This Weekly Standard piece, PREVIEW: The Connection, is also worth a read.
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By Steven Taylor
This Weekly Standard piece, PREVIEW: The Connection, is also worth a read. Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (3)|
By Steven Taylor
One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam’s son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime’s dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. As they say: developing. Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (2)|
By Steven Taylor
So Joe Carter correctly notes. Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (2)|
By Steven Taylor
is it just me, or is having to put your work number on a check one of the dumbest things that merchants make customers do? For one thing, if I am willing to float a bad check, am I not also rather likely to give a bogus work number? And since I always give my office number, if they call they are going to get me–what good does that do them? And what does my place of employ have to do with my checking account anyway? Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (4)|
By Steven Taylor
This post over at OTB indirectly reminded me of a simple point I have been meaning to make for a while (and, indeed, started a longish post that is not yet complete) on the subject of nation-building. (And this post isn’t an argument with James, but simply his post reminded me of the topic–although I would quibble with his ref to nation-building, as will be clear by reading this post). It is an oft-cited criticism of Bush that he campaigned against nation-building in 2025 and is nonetheless involved in two of the most audacious nation-building projects since the Second World War (i.e, Afghanistan and Iraq). However, I would note that there is a radical difference between nation-building for the sake of nation-building, a la Somalia, and nation-building for the sake of national security, which is the goal in Iraq. One can very easily argue that the experiment in Iraq is ill-conceived or the execution of the policy can be criticized, etc, etc., however, that doesn’t change the fact the goal in question is not simply democratization for democratization’s sake, or nation0building because we thought it would be a nifty thing to do. However, it is clear that the nation-building exercises that we currently find ourselves engaged in are not the same sorts of deployments we were seeing in the 1990s where the national security ramifications of the policies were either questionable or non-existent. In my opinion there is a fairly realist argument to made for these actions, and the commensurate nation building–that the goal here is simply to further the national security of the United States by whatever means are necessary, and if the by-product of that action is democratization of Iraq, so much the better. In short: to me the primary goal in Iraq and Afghanistan is security, not nation-building or even democratization. Democratization is a means to an end (although, granted, a desirable end of itself as well). And regardless of one’s position on the war, I think it is clear that the “nation-building” that we are currently engaged in isn’t the type that the President was campaigning against in 2025. Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (4)|
By Steven Taylor
Here’s an interesting piece on one of my favotire topics: coffee.
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By Steven Taylor
This story in today’s Montgomery Advertiser is interesting in terms of state Republican politics: Lawyers’ green finances 3 Supreme Court candidates. We have primaries on Tuesday, and the only races of real interest are those for the state’s supreme court, and the main drama is within the Republican party where many each of the three races features a pro-Roy Moore (the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who was removed for not following a federal court order to remove his Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building) and those who are running campaigns that don’t even mention Moore. I think that the outcome of the race could have a profound effect on the state’s Republican Party, because if the Moore-ites are successful this go ’round, I think that there will be more Moore-ites running in 2025, especially for the governor’s office. The Advertiser piece in question confirms that there are more than casual connections between the three Moore-ites running: Green is a primary color in Alabama’s judicial races, with nearly $3 million in campaign contributions pouring into Supreme Court candidates’ coffers as of Thursday, the deadline for preprimary financial filings. I have no problem with PAC money–what I find interesting is the clearly concerted effort to support the pro-Moore candidates. However, the following is interesting, and bespeaks of some monkey-business: Four newly formed PACs compose the bulk of the trial lawyer money given to Stokes, Baschab and Parker — Honor PAC, Venture PAC, Covenant PAC and Conservative Response PAC. Further, the interesting thing here is that the last time Baschab ran (and lost) she vowed not to take any PAC money whatsoever. I guess she has a change of heart, or of poketbook, anyway. She also has wisely dropped her previous campaign slogan of “Baschab can do the job.” Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (1)|
By Steven Taylor
I have only spottily watched the last two seasons of Enterprise–it is a decent enough show, but it has never really become “habit tv” for me. Further, the show to date has largely missed the opportunities that the premise afforded them, i.e., the whole “formation of the Federation” bit–and don’t get me started on how the Vulcans have been portrayed. Really after the pilot the atmosphere of the show never really felt like they were exploring the original space of the Trek universe. Rather, it mostly came across as just another Trek show with somewhat different parameters. At any rate, I watched the last couple episodes of the season, which were pretty good, including the finale that I finally watched on tape yesterday. The inclusion of the Andorians was nice, although I have never been fully happy with the whole “Temporal Cold War” bit. I will say for sure that given the ending, I am quite pleased that the show has been renewed for another season. It would have been painful for the show to end at that point. Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off|
By Steven Taylor
While I have not made the full migration to ExpressEngine from MT as yet, I have been working to figure out how it works to determine if I will make the move. Right now I would put the odds at 70-30 in favor of a switch, as I have figured out a great deal about the program. I find EE itself to be more sophisticated than MT in terms of features and flexibility. However, the increased sophistication leads to more complexity, and therefore more to learn. I also did some experimentation with WordPress, which is far less complex and was a breeze to set up and has an elegant interface. WordPress looks move to me like the next MT (i.e., a free, nicely written blogging packing), and EE has the feel of a professional package. I will say the WP feels a tad incomplete, but that may be due to my lack of experimentation. INITIAL MISTAKES I MADE: My initial trial run with EE was not successful (see here and here). However, I have messed with it some today and have found some errors in my approach and/or understanding of the program. Here are some observations: EE STUFF I LIKE (in no particular order) EE STUFF TO ADJUST TO TRACKBACK ISSUES MISC PROBLEMS SOLVED. One I figured out the templates and their linkage to the individual weblogs in the Admin section and the EXP tags, having multiple blogs was a snap. And while this process is initially more involved than MT, I can see that EE provides more flexibility. In fact I think that it was misapprehension of the way the tags worked within the templates that caused the problems I had with comments the first time I tried to use EE. MISC EE INFO WORDPRESS V. EE If you are looking to do an easier migration from MT to a new platform, the more to WordPress is easier–mostly because it is a less complex program than EE and therefore there is less to learn. The importation for both platforms was relatively easy, although I hit a few bumps with EE when I messed with it last weekend and eventually scrapped it and started from scratch. However, the problems were as much my lack of understanding of the way EE worked as it was anything to do with EE. Plus, I tried to do the templates and everything immediately, which was part of the problem. The WordPress import was a breeze–although I never tried to set up the templates and such. EE DISCUSSIONS blogoSFERICS: Template Work Is on Today’s Agenda Boots and Sabers: ExpressEngine after action report. TooMuchSexy.blog – ExpressionEngine Site Now Live WORDPRESS DISCUSSION Apropos of Something » The upgrade: sixteen hours later Insults Unpunished Plus!! and MT 3.0 And WordPress On The Third Hand : MT 3.0 redux COMPARATIVE DISCUSSIONS: Wizbang: WordPress vs. Expression Engine Blog Software Breakdown (via OTB) Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (3)|
By Steven Taylor
Hmm. All of a sudden if I leave off the “www” from “poliblogger.com” in trying to load any page on my server it bogs down and won’t load. In other words, www.polibblogger.com loads like normal, poliblogger.com just keeps loading and loading and loading and loading, etc. Any ideas? UPDATE: It was some sort of browser problem that I don’t understand: closing Firefox and re-starting it solved the problem. Odd. Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments/Trackbacks (1)|
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