Around the World Wide Web 3

1. Brandt Ayers wants to bring back the Fairness Doctrine to combat “the barbarians of talk radio.”

2. I’m conflicted about Harry Reid’s remark that the Iraq War is lost. It is a terrible thing for the Majority Leader in the Senate to undermine morale of troops fighting in a foreign land. At the same time, what Senator Reid said is true: the war is lost; it was lost before it began because Bush did not enter it with the purpose of winning, but with the purpose of sacrificing American lives and wealth to build a nation in Iraq.

But there is a difference between Senator Reid and me. The Senator does not believe the war can be won. Perhaps he does not want it to be won. Robert Tracinski in a recent TIA Daily noted this piece by Jed Babbin:

Reid and the rest of the Democrats do not condemn defeat. They do not say they would have done better to win, because the words “win” and “victory” never pass their lips. They never propose an idea that might lead to quicker, more decisive victory in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the Horn of Africa, or Lebanon, or anywhere else.

Excellent point. Just once I would like to hear a Democrat say, “Here is what we need to do to win.”

3. The tallest buildings in the world.

Wikipedia’s List of Tallest Buildings in the World. Taipei 101 looks to me like a stack of chinese take-out cartons.

Tall buildings, both built and proposed, in Chicago.

Freedom Tower.

Noida Tower, being built in a Delhi suburb, will beat them all at 2,329 ft. It is supposed to resemble the Himalayas. I don’t know if it looks like a Christmas ornament or a bunch of wizard caps.

(HT: Gus Van Horn)

4. More Jed Babbin:

If you want to get inside the liberals decision loop, you have to understand their intent -- to destroy conservative talk radio -- and their capabilities, from blogs to pols and all the politically activist media in between. What would you do if you were, say, George Soros? If you had a ton of money and wanted to render conservative talk radio ineffective in the 2008 election cycle?

What you’d do is employ some group to pick at the statements of the talkers, and make every politically-incorrect utterance a cause celebre. Take words out of context. No one will notice. Make any statement about Hillary, Obama or whoever into some sort of outrageous racial/religious/sexist/whatever slur. Petition the advertisers on that show, bash them by name in every corner of the blogosphere and rely on the media to contrive stories around the blogs. Create media feeding frenzies to threaten advertisers who continue to buy time on the supposedly “offensive” shows.

They can try it, but this is 2007, not 1977. There are too many independent voices on radio and the internet that will set the truth straight and put it in context.

5. In game one of their first round playoff series against the Suns, the Lakers were up by 12 at one point, but lost 95-87. Kobe cannot carry the team for four quarters, it seems. I would love to see them start playing better than they have and beat the Suns, but the team does not seem that good to me.

6. The conservatives are outraged because the Mayor of San Francisco wants to make the city a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. From my point of view, illegal immigration is the one issue that is the biggest waste of time in media. The immigrants come here to make money. They make prices lower. Why do we want to interfere with this market force?

I can see limiting Muslim immigration because Islam is more than a religion. Like communism, it is an ideology that wants to destroy America. We are at war with this ideology. Every Muslim should be given a detailed interview before being allowed into the USA.