International headlines have stacked up an impressive list of horribles for the United States this week. American embassies have been protested and attacked and an ambassador and three others were murdered. Warnings came in and were either ignored or treated as so much noise. Adequate security precautions were not taken. The president shirked most of the official briefings leading up to the eleventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks. (more…) Read more
Your diarist has long complained about the Obama campaign’s creepy sounding e-mails. So it’s only fair to note that I just got two e-mails in a row from Mitt Romney with the subject line “Fly with me.” Read more
Here’s a picture from the newly opened Goat Mountain Pizza in Bellingham. The place is tasty and has decent beer, though it’s a little odd. The weirdest bit is, during the day they sell pizza by weight. There are three blocks of uncooked pizza of different types. You pick the kind you want and the guy behind the counter scissors off a square and weighs it and then cooks it. Goat Mountain is right by the Dem campaign headquarters and... Read more
1. To understand and to spread understanding, imperfect though it may be. 2. To have fun. Read more
Boy, it is not easy to make heads-or-tails of Ayn Rand and her devotees on foreign policy. In the book Ayn Rand Nation, sloppy journalist Gary Weiss read some of Rand’s writings on war and peace, mistook her for a peacenik, and ended up asking Ayn Rand Institute board member (and soon to be president of the Cato Institute) John Allison, So why was World War II such a bad idea again? Allison sort of bumbled through an answer and... Read more
What the heart really wants to do is keep on beating. At least, that’s what my doctors tell me. The “Last Call” from the current issue of the American Spectator is a short write-up of my recent heart scare, my “ventricular cacophony,” which came to almost nothing. Though that “almost” is a pretty funny joke to most people: What the [Mayo Clinic website doesn’t] describe is the embarrassment that comes along with explaining to interested parties that you happen to... Read more
Last week, I laid out an idea for “a whole new art form” called bulletpointillism. The idea is that you, the artist, make images by firing bullets into a canvas or template in a very controlled manner. The points would paint the picture, so to speak. I had never seen such a thing before and so, after some Googling, I decided to lay claim to this one. Then I got an e-mail from Jesse Walker, all-pop-culture-knowing managing editor of Reason... Read more
The lawnmower blade pictured below tried to kill your diarist the other day. I was driving up Northwest road just above Bakerview when — pow! — there was a serious commotion with my front right tire followed by a curious metallic clanging sound. Thought I might have blown it or done something worse, so I eased the silver Subaru onto the shoulder and opened the door to investigate. The tire was intact and there wasn’t any obvious damage to the... Read more
[Rather than try to scratch up something new for 9/11 commentary, here’s the note I wrote last year. It sums up my thoughts on this awful day.] My God I am sick of 9/11 commentary. Aren’t you? I have usually managed to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks with some considered thought. But at this point I’ve nothing left to say. Now, you could argue I already did my 9/11 duty with a pair of columns (here and... Read more
Slate‘s Dave Weigel (my friend, etc., etc.) has scooped me on two points on the John Allison-Cato Institute-Ayn Rand Institute story — one minor, one major. We’ll start with the major one first, his conclusion. One of the big sticking points between Cato libertarians and Objectivists has to do with foreign policy. Cato’s foreign policy shop wants peace if possible and wars with sharply defined missions if necessary. Many Objectivists have more of a scorched Earth foreign policy. After 9/11,... Read more
Jeremy Lott's Diary
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