… doesn’t sound like “fireworks,” unfortunately. Also continued post-election updates from Iraq from ITM. Omar and Mohammed have been covering the story at least as well as anyone I have seen, in or out of the MSM.

Neo-neocon has written again (and eloquently, as usual) of her favorite topic, political change - who makes it, why and what happens. This time (in response to an essay by “Bookworm“) she is dealing with the unease many feel (especially blue staters) about coming out to their friends about their political views:

The second reason I tell friends [about my change] is actually more important, because it’s not about me. It’s this: if I don’t speak up, and if people like me (and Bookworm, and her other crypto-con friends) don’t speak up and “out” ourselves, then it simply perpetuates the myths of those who consider The Other Side to be monstrous.

It’s easy to move through life in a liberal bubble if everyone around who disagrees is silent and invisible. The only way to change that is to challenge it by standing up, speaking out, and bursting the bubble. It’s very difficult; but you may find, as I did, that most of your worthwhile relationships survive the blow, although many are never quite the same again.

Indeed!

And neo-neocon does not even blog under her real name. As one who does, I can tell her that the level of “sticker shock” is of a yet higher level (she probably knows that - hence the nom de blog). To be honest, however, when I started blogging almost three years ago now, I had little thought, despite whatever notoriety I had as a novelist and screenwriter, that anyone was paying any real attention. In fact, I started blogging just to promote a book and did not give whatever political change I was undergoing that much attention. I mean who could care, right?

Wrong.

A surprising number of people I knew were paying a great deal of attention. Hardly anyone I talked to in Hollywood did not know “something had happened to Roger Simon, the man who created Moses Wine.” Let’s leave aside for the moment my contention that they had changed but I hadn’t. I was disturbed. No one likes to be a pariah, but there I was. To many of my friends I was a threatening figure, although they didn’t want to admit it, so chalked my current views up to my neuroses or whatever. You’d have to ask them. Once, when blogging at the Republican convention, I ran into an old left/liberal friend covering the same event for the usual suspects. He laughed at my presence and said “You’ll be back some day,” meaning those views were a temporary aberration. (There were other far more insulting moments that I will go into at another time.) I winced and wondered.

Now, I don’t. The truth, as I gradually learned, is there is no “back” to go back to, even if I so desired. The left n’existe pas. It’s over. There’s no there there, as Gertrude famously said - only a boring and aging social club trying to preserve their perks. It won’t work. Neo-neocon doesn’t have to worry as much as she thinks she does, nor does the yet more apprehensive, though immensely sympathetic, “Bookworm” she quotes. Although I still think “sisterhood is powerful” and all that, this is not about men and women (as Bookworm supposes). It’s about common sense. Pardon my bluntness, but screw on some cojones. If you lose friends who are so pathetically stupid (and mired in projection) to think world affairs revolve around the putative lack of intelligence of George Bush (who did better at Yale than John Kerry anyway, as the New York Times, of all places, informed us), those friends probably are not nearly as bright as you thought they were - certainly nowhere near as emotionally or morally sophisticated. Also, they have a stong streak of cowardice. As neo-neocon knows well and has written extensively, these people are far less willing to examine their assumptions than the Bookworms of the world for fear of their own personality disintegrations. And maybe, if truth be told, they do have something to be afraid of in that regard. That, far more than ostracism, is the tragic dilemma which we must all confront on a daily basis.

… sounds a little like “Miss Otis Regrets,” doesn’t it? Anyway, TigerHawk does some graphing to show us the egregious failures of the NYT when it comes to economic prognostication, a fool’s game for most of us, but for the Grey Lady nach ein ander opportunity to bash the Bush administration. What does Suzlberger care that they are dead wrong again? His niche market has no memory … or does it?

And speaking of memory and the NYT, perhaps I missed something, but I’m still waiting for someone to enlighten me on the difference between the NSA’s Echelon program of the 1990s and the current “misuse” of that intelligence agency recently posited by the Xenophons of Zabars. I guess the niche market isn’t listening. There are sales at Bloomingdale’s.

UPDATE: Now the Justice Department is weighing in on what could emerge as one of the most bloody government/press face-offs of our time:

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush’s secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said the paper will not comment on the investigation.

I’m betting it’s the Times that has more to lose than the government in this one. They are going to have to explain why they held onto this story for a year and then suddenly decided it was okay to release it. New York Times stock has plummeted in the last quarter. How much lower can it go?

Seems like every time Sheryl and I go to Seattle (which is twice in the last couple of years), we go crazy from overeating … at least I do. Tonight, working my way through the signature coconut cream pie at the Dahlia Lounge … after a Manhattan straight up, a bowl of duck noodle soup, several slices of black and green olive bread and a generous portion of Snake River Farms pork tenderloin with carmelized pearl onions and (I think) braised kale … all this after a breakfast quiche at the Macrina Bakery and a quick lunch of sukiyaki and rice at the Uwajimaya Market … I found myself thinking back to my college production of Molière’s “The Miser” (in which I played Valere, the romantic lead; how long ago was that!) and the playwright’s immortal words of warning: “You should eat to live, not live to eat.”

I made it well into my middle years without following his advice. And now there seems little chance I will everheed it. Yesterday we made what now feels like an annual pilgrimage to the Barking Frog in Woodinville where I ate my first ever grilled antelope (from a ranch in Texas; okay, not sensational) washed down by a complement of Washington reds (much better than the antelope, as were the oysters from Whidby Island’s Penn Cove and the bread pudding with maple ice cream).

Oh, and I forgot… the homemade donuts with mascarpone at the Dahlia Lounge. (Whoever invented Lipitor is the greatest human being since DaVinci.)

Drew Thornley of My Take writes of the honor killings in Pakistan:

The mainstream American media spent months covering in detail the “atrocities”at Abu Ghraib and continues to give negative press to allegations of inhumane treatment at the hands of American soldiers. As of December 28, 2005, Google searches of “honor killings” and “honor murders” returned 365,000 and 643 results, respectively, while “Abu Ghraib” returned 15,900,000. While few “honor murderers” pay for their crimes, those who perpetrated crimes at Abu Ghraib were dealt with swiftly. They were prosecuted and sentenced; justice was served. The saga of Abu Ghraib should have resulted in negative press for a few shameful soldiers but positive press for the military as a whole due to its response to the events. Yet the events at Abu Ghraib pale in comparison to the real atrocities that receive little or no attention by the same media, such as the crisis in Darfur, Castro’s jailing and/or murder of political dissidents, the May 2005 massacre of public demonstrators in Andijan, Uzbekistan, and the hundreds of “honor murders” committed each year.

When you read this paragraph, you realize there is a deep psychological disturbance in our mainstream media, a kind of willed need to ignore the world around them. It probably was, more or less, forever thus, but modern communications, specifically the internet, have brought this willed ignorance to the surface as never before. And yet the MSM continues in the same direction, even in the face of seeming economic failure.

Sheryl and I were discussing this phenomenon this afternoon with our friend Gerard who reminded us of the obvious. Many of these media outlets that keep ignoring what is happening in the world while trumpeting every US failure are increasingly playing to niche audiences in our society. They have no real interest, financial or otherwise, in the truth - or in the future of humanity, really (that last is my observation).

Those who justify so-called “suicide” bombing on any level, even those who rationalize it through “poverty” or some other supposedly socio-economic reason, ought to examine their own sadism. The hostility of the jihadists toward their own people is monumental.

UPDATE: Speaking of sadists, Saddam’s lawyer has written Bush that reinstating the former dictator who cut out people’s tongues is the solution for Iraq’s ills.

MORE evidence of sadism here. It’s that kind of day.

Michael Totten visits Libya.

… bravo! (via American Thinker)

You remember - the one in which former Oil-for-Food head Benon Sevan’s aunt had the unfortunate accident. In her latest WSJ opinion piece, Claudia tells us for the incredible visit by Hyde Committee investigators to Cyrprus where they met Mr. Sevan himslef. [Time to go back to mystery writing.-ed. You couldn't make anything like this up. You don't have to.]

But to such sketchy accounts, investigators for Rep. Henry Hyde’s International Relations Committee are now prepared to add some illuminating details–starting with their encounter with Mr. Sevan himself, less than three months ago, in Cyprus. As it happens, they were not expecting to find Mr. Sevan in person. They went to Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, trying to track down details of the case, including the fate of Mr. Sevan’s deceased aunt, Bertouji Zeytountsian. By Mr. Sevan’s account to Mr. Volcker, this aunt, while living in Nicosia as a retired government worker on a pension, had sent him funds totaling some $160,000 during the last four years in which he was running Oil for Food, 1999-2003. The day after the U.N. investigation into Oil for Food was announced, in March, 2004, Zeytountsian fell down an elevator shaft in her Cyprus apartment building. A few months later, she died.

The investigators turned to go, and, as one of them recounts, as they headed for the stairs, Mr. Sevan told them, “You can take the elevator. It’s fixed now.”

Glad to hear it.

Given continued revelations about the Syrian regime (the Hariri assassination and others), I am interested if anyone knows any follow-up to my postings on here last January about Syrian dissident writer Nizar Nayouf. At that time Nayouf, a man of considerable distinction according several human rights organizations, was telling the world nefarious things about his native country. From the Washington Times coverage:

Syria’s Central Bank and the Medina Bank in Lebanon are holding at least $2 billion in cash, as well as gold bullion and platinum, that was smuggled out of Iraq, according to a letter written on the stationery of the Syrian army’s intelligence department.
The letter says $1.3 billion was deposited in the Syrian Central Bank in an official “presidency” account, while another $700 million was placed in the Medina Bank. The document does not state the value of the gold and platinum, although it says these are also in the Syrian Central Bank.
The handwritten letter to a Syrian exile in Europe, which also bears what appears to be the official stamp of the Syrian army intelligence department, says the deal was struck not long before a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq early last year.
The document was sent to Nizar Nayouf, an exiled Syrian human-rights activist and past winner of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Press Freedom Prize who is living in Paris.
While the claims in the letter could not be further verified, Mr. Nayouf, a journalist and democracy activist who was released from a Syrian prison in May 2001, said past information provided by the same person had proved reliable.
The letter names two members of the Lebanese parliament as go-betweens.

To what extent has this been followed up? To what extent has the possibility that Saddam outsourced his WMDs to Syria at the same time as his money been researched? You can bet our mainstream media won’t waste a nickle on the task. Not part of their narrative. But this is one of the great stories of the Iraq War. And it just sits there.

(Hint: The French website Proche-Orient.info is a good place to start).