Top of the Ticket, a Los Angeles Times blog, warns that Ron Paul’s cult is up to something:

But in the meantime, quietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in St. Paul at the beginning of September.

Paul’s presidential candidacy has been correctly dismissed all along in terms of winning the nomination. He was even excluded as irrelevant by Fox News from a nationally-televised GOP debate in New Hampshire.

But what’s been largely overlooked is Paul’s candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party’s most conservative conservatives. As anticipated a month ago in The Ticket, that situation could be exacerbated by today’s expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.

Nevermind Ralph Nader, Republican and Democratic parties both face….

…potentially damaging internal splits that could cripple their chances for victory in a narrow vote on Nov. 4.

Nevermind Ralph Nader, Republican and Democratic parties both face….

…potentially damaging internal splits that could cripple their chances for victory in a narrow vote on Nov. 4.

Paul’s candidacy is not a “powerful reflection” of anything. His followers excel at gaming online polls, sending hate mail, and posting blog comments but he and his cultish followers are rooted firmly in the fringe of American politics. A few disruptive protests in St. Paul will not do anything to change that.

Parts of the older Blogs of War archives have been offline for over a year. This weekend I started republishing material from the earliest days of the war.

Thousands of updates were posted in the initial weeks of the war. The mainstream media was still moving at a snail’s pace online in those days and the constant stream of updates earned Blogs of War global media attention. Here are the first 24 hours:

The War: Hour 1
The War: Hour 2
The War: Hour 3
The War: Hour 4
The War: Hour 5
The War: Hour 6
The War: Hour 7
The War: Hour 8
The War: Hour 9
The War: Hour 13
The War: Hour 14
The War: Hour 16
The War: Hour 17
The War: Hour 18
The War: Hour 19
The War: Hour22
The War: Hour 23
The War: Hour 24

Politrickin’ is my new favorite word and that Geico lizard line is just damn funny. I’d almost consider voting for the man if he really campaigned like this.

Google has a dedicated donation page up:

Join recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist cyclone victims in Myanmar (Burma). Below, we’ve selected two among many worthy organizations. Your donation will help survivors and other disaster victims rebuild their communities and their lives. In addition, when you donate on this page, Google donates too. We’ll donate up to $1 million to help organizations provide relief.

Burma Cyclone is monitoring the crisis.

SNL has been giving Hillary a hard time for a while but this sketch takes it to a whole new level.

Play Video

Set aside an hour to watch this video. Trust me. The hour flies by as Mark Steyn systematically dismantles the purely emotional arguments of his critics in an unplanned live debate on Canadian television. Host Steve Paikin (who handled the whole event extremely well) wrote a follow up piece on his blog:

Steyn challenged the three complainants to allow him to join the debate. After considering his request (on live TV no less), they insisted they have time alone (as he did), after which they were content to have him join.

That seemed eminently reasonable to me, and so we made it so, all of it happening on the fly.

For what it’s worth, I think the “Maclean’s Three” made the right call by engaging in a debate with Steyn. They would have looked like hypocrites had they not, given that they’ve been calling for an open debate on the subject matter for weeks.

The program was certainly one of the most heated we’ve ever done, although I believe it stayed civilized almost all the time. We ensured at the outset there would be no shouting or name calling and our guests to their credit stuck to those rules.

What you didn’t see was that after we got off the air and the cameras and lights were shut off, all four participants stayed in the studio for another hour discussing the issues with Wodek and another producer, Navin Vaswani, who helped Wodek with the show.

To Steyn’s credit, he may have offered the first olive branch when he said as I was closing the show, “would you guys like to go for dinner?” One of the lawyers immediately said, “No!” They may not have broken bread, but they did continue the dialogue.

The only problem with the show is that there wasn’t much discussion about the ideas (and facts) presented in Steyn’s work. His opponents went there only briefly and apparently found the experience painful. They could not point to inaccuracies in his work and they did not present any data that offered a reasonable counterpoint to his conclusions. They simply wanted to be heard because their feelings were hurt. The result? Steyn cut through them like a buzzsaw.

Lebanese Political Journal
SSNP guys sit on many corners in Hamra and are patrolling on motor scooters. Their flags are everywhere, and they are gloating. I was regularly mistaken for being an SSNP guy while out walking, because I am the right age, wearing the right clothes, and fitting the right physique to be one of their guys. The SSNP security guys gave me nods, the Army diverted their eyes, and the neighborhood residents gave me looks of absolute hatred.

Across the Bay
Aside from assaulting the Hariri Foundation — a foundation that has paid for the education of thousands upon thousands of Lebanese college students — Hezbollah and its goons have focused their venom, hatred and destruction on the media. The very first thing they attacked, burned and destroyed were newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations that support March 14th political line.

NOW! Lebanon
At least 16 people were killed in clashes in Lebanon on Saturday between supporters of the government and the opposition, security and hospital officials said. Fierce clashes in the Akkar region of north Lebanon killed 14 people, including civilians, when members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party battled supporters of the Future Movement, a security official said. “The headquarters of the Syrian Social National Party (SSNP) in Halba fell to the Future Movement forces,” said the official, adding that seven people were found dead inside.

Blacksmiths of Lebanon
News sources in Lebanon are reporting a statement issued by Army Command calling for the withdrawal of all armed elements from the street. The Army’s statement also declared the establishment of an internal probe into the airport security affair, without the removal [as yet] of Brigadier General Wafik Shoukair as head of airport security; and the establishment of its own study into the Hizballah communication network, along lines that “would not harm the resistance’s integrity and security”.

The final update sums matters up nicely.

Blogging Beirut
SHIT HAS HIT THE FAN

Why do we seem so ill-prepared for events that are clearly inevitable?

The United States is conferring with the U.N. Security Council and others in the Middle East about possible measures against those responsible for the recent violence in Beirut, the White House said on Friday.

The White House has accused the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah of inciting the violence in the Lebanese capital and routing forces loyal to the U.S.-backed government.

Because nothing frightens the enemies of peace and freedom like a diplomatically crafted expression of concern.

Linux has been my primary OS for several years now. I haven’t run a version of Windows at home in over five years. I did continue to use Windows at work but only because no other options were offered. However, work is becoming increasingly Mac-friendly (thank you Vista) so I’ve recently been able to ditch Windows as a primary OS. These days I’m able to run Windows in Parallels on a MacBook Pro (screenshot above) and 24″ iMac - and then only when needed (which isn’t often). My computing time is significantly more productive with Apple hardware and software in the office.

Ubuntu is still my primary OS at home. I don’t expect that to change. Switching between Leopard and Ubuntu 8.04 feels virtually seamless to me. I’m generally happy and productive as long as I’m on some flavor of Unix but open source variants will always have the edge.

Wikipedia has an extended entry on the Enigma machine:

The ‘”Enigma machine” was a cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. More precisely, Enigma was a family of related electro-mechanical rotor machines, comprising a variety of different models.

The Enigma was used commercially from the early 1920s on, and was also adopted by the military and governmental services of a number of nations—most famously by Nazi Germany before and during World War II.