Need to Know is a short roundup of key stories that shouldn’t be missed on your cruise through the blogosphere. The number of links in the roundup may vary but if you find it here you can trust that it’s must-read material.
Patrick Ruffini
Looking beyond the blogosphere, a place the MSM isn’t as familiar with, and you’ll see that the conservative Web is larger than the liberal Web. Sites like Townhall, WorldNetDaily, and Free Republic have monthly audiences that regularly beat Daily Kos and the Huffington Post, to say nothing of Drudge, which still reigns supreme.
Boots & Sabers
Something appears to be going haywire with Giuliani campaign’s email server.
Captain’s Quarter’s
Seoul confirms that the two Korean armies exchanged short bursts of gunshots across the DMZ, one day before disarmament talks expected to set the procedure for permanently disabling the Yongbyon nuclear plant. The exchange could mean that Kim Jong-Il wants a way out of his agreement, or it could have more implications for the role of the DPRK military in the disarmament.
Cheat Seeking Missiles
Yon knows, from having the stink of al Qaeda’s brutality burn his nostrils, what will come next: first bloodshed in Iraq, but then, flushed with victory and still committed to spreading Islam by the sword, bloodshed everywhere. That is the perspective Bush has in fighting this war, a perspective he’s had since its first days, and one he articulates even now. Ingatieff and the Left don’t get it. They think the war will be over when we say it’s over, and they couldn’t be further from the truth, for all their intellectual heavy lifting.
Cold Fury
Possibly in preparation for some new, ah, level of action involving the upcoming Presidential contests, the Fred Thompson folks have completely redesigned their web site, giving it a lot more capability for, um, something or other.
Outside the Beltway
Bush has certainly harmed the Republican Party, contributing mightily to the loss of both Houses of Congress in the most recent midterm election (with plenty of help from his counterparts in the legislature) and making it much harder for a Republican to win the White House in 2008. It’s not clear, however, that conservatism per se has suffered any long term damage.
Michelle Malkin
Well, the YearlyKos convention is over, but the nutroots are still marching on. A few weeks ago, Kos himself assailed “nasty rhetoric” that was “rampant in the primary war diaries” of the Daily Kos website. Yet, the site went ahead and featured a troop-bashing rant by Saturday Night Live has-been A. Whitney Brown, who wrote: “Do I still support the individual men and women who have given so much to serve their country? No. I think they’re a bunch of idiots. I also think they’re morally retarded.”
Hyscience
In his 2006 TED lecture (Technology, Entertainment, Design, Professor of International Health), Hans Rosling, shows that, contrary to rumors, the end is not yet almost upon us. Complex global trends in life expectancy, child mortality and poverty are revealed in ways that may surprise you.
Defense Tech
Any MSM dismissal of blogs because of their inherent absence of editorial oversight misses the point. Well-read blogs do have an oversight process: the “comments” feature. We prove it daily here at Defense Tech. The staff has learned (the good ol’ fashioned “hard way”) that even the most casual sub-truth or pseudo-falsehood will be savaged by our readership. As the dialectic goes high order, the truth emerges . . . every time.
Dean’s World
So really, my question for Beauchamp and his supporters is simply this: you say you saw some bad stuff, and I mostly believe you. But do you think any of that is really typical? As a friend and relative of many who’ve served over there, I don’t think it is. Do you?
Homeland Security Watch
Out of the ashes and tumult of Katrina, a new National Response Plan is near ready. This might be considered a debut for the National Protection and Programs Directorate at DHS, but I am certain many had a hand in the drafting of this document.
One Hand Clapping
So, since even SUVs are many times less polluting than jet liners, especially of carbon dioxide, then would it not make sense for the global warming alarmists to lobby for raising interstate speed limits to make driving more attractive than flying for many trips?
Sister Toldjah
Kinda sad when people who claim to ’support the troops’ in reality are hoping that the negative stories they read about the military are true, and furthermore go out of their way to try and spin them as true, even when it turns out they’re not. These same types of people want us to give accused murderers here at home the benefit of the doubt, but don’t extend that same courtesy to the men and women who put their lives on the line so they can have the right to spout their idiotic, troop-hating nonsense.
The Captain’s Journal
The professional counterinsurgency community famously points out the unintended consequences of inadvertent noncombatant deaths resulting from U.S. kinetic operations, i.e., that they could negatively impact winning the hearts and minds of the population. As we have discussed here before in our coverage of rules of engagement, Dunlap turns this on its head and forces us to ponder the fact that this notion can be carried too far and have the equivalent unintended effect of lack of security, thus losing the battle for the hearts of the people.








August 6th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Right-Thinking Bloggers Prefer Fred…
Right Wing News polled a slew of right-of-center political bloggers and found that their top three candidates that they most want to see get the GOP presidential nomination are, in order, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani and Duncan Hunter. The three……