Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
Jim makes a good point about the repercussions of Iran fighting back against a US attack:
To the extent that Iran has any success sinking tankers, they encourage the rest of the world to, functionally, take America’s side in the conflict. Nobody wants tankers sunk - not producers, not consumers.
I happen to think that the […]

T. has fun with Tom Friedman in comments downblog: “BTW, we need to wait and see whether Friedman’s change of heart actually sticks. The next six months will - ” but you know the rest.
And commenter just sayin makes the key point:
So what’s he plan to do to prevent the coming war with Iran?
Indeed, […]

The historian Gabriel Kolko writes to Antiwar.com to explain why the Bush Administration will not attack Iran in an alternate reality, very much like our own, but where America’s political class thinks things through. Unfortunately, few of Kolko’s 9 bullet points hold in our own dimension:
1. THE U.S. AND EUROPEAN ECONOMIES are now in a […]

Tom Friedman confesses:
What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.
Italics his; bolding mine. It’s not exact: 9/11 […]

By Mona
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Clownhall has teh geys and their “lifestyle” down to a science, I tells ya, my emphasis.

Those pushing the homosexual agenda, including their accomplices in the media, typically portray presentable and socially successful persons who have purportedly made a lifelong and stable commitment to another person of the same sex. Over […]

By Thoreau
In my final piece of Economist blogging today, I’ll note that the Economist has a nice article on biotechnology and biofuels. In a nutshell, ethanol is a popular biofuel because (1) people have known how to make it for a very long time and (2) a common ingredient for it comes from key […]

By Thoreau
The media likes to report only bad news from ethnically and religiously divided federations with high rates of gun ownership. Why won’t they report any of the good news? Like the liberalization of Swiss cheese laws? Well, at least the Economist reports the good news. Time to re-up my subscription.

By Thoreau
The Economist reports this week on legalized online gambling in Britain.  In doing so, they note the training regimen of one professional poker player:
The snakeskin-clad Mr Ulliott, for instance, reportedly trains by making love for five hours at a stretch—“I like to get a woman and wring her out like a flannel,” he told […]

By Mona
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Of course the Senate vote against MoveOn for the Petraeus ad was revolting. But now we are going to have a tit-for-tat congressional resolution denouncing the truly heinous Limbaugh attack on war-dissenter soldiers?
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Do we really want our federal legislature to institutionalize condemnations of political commentary?
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I do not. It is […]

By Mona
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Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers (District 11, Omaha) has filed a lawsuit against God, and the Almighty has in turn filed reply papers. Does Walter Olson know?

Jim Macdonald provides many Blackwater stories for you in one convenient place.
As to the source of this item’s title, I’ve always liked the transition best:
His comrades fought beside him
Van Owen and the rest
but of all the Thompson gunners
Roland was the best
so the CIA decided
they wanted Roland dead . . .
The suggestion that excellence itself infuriated […]

Sometimes I think Kevin Drum is the internet’s greatest libertarian blogger without realizing it.

Bill Clinton looks old! But he’s very good on the “bait and switch” of the Boo-Hoo-Hoo-Someone-Called-a-Grown-Man-a-Name kerfuffle. Why is he so much better on the topic than most currently serving Democrats? Maybe because he doesn’t have to worry about losing votes.

Sullivan finds data rebutting the contrarian “Does pork really liberate local knowledge of local needs?” notion I floated a couple weeks ago.

By Thoreau
I’ve sometimes said that if the government is big enough you can blame it for anything. You can find a policy that, if taken in isolation, would produce effect A, and then find some policy that, if taken in isolation, would produce the opposite of effect A.
I wonder if we could find a […]

Brain-eating, unstoppable amoebae in lakes.
I say, it’s just over two people a year in the entire country. Since lake swimming is a hell of a lot of fun, and a good way to avoid swimming-pool-induced asthma, I’ll risk it.
Via Polliwog. (Get it? It’s a yolk!)

By Thoreau
We’ve just killed another major Al Qaeda leader.  The funeral will be held tomorrow, and will be a double burial.  The other deceased being mourned is the latest Spinal Tap drummer, who tripped over his own foot.
Osama Bin Laden is currently advertising for another #3 guy, and said that he seeks an “enthusiastic self-starter […]

Maybe the key passage in “A Student’s Guide to Hosting Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week”:
Distributing a petition is an excellent protest tactic for several reasons. First, it is a very easy and cost-effective way to draw attention to the issues at hand. Second, a petition can serve as an advertisement for other events, such as film screenings […]

Andrew Bacevich chooses the nice way:
The general’s relationships with official Washington remain intact. Yet he has broken faith with the soldiers he commands and the Army to which he has devoted his life. He has failed his country. History will not judge him kindly.
Well, nicer. Passage I should complain about before Silber and IOZ do:
Petraeus […]

Alex Tabarrok writes about the demonstrated merit of Direct Instruction as a teaching system that doesn’t rely on the sort of star teacher Hollywood makes heartwarming movies about. But he doesn’t seem to extend his analysis of the star teacher problem far enough:
We are supposed to be uplifted by these stories [of heroic teachers] but […]

By Mona
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So…is Charles Johnson of Rathergate and Little Green Fascists fame going to concede that he got suckered into promoting a fake foto courtesy of David Horowitz?
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Nah, doing so would detract from “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” activities, and besides, the pic is — wait for it, we know it is coming — […]

By Thoreau
So, I was deriving equations on the board in my third lecture, when I realized that I wasn’t terribly smooth about it.  I can do it in advanced classes, where I have a lot to say about the subject.  I can do it in conceptual classes, where the whole thing is about explanation.  But […]

By Mona
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Jon Soltz — who served combat time in Iraq, and before that in Kosovo — has publicly asked Rush Limbaugh to interview him on his radio show. Soltz was moved to offer himself for such ugly duty when yesterday, after an Iraq war vet called Rush and pressed him […]

By Thoreau
How else will he get out of handcuffs when arrested for DUI?
While Sutherland’s Tuesday-morning DUI arrest has him potentially facing a minimum of four days and maximum of one year in jail on probation violation charges, his headline-grabbing bust, for the time being, has failed to put a crimp in his work schedule.
Possible jail time?  In […]

By Thoreau
If we really cared about the dissidents in Myanmar we’d drop bombs on their cities.
Discuss.

UO-favorite alumni continue to thrive! Chief Tyrol makes a surprise appearance on Bionic Woman, rather livening the joint up, from my perspective. BW unfortunately featured a script we could politely call “uneven.” The best performers - and there are some good performers - betrayed the same wearying anxiety as parents trying to distract their infant […]

By implication, do not exist. Huzzah!
Via comments on Fucking Dilettante Taking Fucking Hiatus Fucking Blog.

By Thoreau
Via David Weigel, the New York Times has an article about towns that passed strict laws against illegal immigrants. Some of these towns actually got their wishes and drove a bunch of illegal immigrants away.  The result?
With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that […]