Soccer Dad: Watcher's review 04/25/08

April 25, 2008

Watcher's review 04/25/08

As readers of Soccer Dad are aware, I'm a member of the Watcher's Council a group of twelve bloggers who submit and vote on posts every week supervised by the Watcher of Weasels.

That is every week except this week. Unfortunately, this week due to a ~~wardrobe~~ technical malfunction, the Watcher was unable to run the voting this week. Here's hoping that he's back next week.

In the meantime, fellow council members JoshuaPundit and Wolf Howling (and I) have decided to give you a roundup of this week's entries. So we asked and got submissions from most of our fellow council members.

So with no further ado, in the order they were received.

1) Rhymes with Right - When an Obama supporter claims that the activities of Ayers and Doehrn were just youthful indiscretions, Rhymes with Right responds: Not just Youthful Indiscretions -

We are talking about setting off bombs in the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, and New York City Police Headquarters. In other words, acts of terrorism, not youthful hijinks that cause one to blush and shake one's head in dismay over having been so foolish.

Rhymes with Right's non-council submission this week is about convicted killer Selwyn Davis at Urban Grounds.

2) Wolf Howling - In The Central Issues of Obama's Candidacy Wolf Howling shows that the "distractions" that Sen. Obama complains about are measures of his own character and that it speaks volumes, that he no longer wishes to address them. Normally, Wolf Howling reads Krauthammer first thing on Fridays, this week though, it looks like Krauthammer read Wolf Howling last week and simply summarized his findings. :-)

3) Hillbilly White Trash - In Is it time to consign Reagan to the dustbin of history? Hillbilly White Trash argues in the negative and attributes the sentiment to "Rockefeller Republicans" who, in the person of John McCain, are now controlling the Republican party. My impression of Sen. McCain is somewhat different.

His non-council entry is My dad the spy (redux) at White Trash Republican.

4) Cheat Seeking Missiles - In Our Crumbling Civilization he asks what kind of society produces a college student who aborts for art? Pointedly he notes about Yale University where teh student is attending (quoted in part)

Yale of course is not alone among universities that have lost all sensibility, but it seems to be intent on carving out a place for itself as the most nonsensical of universities: It hired Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former Deputy Foreign Secretary of the Taliban; it employs Dr. LaMont Cole, an environmentalist who taught his students, "To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world over population problem;" ...

This is a story that I didn't comment on because of how disturbing it is. Cheat Seeking Missiles went where I couldn't.

His non-council entry is Barack Obama's meeting with Typical San Francisco Citizens at the satirical site The Nose on your Face.

5) JoshuaPundit - In Where Hamas gets it right, JoshuaPundit agrees with Zahar that it was wrong of the United States to ignore the results of the Palestinian elections in 2006. But for somewhat different reasons than Zahar would acknowledge!

His non-council submission was Playing with Fire at Shrinkwrapped.

6) Bookworm Room - Bookworm Room looks at and dismisses Root Causes. She finds that root causes say more about the one espousing them, then those who have supposedly fallen victim to them.

Her non-council nominee is I can has Freedom of Speech at Thought you'd never ask.

7) Colossus of Rhodey.Hube - In The Not-So Proportionate Death Penalty (Should It Be?), Hube wonders:

If proportionate representation was expected in every facet of life, whites would make up 70% of the NBA, Jews would only be 3% of any profession, and blacks and Hispanics would comprise 12-13% of all college professors. Etc. However, these figures are clearly not the case.

In two sentences he demolishes the premise that proportionality is an immutable law of nature (and conversely that the lack of proportionality indicates some evil design.)

His non-council submission is Legalized Child Stealing in Arlington County, VA at Open Markets.org

8) Done with Mirrors - In Documentary, Done with Mirrors doesn't spare "Expelled." But he also doesn't spare the New York Times whose politics allow it to forgive Michael Moore what it won't forgive Ben Stein.

His non-council nomination is Zombie Times Obama visits Billionaire Row.

9) Right Wing Nuthouse - Right Wing Nuthouse gives no quarter to Bill Maher in DEFENDING THE POPE AND OTHER COUNTERINTUITIVE UNDERTAKINGS and expresses his own admiration of the current Pope.

His non-council submission is the Obama Aesthetic by Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker.

10) The Glittering Eye - In Reactions, the Glittering Eye wonders what's behind the NYT making a big deal over Chinese students protesting pro-Tibet activism in the West. Is it ignorance? Or just bad writing?

The Glittering Eye offered an excellent look at MSM distortions with his submission of Pentagon study? Current Events? Not so fast ... from the Small Wars Journal as his non-council choice this week.

11) My nominee was The Damned Lies of the J-Street in which I examined elements of the new "pro-Israel" lobbying group, J-Street.

My non-council nominee was Meryl Yourish's Muslim schools create a new class of African beggars, which describes how enterprising headmasters get around the prohibition of accepting money for teaching the Koran.

Read, Enjoy. Be Informed.

watcher's council.