It's hard to make this up.  Longtime character actor, Dennis Farina, was arrested at LAX Sunday after packing heat in his suitcase.  In case you don't remember who Dennis Farina is, here's a little bit of his work from the 2000 motion picture, Snatch.



My guess is this won't be the last time you hear this joke.

UPDATE: Is Glenn Reynolds a machine?

Off on travel until Monday.  But...

Here's the transcript of Michelle Obama's speech from May 2, 2008 which I discussed on last night's Hannity & Colmes. 

Here's the audio.

Senator Obama is running as a biography/character candidate, not as a candidate of accomplishment because he has accomplished little except obtaining office.  As a biography/character candidate the four corners of that biography that illuminate Obama's character --Michelle Obama, Pastor Jeremiah Wright, the unrepentant terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and  Obama's mentor, financier, friend and neighbor Tony Rezko-- are all extremely relevant to the debates of the next six months, and we need to know much more about each corner of the square within which Obama has moved.

Last night Alan Colmes warned me that attacks on Michelle Obama will backfire.  I agree. But analysis of the campaign speeches she gives in support of her husband's candidacy and delivered, we have to assume, in order to convey her husband's platform and plans to potential supporters, are not only relevant to the campaign, but central to them given how indifferent to specifics Senator Obama has been from day one. 

Stanley Kurtz has written a crucial piece in the Weekly Standard on "The Trumpet," Jeremiah Wright's magazine, which had to have passed though Obama's hands for two decades.  Don't miss it. (And which MSM outlet will be the first to get the copy of The Trumpet with Obama's picture on the cover?  Won't that story/interview be interesting? Note that the magazine's publisher wouldn't release it to Kurtz.)

Speaking of a future biography/character candidate --one with real accomplishments-- the transcript of my interview yesterday with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will be posted here.  Here's the audio. 

Be sure to read Randy Elrod's response to the latest Evangelical Manifesto and comment on both.

Michael Barone has a column out on Douglas Feith's War and Decision in which Barone makes the important point that we are just now beginning to understand the decisions that followed 9/11 and led to the successes and the setbacks since, and that Feith's book is an important insider account of those years.

I will be visiting the Hoover Institution as a Media Fellow next week, and am watching Peter Robinson's magnificent interview with Thomas Wolfe as prep.  I will dragoon Peter to co-host as much of the show as he can be persuaded to do next week.  Howard Mortman and Victor Davis Hanson will also be about, so a fine week of broadcasts ahead.

It will be the week of decision on the polar bear listing, one of those controversies of which the MSM is barely aware but which has far reaching consequences for American industry and economic growth.  Like the civil war raging in Lebanon (Michael Totten has the best coverage of course) or the heparin not-quite-effective-recall or the Rezko trial, the MSM doesn't understand the many moving parts of a complicated story like the push to list the polar bear as threatened, and is staffed by folks of truncated curiosity which combines with contempt for their audience to produce hours and hours of nonsense.  FNC works to bring panels of smart people of differing opinions together to discuss complicated subjects for decent stretches of time, as does CNN occasionally, but generally it is a wasteland on cable and worse on the big 3.  Talk radio and C-SPAN are pretty much alone in allowing someone like Jindal to appear and discuss many subjects for a half hour or more, which is why radio is the most powerful form of serious media left. (C-SPAN doesn't make much of an effort to add pacing, but it is still valuable beyond belief, as when it airs the full Michelle Obama speech.)

How can the world's most advanced economy blessed with an explosion of technology produce such genuinely mediocre broadcast news day after day?

Why doesn't Peter Robinson's interview with Tom Wolfe air on some channel?  Why isn't there a fast-paced but comprehensive program covering the polar bear debate, or featuring Totten or Michael Yon explaining what they saw going on in Lebanon or Iraq?

The answer of course is that broadcast execs don't believe such programming is possible or that it would bring them ratings (and that PBS is so institutionally left-wing as to have no clue about building an audience of other than Bill Moyers groupies.)

Oh, and here's the first online anti-Obama superstore.

 

This is incredible:

The Food and Drug Administration stepped up its heparin alerts to hundreds of hospitals, medical societies and pharmaceutical organizations on Friday after learning that some medical facilities still had the contaminated blood thinner among their supplies....

"Please help FDA spread the word about recalls of injectable heparin products and heparin flush solutions that may be contaminated with oversulfated chondroitin sulfate (OSCS). Affected heparin products have been found in medical care facilities in [California] since the recall announcement," the notice read. "Although product recall instructions were widely distributed, they may not have been fully acted upon at all sites where heparin is used," it said.

A spokeswoman for the FDA said that California authorities had sent a letter out on May 2 about gaps in the recall response.

"They checked and found more than a handful of hospitals had not removed all contaminated heparin," said Karen Riley of the FDA. "We found it on crash carts, catheter labs, and even on one hospital pharmacist's shelf," she added. The additional alert should spur hospital surgery, cardiac and dialysis centers, which use a lot of heparin, to recheck for any contaminated heparin lots."

When yet another "Evangelical Manifesto" appeared this week, I noted the absurdity of even attempting to speak for "evangelicals" given the collapse of hierarchies brought about by new media.  I then asked Randy Elrod for a comment on the situation the church finds itself in as the new technologies empower literally hundreds of thousands of individual Christians to follow their calling in dramatically independent ways.  Randy has spent more time mentoring talented young worship leaders and artists than anyone I know, and I frequently read his remarkable blog Ethos as well as the very long list of blogs he has helped launched.  Here's Randy's response:

The Death Of The Alpha Leader

By Randy Elrod

We now live in an automagical world.  A world that is composed of not one future, but multiple futures. A world of self-chosen communities or tribes that are nodes in large, complex networks of such groups. A world in which hierarchal pyramids of control are crumbling and the Taylorism world of precise affluence has become a Web 2.0 world of mystical influence and social networks.

Viral loops, not manifestos, provide the opportunity for unparalleled influence. This is a world in which documents handed down by well-meaning alpha males result in a stifled yawn. However, this same world moves to the edge of their seat upon realizing that the responsibility to change the world need not be their legacy or burden. On the contrary, the creation of culture is the calling from which history speaks.

For example, Compassion International recently asked me to help form a group of influential bloggers for a historic trip to Uganda. A trip in which we visited slums, HIV/Aids hospitals and projects each morning. We then blogged, created video, and recounted stories raw with reality and emotion each afternoon. Thousands of people around the world followed our eight day journey real-time and over 400 children were sponsored and rescued from poverty. The viral loop that was created spawned hundreds of additional posts and offered the opportunity for thousands of additional people to experience the trip in an automagical way.

This “automagic” tested the corporate structure of Compassion. The trip was completely out of their control. The blog posts were not softened or censored and the videos and art spawned were not pre-approved by the marketing department. The servant leaders of this large organization flexed and collaborated to create culture.

Servant leaders have the ability to provide a new type of leadership. A collaborative mentoring and releasing of people with varied and mystical gifts in order to create culture. Alpha leaders value control, servant leaders value collaboration. Alpha leaders value individualism, servant leaders value community. Alpha leaders value affluence, servant leaders value influence.

Today, it is through viral loops that movements really snowball. In their latest issue, Fast Company says, “A destination such as Facebook grows via invitations, with each "friend" reaching out to her own set of contacts, which in turn do the same. More than half of the undergraduate population at Harvard joined within a month of Facebook's 2004 launch; four years later, it has 67 million active users. And at its current 3% weekly expansion rate, it will have 200 million users by the end of the year, equal to the population of the fifth-largest nation on earth.”

This is not yesterday. It is today. Millions of cultural creatives offer a more hopeful future(s) and are converging for profound change. This convergence is a quiet revolution without manifestos or alpha leaders. This story is one that begs ten thousand tellers and then ten times more to be inspired by it.

From AP:

Shiite Hezbollah gunmen seized nearly all of the Lebanese capital's Muslim sector from Sunni foes loyal to the U.S.-backed government on Friday in the country's worst sectarian clashes since the 15-year civil war.

I was wondering how AP was going to make this the fault of George Bush.

The crisis in Lebanon is arriving just as the Ohlmert government in Jerusalem stumbles into a deeper paralysis.

Nothing yet from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on the court-mandated decision on whether or not the polar bear is a "threatened species."

The deadline is May 15. 

Background column number 1 is here.

Background column number 2 is here.

"The delayed decision announcement by the USFWS has prompted outrage by the public and several Congressional inquires into the reason for the delay," according to the Defenders of Wildlife.

Are you outraged?  Or will you be outraged if a listing effectively drives the price of gas to new heights as every carbon-emitting federal action comes under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act?

Because he is such a very good guy, Ken Starr is helping out the lefties of Malibu control the paparazzi swarms.  (HT: Jeff Bliss).

Inside Higher Ed takes a look.

From my interview with Mark Steyn today:

MS: Chicago doesn’t sound like part of America. It sounds like we need to fly in some U.N. relief agency.  They should all pull out of Burma and fly into these derelict parts of Chicago. The fact is, community organizer is a bogus term. She ought to knock it off. Real people…one of the most pathetic aspects of this race is that somehow, a guy like Mitt Romney, who runs successful companies, he’s regarded as Mr. Bloated Plutocrat like the guy in the top hat on the Monopoly board. A guy like that actually makes a contribution to people’s lives, to generating the great wealth in corporate America that pays for everything else. And a community organizer, which most functioning communities in the United States don’t have the need for, is an entirely bogus term. She is becoming, I miss Teresa Heinz Kerry.  

HH: (laughing) 

MS: God bless here. I used to love going to John Kerry events, and John Kerry would be droning I say to George Bush, bring it on, and Teresa used to stand there next to him looking board out of her skull. God bless her. She was a, you know, she’s a genuine, a very genuine woman. And Michelle Obama by contrast seems to have all the condescension of Teresa Heinz Kerry, plus this weird bitterness and anger. I think she’s a very strange woman.  

From May 2nd, 2008, in North Carolina, here is the text of Michelle Obama's depressing stump speech.  The audio can be found here.  

Well, good afternoon. You know, let me begin by apologizing. We don’t do late. But the weather in Chicago wasn’t cooperating. We were sitting on a plane for two hours waiting for that little window. But we made it, and I am grateful to all of you for sticking around, for coming. It means a great deal to me. I just want to do a few thank you and acknowledgements before I get going. I want to thank Ebony Covington for that wonderful introduction, for all the work that she’s doing on behalf of the campaign. I didn’t get a chance to meet Carol Faulkner Fox, but I know she did the Pledge of Allegiance, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to meet her. But I want to thank her. Mayor Bell was here. I got to meet him before going out, and he had to get back to the business of running this city, but we thank him for all of his support. As he said to me, we should expect to win this state, and win this city. And I will hold him to that, along with all of you all. He was pretty fired up and ready to go. 

I also want thank our staff and volunteers. I know you met Tony Elmo, who is the campaign field organizer who did the pitch. It’s important for you all to know that we wouldn’t be here if it were not for our staff, and for our volunteers, the folks, folks who have sacrificed just as much if not more as Barack and I. People have given up their jobs, left school, they’re sleeping on people’s floors, they’ve been doing it for fifteen months. And they have built what has become a phenomenal organization with a power that has been unmatched. So we are proud of everyone for all of their work. 
Read More...

A grand day in our ally's history.

John McCain, from yesterday's interview, on the U.S. support for Israel:

HH: On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Hezbollah has amassed a new arsenal of 27,000 rockets, including many that can reach Tel Aviv. How would Hezbollah view the U.S. differently with you in the Oval Office, Senator, versus Senator Obama? 

JM: Well, I think they would fully understand that I will not allow Israel to be destroyed. And I will do everything possible to protect the state of Israel from being, “wiped off the map,” as you know the president of Iran has repeatedly stated as his nation’s fundamental belief and policy. And I will not sit down and talk to this Iranian president, who restates that commitment, whose country is exporting into Iraq most lethal devices, apparently, according to General Petraeus, training, even, terrorists in Iran to go back into Iraq, jihadists. And so this is a nation that must be restrained. And they have to understand…I’m not talking about obliteration, I am talking about, Hugh, that the consequences of unprovoked attack on a free and democratic nation are very severe, and that the price they would pay would be far greater than any success that they might enjoy. And I will not specify exactly how we would react, because then, I think we’d be telegraphing our punches. But have no doubt of our dedication to the independence and freedom of the state of Israel. I’m sure you know that down in the southern part of Israel, on the border with Gaza, they are launching rockets quite frequently into Israel, into a town in southern Israel, where the children have a fifteen second warning time. 

 
(Reuters)

Christopher Hitchens isn't letting down his Hillary-guard yet.  From our conversation yesterday: 

HH: We begin this Wednesday as those Wednesdays when we are lucky with Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair fame. Christopher Hitchens, you thought that Hillary’s relentlessness would in the end get her back into the White House. What are you thinking this morning after she barely survived last night?  

CH: What I’m thinking is that in a little while, people will be marveling over who well she’s done in West Virginia and Kentucky. And by that time, the vote will have become thoroughly racialized, if you don’t mind that rather disgusting expression. And people will be speaking about Barack Obama as having won the black vote, as if there was such a thing as if people vote with their epidermis, which they’re already saying about North Carolina. And she will be implicitly, or sometimes explicitly, and with the help of her husband, well, that’s not all there is to it. Look at how many white people want to vote for me. So what’s all this about a post-racial election? And the Democrats will be made to feel nervous on this point, and I think they’ll take it all the way to Denver.  

HH: Well, I happen to agree with you. 

CH: People who are unstoppable and ambitious, and psychopathically power-worshipping, are not bruised by a little thing like North Carolina or Indiana.  

Very interesting interview with the author of Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirkey.  Couple of graphs:

Buzzwatch: Sum up the basic changes you’re talking about.

Mr. Shirky: My five word summary of the book is: Group action just got easier. The thesis is that humans are natively good at doing things in groups. We know how to share, collaborate, converse. So whenever you get a new tool or technology that makes it easier for people to share or collaborate, you’re going to see a lot more of that going on. The Internet–and increasingly, mobile phones–have provided us with a platform of huge new tools and services to do exactly that. So we’re seeing now the first phase of experimentation and people saying, “What can we build on top of these tools?”

Buzzwatch: What does a CEO need to understand about the ways collaboration is changing?

Mr. Shirky: There are two different big things. The first is: Inside your hierarchy is a network. This isn’t about networks replacing hierarchies–we’re still going to have managers and promotions. But particularly for large companies, there’s a lot of value that can be unlocked by letting employees work with one another. There were two research groups at IBM separated by the Atlantic Ocean–one in Armonk and one in the U.K. They were working on the same problem, but of course they didn’t know that. They employed a tool IBM built called Dogear, a tagging tool. These two groups discovered–without any managerial oversight–that they were working on the same problem. They said, “Why don’t we get together and collaborate?” That’s the kind of enterprise value that can’t be driven by the manager. In any complicated field, the people you’re managing know more about the problem than you do. This is a way of getting at that value.

The outside message is: Your customers, who have previously been relatively separated from one another, with their principal connection to you, may start becoming your competitors or your collaborators. CEOs need to be in the position of understanding what might happen and then try to work out strategies for the threats and for the opportunities.

(Emphasis added.) Recently I e-mailed a senior exec-friend caught up in a high profile battle being covered by the media that he needed to get Kithbridge.com to establish some new media monitors/blog tracks.  Even though I am an investor in Kithbridge, I wouldn't know if he did or not, but increasingly the idea of allowing the virtual mobs to gain size and accumulate influence without even attempting to see them coming is close to corporate malpractice.

Barney Frank is pushing a huge housing bill through the Congress.  President Bush has threatened to veto it.

Good.  Nothing that has to be rushed through without publication and debate on the web for at least a week or two can be good news.  Like the immigration reform bill of last year, the key is in the details.  Mr. Frank should publish the latest version on the web and listen carefully to the comments. Perhaps Heritage can post an on-line edition like it did with the immigration bill. (The Heritage analysis of the Frank-Dodd plan is here.)

Look, Frank is pretty smart, but he's not so smart that his handiwork couldn't use some review and criticism from the many, out of which would come some keen insight.  I want to see if they are using the idea that would allow homeowners to use their retirement funds --without triggering tax or an early withdrawal penalty-- to pay down their mortgages so as to keep their greatest asset.  I'd like mortgage bankers to be able to review and comment on the write-down provisions, and home-builders to be able to comment on the impact on new home starts.

In short, the Frank bill is proposing an overhaul of a crucial portion of the economy.  A little transparency please.

The WSJ.com (subscription required) reports on the move by Democrats in Congress to regulate those prescription drug ads you see on television.

They may be annoying, especially in the recitation of side-effects, but this is what the Congress is worrying about?

Key graphs:

A subcommittee led by Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak has scheduled a hearing for Thursday with an agenda titled "Direct to Consumer Advertising: Marketing, Education or Deception?" Mr. Stupak says he wants to lay the groundwork for future legislation to tighten controls on drug marketing, including giving the Food and Drug Administration the right to force changes in TV drug ads before they are broadcast....

Committee members plan to question officials of Pfizer Inc. about ads for its cholesterol drug, Lipitor, which featured Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the artificial heart. Mr. Jarvik isn't a practicing doctor, but he "appears to be giving medical advice," according to the committee, which suggested that the ads are misleading. Pfizer and the joint venture between Merck and Schering-Plough have defended their ads as accurate.

"He appears to be giving medical advice"?

The Democrats think you are idiots.