Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Watcher's Council Business & Nominations

A busy week has me meeting myself coming and going as to the Watcher's Council. Last weeks winners were Get Your Grim Milestone Today? by Done With Mirrors and What Would You Do? by Bookworm Room. In the Non-Council category, the winners were Stake Through Their Hearts by Michael Yon on a tie breaker with CAIR Exposed: Part 1 by The Investigative Project on Terrorism. All are exceptional posts, and I particularly liked the one by Bookworm Room, which took my vote for first place. You can find the full results here.

Welcome to our newest Watcher's Council member, Hillbilly White Trash, a blog about "politics, religion, firearms, food, Celtic music, beer . . ." Since these are all near and dear to my heart, I am looking forward to reading our newest inductee on a regular basis. Mr. H.W. Trash takes the place of departing member, Big Lizards, an exceptional blog that I am very sorry to see go.

On to the nominations. Each week, the members of the Watcher's Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for best post. The Watcher publishes the results each Friday morning. The Watcher also has a process for anyone who would like to submit one of their posts for consideration as part of the weekly contest. You can find out more about that here. This week's nominations are:
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1. Or Not Done With Mirrors
DWM observes as the fog of war gets filtered through the lens of agenda journalism.

2. CD22 Runoff -- Shelly Sekula Gibbs Vs. Pete Olson Rhymes With Right
RWR finds that he wants his representatives home-grown and he feels that Mr. Olson does not have sufficient connection with RWR's locality to justify pulling the lever for him in a run-off for a Congressional seat.

3. Black Liberation Theology Joshuapundit
JP examines the dogma of the racist and radical black liberation theology of Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ. It is an ideology that needs to be treated in precisely the same manner as any other racist ideology. There is no use for it in polite society. Nor, I would add, is anyone of use who voluntarilly associates with it.

4. Interpreting the Events In Basra The Glittering Eye
GE attempts to make some sense out of the events in Basra and questions whether we should be supporting Maliki. I disagree with GE's assumptions, as I do with Right Wing Nuthouse, and will post a response.

5. The Repeated Historical Falsehood The Colossus of Rhodey
Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth. In this case, CoR takes on the oft repeated canard that our government injected several hundred black men with Siphyllis as part of an experiment. Unfortunately, it is uncomfortably close to the truth.

6. The Messiah-Shtick Bookworm Room
BWR beats a horse that is near death, but she does so with incredible eloquence.

7. Sticks and Stones Soccer Dad
I am amazed that we send money to Fatah, or look for the PA to be a partner in peace with Israel. What bothers me equally as much is how Hamas and the PA both get away with things that would raise the decibel level to deafening were it to be authorized or condoned by a Western government - such as Hamas's psychopathic children's programming. SD covers a news story that at least begins to acknowledge some of the incitement, though he is critical of the story's author, who appears to be focusing on Hamas while giving the PA a pass.

8. Another UN Obscenity (Updated) Wolf Howling
The UN Human Rights Council, a misnomer if there ever was one, has passed a Declaration calling for the criminalization of any criticism Islam, to make the canard that Islam and terrorism are unrelated an irrebutable presumption, and to require educational programs in schools to whitewash Islam in the West.

9. 'Tis The Season For Parents and Kids To Be Scammed The Education Wonks
Ed Wonk takes a look at some of the scam operations being played on people with high enough GPA's to know better.

10. Answering Yasmine Cheat Seeking Missiles
CSM argues religion and politics with a young American convert to Islam who, unfortunately, does not fully understand all aspects of her faith.

11. Can We Just Walk Away From Iraq? Right Wing Nut House
Rick Moran has done an interesting post on the assumptions underlying why we need to be in Iraq. It is thoughtful, though I disagree with several of the assumptions and will post a response.

12. The Moral Blindness of the Left Hillbilly White Trash
The ethics, morality and veracity of Hillary Clinton and those on the left is duly called into question by HWT. This is a well reasoned post and I agree, though I think his shot at McCain is an ad hominem attack and ridiculously over-reaching.

Non-council links:

1. If You Can't Beat Them, Threaten to Behead Them... Immodest Proposals

2. Disgrace: UN Human Rights Council Endorses Ban On Religious Defamation Hot Air

3. Marash Quits English al Jazeera Over the (British) Anti-Americanism Augean Stables

4. Thoughts About This Article From The Observer Abu Muqawama

5. Preventing Nuclear Terrorism Oliver Kamm

6. 5 Years, 1 year Acute Politics

7. NY Times Reporters Try To Defend Grave Mistake -- Of Course Fail The Strata-Sphere

8. Safe at Home Interviews Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser Family Security Matters

9. Tribalism Classical Values

10. Avian Chorus The Paragraph Farmer

11. Obama Does It Again Ace of Spades HQ

12. What Did You Expect? Eternity Road

13. Politicians Do Nothing, Call it Something TFS Magnum

14. Young Dick Cheney: Great American (Andrew Reviews) Dodgeblogium

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

GW, I would very much appreciate your analyzing my assumptions, first, since I value and appreciate your thought processes and second, because I try not to make many. As you consider please take not that I claimed neither that the U. S. taking an active role in the operations in Basra was bad nor even that we had an alternative, only that it was risky.

That the operations are not, as they've been portrayed, a case of government vs. anti-government forces, is merely a statement of fact. Maliki's and Sadr's factions are both part of Iraq's ruling coalition i.e. part of the government. As I noted in the post without knowing specifics about what units are taking part in the action and against whom we can't make a reasonable judgment of the other claim, that it's an instance of government forces against a militia. Although the Badr militia has been baptized as Interior Ministry's security police something similar has happened with respect to the Mahdi Army and the Health Ministry. We just don't know—so that wasn't an assumption, either.

GW said...

Thank you Dave, and I would add that I am equally appreciative of your anlyses. My take is not a criticism in any way of either your logic, which is always very good. Rather, it is merely that there are some facts that, I think, lead to different conclusions and I thought it appropriate to air them. Perhaps my use of the word assumptions was incorrect.

In any event, I have published my response at http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2008/04/assumptions-conclusions-about-sadr.html and would very much welcome your thoughts and any contrary arguments.