A Thinking Reed

  • The gender card

    Awesome. (Via Jeremy)

  • Friday metal – To Hell with the Devil edition

    I don’t believe in affirmative action for “Christian” music– it should be held to the same standards as “secular” music. And by those standards–let’s admit it–the majority of contemporary Christian music is mediocre at best. But there are a few bright spots out there. Here’s a clip from Underoath, a Christian hard/metalcore band out of…

  • Bacevich on “Democracy Now!”

    Starts at about 33 minutes into this stream (thanks, Elliot!). To the extent that I still think of myself as a conservative, it’s in the Bacevich-Reinhold Niebuhr mold. Bacevich gets at what I take to be the heart of this conservatism in the interview: it’s the recognition that world exists prior to us and doesn’t…

  • Irony and hunting

    Turns out that Sarah Palin’s RNC speech was written by former Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, who also happens to be the author of Dominion, a conservative polemic on behalf of animal rights. (An excerpt from Scully’s book that appeared in the American Conservative several years back actually helped set me on the path to vegetarianism.):…

  • The “empire of consumption” and Obamanomics

    John Wiener interviews Andrew Bacevich on our “empire of consumption” and the limits of Obama: But he’s not one of those radicals who argue there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. “I call myself an Obama-con, Bacevich says, “a conservative who will vote for Obama – because of the Iraq war. He…

  • Perspective

    I continue to be mystified by the Sarah Palin love-fest and the Sarah Palin hate-fest. Clearly, she’s touched a nerve with the conservative grassroots and set off at least some lefty bloggers and commentators. To my mind this doesn’t change anything. But then, I wasn’t the target audience for this move. McCain is still McCain,…

  • Guitar Man, R.I.P.

    Folks who only know him (if at all) from “Smokey and the Bandit” may not realize what a unique songwriter and performer Jerry Reed was. His sound blended country with a kind of Cajun stomp and a generous dollop of humor. R.I.P.

  • Cheap dates

    Reading National Review‘s “The Corner” and some comment threads at Rod Dreher’s place, I was puzzled to see so many conservatives gushing about McCain’s choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. From what little I’ve read she seems to be an admirable lady with strong convictions, but how does this alter the…

  • Obama’s speech

    This is too little too late in blogospheric terms but, hey, it’s my blog, right? I thought it was very good, but I have no idea how it will play to the mythical “undecideds.” Good stuff on McCain and the Republicans (the line about McCain voting with Bush 90% of the time, the business about…

  • Do it for the hens

    Via bls at The Topmost Apple comes word of a Humane Society campaign to get religious people to replace eggs from battery hens with cage-free eggs or egg substitutes during the month of October. Great idea. St. Francis would be proud. Be warned, though, that there are a lot of labels (organic, free-range, cage-free, certified…