia entries and her television interviews, including this one with Mike Wallace:

Lisa's response at her own blog is here: "Dave Swindle Accused Me of Fervent Anti-Intellectualism?"

I'm not invested in this debate personally, although the topic is fascinating. I'd argue that Lisa is certainly and rightfully able to opine on the moral validity of Ayn Rand's theories. The problem is that the program at the David Horowitz Freedom Center is essentially a scholarly one. The debates are about books. And it's kind of inappropriate to be a representative of that problematique while being out and proud about not having read books you intend to criticize. Thus, I'd have to agree with David's point on anti-intellectualism, although all of this reminds me of an article at the Washington Post almost ten years ago: "The No-Book Report: Skim It and Weep: More and More Americans Who Can Read Are Choosing Not To. Can We Afford to Write Them Off?" As a professor, my job is to get folks to read more, much more. But I was especially interested in this discussion at the Washington Post, since I'd just recently finished my Ph.D and started my academic career:

Jeremy Spreitzer probably wouldn't read this story if it weren't about him.

He is an aliterate -- someone who can read, but chooses not to.

A graduate student in public affairs at Park University in Kansas City, Mo., Spreitzer, 25, gleans most of his news from TV. He skims required texts, draws themes from dust jackets and, when he absolutely, positively has to read something, reaches for the audiobook.

"I am fairly lazy when it comes to certain tasks," says Spreitzer, a long-distance runner who hopes to compete in the 2004 Olympics. "Reading is one of them."

As he grows older, Spreitzer finds he has less time to read. And less inclination. In fact, he says, if he weren't in school, he probably wouldn't read at all.

He's not alone. According to the survey firm NDP Group -- which tracked the everyday habits of thousands of people through the 1990s -- this country is reading printed versions of books, magazines and newspapers less and less. In 1991, more than half of all Americans read a half-hour or more every day. By 1999, that had dropped to 45 percent.

A 1999 Gallup Poll found that only 7 percent of Americans were voracious readers, reading more than a book a week, while some 59 percent said they had read fewer than 10 books in the previous year. Though book clubs seem popular now, only 6 percent of those who read belong to one. The number of people who don't read at all, the poll concluded, has been rising for the past 20 years.

The reports on changes in reading cut to the quick of American culture. We pride ourselves on being a largely literate First World country while at the same time we rush to build a visually powerful environment in which reading is not required.

The results are inevitable. Aliteracy is all around. Just ask:

• Internet developers. At the Terra Lycos portal design lab in Waltham, Mass., researcher William Albert has noticed that the human guinea pigs in his focus groups are too impatient to read much. When people look up information on the Internet today, Albert explains, they are "basically scanning. There's very little actual comprehension that's going on." People, Albert adds, prefer to get info in short bursts, with bullets, rather than in large blocks of text.

• Transportation gurus. Chandra Clayton, who oversees the design of road signs and signals for the Virginia Department of Transportation, says, "Symbols can quickly give you a message that might take too long to read in text." The department is using logos and symbols more and more. When it comes to highway safety and getting lifesaving information quickly, she adds, "a picture is worth a thousand words."

• Packaging designers. "People don't take the time to read anything," explains Jim Peters, editor of BrandPackaging magazine. "Marketers and packagers are giving them colors and shapes as ways of communicating." For effective marketing, Peters says, "researchers tell us that the hierarchy is colors, shapes, icons and, dead last, words."

Some of this shift away from words -- and toward images -- can be attributed to our ever-growing multilingual population. But for many people, reading is passe or impractical or, like, so totally unnecessary in this day and age.

To Jim Trelease, author of "The Read-Aloud Handbook," this trend away from the written word is more than worrisome. It's wicked. It's tearing apart our culture. People who have stopped reading, he says, "base their future decisions on what they used to know.

More at the link. (And food for thought, in any case, especially for armchair intellectuals who don't read the books they're claiming to criticize.)

Emma Watson at World Premiere of 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince'

She looks wonderful.

See London's Daily Mail, "Spellbinding Emma Watson Braves Abysmal Weather in Revealing Vintage Dress at World Premiere of Seventh Harry Potter Movie."

More pics at Just Jared Jr.: "Emma Watson: HP Premiere Pretty."

Tory Councillor Gareth Compton Suspended After 'Stoning' Tweet to Columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

There's video of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown here: "Journalist's Shock Over 'Execution' Tweet." Also at NYT (via Memeorandum). Also, at Belfast Telegraph, "Tory is Arrested for Twitter Call to Kill Columnist."

Twitter is not your friend, obviously.

44th Annual Country Music Association Awards

I couldn't resist posting Fox & Friends at the video, and at LAT, "Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton -- and Gwyneth Paltrow -- Share Spotlight at 44th Country Music Assn. Awards."

RELATED: "Glam Slam: Country's Night Out."

Success Stories at LBCC

A student e-mailed this morning to say that she had plans for Veterans Day and wouldn't be attending class. And she added a post script:

P.S. Love the Dead Kennedys! Thought it was very cool you knew the lyrics to California Uber Alles when you were talking about Jerry Brown in class on Tuesday!

I don't know if that the kind of teaching excellence that Presdient Oakley is looking for, but that's cool my brief discussion of "California Über Alles" went over well with the students.

Back to the Future with Jerry Brown at the Helm in California

The essay's by David Horwich at Pajamas Media.

But this is my chance to repost the Dead Kennedys, "California Über Alles":

Tina Fey Gets the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

At LAT, "Thanks, Sarah Palin!"

And from Daily Caller, "Tina Fey Thanks Palin, Trashes Right Wing Women During Mark Twain Prize Ceremony," and Michelle, "Tina Fey Recycles Palin Rape Kit Lie."

I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn’t thank Sarah Palin for helping me get here tonight. My partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that have ever happened to me.

'The Taqwacores'

I'm not convinced this is going to work. Punk is revolutionary, and for Muslims the revolution wants to dethrone Western hegemony. Won't know for sure until I see it, but the burka-clad punker doesn't inspire confidence. At LAT:

There's a burka-clad Riot Grrrl who scribbles Patti Smith lyrics on her wall and puts forward the notion that a woman doesn't necessarily need to make her face visible to qualify as an outspoken feminist. Another electric guitar-playing skateboarder character tests the limits of his faith by chugging beer and declaring, "I'm not big on the 'Islam is one way' approach."

The Taqwacores generally reject specific tenets of Koranic dogma: that homosexuality is a sin, that masturbation amounts to "self-harm" and that a man is justified in beating his wife to discipline her.

But outside of mashing-up of punk with Islam, "The Taqwacores" presents compelling ideas about how modern Muslims worship in this country. The film presents Islam as a dynamic faith that's endlessly argued and debated — and in one case, straight-up revised when a character crosses out a verse in the Koran — to fit unruly American lives in the post- 9/11 world.

"The point of the film was to portray Muslims in this whole new way," the director explained. "There's a notion that Muslims are zombies; they only regurgitate what they're told by the leaders of their community. But there's a huge spectrum. We're showing an extreme of it."

I'll believe it when I hear denunciations of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Democratic Activists Criticize Possible Compromise by Obama on Tax Cuts

Puff Ho has been leading Memeorandum all day, but I checked Daily Kos this morning and folks there were pushing back against the administration.

And here's this from WaPo:

Democratic activists Thursday sharply criticized White House officials after a published report indicated that President Obama is likely to back a temporary extension of tax cuts for households with income over $250,000 a year.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, top Obama adviser David Axelrod said: "We have to deal with the world as we find it," in noting that the White House might compromise with the GOP on the issue. He said that White House officials have long opposed a permanent extension of the tax cuts on upper-income Americans. However, Obama aides also have repeatedly said that they have not ruled out backing a temporary extension of those cuts as part of a compromise with Republicans.

Both parties want to keep the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 for households with income below $250,000 a year. But the GOP wants all the cuts extended permanently, while Obama says the cuts for income over $250,000 do little to improve the economy and would increase the deficit.

Liberal groups cast Axelrod's comments as official capitulation on the issue, even as White House aides emphasized that his position was not new.

"Sign our petition telling President Obama that Americans want him to fight the Bush tax cuts for millionaires - and that Democrats will keep losing if he keeps caving," the Progressive Campaign Change Committee, a liberal group, told its members in an e-mail.

Republicans said that they still want to make all the tax cuts permanent, including those for income over $250,000 a year. In response to the controversy, Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio), said that Republicans hoped the White House would "show leadership by convincing Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi to stop these tax hikes permanently in the upcoming lame-duck session."

Abu Hussein Obama!

From Amir Taheri, "Why Hamas Loves Bam."

Unreal.

RELATED: "In Indonesia, Where Israelis Can't Enter, Obama Tells Jews Where They Can't Live."

Veterans Day 2010

From the Marine Corps:

The nation's elite fighting force celebrates its 235th birthday on November 10th, 2010. Since the inception of the Marine Corps in 1775, thousands of brave men and women have answered a call to serve our country and protect its freedom.

And at Hardin County News-Enterprise, "America's Veterans Deserve Our Honor and Praise":

Today is Veterans Day, the holiday that honors military veterans for their service to the nation.

The tradition of setting aside a day to remember veterans dates back to the first World War. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the “war to end all wars” came to an end. Since that time, America has designated one day a year to honor those who strive to ensure the liberty the founding fathers sought to establish in a fledgling nation.

Throughout history, our veterans have endured numerous hardships – altered lifestyles, separation from family and friends, trepidation of war. All made sacrifices so that we could enjoy the freedoms we have today. Whether the nation is at war or peace, the contributions of veterans cannot, and must not, be forgotten.

Today, all across the nation, grateful Americans will celebrate and pay tribute to the men and women in uniform, and rightfully so. Residents will fly flags, play patriotic songs, march in parades and detail through countless speeches the heroic deeds of veterans who have given their all to defend freedom and democracy.

RELATED: At NYT (of all places), "Communities Embrace Veterans of Vietnam War." And more Veterans Day stories at the link.

Michelle Malkin Hammers President Obama's Jihad Junket to Indonesia

I was watching and tweeted during the broadcast.

Via Gateway Pundit:

Also, at Atlas Shrugs, "Operation Fetal Position."

The Gettysburg Address Revisited

Via American Digest:

Why Left-Wing Women Hate Women on the Right

From Lisa Richards, at NewsReal:

Left-wing feminists are furious that conservative women are wildly popular. It’s completely unnerving to them that Sarah Palin, a well-educated athlete with a political resume (but considered illiterate because of her western accent, marriage, children, and home state) is the most popular woman in America, even with leftists who obsessively cover all things Sarah. After all, aren’t women supposed to lock-step like a bunch of politically enslaved vote-only-Democrat drones, support abortion, demand better pay (but insist minimum wage stay intact) and sue bosses who fire female incompetents? This is America for heaven’s sake! Women are not supposed to think for themselves, that’s the job of the Democrat Party!

And then came 2008 and Sarah Palin, followed by Michele Bachmann, Nikki Haley, Christine O’Donnell, Linda McMahon, Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, Sharron Angle, Angela McGlowen, Star Parker … should I stop? This might be too much for anti-female-unless-she-hates-men-and-unborn-babies leftist women to bare.

Bachmann and Haley won, the other GOP ladies lost, much to the glee of left-wing feminists like The Nation’s Betsy Reed who declared:

This result should not come as a huge surprise, given that the GOP Year of the Woman was always mostly hype, fueled by a potent mixture of Republican propaganda, Democratic hysteria and the mainstream media’s fondness for loopy ladies.

As opposed to Nancy Pelosi who did wonders elevating women’s political status with her spoiled demands for military jet-set vacations and claims of not knowing anything about intelligence reports. And let’s not forget Hillary’s contribution to women’s equality–accepting her serial molesting husband’s philandering actions, something feminists allegedly abhor.

Leftists do nothing to elevate women, yet they demand women vote one way and only one way. When women break that iron grip, saying no thank you, I can think and vote for myself, radical feminists turn against women like a pack of rabid grizzlies.

Case in point is Amanda Marcotte, who described Nikki Haley’s win as “the second most telling example of the ‘mama grizzly curse.’”

More at the link.

Boehner to Fly Commercial as House Speaker

At the video, after the discussion of failed Speaker Pelosi, and from Fox News:

Presumptive House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday that he will not use the military jet provided to current Speaker Nancy Pelosi to fly from D.C. to his home district each week, but will board the same airlines as everybody else.

Pelosi had claimed after she became speaker in 2007 that a military aircraft was offered to her in light of position as second in line to the presidency. But Boehner said he's not so concerned.

"I've talked to our security folks about the security involved in my new role. Over the last 20 years I've flown back and forth to my district on commercial aircraft and will continue to do that," Boehner, R-Ohio, said.

Affirmative Action Bake Sales

Great discussion with Megyn Kelly and John Stossel:

Plus, "JOHN STOSSEL: Get Your Affirmative Action Cupcakes Here!"

1979 on 'The Sound'

It's 1979 today on The Sound's 10 at 10!

I was a senior in high school in '79. This set brought back a lot of memories, from this morning's drive time:

10:02 - Dance The Night Away by Van Halen

10:06 - Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd

10:12 - Roxanne by Police

10:15 - Just The Same Way (live) by Journey

10:19 - London Calling by Clash

10:22 - Breakfast In America by Supertramp

10:25 - Is She Really Going Out With Him by Joe Jackson

10:29 - Highway To Hell by Ac/dc

10:32 - Don't Bring Me Down by E.l.O.

10:42 - Ballroom Blitz by Sweet

10:46 - Lay It On The Line by Triumph

10:50 - Nights In White Satin by Moody Blues

10:58 - Here I Go Again by Whitesnake

Joseph Nye and the Future of American Power

Probably no scholar has written as much on the nature and longevity of American power as has Joseph S. Nye Jr. of Harvard University. Professor Nye has a forthcoming book, The Future of American Power, and his essay, "The Future of American Power: Dominance and Decline in Perspective," is the lead article at the new Foreign Affairs special edition, "The World Ahead." Here's the introduction:

The twenty-first century began with a very unequal distribution of power resources. With five percent of the world's population, the United States accounted for about a quarter of the world's economic output, was responsible for nearly half of global military expenditures, and had the most extensive cultural and educational soft-power resources. All this is still true, but the future of U.S. power is hotly debated. Many observers have interpreted the 2008 global financial crisis as the beginning of American decline. The National Intelligence Council, for example, has projected that in 2025, "the U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished."

Power is the ability to attain the outcomes one wants, and the resources that produce it vary in different contexts. Spain in the sixteenth century took advantage of its control of colonies and gold bullion, the Netherlands in the seventeenth century profited from trade and finance, France in the eighteenth century benefited from its large population and armies, and the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century derived power from its primacy in the Industrial Revolution and its navy. This century is marked by a burgeoning revolution in information technology and globalization, and to understand this revolution, certain pitfalls need to be avoided.

First, one must beware of misleading metaphors of organic decline. Nations are not like humans, with predictable life spans. Rome remained dominant for more than three centuries after the peak of its power, and even then it did not succumb to the rise of another state. For all the fashionable predictions of China, India, or Brazil surpassing the United States in the next decades, the greater threat may come from modern barbarians and nonstate actors. In an information-based world, power diffusion may pose a bigger danger than power transition. Conventional wisdom holds that the state with the largest army prevails, but in the information age, the state (or the nonstate actor) with the best story may sometimes win.

Power today is distributed in a pattern that resembles a complex three-dimensional chess game. On the top chessboard, military power is largely unipolar, and the United States is likely to retain primacy for quite some time. On the middle chessboard, economic power has been multipolar for more than a decade, with the United States, Europe, Japan, and China as the major players and others gaining in importance. The bottom chessboard is the realm of transnational relations. It includes nonstate actors as diverse as bankers who electronically transfer funds, terrorists who traffic weapons, hackers who threaten cybersecurity, and challenges such as pandemics and climate change. On this bottom board, power is widely diffused, and it makes no sense to speak of unipolarity, multipolarity, or hegemony.

In interstate politics, the most important factor will be the continuing return of Asia to the world stage. In 1750, Asia had more than half the world's population and economic output. By 1900, after the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the United States, Asia's share shrank to one-fifth of global economic output. By 2050, Asia will be well on its way back to its historical share. The rise of China and India may create instability, but this is a problem with precedents, and history suggests how policies can affect the outcome.

I've highlighted the second to last quote above, because it caught my attention. I can recall, almost twenty year ago, Nye offered the same basic analogy, in an article from Spring 1992 at Foreign Affairs, "What New World Order?":

No single hierarchy describes adequately a world politics with multiple structures. The distribution of power in world politics has become like a layer cake. The top military layer is largely unipolar, for there is no other military power comparable to the United States. The economic middle layer is tripolar and has been for two decades. The bottom layer of transnational interdependence shows a diffusion of power.

The top of the international remains unipolar with the concentration of military power in the United States. But I'm interested in how in 1992 Nye spoke of economic "tripolarity" but today mentions "multipolarity" going back from more than a decade ("tripolarity" was a hip term at the time, as Japan and Germany seemed to be emerging at "the new superpowers.") And the bottom layer --- now a chessboard and not a layer cake --- is transnational relations, which implies much larger system effects from non-state actors such as al Qaeda (clearly a nod to the dramatic importance of the global war on terrorism in U.S. foreign policy over the last decade).

Overall, I have little disagreement with Nye's analysis. The one thing that really concerns me, and perhaps more so that it does Nye, is the impact America's long-term debt burden will have on the sustainability of U.S. power. He writes later in the essay, for example:

On the question of absolute, rather than relative, American decline, the United States faces serious problems in areas such as debt, secondary education, and political gridlock. But they are only part of the picture. Of the multiple possible futures, stronger cases can be made for the positive ones than the negative ones. But among the negative futures, the most plausible is one in which the United States overreacts to terrorist attacks by turning inward and thus cuts itself off from the strength it obtains from openness. Barring such mistaken strategies, however, there are solutions to the major American problems of today. (Long-term debt, for example, could be solved by putting in place, after the economy recovers, spending cuts and consumption taxes that could pay for entitlements.) Of course, such solutions may forever remain out of reach. But it is important to distinguish hopeless situations for which there are no solutions from those that could in principle be solved. After all, the bipartisan reforms of the Progressive era a century ago rejuvenated a badly troubled country.

I'll have more on this, but see, in the current issue, Roger C. Altman and Richard N. Haass, "American Profligacy and American Power." And Niall Ferguson, from March/April 2010, "Complexity and Collapse: Empires on the Edge of Chaos."

Hot Shots Calendar 2011

Via Theo Spark:

Order at Help for Heroes.

V for Vendetta Hacker Strikes at Washington State University

At Wired:

And at Chronicle of Higher Education:

In V for Vendetta, the protagonist V is a revolutionary fighting a fascist British regime in a dystopian future. V broadcasts a video message calling the British public to action on November 5 in honor of Guy Fawkes’s 1605 attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate King James I. The film ends in a violent explosion—which had some university officials worried that the V-masked hacker might be threatening to do something similar.

Here's the text: "V's Speech To WSU" (c/o Computer World, "V for Vendetta Hacker Broadcasts Video at Washington State University").