TWO YEARS RUNNING

On December 1, 2001, the JunkYardBlog climbed up from the ooze of the primordial blogosphere and assumed its rightful place near the bottom of the as yet unnamed ecosystem it inhabited. On that first day it got its first InstaPundit link, merely for announcing its existence and letting Glenn know that he'd been part of my inspiration to start a blog. It was easier to get the big guys to link you back in the old days. I didn't have a hit counter then, so I have no idea what kind of traffic he sent my way that day. The term "Instalanche" hadn't been invented yet.

When I logged on to Blogspot and set up the JYB's initial templates, there were far fewer bloggers out there, and fewer still that called themselves Christians. But there were lots of blogs that bashed Christians, and equated us with the terrorists that murdered so many just a few months earlier, so I set out with two missions--to defend the war to skeptics, and defend Christians to the other bloggers and readers out there who mindlessly lumped us in with the bad guys. Hopefully I haven't strayed too far from those missions, though I have probably added a few new purposes since then.

I won't recount everything this blog has been through, though it has been through quite a lot. It once stirred up enough controversy to prompt the Wall Street Journal to call me for quotes. It has been mentioned by Jonah Goldberg, Howie Kurtz and the late Michael Kelly in major columns, yet still remains just a large mammal in the grand scheme of things. It has earned me one or two death threats, as well as numerous offers to expand various parts of my body while shrinking other parts (for a fee, I suppose). It has earned me many friends, but hardly a cent in income (yeah, that's about as close to blegging as I get--but to those of you who have contributed to this site in the past and who host it in the present, a sincere thanks). Rather than shoot up a big laundry list of stuff that will just bore you to tears, I thought I'd put up a list of the posts that came to my virus-infected mind tonight (Thanksgiving was great, but I'm not thankful for the Cowboys humiliating loss nor for the suffocating cold I somehow picked up) as the best in JYB history. Well, my best anyway. We do have a second writer around here though he's been on the lam a bit lately, and if Chris turns up he may add some of his own to the list too. He has contributed mightily to the JYB since becoming the other half of its brain. His work on the sniper case, the Jayson Blair scandal and the Akhbar fragging incident stand out as among his shrewdest work--I found myself reading my own blog when he was writing that stuff, just to see where he'd take the story next. Chris, you have an amazing ability to size up a story and figure out how it will end before anyone else does.

Anyhow, here's the list of my best posts that I could think of. It's by no means complete and in no particular order, just fyi:

Forget Iraq, Let's Invade Mexico (yes, it's a parody, but it fooled one or two of you)

Shifting to the Sand (we need to reorganize our military, and may already be, though not in the way that I expected)

Why Iraq, and Why Now? (Reasons for war that stand up pretty well to the post-Saddam phase of history. No WMDs? No problem. My argument is predicated not on the belief that Saddam already had them, but that we should never let him have them and war was the only way to prevent it. UPDATE: I was right about prevention, it seems--UN-leashed Saddam was still trying to get his hands on long-range missiles via North Korea, missiles which were illegal under the inspections/sanctions regime.)

Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking? (this is the one that got the WSJ to ring me up--also inspired the creation of a whole web site that tracks the comings and goings of terrorists in incredible detail)

The Staggering Gods (we live in interesting times)

Nukng Japan, Part II, Last Word on the Subject, Still More Nuking, and I Can't Let Go of the Issue (Don't argue with me about Truman's decision to drop the big one on Hirohito. Just don't. You've been warned.)

Dr. Vollertsen's Crusade for Human Rights in North Korea (probably not among the best written posts here, but Dr. Norbert Vollertsen doesn't get enough attention)

Zero Sum (the with-us-or-with-the-terrorists calculation is still true)

Rolling Thunder (explains why I called this site "JunkYardBlog," and digs into Vietnam to learn a few lessons about warfare)

Day Trip (a stroll through the Antietam battlefield conjures up thoughts about our war)

Surprised by the Newsboys (I'm not all blood and guts, ya know...)

Knowledge and Innocence (on meeting a mentor)

Harry Potter: Son of Satan or Wizard for the Lord? (I look at the Harry Potter phenomenon from a religious point of view)

Gregg Easterbrook, Arch Villian (defending TMQ from the jackals of the blogosphere)

Gay Marriage and the Influence of One Marriage on All (yeah, that again)

And the JYB managed to gain toeholds on more fruitful shores once in a while. Here are links to some of our pieces that have actually been published by real live news and info sites:

Red River Run (the real story behind the Texas redistricting fiasco--suffice it to say you'll never get this angle from Josh Marshall, because it's based on actual facts)

Shocked! War's Reality Surprises the Media (Chris Regan and I suggest that there may be some Stockholm syndrome going on in Iraq--still a possibility, I think)

Inside Al Qeada's Training Camps (couldn't have done this one without a well-placed informant--and I got to pitch this piece within the storied offices of National Review, to Kate O'Beirne and Ramesh Ponnuru)

Dead Even in Maryland (Dem stronghold Maryland's statehouse fell to the GOP for the first time since Agnew in 2002, and I had that story's pulse earlier than most)

Lifting the Racial Siege (how the Party of Lincoln can reclaim its rightful place as the party of all races)

Genesis: Relic or Relevant? (my read on how Genesis lines up with science)

Blind Ambition (I unlock one of the great mysteries of the modern TV age--why do so many go to such lengths to make such fools of themselves on sydicated trash TV shows?)

I hope you can find something useful or at least somewhere north of yawn-inspiring in all this flotsam and bilge. Heck, most days I'd settle for "readable" and be happy.

Two years. Not a long time, really, but I'm glad that more than three-quarters of a million times during the past two years, surfers looking either for interesting thoughts or pictures of Melissa Stark or reasons to Fear the Turtle have found the JYB and called it, um, the JYB. And a big thanks to all of you who actually come back to the joint once in a while, and to those of you who blog and link back to this blog, and to those of you who snare me in arguments in the comment threads. You make it fun, and that really is the main point of blogging.