Category ►►► Watchers Council

March 25, 2008

Watcher Countdown - Blast-off!

Positively the last ever Big Lizards post as a member of the Council of Watchers of Weasels of Councils. And finally, we can exit the Council with all duties discharged!

(I will restrain myself from the obvious quotation.)

Council

Our number-one choice came in first, which is always nice; but in this case, it did so by beating out our own nominee -- and by the slimmest possible margin! A nice kick in the trousers on our way out the door... thanks, Mr. or Ms. Howling.

• Change & The Cessation of British History, by Wolf Howling.

Wolf Howling howls about the dirty and underhanded way that the Labour Party of Great Britain backdoored ratification of th enew European Union constitution. In other news, Labour's popularity has sunk to new lows seen here only in the "popularity" of Congress. The two news items may be related.

(Our own nominee, Californichusetts, relating how the California Supreme Court may be poised to cram same-sex marriage up our -- er -- noses, polled second... by only 1/3 of a vote! That means that one extra person voted for the Wolf Howling piece... as his or her second-place vote. Yeesh!)

For our second place vote, we picked another fine post by Bookworm Room. (And what do you want to bet she was the one whose second-placer relegated us to landing behind Wolf Howling? Where's the gratitude!)

2. Biology Will Have Its Way *UPDATE*, by Bookworm Room.

Bookworm relates the increasing raunchiness of American culture, and especially of "female chauvinist pigs," as one book calls the rise of raunchy chicks, to the new study that shows that 25% of all teenaged girls in America have had a venereal disease.

Nouncil

The winner among non-Council ("Nouncil") entries was (wait for it) yet another Yon:

• Guitar Heroes, by Michael Yon.

Now, I have nothing against Michael Yon, and his reporting scratches a niche that is large and important. But really, they contain no analysis beyond the immediate; his articles are fascinating, but in the same way one can be fascinated by watching the show Cops.

Granted, it's a view through a window that few other reporters open; he embeds for months at a time with different units in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I hope he continues doing so (so long as his family permits). But I think one win is enough... not virtually every time someone nominates his newest story.

Does this sound snarky? It's not in the sense you might mean it: I think Yon is doing a brilliant and essential job. But I believe awards such as this, particularly in the Nouncil category, should highlight posts that give us a new way of looking at the world that we might miss without the Council nominations and wins.

We voted for two posts that do just that:

1. The Tragedy of the Democratic Party, by American Thinker;
2. Amid Charges of Spitzer Tryst, Embattled Prostitute "Kristen" Expected to Resign, by Iowahawk.

In the first, Thomas Lifson and Richard Baehr note that the predicament the Democratic Party finds itself in is entirely of its own doing, mostly by switching from winner-take-all primaries to proportional primaries; the former would have selected a nominee by now.

The Iowahawk post is one of the most hilarious parodies of news obsession I have ever read; you must read it instanter!

The backward look

Here is the Watcher's result post listing every nominee who received at least one vote; but I urge you to bookmark the Watcher's main page... because you will want to glance at it at least once a week to see what wonderful posts have been nominated.

And with that last commercial message (just leave the bag o'swag on my doorstep, Watcher), I bid a fond adieu to the coven of cronies who gave me equal parts war, peace, pride, prejudice, night, day, black, white, the best of times, the worst of times, sickness, health, triumph, and tsouris. We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the -- ah, heck with it.

Guys, it's been a slice.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 25, 2008, at the time of 3:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 19, 2008

Watcher Countdown - One! And Out With a Bang!

We're quite relieved, actually, that we got one, last win before checking out; that way, we don't quite feel as if we're slinking out the back door, suitcase in hand, skipping out on the rent...

Council

We really liked this post, so we're doubly glad it was this one that grabbed a final victory... instead of the worthless trash we usually publish on Big Lizards!

• Chicago Rules, by Big Lizards.

This was the piece about Barack Obama's astonishing run of good luck: Every time he runs for public office, it seems that something -- happens -- to his opponent; thus he managed to run virtually unopposed both for state senator and then for U.S. senator.

Then we connected this curious history to the wonderful piece by Wolf Howling that we voted for last week, in which we learnt that Obama's guardian angel is trying it yet again: There is a scheme being hatched that might force John McCain to accept public financing, thus shutting off his money spigot for months and months, virtually dooming his candidacy.

(And not only that, some Democrat actually did file a lawsuit asking that McCain be removed from all ballots... because, having been born on a Naval base in the Panama Canal Zone, the suit claims he's not a "natural born citizen" of the United States!)

If either angle bears fruit, then once again, Obama can run virtually unopposed (in the general election, at least!)... this time, for President of the United States.

To make our own win even more savory, our number 1 and 2 votes came in numbers 3 and 2 on the hit parade... a clean sweep of Lizardian splendor in the Council round!

1. The Dershowitz Questions, by Wolf Howling;
2. The Rape of Rape On American Campuses, by Cheat Seeking Missiles.

We're suckers for historical overviews on the existential war of our age, the war against global caliphism (I'm trying that phrase out instead of "global hirabah," since nobody outside our little circle knows what the heck hirabah means; I hope "caliphism" is self explanatory). This one by Wolf Howling is excellent, well deserving our number-one vote.

There were two posts on the moral and political implications of a brand new topic: "grey rape," where a girl voluntarily gets plastered at a party, goes home with a guy, has sex with him... and then later charges him with rape because (she proclaims) she was too drunk to give consent. (Of course, he was too drunk to notice; but somehow that doesn't exonerate his behavior, as it sanctifies hers.)

One of the posts was by Cheat Seeking Missiles, while the other came from the creative keyboard of Bookworm Room. We dithered a long time before finally voting for Laer's... but it was a close call.

Nouncil

We did quite well in the Nouncil round too, as it happens. For once, our own nomination -- which was also our number-one pick -- and also happened to be Power Line, which never wins (I think members are jealous)... won anyway. Hip hip, chin chin!

• Dissecting the 60 Minutes Scandal, by John Hinderaker at Power Line.

John writes about the 60 Minutes story that (falsely) claims Karl Rove orchestrated the arrest, indictment, and conviction of Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama. The entire conspiracy appears to have been fabricated by 60 Minutes' only witness... one Jill Simpson, who claimed to have been a long-time Republican operative working for Rove (but whom nobody in the GOP has ever heard of, mysteriously enough).

Too bad Dan Rather is no longer working on the show; this would have been a natural.

Our number-two pick went nowhere; but it's a great post nonetheless:

2. Not to Complicate Matters, But..., by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Russell Jacoby writing at the Chronicle of Higher Education writes a hilarious pastiche of eduspeak, that content-free bureaucratic buzz whose only purpose is to confuse listeners who haven't been admitted to "the club" and received their secret decoder rings.

Watch your Hottentot

The Watcher watches all; and here be his watchings.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 19, 2008, at the time of 11:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 18, 2008

Watcher Countdown - Two! Just Around the Corner...

Yep, we're winding our way down. By the time you read this, we will already have voted on our last Watcher's Council vote. But we don't consider ourselves truly alumni until we finish the last three results posts... a tad late, but heck, you should be used to that by now.

In fact, the work involved in writing these posts is one of the reasons we're calling it a year after just a year (that didn't come out right, but you know what we meant.) It's not required to discuss each winning post and each post we voted for; all we need do to abide by the letter of the Council is list the winners and link to the results on the Watcher of Weasels' web site. (And, I think, link to the nominees; but I never noticed that requirement until a couple of weeks ago, and it's too late to teach the early worm a new trick.)

But the posts offered by the Council members and those others (the "Nouncil," or non-Council) they nominate are just too damned good to let slide by with a single sentence or a bare link. We feel compelled to discuss them, quote from them, betimes even argue with them. Hence these long, annoying Watcher's Council results posts... which, by the way, nobody has shown any sign of enjoying but we ourselves.

So without further ado -- or further mawkish self-pity -- we give you the winners, the also-rans... and the total losers who write Big Lizards!

Council

The winner is Laer at Cheat Seeking Missiles for this poli-sci piece on the upcoming presidential campaign:

• In A PC Nation, How Will The GOP Run?, by Cheat Seeking Missiles.

I love technical politics... the nuts and bolts of how one actually runs a political campaign, either at the micro level (how Whatchamacallem should run his campaign against Thingamajig) or the macro (how should the GOP run against the Democrats). I never studied any of this at university (I frittered my time away on math and creative writing), so I appreciate any help a blogger can give me by his blogpost.

In this case, Laer takes issue with folks like Jack Kemp, urging John McCain not to run a cautious campaign:

The fact of the matter is, the GOP effort cannot be about, as Politico said, protecting the GOP from charges of racism or sexism. Those charges will come no matter what, so while it's important to prep messaging in order to avoid or reduce charges of racism in the campaign ahead, it's more important to develop a strategy for responding to those inevitable charges.

But I do take a little issue, though I am only an egg, with Laer's prescription for what McCain should do:

Race-card playing race-baiters (or sex-card playing fem-baiters) cannot be allowed to enjoy the immunity that's been extended to Jesse Jackson, the Irreverent Sharpton, or the flock of feminists. Perpetrators of such baiting need to be shut down in language that appeals to GOP and independent voters; forget appeasing the Dems. Here's a first take on such a message:

"This is a defining moment for [race/women] in America, and we all must stand up to those who are playing the tired and empty [race/feminism] card, trying desperately to cling to an America that simply is no more. I am sick of people who want to shame America and embarrass it globally for the sake of their selfish power. I will not allow them to redirect this campaign to the past when I am looking to the future, and neither should you. Tell them you're done with the dirty politics of division."

To be clearer, I support the preamble -- don't let race-baiters get away with it -- but dispute the tactic advised. In fact, I would advist McCain to attack exactly as he would were Obama white or Clinton a man, and not make any big deal out of the first-ness of it all.

I think most people would be refreshed to hear a truly post-racial campaign of white vs. black. And if the race-baiters whine that McCain isn't giving Obama sufficient deference for being the first black presidential nominee of either major party... then McCain asks them to make up their minds: Does this campaign transcend race, or is it about nothing but Barack Obama's race? Let them simmer in their own juice.

Still, it's a great post; we voted it number two, but it's a perfectly reasonable overall winner.

Our number-one vote went to Wolf Howling -- which (as you'll see) appears to be a pattern:

1. Obama (with links) & McCain's Petard, by Wolf Howling;

Mr. (or Mrs.) Howling notes a very ironical Catch-22 that John McCain finds himself in, though there is an easy out. We already discussed this in one of our own posts, Chicago Rules; so no need to go into it here as well.

But you'll be hearing about Chicago Rules in our next post...

Nouncil

The winner here was Gila Weiss, who writes an open letter to a radical filmmaker whose movie equated the victim of a suicide bombing to the murderous bitch who killed her... and Weiss tears the filmmaker a new pineal gland:

• To Die in Jerusalem, Part II, by My Shrapnel.

Can't do any better than to quote the money graf:

You boldly proclaim your identification with Ayat. How much time have you spent trying to identify with Rachel? Where is Rachel in this story? Is she important because she was, because of the person she was…or because she was a particularly interesting victim of terror--a victim the same age as and with a striking resemblance to her murderer? This is how I see it: the only reason that you care about Rachel at all is because she makes the story of your darling, tormented suicide bomber that much more dramatic. She is a foil for the blade to play against. If she were blonde, if she were ten years older, if she were, say, the downright heroic security guard, she would not have mattered to you at all. She would have been just another sad, but rather dull, statistic.

This short, little missive is lethal.

We voted for a couple other brilliant pieces:

1. Validating AGW Skepticism, by The QandO Blog;
2. The Democrats' Collective Cognitive Catatonia, by Dr. Sanity.

The first presents several points that shake the foundations of anthropogenic globaloney a bit, and you already know we're obsessed about that subject! And in the second, Ma Sanity really puts the casual perfidy and narcissistic preening of the Democrats in the House under the microscope, anent their failure to enact (or even allow a vote on) a bill to restore and permanize the Protect America Act of 2007, which fixed some gaping holes in our intelligence gathering.

Read 'em and weep

Check here for all the latest gossip about alien abductions, Bigfoot, liver pills, and a windy singer they call Mariah.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 18, 2008, at the time of 4:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 27, 2008

Watcher Countdown - Three! Superabbreviatedwatcherpost

From the February 22th Watcher post.

We -- er, ah -- completely spaced on voting. I think we only did this once before. The upshot is that we only have the two winners... and we didn't even read them!

But we are now entirely caught up on Watches.

Council

We didn't vote for this piece, but only because we didn't vote for any piece. Too busy sunning ourselves on the sands of Brighton Beach. (Actually, BB doesn't have sand; just rocks. Big rocks. Step on them and break your ankle rocks. The naked English ladies were worth the risk, however.)

• Make Washington's Birthday a National Holiday Again, by Right Wing Nut House.

A paean to our first and greatest president (Gore Vidal notwithstanding), and perhaps the greatest day in his military command. And might we append a peroration on why it sucks that the only American to have a federal holiday named after him is someone who never held elective office in his entire life?

Nouncil

Sigh. Another 75,000 word Michael Totten piece.

• The Dungeon of Fallujah, by Michael J. Totten.

Totten visits... well, a dungeon-jail in Fallujah. 'Nuff said.

See the posts the Lizards never read!

...Right here.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 27, 2008, at the time of 4:08 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Watcher Countdown - Four! Midwatch by the Watcher's Watch

The February 15th Watcher strategic conference and three-legged race.

Climbing out of the hole, just one more to go.

Council

And the second shall be first, and the first shall be second, unto the end of Councildom. Our second pick actually tied with our first pick; so the Great Chronometer picked the winner:

• Mandate Me, Baby, by Right Wing Nut House.

Rick Moran rails about health-insurance mandates. Ook ook, can any subject be finer and nearer our hearts?

1. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and McCain Derangement Syndrome, by Wolf Howling.

Mr. Howling lights into the divine Ann (yeah, sure, if I were single) and the sublime Rush (not even if I were gay) for their continued attacks on John McCain, even after it was all over but the shouting. Now is the time for all good men to come together, right now, over he.

Nouncil

And the first shall be first, and the second shall be third, so sayeth Saurus Giganticus. The winner in this category is not only our top pick... we were the reptiles who nominated it!

• Are We At War? And What Is the Political Consequence of That For Conservatives In This Election?, by BeldarBlog.

Beldar asks the most important question of this election; for if we truly are at war -- and Big Lizards has believed that we are even before hatching from our leathery egg -- then our nation simply cannot afford for conservatives to monkey around with "protest votes" for Huckabee (or in the case of the divine she above, Hillary Clinton!)

1. Obama's Politics of Collective Redemption, by American Thinker.

This came in third: Kyle-Anne Shiver examines the "messianic" fervor of Obamasm -- and shudders.

And the last shall be 45th, and the penultimate shall be 16th, and...

Here be -- as we refer to the Professor and Mary Ann -- "the rest."

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 27, 2008, at the time of 3:32 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 26, 2008

Watcher Countdown - Five! "The Ancient of Weeks"

These last five posts in my tenure on the Watcher's Council will necessarily be brief (and, as you see, often late -- this is for the Watcher post of February 8th!) So forgive me for wasting less of your valuable time than normal...

Council

The winner this week begins his post by saying, "no one's ever going to read this all. But what the hell." Shamefacedly, I must confess it was certainly true in my case! While Callimachus' writing is up to his usual high standards, I find the subject-matter -- ruminations on the Confederate battle flag -- simply tedious, despite the fact that I was born and raised in the South (of California, that is):

• A Short Hitch, by Done With Mirrors.

Rather, we voted for two posts that had absolutely nothing to do with old Stars and Bars:

1. Obama Disparages the Military & Gets a Pass On Iraq From Fox News, by Wolf Howling;
2. Cutting Off Berkeley, by Rhymes With Right.

In the first, Mr. Howling notes that Barack Obama continues to call our presence in Iraq an "occupation;" in fact, it ceased being an occupation when Saddam Hussein's Baathist government fell, and a new government was democratically elected -- and asked us to stay to fight against the terrorist insurgents trying to tear down what the Iraqi people built. Evidently, Sen. Obama is unaware of this history. (I wonder how he would have done on that "quiz" survey that Common Core gave to random 17 year olds?)

In the Rhymes With Right post, Greg notes with enthusiasm Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-SC, 100%) quest to eliminate from the Senate appropriations process any and all "earmarks" for the city of Berkeley, California... on grounds that if, as the city council wrote in a letter, the United States Marines were "unwelcome intruders" in their fair city -- then the city was not entitled to free money from the federal government they reject.

Sounds good to me!

Our own entry tied for last place... but at least we were spared the ignominy of getting no votes at all.

Nouncil

We did rather better in the Nouncil vote, with our number-one vote winning, and our number-two tying for third. (Our own Nouncil nomination got only one vote... and it wasn't even from us!)

• Changing the Organizational Culture (Updated), by Small Wars Journal.

LG William B. Caldwell urges us to become real players in the new world of communications via the internet, something our terrorist enemies have already done. To that end, he proposes we take advantage of the greatest strength of the American military: Not our technology (though that is extraordinary), nor our training (excellent as it is), but the trust and authority we have always invested in our individual soldiers -- as individuals -- to make decisions and take personal responsibility for their areas of operation.

This is something no other national military does to anywhere near the degree we do; most allow their lower-level members no authority whatsoever without orders from higher up... even when they come under attack. Caldwell urges us to allow and even encourage soldiers to post YouTube videos, blogposts, and suchlike; and dang, but that's a great and very American idea!

In our other pick, Oliver Kamm reviews a book on Iraq by Jonathan Steele, and finds that it comes up short:

2. Our Policy In Iraq, by Oliver Kamm.

Full Monty Watcher

See him in all his glory here!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 26, 2008, at the time of 3:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 6, 2008

Wicked Watch of the West

Another Watcher post? Already?

Yeesh.

Council

Our bête noire, JoshuaPundit, came in first this week in the Council category. Which we really can't complain about, since we helped compel it there by voting it our Number 1:

• Energy Independence -- What It Am And What It Ain't, by Joshuapundit.

[At least our own post tied for Number 2.

We're number 2!

We're number 2! Wait, that didn't come out right...]

Freedom Fighter gives an excellent primer on the difficulties of going energy independent, finishing with a stirring call to dive into oil-from-coal and oil-from-shale production, along with many more fission power plants -- one hopes he means the newer designs, such as Pebble Bed Modular Reactors and Integral Fast Reactors.

The only point he didn't discuss is that we could greatly help the drive towards energy independence, without having to scrap our fuel-delivery infrastructure, by offering a massive X-prize -- say, a government contract for $1 billion worth of vehicles -- for the first company to create a commercially produceable car with a high-temperature ceramic engine that burns the gasoline (whether oil-based or artificial) at a much hotter temperature... say about 5,000° Fahrenheit.

The hotter you burn fuel, the more complete the combustion; hence the greater the mileage and the fewer pollutants out the tailpipe. (Smog comprises incompletely burned hydrocarbons that ought to be driving the power train instead.) Couple high-temperature burning with flywheel technology (to conserve some of the angular momentum of the wheels during braking), and the reduction in weight through scrapping the water pump and hose system and the oil pump and lubrication system, and we could see cars getting 80 to 100 mpg.

Our Number 2 was...

2. Complicit, by Soccer Dad.

SoccerDad notes the sad irony of newspapers being accomplices beside the fact in the "Palestinians" (Hamas, actually) blowing holes through the security wall segregating Gaza from Egypt... given that Hamas, had they their own way, would surely dump freedom of the press along with every other freedom in a world of sharia.

This piece, written nearly a fortnight ago, is doubly ghoulish, given that the suicide bombers who killed a 73 year old woman in Dimona, Israel likely entered Israel by crossing the Sinai from Egypt, after escaping Gaza through the breech opened by Hamas. According to Fox News:

The Egyptian Police attempted to keep the escapees contained to Rafah, the town immediately on the Egyptian side of the border. They were unsuccessful. The Egyptians announced that they had picked up 17 Palestinian in various spots across the Sinai Peninsula, armed and intending to attack Israelis. Some were planning to attack Israeli tourists in the Sinai, others were intending to cross back into Israel and attack there.

While the Gaza Strip is separated from Israel by a fence, monitored with optics and patrolled by soldiers, Egypt is not. The border extending south from the Gaza Strip to the Red Sea is protected mostly by an open expanse of desert. There is some fencing but it’s not impassable. The first 30 miles of border, immediately south of the Gaza Strip, are patrolled by only eight soldiers at any given time.

So the New York Times, the Times of London, and other papers that cheered the "Palestinians" on -- "once more into the breach, dear friends!" -- were not only complicit in breaking the Israeli boycott intended to stop the Qassam rocket attacks on northern Israel; they may also have been complicit in one murder, eleven critical assaults, and God knows how much more death and mayhem, if other bombers manage to make it from Egypt into Israel.

I hope the journalists feel chagrin, but I suspect the more likely emotion is narcissistic self-righteousness.

Nouncil

Our Number 2 came in Number 1 this week; actually, it tied for first, but the Watcher selected it for the winner -- against our Number 1, which thus tied for Number 2 with two other Number 2s. Ya fallah?

• The Conclusion We Dare Not Face, by Dr. Sanity.

Dr. Sanity -- or Old Doc Electroshock, as I like to call her -- notes the consequences of entertaining the possibility that Islam might not actually be the "religion of peace;" and she asks whether we can face those consequences -- the decisions they require and the future world they imply. [A commenter swears that D.S. is a she, not a he; I have changed all pronouns accordingly.]

1. Be a Victim! Or Else!, by Classical Values.

Eric examines the phenomenon of gay bashing by Moslem yutes... and thus falls down the rabbit hole of whether a society whose greatest virtue is tolerance can tolerate the intolerant.

The watchword is which word?

If you really want to read all the losers too (including Big Lizards), I supposed you could wend your way here.

But why would you?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 6, 2008, at the time of 4:19 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 31, 2008

Watcher Head and Goat

If we can get this post up quickly, before the Watcher announces this week's winners (or at least before I read the e-mail!), then we'll be current again. Accordingly...

Council

And the (narrow) winner is:

• Liberal Fascism, by Done With Mirrors.

We're pretty happy about this (though we're not happy at being skunked again), because this was our first choice in the Council category. Both our first choices won this week.

This is a snarky, snarly review of the book Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg -- which I have but haven't yet read. We voted for this entry mainly for the wonderful alternative Callimachus invented to replace the left-right political axis:

A simple pair of labels invented to describe the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly in 1789 (in which the nobility took the seats on the President's right and left the Third Estate to sit on the left), they may have been useful for a time in describing the rudimentary politics of the early French Republic. Their application to anything else is a farce.

What would be better? Almost anything. A spiral galaxy, for instance. There is a large, undifferentiated, blurry center. There are arms that trail out of it, getting smaller and more extreme as they are more distant from the center. Here is socialism, and beyond it, communism. Here is conservative moralism, and beyond it theocracy. And out there is a lumpy arm that starts in libertarianism and ends in anarchism. The arms sometimes come nearer each other than the center as they spin out.

(Long quotes are nice; they make the post nice and big without requiring any writing on our part.)

Our other vote was for a more traditional political rant:

2. The Radicalization of American Politics, by The Glittering Eye.

Mr. Eye objects to the increasing radicalization of the parties, as seen most clearly in the racially tinged combat between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination to the presidency.

Nouncil

We knew this next post was going to be the winner, and by a substantial margin:

• Bylines of Brutality, by Iowahawk.

Iowahawk has penned (phosphored?) a wonderful parody of the recent New York Times hit piece on the American soldier that pretended there was a trail of Iraq and Afghanistan vets who had come back more or less like Bruce Dern in Coming Home: Insane, violent, murderous psychopaths.

Iowahawk applies the same non-standards to prove that reporters and news anchors are bursting out in violent outbursts all over the world. It's very funny; read it!

Again, this was our first choice. Our second was the piece we nominated:

2. A Relatively Scientific Experiment, by John at Power Line.

John takes a more sober look at the same story that Iowahawk just took down with laughter. This post was the first I read that seriously looked at the wretched statistics manhandled by the Times, in their wild-eyed vendetta against our troops.

(I don't know why, but Power Line gets no respect at all on the Council. I don't recall them winning anything in the almost eleven months I've been on the coven.)

Watch scarefully...

As always, follow the link to see all those nominees that actually got a vote or two.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 31, 2008, at the time of 7:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 29, 2008

Watcher Behind

Can't stop, running behind again, gotta go --

Council

It'sanhonorjusttobenominatedthankyouverymuch.

None of our votes won this week; we did much better next week.

• Ed. Schools: They're Awful (for the most part), by The Colossus of Rhodey.

Hube states his thesis right up front. He quotes George Leef:

The public overwhelmingly believes that the function of schools should be mainly academic – that is, to make sure that children learn very well the skills and knowledge that it takes to succeed in life....

On the other hand, the dominant view among those who run and teach in our education schools is that the key role of schooling is to achieve various social objectives. In their opinion, it's more important for teachers to properly adjust students' outlook on life and society than to instruct them in "mere" knowledge and facts.

Leef is right, and Hube expounds upon this profundity throughout the post.

Instead, we voted for a pair of lesser issues, evidently:

1. Identity Politics Then and Now, by Bookworm Room;
2. 500,000 Iraqis Did Not Die, by Cheat Seeking Missiles.

Bookworm writes about the politics of identification: "Vote for me because I look like you!" She contrasts this (largely Democratic) tendency with the (more often Republican) propensity to vote for the person whose philosophy and experience most closely matches what we see as ideal.

Is that an important topic? Nah. Tied for fifth.

Our second-place vote went to a post that notes the astonishing discrepency between the numbers of dead Iraqi civilians as estimated by the Lancet study and the World Health Organization... a gulf of greater than half a million souls!

Nouncil

Jeez, this is taking longer than I thought. All right, fifth gear! The winner was a nice piece by that Canadian guy who's under the gun for republishing the Mohammed cartoons:

• Kangaroo Court, by Ezra Levant.

Levant makes a great case that his purpose in publishing them was simply to exercise his freedom to publish them in the putative Western democracy of Canada. (We voted this one in first place, and I remarked to myself, "Self, this Nouncil post is going to win by a landslide."

It tallied 5 1/3 points, which means either eight first-place votes -- or else seven firsts and two seconds -- or six firsts and four seconds -- well, you get the picture. The silver medal was a three-way tie... and one of those three was yet another post about Ezra Levant's battles with the Canadian Human Rights Commission!

Another of the silver medalists was our second-place vote:

2. The Media Does It Again, by Winds of Change.

Armed Liberal tears into the risible New York Times piece purporting to show a trail of death and destruction, or however they phrased it, following after Iraq-war veterans when they returned to the United States. (This was the piece we nominated.)

Oyez!

Here be Watchers.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 29, 2008, at the time of 9:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2008

Allow Us to Blow Our Own Canoe

This isn't really a normal Watcher's Council vote post... but it was a vote, of a sort.

Secretly, while the innocent were sleeping, the Watcher of Weasels conspired to keep a clandestine list of all the votes cast for blogs -- both Council and Nouncil -- which came in first in a weekly Council vote.

That is, whenever a blog would win a Council vote, the WoW would add all votes for that winner to a running tally. If later, that same blog won again, then all the votes for it that week would be added to the previous total, and so forth. At the end of the year, the Watcher toted up all the running tallies and declared a winner in The 2007 WOW Awards.

You probably wonder why we're telling you all this.

(Actually, I doubt that; knowing our entirely overblown opinion of ourselves -- which causes us, e.g., to refer to ourselves constantly in the first-person plural -- you have probably already guessed why. But our well-known modesty forbids us to come right out and say it.)

But of course, we did supply a link...

For those readers as interested in the past as we, here are the previous three years' winner tote boards (I think 2004 was the first year that the Watcher of Weasels compiled an overall winner):

• The 2006 WOW Awards
• The 2005 WOW Awards
• The 2004 WOW Awards

Since we don't actually know whether the Watcher of Weasels is male or female -- or whether, like the Stig, the WoW exists in a freakish netherworld of uncollapsed wave equations -- we shall use the ficticious, all-purpose, genderless pronoun "yeye," invented by Damon Knight (who always insisted it was Swahili, or somesuch).

Here is the earliest Watcher post still up on yeye's site, from March 22nd, 2003: Humanoid Spacifications. That's from before the Iraq War began... in blog years, it's practically precambrian!

It appears that in addition to yeye's current domain-name digs (watcherofweasels.com), the Watcher is or was at one time blogging out of upsaid.com... which looks like a sort of blogger.com type thingie. Yeye had a journal there titled "My Jornal," but with a subdomain of "watcherofweasels;" or at least, so it looks. (The name in the user profile is given as "anna," by the way; which is why I hesitate to assign a sex to the WoW).

The creation date of the journal is listed as April 28th, 2004... but that should be the date when it was recreated or reinitiated or somesuch; because, in the first post we could find that explicitly mentioned the Council -- dated October 24th, 2003 -- the WoW makes reference to earlier Council rules in a (now defunct) link to upsaid.com/watcherofweasels. So the dates are all bollixed up, for some reason.

In any event, the Watcher is evidently one of the Grand Old Men or Grand Old Dames of the blogosphere. While blogging had precursors going back to the late 1980s (in 1987, I was sending around an e-mail newsletter titled the Huge Report), blogging as we know it today, looking like modern blogs, really began in late 1998. But the big explosion happened around 2004... so anybody preceding that should be considered a member of First Blogdom (those "blogging" before HTML -- the real pioneers! -- should be called members of Zeroth Blogdom).

We can see your eyes glazing over, so that's enough ancient history for today.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 17, 2008, at the time of 2:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 16, 2008

At Last, the Final Ketchup Watcher!

Since the vote this week has not even occurred, we're not yet late... so as soon as this post on last-week's Coucil vote hits the 'sphere, we'll actually be all caught up!

Council

The winner was our number-two vote this time:

• Britain's Prosecution of The Blogger Lionheart for Criticism of Islam, by Wolf Howling;

The title says it all: the UK has issued an arrest warrant for a British blogger... for the crime of "stirring up racial hatred" by criticising radical Islamism. Can Britons spell S-h-a-r-i-a?

While the Wolf Howling post was good, we had been planning to blog about that ourselves and never got around to it -- a fact we hold against the wolves. Clearly, we could not possibly put that post in first place, as it just highlights our own inadequacy, lethargy, and laziness. We stuck it in second place, hoping nobody would notice.

Whoops; I think we weren't supposed to write that part out loud.

Instead, we voted for another excellent post -- this one by perennially enjoyable and edifying Laer:

1. Honor Killings? What Honor Killings?, by Cheat Seeking Missiles.

Laer highlights the different treatments given (a) a story about an alleged "hate crime" against a black couple, and (b) the non-story about an Egyptian immigrant who is accused of the "honor" murders of his two daughters. (That's an act of "honor" like blowing up a children's hospital is an act of "jihad": Both are nothing more than acts of human sacrifice that will send the perpetrators straight to Hell.)

Nouncil

With the death in Iraq of Maj. Andy Olmsted -- blogger and former member of the Watcher's Council -- we were pretty sure that one of the winners would be one of the many heartfelt obituaries for Maj. Olmsted; it turned out to be in the Nouncil category:

• Andy Olmsted, by Obsidian Wings.

This vote is entirely fitting: Hilzoy was Olmsted's co-blogger at Obsidian Wings; Olmsted blogged there under the handle G'Kar, and it was there that he could fully express his love of the SF epic show Babylon-5, as well as comment on matters in the real world.

Requiescat in pace, Major.

We voted for a pair of other worthies:

1. Sen. Obama's Calls for Unity Are Not What They Seem, by Dennis Prager at Townhall.com;
2. An Amusing Greenie Attack on the Inhofe Report, by A Western Heart.

The first -- our own Nouncil nominee -- is a brilliant column by Dennis Prager. Prager notes that whenever somebody talks about "unity," he always means that everyone should unify around the unifier's ideas... tossing aside their own like used Kleenex.

The second is, well, just what the title says... a fun fisking of a pro-globaloney attack piece. The fisker is Dr. John Ray, a psychologist and behavioral scientist now out of academe and living in his native Brisbane, Australia.

I know you've never seen this before, but...

You can see all the entries that got votes by motivating here.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 16, 2008, at the time of 5:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 14, 2008

More Stale Watchers... Will We Ever Sight Land?

Someday, we shall overcome this evil curse of being behind in our Watchers. For I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal enmity against all forms of stale-Watcher tyranny over the mind of Man.

Council

I've always rather liked posts that take on the self-inflated and prick their balloons:

• The Freddys Seven, by Soccer Dad.

Soccer Dad pops the automythological "relevance" of the "Reverend" Al Sharpton. 'Nuff said.

Here were our two votes in last week's Council category:

1. America Derangement Syndrome -- Or, Yes, You Can Call Them Unpatriotic, by Bookworm Room;
2. Politics Anonymous, by Right Wing Nut House.

In the first, Bookworm demonstrates that anti-Americanism is endemic in Europe and has always existed; it wasn't caused by having a "cowboy" in the White House... they always hate us. When the president is a Democrat, they're just politer about expressing their hatred. (But of course, anybody who watches the BBC car show Top Gear is quite familiar with this bizarre attitude; the main presenter, Jeremy Clarkson, nakedly loathes everything about the United States... and worse, he casually assumes that every decent person feels the same. I've never actually heard him refer to us as "the colonies," but I'm sure he thinks it -- in the most patronizing, infantalizing way.)

The second is a fun romp by the curmudgeonly Rick Moran through all the candidates... and it turns out he hates them all as even-handedly as European elites hate every aspect of America!

Nouncil

The winner was a post comprising a litany of myths about Israel and her neighbors:

• Exploding Myths, by Treppenwitz.

I agree with the author, David Bogner, in each case; but I'm not sure what is unique enough about the post for it to win the vote this week. Still, it's nice to see these all in one place.

Rather, we voted for a couple that we thought quite different from the norm of Nouncil nominations:

1. The Wodehouse Primary, by The Debatable Land;
2. Ms. Hillary Does Pakistan, by Power Line.

The first recasts one of the principals in the primary pandemoneum -- Ms. Hillary -- as a couple of characters from the P.G. Wodehouse "Bertie Wooster" stories... both are women to which Berties has unintentionally and inexplicably become engaged at various times. Depending on Hillary Clinton's mood du jour, she can be the strident and mannish Honoria Glossop or the pseudo-intellectual Florence Craye. But never, ever the soppy and simpering Madeleine Bassett! (I personally think that at core, she's more like Bertie's Aunt Agatha -- the bad aunt who chews broken glass and bays at the moon.)

The second was our own nomination, a Power Line post in which Scott "Big Johnson" Trunk -- whoops, reverse those -- quotes Thomas Houlahan on the myriad things Hillary Clinton doesn't know about Pakistan... but thinks she does.

This is an example of what Don Rumsfeld would have called an "unknown unknown," where one not only doesn't know, one doesn't know that one doesn't know. This is the most dangerous kind of ignorance, and it's emblematic of today's Democratic Party. Another way to put it, generally attributed to Will Rogers (and quoted in widely varying forms), is: "It ain't what he don't know that scares me; it's what he knows that just ain't so."

How to find a Watcher for your very own

Just search here, and I'll bet one will pop up!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 14, 2008, at the time of 2:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 6, 2008

Wait - Watch Which Watcher, Wretch?

Would you believe it? We're still not caught up. Once again, this is last week's Council decision; we still hope to get to this week's decision later tonight.

(Yeesh, this is like trying to pay off credit cards...)

Council

The only thing as good as winning a Watcher's Council contest -- is seeing your number one and two votes come in -- numbers one and two:

• Judeo-Christian Doctrine and Moral Freedom, by Bookworm Room.

Bookworm makes the case that Islamism has a very important similarity to Leftism: "[N]either believes in free will or in man’s ability to make moral decisions independent of his immediate circumstances."

This was our first choice in the Council vote, as noted; here was our second -- which came in second:

2. Ron Paul, by Done With Mirrors.

See if you can guess what this post is about. I'll wait.

Figured it out, have you? Well, I thought it one of the most erudite takedowns I've ever seen of the pompous, morally preening, far-above-the-fray (in fact, far above the mortal plane) candidate for the Libertublican Party.

Nouncil

We didn't do quite as well in the Nouncil category: Our number two took number two, but our number one was down in the pack. The winner was a nice defense of fear itself as a motivator to fight (and it includes a rant against Paul Krugman, everybody's favorite economist... where "everybody" means the collection of all anybodies who see no connection between economics and the free market):

• Fear, by Silver Bullet.

Ron Silver -- yes, the newly conservative (he would say "revolutionary liberal") actor guy from the West Wing -- writes that a certain level of fear about guys in caves declaring war on the United States is healthy... because it encourages us to take seriously guys in caves declaring war on the United States. (Had we a little more fear in the 1990s, we might have solved the al-Qaeda problem before it metastasized.)

I liked the Silver piece, but we voted for a couple others that were excellent as well:

1. Democrats' 2007 Report Card, by Human Events.
2. Laughter and Tears, by Eternity Road.

In the first, Jennifer Rubin runs down a list of the Democrats' accomplishments last year... and a more run-down lot you'll never find. And in "Laughter and Tears," Francis W. Porretto ("Fran") gives us his last column for a while. He's a fellow author (though I'll bet he's published more recently than I!), and he has to take a blogbreak to finish some book he has under contract. (Something about an irate publisher with a 55-gallon drum of white-out...)

Fran runs through some of what has been making him so angry and tired recently, a series of events that revolve around the issue of power: the power sought by a few to rule over the many. It's well worth reading... and it reminds me somewhat of another author, far better known than I -- and, I suspect, than Francis Porretto: Harlan Ellison.

I wonder if Fran has been noshing on some of Harlan's "angry candy?"

Lookee here

Yeah, yeah; I know: Full results. Here. Now.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 6, 2008, at the time of 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 31, 2007

More Ancient Watchers...

Another hoary, old Watcher's Council post excavated from the Cretaceous period (i.e., last week).

Council

Once again, I'm convinced the only reason we won was a really killer title...

• "The Courage to Do Nothing", by Big Lizards.

This is my paeon to Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK, 100%), and his plea that instead of flying off in all five directions to combat "anthropogenic global warming," we simply have to courage to do nothing -- and wait until we have some actual idea what the heck we should do... if anything.

The posts we bet on didn't do particularly well... but we still like 'em:

1. More on the Teacher Accused of Insulting Religion in His Class, by Bookworm Room;
2. I Bet Not, by Done With Mirrors.

I always enjoy Bookworm's posts, even when, as usual, they're ludicrously wrong. But on those vanishingly rare occasions when she happens, by merest chance, to be right, they're wonderful! (There, how's that for a backhanded compliment?) This time, Bookworm discusses an AP history teacher in San Juan Capistrano (about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego and very near Richard Nixon's "western White House" at San Clemente) who is, as she puts it, "accused of using his AP history classroom to indoctrinate his students in anti-Christian attitudes."

She has papers. Very worth a read.

Our second-place vote went to a post about a computer bug in Trondheim, a city in Norway. Parking tickets were erroneously issued for, ah, somewhat startling amounts:

In some cases, it attempted to drain their bank accounts of up to $148,000, which of course they didn't have. They discovered the overdraft when they went to buy food or Christmas presents and found their accounts frozen.

The post is extraordinarily short, which played a major role in our voting for it. If brevity is the soul of wit, Callimachus at Done With Mirrors is certainly more than half-way there!

Nouncil

The posts we voted for didn't do any better in the Nouncil category. The winner (sigh) was:

• A Stand-up President, by The Ornery American.

I have no idea why this post won (rather, tied for first place, then got the nod from the Watcher). All right, Orson Scott Card is a semi-big name in science fictiondom; and yes, I understand that he was attempting to stick up for George W. Bush. But for Pete's sake, he spends the first half of the post running down Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush... what's up with that?

Perhaps readers were so numbfounded by the sight of a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America who wasn't a shrieking leftist, that they panicked and cast their votes upon the water...

We voted for posts that were rather less ambiguous:

1. Manic Misinterpretations of Climate Change Capitulation by US in Bali, by NewsBusters.org;
2. Mearsheimer, Walt, and "Cold Feet", by Sandbox.

Our number-one vote was in fact for the post we nominated, a companion piece to our winning entry (subtle, aren't we?). Newsbusters was the first site we saw (courtesy of a commenter on Big Lizards named Seaberry) that debunked the meme that started to spread through the dextrosphere that the Bush administration had "caved" on globaloney at the meeting in Bali.

In fact, all we agreed to do was -- to discuss what we might do in the future. We calmly vetoed all hard goals and timetables. That is probably the best that could be done, given the -- er -- climate of the international "community" on the subject.

The Sandbox piece is self-explanatory, assuming you know who Professors Mearsheimer and Walt are. And if you don't -- well, even more reason to read about these blowhards who use high-falutin high-larity to mask their own rather thuggish Jew hatred.

Lookee here

I know you're sick of reading this, but if you look here, you can see the full list of posts that actually received votes. (The others would just as soon remain anonymous -- as we did the one time we were shut out!)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 31, 2007, at the time of 10:46 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 18, 2007

Grumpy Old Watchmen

This is the grumpy edition of the Watcher's Council vote... peevish, short, curt, crotchety, cranky, off the meds, fizzywigged... the reedy, rambling threnody of an alter kaker. Forewarmed is four-armed.

Council

The winner this time was JoshuaPundit -- for making yet another invalid comparison, again to George Bush's disadvantage. (Does Freedom Fighter agree with Democrats that Bush is The Worst President In All of American History? I don't know for sure, but I have my suspicions.)

• Pearl Harbor... And 9/11, by JoshuaPundit.

This time, he posits the following question:

66 years ago on this day, December 7th, Japanese pilots bombed Pearl Harbor in a sneak attack.... The next day, December 8th,President Roosevelt went before Congress and asked them to declare war.... Less than 4 years later, Germany, Japan and Italy were in ruins, their militaries destroyed, their capacity for evil extinguished....

Sixty years after that grim December morning in Hawaii, there was another sneak attack on American soil.... It's been over six years since that happened, and we have yet to defeat these enemies who pose no less of a threat to our civilization and our freedom.

Why is that?

Well for one reason, because we were not attacked by any specific country. We were attacked by an amorphous, transnational terrorist group with no chain of command, no fixed membership, and not even a completely consistent ideology. Nevertheless, we have fared remarkably well: We utterly routed al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and we're well on the way to doing the same in their next base, Iraq.

(They've returned to an old base, Sudan, and to a traditional one, Pakistan; and there are AQ affiliates, allies, wannabes, groupies, and hangers on deeply infested in scores of countries around the globe, all plotting our death and the death of Israel. Merry Christmas!)

There has been no successful attack on American soil or territory since 9/11, and we have shattered major cells from the ME to the Horn of Africa to Canada to Minnesota. But there isn't going to be a signing ceremony on the deck of the USS Missouri because, at its core, our enemy is really not this or that particular group; it is a meme, a wicked, nihilist ideology that seeks only destruction, ruin, and human sacrifice. We are fighting Moloch, and Moloch is everywhere.

But for some reason, Freedom Fighter choose not to compare the War Against Global Hirabah to the more obvious conflict: the Cold War. How long did it take us to defeat the Evil Empire? Well, we first invaded in the 1920s and it didn't fall until 1992... so it took us about 70 years.

But of course, we weren't just fighting the Soviets; we were fighting Communism -- which included also Red China, North Korea, North Vietnam (later just Vietnam), Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Berkeley, Harvard, and many other satellite countries. Most of these still exist; does that make the entire Cold War worthless, the fall of the USSR a pyrrhic victory, and Ronald Reagan a fool?

Of course not. We won the Cold War because the influence of Communism collapsed from its peak in the early 1970s and has never recovered to that point. Victory is not complete so long as Communists states still exist in various places; but it is a victory nonetheless, because our future is no longer clouded by Lenin's long shadow.

And that is the same sort of war and "victory" we look for in the WAGH: When our future is no longer clouded by the grasping dead hands of Salafist Sunni and Shiite Twelvers, then we will have won.

We do not fight WWII-style wars anymore for reasons amply discussed in Thomas P.M. Barnett's book the Pentagon's New Map. That is not a reflection on President Bush, any more than it was a reflection on Ronald Reagan that we didn't leave the Soviet Union "in ruins, their militaries destroyed, their capacity for evil extinguished."

We live in a different world than that of six decades ago. So it goes.

Freedom Fighter is not the only person I know who pines for the good old days, when our enemies were clearly defined and had the decency to clump together into a single country (or in the instant case, a pair of discrete countries), and when we could fight massive tank battles in the sands of North Africa and hop from island to island, closing in on our foe. I think to some extent we all do... but some more than others.

But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war against the enemies you have. We weren't attacked by a country; we were attacked by a transnational group that affiliates, to some extent, with a number of countries. We took out two of the most dangerous affiliates -- the Taliban's Afghanistan and Hussein's Iraq. But we cannot possibly launch a war simultaneously against Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Pakistan (with nukes), Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and a half-dozen 'Stans. I'm puzzled that anyone would think we could.

I think this is another manifestation of American Omnipotence Syndrome... sort of the flip side of the Democratic version, where liberals demand to know why Bush "allowed" Hurricane Katrina to destroy New Orleans -- instead of turning on his big wind-sucking machine and vacuuming it all up.

We voted for a pair of posts that did not fare all that well. Our number one achieved "middle of the pack" status, but number 2 was skunked by everyone else:

1. What the NIE on Iran's Nuclear Weapons Development Doesn't Say, by The Glittering Eye;
2. Another Sign: Islam Is a Human Rights Violation, by Rhymes With Right.

In the first, the author (I don't know who writes the Glittering Eye) points out all the cold facts about Iran that the new and not very improved National Intelligence Estimate did not change; they remain the same, and just as dangerous as before.

The second falls into the category of posts that note how much of the violence and depravity of Islamic radicals in fact comes straight from the tenets of Islam itself. The difference between a Moslem militant and moderate is not so much what they believe... but what they intend to do about what they believe.

Nouncil

We did much better in the Nouncil category, though neither of our choices won; but our number one and two came in a clean second and third, respectively. First, the winner:

• Men of Valor: Part IV, by Michael Yon.

Another Michael Yon piece. I suppose a lot of people love this stuff; Sachi does. But I must confess, it all seems the same to me... and purely descriptive, no real analysis. Not even the level of strategic thinking that one gets from, e.g., Bill Roggio at the Fourth Rail (and all around the milblogosphere). Oh well; vox populi, vox Dei.

Now to our much more interesting choices...!

1. What Happens After the Surge, by Pajamas Media (Omar Fadhil of Iraq the Model);
2. What Iran's "Victory" Means, by ShrinkWrapped.

The first is an amazing, fascinating insider account of what is happening in Iraq, and where it's likely to go after the "surge" ends (after we transition out the extra troops we transitioned in). It's written by Omar Fadhil... one of the famous brothers who started and still contributes to Iraq the Model, the greatest blog every to come out of the Arab Middle East. (In fact, Omar is still the mainstay of the blog.)

In the second, the anonymous psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of ShrinkWrapped (hence the name -- cute, eh?) tries to fathom Iran and what it will do in response to the fawning NIE that the nits from the State Department just handed to the president (and the media). He has some very interesting insights, well worth reading.

I Saw 17 Posts Come Sailing In

...And you too can see them here!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 18, 2007, at the time of 10:16 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

December 12, 2007

Watch Your Head and Coat

Golly, we're getting later and later posting these thingies...

What if we fall a week behind? All those readers who go from Council member to Council member, reading all the results posts, will be utterly befuddled; it'll be like we're living in an odd time zone of last week.

(I swear, I didn't realize as I wrote those words -- we have already done just that! And last week's Watcher post, to boot! But I'm determined that last week's post will post before this week's; so hang on, let me quickly finish off t'other...)

Okay, that's done. Now we're back on track.

Council

A certain lupine so-and-so has won again, the dirty dog. If GW at Wolf Howling wins again next week, he'll have done what we've never been able to do: a "three-peat."

Yeesh.

• Of Islamist Foxes and British Chickens, by Wolf Howling.

We did like the post; voted it number 2. GW first notes the incredible level of radicalization among the UK's two million Moslems... and then he notes with astonishment that the British government has decided to appoint two Moslem associations that are, at the least, rather chummy with some terrorism-supporting, radical Moslem groups to -- I swear I'm not making this up -- to Great Britain's "Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board." Cushlamocree!

For our number 1, we turned to hardy perennial Rick Moran:

1. If the Huck Wins, the Right Loses, by Right Wing Nut House.

I think the title is pretty self explanatory...

Nouncil

Didn't fare too well in the Nouncil category: Our number 1 tied for sixth place, while our number 2 got treated like -- er -- let's not go there. Suffice to say that we were the only ones to vote for it.

Instead, the winner was a piece by a blog whose very name probably got it a couple of votes:

• Teddy Muhammad, by Pierre Tristam's Middle East Issues Blog.

Tristam gives us a brief overview of the rise of radicalism in Sudan and how that led, inexorably, by way of distraction, to the arrest, imprisonment, and calls for the execution of British subject Gillian Gibbons... for the crime of allowing her Moslem students to name their teddy bear "Mohammed."

Here are our two votes; can we pick 'em, or what?

1. Insurance Haters, Let's Get the Job Done!, by Classical Values;
2. Arlington Schools Hire Race-Baiting Diversity Consultant, by OpenMarket.org

Eric of Classical Values begins with a rant against medical-insurance companies, then winds his way, by a commodious vicus of recirculation, to a denunciation of Hillary Clinton. A quote makes all clear:

Well, much as I hate the insurance companies, (a fact I fully admit), there are much worse things. Socialized medicine would be far, far worse. Worse for the country, worse for the individual, but better for Hillary and her faux socialist supporters who imagine themselves to be Robin Hoods while robbing the insurance industry and enriching themselves out of their clients' lottery winnings.

And in our number 2 vote, Hans Bader vents about a race-hustling "affirmative action" champion "diversity consultant," Glenn Singleton, who, despite being personally slapped down by the United States Supreme Court, has nevertheless managed to get himself hired (at six-figure salaries) to school districts from Seattle, Washington to Arlington, Virginia.

Just the facts, ma'am

As ever, get yer red-hot list of vote getters here!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 12, 2007, at the time of 11:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 11, 2007

Swatchers of Swine

Egads... I prepared all the scutwork for this post (putting in all the links) -- and then I went and forgot to finish and post it! So on the theory that twice done is half begun, here is last week's Watcher's Council post. A little late.

Council

In both the Council and Nouncil categories, one of our posts won; in this instance, it was our second-place choice:

• Buchanan's New Book: “Prepare Ye for the End”, by Right Wing Nut House.

Rick Moran turns his mocking dialectic upon the ever darker Patrick J. Buchanan. I must admit, I very much enjoyed his autobiography, Right From the Beginning; his -- Buchanan's, I mean -- his conservatism was of the muscular, workingman's type... not the limp-wristed asceticism of a George Will, nor even the aristocratic, antidisestablishmentarian hauteur of a William F. Buckley, jr.

But Pat seems to have gotten himself into a slump. I covered the Reform Party's convention in Long Beach in 2000 -- well, one of them, anyway; I never could find John Hagelin's separate convention, even though I stood still in the street, cupped my ears, and listened intently for the "AAUUuuuuummmmm..."

I found Buchanan's, however; but the man seemed tired and distracted, just going through the motions. He didn't even blink or comment when several people in the front row stood and gave a Sieg heil type Nazi salute to Buchanan (and his black, female running mate, Ezola Foster). I badgered Bayh Buchanan (his sister and campaign mangler) until she finally admitted that Pat wouldn't even have been in the race were it not for the $12.5 million in matching funds the Reform Party had earned in 1996... but never again, of course, since Buchanan's run killed it off.

But if Moran's review of Buchanan's new book, Day of Reckoning, is accurate (and I have no reason to disbelieve it), then the man has finally sunk to quotidian armageddon-mongering for hoi polloi: Doom is Nigh!

This is a sad end to a fascinating and enigmatic man, falling from the heights of power -- White House advisor and speech-writer under both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan -- to the slough of irrelevance and apathy.

Our second choice was another nice piece by Laer at Cheat Seeking Missiles:

1. Still No Evidence 9/11 Nuts Rule, by Cheat Seeking Missiles;

Laer examines the Left Wing Nut House, which has nothing to do with Rick Moran, and in particular the 9/11 "Truthers" (Laer hates the term); he asks whether the disturbingly large number of Americans who believe this or that insane conspiracy theory about 9/11 bodes ill for our republic.

I think not. Whenever an event of such magnitude and momentum as the terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, and wherever Flight 93 was aimed (probably the White House) occurs, many people are going to be so overwhelmed by the almost cartoon-like reality that they will naturally retreat into the somewhat more understandable, if not comforting, surreality of a conspiracy theory.

Nouncil

In this category, our first-place vote took first place... a piece by Wolf Howling, which evidently encouraged the anonymous lupine author "GW" to join up with the Watcher's Pack:

• Have Our Copperheads Found Their McClellan in Retired LTG General Sanchez?, by Wolf Howling;

The "McClellan" he refers to is, of course, retired Army Lt.Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the head of Coalition Forces Iraq (which today would be called Multinational Forces - Iraq, the position now held by Gen. David Petraeus). Sanchez flung himself into the arms of the defeatist Democrats, just as McClellan did in 1864; however, the former has not elected to make a run for the presidency.

It was a great post, and GW followed it up by another winner next week (isn't the tense of that sentence off somehow?)

Finally, we voted for a La Shawn Barber post in second place, but it was good enough to be a first-place vote in any other week:

2. Another Victory for Colorblind Government Policy, by La Shawn Barber's Corner.

Barber has a personal stake in eliminating racist, "affirmative-action" policies enacted in the name of a "color-blind society" -- which is rather like the Weight-Loss Donut Shoppe. She recounts the sorry history of a couple of counties still desperately trying to find some way around the Constitution, so they can feel like good guys by stiffing white kids.

Illiterate? Write for our free booklet

All last week's winners and whiners can be found in this post.

Note that we're setting this post's date back one day, so we can maintain the fiction that we posted today's post yesterday. We'll post this week's post tomorrow, which will be today by the time you actually read it. (Don't be cross, it's quite simple.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 11, 2007, at the time of 11:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 28, 2007

Ask Not For Whom the Billfolds

Ho hum, another day, another humiliation. Lizards were born to suffer as the sparks fly upward (from the barbecue over which we're being turned into "lizard on a stick" fair food). At least this time we got one vote in first place (or two in second place); it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp suit... but still I long for the glory days of mid-November, when Big Lizards was winning the Watcher votes left and right.

Special note: Council members are dropping like moths around the bug zapper. Now it's Okie From Muskogee (and something about a little lamb) who has shaken the dust from his boots and taken the big sleep (well, as far as the Council of Weasel Watchers is concerned).

The Wotcher needs another victim... so anybody who thinks his blog is ready to hit the big time, tune to this spot and make your case with the Watchman.

Council

This time, funnily enough, our Number Two won, and our Number One didn't attract any votes other than our own!

The winner is a winner of a Cheat Seeking Missiles post:

• Charting a New Course In Iraq Messaging, by Cheat Seeking Missiles.

Laer charts the repeated twistings and turnings of Democrat defeatists desperate to destroy our victory in Iraq... always good for a few laughs!

And just to show that I can go off the deep end as well as anyone, our first choice was actually a post by JoshuaPundit. Yes, you read that correctly:

1. Lebanon's Presidential Election Postponed -- Again, by Joshuapundit.

When JP isn't manning the barricades against the evil George W. Bush, he can be quite insightful. (When he gets on a tear, he's merely inciteful.) In this case, he recounts the sorry history of Syria's slo-mo takeover of Lebanon.

Nouncil

In this category, our first was first and our second was a strong third. The winner:

• The Irrationality of Europe, by The Van Der Galiën Gazette.

In this entry, the Van der Galiën Gazette -- run, oddly enough, by Michael van der Galiën -- notes the perversity of European politics: They fawn over their enemies and kick their friends in the yin-yangs.

Our second-place vote went to a Pajamas Media account of the almost farcical gyrations performed by France 2, the television station that broadcast the first stories about the "killing" of Mohammed al-Dura, a young boy:

2. Al Dura Affair: France 2 Cooks the Raw Footage, by Pajamas Media.

The more evidence we gather, the more it appears that the entire "death scene" of young al-Dura was just another example of "Pallywood," the bizarre choreography staged and faked for Western news media by the Palestinian militiants.

More than likely, Mohammed al-Dura is still alive and well somewhere; regardless, he surely wasn't killed by Israeli troops.

But when a French judge ordered France 2 to produce all of the raw footage and convey it to the courthouse... it appears that France 2 actually spliced the most important footage out of the videotape, then told the judge that was the complete record. Bad journalist! Bad, bad!

Lest we forget...

You can see the full results by clicking here. If you really want to bother, after our excellent summation.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 28, 2007, at the time of 3:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 20, 2007

A Watcher Just Under the Wire

Huh, I would say "It's a great honor just to be nominated;" except that we each nominate ourselves, of course. And saying "It's a great honor to nominate myself" is a bit much, even for my preening narcissism.

So instead I contemplate the absurdity of life, as I carom back and forth between winning the Watcher of Weasels' contest -- and getting literally no votes whatsoever. It's an outrage, I tell you. Heads will roll. Let Madame LaFarge practice her knitting once more.

Or... nevermind. Forget I said anything.

Council

This week's winner was an amusing piece by JoshuaPundit; I didn't vote for it, however, because I think it makes a fundamentally flawed argument by analogy:

• 'Land For Peace', American Style, by JoshuaPundit.

As you may have guessed by now, "Freedom Fighter" at JP is one of those Israel boosters (I don't know where he posts from, here or there) who is so wrought up in the battle that he considers George W. Bush -- the most pro-Israeli president America has ever had -- to be Israel's enemy. Why? Because Bush suggests that Israel and the PA should find a way to coexist, and because (I think) he won't ram an act through Congress declaring that God did so personally give the West Bank ("Judea and Samaria") and the Gaza Strip ("Gaza Strip") to Israel several thousand years ago.

In this post, he makes use of a clever -- but I think failed -- rhetorical trick: the extended analogy: He analogizes calls for Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria the West Bank, recognize a second Palestinian state, and live side by side in peace (or at least a permanent truce) to calls by, I think, six L.A. Chicanos and an angry migrant grape-picker in Escondido for America to withdraw from California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and recognize them as a new Mexican state of Aztlán (which Freedom Fighter spells "Atzlan" throughout the piece; Azt is the same root as in Aztec).

Alas, the problem with clever analogies is they create a huge temptation to overlook sizeable differences between the analogy and reality, differences which actually overwhelm the similarities. Analogies are not arguments; they only displace the argument from "this is why we should do X" to "this is why this analogy, which implies we should do X, is actually a valid and accurate depiction of reality." In the absence of a strong argument why the analogy is accurate, the analogy is reduced to a cute fictional story.

And the differences between the analogy and the reality are stark:

• History: Israel first occupied the West Bank forty years ago, as part of their victory in the 1967 Six-Day War (when they heroically and quite properly vanquished four Arab armies that had massed to attack them).

  By contrast, the United States first "occupied" the border states more than 150 years ago... long before the current Mexican government came into existence (in 1867, following the expulsion of Emperor Maximillian of France). In fact, even before the previous Mexican Republic of Benito Juárez was established by the constitution of 1857.

  Texas was annexed in 1845; and California, Arizona, and New Mexico (plus Utah, Nevada, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming) in 1848, after the Mexican-American war, by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (TGH).

• Annexation: Israel has never annexed either the West Bank or the Gaza Strip; contrariwise, the United States not only annexed the territories ceded by the TGH... they are all full states and have been for longer than Israel has even existed -- with Texas (1845) and California (1850) becoming states even before the Mexican Republic existed.

• Population: Israelis have never been the majority population in either of the occupied territories; those entities have always, always, always had a majority population of Arabs (who now call themselves Palestinans) and have always been totally opposed to being part of Israel.

  On the other hand, the populations of the four putative "Aztlan" states consist overwhelmingly of American citizens or legal residents, and even more overwhelmingly of residents -- legal or illegal -- who accept the United States as the legitimate controlling power of thost states. Those who say the states are really part of Mexico are a tiny fraction of 1% of the population of those states.

• International ratification: Every country in the world, including Israel, agrees that the occupied territories are an odd-duck entity distinct from the nation of Israel; but no country in the world -- including Mexico -- seriously maintains that California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas are "really" part of Mexico.

There are other differences related to the ability of the two countries to hold onto the territories, but this should be sufficient to demonstrate that the analogy, while admitedly amusing, is not particuarly close or accurate. But it's worth reading the post; you will enjoy it.

Our votes went to two posts that got very little support... so you should go read them and help pump up their Sitemeter stats:

1. Poverty and Terror, Again, by Soccer Dad;
2. Hollywood's KoolAid Fest Continues: Wimps for Lambs, by Cheat Seeking Missiles.

Soccer Dad makes the argument -- which is almost unanswerable -- that there simply is no correlation, let alone causality, between poverty and terrorism; at least, the former does not cause the latter... though it's entirely possible that too much of the latter causes the former to become endemic in a society.

In the Cheat Seeking Missiles piece, Laer launches from a discussion of Lions for Lambs into a general condemnation of Hollywood for the recent spate of terrorism-related movies they've churned out. All right, they may be wildly unpopular... but at least they're unAmerican!

Nouncil

We fared better in the Nouncil category, where our first-choice was the winner:

• A Conversation in Bagram, Afghanistan, by Austin Bay Blog.

Col. Austin Bay initiates a conversation with a USAF lieutenant colonel fighter pilot about Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the war on global hirabah.

Our other choice, however, was somewhat less popular (our oblique way of noting that ours was the only vote):

2. Shooting Elephants: Musharraf, Pakistan, and Iran, by Neo-Neocon.

The anonymous author of the Neo-Neocon blog limns the dilemma faced by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, as he struggles -- or wrestles, in her apt wording, with "the Scylla of dictatorship and the Charybdis of anarchy." Her analysis is quite complete and well worth perusing.

The Compleat Watcher

Here be dragoons.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 20, 2007, at the time of 1:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 13, 2007

Watchbaker, Watchbaker, Bake Me a Watch

Yeah, yeah, that time again. You could set your watch by it. Unless, of course, you want your watch to run somewhat faster than "weekly."

(What the heck does that mean? It doesn't even make sense. I was punchy from lack of sleep when I wrote it -- and I reckon you need to be equally punch-drunk to find it funny. Fortunately... I know my readers!)

Council

Sometimes I think that winning the Watcher's Council weekly massacre is nine-tenths just coming up with a truly awesome title:

• Courts v. Terrorism = Wile E. Coyote v. Road Runner, by Big Lizards.

In fact, I must note that we didn't really win: We tied with Soccer Dad's post. The Watchthing had to pick one or the other; he was about to vote for the latter, but moved by all the trouble we've had lately (the haunting, the burnt toast, the Prodigious Hickey, and that whole thing with the lard jar that was so disturbing, I never even mentioned it to anyone), pity stayed his hand.

You remember this post: the whole spiel about why civilian courts just aren't up to the job of fighting terrorism, at least not by themselves.

We voted for a pair of posts that ended up doing pretty well themselves; in fact, they came in numbers 2 and 3... even in the right order! (And of course, in the ordinary voting, Soccer Dad tied with Big Lizards.)

1. Unsex Me... Not, by Soccer Dad;
2. Greenie Insanity and the Santiago Fire, by Cheat Seeking Missiles.

The first is about the quandry of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-Carpetbag, 95%): Should she "unsex" herself and run just as a (genderless) candidate? Or should she run as "the girl," so she can complain about the unchivalrous nature of bullying men -- who keep asking her hard questions. I think she should just bite the bullet and run as a dumb bleached beach blonde.

The second is more or less a grudge post by Laer at Cheat Seeking Missiles, responding to a post by another Council blog -- Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse; Moran implied that anyone who sought to "politicize tragedy" was an idiot; and Laer, having exam