• The Great Rovian Sit ‘n Spin
• The Shining, Redux
• Cognitive Dissonance, the Bush Administration, Cindy Sheehan, and the War in Iraq
• And 86 ‘Caption This Photo’s

Good luck Matt. This one goes out to you:

Put your player on random and gimme dem tunes.

1. Modest Mouse – Satin In A Coffin
2. Frank Zappa – Montana
3. Oysterhead – Rubberneck Lions
4. Orchestra Baobab – Soldadi
5. David Bowie – Starman
6. The Strokes – Trying Your Luck
7. Dave Matthews – Trouble
8. Fiona Apple – Limp
9. Phish – Silent In The Morning (from NYE 1999)
10. Del McCoury Band – Eyes That Won’t Meet Mine

Favorite Song: Starman.
Least Favorite Song: Trying Your Luck.

Click to listen on Rhapsody (minus Dave and Del).

The following headlines link to blog posts about the Times article from Oct. 16 on Judith Miller’s jailing and testimony. These posts are listed in order of popularity, with timestamps of when they were first published.

Check it out.

With that off my chest, there are ways to still get to the Select content and today’s editorial by Tom Friedman is particularly enlightening. He offers a unique take on the quagmire in Iraq by claiming that it is not the intelligence failure on WMDs that will ultimately be seen as the Bush cabal’s downfall in Iraq, but rather their complete misunderstanding of the socioeconomic status of the country prior to invaasion:

But I think Saddam knew how busted and bankrupt his country and army were. Therefore, he never wanted to completely erase the impression that he had W.M.D. Saddam lived in a den of wolves. The hint of W.M.D. was his only deterrent shield left against his neighbors, his enemies at home and the West. (This was alluded to in the Duelfer W.M.D. report.) So he tried to allow just enough U.N. inspections to clear him on W.M.D., while playing just enough cat and mouse with the U.N. to leave the impression that he still had something dangerous in the closet.

The Bush team, and the C.I.A., not only failed to learn that Saddam had no W.M.D., they failed to appreciate how devastated Iraqi society really was. The Bush team, listening largely to exiles who had not lived in Iraq for years, thought that there were much more of an Iraqi middle class and more institutions than actually existed. So Mr. Bush thought taking over Iraq would be easy. That is the only way I can explain his behavior.

This intelligence failure about Iraqi society is what is killing us today. Because what really happened after the U.S. invasion is that what little Iraqi state existed just fell apart in our hands, like a broken vase. And then Rummy let the shards get looted.

Friedman has a tendency to create his own grand hypotheses and then treat them as fact, but this one rings true with me.

[UPDATE: Here's a link to the full version.]

Allow comments from everyone please. It’s the Iggles Nation after all.

Right Wing News (via PrestoPundit, via PSoTD) surveyed the right Blogostan and asked them who their “Favorite People On The Right” were. Results:

2) George W. Bush (23)
1) Michelle Malkin (24)

Ahh George. Just can’t catch a break. LINK

Oh, and Dan Savage is guest blogging for Andrew Sullivan.

The snapshots of Iraqi prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib were taken by soldiers and shared in the digital military netherworld of Iraq. Their release to the world in May last year detonated a media explosion that rocked a presidential campaign, cratered America’s moral high ground, and demonstrated how even a superpower could be blitzkrieged by some homemade downloadable porn. In the middle of it all, a lone reservist sergeant stationed on the Iraqi border posed a simple question:

I cannot help but wonder upon reflection of the circumstances, how much longer we will be able to carry with us our digital cameras, or take photographs and document the experiences we have had.

As Idaho National Guard corporal Michael Bautista so aptly sums up in the article, “What I’m doing and what my fellow bloggers are doing is groundbreaking.” Throughout the military, and even on the battlegrounds of Iraq, these milbloggers are changing the face of combat by posting on their thoughts, emotions, and stories while at war. While some bloggers write from military bases or even their homes after returning from the war, others have created impromptu support networks in Iraq to help soldiers on the ground quicker than the Pentagon can. Others organize shipments of body armor from the US. Still more sites narrate first person accounts of actual firefights, often before the mainstream media’s embedded reporters have even arrived on the scene. In some cases, such as Neil Prakash’s site Armor Geddon, the writing can become quite frank:

Terrorists in headwraps stood anywhere from 30 to 400 meters in front of my tank. They stopped, squared their shoulders at us just like in an old-fashioned duel, and fired RPGs at our tanks. So far there hadn’t been a single civilian in Task Force 2-2 sector. We had been free to light up the insurgents as we saw them. And because of that freedom, we were able to use the main gun with less restriction.

While much of the network infrastructure supporting the explosion of Internet usage and instantaneous communication in the military was created by the Pentagon, some soldiers have gone so far as to create their own networks, trafficking in instant messaging, webcams, gaming, and of course, porn. Major Michel Cohen bought his own satellite dish for an ad hoc wireless network at the 67th Combat Support Hospital based in Mosul. He live blogged the aftermath of the December 2004 suicide bomb attack that killed 22 soldiers in a mess hall:

The lab was running tests and doing a blood drive to collect more blood. The pharmacy was preparing intravenous medications and drips like crazy. Radiology was shooting plain films and CT scans like nobody’s business. We were washing out wounds, removing shrapnel, and casting fractures. We put in a bunch of chest tubes. Because of all the patients on suction machines and mechanical ventilators, the noise in the ICU was so loud everyone was screaming at each other just to communicate.

Here are some of our statistics. They are really quite amazing: 91 total patients arrived.

18 were dead on arrival.

Cohen’s blog was shut down at the Army’s request after the incident due to security concerns. In fact, all the bloggers interviewed agree that the current era of unrestricted access and communication over the Internet in our nation’s military will most likely come to a close soon with the Department of Defense’s review of global digital security. Combined with the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the ensuing worldwide moral backlash against the US, the military will almost certainly make changes to the present open system. But in the meantime, these bloggers are forcing the military, the White House, and the American people to face the unvarnished reality of this long war. Go read the article and if you can, read the words of our soldiers in uniform.

Fortunately the Inquirer is doing a fantastic job of feeding Eagles green fever with a bunch of blogs dedicated to the Birds. They’ve got Eye on Eagles Camp which is focusing solely on camp, while Jim Jenks, the Inky’s sports editor, has his own blog going at Sports Editor, INQ. They’re even podcasting from camp. And don’t forget the numerous non-professional Philly sports blogs further covering the stories such as The 700 Level, Philly Sports Net, and MVN’s For the Birds.

There’s plenty of drama in Iggles land, but at least Hugh Douglas is still
providing some levity:

Today, Owens wasn’t the only player looking for a new deal. While stretching after practice, Douglas asked for one.

“Where’s Joe [Banner]?” Douglas said to no one in particular. “I want to renegotiate for a package of Milk Duds and a box of crackers. And if I don’t get it, I’m leaving camp.”

Latoyia is still missing. Anyone with information is asked to call the Philadelphia Southwest detective division at 215-686-3183 and bloggers should keep writing about her. By keeping her profile high, and the media aware, hopefully this beautiful young woman can be found faster.

OUR former nanny, a 26-year-old former teacher with excellent references, liked to touch her breasts while reading The New Yorker and often woke her lovers in the night by biting them. She took sleeping pills, joked about offbeat erotic fantasies involving Tucker Carlson and determined she’d had more female sexual partners than her boyfriend.

Olen goes on to further disparage her by citing “semi-promiscuous couplings,” “too much drinking,” and suspicions of “boozy nights out followed by coming to work hungover.” All this despite repeated affirmations of an affinity for “this younger version of myself.” She even admits “I could say that I, too, once stayed out late, drank too much and slept with the wrong people.”

If you read the entire article I’m sure there are elements of which a parent can empathize with. But why is an employee anonymously blogging about her employer a fireable offense while the same employer writing about the employee is journalism? It all seems a bit elitist and condescending. Fortunately because these are blogs, our dear nanny can fire right back in a point-by-point refutation of Olen:

I am not a pill popping alcoholic who has promiscuous sex and cares nothing for the children for whom she works with. Nope. If you look carefully through my archives, instead you will find a young woman in her mid-twenties who decided to work as a nanny for a year while she prepared to enter the next phase of her professional life; namely the life of an academic pursuing a PhD in English Literature specifically focusing on the Late Victorian novel.

Further proof that perhaps it is blogs that will pick up the mantle of abrogated responsiblity left behind by the mainstream media.

Ok, maybe that’s a bit grandiose. But the whole thing is interesting and inspiring lots of great commentary from the blogosphere.