Just broke the Water Pitcher

Kieran thinks that’s bad? (And that?) Jonah Goldberg gets letters, one of whose authors he adjudges “ain’t altogether crazy.” From the mailbag:

and it hit me…Holy cow. The global warming alarmists KNOW the earth is going to begin cooling in a few years – and their alarm is that they have to have Kyoto-like programs in place that they can point to as the cause of the cooling.

If they can succeed at this – they effectively control the world. In a few decades they can revive the “earth is cooling and there’s an ice age coming” alarmism – and prescribe policies that ensure they have the power they want to manage that impending climate disaster.

You must now fill the comment box with your best Hollywood pitch/screenplay treatment for this sophisticated conspiracy flick. Bonus style points for Ludlumesque title.

Following up last night’s post, I’ve constructed two more little Tom and Jerry appreciation sites – for “Pencil Mania”; for “Piano Tooners” [fixed!] You can also download the cartoons themselves here and here. I’ve incorporated my expert commentary into the sites themselves. Are you like me? Do you find these things just weirdly beguiling?

That reminds me. One of the finest graphic novels you’ve (maybe) never heard of is Kim Deitch, The Boulevard of Broken Dreams – and it’s for sale cheap, in hardback [amazon]. Now that Green Day went and sang that song, the poor book will never show up in google searches anymore, I guess. Pantheon doesn’t even have all that much about it on their site. But I’ll tell you a secret. I linked to this page of stills – and this charming little animation – long ago, and the links are still good! (Probably there’s some way to get there the normal way, but I’m not seeing it.)

Here’s a short bio piece on Deitch, who really deserves to be as well known as Spiegelman and Crumb.

A week or so ago I noted the availability of absurdly cheap 50-movie DVD packs – SF, mystery, so forth. And this 100 Cartoon Classics [Amazon]. I now report that they work great for snarking out! (If you don’t know what that means, read more Daniel Pinkwater.) Just pick a cartoon – any cartoon – then a film, or two for a double-feature. Fan out all the discs and pick strictly at random. Now you must watch. The results will probably be bad. But that’s part of the snarking-out experience.

This afternoon Belle and I ran a double-feature matinee. First, a Tom and Jerry cartoon, "A Spanish Twist". No, not the stupid cat and mouse. The originals. Read about them here. Now visit the wonderful little site I have built just for you. Wonder of wonders! It turns out you can download the whole cartoon here.

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From Rachel Aspden’s New Statesman review of Alain de Botton’s latest

None of this [pretentiousess] would matter so much were de Botton not selling the promise of taste. The Architecture of Happiness is being advertised on the Tube with a poster of flying-duck plaques – middle-class shorthand for “naff” – asking: “Is this your idea of good taste?” … If this is happiness, I’ll take the flying ducks any time.

Reading this in the kitchen, I naturally glanced up at the wall, which is adorned by a classic flight of flying ducks. I acquired them in my youth in a spirit of irony, but that has long since transmuted into genuine affection (if indeed, the irony was ever genuine). They used to be accompanied by a koala, masked and caped as a flying supermarsupial, but the wall wasn’t a safe place for such a unique item, and we’ve never found another.

So is it OK to like flying ducks? Or is this the crime against the holy spirit of Good Taste that can never be forgiven?

(see “here”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/05/french_universi.html for Tabarrok’s original; see “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2004/03/25/juan-non-volokh-with-minor-editorial-changes/ for No. 1 in this series)

The US has one of the most deplored health insurance systems in the world and one of the most “admired”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/01/paul_krugman_on_1.html veterans’ health care systems. Could the difference have something to do with the fact that America’s health insurance firms operate in a competitive market with lots of private suppliers while veterans’ health care is dominated by monopolistic, government provided hospitals?

What would our health system look like if it operated like the Veterans’ Administration?

Look to France for the answer. “Healthcare in France”:”:http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2005/04/health_care_fra.html is “mainly under state control … The state plans out hospitals, the allocation of specialized equipment, etc.” However, as Kevin Drum “notes”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006148.php, this

bq. works pretty well. French healthcare is excellent, waiting lists are short, the supply of doctors is high, overall costs are reasonable, and patient satisfaction levels are excellent. It couldn’t be transplanted whole into the United States, of course — doctors are paid considerably more here, for one thing — but it’s a pretty good model for what we could accomplish.

Spring is here, and meat is in the air!

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I finally got around to reading the Euston Manifesto. Something of the sort used to be me. Here I am, back in Feb 2004, recollecting 2002-2003: “I did a Hitchens, basically. But I’m better now. Really, I feel fine.” Well, I was never worse than a sort of nail-biting queasyhawk, squawking about threatening storms. But good thing that Belle has been upholding the family honor with her ongoing ‘why I was wrong’ series. Apart from the fact that Belle accidentally logged in as me to make the first post, I never openly endorsed them. Usually I do that at dinner. But maybe a few words now about this Euston thing. [click to continue…]

David Beito reminds conservatives that they can’t always get what they want. Apparently Michelle Malkin complained vociferously about a math teacher at Bellvue Community College asking the following question:

“Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300-foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second.”

As a result of the campaign by Malkin and others the teacher was upbraided, the President of the College expanded the administrative staff dealing with diversity issues and the consequence of the whole thing has been a nice bounty for another diversity expert:

In response to Malkin’s campaign, Bellevue College not only has given the diversity police more monitoring authority over the curriculum and personnel evaluations, but will hire the notorious Glenn Singleton to conduct ideologically one-sided training for faculty and staff. Apparently, it will be mandatory.

(Readers with long memories will know that I am less than enamoured with Singleton’s trainings).

David Horowitz take note!

Anyone want to discuss the Hammer’s announcement of withdrawal from the race [Time, NY Times)? There’s a thread developing at Redstate. Realamerican writes:

Look, I’ll be honest. I don’t care if DeLay broke a few laws. He was good for our side, and I’d rather have a corrupt Republican than an honest Democrat (not that there is such a thing).

But by dropping out, he might as well put on a T-shirt saying, “Yes, I AM guilty!” This will paint the entire Republican Party in a bad light, and put our majority in real jeopardy. The honorable thing for him to do would have been to resign before the primary. By waiting until now, he makes it look as though Earle or someone has something really damaging on him. Even if he’s innocent, he looks incredibly guilty.

This is bad. Just really, really bad. Truthfully, I think we just lost the House.

Interesting use of the word ‘honorable’. To be fair, realamerican is getting a bit of pushback from the others in the thread. Not as much as one would hope for, however.

I think Powerline nails it about right:

It’s too bad, I think. DeLay was an effective leader, albeit too liberal in recent years. It’s possible, of course, that he did something wrong along the way. But there is no evidence of that in the public domain; as I’ve often said, the politically-inspired prosection of DeLay by Travis County’s discredited DA, Ronnie Earle, is a bad joke. As far as we can tell at the moment, DeLay appears to be yet another victim of the Democrats’ politics of personal destruction–the only politics they know.

As to my post title. I’ve used that joke before, but it seems extra super appropriate today.

And just to be clear: realamerican and hindrocket are mostly here to provide black humor. You don’t need to talk about them unless you want. You might consider discussing levels of denial of Republican corruption problems, however.

via “Steven Berlin Johnson”:http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/2006/03/dan_hill_has_a_.html, Dan Hill has written a “blogpost”:http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2006/03/why_lost_is_gen.html on the creative (but slightly creepy) ways in which _Lost_ is beginning to invade the real world.

bq. Some have speculated that the show is only being produced a few episodes in advance, as the screenwriters are wrangling the numerous ideas generated in fans’ forums into the script … But the most sophisticated tactic I’ve seen deployed thus far lasted for a few seconds on-screen, and has yet to play out fully online. In series 2, episode 13 (‘The Long Con’), the Hurley character is casually seen reading a tattered manuscript found in one of the suitcases washed up on the beach. He shows the name of the prospective book: Bad Twin by a ‘Gary Troup’, and makes an off-hand complimentary comment on the content. And the scene moves on. However, this book, Bad Twin, “actually exists in Amazon.com”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401302769/102-7191170-2490510?v=glance&n=283155. Scroll down and check the ‘About the author’ section to discover that Lost’s fiction and Amazon’s facts have collided …

Time to get cracking on that essay on Sir Thomas Browne’s _Urn Burial_ methinks.

Avram Grumer on power law extrapolations and the “Gillette Singularity”:http://agrumer.livejournal.com/414194.html.

(Via “Making Light”:http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/)

A while back I noted the “disquieting resemblance”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/01/02/separated-at-birth between the Emperor Gorg (of “Fraggle Rock”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0009RQSSW/kieranhealysw-20/104-7889918-1956712) and L. Ron Hubbard (present whereabouts unknown). Now my sources have alerted me to “this clip”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sH42MMepT4&search=muppet from the short-lived “Muppets Tonight”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muppets_Tonight. The premise of the clip is a look back at “The Kermit Frog Club,” like the Mickey Mouse Club but with Kermit as the object of devotion and guest Cindy Crawford in the Annette Funicello role. (The MMC is outside the range of my pop culture: I have no idea what I’m talking about here.) Anyway, of interest are the muppet Frogsketeers, whose names are emblazoned on their shirts: along with Cindy, there’s Newt, Stu, and … L. Ron. Now that I look at the screenshot again, Newt’s crop of hair is also somewhat “evocative”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich.

As Jim Henley has noted, there’s a lot of ressentiment on the right these days. And “not only”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5824c998-b0a3-11da-a142-0000779e2340.html in the US.

bq. Two years after the Madrid train bombings, Spain’s main political parties cannot agree on who was responsible for the nation’s deadliest terrorist attack. … The Popular party, which lost power in a general election three days after the train bombings, accuses the Socialist government, the police and the judiciary of taking part in a massive conspiracy to cover up alleged links between Islamic radicals and Eta, the violent Basque separatist group. … The Popular party’s conspiracy theory has been taken up by rightwing talk- show hosts, some of whom have even accused unamed Socialists of financing the terrorist attacks to oust the Popular party from power. …

bq. After a two-year investigation spanning nine countries, Juan del Olmo, an investigating magistrate, says he will lay formal charges against dozens of suspects within the next three weeks. … The Popular party refuses to endorse Mr del Olmo’s conclusions, perhaps because José María Aznar, the former prime minister, retains a powerful influence over his party. Mr Aznar blamed Eta for the Madrid train bombings and continued to insist on a Basque connection long after evidence began to point to Islamist extremists.

Reading this, and drawing the obvious comparison with Cheney’s “bogus claims”:http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/18/cheney.iraq.al.qaeda/ about the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, and Wolfowitz’s “fantasies”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.bergen.html, about who ordered the original World Trade Center bombing makes it seem pretty strange to me that the meme of lefties as conspiracy theorists has stuck. Not that there aren’t some strange conspiracy theories out there on the left – but they’re weak beer in comparison to some of the deeply weird shit that our Right Wing Overlords in the US administration, and our former and would-be future Overlords in Madrid, take as gospel truth.

Kevin Drum mocks Hugh Hewitt for his ‘it was in a PDF file that we were only able to read after downloading a new version of Adobe’ defense. But the proper pop cult reference is not Perry Mason. Allow me. Look to the man’s own site: "Hugh Hewitt is the Jack Bauer of talk radio and the blogosphere." This is actually a good idea for a show. ‘In the next 24 hours, terrorists will make a major strike against an American city. The only thing between all of us, and just a few of them … is a complacent, partisan hack.’ In 90 minutes or less you could play it strictly for Man Who Knew Too Little laughs. Subtler and ultimately more satisfying would be a genuine, 24-karat gold-plated imitation 24. In the first episode, "Download PDF For Murder", terrorists have encrypted their plans in an email attachment that can only be read using the latest version of Adobe Reader. Sweaty ‘which wire do I cut?’ tension as the heroes race against time to crack the main Adobe site. ‘This mouse has TWO buttons!’ ‘Just PICK one!’ [Adobe Acrobat Reader starts dowloading, to the "Hackers"-inspired strains of The Prodigy’s "Firestarter".] But then it all goes crazy. In the end they confront a nail-biting moral dilemma. Should they torture the Adobe executive, kidnapped in a daring, extra-judicial raid. He’s screaming "Just DOUBLE-click!" The agents scream back: “You’re lying” [click to continue…]