February 10, 2004

SHORT BITS

• The third installment of US Marine Brian Taylor’s war journal is now up at Opinion Journal. Read parts one and two here. Massively recommended.

• Increased stem cell research is a matter of vital international importance.

• Adam Yoshida digs and digs and digs into those George W. Bush AWOL reports. Expect the AWOL line to slowly fade.

• Random Prose discovers that ABC web polls are predictably inaccurate.

• Al Gore is out of his tiny robot mind.

• It’s a free trade omen! Rafe Champion alerts us to the bicentenary of free trader and miscellaneous reformer Richard Cobden’s birth.

• I’ve been blocked at Niall Cook’s website! Pity; I was going to tell him I saw a Vietnamese guy messing with his Camry. I think he was putting KILL WHITEY stickers all over it.

• Reader Rod A. writes: "The 7.30 Report guestbook is rarely if ever updated, making it very difficult to offer current criticism on any particular story. I have drawn their attention to the problem more than once but in true ABC fashion they refuse to even answer.” Solution: Privatise the bastard ABC.

• Dave at Israelly Cool has more to say on the issue of ethically-challenged Adelaide intellectual Gary Sauer-Thompson.

Posted by Tim Blair at February 10, 2004 10:23 PM
Comments

interesting...

Posted by: Mel at February 10, 2004 at 10:38 PM

You don't wanna mess with the Cong bro.....

Posted by: gaz at February 10, 2004 at 11:15 PM

On the first short bit . . . I just went back and reread the entire Marine Opinion Journal series.

At 1300 Capt. Gougen came to the tent and offered to take my fire team and me down to the battalion command operations center tent to see digital photos of the baby. Maj. Kundith took a photo of us to send home and then we crowded into the COC. They were going over aerial imagery of our first objective and making plans. But they happily turned all that off, inserted a new disk in the computer, fumbled to find the right application for picture viewing. My whole team moved into the seats formerly held by most of the command staff and then everyone in the COC looked at baby pictures. It was an incongruous moment when desert warriors paused to stare at a new baby and congratulate his father. Whoever ran the slide show promised to print the pictures off and pass them along later.

I don't know what to say, beyond this has to be worth fighting for -

Posted by: dazed at February 10, 2004 at 11:34 PM

I've been blocked by Niall as well; he seemed to get a bit crotchety when I suggested it was a pity the Vietnamese chap in question wasn't driving a T54.
No sense of humour, Niall.

Posted by: Habib at February 11, 2004 at 12:08 AM

Can you please re-post a link to his site so we may mock him? He can't block us all.

Posted by: Bill at February 11, 2004 at 12:38 AM

Actually, he not only can block you all, he's already done it. Access to the blog is password only now.

It makes perfect sense. His blog is obviously beyond reproach, so given what has happened, clearly the readers are to blame. Solution: exclude readers. This will ensure the blog's perfection.

Posted by: ChrisV at February 11, 2004 at 01:14 AM

Next thing you know, he'll be blaming Tim for the fact that noone's reading his tripe anymore.

I'm sure someone out there will be posting a username/password soon...

Posted by: david at February 11, 2004 at 02:08 AM

Dang, Gore sounds a lot like angry dean right before the scream..

Posted by: Steve at February 11, 2004 at 02:24 AM

It's funny you mentioned Algore's tiny robot mind. Last night I watched the episode of Futurama where Fry gets sent to the Home for Deranged Robots and becomes convinced that he actually is a robot.

Posted by: Tibor at February 11, 2004 at 02:28 AM

That Al Gore sound bite eerily reminded me of old newsreels of Hitler making speeches. It sent cold chills up my spine.

Posted by: Rebecca at February 11, 2004 at 02:56 AM

If you liked Brian Taylor’s Opinion Journal articles then you'll probably really like "The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division" by Bing West and Ray Smith, both retired marine officers who accompanied the First Marine Division from Kuwait to Baghdad. They had better access than the embedded reporters who went. Here's the Amazon (UK) page for it:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1844134253/qid=1076431666/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_8_1/026-3921198-7065206

I just finished it this Sunday. I couldn't put it down.

Posted by: Julio at February 11, 2004 at 02:58 AM

Gore sounds just like Vince MacMahon from the WWE.

Posted by: Jim Treacher at February 11, 2004 at 03:17 AM

The thing Lefties hate most is other people's free speech. Big on asserting their own, but. And the right of mass murdering dictators to keep on murdering. Sikfux, the lot of them. No standards, no morality, no conscience - just eternal confusion. And a sh*tload of whining.

Posted by: Paul Johnson at February 11, 2004 at 01:50 PM

Gary Sauer-Thompson is an "intellectual"? If you say so, but to me his blog looks like more proof that although education is wonderful, too much education in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing.

Posted by: Kurt at February 11, 2004 at 05:53 PM

You can still read Niall's site by pasting this URL into yer browser

http://ardrighs.the-onion.net/weblog/

Posted by: Tex at February 11, 2004 at 07:53 PM