Fracture

One of the better flicks I've seen lately.

It's a "perfect crime mastermind" vs. "young DA" but well acted by Anthony Hopkins, who can do no wrong, and Ryan Gosling.

It has actual dialogue and engages the brain. Will wonders never cease?

Stanley Crouch Tells It Like It Is

Stanley Crouch is a unique, sometimes crotchety voice.

In a column today, he writes of the carnage wreaked in the black community by gang murders, and the strange reluctance of the political class even to talk about it.

That, and the astonishing numbers of incarcerated black men, is a major problem, but not a major political issue. It should be both.

Ames

Mitt Headroom got 31 per cent of the vote in the Ames straw poll. That's not so impressive considering how much money he spent.

We have a bizarre situation where Romney's been at or below 10 per cent in the national polls, but polling well in Iowa and New Hampshire. Back-to-back wins in those two states could give him some momentum. On the other hand, with other primaries following so soon afterward, an initial bounce might not mean so much next year.

Cute Baby Pictures

Here.

HT: Rod Dreher.

King-Harbor To Close

LA County has decided to close King-Harbor Hospital (formerly King-Drew), because the feds inspected it, found it not up to snuff, and cut off funding.

King-Harbor has been out of compliance with Medicare standards since January 2004, a stretch some experts say was unprecedented and would not have been tolerated at other hospitals. In a five-part series published in December 2004, The Times detailed how the hospital had become one of the worst in the nation by a variety of measures, largely because county supervisors failed to take aggressive action for fear of being branded racist. [Emphasis added].

The hospital was built as a sop to the black community after the 1965 riots, and has been protected as a patronage pot for years.

Now, of course, the Chicanos are on top in L.A. as far as minority politics goes.

Meanwhile, the Supervisors showed they aren't racist by letting a charnel house operate in the black community for years. The Supervisor for that community lives in posh Brentwood, not in her own district.

Air Crash in Polynesia

An Air Moorea Twin Otter that took off from Mo'orea for the seven-minute flight to Tahiti crashed in the sea, killing all aboard, Tahitipresse reports.

“The political knowledge of the average voter has been tested repeatedly, and the scores are impressively low. In polls taken since 1945, a majority of Americans have been unable to name a single branch of government, define the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative,’ and explain what the Bill of Rights is. More than two-thirds have reported that they do not know the substance of Roe v. Wade and what the Food and Drug Administration does. Nearly half do not know that states have two senators and three-quarters do not know the length of a Senate term. More than 50 percent of Americans cannot name their congressman; forty percent cannot name either of their senators. Voters’ notions of government spending are wildly distorted: the public believes that foreign aid consumes twenty-four percent of the federal budget, for instance, though it actually consumes about one percent.”

– Louis Menand, from “Fractured Franchise - Are the wrong people voting?” in The New Yorker

HT: Total Buzz.

Jay Leno has been making hay with this for years, going out on the streets and asking very basic questions of passers-by, usually louts with bill caps on backwards.

Ain't democracy wonderful?

The GOP Unravels

Power tends to corrupt, and corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

Lord Acton said it, and it's wise. This piece by John Fund, on the imminent demise of Alaskan porkmeister Ted Stevens and the blindness of the Republican Party, is sad.

It leaves the field open to the Dems, who may well be far worse.

Sad, really.

What Price Controls Do

An eerie report from Zimbabwe.

It appears, however, that not even an unchallenged autocrat can repeal the laws of supply and demand.

One month after Mr. Mugabe decreed just that, commanding merchants nationwide to counter 10,000-percent-a-year hyperinflation by slashing prices in half and more, Zimbabwe’s economy is at a halt.

Bread, sugar and cornmeal, staples of every Zimbabwean’s diet, have vanished, seized by mobs who denuded stores like locusts in wheat fields. Meat is virtually nonexistent, even for members of the middle class who have money to buy it on the black market. Gasoline is nearly unobtainable. Hospital patients are dying for lack of basic medical supplies. Power blackouts and water cutoffs are endemic.

So-called "advanced democracies" don't do much better. Their economic folly is just not so extreme or so widespread. Think rent control. Think minimum wage. Think gasoline price controls in times of shortages.

My New Logo

Lileks also came up with this one.

Very appropriate for a Grumpy Old Man.

Porky Commits Seppuku

I've always been amused by cartoons and drawings of animals joyfully contemplating their imminent demise at the hands of carnivorous humans. These are found in Mexican restaurants and small-time fast food joints, mostly.

This French offering is in a class by itself, however.

"The French don't care what they do, actually, so long as they pronounce it properly."

HT: Lileks.

Put That High-Octane DNA In Your Pipe, and . . .

The DNA of the people they hire tends to be a little higher octane in terms of aggressiveness and energy,” said Jason E. Klein, president and chief executive of Newspaper National Network, which sells ads on behalf of a variety of newspapers across the country.

--NY Times, on News Corp.'s takeover of the Wall Street Journal

Eye of newt, nitro, and a spark of creativity. That's how to sell advertising.