A Google Heiress In North Korea

This is excellent (really, I'm not being sarcastic), it’s an account by Eric Schmidt’s daughter Sophie of her recent trip to North Korea with her Google-boss dad and a mixed bag of American tech people and politicians. It's marvelous; my only complaint is that she doesn’t make fun of Bill Richardson. A sample:

Ordinary North Koreans live in a near-total information bubble, without any true frame of reference. I can't think of any reaction to that except absolute sympathy. My understanding is that North Koreans are taught to believe they are lucky to be in North Korea, so why would they ever want to leave? They're hostages in their own country, without any real consciousness of it. And the opacity of the country's inner workings--down to the basics of its economy--further serves to reinforce the state's control. The best description we could come up with: it's like The Truman Show, at country scale.

Seriously: read the whole thing.

When You Wish Upon A Death Star

Wow:

An exciting new future featuring the continuation of the Star Wars movie saga was announced on October 30^th, as the Walt Disney Company enters an agreement to acquire Lucasfilm Ltd from George Lucas. Backed by the global reach and brand stewardship strengths of Disney, the future of Star Wars is now under the direction of acclaimed film producer and studio executive Kathleen Kennedy, Co-Chairman of Lucasfilm. Kennedy and Disney plan a slate of new Star Wars feature films, beginning with the long-awaited Star Wars: Episode VII, targeted for release in 2015, followed by Episodes VIII and IX. Additional feature films are expected to continue the saga and grow the franchise well into the future.

Twitter just exploded yesterday afternoon when that announcement was made.  I thought it had to be a put-on when I saw the first blurb from Reuters, but it's the real thing.

Jonah Goldberg had what I suspect is a representative take at NRO, starting with fear (which, as we know, is the path to the Dark Side) and eventually rolling into guarded optimism.  I tend to agree, and although as Jim Geraghty noted, we're talking about the same studio that recently gave the world the lovely flop known as John Carter, Disney usually knows what they're doing.

Better still, Disney employs Brad Bird, who would be hands-down the best choice to write and direct the now on-again Star Wars sequels, the long gestation of which George Lucas has finally re-admitted, after a couple of decades of denying that he'd ever had any such thing in mind.

After seeing his prior work in The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille, I'd probably buy a ticket to watch Bird reading his grocery list.  There's no serious question that Bird can write rings around Lucas, and his live-action debut in the last Mission: Impossible movie showed he's got the action movie chops as a director. Hopefully Lucasfilm's new Mouse overlords are smart enough to put him in charge of their new Empire.

So, Let Me Get This Straight

The overwhelming political objective of the Democratic Party since the 1930’s has been to get as many people as possible enrolled in one government program or another, at least in part to guarantee their votes in subsequent elections: “Tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and elect.” 

And now it’s somehow a scandal when a Republican notes that they succeeded, to the tune of nearly half the country?

Am I missing something?

Aunt Dee

Connie Dee Brown, of Albertville, Alabama, died on Saturday, July 28, 2012, in Birmingham after a brief illness, two months shy of her 97th birthday.

Connie was born on Sept. 19, 1915, in Hustleville, the daughter of Arnold Chambers and Ola Johnson Chambers. She was the eldest and longest-surviving of three sisters. She graduated from Albertville High School in 1935, and afterwards ran her own beauty shop in Albertville.

Connie married Roy Rodger Brown in 1957, and together they operated Roy’s Restaurant in Albertville for many years. Upon Roy’s retirement from the Bryant Line Furniture Company, Connie and Roy began many happy years as the most famed anglers in north Alabama, including spending every day one entire year fishing on their beloved Lake Guntersville. Roy Brown passed away on Oct. 9, 1997, after 40 years of happy marriage.

Connie was an active member of First United Methodist Church of Albertville and the Fairview United Methodist Church in Hustleville, leading Sunday School classes and church events too numerous to count. She was an avid Rook player, never missing weekly games with her close friends to the end of her life.

She was a steady and loving anchor of her family, providing care for her sisters and brothers-in-law in their own latter days.

 Connie was preceded in death by her husband, Roy; her sister, Ruby Jo Weir; brother-in-law, Joyce Weir; sister, Bernell Chambers Lowery and brother-in-law, Brelen A. Lowery; and her niece, Lynda Lowery Collier. She is survived by her niece, Lauren Elizabeth Lowery; great-nephew, William B. Collier III; great-niece, Killy Collier Mingus; and great-great-nephews, Collier and Matthew Mingus.

Aunt Dee’s family wishes to thank her many dear friends and neighbors for their aid and kindness during her long life, with particular thanks to Margie King for her devotion and care.

A graveside service at Memory Hill Cemetery in Albertville was held on Tuesday, July 31, at 11 a.m.

We Are All Afghans Now

From Jake Tapper at ABC, yesterday:

"What we fail to understand was that the Afghan people largely wanted to be left alone and they hate their government, in many cases, as much as they hate the insurgents. And when we went to them and said, 'Ah, we're coming here to help bring your government to you.' They said, 'Whoa we don't want out [sic] government!'"

All the Afghans wanted, says Chandrasekaran, was to be left alone, "and we didn't get that."

Imagine that.

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012

Twenty years ago, I put this quote at the front of my master's thesis in aerospace engineering:

"The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them."

It was taken from Bradbury's collection R Is For Rocket. Despite his many volumes of science fiction stories, Bradbury actually knew next to nothing about rockets or astronomy or science. That didn't matter. He knew everything about the human heart.

True then. True today. Thank you, Ray. Clear skies.

Fly-Over "Journalism" From The LA Times

I have a new column up at PJ Media about the LA Times' lame attempt to report on former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman's recent failed appeal of his corruption convictions.  Here's a preview:

Much of [reporter David G.] Savage's article is downright funny (although not always in a ha-ha way) if you were previously familiar with either Siegelman or Alabama.  In attempting to explain the strange creatures from this mysterious hinterland to his La-La Land readership, Savage tosses up this doozy:

Siegelman was the rare Democrat who could win in Alabama. He had also won election as Alabama's secretary of state, attorney general and lieutenant governor. But his career ended when Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys charged him with corruption.

Well, I suppose that's one way to put it.  That is, if you either (a) don't actually know anything about the political history of Alabama, or (b) are anxious to put a pro-Siegleman spin on the whole affair. 

While all of Alabama's statewide offices did flip--and severely--to the GOP in the 2010 elections, prior to that watershed year "Dirty Don" was far from rare as a Democratic officeholder.  The state legislature had been majority Democrat for an astonishing 136 consecutive years prior to 2010.  The lieutenant governor's office, which Siegelman held from 1995-1999, has had exactly two Republican occupants (the last Democrat was Jim Folsom, Jr., who served until 2011) in the state's post-Reconstruction history.

...

Savage also gets plain points of fact wrong regarding Siegelman's prosecution, claiming of the first of two corruption trials for Siegelman, "To the surprise of many, a jury in Birmingham acquitted him on all the counts in 2005."

But that's not what happened.  Savage didn't even get the year of Siegelman's first trial right.

The 2004 (not 2005) case never went to a jury.  The charges were summarily thrown out by now-retired Carter appointee U.W. Clemon, an old political associate of Siegelman's, and in his day one of the most nakedly-partisan Federal Judges in the country. 

Here's the whole thing.