In a piece by Rand Fishbein at today’s National Review Online, he (mis?)quotes General Wallace as saying “The enemy we’re fighting against is different from the one we’d war-gamed against.”

After the firestorm that this caused, I thought that it had been tamped somewhat by getting the full quote (here, from the March 28, 2003 Evening Standard): “The enemy we’re fighting against is a bit different from the one we’d war-gamed against.”

A much different meaning. Now the question is (though I thought that this had been resolved), which is the correct quote?

My latest Fox column is up. It’s a slightly expanded version of this post about renaming the station. I bring in Shelley as well as Coleridge, per Alan Henderson’s suggestion in the comments.

I just googled (yes, I know Google doesn’t want me to verbify their name), “Lester Maddox,” and got 6100 hits. I did it as “‘Lester Maddox’ Democrat” and got 640 (a reduction of almost ninety percent). The first ten on the page only have a single one from a major news source (the WaPo). Looking at the next ten, I see CNN and MSNBC, but the reference is “…Lester Maddox on Jimmy Carter. … candidates prevented Callaway from receiving a majority, and the question was thrown to the Democrat-dominated legislature…” Well, OK, they do say that he won the Democratic nomination for governor, but it’s buried pretty deep in the story.

Gosh, you’d think that the major media sources are almost, like, ashamed to admit that Mr. Axe Handle was a Democrat. But why?

Well, at least they didn’t actually lie, and try to pawn him off as a Republican.

You know, come to think of it, because of Democratic demogoguery on race over the past couple decades (“Churches will burn, and men will be dragged behind cars, if the Republicans come to power!”), I’ll bet a lot of young reporters who haven’t studied history carefully actually believe that a lot of the old race baiters, like Maddox and Bull Connor, and George Wallace, were in fact Republicans.

I doubt it, despite what the Telegraph says.

More than one million North Koreans crowded Pyongyang’s streets for anti-American rallies today, part of government commemorations marking the 53rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.

The crowds vowed to fight US pressure by building nuclear weapons, state media said. It was apparently part of efforts to fuel anti-American sentiment amid the nuclear standoff with the United States.

They state it as though it’s a fact, but the article is bylined as “correspondents in Seoul.” How would a “correspondent in Seoul” know how many people are marching in Pyongyang?

Oh, here’s their reliable source:

Led by senior communist party and state officials, Pyongyang citizens packed streets and plazas, “shaking with towering hatred and resentment against the US imperialists”, said North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency.

Well, there’s a story you can take to the bank.

Here’s a newspaper editorial calling for a phaseout of the Space Shuttle. What’s surprising about it is the source. It’s Florida Today, traditionally one of the best sources of space-related news on the web, and the newspaper of the Space Coast, home of Cape Canaveral and all it entails.

We think the shuttles should fly again, but their day is coming to an end much faster than NASA is willing to admit.

This I agree with.

We believe the fleet should be phased out — as soon as five or six years, if possible — and replaced with a new manned vehicle that could be launched atop an unmanned rocket and take crews to and from the International Space Station.

This I don’t, at least not if it’s going to cost anywhere near NASA’s current estimates.

Better in my mind to have no manned space program than a very expensive one based on debilitating and flawed premises.

It’s time to take some of those billions that NASA plans to spend on human space transportation, and put them in escrow for companies that can affordably provide it, cash on delivery. I suspect that this might leave Boeing and Lockmart out in the cold, though.

A team of geologists believe that an asteroid impact may have altered history, and saved Christianity.

I’m telling you, we’ve got to keep our eyes out for those things.

If true, this is just plain weird.

As the page points out, it’s unfortunately not unheard of for men of the cloth to solicit prostitutes, but well, go read it.

On second thought, maybe he should switch to the Church of England. They’d probably make him a bishop.

John Derbyshire reminds us of Robert Conquest’s Three Rules Of Politics. I thought the third one was most applicable to our friendly neighborhood space agency:

“The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”

I remember when the Republicans won the Congress in 1994, and wondering when I would actually see some tangible benefit from it. The first time that I felt that there was really a change in the country was when they repealed the idiotic national speed limit, and I could once again drive legally at a rational pace.

Well, according to the DOT, it turns out that it’s not only increased national productivity, but it’s had no measurable effect on increased loss of life (and may even have reduced traffic deaths).

I’ve long thought that 55 was more deadly, for several reasons. It increased the lengths of trips, making driver fatigue more likely. It also made for more boring driving, resulting in an increase in driver inattention.

I suspect that it also reduced traffic on the freeways, shifting it to the more-dangerous primary highways, since the advantage of using the freeways was greatly diminished by the low speed limit. I know that I tended to use back roads more, because the freeway wasn’t much faster, and the trip was more interesting. And of course, it was particularly stupid to impose a fifty-five MPH speed limit on a freeway that was designed for seventy (and for a different generation of cars, that handled and braked much more poorly than modern ones).

It’s not absolute speed that’s dangerous on the highway–it’s relative speed. In fact, that’s why it’s unfortunate that most states don’t post minimum speeds as well as maximum. Growing up in Michigan, the speed limit on the freeways was minimum 45, maximum 70, and you could get a ticket for driving too slowly as well as too fast. In fact, I think that’s too large a spread, since you have cars sharing the road with a differential of twenty five miles an hour. I think that sixty-five to eighty would in fact be safer, given the performance of modern cars. If there are three lanes, you might allow slow traffic in the far right, but otherwise speed should be generally encouraged, within reason.

Anyway, Steven Moore has a piece in NRO today on the stupid hysteria of Ralph Nader and Joan Claybrook and the other safety nannies, and the fact that they refuse to accept the steaming plate of crow they so richly deserve.

I remember when the Republicans won the Congress in 1994, and wondering when I would actually see some tangible benefit from it. The first time that I felt that there was really a change in the country was when they repealed the idiotic national speed limit, and I could once again drive legally at a rational pace.

Well, according to the DOT, it turns out that it’s not only increased national productivity, but it’s had no measurable effect on increased loss of life (and may even have reduced traffic deaths).

I’ve long thought that 55 was more deadly, for several reasons. It increased the lengths of trips, making driver fatigue more likely. It also made for more boring driving, resulting in an increase in driver inattention.

I suspect that it also reduced traffic on the freeways, shifting it to the more-dangerous primary highways, since the advantage of using the freeways was greatly diminished by the low speed limit. I know that I tended to use back roads more, because the freeway wasn’t much faster, and the trip was more interesting. And of course, it was particularly stupid to impose a fifty-five MPH speed limit on a freeway that was designed for seventy (and for a different generation of cars, that handled and braked much more poorly than modern ones).

It’s not absolute speed that’s dangerous on the highway–it’s relative speed. In fact, that’s why it’s unfortunate that most states don’t post minimum speeds as well as maximum. Growing up in Michigan, the speed limit on the freeways was minimum 45, maximum 70, and you could get a ticket for driving too slowly as well as too fast. In fact, I think that’s too large a spread, since you have cars sharing the road with a differential of twenty five miles an hour. I think that sixty-five to eighty would in fact be safer, given the performance of modern cars. If there are three lanes, you might allow slow traffic in the far right, but otherwise speed should be generally encouraged, within reason.

Anyway, Steven Moore has a piece in NRO today on the stupid hysteria of Ralph Nader and Joan Claybrook and the other safety nannies, and the fact that they refuse to accept the steaming plate of crow they so richly deserve.