Our occasional medly of some fascinating posts from all over the Internet. They are NOT selected for or limited to specific political viewpoints. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice. ARE THE IRAQI ELECTIONS A WIN-WIN-WIN SITUATION? The (always witty and original) Talking Dog looks at the elections that just started and writes: The best part of all: no matter what happens, the President can hail having brought "democracy" to the Arab world, and...

Didn’t we know this already?

Photo courtesy of Democracy In Iraq — which is changing its name today to  Democracy In Iraq (Is Here!) and writes: I have changed the header of my page to reflect the new, improved, democratic Iraq. The turnout has been higher than expected, even Yahoo had an article reflecting this. I link it below. The article states that turnout was about 75%, so I believe it was in reality somewhat higher. And all this despite the fact that the terrorists did indeed carry out attacks, but as we all...

Due to our brutal trip this week, we’re a little behind on things but we will be doing a post and roundup on the Iraqi elections (we will be looking at posts and links). Check back later.

The gray haired man looked a bit like how actor actor Spencer Tracy looked in Tracy’s final years. He had been sitting at a dining room table in New Haven, Connecticut when he called his over his teenage grandson. "This was my family," he said, slowly opening the photo album. Then he started pointing to a host of aging photos showing large, smiling groups of people of all ages. "He’s dead — killed by the Nazis. She’s dead — killed by the Nazis. This little...

Joe has been kind enough to allow me one more day to post after his return from his grueling weekend journey (boy, I’m glad I don’t have his job…).  I would like to thank Joe for the opportunity he gave me to guest-post here.  Unfortunately, this has been far from my best work, but I try to remember the words of Jean Giraudoux, "Only the mediocre are always at their best." On my weblog Random Fate I often ask questions that I strive not to suggest answers to...

The Watcher of Weasels council has selected its winning posts. The winning Council post is Wallo World’s A Childlike Fantasy. The winning non-Council post is Cavalier’s Zarqawi’s War On Democracy. The full list of posts for this week can be found here. The Moderate Voice sits on the Council but a sofa is more comfortable.

Recently, the Christian Coalition supported  the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America in a court case. This tale of strange bedfellows has more to it than initially meets the eye.

Jeff Jarvis has your one-stop shop for Iraqi election coverage: Iraqi bloggers, Iraqi youth, and non-Iraqis.  He gives brief descriptions of each and a snippet of a post for a few.  (Lest Eric Alterman get his panties in a bunch, several of the listed Iraqi bloggers are against the occupation.)  Technology entrepreneur (and Dallas Mavs courtside yeller) Mark Cuban, who owns the high-definition network HDNet, has sent his "TV studio in a box" to Iraq to cover the elections...

A popular cable channel might be for sale, but it’s not the one you think … read this post to find out more. Well, that does it for me.  Thanks to Joe for giving me the privilege of contributing to this blog in his absence and having the chance to increase my own audience (hopefully not at his expense).  You can follow my writing – the serious, the fluff, and that wonderful gray area that keeps snarky and sycophantic columnists out of the gutter – at the benignly...

The Moderate Voice wants to give a heartfelt "Thank You" to our two highly talented Guest Bloggers Greg Piper and Jack Grant. TMV means it when he says that he visits their sites often because he enjoys the way they write and has the utmost respect for the fact that they’re independent thinkers. In this case, they were gracious enough to take time from their extremely busy schedules (they both have very full lives outside of blogging  PLUS their own blogs) to help TMV out...

The Bull Moose (a weblog I know is on Joe’s regular reading list, as it is mine) makes a plea to everyone regarding the Iraqi elections tomorrow.

…post-election Iraq will be an awful quagmire of Indochina proportions.  The New York Times, apparently not aware that it is a parody of itself by now, does a story about everyone’s favorite failure and how "comparisons [of Iraq to Vietnam] are no longer dismissed in mainstream political discourse as facile and flawed, but are instead bubbling to the top" (my emphasis).  Before going into the content of the story (which is thin anyway), let’s examine the phrasing...

…but I must discuss this. I have seen little mention in blogworld of the capture (I won’t call it "liberation") of Aushwitz by Soviet troops 60 years ago. I cannot let this pass without comment. Truly, we can never forget, for if we do, we will continue to allow it to happen, as we have for the last 60 years.

Best of the Web Today notes some interesting paragraphs from an AlterNet interview with Canadian writer and leftist Naomi Klein, best known for her anti-corporate book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies.  Klein, an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq, has some uncomfortable words for her fellow antiwar acolytes, although the interview introduction makes no mention of her Sister Souljah moment: Quite frankly, there’s a lot of skepticism in Iraq . . . about the international anti-war...

Internet streaming rose rapidly last year, with video streams slightly outpacing Internet radio.  It shouldn’t be a surprise to fans of either, since more homes are connected to broadband (although the US is still a "broadband backwater" compared to many developed countries).  In addition to the streaming-only radio stations, some traditional stations have made great strides online, most successfully in Seattle’s indie rock powerhouse KEXP, which arguably has the best...

Reason’s Charles Paul Freund has a thoughtful consideration of why the CIA would ever set up pro-American Iraqi blogs, as Eric Alterman among others has speculated with regard to Iraq the Model (Jeff Jarvis has savaged Alterman for possibly threatening the Iraqi bloggers).  He argues, persuasively to me, that even the CIA can’t be that dumb: The limitations of a pro-U.S., English-language Iraqi blog should be obvious. First, it would immediately be suspect in the eyes of my critics...

A new website has been set up to carefully watch what is expected to be a battle royal over California Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger’s plans to reform government. It’s appropriately called Bloginators and it bills itself as a group of bloggers who aren’t connected to any party who want to follow and debate the controversial proposals that are sure to be making big news (one way or another). We’ve added it to our blogroll under Other Voices — and will probably join...

It appears that the immigration reform laws of the 1980s that required employers to obtain and verify Social Security numbers of newly hired employees has had the unintended consequence of creating an industry of Social Security number identity theft.  The linked article makes for disturbing and somewhat frightening reading. The patchwork system of taxation, credit reports, employment records, educational transcripts, and other important information that all use the Social Security number as...

From the pages of The Economist magazine (recommended reading, giving a point of view from outside the United States), an article on the outcomes of "public goods games", research that has the potential to provide a lot of insight on how politics in democracies works (or, on occasion, doesn’t…).  The concluding paragraphs: …  The researchers were able to divide their subjects very cleanly into co-operators, free-riders and reciprocators, based on how many tokens...

Some controversies exceed the attention span of the media and the public long before they are resolved, regardless of the importance of the issues raised or the tragedy that originated all the sound and fury.

My name is Jack Grant, and I am the author of the weblog Random Fate, which Joe has been kind enough to link relatively frequently. I am a bit older than the other guest-poster, Greg Piper, who is also helping to fill in during Joe’s absence.  I received my graduate degree in Physics a full decade before Greg graduated college, so I’m sure that even though we are both self-described moderates, we will definitely have different viewpoints. My weblog Random Fate started as a way for...

Hillary Clinton’s speech on abortion earlier this week is making waves among serious thinkers on abortion policy, both the life and choice variety.  Glenn Reynolds has speculated that the junior senator from New York might fulfill this alternate-history novel’s description of her as "the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States," but the president who ended the abortion wars through careful diplomacy?  I’ve been a strong (if unconventional)...

A note to our wonderful readers. For the past year The Moderate Voice has posted for every single day with the exception of Guest Blogger stints on Dean’s World. That’s due to TMV having a laptop. The laptop is totally dead. Say prayer for it. Last night TMV left for a trip that will take him from Southern California to Northern California back — all within a three and a half day period. With NO LAPTOP (one was ordered Tuesday). Fortunately two bloggers who we admire a lot for...

Jeremiah Lewis, who you’ll notice on Joe’s "Right" blogroll under "Fringe," has a hilarious satire and helpful advice on vanity license plates.  I first met Jeremiah through blogging – he was searching for tobacco, of all things, and came across my deceptively-titled site.  He is an aspiring filmmaker in Blacksburg, Virginia, and devotes most of his writing now to film review and criticism, but has a certain Lileksian talent for narrating the everyday...