Go read Lileks.

Go read Lileks.

As expected, it looks like the only thing “sexed up” about the British government’s dossier was the BBC story about it…

[Update on Friday morning]

Via Instapundit, Brendan O’Neill says that Blair’s critics were the real spinners. I’d actually be embarrassed to claim that I was “duped” by such a supposedly incompetent government, just as the Dems should be ashamed to be continually outwitted by the retarded monkey in the White House, but I guess when you hunger for power, you have no shame…

…by getting on an airplane.

I’m flying from SFO down to LAX this morning. I expect that I’ll cheat death and whatever perverse form of Allah our enemies worship once again. More posting later.

[Update at 11 AM PDT]

Landed safely and am back home, as expected.

Up yours, Islamonazis…

…by getting on an airplane.

I’m flying from SFO down to LAX this morning. I expect that I’ll cheat death and whatever perverse form of Allah our enemies worship once again. More posting later.

[Update at 11 AM PDT]

Landed safely and am back home, as expected.

Up yours, Islamonazis…

…by getting on an airplane.

I’m flying from SFO down to LAX this morning. I expect that I’ll cheat death and whatever perverse form of Allah our enemies worship once again. More posting later.

[Update at 11 AM PDT]

Landed safely and am back home, as expected.

Up yours, Islamonazis…

A Springfield, MO newspaper has dropped Doonesbury, due to reader feedback.

“Doonesbury” was the most reviled strip, with 1,133 of our voters ranking it in the three they hate most.

Now, if they’d just pick up Day By Day…

The latest Field Poll from California implies that McClintock will be the spoiler who will give the race to Bustamante. It will be used, of course, as ammunition for the Schwarzenegger camp to pressure him to drop out. Frustratingly (at least to me), the poll does a Schwarzenegger matchup against Bustamante without McClintock, but it doesn’t do a McClintock-Bustamante matchup sans Schwarzenegger.

If I were McClintock, I’d take some of the little money he’s spending on ads to do my own poll that did exactly that. It would do two things. First, it might provide a reality check to see if he really has a chance, and second, if it shows that he does, then it would provide counterleverage, allowing him to actually pressure Schwarzenegger to drop out.

[Update on Tuesday afternoon]

Dan Weintraub has some relevant data:

The poll is a bit dated, but there’s lots of other stuff to chew on, including these head-to-head match-ups:

Schwarzenegger 49
Bustamante 42

and

McClintock 41
Bustamante 47

That looks like the same forty percent that voted for Simon last fall. It still doesn’t answer the question of who would get Arnold’s vote if he dropped out, though. Bustamante would probably get some of it, but he’s not likely to get that full forty seven percent–there are too many donkey-like alternatives (Green Party, Arianna). But it’s more likely that McClintock would pick up the full forty one percent without Arnold in the race–with Ueberroth out, he’s really the only serious Republican left. So it’s got to look tantalizing to him, and it weakens the case for him dropping out.

Virginia Postrel has a good post on the real-life consequences of allowing the verbal currency to be debased (e.g., the hijacking of the word “liberal” by the left).

Bush’s rhetoric continues to have two major problems, neither of which is likely to disappear. The first, and most obvious, is that he says the enemy is terrorism rather than Islamicism using terrorism as a weapon (including against Muslims). The second, less obvious, is that he says we are fighting to defend democracy, when in fact we are fighting to defend liberalism (or liberal democracy). Iran is a democracy, in the normal sense of holding real elections, but it is not liberal.

The fundamental conflict is over whether the systems of limited, non-theocratic, individual-rights-bsed governments that developed over centuries in the West are good or bad. Outside of the academy and other intellectual circles, however, American political discourse has literaly lost the words to describe what the “civilized world” has in common. We think “liberal” means Hillary Clinton, when it also means George Bush.