Under the rubric of a review of the current remake of The Quiet American, Mark Steyn holds forth on European and Canadian attitudes towards America and its President.

The American is still quiet but the Euro-Canadians get noisier in proportion to their impotence. American naivety transformed Japan and Germany. Anglo-French worldliness gave us Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and thereby September 11. If it takes centuries of "experience" in the region to invent Pakistan, then how much worse can a blundering Yank moron do?

Of course, Claude Rains (as Capt Luis Renault) said it best:

Major Strasser: [About Rick.] You give him credit for too much cleverness. My impression was that he's just another blundering American.

Renault: We musn't underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918.

(Steyn, incidentally, has a new site providing pointers to his latest writings; link courtesy of Sarge.)

This one is a personal matter; I feel the need to vent. If you're looking for political discussion, move on to the next item.

I'd been having trouble with my driver's side car door for several days; the inside panel had come loose from the frame. On the way back from a family visit in Oklahoma, the problem became critical: preparing to leave from a stopover in Dallas, I found that the door would no longer latch.

I needed to tie the door shut to make the car even marginally driveable. I had nothing with me which was suitable to do that.

There was a convenience store nearby, and I went in looking for something useable. Twine? No. Duct tape? No. What did they have?

Shoelaces.

I bought two pairs of sneaker laces for $0.99 apiece, and used them to lash the door to the center post and the frame of the back door. I was able to close the windows, though they no longer made a tight seal. I then drove this mess back to Houston (250 miles!), with the car feebly beeping every couple of minutes to notify me that the driver's door was "ajar".

After an early-morning dropoff and one day driving a rental (a Ford Escape, a "mini-SUV" -- making it only somewhat politically incorrect, I guess), I got my car back noon yesterday. Satisfaction: I'd also gotten them to do the 60,000 mile service and replace the brake pads, so that vehicle was more than restored to its previous dim lustre.

So what happened on the way to work today?

I got rear-ended.

It never ends, does it?

Michael Moore is disconsolate over the election results. I'm not above a little schadenfreude, but we've got more important things on our national agenda than watching the big man blubber. I only note this in order to, er, note this:

Only about 20% of the American people showed up three weeks ago to vote for a Republican. That's it. Just 20%. And about 19% voted for a Democrat (an amazing number considering how few fights the Democrats put up around the country).

And 61% said, "To hell with all of them!" and refused to show up and vote.

I am not surprised this happened. My greatest fear after the 2000 election was that the majority of Americans would just give up and say, "Why bother?"

Meanwhile, back in reality, here are the last few mid-term voter turnout numbers (as a percentage of the voting-age population):

1998: 36.4% 1994: 38.78% 1990: 36.52% 1986: 36.40% 1982: 39.79% 1978: 37.21% 1974: 38.23% 1970: 46.60% 1966: 48.39% 1962: 47.27%

(Source: Federal Election Commission, details here and here.)

So in fact, the voter turnout of 39% in 2002 was typical for a mid-term election, maybe even a little on the high side.

(BTW: Why the big decrease from 1970 to 1974? Whenever you see an anomaly in the US population statistics in the latter half of the 20th century, and ask yourself "why?", nine times out of ten the answer is, "the Baby Boom" -- in this case, the entry of the Boomers into the pool of voting-age citizens. The effect is magnified here by the 1971 ratification of the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.)

I don't believe that Trent Lott is really a racist. After all, that would require that he actually believes in something.

Yeah, the "Lott" puns are getting a little strained; I think Acidman used up the last good one with "Vacant Lott", and when you find yourself trying to do a Sodom and Gomorrah pun, it's time to give up.

But just think of all the punnish fun we'll have if Lott is succeeded by Bill Frist: "Frist Clenched in Anger"; "Frist Fight", "What's on Second, Who's on Frist", "FristWatch", etc.

UPDATE 11-Dec-2002: Dammit, Jonah used my title, or something close to it. We need some kind of pun registration system, with mandatory background checks, waiting periods, and so on.

Jonah touches -- a bit more gracefully -- on the same point I made, that Lott almost certainly isn't a racist, but he isn't much of anything else either. And that that was the reason conservatives weren't coming to his defense, where they would have gone to the mat for a more principled and competent leader. Read it.