More Pundit Bashing

With a title reminiscent of one of Professor Reynold’s points this morning, Hugh Hewitt weighs in with a piece called Irrelevant Cleverness. Definitely worth a read.

In response to my comments about the prospects for changing the political complexion of New York state, New York reader Charlie Banks opines:

As a New Yorker who has been fighting a losing battle against the cult of Clinton in my lifelong home state, I must say I see a glimmer of hope in the political wakeup call New York may have heard post-9/11. Schumer, I must admit, comported himself quite elegantly in the immediate aftermath (tho’ unfortunately he’s clearly reverted to form, judging from his Fed-Orgy op-ed in the NYT), but on the other hand I’ve noticed the general consensus that just about the only major New York State political figure whose approval numbers have not risen since 9/11 is Hillary Clinton. If the political hay to be made from these attacks doesn’t help her, nothing will.

I’ve always had something of a political fantasy going in the last year or so, which goes something like this:

(1) George Pataki runs for a third term as Governor in 2002, and wins;

(4) Possible-A.G. Giuliani runs to succeed Pataki as Governor in 2006.

In my estimation, (1) is looking more likely every day. Element (2a) looks like something Bush would just love, and is probably more likely than (2b), at least at this late date. The fate of (3) hinges on how Pataki does in his presumptive third term, but if his popularity continues to outshine Clinton’s as it does now (and has consistently for years), I’d put money on him. Giuliani doesn’t even need the A.G.’s office to pull off (4), but then, that is a long way off.

To crib another New York catch-phrase (Yankee fan tho’ I am), Ya Gotta Believe.

Yes. Well, much can happen in five years. Heck, as we’ve seen, a lot can happen in three months. This looks like as reasonable a scenario as any right now.

Of course, it’s hard for me to feel a lot of sympathy for your senatorial plight–where I spend much of my time, I have to contend with Boxer and Feinstein. The only hope that I see for California is some kind of partition–I’d move to northern California (the part way above San Francisco) in a minute if it were removed from the bootheel of Sacramento.

With regard to the JDL bomb plot, I haven’t seen any metacomments about how this plays into our PR strategy. After all, if the White House had scripted this themselves, it couldn’t be better–a Jewish extremist group plots to blow up a mosque, and are arrested before they can bring their evil scheme to fruition. How better to prove that the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam?

Has anyone seen this story reported in any of the Arab media (it doesn’t really fit the template, does it)? I’ll be waiting for someone to point out some sightings. Email’s to the left, or put it in the comment box below.

I suspect that while I wait, I’ll have time to not only brew a cup of coffee, but to grow the beans…

Curious Aghan tourists were shocked at the opulence in which the Mullah “Cyclops” Omar lived, according to this article from the San Francisco Chronicle.

A series of bedrooms — at one end Omar’s, a smallish room adjoined by a pink-tiled bathroom, a soft-mattressed bed and a neat row of clothes cupboards that filled the only room untouched by the rain of bombs — straggled down a hallway littered with glass and broken cement. A Western kitchen, including a Whirlpool dishwasher, was in one corner of the sprawling two-level house.

“Obviously, he shouldn’t have led this luxury life,” said one man who was touring the house. “He should have lived a simple life.”

Another man interrupted. “What they said was that he was living a simple life and preaching Islam,” he said. “But in reality he was living like this.” The man waved the barrel of his rifle around a second-floor patio, a look of dismay on his lined face.

“He was supposed to be a religious man,” explained Said Abdullah, a young man who said he had lived in Pakistan for most of his life, but wanted to come to Kandahar now that the war seemed over. “I have memorized all 6,666 lines of the Holy Koran, and I think I know what it means to be a good Muslim. But I am not sure Mullah Omar was a good Muslim. Look how he lived here. Look at what he did to our country. Did the Taliban do anything for all the poor people of our country? No, I don’t think so.”

No, I don’t think so either.

But wait–I thought it was only evil western colonialism and capitalism that allowed the ruling classes to live in decadent luxury while the poor starved. How can we explain this?

Chomsky? Sontag? Bueller? Bueller?

Anyone?

Will this story be covered on Al Jazeera?

According to Space.com, Lockmart’s bid to keep the carcass of the X-33 intact has failed.

Sensibly, it was decided that the whole was less than the sum of its parts, and have correspondingly distributed them among several other Space Launch Initiative programs. My opinion is that the value remains overstated, but at least now we don’t have to worry about the program being resurrected with Air Force money, as was being threatened a few months ago. It’s time to put this sad chapter in mismanagement behind us, and to move forward into an era of true commercial space transportation.

Thanks to a tip from John Weidner, I see that Jonah Goldberg has taken the new New Dealer brilliantly to task, as has Virginia Postrel. But somehow, I doubt if we’ll change his mind. Only the voters of New York will do that, and given what they elected as his junior colleague last year, I hold out little hope for that (though post 911, almost anything could happen).

An interesting read on political correctness and self esteem in Bill Cohen’s (read Bill Clinton’s) military, and its costs, both fiscal and in morale, by a soldier with the nom de plume of Kirk O’Field. More mess for Rumsfeld to clean up.

There’s a nice piece about left/liberal angst and pessimism in JWR by Dick “Toesucker” Morris. He seems to be on a real jag to redeem himself (or perhaps to redeem his soul from the devil to which he sold it in the 90s).

Here is, in Matt Welch’s parlance, the nutgraf:

How often must the left be proven wrong for it to start to figure that something is very wrong in its world view? How many Afghanistans and Gulf Wars must we win before they start to have a little faith in American prowess and technology. Now the left warns that aggressive United States action in Iraq will shatter the global coalition against terror and will leave our military alone, isolated in a grisly war with Baghdad. When will we stop taking the cautionary pessimism of the left seriously?

The first review I’ve seen of LOTR that doesn’t extol its perfection. It’s written by an admittedly recovering Tolkien fan for the Irish Times, and it’s a good review. I’ve been a little leery of all the others I’ve seen, because they are so utterly uncritical that it strains credibility (I suspect that most previous reviewers have been so overwhelmed by a film that they were very afraid would be a mess, that when it wasn’t, they were blinded to any flaws at all). It still sounds like it’s going to be a great film.

In today’s Telegraph, Mark Steyn has written another polished gem, on culture, politics, sharks and Islam.