Unqualified Offerings has decided to do awards too!
Least Dispensible Weblog - Instapundit
Hawk of the Year - Christopher Hitchens
Dove of the Year - Alan Bock
“Do What You Want with the Girl, But Leave Me Alone” Award - Michael Moore, regretting that al Qaeda didn’t target Bush voters.
“Turning Japanese” Award, for Best Case of the Vapors - […]

It is 33-degrees fahrenheit at Unqualified Headquarters. Unqualified Offerings is about to grill t-bones, outside, for New Year’s Eve dinner. Fuck 2001!
And after dinner - Unqualified Successes, UO’s end-of-year awards. Don’t miss it.

The Wall Street Journal got ahold of an al Qaeda PC and has published a story about the contents. This part is particularly chilling:
Particularly encouraging, the letter in the computer files said, was a home-brew nerve gas made from insecticides and a chemical additive that would help speed up penetration into the skin. The writer […]

According to Reuters via ZDNet, fuzzy, big-eyed music industry oligarchs are about to permanently lower the price of music CDs to $9.99, “in bid to battle the scourge of online music piracy,” per the subhead. “I think to some degree that’s got to be attributed to the fact that there’s so much music available online,” […]

I know plenty of other antigovernment extremist bloggers who want to divide us rather than bring us together, as Bill Clinton might put it, have already cited stories about how the new federal airport security employment guidelines are designed to allow as many of the exact same screeners to stay in their jobs as possible. […]

For awhile, improvements in food quality at McDonalds were a hot topic on Instapundit. But somehow the two best things about McDonalds never came up: 1) The sausage and egg biscuit - the breakfast food of the gods; and 2) the straws! McDonald straws are of a significantly wider gauge than most restaurant straws. What […]

Soulless corporation Lipton first introduced real decaffeinated tea something over a decade ago. This was not some herbal ersatz “tea,” but real orange and black pekoe with the caffeine sucked out. It tasted fine, though it was weaker per bag than caffeinated tea. Since iced tea is what they drink in heaven, and since Unqualified […]

All blogdom has been following the Great Debate on gun rights, gun shows and gun registration between Samizdata and its overmatched opponents. Today, Perry de Havilland writes:
In fact the debate is nothing of the kind. As I has said again and again, the Second Amendment is irrelevant. It is nothing more than a useful 200 […]

In his famous postscript to The Constitution of Liberty, F.A. Hayek explained why, despite his anti-socialism and anti-statism, he had to disclaim the label “conservative.” There are still as many reasons for libertarians to reject the label as ever. Consider first, Best [Neocon-Approved Items] of the Web yesterday on the latest draft guidelines for those […]

Unqualified Offerings wishes to stress that it remains agnostic about the “China Did It” hypothesis of the man it shall call “Toiler.” But one hallmark of a worthwhile hypothesis is that it opens further avenues of research. Try this one:
Let’s say China has penetrated al Qaeda and used it as an instrument of Chinese policy. […]

Thanks to the energetic and interesting Slotman’s “Insolvent Republic of Blogistan,” I found this excellent Guardian piece by Christopher Hitchens. It shows that Hitchens is good for a lot more than just Chomsky-bashing, and just how libertarian his instincts have become. Hitchens tells of getting two phone calls at the beginning of November from insiders […]

Maybe Unqualified Offerings has not thought far enough outside the famous “box.” It just got off the phone with an old friend who toils in the national security bureaucracy. This fellow began by asking himself qui bono. Qui bono is what has bedeviled the “Saudi Arabia did it” theory. This site has repeatedly maintained two […]

Guns.

Both by Perry deHavilland. The first, “Triumph and Realism,” argues against the temptation to irrational euphoria in the wake of US military and political success in Afghanistan so far:
Yes, that is quite true and in fact much of Hanson’s article is spot on. However I do worry that in the wave of understandable euphoria following […]

Mickey Kaus is on an absolute roll the last couple of days. In addition to his righteous pasting of David Broder, he has an excellent critique of a Post article on welfare caseloads in Wisconsin and a minor, but important, cavil about an otherwise good piece by Kevin J Hasson in today’s - Post. Okay, […]

“Paramilitary’s Rise Unintended Outcome Of U.S. Assistance” reads the dumbfounding subhead of a lengthy article in today’s Washington Post. Apparently all that Plan Colombia money - ahem, Andean Initiative money for the War on - you know, has led to the Colombian Army building up right-wing paramilitary groups as a bulwark against left-wing FARC guerrillas. […]

Unqualified Offerings will attempt to get all paranoid for a bit in hopes of understanding certain Current Events, including the Shoebomber, the newest bin Laden tape and, oh yeah, the prospects for nuclear war in South Asia. Specifically, UO will attempt to make everything fit into a plausible grand strategy for UBL. It will also […]

Affordable, professional cosmetics. Clothes that fit. And cost-effective broadband. Ginger Stampley, who has always been linked at the left and will always have the top spot on the Unqualified Offerings link list, has been turning out great post after great post about the economics of practical womanhood. The latest is called, “Economics of Lipstick, Redux.” […]