What’s the conservative blogosphere for? Dean Barnett says ideas. Patrick Ruffini counters:
"the view that ‘it’s all about punditry’ is just as short sighted as Kos’s whining, thought-free winnerism."
Barnett budges an inch. Personally, I’ve always thought the great advantage of the blogosphere is that you don’t have to be conservative or liberal. You can just be yourself, which turns out to require a little more cojones than many seem interested in.
Misadventures in heterosexuality. Not Safe For Work.
San Francisco, California, 10 am.
He one-ups Cass Sunstein. On the List:
Donna Summer’s version of MacArthur Park: Why can’t she ever have that recipe again? It’s probably in Joy of Cooking, after all.
1980s Hair Bands.
Jackie Collins novels.
Bainbridge is way gayer than me. Mine, off the top of my head: skittles; ginger snaps and coffee; the Corner; Shep Smith; Top Chef; George Michael. Okay: so not waay gayer than me. (And his chops for Velveeta puts him in uber-hetero territory.)
Bob Kaplan offers a qualified defense of private military contractors in Iraq and elsewhere:
Rather than mercenaries who will fight for the highest bidder, private contractors like KBR and Blackwater are composed mainly of retired American noncommissioned officers (NCOs), working alongside the same military to which they used to belong. Just as other professions tap the wisdom and expertise of retirees, so does the American military. Indeed, some contractors, like Triple Canopy, are known to hire veterans of the most elite Special Operations units in the U.S. military. “I’m hiring the elder statesmen of the combat arms community,” one Army colonel told me, referring to some private contractors he was taking on to supplant his uniformed troops in a noncombat capacity. “They won’t have to go through any sniff test when they arrive in the field as consultants. They’ll be instantly looked up to.”
It’s difficult to know what to do to help. Online visibility is one small way: sign this petition of support. A quarter of a million people already have.
Here’s something made possible by the web: a transcript of one of Oakeshott’s BBC lectures – on the philosophy of history, with an audio of the great man reading it on the radio. Leslie Marsh, who posted it, writes:
Not having met MO, I find reconciling the voice with the image of the man difficult. I am told that the voice remained pretty much the same in his later years.
It lost a little of its post-war twang, I think.
It’s an important one, and a corrective to my leaning toward Obama. A reader writes:
Just some anecdotal evidence to supplement your belief that everyone under 40 is voting for Obama. I’m a (gay) law student in Boston. There is quite a lively debate within the community about who we should support in the primary. While you’re correct that Obama has more support among young people, particularly those in advanced programs, I’ve found that his advantage is not at all overwhelming.
It goes almost without saying that most people under 40 want a clean break from the debacle of the Bush presidency, but part of what makes his presidency such a disaster is the basic incompetence with which he, and members of his administration, exercise the powers they are charged with exercising. Clinton, whatever else you can say about her, exudes competence. Furthermore, she exudes this competence much more so than does Obama. That is what many, including myself, see as the tipping point.
"Brother Osama, what is to be gained from the destruction of entire nations – which is what we are witnessing in Afghanistan and Iraq – seeing them torn them with plague and famine? What is to be gained from undermining their stability and every hope of a normal life? Three million refugees are packing into Syria and Jordan alone, not to mention those who are fleeing to the East and the West.
The nightmare of civil war which now reigns supreme in Afghanistan and Iraq brings no joy to the Muslims. When the Prophet (peace be upon him) heard about a man named Harb (meaning “war” in Arabic), he promptly changed his name to something else, because the Prophet hated war.
Allah says: “Fighting is prescribed for you, though you detest it.” [Sûrah al-Baqarah: 216]
War is something hateful that must only be resorted to under the most dire and compelling of circumstances when no other way is found.
Who stands to benefit from turning a country like Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia – or any other country for that matter – into a battlefield where no one feels safe? Is the goal to obstruct the government? Is that, then, the solution for anything?
Is this the plan – even if it is achieved by marching over the corpses of hundreds of thousands of people – police, soldiers, and civilians, even the common Muslims?" – Saudi preacher Salman al-Audah, a leader of Saudi Arabia’s important movement of politicized Wahhabis known as Sahwa Islamiya.
Time’s Scott MacLeod writes:
Al-Audah is a major influence on Bin Laden, who often cited Audah’s political views and condemned the Saudi government for imprisoning him for them. When one of Bin Laden’s men gave me a copy of Bin Laden’s letter to King Fahd in 1996, I noticed that it was dedicated to Audah and another Sahwa scholar.
Audah chose to issue his attack on Bin Laden on the Cornerstone program of Middle East Broadcasting, one of the prominent Arab satellite channels seen throughout the Arab world, on Sept. 14, coinciding with the sixth anniversary of 9/11 as well as the start of the holy month of Ramadan.
Encouraging, no?
The program explains itself thus:
So this guy noticed that Garfield comics make just as much sense if you throw random panels together, and sometimes are actually pretty funny. He got a cease and desist letter. So he made the code available for people who wanted to try it for themselves. Here we go!
(Hat tip: Ceneris.)
