MLB on 'roids
Baseball's dirty little secret is out: rampant steroid use. I hope they do something about this, and fast.

The decline of the Empire
No, we're not talking about Star Wars here; I mean the British one. Take a look at this obituary of The Earl of Kimberley from The Daily Telegraph. Eerie connection: I also spent some time living in Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge.

SFSU Blog Burst
Joe Katzman has coordinated a massive, comprehensive collection of blog media accounts of what happened at San Francisco State University a couple weeks ago, called a "blog burst". If you don't know anything about this story, I'm not surprised, since the local and national media virtually ignored it. But it was an all-too-not-rare incident of the rising ugly tide of anti-Semitism happening in the name of pro-Palestinian causes that are currently abounding in academia and at protests and rallies across the United States (and, I presume, Canada and the rest of the civilized world). Please go check it out and educate yourself through this conglomeration of accounts documenting the hateful event that occurred at SFSU.

World Cup fever
I have a new excuse for my wacky sleeping habits and staying up so late: I'm just getting ready for the World Cup, being held in Japan and South Korea. The first game kicks off late Friday night; are you ready?

Bush, oil, Florida, and politics
Something tells me that Democrats, liberals, and enviro-wackos are going to call this cynical political pandering--that President Bush is just bolstering his brother's gubernatorial reelection campaign. Actually, if they truly believe what they preach, they should applaud the president's move here. I think Bush is making a mistake, though, because this is precisely the time we need to do more drilling and less posturing over the environment in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Why is it we make these hypocritical claims about wanting to protect the environment in our own country--where we have very strict standards and scrutiny over the processes of exploiting our natural resources--but don't seem to care that the exact same thing is being done elsewhere in the world--by regimes not only hostile to our agenda but also less careful about protecting the environment??

New blog siting
Hey, Townhall has a blog! It's news to me anyway. The name is kind of funny too.

I also didn't know that The Heritage Foundation had a blog.

Oh boy! Fuddruckers!!!
Yes, I like Fuddruckers, but this restaurant review in the Arab News is just a little over-the-top for my tastes. Could they find anything wrong with the place--anything at all? Or is this actually a recycled Fuddruckers press release?

No, really?
Yahoo! link says Examiner: Chandra Levy was murdered. Well, duh. What were you suspecting, natural causes?

Common sense?
This appeared in Arab News:

"While the fax enumerated a number of significant achievements by the Zionist state, it also compared them with Arab achievements -- or to be precise, Arab failures. First, the fax underscored the progress made by Israel in achieving its present Gross National Product (GNP). Israel’s GNP exceeds $100 billion while the oil revenue of all the Arab countries combined is barely $113 billion. The average annual income of an Israeli is about 17 times higher than that of an Arab. The Arab’s average annual income is $1,000 while the Israeli average is $17,000. Twelve percent of Israelis are employed in agriculture and another 12 percent in business while the remaining 76 percent are employed in the industrial sector. The average spent on scientific research per year per person in Israel is $110. The Arab world, in contrast, spends a pathetic $2. Israel’s leading electronic industry manufactures several times more than all the Arab countries combined produce. Israel exports $7.2 billion worth of IT products annually and aims to push it up to $12 billion in a decade. As a proportion of its total population, Israel boasts the highest number of engineers and scientists in comparison to any other country."

"Generous scientific and financial assistance provided by the US and Western countries support these highly qualified experts. Further, the US provides Israel with the most advanced weapon technology. This has helped -- and still helps -- Israel to develop sophisticated missile systems. With 70 percent of the weapons manufactured in the country exported, the Jewish state is the fifth largest weapons exporter in the world. It has also developed a plutonium-based nuclear capability. As the sixth atomic power in the world, Israel is also capable of manufacturing 200 nuclear warheads."

"These are the facts, Arabs. What are you going to do about them?"

Bitch and complain and blow themselves up, of course. As Larry Miller notes with humor,

"But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun."

Plus,

"[T]rying to destroy Israel--or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it--for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something. It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mideast. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one."

A "spirit of hatred"
Paul Berman gives us a splendid if meandering essay in Forward magazine on the recent resurgence in anti-Semitism. The problem, though, is not the open bigots, the obvious Arab anti-Zionists, the crusty Stalinists who are predisposed to hate Judaism and Zionism. Read Berman:

"Yet it is the unintended inferences that seem to me the most frightening of all. To go out and fight against bigots and racists of all sorts, the anti-Semites and the anti-Arab racists alike, seems to me relatively simple to do, even in these terrible times. It is not so easy to put up a fight against a wind, a tone against an indefinable spirit of hatred that has begun to appear even in the statements of otherwise sensible people."

I've sensed it too, but I've also spoken to a lot of people who just don't see it, who act as if nothing has really changed. This is depressing to be sure, and I think that despondency is readily apparent in Berman's piece.

Blogger sux
Okay, now that Blogger is finally working, I'm going to post a few messages I wrote up last night.

To the point
Incidentally, did you notice the links in the "Our top stories" blurb on that page? The link to the first story reads, "Will India and Pakistan Blow Each Other Up?" I don't know why, but that just amuses me. It's like an eighth grade-level headline that you would hear on Hard Copy or something. I can hear it now....

"Coming up next, do the present disagreements between America and Europe mean divorce is right around the corner? Some commentators are citing 'irreconcilable differences.' Our reporters have the inside scoop! After the break!"

Europe: Like 1970s America
So says Joe Klein. This is his second trip around the continent--some 35 years after his first, which he describes thusly:

"...I approached Europe then as most Americans have for the past half-century: anticipating an adult theme park. One went there to find history, culture, sophistication, and, of course, naughtiness."

Naughtiness? What, Joe, are you talking about?

"Things have changed, apparently. Europe is in crisis, and in a fairly pissy mood besides. There is a growing 'rift' with America. We are seen as naive, arrogant, unilateral barbarians. (But wasn't that always the case: 'Monsewer, van rooge see voo play?') And Europe itself is becoming less fun: There is crime, there is a tide of immigrants, there are right-wing demagogues, there are right-wing demagogues being assassinated, there are lunatic children firing weapons in schools. Indeed, the news from Europe sounds ... rather American, don't you think?"

Well, possibly. History likes to play strange games like that. I look forward to more of Joe's reporting at the scene of the crime.

An honest liberal
From Peter Beinart in TNR, on the Newark mayoral election:

"So Governor McGreevey, having essentially bribed Newark's struggling people to reelect an atrocious mayor, is now reneging on the deal. Republicans call that racial exploitation. What honest Democrat could disagree?"

Capitalism bad, government-run health care good
That seems to be the message of this Reuters story (surprise surprise).

Mugabe has got to go
Reading this makes one realize how evil and barbaric this man really is. Apparently Stalinism still exists and is alive and kicking in Zimbabwe.

Bush's Memorial Day speech
If you haven't read President Bush's speech from Normandy this morning, you should go do so. Yes, it's profound and moving, but what strikes me is the manner in which his heart shows through his words. I can recall presidents in the recent past with a much greater gift for oration, but the words never seemed as dignified; the speeches always sounded somewhat hollow, the sign of talent squandered on demagogic spiel, flattery, and empty pitches consisting of "I-feel-your-pain"-driven messages. But now, it's nice to finally have a statesman as commander-in-chief.

"The U.S.-Europe Divide"
Robert Kagan, writing for the Washington Post, observes the collision between America's belief in power as a way to safeguard her interests in a Hobbesian world and Europe's Kantian paradise of "perpetual peace." Kagan says that "The irony is that this transatlantic disagreement is the fruit of successful transatlantic policies," and that "Most Europeans don't acknowledge the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has depended on the United States not making the same passage." The result is that

"[T]hey have come to view the United States simply as a rogue colossus, in many respects a bigger threat to the pacific ideals Europeans now cherish than Iraq or Iran. Americans, in turn, have come to view Europe as annoying, irrelevant, naive and ungrateful as it takes a free ride on American power. This is not just a family quarrel. If Americans and Europeans no longer agree on the utility and morality of power, then what remains to undergird their military alliance?"

Kagan closes with this prescription:

"Whatever else we do, let's stop pretending that we agree. That pretense has done little for the alliance since the end of the Cold War than create more confusion, misunderstanding and anger. Better that we should face our differences head on. That is the necessary first step on the road to recovery."

Overall I like his analysis, but I don't agree that "As good children of the Enlightenment, Americans believe in human perfectibility." What distinguishes our nation from just about every other Western nation is not our appeal to Enlightenment philosophy but our tempered acceptance of it; Americans are profoundly more religiously inclined than anybody else in the West, so I would hesitate to say we buy the notion of the perfectibility of mankind. I think we still believe in Original Sin and the fallibility of Man, which is why we will never accept the European's vision of Kantian order; we're not gullible enough to believe it will really work as long as there are very real bogeymen out there like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Thus, I agree with Howard Owens over at Global News Watch when he says, "Frankly, I think we're right about the dangers the West faces, and Europe is blind, and we'll just need to find a way to get along with emaciated NATO allies."

Free trade hypocrisy
I consider myself a pro-free trade pundit, but I have a few acquaintances who are firmly in the anti-globalization camp. (This is of course how we describe them; they don't view themselves as anti-globalization at all, but for now it's an easier term to use because we all know who we are talking about.) One of the things that they've pointed out to me and that I've come to agree with is that although we preach free trade, in reality we shut out developing countries from our markets in the only areas in which they can compete because of domestic political pressures. Witness these excerpts from an article in today's New York Times:

"'The fields in which Africa is most competitive now — agriculture and textiles — are the areas that are most protected in the West,' said Muna B. Ndulo, director of the Institute for African Development at Cornell University...."

"Trevor Manuel, South Africa's finance minister, singled out the farm bill signed into law recently by President Bush for offering additional subsidies to American farmers, making it that much harder for Africa to compete on world markets...."

"Criticism of the United States is more pointed when it comes to agricultural trade. Activists in Ghana said the United States government had been hypocritical by demanding, through the International Monetary Fund, that Ghana phase out subsidies for rice, a food in which it was once self-sufficient, while increasing subsidies for American farmers...."

"Some of the women eking out a living selling shriveled vegetables in the market are economic refugees from regions in Ghana that once had economies built on growing rice but that can no longer compete with subsidized imports, said Bishop Akogolo, deputy executive director of the Integrated Social Development Center, an advocacy group in Accra."

"The only answer, he said, is for Ghana to throw up its own trade restrictions to protect its farmers. 'You keep your subsidies and we'll keep our subsidies and barriers,' he said. 'The U.S. farm bill is spelling more doom for us....'"

"'Even modest increases in developing countries' share of the world export market will massively outweigh any conceivable increase in aid,' the Oxfam report said."

"But some African officials said that if the trade relationship between the developed and developing worlds was not managed better than it had been so far, Africa might get nowhere in its efforts to attract much-needed investment from abroad and to create economies vibrant enough to address the causes and symptoms of its extreme poverty."

If we truly want to help Africa and developing countries, we can't play this hypocritical game of subsidizing our own industries like farming and steel just to placate domestic political pressure. I wish our Republican leaders had the balls to go against the farmers and steel producers, demand the same of Europe, and save ourselves money while helping third-world countries at the same time.

Meaningless flattery (Is that redundant?)
Thanks for linking to me, Instapundit. You know Glenn, links from you are worth more than their weight in gold. Haha!