Today on the Dish, a big earthquake shook the Eastern US. On the Libyan front, Saif al-Qaddafi reemerged to give conflicting accounts about government forces on the rebound, and then rebel forces took over Qaddafi's compound. We weighed whether our intervention worked and Zack duked it out with Freddie deBoer over our Von Hoffman awards. We revisited the success curse and whether this war was really a war, and Qaddafi lived up to his narcissistic dictatorship tendencies. Ben Dunant questioned Robert Kagan's view of superpower suicide, and we wondered about the dissolution of trust in the Middle East.
In the political alley, Maisie tackled the GOP for catering to nostalgic white voters, Fallows bashed the GOP's allergy to taxes unless they're taxes on the poor, and libertarians still wanted to build their own island. Steve Kornacki charged Huntsman with copying McCain's campaign style, and Rick Perry challenged the Republican Party to decide whether they are Establishment or tea-vangelical. We poured over Obama's summer reading list, and a Quebecois reader remembered the great Jack Layton. Dale Carpenter debated whether the case against Prop 8 has sapped support for a repeal, and Simon Rippon made the case for not banning twin reduction.
In other international news, Felix Salmon proposed a more mobile, global workforce, and Ken Menkhaus tracked al-Shabaab's implosion in Somalia and advised us not to intervene. Peter Ackroyd argued rioting is a London tradition, Haiti hasn't been able to use all its recovery funds, and terror could kill the tent protests and move Israel to the right.
Chris explored intimacy in the asexual world, most women masturbate without feeling guilty about it, and one reader was ready to nix the postal service. Giving presents to coworkers makes us feel better, we learned how voice recognition works in computers, and the law-school-is-a-scam scandal escalated with the exposure of the man behind the blog. Scientists accepted their own mistakes, telemarketers follow the script, and readers boggled our minds some more on infinity (and beyond).
Hathos alert here, MHB here, FOTD here, VFYW here, and winner #64 here.
–Z.P.
(Tweet via JP Moore)
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