Rudy v Fred v McCain v Mitt - the issue

John Hawkins emphasizes national polls. Mick emphasizes early primaries. Powerline hops about. Hugh Hewitt's in love.

Comment is free, but facts are sacred:

to find a clearly bald candidate beating a rival who was not so afflicted, you have to go back to the 1880 election, when James Abram Garfield beat the retired Civil War general Winfield Scott Hancock by fewer than 10,000 votes.

Columbia U is right, Bush is wrong

I have no problem with a New York college giving a platform to a fascist like A'jad or Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot. Sure the academics' motives are treacherous, but I credit the American crowd with the wisdom to see diabolism for what it is - laughable.

I have a problem with the US government allowing free movement in NYC to a murderer of US troops.

A'jad is right

This from the Iranian news agency:

International rules require the United States, as the host to the UN headquarters, to issue visa for other countries' envoys to the United Nations and to refrain from disrupting the operations of the world body.

Due to similar incidents in the past, Iran has called on the UN member states to change the UN headquarters from New York to Geneva or a more convenient and impartial place.

Actually move the UN to Tehran. Ok it might inconvenience the next Australian PM when he wants to get sloshed in a strip club while on an official visit to the UN, but what's that compared to the sheer appositeness of the world's foremost forum for hypocrisy and anti-Americanism re-locating to Iran.

A slasher

Sweeney Todd is a great role for Johnny Depp in the forthcoming movie of Sondheim's classic, but I don't think he's interesting enough to pull it off. The overall cast looks good with Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford and Borat as Aldolfo Pirelli, 'the king of barbers and barber of kings'. The greatest weight should fall on Helena Bonham Carter who plays Mrs Lovett, purveyor of meat-pies. Isn't she a Johnny Depp lookalike?

I saw Sweeney in London 26 years ago, but was mesmerized by the recent lean, mean revival in London in which the cast of 9 played the instruments and replaced the orchestra. It was so thrilling that I saw it again when it transferred to New York. To die for.

Idiot, yes. Useful, no.

This just in: you can't trust Syria, you can't trust Iran, you can't trust N.Korea. It appears that the Israelis just destroyed Syrian materials for nuclear warheads stored 50 miles from the Iraqi border.

Andrew Semmel, a senior US State Department official, said Syria might have obtained nuclear equipment from “secret suppliers”, and added that there were a “number of foreign technicians” in the country.

Asked if they could be North Korean, he replied: “There are North Korean people there. There’s no question about that.” He said a network run by AQ Khan, the disgraced creator of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, could be involved.

But why would nuclear material be in Syria? Known to have chemical weapons, was it seeking to bolster its arsenal with something even more deadly?

Alternatively, could it be hiding equipment for North Korea, enabling Kim Jong-il to pretend to be giving up his nuclear programme in exchange for economic aid? Or was the material bound for Iran, as some authorities in America suggest?

Also

As a bonus, the Israelis proved they could penetrate the Syrian air defence system, which is stronger than the one protecting Iranian nuclear sites.

A pox on Nancy Pelosi. A pox on James Baker.

Advice to a Prince

I'm pro-Prince. 'Pink Cashmere' will play at my funeral. Last night a Polish Princess took me to a Prince concert at the Dome in London. I'll skip the superlatives and give the boy some tips:

* Look, a lot of the concert was over-orchestrated. Can a wall of sound swamp out detail? If so, it did that.
* You can play guitar. Did you know? Just stand there and pump that thing.
* The light show is past passé...no impact. Minimalism rocks.
* Boudoir colour schemes evoke, well, nothing much. They're not even suggestive as kitsch.
* Your live act subtracts melody, adds rhythm. then plays with the rhythms virtuosoifically. I want to damn well hear it.

You may not know it, but you have a real talent hidden there. Lose the layers.

Slimy yet satisfying

The "General Betray Us" ad in the New York Times brings all this War on Terror stuff into perspective. Could any conservative invent a more satisfying branding iron for the Democrats? Alright the liberal congress only called Petraeus a liar not a traitor, but I think the job's done. Thankyou, God.

As for the Times, see Thomas Lifson:

Even Pinch Sulzberger must, by this time, understand that the newspaper industry is dying. But a canny strategist could, as Rupert Murdoch is doing, leverage assets like a famous name and a national distribution platform into a multi-media platform that could thrive in the new technological environment of news. Despite the ineptness of the company's diversification strategy, the venerable brand name and worldwide reputation of the paper, a legacy he inherited from his ancestors, remains the company's most valuable asset. But this sort of cheapening of the company's standing, publishing scandalously scurrilous ads and devoting its diminishing supply of space to redundant stories with attitude, is undermining the remaining value of that brand.

Unless members of the Sulzberger/Ochs family decide to protect their patrimony by removing their incompetent cousin, something of a Greek tragedy will play itself out at the company, and it will be devoured by Pinch's lethal combination of hubris, youthful political obsessions, and lack of business acumen.

Potty talk

Vigourous vernacular vocabulary flows east to west across the Atlantic these days. My ambition in life is to replace 'restroom' with 'bog' in American speech. "Republican senator pleas insanity after after pleading guilty to footsy with with cop in bog" has a certain je ne sais quoi. This thought was prompted by a professor of politics here.

Oil slick

The chart shows the Crude Oil price over the last 6 years. I sold short at $74 on Friday on the basis of the big formation double-top and the recent 50% retracement from $69 to $74 after the drop from $79. Over a 3 day weekend there's more potential for a price gap in either direction, so I'm happy with a guaranteed stop-loss equivalent to an out of the money call. The crux is the cost of that call..heh,heh,heh.

Putting the grim in pilgrim

I recently spent a few days on the Way of St James, walking the stretch across the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles in Spain, the site of Roland's mythical last stand against the Moslems in 778 AD. I joined a soccer friend, Seth, and his friend, Greg, on their pilgrimage from London to Santiago de Compostella, site of the supposed remains of the apostle James, a fisherman who became a fisher of men.

The first day was a washout, more like snorkelling than walking, then the sun came out, the foothills of the Pyrenees cast their spell and we strode on. As pilgrims, 'pelerins', we received kindnesses along the way. Until we reached St Jean Pied de Port, where several routes converge before the push across the Pyrenees, our route from the north seemed hardly used by pilgrims and we were a little special. You can identify pilgrims by the scallop shell swinging from their sack or their broad-brimmed hats.

Greg is a damned liberal and I'm a damned conservative. He's just gained a first class degree in 'Developement Studies' and plans to take a Master's in 'Peace Studies' at SOAS, the infamous School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He's recently been in Palestine, mewling and puking over the oppressed Palestinians, and cares little for history prior to the start of 'de-colonization'. Any normal person would ostracize him or pelt him with rotten eggs. I relished the mental fight and the klicks (kilometers) flashed by unnoticed as we cudgelled each other with words up hill and down dale. I won all the arguments (you know the stuff: Hummers are greener than Hybrids; everyone should pay the same tax; no tax, no vote; the Palestinians are lucky to have the Israelis as enemies; American soldiers are heroes), but I rubbed it in by grinding his liberal arse to dust at chess. Greg, you've been mugged by a neocon and one day you'll be mugged by reality, but you're a good sport and I relished being baited back.

I'm invited to re-join them towards the end of the pilgrimage and I might, especially if they want to go the extra 90km to Cape Finisterre

Land's End/End of the World. This mythical promontory symbolizes for many pilgrims the end of the terrestrial way and the beginning of a spiritual renewal. It is the tradition of pilgrims who continue to cap Finisterre to burn their clothes and sandals as a sign of this renewal.

Sondheim teaches pronunciation

Note Sondheim's wince at the first slurring of 't's, but also his beautiful teaching style, his absorption with the potential of the lyric in its setting, his happiness at his pupil's success, his succinctness, his persistence to defeat the 2nd rate.

I'd also have asked the singer to improve 'careah' to 'career'. It's not at all that there's a proper way to speak or sing....there's an expressive way, an accurate way, a suggestive way... and before that happy state there is basic state of respect for words to be mastered and then riffed around. Mere slurring doesn't cut it.