Punchposts 19th Oct.

Stuff I meant to write more about but didn't.

Noam Chomsky has been voted the world's leading living intellectual in a poll run by Prospect magazine. Umberto Eco, the Italian novelist and philosopher, was second and Richard Dawkins, the Oxford scientist and outspoken critic of organised religion was third. Chris Hitchens, by virtue of a self-serving blog-post managed to come fifth. Sorry, Chris. You're a bright bugger but you don't belong in that company.

Hitchens does, however, have a really interesting essay at Slate on the tribal rather than religious variations of Iraq. Although he is right that tribal loyalties play a far greater role than Western pundits normally give credit for, he misses the point as usual. Yes indeed, the three normal groups of Sunni, Shia and Kurd are two apples and an orange - but then again so would characterising mainland UK as Catholic, Protestant and Scottish be two apples and an orange, yet that's a distinction that has relevance because many Scots see themselves as Scottish first. So too with the Kurds.

Rightwing pundit Bruce Bartlett has been fired by the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative research group based in Dallas. His crime? Telling the masses that Bush isn't a conservative. Luckily for those who like a laugh, Bartlett is still waxing strong over at Townhall.com. Read his latest entitled "The Final Straw" and be sure to quote BIG chunks of it to BushCo asskissers like Hugh Hewitt. I'm looking forward to Bartlett's book, the cause for his firing, "The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." Should be fun.

The always-informative New Standard has a story which speculates on why parts of the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans remain off-limits to residents. None of the official excuses are workeable or even agree with the other reasons and residents are sure the real reason is they want to make an industrial park of the area - which had the highest rate of black home-ownership in the city.

Nathan Newman cuts to the chase on the much talked about David Sirota article "Partisan War Syndrome", arguing that, Democratic Party hacks aside, focus on electoral strategies and "framing" is pretty much secondary. Instead, liberals should make the ideological case for progressive values to undecided voters. "Activists need to rediscover a basic lesson of the abolitionists, feminist, civil rights and labor movements: pragmatism is what you do when you cut the deal, but you build support through passionate commitment to moral values and ideas."

Style over substance is the modus operandi of today's Republican Party - and their lawyers - "U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's chief lawyer says he has no evidence that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle participated in grand jury deliberations, despite having made that allegation in motions to dismiss DeLay's indictments".

Some idiot by the name of Todd Manzi , writing for the conservative Human Events Online magazine, is hoping to excuse Bill Bennett's ridiculous black baby abortion comments by saying that few of his listeners were offended (well yeah, they are probably racists too) and that it didn't actually begin to offend thousands until the "vast liberal media conspiracy" (TM) broke the story. Well yeah...and if no non-Jew in the USA was ever told about the Nazi holocaust it wouldn't be such a bad thing either? C'mon Todd, pull the other one, it has bells on it.