Blog round-up

  • I’m home sick today. Well, since I work at home, the first part of that is extra­ne­ous. But because I’m sip­ping broth soups and tea, I gave myself the day off, which means I get to hit the blo­gos­phere. Lots out there:

    • Hugh Hewitt sums up the changes in the land­scape that led Penn­syl­va­nia vot­ers to holler loud enough to over­turn a whop­ping pay raise that state leg­is­la­tors had voted for them­selves:

      The web-talk radio syn­ergy has empow­ered cit­i­zen activists in ways never imag­ined, but pri­mar­ily in the abil­ity to locate and com­mu­ni­cate with each other. Pay­backs are now not only pos­si­ble, they are rel­a­tively easy to orga­nize. Cross a wire, and the vot­ers will not only know about it, they will be reminded of the fail­ure again and again, and mobi­lized in advance of a cru­cial election.

      I’m not say­ing the power of alter­na­tive media, talk radio and the blo­gos­phere doesn’t get a lit­tle exag­ger­ated some­times, but I think he’s right in what he’s say­ing. In this age, infor­ma­tion is power, and decen­tral­iz­ing the desem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion has given extra lever­age to many peo­ple that wouldn’t oth­er­wise have had it.

    • Michele Malkin has a take on the strat­egy behind all the Sen­ate cries for with­drawal from Iraq:

      The more I think about it, the more I believe this is just a way to dimin­ish any polit­i­cal good­will that will accrue to the Bush admin­is­tra­tion when troops do begin leav­ing Iraq. I think the same can be said for the timetable Democ­rats wanted to impose in the Con­gress. With upcom­ing elec­tions and the trial of Sad­dam, and more and more Iraqi troops and police being trained daily, it is likely, and I think the Pres­i­dent has even stated, that the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary pres­ence will start being scaled back within the next 6 – 12 months. When that hap­pens, Democ­rats will try to claim it was the pres­sure they exerted that caused it. We all know that is what the Pres­i­dent has said all along — that we will leave when the Iraqis no longer need us there. The pub­lic, how­ever, has heard a con­stant drum­beat from Democ­rats and the media that there is no exit strategy.

    • I can’t fig­ure John McCain out. It seemed like he’d made up his mind to be the Repub­li­can that lib­er­als can feel good about, and then he sud­denly comes out strong against the Iraq pull­out cries. Not only did he make this speech on Tues­day, but he had an edi­to­r­ial today in the New York Post:

      Moral­ity, national secu­rity and the honor our fallen deserve all com­pel us to see our mis­sion in Iraq through to victory.

      But the amend­ment sug­gests a dif­fer­ent pri­or­ity. It sig­nals that with­drawal, not vic­tory, is fore­most in Con­gress’ mind, and sug­gests that we are more inter­ested in exit than victory.

      A date is not an exit strategy.

    • Speak­ing of help from strange quar­ters, any­one who didn’t see last night’s new episode of “South Park” missed a real slam at the “church” of Sci­en­tol­ogy, Tom Cruise, John Tra­volta et al. It was loaded up with enough spe­cific infor­ma­tion about the com­pletely ridicu­lous ori­gins and beliefs of that group that even the usu­ally death-defying South Park duo were obvi­ously scared of a law­suit. I know peo­ple have a lot of rea­sons for not watch­ing that show, and of course, I would never let a kid see it. But still, this episode, enti­tled “Trapped in the Closet” is too good to miss. If you hap­pen to see it in re-runs, check it out.

    Related posts:

    1. Bush’s great speech
    2. The canoe-headed one strikes back
    3. Blog bag for today
    4. The Bat­tle of Lex­ing­ton and so on
    5. Howard lay­ing it down

    November 17th, 2005 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Karl Thienes 11.17.2005

    I am a secret (but not any more!) fan of “South Park”, not only because I think the writ­ing very clever and am eas­ily amused but because no show in mod­ern mem­ory (except “The Simp­sons”) has had such stun­ning suc­cess lam­bast­ing Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism, wacky reli­gious beliefs of every fla­vor, the social total­i­tar­i­an­ism of “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness”, and the inanity of the pub­lic edu­ca­tion system.

    I haven’t seen an episode in a while since we don’t have cable. But I’ve always argued that if one can get get past the ado­les­cent humor and delib­er­ately provoca­tive treat­ment of sen­si­tive issues, it really is an inter­est­ing show.

  • Grace

    Yay, I’m not alone. I think that even us good go-to-Sunday-meeting types have a guilty plea­sure or two. I felt bet­ter about my occa­sional South Park view­ing when I heard John Mark Reynolds talk about how much he liked “Life of Brian,” which I found too irrev­er­ent to put up with.

    I actu­ally think that Trey Parker and Matt Stone do some of the fairest slap­down social satire — every­one catches it sooner or later. “Team Amer­ica” lam­pooned the super-patriots and war hawks, but it also made fun of Michael Moore, Susan Saran­don, Matt Damon, Kim Jong Il and Alec Bald­win (keeper line around the Brooks house: “You are USERESS, Arec Bardwin!”)

    The episode I men­tion is worth watch­ing just for the (long over­due) shots at Sci­en­tol­ogy. But the last LOL episode I saw was a post-Katrina send-up (Kyle and Cart­man man­age to break a dam and every­one is con­vinced it’s a sure sign of global warm­ing) — that one is a scream.

  • Michelle

    I hope you feel bet­ter soon, Grace.

  • Grace

    Thanks. It’s really not too bad. Any cold that neces­si­tates some com­fort food but doesn’t leave me mis­er­able seems like a *good* cold to me. ;-)

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