The expectations of children grow to match whatever their parents happen to do. If I brought home a pony on Monday and another pony on Tuesday, by Wednesday the boys would be greeting me at the door with “Where’s the pony?”

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At 36, he is inexperienced but full of idealism and unlikely to get worn down by world-weary professors in the front desks who have seen it all before. As Peter Dobrin has reported, the players liked him more than any other guest conductor in the past couple of years.

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Lot of journalist vs. journalist stuff of late:  Last week was the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel quitting/being fired over the outting of messages about other journalists (and conservatives he was covering) that he posted on a listserv called JournoList.  Weigel, who is somewhat conservative (though admittedly more on the cultural libertarian part of the spectrum) responded to the controversy over here. The issue got even more messy when liberal Ezra Klein (who still blogs for the W. Post) owner of the liberal-filled JournoList noted that one of the outlets that exposed Weigel’s emails was Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller — not so long after Carlson asked to join JournoList and was turned down.  

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Wasn’t Obama the guy who said during the 2008 campaign that if he were elected president, he’d usher in a new era of bipartisanship, listen to and work with Republicans, transform American politics and bring it into the 21st century, and heal the political divisions of the past?

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On June 7, I submitted a post describing the odd connection between victory in the World Cup and a nation’s fascist legacy. Briefly, with the exception of Great Britain in 1966, by a disputed goal in overtime against Germany, every World Cup champion since the beginning of competition in 1930 has had a fascist government at some time in its history. News you can use?

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SIGNED, SEALED, AND DELIVERED

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The Obama administration is urging the Senate to ratify the US-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty — but it won’t release the negotiating record for “New START” to senators who’ve asked for it.

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Hugo Chavez, the whacked-out Venezuelan leader who is meeting with the terrorist-leaning head of Syria this week, called Israel a “genocidal” country in a speech in which he informed the latter that the United States and Israel are the world’s most despicable nations.

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Tom Cruise bombed at the box office over the weekend, but a mosque being built at Ground Zero is apparently a big hit. Americans just can’t forget the actor’s antics the way they did 9/11. [End.]

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If, on Sept. 12, 2001, I’d gone around telling people that in a few years we were going to hand major port security and operations over to the United Arab Emirates, they would have told me I was certifiable. If I had then told them that a few years later, the proposed memorial for the victims of Flight 93 would be in the shape of an Islamic crescent, they would have shipped me off to a sanitarium. If I then proceeded to tell them that a couple years after that plans would be approved for a mosque to be built yards from Ground Zero, they would have lobotomized me. If I also announced that in the midst of all this we would elect someone named “Hussein” president, they would have slipped a razor into my cell and turned a blind eye while I did us all a favor.

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The older boy wanted to go to the book fair at Printers Row last Sunday, but by the time we set down our books and mobilized to leave, it was almost 3 p.m., barely enough time to properly see the thing.

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While Americans focus on the significant challenges at home, they must also not forget the growing national security challenges that our nation faces abroad. The world remains a dangerous place, populated with states and groups that hold — or could hold — America and its interests around the world at risk.

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President George W. Bush called the battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan critical to our short and long-term national security.

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It is not a crime to smoke cigarettes at home — not yet, anyway. Nor is it a crime to be in debt. But a dozen states have laws a judge hearing a divorce case can use to deny custody to the smoking parent. And recently, aggressive creditors are getting judges to jail those who fall behind on their debts, a whiff of Dickens’ workhouse in the 21st century.

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If the truth can set you free, it also can land you in some trouble. Just ask U.S. Rep. Joe Barton   or Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

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By now we’ve all heard about President Obama’s fiercely uninspiring speech regarding the BP spill. There he was, in his first ever Oval Office address: stern . . . fastidious . . . reassuring the American people that his administration has done everything in its power to clean up after this historic environmental calamity. Quite the contrast to the Commander-in-Chief of just a few weeks ago, where multiple rounds of golf, a couple concerts and two vacations topped the list on the Executive docket. Meanwhile, Governor Bobby Jindal is trying to move heaven and earth to prevent the encroaching spill from spoiling his shores.

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In one of the wonderful ironies that history loves to deliver, a son of Strom Thurmond — the man who defined South Carolina hardball racial politics for decades — lost a GOP primary runoff to an African-American Republican called Tim Scott.

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Lang, an American, was installed at DG as the executive arm of Chris Roberts, president of Universal Classics and Jazz, whose writ reduced the famous label from standard-bearer of classical performance to ambulance chaser of crossover trash. Roberts is leaving the job in October and his structure is being demolished daily beneath him.

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Shortly after President Obama assumed the Commander-in-Chief duties, he retired the existing commanding general in Afghanistan and hand-picked his successor: General Stanley McChrystal. McChystal was always known as a brash and outspoken military man, an expert in counterinsurgency, greatly respected by the troops under his command, and as having little patience for fools.

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I know General McChrystal apologized for being indiscreet in a Rolling Stone interview yet again. Believe it if you wish. I do not. He has shown signs of wear and tear for some time. I think he’s had it and would be thrilled to be fired. He feels he does not have the tools (45,000 soldiers) to win. The opposite is true. His enemies know the date of his departure and are cutting deals in advance. His soldiers are dying in vein. Civilians sent to help him are actively undermining the little chance of success he has left. The president he serves is busy playing golf.

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Politico reports that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has been “summoned” to Washington from Kabul over “biting and unflattering remarks” he and his staff made to Rolling Stone magazine about members of the Obama administration, including Obama himself. The general is now winging homeward for a meeting with the president tomorrow. “The face-to-face comes as pundits are already calling for McChrystal to resign for insubordination.”

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Are you a feminist or a leftist? Do you cheer women who break glass ceilings or are you frustrated with the attention paid to the persecution of Muslim women and the rise of Conservative women? Feminists like Laura Bush and Sarah Palin had little difficulty celebrating the success of Hillary Clinton. But the same cannot be said about leftists claiming to be feminists. They have long learned to ignore the plight of Muslim women so inconveniently highlighted by Hirsi Ali. Now the success of Conservative feminists drive them batty. The response to Ross Douthat column No Mystic about Feminism is quite illuminating. Scott M. Auerbach from California points out most reasonably:

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Lenin predicted that capitalists will sell the rope with which Communists will hang them. At the moment, one must wonder if debt is not the rope with which the slave world will hang the free one. Alan Greenspan warns that we will soon begin to feel the noose. But Krugman worries that if we stop spending we will end up in a 1930s type depression. Reading a review of Raghuram Rajan book on Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy it struck me yet again that US problem lies not merely in borrowing too much but in borrowing too much to keep up consumption.

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     If you lament that Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous devolved into The Real Housewives of New Jersey;  if you watch the Food Channel and salivate over airbrushed food;  if you read Vanity Fair, Avenue and the Thursday Style section of the NYT - your film to see is I Am Love.  From the opening scenes of a snowy Milan and the gorgeous villa whose chilly inhabitants are adumbrated by the precipitous weather, to the lush furnishings, clothes, hairstyles, plants, textiles, boardrooms, table-settings, meals and music - you are in the element of super-rich indulgence.  Even the omnipresent cadre of uniformed servants move elegantly through their appointed tasks, overseen by a major domo who is clad in classic matron chic.  But what is so mouth-watering to view is less palatable to swallow and digest.

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From my point of view, we are not even close to solving this problem because BP doesn’t understand the basic physics of what’s going on in the world of very high pressures and/or still wants to save their wellhead. It’s very difficult when you know exactly where BP is going wrong but feel powerless to stop it.

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Her birth name is Corie Elizabeth Hurley. But, she prefers to be called Anastasia Hurley, which is her Orthodox saint’s name. She is the reason I never became a priest. I wanted to be married so I could have a child. From the moment she entered this world on September 19, 1984, she has dominated my heart and my life. I have never loved anyone as much as Corie Beth. Sweet, kind, intelligent, sentimental, relentless, loves the underdog, vulnerable with a smile that lights up everyone around her, she is the most memorable person I know. I love my daughter beyond words. And, I have not seen or heard from her in three years. I do not expect Father’s Day tomorrow to change that fact. I will pretend it is just another day.

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I just have to break down this stunningly titled piece that was published last week in the Washington Times:

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FT reports that some investors were not surprised by the deadly Gulf disaster. They’ve expected it and stayed away from the stock:

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Today, President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will kick off yet another PR stunt: “Recovery Summer!” This will be a six-week-long push to highlight all of those jobs created by “stimulus” spending. Over $1 trillion of it. As they celebrate all of those “Recovery Act” jobs, they won’t tell you that they are dead-end public sector jobs, paid for—in spades—by YOU and that they end when the project ends.

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Here’s my Wall Street Journal review of a new biography of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton — actors, fighters, boozers.

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Anyone who read Obama’s books should have expected as much but few took him at his word. Now they are learning to do so. The Economist editors write (6/12/10 p. 13): “Mr Obama deserves to be pegged back. This newspaper supported him in 2008 and backed his disappointing-but-necessary health-care plan. But he has done little to fix the deficit, shown a zeal for big government and all too often given the impression that capitalism is something unpleasant he found on the sole of his sneaker. ”

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Bremner fears joke about Islam would mean death

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Last night, the president sat somberly behind his big desk, folded his hands next to the red phone, and droned on about the Gulf oil crisis.

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The blame game seems to be a pretty popular sport these days. One the left has played to perfection. Did you see they’re blaming George W. Bush for splitting up Al and Tipper Gore? It’s those kinds of hysterics that make your Chairman a little hesitant to start pointing fingers whenever something goes wrong, but if there is someone to blame for this BP disaster, let’s look at some of the original culprits.

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Islamist may demand respect for their own religion but they show none to others. Once again, they are doing their best to make sure that the Jewish and Christian Sabbaths will be disrupted. Iran war on Israel is focusing on the efforts to break the blockade on Hamas ruled Gaza. Success would enable Iran to ensure that its Hamas proxy would be in possession of missiles able to bring life in central Israel to a halt as her other proxy, Hezbollah, has been able to do in Northern Israel. Such vulnerability, Iran figures would go a long way towards convincing Israel that it has no choice but to live with a nuclear Iran. The thoughtless Western support for ending the blockade on Gaza in the aftermath of the Mavi Marmara IHH/IDF battle, presented an irresistible opportunity.

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