Things to do in the Philippines when you're imprisoned

• First up and the must-read: Glenn Greenwald demolishes the O'Hanlon/Pollack NYT Op-Ed (read it here). Really, though, what Greenwald demonstrates here is that neo-conservatism is essentially the active, vigorous foreign policy of liberalism. No wonder the Pollacks and O'Hanlons of the world gleefully continue to cheer the war. This is, in many ways, exactly the war liberals wanted to fight. Let's not forget that mainstream liberal luminaries like Paul Berman and George Packer supported the war, and that the likes of Pollack, O'Hanlon, and Hitchens continue to support the war. It was Bill Clinton who signed off on military action in 1998 and pushed the Congressional "regime change" Iraqi Liberation Act. Greenwald strikes down any notion that liberals can be "Administration critics," simply based on their credentials as "liberals." I would say that I'm shocked, shocked to find out that the media is irresponsibly reporting bullshit, but then, no, I'm not surprised at all.

• Speaking of Iraq, it looks like the Brits are so super-confident in the Bush surge's efficacy that they are planning to pull troops out regardless of what happens. Strange that amidst the brouhaha over the Bush/Brown summit, few news agencies ran with this seemingly significant story. Fake "results" or no "results," the Coalition of the Willing looks like it'll just be us and Estonia. (Also, looks like Iraq's parliament is going on vacation anyways!)

• OK, I agree mostly with this op-ed piece espousing containment as opposed to war, but how did a ragtag band of criminals become the necessary target of a whole new Cold War? Osama bin Laden is probably dead, and the damage these guys do is not crippling in the least. The global economy is chugging along regardless, and terrorism in the West has become more "aspirational" than anything. Compare the London car bombs to the subway bombings just a few years ago. I'm just wondering whether these criminals deserve a whole new Cold War, and I wonder how a Cold War against terrorists would even work. Anyways, count me a skeptic.

• Could this slippery and/or incompetent and/or evil huckster lose his job already? Please?

• Looks like colleges have found a way to stop file-sharing without banning it. Just make it really, really slow.

• Zimbabwe, please, just stop. 100,000 percent inflation?!?! How do states fail? Someday we'll look at Zimbabwe as a textbook example.

• OK, this is from Drudge, so a caveat applies. Also, I don't know how "big" this phenomenon is. If this is like that choking game idiocy last year, it's nothing that's been overblown by media. Right, so vegans are refusing to have sex with meat-eaters. I guess if you saw it as a defining moral issue, you couldn't do it any other way.

• A cool photo essay on life under Antarctic ice. Those penguins are awesome.

• Why The Simpsons is mankind's greatest achievement. Thanks, AV Club. The movie's a B+, by the way.

• GM is mysteriously making money again. Alas, this means their UAW negotiations can't go anywhere but south.

• I never saw the documentary The Bridge, and had almost entirely forgotten it. Then, this LATimes article reminded me about the Golden Gate suicide debate. I'd say the numbers need to be publicized so they can build a barrier. For San Francisco, nanny-state of all nanny-states, to say that they can't build a public safety barrier for "aesthetic" reasons, then cover up the suicides, is quite ridiculous.

• My Super Sweet 16 (or My Super Sweet 2) India-style.

• There are only 12 types of ads in the world. Seth Stevenson details them all.

• NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! FUCK!

• Also, in NOOOOO! FUCK! news, Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni die one day apart? A tragic loss.

• Remember the AFI re-100? Take a look at the Internet film community's top 100. Yeah... I'd rather have the AFI's, thanks very much. As Schmidtty has noted before, the Internet's top 100 is just a testosterone-loaded, younger AFI100 with its Die Hard (#30) and Spielberg action (Raiders and Jaws in the top 10). I suppose it makes sense, but it's unfortunate that the online film community is so... what is the word? dorky.
  

• My meta note of the day is on America's incarceration crisis. We've got a country which incarcerates a higher percentage of its citizenry than any country but North Korea, with some states' prisons are so over-crowded that they're now sending them across state lines. Meanwhile, it turns out that after getting out of jail, you're not really out of jail, whether it's through sexual offender databases or pot-smokers being prevented from voting. The result of "tough on crime" for years has just ended in prisons crammed with non-violent drug offenders, and no end in sight. We'll commute Lewis Libby's sentence, but mercy for Texas criminals who don't have ties to the President? Eh, screw it (TimesSelect). I'm just a bleeding-heart liberal crazy. Can we get rid of mandatory minimums, please? I wonder what polling information would reveal about the public's view of the prison population.

OK, it was hard to pick a winner for today's video, so I'll include the two other links I would've put on. First, the internet phenomenon of the Filipino prison "Thriller"... so I guess there's something you can do with prison overpopulation. So You Think You Can Dance: Prison Edition! Second, this remarkable video of a man asking a pertinent question for anti-abortionites... so if abortion should be illegal, what should women who abort their fetuses get as punishment? Uh, turns out, no one's been thinking about it. Huh. How 'bout that? Pro-lifers not thinking things through. Whodathunkit?
But the winner today is an older video, Nina Gordon singing "Straight Outta Compton." Even better than Ben Folds' "Bitches Ain't Shit." The incongruity is even greater.