Andrew Stuttaford has watched all of the Kong movies, so you don’t have to.
The New Five-Year Plan
Tony Snow makes an excellent point about the Democrats’ position–that long-term central planning doesn’t work much better in war than in agriculture or industry:
The only flaw in the Orderliness Hypothesis is that it doesn’t work if people are present. The war on poverty looked great on paper. It failed miserably in real life. Air-cleansing regulatory schemes looked great in computer models, but failed abysmally in reality. Centralized health care boasted of chalkboard elegance, but is breaking the bank right here, right now. The myth of managed affluence collapsed with the Berlin Wall.
And yet, failure has not altered Democratic thinking an iota. John Kerry boasted dozens of times in his debates with George W. Bush that he had a plan — for everything: dental care, tree planting, street paving, book binding, teen rutting, mass transit, air circulation, steel production … you name it. He announced these schemes with a sense of triumph, as if having a plan were superior to having a clue.
In resisting President Bush’s infinitely variable approach to the ever-shifting situation in Iraq, Democrats have reverted to form. The cries for benchmarks and deadlines merely embody their weird faith in plans. Howard Dean unwittingly captured the absurdity of it all when he announced this week the precise number of National Guard units required to subdue Al-Qaida.
[Update at 11:30 AM]
Rich Lowry says that the Dems are dazed and confused:
The sight of Murtha denouncing (even incoherently) the war was too much temptation for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). The House Democrats
Santa Is A Fat Old White Man
This is a pretty funny satire, but what’s even funnier are the clueless commenters.
What Happened To COTS Watch?
Is it just me, or is everyone getting redirected to the Institute for Space Law and Policy?
Monday
SpaceX will be making their next launch attempt at 11 AM Pacific time.
The Two Wars
Stephen Schwartz writes about the real wars in which we have been, and remain engaged, and the fantasy ones in the minds of the left, and much of the media:
The degree to which the MSM, academia, and other members of the Western intelligentsia live in a fantasy world of narcissistic self-righteousness is extraordinary. But the phenomenon is not new. It first became visible during the Spanish civil war of 1936-39, the original exemplar of what I call a theory of
“Not One Penny”
Mark Whittington has further (uncharitable) thoughts about the late Senator Proxmire. It’s a harsher obituary than I’d write, particularly seeing as the body has barely cooled off, but then, I’ve never been as enamored of large federal space budgets (particularly considering how ineffectively they’ve been spent, for the most part) as he is.
“Not One Penny”
Mark Whittington has further (uncharitable) thoughts about the late Senator Proxmire. It’s a harsher obituary than I’d write, particularly seeing as the body has barely cooled off, but then, I’ve never been as enamored of large federal space budgets (particularly considering how ineffectively they’ve been spent, for the most part) as he is.
“Not One Penny”
Mark Whittington has further (uncharitable) thoughts about the late Senator Proxmire. It’s a harsher obituary than I’d write, particularly seeing as the body has barely cooled off, but then, I’ve never been as enamored of large federal space budgets (particularly considering how ineffectively they’ve been spent, for the most part) as he is.
Compare And Contrast
I’m not a smart enough Googler to figure it out, but how did the press coverage of Saddam’s “election,” in which he won 99% of the vote, compare to today’s? Which did the MSM think the bigger story, and by how much?
[Update on Friday morning]
Little Green Footballs has an example.
[Update at 9 AM]
Here’s a roundup from last January of how credulous many in the media were about Saddam’s “election”:
While the network news gurus have spent weeks questioning whether Sunday