September 30, 2010
Adventure on the High Seas
Discovering Patrick O'Brian was a great joy. I've read and re-read, several times, his entire Aubrey/Maturin series, and greatly mourned his passing away in 2000 at age 85, an unfair and premature death that prevented his finishing volume 21 (although the partial novel was published posthumously). I knew, of course, that C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower
September 29, 2010
Podcast Schedule for (Most of) October
Coming up this Friday, October 1st, I talk with Dr. Bruce Cumings about North Korea, based in part on his recent book, The Korean War
September 27, 2010
Biopsy of a Failed War
Bob Woodward is a skunk. Having said that, he does sometimes report interesting things. His new book on the Afghanistan debacle, partially excerpted in this morning's Washington Post, is destined to be a bombshell. After Woodward gives plenty of examples the bottom line is clear: the President has no guts. There's nothing serious about this war. It's just Obama's political stage prop. Now, maybe we all already think that, but having the details of the story makes things real. Woodward will have pushed Obama's popularity down by another several points. Also, just fyi, if you're interested in an excellent daily sitrep on Afghanistan I recommend the New America Foundation's Afpak Channel, available free on the web and by email.
September 25, 2010
Kill Them All — Let God Sort Them Out
When a government claims the right of extrajudicial executions, by definition, it is a totalitarian power. So we should pay attention to this Washington Post report that the Obama administration will do whatever it takes to quash a legal challenge alleging the order of extrajudicial execution of an American citizen abroad, outside an active war zone. When our language gets corrupted to the extent that the mainstream media routinely describes as "liberal" an administration that engages, or wants to engage, in extrajudicial executions, something has gone horribly wrong. Actual liberals have a responsibility to confront, to denounce, and to punish the administration for dishonoring the nation. Extrajudicial executions are a bright red line, sufficiently so that liberals must entertain alternatives to the Democratic Party.
September 24, 2010
Be Careful What You Wish For
The big advantage of open internet protocols is that a lot of smart people can tinker all the time with the system. But if you set up a closed, supposedly secure system you'll create something like Windows hopped up on steroids. Totally vulnerable. If I were feeling perverse I'd hope that Gen. Alexander gets his way — teach the guy a hard lesson — except that the results in busted public utilities, havoc in critical data bases, and who knows what assorted crashes, would directly affect me. So, no, having a separate, government secured internet is not a good idea. What's even worse is that a bunch of official goofballs, somewhere, also seem to think it's productive to play around with cyberwarfare. Surely that won't turn out very well, either. I predict that if and when we get into a serious exchange of hacks our military establishment will be shocked to discover how vulnerable it really is.
September 21, 2010
Say (All I Need)
September 17, 2010
Serbia Surrenders to the EU
By Diana Johnstone
PARIS — On September 10, at the UN General Assembly, Serbia abruptly surrendered its claim to the breakaway province of Kosovo to the European Union. Serbian leaders described this surrender as a "compromise." But for Serbia, it was all give and no take.
In its dealings with the Western powers, recent Serbian diplomacy has displayed all the perspicacity of a rabbit cornered by a rattlesnake. After some helpless spasms of movement, the poor creature lets itself be eaten.
Bluehost Went Down
Last night and early this morning Bluehost's servers were down for several hours. Not good. Actually, the worst outage I've seen with them. In the middle of the night I managed to get through by phone to the support desk — they told me there was some kind of local power emergency; Rocky Mountain Power had showed up at the server facility and given Bluehost fifteen minutes to shut everything down. Ouch! But to get everything running again all that was necessary was to flip some switches. Don't panic! I think this kind of thing could have happened anywhere, it wasn't Bluehost's fault, and they handled it very professionally.
September 15, 2010
Good Riddance, Adrian!
A young, hip, attractive, light-skinned Black man, with little political experience but a lot of ambition, reasonably articulate, suddenly acquires real power. In Adrian Fenty's case, as Mayor, he had no clue what to do. He produced no noteworthy results. His opponent in yesterday's Democratic primary, Vincent Gray, probably isn't any better but DC residents were sufficiently fed up with Fenty to vote for Gray. Perhaps unsurprisingly, DC's main papers carried no specific ward by ward analysis; my guess is that two factors mattered: a large Black protest vote, and many residents in the white areas of northwest DC (where I live), most of whom were expected to support Fenty, who didn't vote. Indeed, even Fenty's door to door operatives, when I pushed them aggressively on things like public schools, acknowledged that Fenty wasn't doing a very good job. The ground troops couldn't refute the facts. In this town the winner of the Democratic primary, of course, wins the general election. Barry from DC, you're next.
America's Last Light Bulb
It used to be you could buy light bulbs made in America. Better than the store brands, they didn't screw in at odd angles, the bulbs didn't explode such that needle nose pliers were required to unscrew the base of the light bulb from the socket, they didn't burn out within seconds of first being screwed in, they didn't develop odd flickers throughout most of their working life — indeed, they lasted a reasonable time and worked well. They cost a little more, but they were worth it.
September 12, 2010
The Fine Print
When he finally got around to shilling for his version of health care reform, Mr. Obama said "My proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions — families, businesses and the federal government." At the time, the real experts on health care predicted that, because Mr. Obama's plan is based entirely on so-called "free market" mechanisms, it could not possibly reduce costs. Now the government acknowledges that medical costs, under the new legislation, will increase. So Mr. Obama is backtracking. What he really meant was that your spending for health care will rise from 17% of your budget to only 20% of your budget, instead of the 25% or so without reform. That's change we can believe in (not). Don't expect many Democrats to run for reelection on their health care reform accomplishments...
Technology and Dreams
Occasionally — rarely — my dreams take the form of animated cartoons. One, for example, had a tiny airplane flying through a museum. I'm sure animated cartoon dreams occur to people all the time, though I daresay that before cartoons were invented they never did. Which brings me to 3D technology. 3D movies give me a headache. I have no interest whatsoever in gangrel 3D television, though I note that manufacturers are racing frantically to bring such sets to market. At some point, like it or not, 3D moving images probably will become ubiquitous. So I wonder: will peoples' brains adapt and dream in 3D? Do some people already dream in 3D? I've never heard of such a thing, but why not? We see in 3D. Just asking.
September 10, 2010
Burning the Qur'an
On this, everybody seems to agree: Pastor Terry Jones has an absolute constitutional right, a First Amendment right of free speech, to burn a pile of copies of the Qur'an, if he wants. Does he, then? This does not seem at all clear to me.
To put things into perspective, the Qur'an is even more of a holy book to Muslims than the Bible is to Christians, for the simple reason that Muslims don't express their piety in the other ways that Christians do, through realistic depictions of their savior. Christians have paintings, icons, movies, even miraculous pieces of toast, but Muslims invest all, or nearly all, their spiritual energy into their holy book. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the Qur'an is ten times more important for Muslims than the Bible is for Christians, though it's probably more than that. Now factor in the timing. Tomorrow, Saturday, Pastor Jones' previously scheduled day for his Qur'an burning event, this year just happens to be the Muslim holy day of Eid ul-Fitr, which ranks somewhere in comparable importance to Christmas. So imagine a Muslim Imam undertaking to burn a stack on Bibles on Christmas, then multiply the outrage. And ask yourself: are the consequences of that outrage entirely unreasonable?
September 9, 2010
America's Heart of Darkness
So now our mercenaries in Afghanistan are murdering civilians in order to take their fingers as trophies. Who would'a thunk it? Actually, it's been thunk: Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness
Helter Skelter in Cleveland
In a burst of enthusiasm, Arianna Huffington said "[it] was definitely the best speech we've gotten from him since he's been in the White House." On the other hand, David Broder, a reliable Washington weathervane, noted "the turn to the right that will mark his tenure." People hear what they want to hear. But why Cleveland?
News reports chalked it up to a dig at putative House Speaker John Boehner (R, Ohio), who in late August used the venue of the City Club of Cleveland to call on Mr. Obama to fire his economic team. Nobody in the media, however, seems to have noticed that Cleveland also happens to be the headquarters of Mr. Obama's church. As such, it's not only home turf but a main cog in his political machine, one that had already played an essential role in defining candidate Obama. If in 2007 he had not garnered a seal of approval and influential intellectual support from one of the oldest mainline denominations in America, arguably he could never have won the caucuses, or the primaries, or the nomination, let alone the general election.
September 8, 2010
Podcast Schedule Mid-September
This Friday, the tenth, my guest is Leslie Kean, who's got a new book out, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On The Record
Work, Workers, and the Very Rich
It's tempting to want to see the positive side in Mr. Obama's recent talk of further stimulus. One must remember, however, that it's only talk — he has no intention of jamming anything meaningful through a dysfunctional Congress — and, further, that his heavy emphasis on tax cuts for business, if implemented, would just set us back further. What we really need, more than anything else, is a massive tax hike on the Über-rich. Establishment "left" economists (not to mention mainstream economists) just don't get it: the Über-rich, both deliberately and accidentally, create such powerful economic distortions that the economy is only able to lurch from crisis to crisis, to their benefit, but not to anybody else's.
September 4, 2010
The American Dream
September 1, 2010
President Laughingstock
By this time it's fair to say that Mr. Obama is not merely a right of center politician, but a right-winger. There's nothing "centrist" about him. I wonder, though, whether it's becoming fair to say that he's a Manchurian Candidate, a plant, extreme in his support of the establishment which, by definition, is an oligarchic dictatorship? One sees the dawning recognition — from Harry Shearer ("President Obama speaks to New Orleans From Planet Zarg") to David Letterman ("He'll have plenty of time for vacations when his one term is up") — the comedians being, as usual, ahead of the curve. And I can't imagine that Mr. Obama's speech last night impressed anybody except, of course, his courtiers in Versailles on the Potomac.
