Huff, Huff! Last Week's Council Winners

This week’s first place went to The Glittering Eye for his excellent essay "Perspectives on Foreign Command of U. S. Forces." This is dense essay, not easily taken apart for discussion. However, here’s the setting for his subject:

The U. S. is allergic to placing its military forces under foreign command. The current U. S. military doctrine is that, while its forces may be placed under foreign command, they are never placed under foreign operational control. Whether the president has the power to place U. S. forces under foreign operational control is a topic for legal scholars and is beyond the scope of this post but the reality is that at least four presidents have placed U. S. forces under both foreign command and foreign operational control.

We’re “allergic” to foreign command of U. S. Forces because our military is built upon very different assumptions from that of other countries. You can begin with the class differences, so sharp among European classes, and so absent in our Army. Dwight Eisenhower would never have made it to Sandhurst.

New Sisyphus took second place for Misogyny Day, his post on the Canadian massacre of the girls in a Montreal schoolroom back in the ‘70’s. Like the rest of us, New Sisyphus is disgusted at learning that the incident was not about “Western man’s horrific violence against women.” When you discover that the killer was not “Marc Lepine,” as he claimed, but in reality was a Muslim named Gamil Gharbi, as New Sisyphus says,

...all you have is yet another sad example of Islam's disfunctional and completely over-the-top misogyny.

Another fable presented to us by the MSM and the lying elites. They have no shame in pushing their agenda, as you will see in one of the non-council posts, below.

This week's non-council winner, Patterico’s Los Angeles Dog Trainer Year in Review 2005 deserves his spot just for all the work he put into it. Besides which, you have to admire anyone dedicated to exposing The Los Angeles Times for what it is. Right up front, Patterico sums it up:

This post summarizes an entire year’s worth of work documenting omissions, distortions, and misrepresentations by this newspaper. When someone truly takes the time to provide specific examples of liberal bias in the news media, the result can be voluminous, and this post is no exception. Feel free to bookmark it and return to it in the coming days, browsing through the categories as they interest you.

He’s not kidding, either, about the sheer volume of their perfidy. Well worth your time. And I freely admit my bias, I love anyone who exposes the Old Grey Doxy in New York City, or her West Coast echo companion, The Dog Trainer. Patterico is a man after my own heart.

There was a tie for second place between Maxed Out Mama and Protein Wisdom.

M.O.M’s Stuck on Thought means exactly that. She ponders two issues which do not have clear boundaries or answers, and she asks you to follow along with her.One bit of her wisdom is well worth consideration. She says that anger does not corrode the soul (as Judge Cashman claimed) but Hate sure does....food for thought. Maybe someone could point out her post to His Honor.

Protein Wisdom's subject matter is closely aligned with New Sisyphus, above. His post is concerned about the dominant [perception of] reality and who will be allowed to control that reality.
In "We Love the Troops; But It's a Tough Love (#144) – UPDATED," PW terms the present moment as a postmodern one in which reality is granted to those who control the dominant narrative:

That such can be done purposely and cynically-and with full knowledge that the narrative is manufactured to persuade rather than to inform-is simply part of the game.

Which is why it is imperative that those of us who are concerned that epistemology not simply become a playground for those with the biggest bullhorn and a philosophy that unabashedly adopts a strategy whereby the ends justify the means, must consistently and painstakingly point out the rhetorical gambits and animating power structures that drives what orchestrated oppo research hopes will become ossified narratives-“contingent truths”-which increase in power over time and with pedagogical canonization, airbrushing of inconvenient counterclaims, and repetition.

Well and truly said. And this struggle is going to be a long one.

Interesting point: three of the four winning posts this week have to do with aspects of the perception of reality. All three, from varying perspectives, question or disparage the common wisdom. Perhaps because it has ceased to be either common or wise?

All the nominations are over at the Watcher’s place. Quite an offering.