John LeBoutillier: Bush is Incompetent

From Boot's Blasts:

9) The Bush Administration has handled foreign policy with the same level of competence they handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The incompetence from the top down has been shocking. And it is our soldiers and their families who are paying a steep price for this;

10) The President says we are staying until “we achieve victory.” OK...that sounds great. What exactly is this ‘victory’? Who do we want to win? The Sunnis of Saddam? Or the Shi’a of Iran?

11) All of this is why only a quarter of our fellow Americans remain steadfast that things will go well in Iraq. And make no mistake about it: the crumbling of the GOP lately is not due to Mark Foley’s perversions; it is due to Iraq and the realization that this war is a disaster for our country.

12) The Democrats were willing partners with GW Bush and the GOP in getting us into a war we need not have started. Containment would have worked; after 9/11, all the world was with us. We could have done to Saddam what we did to the Soviets for 40 years: starved him out until his rotten regime crumbled from within. We could then have spent our resources in getting Osama and wiping out the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Daniel Pipes: Change Course in Iraq

The Bush administration slogans have shifted from "Mission Accomplished," to "Stay the Course," to "Finish the Job." Now, Daniel Pipes suggests moving American troops from cities to desert bases under another motto: "Stay the course – but change the course."

The situation in Iraq has become a source of deep domestic antagonism in the coalition countries, especially the United States and Great Britain, but it can be finessed by noting that the stakes there are actually quite minor, then adjusting means and goals on this basis. Do you, dear non-Iraqi reader, have strong feelings about the future of Iraq? I strongly suspect not.

Iraqis want possession of their country; and peoples in countries providing troops serving in Iraq have wearied of the hopeless effort to transform it into something better than it is. Both aspirations can be satisfied by redeploying coalition troops to the desert, where they can focus on the essential tasks of maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity, keeping the fossil fuels flowing, and preventing humanitarian disasters.

Malkin: "CNN Wants US to Lose..."

Flying on JetBlue, I watched Bill O'Reilly debate CNN's Iraq war coverage with Michelle Malkin. He defended CNN against her charges that the network favors the Iraqi terrorists and insurgents, and chooses to show propaganda in order to demoralize and defeat the US. I couldn't find the video on YouTube but did find the official O'Reilly summary:

"CNN wants us to lose this war," Malkin declared. "It's not just the airing of this sniper video, which undermines troop morale, but there's a whole history at CNN of choosing the wrong side. If you're going to run this kind of video, you have to be very mindful of being used as a tool."

O'Reilly pooh-poohed Malkin (I don't see his quote in the official summary, something like, "I can't believe Larry King wants us to lose"). But I'd say it is not impossible to believe that Anderson Cooper--an alumnus of the University of Hanoi in North Vietnam--might not want to see an American victory.

In any case, there is no need to treat this question as a guessing game. One way to settle this question might be for O'Reilly to invite CNN's anchors and executives onto his program and ask them directly: "Who do you want to win in Iraq?"

Doubt by John Patrick Shanley

While visiting Los Angeles last weekend, I went to see Cherry Jones starring as Sister Aloysius in John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, now playing at the Ahmanson Theatre. Doug Hughes' production was pretty good--a thousand times better than the horror show we walked out of at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. Sort of George Bernard Shaw meets Playhouse 90 (can the HBO/PBS version be far behind?) The play seemed extremely timely--given Mark Foley's congressional page scandal. And the audience seemed to include a number of alumni of the Catholic school system, who laughed knowingly at references that were opaque to this non-parochial school grad.

Curiously, although reviews had given an impression that the play left matters of guilt up in the air, it seemed to me that Sister Aloysius did in fact catch a child molester--and that her doubts at the end were related to a Church heirarchy that appeared to protect and promote pedophiles. In the play, the accused priest, named Father Flynn (Chris McGarry), goes on to become pastor at another school--much as Mark Foley's priest appears to have been protected.

The conflict appeared to be more between Nuns (good) and Priests (bad). It reminded me of the Washington saying about John F. Kennedy--that the Republicans and Richard Nixon had support from bishops, while the sisters were all for Jack Kennedy. Another meaning for "sisterhood is powerful" I guess. It might be relevant, because the action of the play occurs shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, America's first (and only) Catholic president.

There is another theme, of integration, which is handled in a complex manner. The victim approached by the priest is one of the first students to integrate the formerly all-white school for working class Irish and Italian kids. When Sister Aloysius invites his mother (Adriane Lenox) to discuss the situation, she begs the nun to keep the matter quiet. Interestingly, something similar seems to have actually happened in the Foley case. After that confrontation, Sister Aloysius becomes more determined than ever to "get" the priest.

She does--while keeping it quiet to protect the victim--and then, for the first time in the play, admits she has doubts. For Doubt is about doubt--including doubt about doubt itself...

This 'n That on Hud

This 'n That recommends you add Paul Newman's Hud to your Netflix queue:

Alma, (Patricia Neal) the Bannon's cook and housekeeper, is desired by both Hud and Lonnie. She is devoted to the Bannon's in a way that she keeps to herself. And she conceals her admiration of Hud's masculinity, though repulsive at times. Perhaps she understands the anger brought on by the anguish that Hud works so hard to keep to himself. Where seventeen year old Lonnie expresses his sexuality in a sweetly innocent manner, Hud is overtly aggressive: "The only question I ever ask any woman is" 'What time is your husband coming home?' In the end, it is Hud's attitude toward Alma that completes the dismantling of the Bannon household after the death of Homer.

To coin a cliche, they don't make 'em like this anymore. "Hud" is a near perfect film about an extremely flawed man or men. What major actor today would take the risk that Paul Newman took - to portray a character that no one gives a hoot for? And he is not too far off the attitude of some of our most esteemed leaders in the world of big business and politics today when he says: "Well, I've always thought the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner. Sometimes I lean one way and sometimes I lean the other."

Benjamin Kerstein: The Anti-Chomsky

Here's a link to his website. A sample:

Apparently, while I was on my two week trip to the States, Noam Chomsky died and was resurrected, prompting a grateful puff piece from the New York Times, which appears to have forgiven Chomsky his innumerable slanders against it over the course of his career. When ideological purity is question, personal insults can always be forgiven. The Times, of course, refers to Chomsky as a "scholar", which, in the realm of politics at least, he most certainly isn't, and then prints a flattering portrait of him surrounded by the books which, judging by the man's own writings, he clearly doesn't read.

At a news conference after his spirited address to the United Nations on Wednesday, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela expressed one regret: not having met that icon of the American left, the linguist Noam Chomsky, before his death...[Chavez] urged Americans to read one of Mr. Chomsky’s books instead of watching Superman and Batman movies, which he said “make people stupid.”

One could, of course, say that making people stupid is not nearly as evil as making people stupid while convincing them they are, in fact, extremely intelligent and well informed, which is generally the most common effect of reading Chomsky's books. But I digress, since I find it interesting that the Times would refer to a clearly psychotic statement as "spirited". One doubts they grant the same indulgences to the rantings of say, Pat Buchanan or David Duke. Hitler must have been "spirited" too when he made all those marvelous Nuremburg addresses. No amount of insidious propaganda and leftist conspiracy mongering is, apparently, enough to shock the Times.

Robert Dreyfuss on the Baker-Hamilton Commission

From The Washington Monthly Iht Wikipedia):

But according to all accounts, the Iraq Study Group is Baker's show, with the assembled cast of characters there to give Baker the bipartisan, protective coloration he needs. "Jim Baker is the gatekeeper," one task-force participant told me, insisting on anonymity. "He's by far the most dynamic, and everyone else is intimidated by him." And Baker is keeping his cards very close to his chest. "He's very secretive, he keeps his distance, and he compartmentalizes everything, which is not a bad way to organize a political conspiracy," says another member of one of the working groups.

Several of those involved in the task force point out that Baker is perfect for the job. "First of all, he's close to Bush 41," one of them told me. "Second, Bush 43 owes his presidency to Jim Baker because of the skullduggery in Florida in 2000. And Baker is the consummate consigliere. He's utterly ruthless and very effective at what he does. When they [the Bushes] get into an emergency, they call Baker."

The emergency, in this case, is the collapse of public support for the war in Iraq, the president's catastrophic fall in the polls, the growing calls on the left for a pullout of U.S. forces, and the concern at the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the Pentagon's inability to sustain the presence of 127,000 U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely. "The American people will not allow the United States to stay much longer," a participant in one of the working groups told me. "They're going to demand a phased withdrawal."

Partly because of his penchant for secrecy, no one knows Baker's views on the war, and since 2003 Baker has said little. It is widely believed, however, that Baker is part of the realist-minded, internationalist wing of the Republican Party, whose semi-official spokesman is Scowcroft, Bush 41's national-security adviser. At the time that the task force began its work, in April, The New York Times reported that the idea had the support of President Bush's father. "Baker has had some serious doubts about the war and about the nature of our commitment," Edward S. Walker Jr., the former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, who is president of the Middle East Institute, told me. "He seems to be reflective of the part of the Republican Party tied to Scowcroft. And it's natural to think that the whole group around George H.W. Bush is involved in this with Baker."

Anti-Wiki Washingtonians?

A few years ago, R. Emmett Tyrell, then-editor of the American Spectator, published a book called The Conservative Crackup. Basically, it was an indictment of the Republican party for having lost touch with first principles. The other night I found myself invited to a bull session over pizza, mainly concerned with the internet. It struck me that if Bob Tyrell is still out there, he may want to write a sequel. There were all sorts of conservative Washington DC types,ranging from a former senators to a TV celebrity pundit to Congressional staffers to think-tank types to political advocacy specialists and lobbyists. Striking impression one: Not a lot of happiness about the way the President has handled Iraq.

But it also struck me that there was some disconnect between the present Washington insider zeitgeist and the people out there--not only beyond the Beltway, but especially on the internet. When insideres lose touch with outsiders, they get replaced. I think that may be one dimension of this election cycle. Call it the Wiki effect...

While everyone admitted using Google, it was notable that out of maybe a dozen folks, only a couple had anything good to say about Wikipedia. And one of those two was yours truly. The one other Wiki-person also said he used the Google Personal Homepage and added RSS feeds of his favorite blogs and news sites, using Google gadgets. But that's a very small percentage for leadership cadre. The people in the room may have owned Blackberries, but without using Wikipedia and other new media, weren't really connected.

The recent fight between Rush Limbaugh and Instapundit, over ,Glenn Reynold's "Pre-Mortem" explaining the reasons for Republican failures is reflective of the reality that talk-radio has become another form "old media." Dragimol explained Instapundit's case against Repulicans, one that outraged Rush:

Recently Glenn Reynolds, webmaster of Instapundit.com, the world's most popular blog site and a conservative made the argument that if Republicans lose, it's because they deserved it.

Rush Limbaugh today struck back with the charge of "Do we deserve to have our taxes raised? Do we deserve a cut and run policy in Iraq? Do we deserve to have endless congressional investigations?"

The argument is strong but I think overlooks one thing -- we do have a Republican President right? Our taxes aren't going to be raised before 2008.

My view is the same as Glenn Reynolds. The Republicans blew it. They became complacent and ignored their constituents. If they lose, I do think they lost because they deserved to lose.

Does that mean I agree with those who think we should have higher taxes or that we should abandon Iraq? No. But the Republicans losing the house (and even the senate) doesn't mean that's going to happen. It gives Republicans two years to clean up their act and make their case in 2008

This is just one symptom of the disconnect between high-feedback system-users and Establishment Washington Republicans. It's a basically reflective of a producer-centered vision (authoritarian) vs. a user-centered vision (libertarian). Interestingly, Rush is not totally on the inside, and while attacking Glenn Reynolds on the air, has simultaneously backtracked on his own blog posts, defending bloggers vis-a-vis newspaper columnists (actually an older debate), in an entry called I'm not at war with conservative bloggers (ht lgf):

RUSH: I knew I was going to do it. I left out some blogger names that I routinely read. One of them is Michelle Malkin, and she's just fabulous and extremely valuable. The American Thinker, which I cite and quote on this program constantly, and Debbie Schlussel-- and I'm sure there are more. Not all of them are on my RSS reader. Some of them I have to go look for. (interruption) What are you shaking your head in there for, Snerdley? "What's the difference between bloggers and columnists?" Today, nothing! It used to be a big deal to be a newspaper columnist, because there weren't many. It used to be a big deal to be a TV anchor, because there were only three. It used to be a big deal to be a commentator on a Sunday show because there weren't many. But now, everybody is one, whether you're published on the Internet or in print. More people are reading the Internet than their newspapers now. I saw that the other day.

Everybody and their uncle is a columnist. Everybody is a columnist somewhere. The very nature is that the whole pie has gotten bigger. It used to be really tough to get a column. I talked to George Will about how he got his at the Washington Post. Meg Greenfield, I think, read a couple of his pieces and suggested that he explore the possibility. It took awhile to get it done in the Washington Post writers group which was the syndicate that he wrote for at the time. But back then, when you were Scotty Reston of the New York Times or Anthony Lewis or Flora Lewis, I mean, you were big when you were in the New York Times because it's the Times and the Washington Post, not local. Some of these guys were syndicated, and they all had huge readership. I think Cal Thomas is the biggest now.

I think Cal Thomas is in more newspapers than any other columnist, but you wouldn't know it because he's ignored by the Drive-By Media and so forth. There's so many of them now that it's not nearly as prestigious as it was. So what defines them today is quality, and that's why I've always said: "In whatever you do, it's content, content, content is what will determine who and what acquires an audience." Content. Not where you are, but what you do. Content, content, content. Because where you are will take care of itself if your content is what it is, because those who are, quote, unquote, the biggest are going to want the best content, which is why quality and content -- be it any kind of programming -- is what determines who ends up with the widest appeal, widest audience, and the greatest opportunity to reach the largest number of people.

Now, is that not the answer you were looking for? You look stunned in there. What were you getting at with the difference between a blogger and a columnist? (interruption) Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. No. In fact, Michelle Malkin, she has a column and she's got two blogs. She's got a blog called Hot Air and she's got a personal blog. They're both excellent.

IMHO, Wikis, Google Personal Homepages, and the like are symbolic of a user-centered user-created "open source" mentality that drives all sorts of independent-minded people dissatisfied with the Establishment these days--and a lot of people in the Establishment, too. If the Washington insiders are anti-Wiki, well, to me it seemed practically un-American...an a losing strategy, to boot. I think America is tired of party-line, faith-based approaches. They want empirical, practical, and fact-based politics; just as they want empirical, practical, and fact-based Wikipedia. After all, Wikipedia's selling point is that anyone can correct the mistakes.

Yet, to show the Establishmentarian bias of the insiders, one young person said he thought the NY Times was more reliable than Wikipedia--a statement I found simply laughable, given the number of scandals at the paper--from Jayson Blair to recent National Intelligence Estimate kerfuffles. The Washington insiders appeared to be really out of touch. Which, I guess, is why the Founding Fathers came up with the idea of frequent elections for Congress in the first place.

Maybe the thought of political defeat in 2 weeks may help to concentrate the minds of Republicans. Divided government never looked so good...It's sort of like a Wiki--self-correcting.

After that evening, I realized a Wiki on how to win the war in Iraq might come up with better ideas than recycling advice from "wise men of Washington" like James Baker. As I remember quite vividly, bringing in James Baker as campaign manager didn't save Bush 41 from defeat by Bill Clinton in 1992. So, why think he would do any better against the likes of Al Qaeda, the Ba'athists, or Moqtada Al Sadr?

President Bush on Iraq

Flying to LA on JetBlue, I had a real festival of cable TV-watching and NYC television channels --I didn't realize that Ernie Anastos and Chuck Scarborough were still anchoring local news. Not just HGTV and the Food Network, but also BBC America on which Gordon Ramsay's new cooking show--The F-Word (Food)--looks good. And CNBC for stocks, Larry Kudlow (he wants Rumsfeld fired), and Chris Matthews Hardball. Most interesting of all was Bill O'Reilly's long interview with President Bush. It gives you some idea of how the President is thinking. He has difficulty explaining himself, and he may lose Congress, but O'Reilly did a pretty good job getting the guy to open up a little. You can watch it here, on the Fox News website.

89-Year-Old Man Convicted of Killing 10

With his car, in 2003. George Russell Weller, then 86, killed 10 people when he plowed through a farmer's market in Santa Monica in 2003. This was the news on my arrival here in Lost Angeles. Sounds like he may be suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and I don't know why his defense attorneys didn't raise the possibility--especially since the disease sometimes makes people aggressive and violent, as well as confused and disoriented. 73 people were injured by Weller, who now faces up to 18 years in prison (if he lives so long). Here's a link to the LA Times story.

Charlie Cook: Republicans Will Lose Control of Congress

From the Cook Political Report of October 13th:

Category 5 Hurricane Heads for House GOP

Let's get the disclaimer out of the way: there are 25 days between now and the November 7 election and things could well change, making what follows obsolete.

That said, this is without question the worst political situation for the GOP since the Watergate disaster in 1974. I think a 30-seat gain today for Democrats is more likely to occur than a 15-seat gain, the minimum that would tip the majority. The chances of that number going higher are also strong, unless something occurs that fundamentally changes the dynamic of this election. This is what Republican strategists' nightmares look like.

Whether one looks at national or district-level polling data, or a survey like the new Democracy Corps survey that covered the 49 most vulnerable GOP districts, the conclusion remains the same: it is very ugly for Republicans.

Michelle Malkin v Angelina Jolie

Michele Malkin thinks Angelina Jolie doesn't know enough about corruption at the UN to do a credible job as "goodwill ambassador":

You want to talk about scandal? For years, U.N. staff members in Nairobi shook down African refugees seeking resettlement in North America, Europe and Australia while the U.N. looked the other way. The extortion racket charged up to $5,000 a head for resettlement rights. Belated investigations found that the scandal wasn't the result of a few rogue workers-but of negligent management that created a ripe atmosphere for abuse.

You want to talk about callousness? Tell it to female and child refugees across the Congo who have been victimzed by sexual predators protected among the ranks of U.N. peacekeers and civilian staff. Last year, some 50 U.N. peacekeepers and U.N. civilian officers faced an estimated 150 allegations of sexual exploitation and rape in the Congo alone. The abuse is widespread among U.N. personnel-from the Central African Republic to Bosnia and Eastern Europe. Again, these refugees were exploited while U.N. management fiddled.

You want to talk about failing to take notice? As Claudia Rosett has reported, the U.N. refugee agency sits on its hands while some 300,000 North Korean refugees have endured decades of abuse and hopelessness underground in China-where the $4.4 million-funded UNHCR office is fortified against refugee intrusions.

You want to talk about wasted resources? That $10 billion Saddam Hussein siphoned off in the U.N. Oil-for-Food debacle could have fed a lot of hungry people...

Georgetown's Patisserie Poupon

Someone I know and I had lunch today at Patisserie Poupon in Georgetown. Not only was it delicious, they told me that their pastries are baked in Baltimore...

How About That Cardinals-Mets Game Last Night?

The playoffs are certainly exciting--Glavine didn't live up to the hype. Even the NY Daily News is writing about St. Louis Pitcher Chris Carpenter...

Oliver North: Who Lost Nicaragua?

Oliver North says President Bush may put Daniel Ortega's Sandinistas back in power in Managua, come November:

Hopefully, the most recent polls – and the earful Secretary Rumsfeld received this week about the insidious role being played by Chavez, Castro and their cronies – will wake up Washington before it’s too late. U.S. diplomats in Latin America in general – and Nicaragua in particular – act and speak as though everyone in the region thinks we’re “ugly Americans.” It’s simply not true.

There are millions of our southern neighbors – small “d” democrats, entrepreneurs and labor leaders – who are counting on the United States to stand up for our own interests – and the cause of liberty in their countries. Many of them – like Presidents Alvaro Uribe in Colombia and Tony Saca in El Salvador have put their lives on the line to achieve and preserve democracy. They have watched with alarm as the will of the people was perverted by Chavez in Venezuela and distorted by Morales in Bolivia – and they know the consequences for foreign investment, development and economic opportunity.

This sad outcome doesn’t have to happen in Nicaragua – but it will require an abrupt reality check at the State Department. The U.S. doesn’t need to launch an “Uncle Sam says: Vote for Rizo” campaign – but we must act now to level the playing field and help unite the anti-Sandinista opposition.

Our Ambassador, Paul Trivelli has to stop pressuring private sector leaders with potential reprisals for supporting the PLC. And when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns from her Mid-East trip – she should head to Managua and meet with all the presidential candidates – including the now shunned Mr. Rizo. Doing these things now might well prevent people asking next year: “Who lost Nicaragua?”

Hitchens on Orhan Pamuk

In a review of the literary output of this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Christopher Hitchens maintains that Orhan Pamuk may not be the writer he appears to be... From The Atlantic:

...I should caution the potential reader that a great deal of the dialogue is as lengthy and stilted as that, even if in this instance the self-imposed predicaments of the pious, along with their awful self-pitying solipsism, are captured fairly well. So is the superiority/inferiority complex of many provincial Turks—almost masochistic when it comes to detailing their own woes, yet intensely resentful of any "outside" sympathy. Most faithfully rendered, however, is the pervading sense that secularism has been, or is being, rapidly nullified by diminishing returns. The acting troupe is run by a vain old Kemalist mountebank named Sunay Zaim, who once fancied himself an Atatürk look-alike, and his equally decrepit and posturing lady friend. The army and the police use torture as a matter of course to hang on to power. Their few civilian supporters are represented as diseased old ex-Stalinists whose leader—one Z. Demirkol, not further named—could have leapt from the pages of Soviet agitprop. These forces take advantage of the snowstorm to mount a coup in Kars and impose their own arbitrary will, though it is never explained why they do this or how they can hope to get away with it.

In contrast, the Muslim fanatics are generally presented in a favorable or lenient light. A shadowy "insurgent" leader, incongruously named "Blue," is a man of bravery and charm, who may or may not have played a heroic role in the fighting in Chechnya and Bosnia. (Among these and many other contemporary references, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are never mentioned.) The girls who immolate themselves for the right to wear head-covering are shown as if they had been pushed by the pitiless state, or by their gruesome menfolk, to the limits of endurance. They are, in other words, veiled quasi-feminists. The militant boys of their age are tormented souls seeking the good life in the spiritual sense. The Islamist ranks have their share of fools and knaves, but these tend to be ex-leftists who have switched sides in an ingratiating manner. Ka himself is boiling with guilt, about the "European" character that he has acquired in exile in Frankfurt, and about the realization that the Istanbul bourgeoisie, from which he originates, generally welcomes military coups without asking too many questions. The posturing Sunay at least phrases this well.

No one who's even slightly westernized can breathe free in this country unless they have a secular army protecting them, and no one needs this protection more than intellectuals who think they're better than everyone else and look down on other people. If it weren't for the army, the fanatics would be turning their rusty knives on the lot of them and their painted women and chopping them all into little pieces. But what do these upstarts do in return? They cling to their little European ways and turn up their affected little noses at the very soldiers who guarantee their freedom.
A continuous theme of the novel, indeed, is the rancor felt by the local inhabitants against anyone who has bettered himself—let alone herself—by emigrating to an undifferentiated "Europe" or by aping European manners and attitudes. A secondary version of this bitterness, familiar to those who study small-town versus big-city attitudes the world over, is the suspicion of those left behind that they are somehow not good enough. But this mutates into the more consoling belief that they are despised by the urbane. Only one character—unnamed—has the nerve to point out that if free visas were distributed, every hypocrite in town would leave right away and Kars would be deserted.

The Queen

Thank goodness for the Internet Movie Database entry on Helen Mirren. It told me that she is of Russian ancestry--her given name is Elena Lydia Mironoff, her grandfather was a Tsarist diplomat who stayed in Britain after the Russian Revolution of 1917, her great-great-great-great grandfather was Field Marshal Kamensky, a hero of the war of 1812. So, it turns out that Stephen Frears has provided a very Russian--which is to say long-suffering and deeply soulful--portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in his new film, The Queen.

What I didn't know...was that the film is about a love triangle--between Tony Blair, Princess Di, and the Queen. In the end, Her Majesty sways young Tony's affections, and he seems to forget the "People's Princess" in favor of the old-fashioned stiff-upper-lip Queen Ellizabeth. Michael Sheen's portrayal of the dynamic British prime minister is uncanny. He doesn't look like him--but he acts like him. "That Cheshire cat grin," says the Queen. And Sheen has it.

The whole cast is so good, it is almost like watching Anglophile pornography. Helen McCrory is a dead ringer for Cherie Blair. James Cromwell is the bossy and tyrannical Prince Philip. Every scene is carefully composed and artistically staged. The Queen'ss corgis are there. The Queen's butler informs us that one calls her "Ma'am like Ham, not Ma'am like Farm." There is a precedent for everything royal, in a family that have been around for a thousand years. Even the stag who meets the Queen at Balmoral is out of Sir Edwin Henry Landseer's "Monarch of the Glen."

If you liked Mobil Masterpiece Theatre, you'll love Helen Mirren as "The Queen."

Carrie (1952)

How could I have missed seeing William Wyler's 1952 adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie? Laurence Olivier, Jennifer Jones, Miriam Hopkins and Eddie Albert star in this overlooked classic film--a painfully powerful melodrama in which a small-town girl makes good (eventually), while her desperate older paramour sinks into the gutter (after she leaves him). The story and characters are so vivid and tabloid--yet realistic--that they seem torn from today's headlines. Maybe you'll think of Anna Nicole Smith, or the battling Astor Family in New York. I can see why Russians love Dreiser. It's not really that his stories are about capitalism, rather that they are about the foolish mistakes people make, and the suffering which follows. Drink, depression, and death dance around Laurence Olivier's tragic portrayal of Mr. Hurstwood. He's romantic and rotten at the same time. Eddie Albert's Mr. Drouet, while immoral, seems like a nice guy in comparison. Jennifer Jones is irresistible, and her story arc believable. And Miriam Hopkins as the wronged wife almost steals the show. Wyler directed Wuthering Heights and The Heiress, as well as films such as The Best Years of Our lives. He's a master of melodrama and tragic sentiment, and this is an almost perfect film. The flophouse sequence is just chilling.

Five stars. You can add it to your Netflix queue...

Micro-finance--Micro-success...

After pointing out that, "After all, Grameen Bank has been going for 30 years now and Bangladesh is still one of the poorest countries on earth," Daniel Davies argues that schemes such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunus' may not be the answer to the problems of poverty, in The Guardian online:

It's quite arguable that the real benefit that comes from microcredit is simply the fact that it doesn't give grants. I am in general quite in favour of small user fees for most development aid, based on the principles set out by JK Galbraith in one of his least-known but best books, The Nature Of Mass Poverty. In it, Galbraith argues that poverty is an economic equilibrium and that most very poor populations are "adapted" to it and that most aid will therefore have a temporary effect at best.

He suggests that development aid (as opposed to emergency aid) should instead be concentrated on the "non-adapted minority" of people who aim to leave the poverty equilibrium rather than staying in it. In other words, although I don't think that this specific formulation is in Galbraith's book, the rationing effect of user fees is actually salutary, because it means that the aid will go to people who plan to do something with it. This is in many ways an unfair way to distribute aid, but to be honest we have tried fairness for the last fifty years and the results have been terrible. I suspect that Grameen Bank's successes, where they have occurred, have been a result of selection of this non-adapted minority.

The main effect of the microfinance revolution has been the rebranding of agricultural development banks as "Microlenders". This has happened because although a loan to buy a tractor or provide working capital for a harvest season isn't microcredit, calling it microcredit will bring in a lot more grant money. That's probably good news, because agricultural development banks usually do good work.

So good luck to Muhammad Yunus and I hope he enjoys his prize. But if you work in government or a major aid agency, perhaps take his acceptance speech with a pinch of salt.

You can buy Galbraith's book from Amazon.com, here:

Battle Hymn (1956)

Concerned about civilian casualties in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, or Chechnya? Then I'd recommend watching Rock Hudson's star turn as a minister turned Korean war pilot in Battle Hymn.. He does a great job in the role of a United States Army Air Force pilot who bombed an orphanage during WWII. He killed 37 German orphans, then left the service racked by guilt over killing innocent children, to became a Christian minister. Douglas Sirk directed this classic.

During the Korean War, feeling that he's not got a calling for the pulpit, he goes back to war to train Korean Air Force pilots--this seems relevant today with all the talk about Kim Il Jung's nuclear bomb--and sees action once more. He finds some Korean orphans, and a Korean lady friend, takes them under his wing--and so finds God.

It's good--I finally understood why Rock Hudson became a star in the 1950s after watching this film. I gave it five stars. You can get it from Netflix.