MY BUSH PREDICTION FROM MAY 2003

The only thing that can beat Bush in 2004 is a candidate who is more trustworthy. That can only happen if Bush has a moral lapse. They can't co-opt the war issue because most of them have been critical of Bush the whole way. So the pundits can spend the next 18 months talking about the economy, and since the economy is likely to improve, they will be certain Bush won because for reasons which I think are spurious. But if the economy doesn’t improve according to the media, just wait for the looks on their faces when Bush wins anyway.

Click for larger image and check out the punk in the T-Shirt 

E’s BOOK REVIEWS 2004

I generally read in three categories: spirituality, business, and practical helps, with particular books often straddling categories. This year I also read on politics. I rarely read fiction, and when I do, it’s timeless classics like FRANKENSTEIN or DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE with masterful language and themes that probe the human condition. Following are capsule reviews of the books I read in 2004.

THE BIBLE CURE FOR ALLERGIES by Don Colbert and MANAGING YOUR ALLERGIES by David Hazad (3 stars of 5). I developed a full-blown allergy to soy in October 2002. The main takeaway was that if I treat my body well in general through good diet, exercise, and sleep, then my body will react less violently to allergens. What strikes me now, having consumed so many pies and cookies over the past five weeks, is how completely I forget that wise counsel. I stopped taking my daily allergy meds some months ago, feeling that I had the problem under control. Yesterday I had my first allergic reaction in quite some time and had to pop a pill. At about $3 per pill, I think I better revisit diet and exercise. Don Colbert is very supplement-happy and I am generally not a fan of his. I was struck by one nutritionist’s remark that supplements are the ultimate processed food, with all the actual food removed. He made the point that the natural balance of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, etc. in whole foods work in combination to bring health in a way that supplements can never replicate. Which made sense to me.

Self-study of THE BOOK OF JONAH. Dug up some interesting reading on how sperm whales have been sighted in the Mediterranean and how incidences of whales swallowing and then regurgitating live humans have been documented, and ultimately realized that a big fish (or aquatic mammal) is not what the book is about. I shared my testimony at church in February and used Jonah as a backdrop for my own life story.

GOD AND RONALD REAGAN by Paul Kengor (5 stars). Meticulously researched and effectively (if selectively) presented account of Reagan’s spiritual influences and how they shaped his perceptions and actions in office. This book made me appreciate the importance of who is President, made me take a very active interest in politics this year, and has me considering running for local office in the future.

A NATIONAL PARTY NO MORE by Sen. Zell Miller (2 stars). A couple of rousing chapters at the end which make an emotional case for war and explain his affinity with President Bush. Otherwise mostly disenchanted ranting on how corporate and special interests own both parties and especially the Dems. He longs for the days of conservative southern Democrats and proclaims the end of the Democratic Party’s national appeal in anything like its current form. Incidentally, I heard a few weeks ago that Zell Miller starts his new gig as a Fox News political analyst after the holidays.

THINK LIKE JESUS by George Barna (5 stars). An in-depth treatment of WWJD. The Barna Group polls Americans on cultural and moral issues. This book grew out of his findings that few Americans, and few churchgoers, operate from a worldview that reflects an internalization and outworking of core biblical principles. I taught some of this material with a friend to a group of 14 men at church over the summer. Barna is one of those authors (C.S. Lewis, Chuck Colson, and Lee Strobel would be others) who makes the case for Christianity as the thinking man’s religion. See www.barna.org.

GOOD TO GREAT by Jim Collins (5 stars). Superb business book that examines the common elements that caused 11 large public companies to track the market for 15 years and then substantially outperform the market for 15 years. The “hedgehog concept” and “economic denominator” are concepts that any manager can and should apply. Don’t skip the appendices which explain the author’s methodology – there’s gold there.

THE TRUSTED ADVISOR by David Maister (3 stars). I probably gave this book 4 stars on completion, but upon reflection I find that little of it has stuck, so I am downgrading it to 3. Practical advice and lists on how providers of professional services can serve clients in such a way that consultant and client become true partners with mutual trust, admiration, and respect. Maister is required reading among law firm managers and legal consultants. Much of this was intuitive or review.

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS BUSINESS ETHICS by John Maxwell (2 stars). I like Maxwell – in fact, Nancy is teaching his MAKING YOUR MARRIAGE WORK video series in our Sunday school class right now. But this gift-size book didn’t offer anything new. I generally don’t like gift-size books because they can’t treat their subject matter with sufficient depth. But I received it as a gift so I read it. I find these books generally don’t require much and therefore don’t deliver much.

TEACHING TO CHANGE LIVES by Howard Hendricks (5 stars). A classic must-read for teachers. Tremendous.

THE VISION by David Wilkerson (5 stars). Social, political, cultural, weather, and other prophecies, written in 1973. Amazingly accurate and therefore highly disturbing.

THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE (3 stars). Mind-bending content but weak conclusions. I finished this in July and still owe Dude a review, which I took notes for and will eventually post. Worse, I still owe Tom a review of THE TRUE BELIEVER from 2003. No promises there, Tom.

10 STUPID THINGS MEN DO TO MESS UP THEIR LIVES by Dr. Laura Schlessinger (1 star). Fortunately I am not doing any of them. Basic rehash of her radio show. To be fair to the author, Nancy read her PROPER CARE & FEEDING OF HUSBANDS and loved it.

BUSH COUNTRY by John Podhoretz (5 stars). Defends the arguments liberals use to demean President Bush. Logical, coherent, persuasive, and fun. His column in the NY Post is worth following.

UNFOUNDED LOYALTY by Wayne Perryman (1 star). Written by a black clergyman on blacks’ unfounded loyalty to the Democratic party. Rush job. A great book could be written under this premise, but this one wasn’t it.

SLANDER by Ann Coulter (4 stars). Replete with examples of liberal media bias and the irrational attack strategies liberals typically employ. Would be 5 stars except for the author’s pathological obsession with the New York Times. I enjoyed SLANDER and TREASON but Coulter’s shtick does grow a bit tiresome after two books and dozens of weekly columns. I think I’ll pass on HOW TO TALK TO A LIBERAL (IF YOU MUST) although I love the title.

THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES – audiocassette study by Tommy Nelson (5 stars). As a philosopher, Ecclesiastes is my favorite book of the Bible. This 12-volume audio series opens up each of the book’s 12 enigmatic chapters in an easy, personable style. I learned in many cases that wise guy Solomon wasn’t saying what I thought he was saying.

THE BOOK OF JOB – audiocassette study by Jim Richards (3 stars). Offered new insights into what is really going on between God and Satan with respect to Job, but on further study I had to conclude that the standard interpretations of biblical material probably became standard for good reasons.

KOUFAX: A LEFTY’S LEGACY by Jane Leavy (2 stars). Weak New York Times bestseller. Koufax is notoriously reclusive, so the author pieced together his biography from friends, family, teammates, and other published works, so it lacks the self-discovery insights that make a biography interesting, and it also lacks the kind of first-person insights into the game that make for a good baseball book. A friend gave me this book to read, presumably on his recommendation, so when I got halfway through and told him it really wasn’t clicking with me and he said he didn’t really like it either, that kind of chapped me. There were some interesting nuggets, however, like how Koufax saw pitching as a series of levers, an intuitive theory later validated by physicists.

CAN A SMART PERSON BELIEVE IN GOD? by Michael Guillen (3 stars). I know the answer because I am one who does, but this pithy gift-size book probably fails to make the case with its smartest readers – again, due to the inherent limitations of a gift-size book.

Those are just the books I read in full or large part. I also revisit previously read books from time to time as I get reminded of stuff or want a refresher. I mark up books as I read them, which helps the material to stick since I can remember it visually, and so that I can re-read them quickly.

I am currently enrolled in the Master of Arts in Bible program at Lancaster Bible College where I have completed two courses. I had forgotten how time-consuming graduate study is, but I am really enjoying being back in the classroom and studying under intellectual and spiritual giants. My other reading has fallen off since I enrolled in August. For my coursework I have read HANDBOOK OF EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY by Robert Lightner (and written a book critique on same), A SURVEY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (580 pages), most of the Old Testament, and countless articles, book chapters, and course notes. In the spring I will be taking a New Testament survey course and a Biblical Hermeneutics course.

I also consumed a tremendous amount of political analysis this year as mentioned above. I have reclaimed that portion of my life since election day and am glad to have the next couple years off.

And I am leaving out hundreds of children’s books, some of which were extremely impressive.

I am frequently reminded of the old R.I.F. public-service spot where Ed Asner asks the kids, “You’re pretty smart! How’d you get so smart?” and they all shout in reply: “READING!!”

EARTHQUAKE SHAKES OPRAH

A celebrity interior decorator vacationing in Sri Lanka said Monday that all he could see was "utter devastation" in the wake of a deadly tsunami that slammed the island.

"We were completely devastated yesterday morning," Nate Berkus told CNN. "There was absolutely no warning."

Berkus, a regular contributor to "The Oprah Winfrey Show," said he and a friend were sleeping in a beachfront cottage at Arugam Bay on Sri Lanka's eastern coast when he heard a loud noise and the roof was ripped off.

Berkus, 33, said they were swept into the sea along with debris, animals and other people.

The two grabbed a telephone pole, he said, but lost their grips when a second large wave hit. Berkus told CNN that he climbed onto the roof of a home; his friend was missing.

I think it was philosopher Adam Smith that said if you woke up one morning and heard that a million Chinese had died overnight in a tragedy you might feel badly for them but your reaction would be nothing compared to the loss of the tip of your little finger.

The story above about Oprah's interior decorator reflects this pretty well. He's not just another schlub that was inconvenienced, but the guy on our TV that Oprah likes. The media found a way to personalize the storm. Now for many it has happened to a real person. I don't watch Oprah, but if Doyle Brunson or Hideki Matsui had been swept away it would have gotten my attention. We were shortly worried about Tricia's two friends who were vacationing in Vietnam, but the Tsunami seemed to leave that place alone.

You have to know someone to feel the impact because people for as selfless as they aspire or pretend to be are really self-interested. The world works in the manner of Adam Smith's invisible hand. When society is designed with human nature in mind things run much more smoothly. When planners try to design a system that ignores people's self-interest for the glory of the greater whole, they fail.

People aren't little angels. Half of Europe can oppose our fighting the war on terror because 9-11 didn't happen to them. Chirac and Shroeder's self-interest lies in secret oil deals and getting re-elected not, avenging our loss. Likewise, most Americans didn't lose sleep worrying about Asia's disaster. We're a philanthropic country and we'll send money, but it won't change our worldview.

Human actions are linked to human desires. When those desires hurt others in the forms of thefts or killings we punish the perpetrator because it acts as a disincentive. Disincentive is a very powerful tool among the sane, because it conflicts with our self-interest. That’s’ why those who favor rehabilitation instead of punishment for prisoners are the same people who think we can spend the poor out of poverty. But if people weren’t self-interested then why does the CEO of the United Way make $150,000 a year?

When the government denies self-interest it many times hurts it own self-interest. For instance, the disincentive of taxation keeps people from engaging in certain behavior that grows the economy. The government benefits from a growing economy, but the government’s desire to centrally plan more of our lives hurts their ability to collect the money to pay for it.

There is an interesting quirk in central planning. Central planners trumpet their important work, but usually hide or ignore the unintended results of their decisions. Though it would be good for the system as a whole to hear the central planner tell of the trade-offs, it’s in central planner’s self-interest to present their plan as a marvel and nothing less. Therefore, even by their own actions, Central Planners usually prove the self-interest is a more effective tool than central planning.

And the electric chair is a more effective disincentive to murder than college credit made easy.

MOVIE ROUNDUP

Here are some films I’ve seen recently:

+MAN ON A TRAIN (2002) Stylish French film with robber Johnny Halladay meeting and staying with college professor Jean Rochefort. Rochefort is fascinated by this rogue and through invstigations learns of his plans to rob a local bank. Both men come to envy the life of the other. The robber wishes he had a normal life and the professor wishes he had a more exciting one. The dual climax is Halladay risking his life to rob a bank as Rochfort risks his life in surgery.

BIRTHDAY GIRL (2002) is like a lot of films that begin with stylish promise become conventional at the first plot point and resolve in ways that are inconsistent with the movie in order to deliver a happy ending.

TAKING LIVES (2004) I saw it on the strength of an interesting trailer (I know, bad idea) and the fact that Ethan Hawke picks his projects more carefully than his contemporaries. Adhere’s to the Agatha Christie rule of mysteries – No matter how baffled the heroes are by the identity of the culprit, the person has already been introduced to the audience. Movies like SE7EV that ignore the device are usually better than the ones that don’t, therefore this movie is more of an academic exercise in deduction than unique entertainment.

+THE SLASHER (2004) Washed up director John Landis (Blues Brothers, Trading Places) moves to documentaries with this look at the car dealership industry. The Slasher is Michael Bennett the man car dealerships hire to fly in and move their dusty inventory. Bennett is the kind of guy that drinks beer for breakfast and gives speeches on how he doesn’t believe in high-pressure sales (Ya Ya). He and his team land in Memphis and help a local dealer in a depressed part of town with their troubles. Often funny and quite illuminating on how the car industry really works from a sales standpoint.

+MAYOR OF SUNSET STRIP (2004) Documentary by George Hickenlooper (Hearts of Darkness) about Rodney Bingenheimer a diminutive guy who was Davy Jones’ stand-in for the Monkees TV Show, owner of the first Hollywood Disco, discoverer of David Bowie, and currently an obscure figure by the general public that works as an LA DJ two hours a week from 12-2am on Sundays Nights. It’s both sad and funny.

RIVERS AND TIDES (2003) Documentary of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist who does his work almost exclusively in the outdoors. Though we meet his family briefly, we learn little of his life. The footage is of the man in action trying to create his vision before nature destroys it. I found portions of his work beautiful and other parts uninspired and pointless. The movie sways back and forth from dull to interesting depending on the current project.

+ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004) (See Dude’s exhaustive review of this film and Charlie Kauffman) Eternal Sunshine is well-written, but directed in that Terry Gilliam style of mayhem that’s hard to sustain through an entire film. Jim Carrey continues to prove he’s a decent dramatic actor, Kate Winslet puts in another plus performance, and the supporting cast of Wilkenson, Wood and Dunst are also good. Once you buy into the science fiction premise, the characters’ actions seem pretty consistent with human behavior in that memory may be erased but attraction puts people back together. It’s unique, thoughtful and though provoking. I enjoyed it, but don’t imagine that I’d ever see it again.

+GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS (2003) James Cameron returns to the Titanic for real with submarine gadgets for filming and Bill Paxton to provide commentary. Cameron spent a ton to build mini-submarines and they often fail. The stuff they discover is educational though and we get to see what many of the intact artifacts looked like when the ship was launched. The film is mostly of interest to those who enjoy the history of the Titanic.

EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS (2003) Documentary of 70s films and filmmakers based on the Peter Biskind book I read recently. It explores a few areas not touched upon in the book, but it excludes some of the most damning items. It’s a good way to absorb that film history. A strong filmmaking effort though it seems to borrow a little from THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE. I probably would have liked it better had I not read the book.

George Washington (2000) David Gordon Green’s slice of life debut reminds me of a John Cassavettes film without all the shouting. Rather than a story arch per say, Green takes the characters through a bunch of random episodes to see them react to surprising challenges. The actors all seem like naturals living in real houses and eating real food. Add a narrator and you’d think documentary if you caught it flipping around. Still, if you’re waiting around for a point you’ll have to dig way between the lines. Otherwise you might get the idea that this film is about the randomness of human life and little more.

+All the Real Girls (2003) I saw David Gordon Green’s second film first and like it better. Paul Schneider who had a small part in the first film plays a small town playboy in this one. When the pure little sister (Zooey Deschanel ) of his best friend returns after years in boarding school they soon start an honorable flirtation that ruins his friendship with the brother. In the conventional indie classic TAO OF STEVE, the hero meets his match and falls for the girl. Green doesn’t make it so easy for his characters. Just when things are heading the conventional way here something unexpected happens and our hero has to struggle with himself. All in all it's a better use of Gordon's knack for realism than GW.

+SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER (1960) Francois Truffaut film about one-time big shot concert pianist that’s reduced to playing in a saloon. If that’s not bad enough his criminal brother drags him into the middle of his own drama. Our hero is tasked with fleeing the bad guys and reliving the experience that cost him his career as a virtuoso. Traffault’s influence from American film noir is evident and I liked it better than THE 400 BLOWS that gets so much ink.

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS IN IRAN

Iranians complained about Unidentified Flying Objects at very low altitudes around its nuclear installations all around the country. United States has excellent satellite imagery and hence do not need low altitude spy planes to monitor the activities as the Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers as they assemble their nukes.

Sources in Iran say, the Iranian Air Force have admitted these sighting and assuming these are US spy crafts, directed Iranian Air Force to shoot them down at sight.

Sources also reveal that Iranian Air Force have failed shoot down even a single UFO and many in Iranian Air Force are complaining about lack of technical ability in shooting these UFOs down.

Psychological warfare by the U.S. or E.T?

MEGALON LOCATED

Monster cockroach and other species found in remote Borneo. U.S.-funded environmentalists rush to protect previously unknown and almost certainly unwanted species.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - A team of international scientists have found new fish and insect species, including a monster cockroach, living in caves in Indonesia's remote East Kalimantan province, the group announced Wednesday.

Led by the U.S.-based organization The Nature Conservancy, the team said the area where the new species were discovered was threatened by environmental degradation, and called for the government to protect it immediately.

"In just five weeks, the expedition team discovered numerous new species previously unknown to science. Who knows what else is out there?" said Scott Stanley, the conservancy's program manager for East Kalimantan, on the Indonesian side of Borneo Island.

"If something is not done soon to protect these areas, dozens of species could disappear before anyone knew they ever existed."

And who would care? Had you not accidentally found them, who would miss them?

NEO-FLIGHT

Are two neoconservative houses, both alike in dignity, feuding over the fate of Secretary Rumsfeld?

The conflict in question has been fought not with swords, as in Shakespeare, but with columns in the newspapers.

In the Washington Post on December 15, William Kristol, editor and founder of the Weekly Standard, raised eyebrows when he wrote that American troops "deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have."

In the New York Post on Tuesday, under the headline "Beltway Blunder: Why 'fire Rummy' crew failed," the columnist John Podhoretz responded with a spirited defense of Mr. Rumsfeld, which criticized "in-the-know" journalists who "say things in op-eds" and others who seek the defense secretary's ouster.

For some reason Bill Kristol loves John McCain despite the fact that he's not even a conservative anymore. McCain wants Rummy gone and now so does Bill. Should we next see Kristol columns defending McCain federal steriod search and boxing commission?

CULTURAL LITERACY

I was reading the Dynamist last week and she was talking about a game in which academics ask one another what book they are most ashamed of not having read.

Here's a game for the visual generation. What movies are you ashamed of not having seen? Netflix has given me a few years to catch up on Bergman and Kurosawa, but I still have gaps. Here are a few that I should have seen by now.

BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) - The first big event movie.

JAZZ SINGER (1927) - The first talkie may not be a great movie but it's such a part of film history that I am remiss.

Wuthering Heights (1939) - Olivier and the year of the movie. I read they tinkered with the book for a happy ending, but it's still classic Wyler.

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) - I know I will love this, but the stars are against me. I have seen the first 15 minutes on TMC and have gotten interrupted 3 different times in the last 15 years. I once had it on VHS but it was a victim of the move. Not on DVD. The wait continues.

Bicycle Thieves (1949)- The postwar Italian Neo-realism exemplified here and I've made time for Cinema Paradiso and not this.

An American in Paris (1951) - Best picture and considered a classic by everyone. I don't watch a lot of musicals and I have never made the time for this one.

A Man for All Seasons (1966) - The excellent actor, Paul Scofield won as Oscar. Orson plays Cardinal Woolsey. Dude and I were in a stage play with roughly the same story, but I haven't seen this.

Barry Lyndon (1975) - I understand it to be as slow as it is long (3 Hours) but brother John said that he liked it quite a bit. I've seen all the Kubrick's save this and the Shining (1979).

Brazil (1985) - I'm not a big fan of Gilliam. I find his stuff too stylish and nuts. 12 Monkeys was alright at the time, but I don't even remember it. The Fisher King didn't do much for me either. Brazil is supposed to be his masterpiece, so I will eventually get to it.

Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-3)- Okay, I went to the first film and fell asleep three times. I remember a preponderance of monsters would attack our heroes and they'd fight them off only to be attacked all over again with a new set of worse monsters fifteen minutes later. There was very little bloodshed from our heroes, but just enough to make you think the fighting was tough like on the A-Team. I'm told that the Director's cuts are better and the series improves with each movie and yet I'm going to have to be in the right mood to see these things. Once every few years the critics and moviegoers agree on a movie and I still hate it, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Maybe I'll like the Lord of the Rings better the second time around.

I'm sure there are others I'm ashamed of having not seen. What are yours?

BUSH: LITTLE TALK, MUCH ACTION

I have generally sided with the critics who say Bush does not focus nearly enough on making his case, on currying public opinion, on conspicuous speechmaking. But it's also fair to say that he simply says what he's going to do, then immediately sets about doing it. And that is not a bad legacy to leave. In the final analysis, he will be characterized as a president who moved in bold strokes with little concern for how it would play with his critics. There is a lesson for all of us in there.

The mainstream media are carping and whining that the president’s recent economic conference in Washington was comprised of supporters rather than dissenters — as though this is some great surprise. The president, they said, was just preaching to the choir. They called the meeting an exercise in political propaganda that was just paying off big campaign donors. As usual, big media missed the big story: In a master stroke of message communication the president spoke directly to the nation in certain terms about his visionary economic plans for the next four years.

Over two days last week, George W. Bush gave three full-fledged statements on his economic intentions. Reading through his comments one is struck by the clarity of his message. Each of his key points is pro-growth, incentive-based, and investor- and owner-oriented. His economic message favors entrepreneurs, importuning for more saving and capital formation as well as a healthy dose of deregulation.

In short, Bush is prescribing market-oriented measures that will spur prosperity and wealth creation. He’s clearly rejecting government planning and entitlement. This is another dose of cowboy capitalism from the president. It is Schumpeterian capitalism. Entrepreneurial capitalism. Ownership capitalism.

One of the best barometers of the health of the political economy and the future outlook for business and economic growth is the U.S. stock market. Since the election, stock indexes have gained 6 percent. Since Bush took the lead in his reelection bid way back in August, the averages are up more than 12 percent.

Question: What does the stock market know that the mainstream media do not? Answer: almost everything.

Due out from Disney/Geragos (c)2004 All rights reserved.

THAT ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

It takes a special kind of man to represent guilty persons in a court of law. It takes an even more special kind of man to try to cash in from public donations less than a week after losing your high-profile case and having your client sentenced to death row. Not to mention milking your client's family of their life savings. But like Geragos always says (or should), you gotta make hay while the sun is shining.

Los Angeles defense lawyer Mark Geragos has set up a Web site seeking financial assistance in the continued search for the real killer.

"We believe Scott Peterson has been unjustly convicted. This site will continue to monitor the happenings in this case until justice is finally served," the site reads. "With your support, you can help us continue to investigate the murders of Laci and Conner Peterson so that we can free the man we know is innocent."

The site encourages donors to send money to "The Peterson Investigation Fund," care of Geragos' office.

DARWIN AWARD WINNER

Dude's vocabulary usage requirement has slowed traffic at this site. In my despair I remembered the Darwin Awards, which recognize individuals' contributions to the gene pool by removing themselves from it through acts of grand stupidity. In the following (edited) example, this fellow qualified as both ignoranus and protected by thick bozone.

(17 February 2003, New York) A 25-year-old man who had often annoyed neighbors by snowmobiling at high speeds through their quiet streets at night, died Friday when he drove headfirst into a tree.

Brian "The Brain" Sabinsky was driving an unregistered, uninsured snowmobile without a helmet while drunk. Mr. Sabinsky was a member of the same fire company dispatched to peel him off the tree.

With the fire company, Sabinsky responded to gruesome snowmobile accidents every year and preached snowmobile safetey to local residents. An illuminated "helmet safety" notice had been posted 700 feet from his home.

BOOKNOTES NO MORE

Booknotes began in 1989 but I didn't watch it religiously until 1992 when I had an all-night editing job on Sundays. I would alter editing and dubbing and the dubs would each take 60 minutes so I had a lot of free time. I don't know what it was about the show that captured my imagination, two guys sitting in a black studio discussing a single book. I think it intrigued me how knowledgeable each guest was about some obscure piece of history or contentious issue. It became my favorite show, the one in which TiVo gets the most miles, and it will be missed.

Luckily the transcipts are available online and the repeats will still air on C-SPAN 2. There were some great exchanges by great minds. Milton Friedman on the Lessons not learned from the fall of the Berlin Wall:

FRIEDMAN: Everybody agrees, as a result of the experience in the West, that socialism has been a failure. Everybody agrees that capitalism has been a success, that wherever you have had an improvement in the conditions of the ordinary people over any lengthy time, it's been in a capitalist society, and yet everybody is extending socialism. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were no summits in Washington about how we cut down government. The lesson from the fall of the Berlin Wall was that we have too extensive a government and we ought to cut it down. Everybody agrees, but yet wherever you go, we have to extend socialism. The summit in Washington was about how you enable government to get more revenue in order for government to be more important, which is exactly the opposite. So socialism guides our behavior in strict contrast to what we believe to be the facts of the world.

Friedman was on to discuss his introduction to the 50th Anniverary edition of Friedrich Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM. Hayek is such an important figure in free market economics that host Brian Lamb has asked several authors through the years about his influence. Lamb's last guest was a liberal college professor, Mark Edmunson, who wrote a book called "Why Read?" Lamb showed a clip of Friedman talking about Hayek and then this exchange:

LAMB: He`s talking about "Road to Serfdom" - Hayek - a bible for people on the conservative political side.

EDMUNDSON: I`m glad to know about it. Until this moment, I`ve heard nothing about it. But I will write it down and give it a look.

LAMB: So, you`ve never read "Road to Serfdom."

EDMUNDSON: Never. Nor heard of it, until this moment.

LAMB: Mark Edmundson, we`re out of time. Thank you for joining us.

Funny that I once mentioned this book to a liberal friend of mine when we were discussing economics and he had the same reaction. It came up because he said that there had never been an adequat intellectual argument for supply-side (he called it trickle down). You just don't get Hazlitt, von Mises, Hayek, Sowell, Friedman, or Rothbard on the college campus, I suppose.

Anyway, I'll miss the show and enjoy the repeats.

It's a Wonderful Life In 30 Seconds - Re-Enacted by Bunnies

KAUS ON KERIK AND THE NY TIMES NEW STANDARD

Has Hillary committed any "intimate transgressions"? We'll soon find out! Hasn't Bernard Kerik performed a huge service for journalism (and the Republican party)? Because of his sacrifice, we now have a dramatically lowered standard for when the New York Times will report the intimate details of public figures' private lives. Kerik was having "clandestine love affairs" in a Battery Park City apartment he apparently paid for. The Times first reported these "intimate transgressions"--and named one of Kerik's partners, Titian-tressed titan Judith Regan--even after Kerik had withdrawn from consideration as Homeland Security secretary citing an illegal-nanny problem. ... Somwhere, Jeffrey Toobin is turning over in his grave. Toobin argued absurdly that a politician's sex life is off limits to journalists' because it "tells you absolutely nothing about their performance in office". But Kerik wasn't even going to perform in office! He was out. ... The Times, a principled organization, will presumably apply the Kerik precedent in years to come when Democratic figures are involved. I especially look forward to the paper's multiple-reporter investigation of Hillary Clinton's erotic life when she runs for Senate in 2006. All of her housekeepers need to be produced, of course, and if she has any lovers other than her faithful husband we'll find that out too! ... P.S.: Plus, following the Kerik precedent, it will be enough if "someone who spoke to" Hillary about any relationship can vouch for it. Hearsay evidence about sex is good enough for the Times!

MOVEON.ALEXANDER

From Bruce Thornton's review:

Instead, Stone gives us the visionary Alexander, the great idealist who pursues his vision until he burns out, and whose excesses are the lamentable byproducts of such noble ambition. And here's the most illuminating point about this forgettable movie: once more we see the left's romantic admiration of any mass-murderer who cloaks his slaughter in idealism. Wasn't it Lenin who said you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs? The "omelet" of Communist idealism took, as we now know, 100 million dead human beings, and ended up inedible anyway. But that hasn't stopped the left from continuing to excuse murder on the grounds of "idealism," provided it comes from the left (after all, Nazis were idealists too). Thus Stalin, Ho Chi Min, Mao and Castro continue to be more popular on college campuses than Ronald Reagan, and ex-terrorists like Bill Ayres and Bernadette Dohrn are professors at taxpayer-funded universities.

Once more we see the bankruptcy of the left, the hollowness of its populist rhetoric and democratic idealism. Behind all that lofty rhetoric is the old lust for power and domination, contempt for the average person, and a burning confidence in the superiority of its ideas no matter how bloody their application or how often they are discarded in the trashcan of history. Stone's Alexander may not tell us much about the Macedonian killer, but it reveals a lot about the pathology of the left.

BREAKING NEWS: RICKY WILLIAMS SMOKED POT

The Dolphins are 2-11 this season. Williams, 27, stunned his team by retiring shortly before Miami opened training camp in July.

"I didn't know ahead of time or I would have given them a clue," he said.

Williams said a third failed drug test made him retire because he was "scared to death" that people would find out he smoked marijuana.

"The thing I had the most trouble with was that after you fail your third test, then it becomes public knowledge," said Williams in the interview, parts of which will also be shown on CBS' Sunday pregame show "The NFL Today." "That's one thing I couldn't deal with at the time -- people knowing that I smoke marijuana. That was my biggest fear in my whole entire life."

The Dolphins filed a lawsuit in federal court against the running back, seeking the $8.6 million an arbitrator ruled he owes the team for breaching his contract. Williams is fighting the decision.

He gave up the $5 million he would have earned this season, which would have been his sixth in the NFL. He is now enrolled in a 17-month course at the California College of Ayurveda in Grass Valley, Calif., studying holistic medicine.

"To a lot of people, I look very foolish in what I am doing and I understand that," Williams said. "(It doesn't bother me) because the only thing that matters is how I feel, and if I let what they feel affect me, then it changes how I feel."

Yo Ricky, is there anyone who did NOT know you were smoking marijuana?

The only thing that matters is how he feels, right now, at this moment. Which is why he has been smoking pot every day since ever. And why he bailed on his teammates without thinking it through. And why he decided he'd play again, then not. The deplorable conditions of his luxury apartment in New Orleans during his time with the Saints were legendary. He didn't feel like cleaning up the pizza boxes and chicken bones. Some day he may feel like another $20m would have done him more good than another bag of weed, and what will he do that day to feel better? Correct: more weed.

He has a textbook substance abuse problem. Staying in the NFL meant "outing" and mandatory enrollment in a substance abuse program. That is why he quit, suddenly and illogically, but it made perfect sense in the parallel universe of the addict. He needs help and is determined not to get it.

THE SEEDS OF CLINTON

A federal grand-jury investigation of pardoned financier Marc Rich's role in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal has focused on whether he helped Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein reward the families of Palestinian bombers who carried out suicide attacks in Israel, sources said yesterday.

Law-enforcement authorities and congressional investigators said the grand jury wants to know whether cash funneled to Saddam by oil traders — including Mr. Rich — to help arrange multimillion-dollar Iraqi oil deals for political leaders and well-heeled investors was used by the now-deposed dictator to pay the bombers' families.

"Can we legitimately speculate that some of the blood money Saddam paid to kill people in Israel may have originated or at least been touched by Marc Rich through the United Nations' dreadful oil-for-food program?" said a source close to the probe. "We know Saddam Hussein was getting a rake off from the U.N. program and Rich was in the middle of that."

The grand-jury probe centers on questions of whether Mr. Rich, pardoned by President Clinton on his last day in office in a pending $48 million income-tax-evasion case, brokered millions of dollars in deals between Saddam and other traders as part of the oil-for-food scandal, the sources said.

Did the same pool of money that killed Israelis also place bricks at the Clinton library?

EJECT THE HALLS

John Ellis suggests that

if someone went out and organized a "Recall Them All" campaign on the Internet — urging people to vote out of office every single incumbent, at every level of government — that that someone could raise about a billion dollars. And have a significant impact on the nation's politics.

If this were to happen -- all the incumbents got tossed -- how long would it take for the system to get back to the equilibrium it has now? Isn't big money always going to control government, or am I missing something?