Friday, October 12, 2012

The Council Has Spoken!! This Week's Watcher's Council Results

 

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

A close contest this week, with ties in both the Council and Non-Council category, so I had to really earn my munificent Salary as Watcher this week!

In the Council category, the tie was between Joshuapundit's Why Obama Got His Clock Cleaned Last Night,my examination of last week's presidential debate and Bookworm Room's The girl's guide to visiting the USS Makin Island, a truly amusing, sparkling account of her visit to one of our naval vessels as a speech she gave as part of her duties with the Navy League.
 



In accordance with our bylaws in these matters, I was more than happy to break the tie to declare Bookworm Room's The girl's guide to visiting the USS Makin Island this week's winner. Here's a slice:


Courtesy of the Navy League, today I boarded the USS Makin Island as an official ship’s greeter.  My visit was a bit more fraught than past experiences have been, so I thought I’d walk you through the girl’s guide to visiting the USS Makin Island, starting with pre-visit preparations:
  1. Review boarding instructions at last-minute and realize that I’m supposed to wear “slacks.”  Who the heck has slacks?  I live in jeans, either blue or black.  Burrow through closet and discover antique pair of bland brown slacks.
  2. Breath sigh of relief that slacks still zip.  I vow not to do any inhaling for the rest of the day, lest the slacks become rebellious.
  3. New problem:  After a harried search for the sole, and ancient, pair of brown shoes I own, I find that they are scratched and dirty.  This is bad.  Worse is that I have no shoe polish.  A frantic hunt for something oily to help liven up the leather yields only Tea Tree oil.  Did you know that if you polish your shoes with Tea Tree oil you go around the rest of the day smelling like disinfectant?  I know that now.
  4. Leave house in order to arrive at Pier 80 (in the southern-most part of the City) by 2:30, since the last, best word is that I should be there at 3:00.  I figure a half-hour of wiggle room is a good thing.
  5. Halfway to Pier 80, I get a timely telephone call telling me that the USS Makin Island is actually going to be at Pier 30/32.  Under these circumstances, San Francisco’s maze of one way streets becomes the enemy.
  6. Arrive at Pier 30/32 at 2:30, blithely assuming that I’ll be on board by 3:00.  Hah!  But more on that later.
  7. Learn that, because of snafu, while I am approved for entry onto the pier, my car is not.  I begin the hunt for San Francisco street parking.  Rather to my surprise, I find a spot only a block away, a distance even my dodgy knee can tolerate.  I spend a few minutes struggling with the new-fangled ticket machine, which charges me a hefty $12 for four hours of street parking.  Four hours should be enough, right?
  8. Arrive at pier, and saunter self-consciously across a vast parking lot and staging area, which is empty but for a handful of people who clearly belong there, including five spit-and-polished Marines.   Here’s a picture of that vast space: 
  9.  
  10. With feigned coolness, because I’m neurotically certain that everyone there is staring at me, I casually seat myself on one of the comfortable-looking, bright orange security barriers.
  11. Learn the hard way, when my weight compresses the barrier on which I’ve seated myself, that said barriers are filled with water.

Read the rest, it gets even better.


In our non-Council category, the tie was between Monkey In The Middle's  Muslim Persecution of Christians: August, 2012 submitted by Simply Jews an account of the Religion of Peace's tolerance and acceptance of Christians during just one month, a story the dinosaur media largely isn't bothering to report and Michael J. Totten's  The Most Overrated Intellectual In The World submitted by The Glittering Eye, a trenchant look at Islamist Tariq Ramadan, a stealth jihadi quite popular in parts of western academia.

Tough, tough choice...but I opted for Monkey and the Middle largely because the piece's simplicity says volumes about how the west deceives itself.But both pieces will well reward your attention. In fact, I could say that about everything that appears week in and weekout on the Watcher's Council's nominations and results pages.



OK, here we go....this week’s full results. The Right Planet and The Independent Sentinel were unable to vote this week, but neither was subject to the mandatory 2/3 vote penalty.:

Council Winners



Non-Council Winners


See you next week! Don't forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week's Watcher's Forum, as the Council and their invited guests takes apart one of the provocative issues of the day and weigh in...don't you dare miss it.And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!
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