London’s Daily Telegraph dubs Matt Drudge the “world’s most powerful journalist” in yet another testament to how the internet is sweeping the old world away.

Michelle Obama, who used to work for one of the most prestigious law firms in America, told a group of young supporters at a local day-care center they should avoid the professions and “corporate America” and instead pursue careers as social workers and so forth.

More leftist “do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do” of course, but it rings a little hollow from the well-heeled Mrs. Obama, who proceeded to moan and cry for a bit about how much she has to spend on piano and dance lessons for her two children, an amount equivalent to almost 1/3 of the median household income of the town in which she was speaking.

Barack Obama could not be where he is today if he’d followed Michelle’s advice to these young women, who live in a town where only 12.2% of adults have a college degree and 20% are high school dropouts. But this is the left’s line, from Chicago to Cambodia to Chelyabinsk: the proletariat should “serve the needs of society”, while the elites should organize everyone for the greater good.

Has it ever occurred to you that socialism is just the old aristocracy, dressed up for a politically correct age?

Here’s a really insightful piece — a three-page essay for the leftist Time magazine — by George Bush’s most unlikely fan, Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof. Geldof and pal Bono are among the world’s most dedicated activists in the cause of relieving African suffering, and both take the view that George W. Bush has done more for Africa than anyone else alive.

Which, of course is true; although, as Geldof points out, you (tragically) aren’t likely to know it.

Geldof’s rather strong differences with Bush come through loud and clear in the essay, which only serves to highlight all the more the degree of his admiration for the President, the transformative nature of what the Administration has done in Africa, and the degree to which this foreigner is willing to work “across the aisle” in an important cause when his American co-partisans are not. Demonizing your opponents has become the first resort of the American left. It would appear Bob Geldof didn’t get the memo.

The “virtual fence” isn’t working. Perhaps they should build a real one?

Story from page A-1 of the Washington Post.

UPDATE: Very interesting piece by Buchanan on this. Worth a look.

William F. Buckley’s passing today surprised everyone, and greatly saddened millions who have been touched by his life.

Perhaps the greatest sadness in this — for Buckley is surely with his Lord this day — is that it is mere millions and not billions who will miss him; for surely the entire world has benefited from his wisdom and tireless advocacy for freedom, the transformative global change his ideas begat, and the spread of a renewed belief in liberty which had been all but exhausted when his work began.

From Prime Ministers to Presidents to a little girl — my Sherri — sitting with her daddy watching Firing Line, those indelibly marked by his insight are all around us, in a world far better than that which Whittaker Chambers and Joseph Schumpeter imagined possible, believing in the inevitability of Communism as surely as they passionately promoted a different path. They did not believe their work could bear fruit; but Buckley did, the impetuous youth standing up in his day to an older, tireder generation, “standing athwart history crying ‘Stop!’” And stop it did: with the collapse of not only the Soviet Empire but the Keynesian and socialist mire into which the West had fallen too, and the rise of a new dawn of freedom, all made possible because someone not only nurtured the ideas but provided the hope required for victory.

The left, now at least nominally led by Barack Obama, preaches “change” and “hope” too, but the change they preach is a return to the old lost path, one of serfdom, of drones, of cogs in a statist machine. You can call it socialism, you can call it fascism, but what it is, on its very best day, is bleak, and dark, and hopeless.

It is up to us to stop this false hope, this “change” for change’s sake; and not just when it appears in one party, but wherever it shows its face. It is a task worthy of the great Buckley. It is our duty to rise to the occasion, to fill his shoes, and to triumph. His whole life was spent to make that possible. Now it’s up to us.

Lisa Fabrizio cuts to the chase, at the American Spectator.

He left out Charlie Rangel, unfortunately. Clip from the CNBC story (which includes the video):

The US economy will avoid recession as the housing market begins to recover this spring, according to billionaire investor Sam Zell.

Speaking on “Squawk Box” this morning, Zell attributed much of the current economic troubles to fear-mongering and politicking by Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

“Obviously what we have going on is an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Zell, chairman of Equity Investments Group and owner of the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other companies. “We have two Democratic candidates who are vying with each other to describe the economic situation worse.

Anyone else remember “the worst economy in 50 years”?

Interesting article on the rapidly advancing technologies our military (as well as South Korea’s, Israel’s, and others) are deploying on the battlefield, and the potential ethical implications as they become more and more like the Terminator.

As a big supporter of many of these things who nevertheless does not wish to be annihilated by Skynet, I think it’s worth some thought.

The hard evidence is in: a twelve-month long drop in world temperatures just wiped out a century of warming. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

According to the report, the cooling is pretty dramatically driven by the sunspot cycle — as this blog has been reporting for several years now — and not by still-climbing CO2 emissions. As the report says, “While the data doesn’t itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.”

Ya think? Really? A gigantic nearby star has more effect on our tiny planet’s climate than, say, Al Gore’s SUV?

Could that have also been true when Earth (and several other planets, according to NASA data) were warming, you know, because the Solar cycle was really really active for a number of years?

So it seems. And though this may save us from some nasty global socialism, the irony is pretty rich. As the story puts it, “Let’s hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat.”

Yeah. Sure is, Al. It sure is.

Apple’s iTunes store is now the number 2 music retailer in America, behind only Wal-Mart. 50 million customers and they sold 20 million songs on Christmas Day alone. Impressive.