Around the World Wide Web 14

1. In a post sneering at Hummers Andrew Sullivan writes, "We have to create a social stigma toward people totally contemptuous of the environment." Sullivan claims that he is a true conservative, and I think he's right. Instead of arguing for government intervention, he wants people to act voluntarily on environmentalist premises. Sounds like a classic conservative compromise to me.

I can't believe I once sent this fool $20 when he begged for donations to keep his blog running.

2. Frontpagemag has a long piece on the intellectual odyssey of Hillary Clinton.

Rodham was deeply influenced by a 1966 article titled "Change or Containment" that appeared in Motive, a magazine for college-age Methodists. Authored by the Marxist/Maoist theoretician Carl Oglesby, who was a leader of the radical Students for a Democratic Society, this piece defended Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and Maoist tactics of violence. Its thesis was that "certain cultural settings" (most notably American capitalism) were inherently inequitable and oppressive, and thus caused people to feel "pain and rage" that sometimes erupted into violence -- like that of "the rioters in Watts or Harlem" -- which was "reactive and provoked" rather than evil or malicious. Hillary later said that the Motive article had played a key role in her metamorphosis from Goldwater Republican in 1964 to leftist Democrat in 1968. During her years as First Lady of the United States, Mrs. Clinton would tell a Newsweek reporter that she still treasured the Oglesby piece.

As late as the 1990's she was still publicly glowing about a New Leftist article that attacked capitalism and defended communism. Unlike her pragmatic husband, who seems to have just wanted people to love him more than anything, Senator Clinton is an ideologically committed collectivist. All her husband's presidency did was make her angrier and more bitter about a nation in which evil, selfish right-wingers can say what they want and stifle her benevolent socialism. What a nightmare this woman is.

3. Somebody please spoil the ending of the last Harry Potter book for me, because I'm not about to start with the first book and read through seven volumes just to find out what's so great about this ending. I guess I could wait for the movie, but Harry and that red-haired kid remind me Spanky and Alfalfa.

4. Barry Bonds is better than Henry Aaron. However, Babe Ruth was better than Barry Bonds. Speaking of baseball, the Dodgers have the best record in the National League as I write. And the best record in baseball? The Detroit Tigers?! The apocalypse is nigh!

5. There is a joke in this somewhere:

A French civil servant has been found to have a huge cavity filled with fluid in his head — yet lives a completely normal life. Scans of the man's brain show the huge fluid-filled chamber and the thin sheet of actual brain tissue. ... [T]he man, who works as a civil servant in southern France, has succeeded in living an entirely normal life despite a huge fluid-filled cavity taking up most of the space where his brain should be.

6. Martin Durkin, author of The Great Global Warming Swindle, writes about the documentary's reception on "the ABC," an Australian channel, not to be confused with America's ABC, which lacks the definite article. He makes some excellent points and gives me hope that not all of humanity is bent on suicide and insanity.