Writing for Austria's Format magazine, Christian Ortner has not been impressed:

""European intellectuals went wild when the electricity failed in Baghdad. They note the 10,000 heat deaths in France with a shrug of the shoulders."

This is an analogy that shouldn't be pushed too far, but interesting nonetheless.

Via Bill Dawson blogging away from Vienna

Here's an extract from the letter he wrote to his family on July 14th the same year:

" …we came to a huge collection of mud houses, with some stone in the middle surrounded by hills. It was Kalgan, the outpost for trade between the Mongols and China. There, two magnificent cars were waiting for us. We were to be the guests of Mr. Purpis, a Latvian, the "King of Kalgan" who is the chief trader in Inner Mongolia and sells about 30,000 horses each year to the Chinese Army. Our chauffeur was the former chauffeur of the Panchen Lama, who with the Dala Lama is the chief lama of Tibet and Mongolia. He drove us through the dirty town to a kind of mud-wall fortress on the outskirts of the town. It was Wostwag, the company for trading with the Mongols, a German firm…"

Indiana Jones was, rather surprisingly, no relation.

"I, ___________________, release 5 Spot from all liability of any weight gain that may result from ordering and devouring this sinfully fattening treat. I will not impose any sort of "Obesity-Related" lawsuit against 5 Spot or consider any similar type of frivolous legislation created by a hungry trial lawyer.

5 Spot will not be held liable in any way if the result of my eating this dessert leads to a "Spare Tire", "Love Handles", "Saddle Bags", or "Junk in my Trunk". If I have to go to "Fat Camp" at some time in my life, I will not mail my bill to 5 Spot.

According to 5 Spot's co-owner, Jeremy Hardy this waiver was created to "make a statement about frivolous lawsuits and accountability."

It does.

Bravo.

Via the Fifty Minute Hour.

He's still around - and flourishing. Sadly he has been stopped from drinking beer, a habit that reportedly reached ten pints a day, after killjoy Brigitte Bardot complained that it could damage his health. Despite that setback, Cheeta still 'likes to go to the drive-through and get a hamburger and a Coke'.

Don't tell the Center for 'Science' in the Public Interest.

"According to a report in the Los Angeles Times in October 2001, from 1992 as many as 4,000 volunteers from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, 'known as the mujahedin', arrived in Bosnia to fight with the Muslims. Richard Holbrooke, America's former chief Balkans peace negotiator, has said that the Bosnian Muslims 'wouldn't have survived' without the help of the mujahedin, though he later admitted that the arrival of the mujahedin was a 'pact with the devil' from which Bosnia is still recovering.

By the end of the 1990s State Department officials were increasingly worried about the consequences of this pact. Under the terms of the 1995 Dayton peace accord, the foreign mujahedin units were required to disband and leave the Balkans. Yet in 2000, the State Department raised concerns about the 'hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists' who became Bosnian citizens after fighting against the Serbs, and who pose a potential terror threat to Europe and the United States. US officials claimed that one of bin Laden's top lieutenants had sent operatives to Bosnia, and that during the 1990s Bosnia had served as a 'staging area and safe haven' for al-Qa'eda and others. The Clinton administration had discovered that it is one thing to permit the movement of Islamic groups across territories; it is quite another to rein them back in again.

Indeed, for all the Clinton officials' concern about Islamic extremists in the Balkans, they continued to allow the growth and movement of mujahedin forces in Europe through the 1990s. In the late 1990s, in the run-up to Clinton's and Blair's Kosovo war of 1999, the USA backed the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbia. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post in 1998, KLA members, like the Bosnian Muslims before them, had been 'provided with financial and military support from Islamic countries', and had been 'bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters or mujahedin ...[some of whom] were trained in Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan'. It seems that, for all its handwringing, the USA just couldn't break the pact with the devil."

Intriguing.

Why the British want to reproduce themselves is a question which is as puzzling in its own way as that of the origin of life. Their existence is so wretched, so utterly lacking in anything reasonably resembling a purpose, so devoid of those things that make human life worthwhile (I am merely paraphrasing what thousands have told me) that it is a marvel that they should go in for children. I suppose the nearest I can come to an explanation is that they hope a child will supply the want that they feel: the triumph of hope over experience, for they soon discover that a British child merely adds chores to emptiness."

Blimey.

LOS ANGELES Gov. Gray Davis has officially validated the view in parts of the USA that the Golden State is far-out. Meeting Sacramento voters late Wednesday, Davis praised California's diversity: "We have people from every planet on Earth in this state. We have the sons and daughters of every of people from every planet of every country on Earth."

The San Francisco Chronicle called this a "stumbling" remark, but it reflects Davis' background. He started in state government in 1975 as chief of staff to Jerry Brown, whose proposal for a state-owned satellite earned him the title "Gov. Moonbeam."

By Martin Kasindorf

Dear K-Lo:

You posted today that some Cornerites are without power.

Assuming that telephone service is not interrupted, are you all aware of what you can do to keep your computers running during a power outage?

Buy a UPS (unterruptible power supply.) Essentially a big battery.

Buy a spare battery for your laptop.

Configure your computer to conserve power: - Dial-down the brightness of the screen.
- Make the hard drive go to sleep after only a brief period of inactivity.
- Arrange your work to do all hard-drive accesses in bunches. (Compose a bunch of emails or postings, and do not save or submit them until you have a bunch ready to go.)
- Tell your AntiVirus software not to scan files on your hard drive.
- Close unnecessary programs, to prevent them from accessing the hard drive at odd moments.
- Remove unneeded devices from your laptop. Even though you're not using the floppy drive and CD-ROM drive, they're still eating electricity.

Buy a second UPS, and use it to power a small flourescent lamp during power outages.
(That's for well-paid Cornerites, I suppose.)

At Arlington National Cemetery, soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknowns were given — for the first time ever — permission to abandon their posts and seek shelter, Superintendent John Metzler said. But they stood guard anyhow.

The western edge of the storm skirted New York City--a degree or two of difference in longitude and Manhattan would have been devastated. The glancing blow pelted the city with rain and wind. Heavy morning thunderstorms turned to monsoons by afternoon. Gusts as high as 120 miles an hour screamed from the top of the Empire State Building and thirty-miles-per-hour winds swirled down the avenues. Street signs swung. Billboards toppled. Garbage cans tipped and rolled, clanging down the streets. The afternoon commute became a nightmare. Subways flooded. Trolleys stalled. The Empire State Building swayed four inches.

At the southern tip of Manhattan, the flag on the U.S. Weather Bureau office shredded like ticker tape, and the station’s barometer nose-dived. By 3:50 P.M. it read 28.72, a record low for September….

Yet sophistication is not morality. Neither is nihilism. More people, remember, fried in France this August while its social utopians snoozed at the beach than all those lost in Kabul and Baghdad together. I think an American pilot who flew over the peaks of Afghanistan or a Marine colonel now patrolling in Iraq was far more likely to ensure that his aged mother back home lives under humane conditions than was a Frenchman this summer on his month-long vacation on the Mediterranean coast. So remember, this August Americans lost 100 brave soldiers fighting selflessly for the liberty of others while thousands of Frenchmen perished through their children’s neglect and self-absorption.

A Bruce Willis burp: "Ted Kennedy's still running around Washington. Somebody tell him to get a real job."

"The Eurostat fraud scandal, which has shed doubts over whether the present Commission took the necessary steps against alleged corruption and fraud, appears not to be an isolated case as investigations have spread to other departments."

"President Romano Prodi, whose Commission had pledged 'zero-tolerance' on fraud and mismanagement when they took office in 1999, will appear before a meeting of the political group leaders on 25 September in Strasbourg, where he will personally answer questions over this affair."

Ha ha ha.

"One of the nice things about being so close to Scotland is cheap smoked salmon (and cheap Scotch, of course) -- although the Scots could learn a thing or two from New York delis about how to smoke it. Anyway, smoked salmon must be eaten with a bagel, cream cheese, and red onion (or, as KS would want me to point out, scrambled with eggs and onion), and low fat cream cheese isn't worthy of the name. Hence, "full fat" it is!"

This is nonsense. Ordinarily I would say that the cheese, the cement-bread better known as a bagel and the sensory overload represented by an onion would obliterate the delicate taste of smoked salmon, except that there is nothing delicate about the pink slabs of cured fish that New Yorkers call smoked salmon.

Proper smoked salmon is Scots, eaten with brown bread and butter and flavored with a little lemon juice. Come to think of it, this delicacy (along, perhaps with potted shrimps) is one of the few that does need brown bread. Everything else tastes better with Wonderbread, an often overlooked treat.

There's more on this important topic over at Crooked Timber, but the writer there goes too far. The butter does not have to be Irish, and homemade bread is just pretentious. Store-bought will do just fine, and ignore those remarks in the comments section about capers. Capers are the anchovies of the vegetable kingdom - useless and rather nasty.

It was your "English-speaking world" line that did it. My husband and I budget twenty bucks apiece per month for whatever we want. Usually my twenty gets frittered away, but now I will reap the benefits of a wise choice for a whole year. Of course, I must forgo my visits to Rembrant's Coffee Shop for the month of October because that is the twenty I spent...drat, Folger's drip for a whole month with no breaks.

What nonsense. Byrne's argument is as shaky as his grammar. Any correlation is statistically irrelevant, except, perhaps, in the case of asthmatic children - and children should not be in bars in the first place. To be blunt, Byrne's statements are dishonest, manipulative and insulting. In any normal organization he would be drummed out of office.

In Brussels, doubtless, he will be promoted.

I've been thinking some more about those truculent capuchins, and the more I do, the more reassured I am. Forget Marx or those other folks. Socialism has no intellectual or moral foundation - it's just the accumulated resentment of generations of monkeys.

Other readers also found some rather different encouragement in the story. We are, it seems, hot-wired to reject welfare:

"The animal's umbrage was even greater if the other monkey was rewarded for doing nothing. They did more than sulk, sometimes throwing the food out of their cage."

And anyone who describes this too as the accumulated resentment of generations of monkeys is just being pedantic.

All we need from him is silence.

Britain has a bicameral system of government. Until recently, the country's 'senate' (the House of Lords) was a motley blend of judges, bishops, hereditary peers and a mass of stooges, cronies and the retired appointed as 'life peers' by various grateful governments. It tended to the center-right. This was unacceptable to Tony Blair. He swept away most of the hereditaries (fair enough), boosted the number of cronies and made a few patronizing promises about the introduction of an 'elected element'. Needless to say, the judges and, even more disgracefully, the bishops, clung to their seats.

Now, Blair is proposing to junk the remaining hereditaries (too many Conservatives), but he has nothing to say about that 'elected element'. The Tories' reaction? A spirited defense of, uh, the hereditary peers.

Talk about losing the plot. The Conservatives have an ideal opportunity to champion democracy. There should be no hereditaries, no bishops, no judges and no 'life peers,' just a fully elected upper house, and the Tories should say so. Instead, judging by this report in the Daily Telegraph , they are planning to mount a full-throated defense - of the hereditaries.

Losers.

Just what is wrong with siphoning money from the tribes AWAY from Bustamante? More importantly, is Hugh saying that there's something wrong with taking money from Indians? Is that the best he's got?

I am a voting member of the Oklahoma Choctaw Nation, and no, I don't think gambling does Indians any favors. I am also a social conservative, however, and [McClintock's use of Indian money] is hardly a dealbreaker. Shows Tom can maneuver, and that he's still a-scrappin.'

By the way, I'm still getting three or four emails a day on the Bush = Hitler G-File like this one:

I think the point is that he is on his way to becoming a Hitler and that we should all maybe step in before more atrocities are commited in the name of Greed and Christian Fundamentalism. You should be smart enough to grasp that... they gave you your own column after all. A couple of clues: Concentration Camps = Guantanamo Bay

Nazis murdered millions of unarmed people = Iraq and Afghanistan

launched wars for territorial and egotistical gain = launched war for economic and egotistical gain

banned books and burned them too = Patriot Act
etc...

Good stuff:

Sorry Jonah, here’s one more from a conservative librarian:

The ALA is certainly culpable. Stalinist, self-important, pin-heads who see themselves as the last defense against fascism make up most of the leadership. They pass resolutions on Cuba (good), Israel (bad) and American foreign policy (worse).

But the re-education starts in grad school. What used to be Library Studies is now “Information Science.” Librarians (oops, I mean, Information Media Specialists) are constantly drilled in the notion that they and only they can properly deliver “Information Bearing Entities” (that’s books and stuff to you) to a public desperate for “critical thinking skills.” I once mentioned in an Archives class that the archivists of old learned their trade by working in archives, without the degree. People reacted as if I advocated home-surgery kits. This is the cult of the advanced degree. After all, when ALA denounced the dissident Cuban librarians who were jailed for operating private libraries, the number one complaint about these brave folks was that they did not have a Library Science degree.

If you want to be part of the Master Race you must have a Master’s Degree.

[Name and library withheld]

Tim - I agree with everything you -- and Ramesh -- have to say about Noah's latest non-whopper. However I think one thing needs clarification. You write, "Minutes earlier, reporters were pressing Ari (and Bush) to condemn the speech of Rep. John Cooksey, who had said airport screeners ought to search anyone "with a diaper on their head," which upset many American Sikhs."

That's true, and Sikhs had every right to take offense. However, they were not the only group. Some Arabs who wear turbans were rightly upset. And, the unsung minority of folks -- like me -- who actually wear diapers on our heads took offense as well. Some of use feel we shouldn't be discriminated against simply because we enjoy that crinkly-swooshing sound -- and total hair protection -- that comes with wearing a Pampers Chapeau.

I just wanted to get that off my chest.

From a conservative librarian:

Sorry, one more from a Librarian.

For public librarians, especially Reference librarians, much of their day is spent wading through library seating packed with drunks, the homeless, and leagues of people who are, to one extent or another, sociopaths. Add to this the fact that, out of 100 reference questions, 93 will be, "where's the can?"

Given the above, and given the fact that librarianship requires an expensive undergrad and grad degree, you will begin to understand that most librarians feel that there MUST be more to public librarianship than this! This line of thinking, coupled with the able leadership of the far-Left cabal at the American Library Association, leads directly to parades of librarians on the steps of the Supreme Court.

Sincerely,
[Name and Library location withheld]
(please, no public mention of my name or library. As a conservative librarian, I'm usually in a state of apoplectic terror of my colleagues).

Here's a fun email:

Jonah,

Librarians for years have been trying to "sex-up" their image, unfortunately, not in the way I would prefer it. Over the years, they have been very successful in increasing their budgets as they have proven their usefulness, especially in academic centers. Unfortunately, their usefulness, in my opinion, is coming to a close as nearly all journals are now on-line and so librarians are going to be left competing with major book retailers for customers still interested in books on dead tree. As a result, they need a new advocate (scientists won't need them much longer), and as with all industries facing obsolescence, the best place to turn to is the one segment of society that is the best at resisting change: liberals. So I see this as a ploy to endear librarians to the vocal left to gain allies for future battles. But who knows? Maybe they actually believe this crap.

What I haven't seen pointed out is that after the next terrorist attack in this country, I'm sure that plaintiffs' attorneys will be very interested in whether or not a specific librarian interfered in Patriot Act investigations that could have prevented such an attack. And I'm sure that those librarians will scream bloody murder when they get sued for a gazillion dollars since, after all, anyone who is standing up for a principle should be able to do so consequence free. Of course, I also haven't seen pointed out that they would gladly roll over if the police wanted to come look through the library records of a suspected spouse abuser. None of them want to look like the heavy on a Lifetime movie of the week. (So, Ma'am, let me get this straight. You thought that when this guy checked out Wife-Beaters and the Women Who Love Them and How They Got Rid of Those Women, he was just being provocative? How droll. Do you realize he ended up murdering his wife?!?! [Close-up of librarian, sobbing] My God! How can I ever live with myself! I thought I was protecting the Constitution! [Pan back to detective] No, ma'am. The Constitution is a dead piece of paper. It's his wife who was a living, breathing thing.)

So my opinion is: Librarians think they're doing me and my children a favor? I'll remember whose side they were on the next time a bond issue comes up. Thank God for local control of library funding.

[Name withheld]

This is the mother lode for flying monkeys of my generation. This is better than the box of old wire hangers and expired prescription medicine Homer Simpson found on the curb. This is a huge resource of 1970s TV.... stuff: commericals, theme songs, they even have the Calgon ad and the PSA from that odd moldy looking cartoon character who explained how to make popcicles out of toothpicks and orange juice on a rainy day. I know Rod Dreher, John Podhoretz and Robert George -- wherever they are -- will appreciate this. Nostalgia overload.

That's the number of times the Justice Department has used the super-dooper-scary Section 215 of the Patriot Act which critics say allows the jack-booted thugs of the Leviathan State to come riding into town woopin and a hollerin' kick'n and stomp'n all over our civil liberties. That's 0 times the government has searched libraries. That's 0 times it's rummaged through your video rental records like Bill Clinton at an interns underwear drawer. Zero.

In fact, I'm kind of ticked off. Why hasn't the Federal Government used 215 more? Why hasn't it searched the records of these bad guys. Don't get me wrong, I like the egg on the face of the naysayers, but maybe we should be giving the civil libertarians a little more ammo. You know?

UPDATE: Sorry, I didn't post the link to the story.

Just caught the “Corner” posts on DC think tanks closing down due to Isabel, and I just have to say that you should have stuck to your guns. You were, of course, correct the first time. Here we are at the John Locke Foundation, in North Carolina, in the path of the storm, with the wind already whipping up and rains whomping down, the trees already shaking — and we’re open and working. We’re putting out a school-choice report and a piece on Smart Growth nonsense. We’re preparing for a Friday night event with former CIA director James Woolsey to assess the War thus far. And we’re getting ready to pounce on a new state law sure to come into play in the wake of the storm, a foolish law that purports to ban “price gouging” but will do little more than create artificial scarcity and long lines.

Now THAT’s dedication to the cause of freedom. Heritagers and Catons, this is no time to wimp out — particularly if your excuse is that you can’t get to your job because the government’s mass-transit system isn’t operating.

K J L,

Alright you got me. I'm in, digitally that is.

Best to you all,

[A new subscriber.]

P.S. You know it is a great feeling, being a part of your publication. I did feel a little guilty, getting all this wonderful reading for free.

"The most important eight hours of my life."

Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Arpad Goncz are less enthusiastic about Spielberg's pal. Here's an extract from a letter they published today:

"It is time to put aside transatlantic disputes about the embargo of Cuba and to concentrate on direct support for Cuban dissidents, prisoners of conscience and their families.

Europe ought to make it unambiguously clear that Castro is a dictator, and that for democratic countries a dictatorship cannot become a partner until it commences a process of political liberalisation."

"The [research] team taught brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to swap tokens for food. Normally, capuchins were happy to exchange their tokens for cucumber. But if they saw their partner getting a grape - which is more coveted by capuchins - they took offence."

Fat Brits, like everything else that the world is supposed to regret, are, it seems, America's fault, well sort of anyway. This piece from the London Independent is also noteworthy for the following statistics:

"Research in the US has shown that in the past 20 years the size of a standard hamburger has increased by 112 per cent and bagels by 195 per cent. Pasta servings are 480 per cent bigger and cookies 700 per cent larger."

The key, I suppose, is in the word 'serving', but, even allowing for that, the figure for cookies seems unbelievable. A cookie a seventh of the size of the typical offering we see today wouldn't be a cookie, it would be a crumb.

Herb London continues to perpetuate a myth and he should know better. He writes, "National Review editors contend that homosexual marriages are virtually inevitable so there is little sense in resistance." Variations of this assertion proliferate in certain corners of conservatism and it's simply nonsense. I can't help but get the sense that various commentators continue to insist it is true so they can sound more conservative, courageous and true-believing than the the French-like folks at National Review. That would be fair if it were true, but since even a modicum of research would demonstrate it's not, it's very annoying.

London is presumably referring to Ramesh's cover story on gay marriage which not only did not endorse gay marriage or surrender to its inevitability but rather offered a sober-eyed analysis of the current state of the debate. Ramesh -- a senior editor of the magazine -- and the magazine in general have come out time and again for the Federal Marriage Amendment. Indeed, no other conservative magazine has dedicated so much space and energy to endorsing the FMA and opposing same-sex marriage.

Much the same can be said for National Review Online. Stan Kurtz is a cottage industry on this issue. David Frum has been fighting with Andrew Sullivan and others on this point for years. Maggie Gallagher, Kathryn Lopez, and pretty much the whole NR gang have written over and over against same-sex marriage.

Then there's me. Presumably London gets to use the plural "editor" by lumping me and Ramesh together. Well, first of all I am not an editorialist or senior editor for National Review. Second, I remain opposed to gay marriage (though I haven't thought through the FMA) as a matter of public policy. If possible, I'd allow federalism to solve much of this so long as states were allowed to ban gay marriage too. The place where I am off the reservation is on civil unions. For reasons that I've offered many times, I think it's untenable to deny both marriage and some form of civil union or contract to gays. So, I choose civil unions as a necessary compromise in part to do right by homosexuals and in part because I would like to preserve the integrity of marriage.

Many of those condemning NR for its editorial position because of what I've written commit a pas de deux of dishonesty, they not only get my position wrong they then misapply their mistaken view to all of NR. Enough already.

Robert Samuelson in today's WaPo: "There are grounds for hope. One is that job losses are exaggerated. The government has two employment surveys: a payroll survey of 400,000 business establishments (firms report how many people they employ) and a survey of 60,000 households (people are asked who's working and who's looking for work). Only the payroll survey shows continuing job losses. The household survey indicates a 1.8 million gain since January 2002. The payroll survey misses hiring by new companies, goes the argument; they are not in the sample. Unfortunately, the case is shaky. About 60 percent of the reported job gain occurred in one month (January 2003) and seems mostly to reflect statistical adjustments. Another question mark involves a huge jump in the self-employed, almost 600,000 in a year; many of these 'jobs' may be wishful thinking.

"The stronger case for optimism lies elsewhere."

My syndicated column.

From a reader:

This is the man who tells Tim Russert "I thought that this country was founded on the principle of progressive taxation."

See also libertarian blogger, Gene Healy, who compared Dean and Clark thusly : "Dean, unlike Clark, is able to blink and doesn't have a creepy thousand-yard stare that makes him look like he's ready to either burst out incongruously into giggles or stab you in the eye with a pen."

I see great comic potential here, Jonah.

I've gotten a lot of email from folks defending the first Highlander movie from the shlock charge etc. I agree. The first movie was great and a brilliant idea from Highlander creator Gregory Widen. I also thought his movie "The Prophecy" was a brilliant idea, less brilliant executed -- particularly in the sequels. He also wrote Backdraft which I thought was a terrible, terrible movie from soup to nuts.

I'm still reserving judgement, but I'm getting lots of email like this:

Jonah: Take heart, your vexation at finding Wes Clark an incomparable won't last. The man is an empty suit or I should say uniform complete with four stars. My father and husband were both military officers and I have seen the likes of Wesley Clark many, many times. He is a political officer. That means that his main objective in his career is to be promoted and he will say and do anything to achieve that objective up to and including ruining other officers careers. He was promoted up the line by others of the same ilk. These guys always look good on paper---that means, they went to the right schools (usually the Academies or one of the private military schools), they went to the right wars (known as being in the right place at the right time) and had the right sponsors. Even had the right medals. But they are lousy leaders of men and real leaders can spot them a mile away. It is somehow fitting that Bill and Hillary Clinton would sponsor him. I'm sure they see him as one of their people and he is. Vain, shallow, looks good in a uniform and easily manipulated. You will no doubt receive plenty of e-mail from people who have had the occasion to run into or afoul of General Clark. You should also look into his record as Commander during the war in Kosovo. He almost started WWIII but thankfully a British commander wouldn't follow his orders. He didn't do it out of mendacity just good old garden variety stupidity and vanity. Wesley Clark is not a class act.

[Name withheld]

Okay, okay. He can be made fun of. Most of the email comes from current or former military types who deeply dislike political generals like Clark. I'm not sure that's a angle of attack that the pundits can take up willy-nilly, but it is interesting. One of the leaders of this camp is one of my original Military Guys (remember them?). He's started a blog and promises to pound at Clark like only an old artillery officer can.

Folks, I didn't say there wasn't anything about Clark one couldn't criticize I said there doesn't seem to be much one can make fun of. There is a distinction. I appreciate all the critiques of Clark, but that wasn't really my point.

Besides the fact that the Clinton mafia is mysteriously supporting him (If they think he can win, then you'd think Hillary wouldn't want him to run since a Clark Presidency would ruin her chances to be president) I'm opposed to Wes Clark running for President because he is the only Democrat it's hard to make fun of. It's hard not to make fun of Sharpton, Kucinich, and Braun. Lieberman looks like a rodeo clown who hasn't had his foundation make-up removed yet. Edwards is a trial lawyer who would still be a trial lawyer if he looked like Kucinich. I think I've said this before, but Dean's the sort of arrogant liberal who yells at you for buying the wrong book at his used book store. John Kerry looks like some suction-cup-fingered demon sucked-out his soul through his temples. Graham thinks he's doing history some great favor by recording his bowel movements on notepads.

But what am I supposed to say about Wesley Clark? He's too neat? I'm sure we'll find something, but for now it's vexing.

A couple emails on my assertion that our best students are as good as their best students:

You mentioned that you'd put the top 5% of American kids against the top 5% of Europe and Asia any day. That's a little hard to find, but we do put around the top .000002% in competition every year. Check out for the US Physics team , which blew the rest of the world away last year. The US tends to do similarly well in the Chemistry and Math Olympiads.

And...

We do pretty darn well. Send more people to college than any other country on earth -- you don't see anyone clamoring to get into Korean colleges. We're winning a war that is mainly being fought by kids who graduated from high school in the last four years.

Not to mention more school spirit, baggier pants, way cooler Slipknot T-shirts, and let's face it, our high school football teams rule -- did Tokyo High even makethe playoffs last year?

And....

On your corner blog:

I don't think your excuse works. These are not college results, but high school results. Universal education is still universal education. Asian peasants? You won't find that many peasants in South Korea, one of the most urbanized populations around.

I think you will find some controversy behind math education related to this. See mathematicallycorrect.com, where they argue that "new-new math" has ruined US math education. That site also has a bunch of older international comparison links...