QUOTE OF THE YEAR:

"Why do papers like the [NY Times] and [Washington Post] misread the plainly vague meaning of Bush's words?"
--Mickey Kaus

Those who look carefully enough may notice that I now have something like an RSS feed, whatever that is. Let me know if it works.

Former-marxist-turned-neo-fascist writer Oriana Fallaci has a new book out, which blames Arab immigrants for every problem now afflicting Europe, and hypothesizes that the Roman Catholic Church is now controlled by a Wahhabist cabal (ed.--yeah, it's called Opus Dei). If another Hitler ever rises to power in the future, he will probably scapegoat Muslims.

Worth reading: a very eloquent post by "Kos" on his mixed feelings over the deaths at Fallujah, told from the perspective of someone who grew up in a country torn apart by guerilla warfare, and who has actually fought in a war himself.

UPDATE: Dr. J. has more on Blackwater Security, the organization that employed the four men killed last week. Needless to say, while I don't believe that anything they might have been doing justified either the barbaric way in which they were murdered last week or Kos' insensitive remarks concerning same, I believe it should be a matter of concern that we are tolerating the use of mercenaries (or "private security contractors") in Iraq. His language was clumsy and cruel, more reminiscent of an LGF post on Rachel Corrie, but compared with much of the crap that exists in the b-sphere, Kos is actually a moderate voice (as far as I can tell, he hasn't called for the extermination of the Palestinian people), and, unlike the Kerry Campaign Blog, I will not allow his unfortunate venture into the realm of Political Incorrectness determine his position on my humble blogroll.

As it turns out, not everyone appreciated Mr. Clarke's eloquent testimony to the 9-11 Commission. Charles Krauthammer, whose Pulitzer Prize is more in the tradition of Walter Duranty's and Janet Cooke's, goes on the attack, denouncing Clarke's apology to the 9-11 victims as "phony", and then ridiculing those same families for claiming "special status" as victims.

Dr. Krauthammer's rationale, such as it is, is that since Clarke admitted that even if the Bushies had followed his advice, the 9-11 attacks still would have taken place, there was nothing that could have been done to prevent what happened. Everyone did there best, so no apology was in order. Besides the incredible defeatism of that conceit (no matter how hard we try, the terrorists will inevitably succeed), it also misses the point completely. Clarke was the anti-terrorism tsar. If he couldn't devise something to prevent 9-11 from taking place, and if the Bushies were clearly disinterested in the whole subject of non-state-supported terrorisms before 9-11 to have ignored Al Qaeda, the American people are owed an explanation why. Clarke gave them one, by taking accountability, showing them the respect that Krauthammer couldn't find in his heart to give.

This week, Sports Illustrated has an excerpt in its GolfPlus Special from the recently published tome by Alan Shipnuck on last year's failed effort to integrate the home of the Masters, The Battle for Augusta National. Shipnuck, who covers the sport for the magazine, has some particularly interesting insights on the sad role blogs played in the whole affair. The villain (or hero, amongst the bedsheet-wearing crowd) of the piece is a Beltway flack named Jim McCarthy, who was hired by the restricted country club to go "on the attack--investigate the activists, hold them accountable for their track record and their ideological inconsistencies. You have to take on the press that is often conspiring to give the activists a platform to espouse their views. It's like the argument of appeasement versus aggression in geopolitics, and we all know how Neville Chamberlain fared."(emphasis added)

McCarthy, an avid readers of blogs, planted stories with Internet conservatives to shift the focus away from Augusta National's sorry track record on racial and sexual discrimination and instead towards the New York Times and Howell Raines. With Raines, et al., already unpopular on the right for the Times' oft-critical reporting of the Bush Administration, McCarthy's flackery found a receptive audience in the blogosphere, and hostile coverage elsewhere effectively mau-maued the Times into silence on the issue. As of today, Augusta National still has no female members, and only a smattering of token non-whites, and stands as a shabby symbol of the sport of golf. [additional links via The National Debate]