May 30, 2026

NITHYA RAMAN: BIKE LANE LEFTIST.

Back in 2003, Mark Steyn wrote:

Like Susan Lucci at the Emmys, Howard Dean is getting better at putting a brave face on things. When Saddam Hussein fell from power, the Vermonter said churlishly, “I suppose that’s a good thing.” When Uday and Qusay bit the dust, the governor announced that “the ends do not justify the means.” But on Sunday, Dr. Dean was doing his best to be fulsome, if you can be fulsome with clenched teeth. Nonetheless, he congratulated “our extraordinary military on an extraordinary victory and an extraordinary success.” They gave Miss Lucci the Emmy eventually, and maybe by Labor Day next year, when the good doctor is thanking Don Rumsfeld for the souvenir vial of Osama’s DNA he FedExed over, the voters will be feeling sorry enough to give Howard the prize, too. But this weekend that pileup of “extraordinaries” made the governor seem, well, ordinary.

It’s odd that when something big happens, as on Sunday, the Democratic candidates seem irrelevant to the story, like asking a lacrosse expert what he thinks of the Super Bowl. They get interviewed and they trot out their lame clichés, about the need to “internationalize” Iraq, by which they mean not Tony Blair, John Howard, the Poles and Italians, but Kofi Annan, The Hague, the French, the Guinean foreign minister, all the folks who proved unwilling and unable to deal with Iraq before the liberation and who have given no indication of being likely to do any better after. The Democrats’ indestructible retreat to this dreary line gives them the air of a gormless twit in a drawing-room comedy coming in through the French windows every 10 minutes and saying, “Anyone for tennis?” You can’t help feeling that, on the big questions roiling around America’s national security, the Dems don’t really have speaking parts: if this was Broadway, they’d have been written out in New Haven.

There was a revealing moment on MSNBC the other night. Chris Matthews asked Dr. Dean whether Osama bin Laden should be tried in an American court or at The Hague. “I don’t think it makes a lot of difference,” said the governor airily. Mr. Matthews pressed once more. “It doesn’t make a lot of difference to me,” he said again. Some of us think what’s left of Osama is already hard enough to scrape off the cave floor and put in a matchbox, never mind fly to the Netherlands. But, just for the sake of argument, his bloodiest crime was committed on American soil; American courts, unlike the international ones, would have the option of the death penalty. But Gov. Dean couldn’t have been less interested. So how about Saddam? The Hague “suits me fine,” he said, the very model of ennui. Saddam? Osama? Whatever, dude.

So what does get the Dean juices going? A few days later, the governor was on CNN and Judy Woodruff asked him about his admission that he’d left the Episcopal Church and become a Congregationalist because “I had a big fight with a local Episcopal church over the bike path.” I hasten to add that, in contrast to current Anglican controversies over gay marriage in British Columbia and gay bishops in New Hampshire, this does not appear to have been a gay bike path: its orientation was not an issue; it would seem to be a rare example of a non-gay controversy in the Anglican Communion. But nevertheless it provoked Howard into “a big fight.” “I was fighting to have public access to the waterfront, and we were fighting very hard in the citizens group,” he told Judy Woodruff. Fighting, fighting, fighting.

And that’s our pugnacious little Democrat. On Osama bin Laden, he’s Mister Insouciant. But he gets mad about bike paths. Destroy the World Trade Center and he’s languid and laconic and blasé. Obstruct plans to convert the ravaged site into a memorial bike path and he’ll hunt you down wherever you are.

It’s just a little bit of history repeating, as Shirley Bassey would say:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

CYNICAL PUBLIUS: Élan, Social Justice, and Losing Wars.

Military historians talk a lot about “revolutions in military affairs.” Usually, this refers to a game-changing technology that obliterates existing doctrines and tactics almost overnight. Examples include the phalanx, the longbow, the rifled musket, targeted indirect fires, the machine gun, the airplane, the submarine, the tank, the nuclear bomb, and the drone—the list goes on and on. However, revolutions in military affairs often do not relate directly to technology. Instead, they are frequently rooted in changes in guiding philosophies born of the “moral” (as Clausewitz describes it) rather than the physical.

That’s what Social Justice Warfare is—an expression of the moral over the physical elements of warfare. It is the idea that “diversity is our strength” and that the progressive policies of so-called “social justice” have a place in winning wars. Social Justice Warfare holds that political orthodoxies can overcome the intrinsic violence of war. Then it dawned on me: Social Justice Warfare is the modern equivalent of the pre-World War I French military doctrine of “élan.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: CA Union Hilariously Mocks Gavin Newsom by Weaponizing Climate Excuse to Dodge Return-to-Work Order.

The California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment (CASE) earlier this week fired off “exhaustion” letters to over 100 state agencies, claiming that forcing 90,000+ state workers to commute four days a week would contribute to the global warming crisis.

I say ‘mocked’ above, but there is a very significant chance that the union here actually believes what it is peddling. And man, did they ever go full throttle here, producing an exhaustive (pun intended) scientific study indicating that their workers heading back to the office would pump an extra 15,000 tons of carbon into the air every month.

Baseline Environmental Consulting, which conducted the study, suggests that the looming return-to-office policy “runs counter to the state’s effort to reduce transportation-sector emissions,” outlined in California’s comprehensive roadmap to achieve carbon neutrality.

As far as circular firing squads go, this is just … *chef’s kiss* baby.

Exit quote: “What makes this interesting, though, is that Newsom has been cornered. He can’t attack the union without torching his own beloved climate law and carbon-reduction goals that he’s spent years ramming down Californians’ throats. Only in a one-party blue state clown world could government unions use the Democrats’ favorite environmental weapon to declare commuting to work an existential threat to the planet.”

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT’S MEL BROOKS’ WORLD; WE’RE JUST LIVING IN IT:

Not to be confused with the other Mel Brooks production this year: Don’t Be Stupid, Be a Schmarty: The Party With the Nazi Tattoo.

 

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

DIFFERENT TAKES:

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TEDDY ROOSEVELT: MANLY MAN: “The theorists today who say masculinity is a social construction often give the impression that there’s nothing to it; society waves a wand and a nerd is made manly. No, it takes effort to become manly, as Teddy Roosevelt says. The more manliness is constructed, the more effort it takes.”

To the point where:

Marco Rubio, are you up to the challenge?!

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE:

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

PRATT SUMMER:

And yet curiously, Pratt’s carbon footprint is much, much lower than Hannah’s preferred candidate:

 

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

RIP: Marcia Lucas, Oscar-Winning Star Wars Editor, Dies at 80.

Marcia served as part of a three-person crew editing both “Star Wars” and “Return of the Jedi.” On the first film, she worked alongside Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew and was personally responsible for editing the Battle of Yavin — otherwise known as the iconic “trench run” sequence near the end of the film. For “Return of the Jedi,” Marcia shared credit with Sean Barton and Duwayne Dunham, with George citing her as responsible for the “dying and crying” scenes to Time.

That “dying and crying” is pretty significant in “Return of the Jedi,” a film that hinges its third act not on a massive battle (though there’s plenty of space action, too), but on a father sacrificing himself because his son believes he’s not beyond redemption. In general, Marcia has been credited as, in some respects, the heart of the “Star Wars” franchise, working tirelessly to ensure that moments like Han Solo’s grand return to the Rebellion at the end of the original film landed with emotional impact for the audience.

Flashback: Marcia Lucas, the ‘secret weapon’ behind the original Star Wars. And Raiders of the Lost Ark: “‘[Marcia] was instrumental in changing the ending of Raiders, in which Indiana delivers the ark to Washington. Marion is nowhere to be seen, presumably stranded on an island with a submarine and a lot of melted Nazis. Marcia watched the rough cut in silence and then levelled the boom. She said there was no emotional resolution to the ending, because the girl disappears. ‘Everyone was feeling really good until she said that,’ Dunham recalls. ‘It was one of those, ‘Oh no we lost sight of that.’ ‘ Spielberg reshot the scene in downtown San Francisco, having Marion wait for Indiana on the steps on the government building. Marcia, once again, had come to the rescue.’”

UPDATE: Absolutely spot-on:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

AMERICA’S GOT TALENT:

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll