Wednesday, December 24, 2008

HOT5 Daily 12/24/2008

1. "Wacky" A smackdown of the NYT's uninformed op-ed on military procurement.

Representative Sample: There’s no system so internally complex that an outsider, with no real experience, can’t fix by waving his magic wand. 

2. "There Is Indeed a Christmas Story" An interesting article on the origins and meaning of  X-mas.

Representative Sample: On this day, children all over the world turn color blind to appreciate the pastel-perfect joys of Santa Claus and his reindeers

3. "Casualties of the American Drug War" Analysis of the drug war and its spillover in Mexico.

Representative Sample: When will enough be enough in the failed attempt to prohibit drug use in this country by force of arms?

4. "Jihad by the Shoe: Who Was Behind it and why?" A Middle East expert provides a detailed examination of the  Bush/Iraq shoe-throwing incident.

Representative Sample: The public simply wasn’t told - with accuracy - what actually unfolded in that incident, which was another battle in the ongoing War of Ideas

5. "The delightful holiday whimsy of Michelle Malkin"  Irrational leftist consumed with hatred for Michelle Malkin accuses Malkin of "hate" for posting widely-circulated x-mas humor.

Representative Sample: There's not much on God's green earth that Michelle Malkin doesn't hate


To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

4 comments:

  1. I stopped reading number 2 at "Croatians and Serbs may share a common tongue and may have intermarried beyond overt differentiation, but they remain age-old nemeses." This represents the point made in number 1 pretty well: people who've actually reported from Yugoslavia, or have studied its history, will tell you that the hatred between Serbs and Croats goes back to about 1989 and Milosevic's quest for power.

    As for number 5, Malkin defended Japanese internment. The real tragedy is that she's not much more racist than many other conservatives who jumped on the Bell Curve wagon gleefully, like John Derbyshire. She is, however, Filipina, and if there's one thing the left hates, it's a minority who fails to be a leftist.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "the hatred between Serbs and Croats goes back to about 1989 and Milosevic's quest for power."

    They've haven't been totally harmonious in the past either, particularly during WW2, but I certainly wouldn't call them "age-old nemeses."

    "As for number 5, Malkin defended Japanese internment."

    True, but taking an unpopular position on a historical event doesn't make someone a racist. I think her thesis is way off base, but there's nothing inherently wrong with trying to make a case that interment was justified by national security concerns.

    "if there's one thing the left hates, it's a minority who fails to be a leftist."

    Yeah, that's definitely true.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Taking an unpopular position on a historical event doesn't make you a racist. Taking a position that mainstream historians find laughable and badly researched, when you have no credentials as a historian or even as a popularizer of history, does.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Taking a position that mainstream historians find laughable and badly researched, when you have no credentials as a historian or even as a popularizer of history, does."

    There are various reasons someone might do that, not just racism. It's just one possible explanation.

    ReplyDelete