SOME EXCELLENT LOCAL-BLOGGING from SKBubba, here (regarding radiation at Oak Ridge) and here (regarding sundry local political shenanigans.)
That’s OK — at least we’re better than Montgomery County!
Archive for 2005
May 12, 2005
HOME: The Insta-Wife is reclining comfortably, reading a magazine.
ANOTHER BUCHANAN-FISKING, this one from Stephen Green:
It took 40 years, but today Pat Buchanan hit bottom on the slippery slope from Young Turk conservative columnist to Nazi Apologist troglodyte.
Ouch. And that’s just the beginning.
UPDATE: Clayton Cramer writes:
I will tell you, if this was an essay written by a high school student, or even a college student, I would assume that he did not understand the history of that time. But Pat Buchanan knows better. I have long resisted the popular leftist view that Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite. Reading essays like this makes such a position more and more sensible.
It’s not just leftists who think that.
ROGER SIMON NOTES an Ivy League upset, as bloggers Peter Robinson and Todd Zywicki appear to have won seats on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees.
UPDATE: It’s official. Hugh Hewitt observes: “The message the Robinson-Zywicki election sends is simple, and I think of much wider applicability than just Dartmouth: Colleges and universities are out of touch with large segments of their alums, and those alums do not like the policies and practices they read about at their alma maters.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: I think it’s more likely to work than this approach.
HERE’S MORE ON CONDI RICE and the right to bear arms:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, recalling how her father took up arms to defend fellow blacks from racist whites in the segregated South, said Wednesday the constitutional right of Americans to own guns is as important as their rights to free speech and religion.
In an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Rice said she came to that view from personal experience. She said her father, a black minister, and his friends armed themselves to defend the black community in Birmingham, Ala., against the White Knight Riders in 1962 and 1963. She said if local authorities had had lists of registered weapons, she did not think her father and other blacks would have been able to defend themselves.
Now that she’s Secretary of State, she has an opportunity to press for treating the right to arms as an international human right. Sure, most governments don’t recognize it now, and are shocked at the suggestion. But that’s true with all newly-recognized rights:
After all, the human rights community has long argued that all sorts of dramatic changes in international law are justified if they might make genocide unlikely and has been nothing less than flexible in discovering such “post-first-generation” human rights as “developmental rights,” “environmental rights” and a “right to peace.”
Surely a right to defend oneself against massacre — particularly when, once again, the international community has failed miserably to prevent genocide in Darfur — is as plausible as those others.
UPDATE: Countertop Chronicles notes that the transcript is up, and this stuff isn’t in it. Poking around, I found this story from the L.A. Times, which says that the interview “was taped for airing Wednesday night.” So maybe they cut it out of the broadcast part?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Yep, that’s what happened. Thanks to reader Joe Zwers, here’s a link to the full interview transcript.
I’M HOSPIBLOGGING AGAIN: The InstaWife is in for a minor procedure, except that they have to have a cardiologist in for it to turn off her ICD before, and then restart it after, which means it has to be done in a hospital. Yuk. I’m pretty tired of hospitals.
USA TODAY is writing about milblogs, and here’s an interesting tidbit:
Many of the soldiers and their families will likely print out the stories, or save the blog pages on hard disks or CDs. The Library of Congress is preserving one of the “milblogs,” The Indepundit by Lt. Scott Koenig, 33, of the U.S. Naval Reserve.
Making history, one blog at a time.
INSTAPUNK OPENS A 55-GALLON CAN OF WHUPASS ON PAT BUCHANAN. And it’s richly deserved. But then, it usually is, where Buchanan is concerned.
UPDATE: The topic is unrelated, but speaking of opening up a can of whupass, watch this commentary aimed at members of Congress who complained about yesterday’s evacuation.
BETTER THAN MOWER-BLOGGING: It’s roto-tillerblogging!
IN THE MAIL: Roadside America: 365 Days
UPDATE: Of course, looking at these photos of classic cars would only depress James Lileks further.
STRATEGYPAGE on press irresponsibility:
AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Get a Boost from American Media
May 12, 2005: Anti-American protests have spread to the capital, sparked by an unsubstantiated accusations by a U.S. newsmagazine. Newsweek magazine published a hearsay item about American interrogators at Guantanamo desecrating the Koran to intimidate suspected terrorists. The Taliban has been trying to spread similar stories, but have no credibility. American media has more clout, even if the story in question is basically a rumor. The pro-Taliban groups will push this story as much as they can, but the Taliban support is basically restricted to some Pushtun tribes in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
The press is exquisitely sensitive to the risks posed by, say, racial insensitivity in reporting. It’s too bad they’re not so careful with regard to things that might get American troops killed.
UNSCAM UPDATE:
UNITED NATIONS — A U.S. Senate committee probing corruption in the U.N. Oil-for-Food program released new evidence purporting to show that two prominent politicians from Britain and France received millions of barrels of Iraqi oil in exchange for their support of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Citing contracts, letters and interviews with former Iraqi leaders, the probe set out evidence Wednesday to back the claim that British lawmaker George Galloway (search) and former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua (search) accepted oil allocations under the scheme.
Galloway and Pasqua have denied any wrongdoing in the Oil-for-Food program.
Pardon me if I’m not surprised to hear this. There’s more background here, including a link to the Senate report, and an observation that the BBC is downplaying the bribery bit. Pardon me if I’m not surprised to hear that, either. Paul Musgrave has more.
UPDATE: Interesting bit from footnote 5 of the Senate Report: “Terrorist individuals and entities who received allocations include the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Abbas, and the Mujahedeen-e Khalq.” (Via Power Line, which has much more).
ANOTHER UPDATE: BritBlog The Daily Ablution has much more on Galloway, and his rather dubious statements in his own defense.
MR. ROBOTO: “I will never again type the word BlogNashville.” (Via Rex Hammock).
SHE’S GOT THE GAY GUN-NUT DEMOGRAPHIC SEWN UP: Jeff Soyer endorses Condi Rice for President.
Evan Smith on Dennis Miller: “He could have been Bill Maher ….” Now that’s a low blow. I thought these days Bill Maher was the one kicking himself thinking he could have been Bill Maher.
Instead of a bum, which is what he is. . . .
MORE PRC SHENANIGANS in Hong Kong.
MICHAEL TOTTEN DESCRIBES THE CEDAR REVOLUTION, in an article in the latest L.A. Weekly.
Politics in the 21st century will cut across the traditional political left/right rift of the last two centuries. Instead, the chief ideological divide will be between transhumanists and bioconservatives/bioluddites.
I’m not so sure, but if things work out that way I know which side I’ll be on. But then, I’m an Accelerationista. . . .
Yesterday, United Air Lines was allowed to dump its pension plan on the federal government. That’s bad news for pretty much everybody except UAL’s accountants and execs: employees and pensioners are going to get considerably smaller payments than they’d been promised, and everybody who pays taxes gets to pick up the tab.
Whatever you call this, it’s not free enterprise. Megan McArdle has related thoughts.
May 11, 2005
AMBRA NYKOL: “Complaining about how you wish more people would visit your website is the antithesis of cool. Keep that stuff to yourself. Don’t rant about it on your weblog. That is what nerds do.”
BAINBRIDGE ON CONASON on Bush on Yalta.
UPDATE: Matt Welch writes that quite a few people are getting overly exercised on this subject: “It has been official American policy to bury Yalta in symbol and by name for at least a decade now. . . . I’m just suggesting that those looking for a Stab in the Back or at least a John Birch slap within the remarks of the president may have stumbled onto a plot even more sinister, because the Clintonites are in on it, too.”
STANDING UP FOR TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE:
The Republican chairman of Seminole County, Florida says his bid to head the state party was sabotaged because a letter accused him of having been married six times.
He says the correct number is five.
Well, OK then. (Via Blake Wylie).
UPDATE: I think this is more evidence that the Republicans should be taking advice from InstaPundit reader Madhu Dahiya.
HERE’S THE NASHVILLE SCENE’S COVER STORY on the BlogNashville conference.
UPDATE: Here, however, is the most shocking report so far.
ARRESTING PEOPLE FOR “ACTING UNPROFESSIONAL AS A REPORTER?”
Following hard on its adoption of official interpretations of the Bible, this is beginning to make me think that Montgomery County, Maryland has some serious problems with governance.
Pity the poor United Nations. Not only is the management at Turtle Bay hopelessly corrupt and inept, its new blogosphere apologists don’t appear very bright, either. Not only did they run a lame attack post about Roger L. Simon’s recent focus on history’s largest embezzlement scam, they sent out e-mails to bloggers asking us to promote it.
Oops. Roger’s response is here, but I like what one of his commenters said:
Maybe they’d feel better if you laid off the Oil-for-Food business for awhile and concentrated on the Congo sex crimes scandal instead.
Heh. Actually, they probably would.