Does Foreign Policy Community Love War?

Glenn Greenwald revisits an old debate, arguing that "Our war-loving Foreign Policy Community hasn't gone anywhere." Building off of Marc Lynch's blog post yesterday pointing out that General McCrystal's strategic review calling for more troops in Afghanistan was written by "a dozen smart (mostly) think-tankers," Greenwald writes,"What would a group of people like that ever recommend other than continued and escalated ...

OTB Latenight – Talking Heads

Live in Rome, 1980, with Adrian Belew on guitar:

Writing for Money

Harlan Ellison's rant "Pay the Writer" is getting some favorable linkage, notably from Max Boot and Michael Totten. He vows that "I don't take a piss without getting paid."  Which, I suppose, is good work if you can get it. Ellison is an all-time great and he's been getting paid to write -- and been famous -- since before I was born.  ...

Right Needs New Public Intellectuals

In Saturday's post "Talk Radio Killed Conservativism?" I observed parenthetically that "most of the best analytical blogs are on the center-left" and promised to elaborate. It's something that has struck me for quite some time (see, for example, February's "Rational Conservative Blogs") and that was brought to mind again with two links at Matt Yglesias' place Thursday. BRIGHT YOUNG BLOGGERS First, an ...

New Yorker Obama Terrorist Cover

The liberal blogs are in a tizzy about the cover of the July 21 New Yorker, an illustration by Barry Blitt which shows the Obamas in terrorist outfits, doing a fist bump with a big portrait of Osama bin Laden over their mantle with an American flag burning in the fireplace: Given that this is the liberal New Yorker and that ...

Throwing Sister Souljah Under the Bus

Publius thinks it's time to ban the phrase "Sister Souljah" moment, not just because it's hackneyed but because it has been misused. The more benign interpretation is that a Sister Souljah moment occurs when a candidate criticizes some group or idea nominally aligned with that candidate. In short, it’s criticizing your own coalition – or some idea valued by your coalition ...

Women and Editorial Pages

Ari Melber cites statistics showing the major paper editorial and op-ed pages, the prestige talking heads shows, and other high profile outlets for punditry remain overwhelmingly male dominated. Matt Yglesias, a male who blogs for the male-dominated Atlantic.com (eight "voices," seven of whom are male and an eighth who is unusually tall and therefore, despite obvious femininity, often mistaken ...

Fox Assistant Fired for McCain Worship

A young Fox News staffer was fired for telling John McCain she'd voted for him, Chris Ariens reports. Insiders tell us the assistant, identified as Jennifer Locke, was on assignment with a camera crew to cover the entertainment angle of the event. When Sen. John McCain walked by, the assistant said, "I voted for you in the primary, you're going to ...

Hillary Clinton Fact Wars

There is a lot of chatter going on about the "facts" as regards to Hillary Clinton's bid to come from behind to win the Democratic presidential nomination. The campaign's The Fact Hub blog contends that "More People Have Voted For Hillary Than Any Other Candidate." They arrive at this conclusion, which goes contrary to the expert consensus, ...

Andrew Olmsted Killed in Iraq

Major Andrew Olmsted, a longtime blogger and Army Reservist, was killed in action yesterday when his unit was ambushed. His Obsidian Wings colleague Hilzoy had the sad honor of posting his final blog missive. Her lead-in: Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G'Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to publish in the event of his ...

Op-Ed Pages Getting Bloggier

Henry Farrell recounts an interesting discussion he had on bloggingheads with Dan Drezner, about the longstanding norm wherein regular op-ed columnists "seem to be discouraged from mentioning each other by name when they disagree/attack each other." They note that the norm seems to be breaking down as the op-eds "become a bit bloggier" and, indeed, many of the columnists ...

Bloggingheads.tv

My Bloggingheads.tv debut, opposite Ezra Klein, is up. After some snafus, we recorded it Friday afternoon. We discuss the hubbub around General David Petraeus, President Bush's speech calling for more time in Iraq, the Fred Thompson campaign, and the difficulty of some presidential candidates with impressive resumes to get any traction in this campaign. My longstanding skepticism about bloggers ...

Megan and Dan Do ‘TV’

Dan Drezner and Megan McArdle appear on BloggingHeadsTV discussing why Megan gets such strong reactions in the blogosphere, fashion trends in academe, the netroots vs. Foreign Policy Establishment debate, Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy, and some other topics. The pairing is somewhat against type, in that both are libertarian centrists rather than one lefty and one righty. It's an interesting discussion ...

Yglesias Bros on Vlogging

Matthew and Nick Yglesias discuss the virtues of vlogging. In a painfully awkward video, Nick describes why most bloggers are "painfully awkward" on video and that vlogging has few of the advantages of text blogging (aka, "blogging"). He's right. Indeed, I seldom watch professional quality newscasts and talking heads shows anymore precisely because the time and concentration ...

Reservists Going to Iraq Without Rifles?

A report by David Cloud in today's NYT on the deployment of Reserve Component soldiers to Iraq sheds some light on a couple of issues that may come as a surprise to those who don't study this sort of thing for a living. Cloud notes that the Pentagon's announcement that it may send "more than 14,000 National Guard troops" ...