Unqualified Offerings

[This week’s poem actually deals with a libertarian red meat issue. I was very happy that the Hudson Review chose to publish this (in 1998), as it flouted my assumptions about what even the best sort of New York magazine would print. The actual visit took place in January 1996, when my friend Bruce Fleming […]

Wendy McElroy is a little alarmed at the possibility that the War of 1812 may have been for naught.

Jim of Objectionable Content tips Unqualified Offerings to the fact that Jess Nevins’ annotations for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume II, Issue 2 are up. That suggests that it’s high time UO get itself to a comic book store again, since it does not yet have issue 2.
Jim further notes that he found this information […]

Tony Adragna urges Congress to remove Major League Baseball’s anti-trust exemption.
Baseball is not a monopoly. Its competitors include the NFL, the NBA, college football, college basketball, hockey (look! straight face!), soccer (okay, let’s not get carried away), the X-Games, amusement parks, movie theaters, DVDs, concerts, whitewater rafting and just hanging out in the back yard. […]

The Talking Dog thinks Jackie Mason should have kept Palestinian comedian Ray Hanania on the bill but used his headline status to subject Hanania to bullying and unfunny japes onstage.

Ginger Stampley wants you to know she’s having plenty of fun, thanks.

When Unqualified Offerins saw the first press reports this morning on Freedom Forum’s poll on American attitudes toward the first amendment, it wished, as happens occasionally, that it were not a confirmed non-drug-using non-drinker. (Link via Counterspin.) Now that it has seen the actual survey results (PDF here) it is far less worried. (Link via […]

In an interesting post, Kathy Kinsley explains why she has been excerpting odd bits of “Islamist” doctrine from available websites. I’m not sure the effect equals the intention, but it’s good to have her thinking laid out. For my part, I disfavor the term “Islamist,” after some consideration. The term I prefer for our actual […]

Fixed a bunch of stupid typos in posts from yesterday evening forward. Yuck!

Radical anti-interventionist historian Joseph Stromberg is having a contest to name the big war, the one the hawks want us to fight against everyone who ever looked at the US cross-eyed. Unqualified Offerings favors, of course, The Million Mom War, though for some weeks it considered the “Trojan War,” in honor of its supposed prophylactic […]

It’s probably a sign of something salutary in the culture that a popular new song on country radio involves prison, bloodhounds, the murder of a cheatin’ spouse and a jailbreak, even if the song isn’t all that great. The tune is just Garth Brooks’ “Rodeo” salvaged in an episode of musical dumpster diving. The “clever […]

The CDC expects West Nile Virus cases to peak soon, according to MSNBC. That means the Republic may be spared.

THE U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 75 new cases on Thursday, bringing the year’s total cases to 555.

The population of the U.S. on April 1, 2000 was 281,421,906.

The virus, which can cause encephalitis, […]

Eve Tushnet says the libraries she volunteers in are much better than the “average” libraries UO maligned below. She likes the idea of alternative library providers though.
She continues to worry the Allan Bloom rock bone to good effect too.

The Redskins are losing to New England 14-0 so far. Good. Unqualified Offerings does not believe preseason success is totally meaningless. But it firmly believes that a team benefits from a conspicuous preseason failure in either the last or next-to-last game. Keeps players from getting a swelled head. Aids - what was that coachspeak word? […]

Needless to say, for Saddam to want to risk giving possibly-disloyal terrorists nukes to sneak into the US, he would have to figure he stands to gain something thereby. So would the terrorists. Something besides ruin the best market for his country’s sole export. One reason for a non-interventionist foreign policy is to reduce the […]

Reader Munham Yam too is relieved that the Olympics will be giving DC-Baltimore a miss. He writes

As a fellow metro Washington DC resident (and bug-chucker; didn’t notice the fishing part of the blog) I too exult in our loss of the Olympic bid. Hooray! Less traffic! Less tourists! No bonus attention from terrorists!
I […]

Selenously pseudonymous Diana Moon of Letter from Gotham e-mails to draw my attention to this piece on Saddam and deterrence (as if I didn’t read her, faithfully, every day!). Diana notes that

…not all rational people come to the same conclusions when faced with the same facts. Take a look at the history of science. Scientific […]

Unqualified Offerings has two last installments from your Talking Dog for the week. TD is back in his Talking Dog House as of today. As always, the Talking Dog comes to you in hard-hitting, unexpurgated, unedited-by-UO form. Here was Wednesday’s missive:

Continued thanks for allowing me into your (blog) home. It […]

Between UO’s gaming night and Mrs. Offerings’ birthday celebrations, this site is behind on some interesting mail that came in yesterday, including the latest from your Talking Dog. More tonight, though that birthday continues, so it’s not clear how much more tonight.

Unqualified Offerings has been planning an item called “Intervention: The Socialism of Kings,” comparing the utopianism of the uberhawks to the utopianism of, well, commies. But UO takes its time getting around to these things and now Jim of Objectionable Content has largely written it. It’s tucked into a piece called “Stop hating imperialism or […]

Interesting essay on privatization and public libraries by little-loved (among bloggers) Lew Rockwell. Rockwell notes something that is hard for any honest American to gainsay - most public libraries suck:

Well, you know what? Many public libraries have been a disgrace for decades. Like most public institutions, they are architectural monstrosities. They have terrible hours, which […]

Julian Sanchez takes out after a very bad defense of a very bad proposal, NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s proposal to ban smoking in bars. (LA Times link requires registration. Julian Sanchez’ Notes from the Lounge link does not.) Julian:

In other words, not only do you have a basic human right to attend a bar you […]

Mroww!

I’ve never seen Ann Coulter except in still photographs, but the tone of her words in transcripts is often sullen. Yet she doesn’t convey sullen sexuality. What she conveys is a sort of drunken desperation, as if she’d go home with just about anyone. She certainly has bad manners. I hope to god she doesn’t […]

The Washington-Baltimore bid to host the 2012 Olympics died today. Thank heaven for that. Years of public works expenditures for the sake of an awful month of traffic and security hassles the area did not need.
Houstonian Ginger Stampley is celebrating her own city’s victory in the quality-of-life sweepstakes too.

In 1990, feminist opponents of the Gulf War argued that Saudi Arabia wasn’t worth defending because of the kingdom’s horrible treatment of women. Hawks pooh-poohed these ridiculous concerns.
In 2002, hawks want war or something very like it with Saudi Arabia, and their horrible treatment of women is one of the important reasons. (See this lengthy […]

But I could have gotten Brink Lindsey and Glenn Reynolds thoughtful gifts if I had only stumbled on the Origami Boulder site in time. Check it out!
(Link via Scrappleface.)

Brink Lindsey and Glenn Reynolds both get a year older today. Best wishes, and Unqualified Offerings will hold off dealing with BL’s most recent posts on libertarianism and intervention (esp. in Iraq) for another day, instead of a present.

Time once again for your daily dose of the Talking Dog, from the only weblog big enough, bold enough and bad enough to say, Hey! Bring on the guest voices! Unqualified Offerings isn’t afraid!
(It beats working.)

Dear Jim:
I can’t thank you enough for agreeing to be my home page in exile; it’s […]

My god - Offering Boy starts first grade today. Wish him luck!

Interesting bits from Alan Bock’s latest column.
On the Administration’s suggestion that the 1991 Congressional authorization is sufficient to renew large-scale offensive operations against Iraq today:

I know that one of the reasons for getting a law degree (besides having an attitude of virtual worship for an abstract concept called “the law” inculcated by people with a […]