Unqualified Offerings

Very Brief Spider-Man 2 Reaction - That . . . was . . . AWESOME!!

Undue Burden - It’s not like Eugene Volokh thinks much of me, either, but I’ve always considered his specialty to be showy moral handwringing on the way to siding with Power anyway. The further you get from standard Republican issues like guns and university speech codes, the more likely he is to arrive, with exquisite […]

Fat Lady Sings - This just in:
Inspired by the early handover of sovereignty in Iraq, President George W. Bush employed the element of surprise once more last night, holding the U.S. presidential election four months early.
The election, about which only top Bush administration officials were notified, went exceedingly well for the president, who carried all […]

Surprise! - Happy “A Republic if You Can Keep It” Day to our Mesopotamian wards. Mindles H. Dreck makes a plausible argument that keeping to the schedule - okay, the schedule we accelerated in November - is the smartest thing we could do, inevitable problems notwithstanding. From the dovish side, Alan Bock thinks it’s a […]

Oh by the Way - Daniel Drezner points out that, in addition to the headline-grabbing pooh-poohing of any Iraqi role in supporting Al Qaeda, the 9/11 Commission report also finds evidence for official Saudi support of Al Qaeda wanting. Well, shucks.
There are two casualties here, though on my reading, Drezner stresses only one: Iraq War […]

The actual journalism version of my old blog item about Steve Englehart’s prescient 1973 suicide bomber story in Marvel Comics’ Avengers series is online at the American Spectator today. And check out the cool “cover” graphic while it’s still there.
The article includes quotes from Englehart and a (qualified) defense of suicide tactics, because I understand […]

Drat the Luck - How might history have changed if the first World Trade Center bombers weren’t so stupid as to try to get their deposit back on the rental truck? That instantly turned them from fearsome killers to figures of fun in the public eye, and likely some official ones too. It invited us […]

Hey, Why Wouldn’t That Work for Me?? - Diana Moon writes of David Brooks that
His success is an affront to all decent hardworking people everywhere. This is a guy who has no particular expertise in his field and by dint of a pleasing personality and modest writing skills and tremendous energy has leveraged his way […]

(retroactive) to invade Iraq will hug the news like a new, rare beanie baby; those holding out for evidence of a genuine Saddamist threat to the United States will yawn. I of course am in the latter camp. If you really want to kill someone, skip the mustard gas and get a gun.
The other “big” […]

Bonus Fitness Blog Item - Joyner surveyed reactions to C2, the new lower-sugar Coke drink the other day. I’ve now had some myself and, absolutely, it’s good. Let me clarify: if, like me, your taste buds are not currently sensitized to high-sugar drinks (okay, high corn-juice drinks), it’s good. Nice cola taste and sweet enough. […]

Jealous of the Rhyme and the Rhyme Routine - I’ve really been getting back into poetry lately, reading and writing both, which is nice. Poetry and I were estranged for some years. There are various reasons, including politics - I started back in looking for Robinson Jeffers after all - but among them is the […]

the “suicide” part - ought to chant it over and over again like Wonkette and “ass fucking”. We ought to rub their noses in it.
Even rhetorically, national defense is too important to leave to hawks. They can’t even get that right.

A Billion Here, A Billion There - President GW Bush , who has not vetoed a single bill in his first term so far, has increased spending faster than any president since the Richard Nixon-Gerald Ford two-step of the mid-seventies, according to a handy chart from the Independence Institute. That’s total spending OR non-defense discretionary […]