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• May 6, 2007 (word)
• May 6, 2007 (pdf)

In 1927 the writer Eugene Lyons sailed with his family to Russia, “the land of our dreams.” They returned in 1934 and three years later he published Assignment in Utopia, one of the most courageous, perceptive and honest accounts of the early Soviet Union. And the end of Lyons’ love affair with it. For example;

People under dictatorships, it has been well said, are condemned to a lifetime of enthusiasm. It is wearing sentence. Gladly they would burrow into the heart of their misery and lick their wounds in private. But they dare not; sulking is next-door to treason. Like soldiers weary unto death after a long march, they must line up smartly for parade. …

Our selection today for May Month Grinding People Down With Stupidity uses a passage from Solzhenitsyn to illustrate a lifetime of enthusiasm.

… “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!” …

Power Line and Roger Simon comment on Royal’s late inning tactics in the French elections.

Corner post on Sarkozy’s win.

… Sarkozy just gave his acceptance speech, in which he uttered the somewhat astounding—and from a political point of view, needless—line: “…and let me say to our American friends, they can count on our friendship.” …

Amazing. Germany, and now France. Not bad for having a moron in the White House.

Tenet’s book allows Charles Krauthammer to remind why we went to war.

… Outside of government, the case for war was made not just by the neoconservative Weekly Standard, but — to select almost randomly – the traditionally conservative National Review, the liberal New Republic and the center-right Economist. Of course, most neoconservatives supported the war, the case for which was also being made by journalists and scholars from every point on the political spectrum — from the leftist Christopher Hitchens to the liberal Tom Friedman to the centrist Fareed Zakaria to the center-right Michael Kelly to the Tory Andrew Sullivan. And the most influential tome on behalf of war was written not by any conservative, let alone neoconservative, but by Kenneth Pollack, Clinton’s top Near East official on the National Security Council. The title: “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq.” …

Judging by re-enlistment rates our soldiers didn’t need to be reminded. Instapundit has the details.

Kathleen Parker comments on the reactions to Broder’s column on Harry Reid.

… Broder’s point, provocative but hardly incendiary, was that American lives are on the line and that Reid’s remark didn’t help matters. Rather than provide encouragement to our enemies, Broder suggested that the Senate leader might do better to heed the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group report and seek common ground toward both military and political solutions. …

Strategy Page says Islamists are losing control of women.

…Thus in most Islamic countries, the women are having fewer children, and making more noise about economic and educational opportunities. This resonates with some of the better informed Islamic men. One reason the West, and other parts of the world, have enjoyed much better economic growth than the Moslem countries, is that they have added large number of educated women to their work force.Losing control of the women is something that makes Islamic conservatives very angry. Murderously angry. This is a vicious, lethal battle taking place largely out of the media spotlight. But, long term, it is destroying the source of Islamic terrorism.

G. Schoenfeld posts on Carter’s diplomacy.

James Taranto posts on Pelosi’s diplomacy.

The Captain posts on a typically sneering NY Times reference to W.

The Weekly Standard reviews a book on the wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound.

David McCullough’s face contorted with anger.
That is the first line of Wendy Williams’s and Robert Whitcomb’s account of one man’s possibly misguided attempt to build a wind farm off Cape Cod. My first thought was: Oh, goody. Something snippy about Saint David. I am going to enjoy this.
On page one, McCullough is fulminating about Cape Wind, the 24-square-mile, turbine-powered electrical power project that energy entrepreneur Jim Gordon wants to build in Horseshoe Shoal, not far from McCullough’s Martha’s Vineyard home. McCullough sputters in fine company, with Walter Cronkite, Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, and all manner of Kennedys. Because, as everyone knows, it is one thing to speak out in favor of homeless shelters, affordable housing, and “clean” energy projects. It is quite another thing to gaze at them from your front door. …

Toledo Blade with a piece on Pickerhead’s alma mater.

Arnold Kling in Tech Central on how to cure poverty.

… The point of this essay is to simply state the obvious. If you look at poverty from the broad perspective of international and historical comparisons, the solution to poverty is decentralized entrepreneurial activity under capitalism. …

Imus’s suit against CBS will claim the dump button was available to censor his remarks. Slate’s explainer tells us how the “dump-button” works at.

Dilbert’s here.

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• May 3, 2007 (word)
• May 3, 2007 (pdf)

The Captain has an interesting post on developments at the LA Times and CNN. Seems like the media is tearing itself loose from the fools in the Reid Pelosi camp.

Yesterday, CNN reported on the disastrous consequences that a precipitate American withdrawal would create for Iraq. Today, the Los Angeles Times follows suit, describing the delicate process of training a national army from scratch, and the collapse that would ensue if America bugs out …

Hugh Hewitt interviews Mark Helprin. Mark has long been a critic of the Iraq war. He doesn’t like precipitous withdrawal either.

… if we simply withdraw according to the timetable that they offered, it would be a terrible disaster. And people say that, but they don’t explain why. It would be a disaster because it would energize every enemy of the United States throughout the world, and cause much greater pain and suffering, and danger, than we’ve had up to this point in this war. …

More on salaries at the World Bank.

French presidential debates are real debates. Power Line posts.

John Fund reports on undeclared pres candidates and their strategies.

Longish but well written article from Knoxville on one of those undeclared – Fred Thompson.

It was a scorching summer day in 1993 at the Sevier County fairgrounds. I was standing around with four other political junkies with nothing better to do and we were laughing about Congressman Don Sundquist’s ardent pursuit of the goodwill of Congressman Jimmy Quillen.
Quillen, the boss of the heavily Republican First District, had torpedoed the candidacy of Winfield Dunn, the last serious Republican candidate for governor. Quillen was playing hard-to-get that summer with his back bench colleague, Sundquist, who would be running for governor in 1994.
Quillen and Sundquist were inside a big tent and the crowd was whooping it up, in anticipation of capturing the governor’s office after eight years of Democratic Gov. Ned McWherter.
We looked over the fairgrounds to see a tall fellow we recognized from the movies wandering around like he was lost. He evidently didn’t get the memo about it being a casual event. He had left his suit coat and tie in the car and had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. He wandered up, sweating like a pig. …
… Fred Thompson, on his first campaign appearance in East Tennessee, assumed (not incorrectly) we were a group of local rednecks. We surrounded him like a bear in a ring and started peppering him with questions. …

“Tell us what you really think” Michael Graham has words for Tenet.

If there’s a bigger buffoon or more gutless weasel in the intelligence world than George Tenet, he’s being hidden in a black ops prison on Guantanamo Bay. Tenet, a poster child for “The Power Of Positive Brown-Nosing,” has hit a new low, even for Washington. Having worked his way up the political ladder by leaving no back unslapped, on the way down he’s leaving no back unstabbed.

George Tenet is the Barney Fife of the spy world. Every bad guy got away, and he never took his bullet out of his pocket.

Screwing up the pre-Iraq war intelligence alone makes him a failure. Utterly missing the 9/11 attacks and having not a single CIA asset in the Taliban or al-Qaeda at the time earns him “Worst CIA Chief Ever.” …

The latest problem in Brit health care; they’re short 3,000 midwives.

Great post from Right Coast on how local gov folks apply loving care to military contractors.

New discovery may make less expensive solar panels possible.

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• May 2. 2007 (word)

• May 2, 2007 (pdf)

Following along on the theme we emphasized yesterday, NY Sun editors write on Broder’s column.

Instapundit posts on the Sun editorial.

We get a look at the quinquennial farm bill which proves Bismarck’s dictum; Men should not know how their laws and sausages are made.” This comes to us two different ways; a LA Times editorial on sugar tariffs and an article on the farm bill from NY Times.

A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?

Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice. …

… The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow. …

Neal Boortz posts on the Bush veto.

Any discussion of the president’s veto of the Democrats surrender bill must begin with the realization of one simple, basic, incontrovertible fact. The Democrat leadership of this country awakes every single day with one desire on their mind: They want a day of bad news from Iraq. Those Democrat leaders who actually pray are praying for our defeat in Iraq. Every bit of bad news from Iraq brings smiles to Democrat faces. Every bit of good news brings sadness.

Tony Blankley writes on Muslim hatred of the West.

Mark Steyn with a Corner post on the same subject.

David Boaz was in Tech Central with our May Month Remembrance of the Victims of Communism. He wants to know where the anti-communist movies are?

The Hurwitz jurors explain their verdict for John Tierney.

John Stossel writes on the school choice wars.

NY City bans aluminum bats. WSJ has an editorial.

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• Pickings :: May 1, 2007 (PDF)

• Pickings :: May 1, 2007 (word)

Once again we see the Dems heading down the primrose path with their friends in the main stream media. The mutual admiration society never alerts Reid, Pelosi, et al to trouble ahead.

The first to break ranks from the MSM was David Broder whose piece was in last Thursday’s Pickings. Now Lawrence Kaplan of the New Republic has a piece subtitled; Congressional leaders are illiterate on Iraq.

… What is going on here? There are two possibilities: First, Reid and Pelosi could be purposefully minimizing the stakes in Iraq. Or, second, they don’t know what they’re talking about. My guess is some combination of the two. Political maneuvering certainly contributes to the everyday pollution of Iraq discourse. But a lot of the pollution derives from legislators being functionally illiterate about the war over which Congress now intends to preside. …

Ed Morrissey, the proprietor of Captain’s Quarters has a number of illustrative posts.

First off, “Good News In Anbar.”

Just as the Democrats have raised the white flag on Iraq, the New York Times reports that the surge strategy has started paying off in Anbar. …

Then a post on Broder.

… David Broder took Democrats to task for allowing an incompetent like Harry Reid to rise to party leadership, pointing out several of the Senator’s foolish foibles as examples. This column sent the netroots into a tizzy, with many of them declaring Broder as irrelevant and past his expiration date. The Senate Democratic caucus even sent him a letter, signed by all 50 members, extolling the virtues of Reid and lauding his “straight talk” — apparently all endorsing the notion that we have lost the war in Iraq. …

Next a post on the possibility Sunni’s have killed the al Qaeda leader in Iraq.

The last is “Dude, Where’s My Bill?” Seems Bush wants to veto the appropriation bill, but he hasn’t got it yet. Why’s that? Because Nancy hasn’t read it. You can’t make it up!

Rich Lowry at NR writes about all this.

WSJ thinks there’s a chance we wouldn’t have beat the Japanese if Murtha had been around.

Mr. Murtha has good intentions, but he’s got it exactly wrong. If U.S. forces lack the equipment or training they need, it’s his job, as the chairman of the one subcommittee specifically responsible for originating defense appropriations, to make sure they get it.

If legislators really don’t believe we should continue in Iraq, they need to come clean, shut down the war–and accept the risks, and take responsibility for the consequences. Otherwise, they need to provide U.S. forces the means to carry out their missions.

Marty Peretz reacts to the NY Times Sunday piece on Anbar province.

… The kissing and dancing of the Democrats when they won their date-certain resolution was simply disgusting. Do they really want to have the terrorists win a free and murderous hand in Iraq?

NY Times with an Op Ed claiming congress should support the surge.

Ilya Somin at Volokh notes we might be ignoring the drug war in order to succeed in an Afghan operation.

He then posts on a May Day that would memorialize the millions of victims of communism.

Two years ago Pickings took the month to honor communism’s victims. We repeat one of our first posts. It is about Walter Duranty, Pulitzer Prize winning liar, who was the NY Times man in Moscow in the 1930′s.

Bret Stephens of WSJ has more on Wolfowitz.

A Corner post on same.

Power Line posts on a NY Sun story of a jobless conservative academic.

Mark Moyar doesn’t exactly fit the stereotype of a disappointed job seeker. He is an Eagle Scout who earned a summa cum laude degree from Harvard, graduating first in the history department before earning a doctorate at the University of Cambridge in England. Before he had even begun graduate school, he had published his first book and landed a contract for his second book. Distinguished professors at Harvard and Cambridge wrote stellar letters of recommendation for him.

Yet over five years, this conservative military and diplomatic historian applied for more than 150 tenure-track academic jobs, and most declined him a preliminary interview. During a search at University of Texas at El Paso in 2005, Mr. Moyar did not receive an interview for a job in American diplomatic history, but one scholar who did wrote her dissertation on “The American Film Industry and the Spanish-Speaking Market During the Transition to Sound, 1929-1936.” At Rochester Institute of Technology in 2004, Mr. Moyar lost out to a candidate who had given a presentation on “promiscuous bathing” and “attire, hygiene and discourses of civilization in Early American-Japanese Relations.” …

Another environmental legend bites the dust. No longer is a Galapagos tortoise the last of his species. John Tierney who communed with the beast has the details.