Monthly Archives: January 2004

January 21, 2004 — John Hinderaker

The Only Problem I Can See Is How To Enforce It

Former novelist Erica Jong has a piece in today’s Sydney Morning Herald on the threat allegedly posed by the “Christian right.” It is a good example of how some fevered leftists talk when they are addressing a mostly non-American audience. Here are some excerpts: “One of these days, young women in the United States are going to wake up from watching so-called ‘reality TV’ and discover that they have lost »
January 21, 2004 — Scott Johnson

Mazel tov, part 6

Several readers wrote to suggest that Ambassador Mazel’s disruption of the Stockholm “Snow White and the Madness of Truth” exhibit might best be defended as a work of performance art. Jerusalem Post columnist Calev Ben-David pursues that train of thought while adding a twist or two to the available information about the controversy in “Diplomat as performance artist>” »
January 21, 2004 — Scott Johnson

An Olympian perspective

Tony Blankley seems to have peeked into my mind to describe the emotional roller coaster of a Republican partisan over the past few days for today’s column. But he seems also to have read the minds of the Democratic contenders: “Let the games continue.” Blankley’s perspective in this column is unusually detached and Olympian — the perspective of comedy. »
January 20, 2004 — Paul Mirengoff

What a difference 12 years make

Throughout 2003, we often heard that President Bush’s strong poll numbers, driven in part by our success in Iraq, didn’t mean much. After all, we were reminded, his father had even better numbers in 1991 after the first Gulf war, and look what happened to him. This wasn’t necessarily a bad cautionary tale, until the summer when the economy picked up. Since it was the troubled state of the economy »
January 20, 2004 — John Hinderaker

State of the Union

I thought he started great, came out swinging, stayed very strong until he got to the laundry list midway through the domestic segment. From then on it was lame, and closed pretty weakly. But the dominant impression I came away with is how formidable the President’s chief themes will be in the upcoming re-election campaign. I would not want to be running against Bush as an anti-war candidate, or as »
January 20, 2004 — Paul Mirengoff

Andrew Sullivan’s take on Iowa

Andrew Sullivan makes the case for why the Iowa caucus results are bad news for Clark. According to Sullivan, Clark “was supposed to be the anti-Dean, but adopted Deanish rhetoric. Both positions are now somewhat redundant. The Iowa voters – not exactly centrists – picked Kerry and Edwards to be the anti-Dean candidate, and the shrillness of the Dean-Clark message (the shrillness that so appealed to Paul Krugman) was just »
January 20, 2004 — Paul Mirengoff

The caravan moves on

I’m still trying to think through where things stand after Iowa. I agree with the consensus that Iowa rejected Dean mostly because they found him too weird. That Iowans found him too weird would not necessarily have meant that New Hampshireites will do so. However, Dean’s post-defeat theatrics may mean that he is now too weird for all of the states he shrieked out during said theatrics, and every other »
January 20, 2004 — John Hinderaker

More On Jobs

The “jobless recovery” theme is so deeply embedded that I’m not sure anything is going to change it. My guess is that President Bush’s speech tonight won’t try to correct that misconception, but rather will play to it by expressing concern about jobs and advocating new job training programs. But the huge discrepancy between the jobs reported by employers and those reported in the government’s household survey, on which the »
January 20, 2004 — John Hinderaker

Krugman Sinks Deeper

After last night’s fiasco, the world has taken note of Howard Dean’s nuttiness. It is time that the same attention be focused on Paul Krugman, with the same result. Today’s Krugman column is one of his most outrageous. As always, Krugman’s column is a partisan attack on President Bush. But his attacks are getting ever weirder and more paranoid. He says that “[Bush’s] political handlers seem to have decided on »
January 20, 2004 — Scott Johnson

Who’s smiling now?

Ashland University political science Professor Jeff Sikkenga has an interesting snap analysis of the Iowa results and the course ahead over at No Left Turns. »
January 20, 2004 — Scott Johnson

“Road map”: charting with a bullet

MEMRI has just forwarded this dispatch regarding the latest pop music smash on the Arab hit parade. The MEMRI translation provides excerpts from a review in the Cairo Times of popular Egyptian singer Sha’ban Abd Al-Rahim’s new album: “[Popular] singer Sha’ban Abd Al-Rahim is making headlines again with his announcement that he has put the final touches on his latest album Mahibish Al Karasi (I Don’t Like the Chairs) – »
January 20, 2004 — Scott Johnson

Separated at birth?

University of Michigan Busines School Professor Scott Masten writes: “I’ve been trying to figure out who it is that Kerry reminds me of. Then it dawned on me. As a native of New Hampshire (and Dartmouth alum), I grew up with the image of the Old Man of the Mountain. Now mind you, I’m not fond of the thought of Kerry as a symbol of NH. But should he ever »
January 20, 2004 — John Hinderaker

The Morning After

It looks like we may not have Howard Dean to kick around much longer. Everyone is talking about Dean’s over-the-top performance last night; here is the New York Post’s take: “Rolling up his shirt sleeves and shrieking so loud that his voice cracked, a raging Dean rallied his supporters with forced optimism and a pugilistic tone that stood in contrast to the formal upbeat speeches by his opponents. “‘I’ll see »
January 20, 2004 — Scott Johnson

The Post vs. the President

Not only is Rocket Man featured in today’s FrontPage together with Andrew Sullivan and Daniel Pipes, but his piece is the best of the (very good) lot. In his Power Line piece yesterday morning on Glenn Kessler’s page-one Washington Post article, he demonstrated with Euclidean precision how the bigfoot media are an obstacle to understanding crucial issues related to the war, and he did so while shedding light rather than »
January 19, 2004 — John Hinderaker

More Poll Data

The Washington Post headlines the most recent Post/ABC News data “Domestic Issues Hurt Bush in Poll,” and its spin is mostly negative. But the President’s approval rating of 58%, compared to 39% disapproval, is very healthy. And 51% approve of his handling of the economy, up from 45% in August. Support for the administration’s Iraq policy also remains solid. What is most interesting to me is that President Bush is »
January 19, 2004 — Paul Mirengoff

Back to basics

We frequently link to Victor Davis Hanson when it comes to national security affairs. But Hanson is also the author of Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, and thus is well qualified to opine on President Bush’s recent immigration proposal. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Hanson gives the proposal the thumbs down. He believes that “once the U.S. government commits its good name and legal capital to regulate, rather than end, »
January 19, 2004 — Paul Mirengoff

Dean’s “inevitable” defeat

I just caught a few minutes of Fox News’ coverage of Kerry’s victory in Iowa. David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register, fresh off of assuring us that Dean’s superior organization would likely see him through, is now saying, in effect, that Dean’s defeat was inevitable because Iowa never picks a hard-left candidate. Michael Barone’s take is that Dean’s campaign started to deflate when we captured Saddam. My take is »