December 29, 2010
Will They Or Won't They?
The 112th Congress convenes in one week, on Wednesday, January 5th, and on that day the Senate will adopt its rules. I believe, and an increasing number of constitutional scholars agree, that in adopting its rules the Senate could, by a simple majority vote, change or eliminate Rule 22, the cloture rule, which provides for filibusters. At all other times, assuming that Rule 22 remains unchanged and in effect, to change the Rules requires a 2/3 majority of those Senators present and voting. So next Wednesday is a rare window for the Senate to do the right thing.
December 27, 2010
Droning On
It's the prime fantasy of every military professional: superior technology that mows down the enemy at no cost to one's own forces. Once it was the Maxim gun. Before that, the cannon. Lately it seems to be the unmanned drone, machines like the MQ-9 Reaper. The Obama administration makes no bones about its preference for increasing drone strikes, but I wonder whether anybody in the Pentagon has seriously tried to think this through. We know that drone strikes greatly annoy local tribesmen in Afghanistan and Pakistan, among other places, and we know that insurgents tend to express their annoyance by killing people. What we don't seem to know — and what the insurgents don't know yet either, but predictably will eventually learn — is that drone technology is not necessarily a U.S. military monopoly.
On Phony Intellectualism
Edward Hopper is one of my favorite painters. I've seen a number of exhibits of his work in Europe and in the U.S. and years ago when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago I often used to admire his paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago. Nighthawks is one of the Art Institute's mainstays — right after their Botticelli Virgin and Child with an Angel, and several of their impressionists, including especially Pissarro, their Hopper collection often drew me from Hyde Park into town on daytrips, sometimes paired with matinee rehearsals (half price for students) by Georg Solti at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra just up the street. Accessible art. A joy to experience.
December 25, 2010
Happy Winter Solstice!
Here comes the Sun. In the latitudes of Washington DC one quickly senses the days becoming longer. The bureaucrats stick their heads out of their burrows, nostrils twitching, guessing at the bounty of a new year. Politicians chatter raucously high up among the trees, tin-pot martinets polish their shining stars, while lobbyists imbibe their extra time, at ease in oak-paneled parlors. Fifty-something blondes on cell phones swirl brand new German automobiles into impossible U-turns, snarling late afternoon traffic. Store clerks pray for monumental post-Christmas sales. Famous talk-show hosts spurn autograph seekers at charity events — others' children being from a foreign land. The light changes. Shared experience morphs into personal triumph. Who will help those less fortunate? Who even notices? Yet still we manage to celebrate a tradition of great antiquity: perhaps the world will speak to us after all. Yay!
December 24, 2010
Team Black Sheep
December 23, 2010
Ancient "Denisovans" Interbred With Early Humans
Remember that strange pinkie bone found in a cave in Siberia? Now the full scientific story has been published and it turns out (1) it's a new species of ancient human and (2) they interbred with early humans, leading to (3) the fact that people today in the Melanesian region North and Northeast of Australia carry between 4-6% of "Denisovan" DNA. Wow! Human history is fascinating. It wouldn't surprise me much if we one day discover further that Bigfoot not only exists but has been occasionally interbreeding with humans all along. A not entirely unreasonable hypothesis if folk tales are to be believed.
December 22, 2010
A Horrible Cure
A week ago Sunday I came down with a flu-something. (Yeah, right, take a vacation, spend half of it being sick. Why is that?) Almost impossible to breathe, non-productive cough, slight fever, very weak. Remembering how going to the emergency room a couple years ago cost me $2,000 for a case of pneumonia, and still being among the uninsured, I was eager to cure myself, so here's what I did: I took — and am still taking — a lot of raw garlic.
December 20, 2010
2010 EP Annual Survey [Now Closed]
It's a little bit late this year, but here's our annual survey. It's the fifth one so far — you may notice that the questions don't change much year to year — but even if you've completed past surveys it would be very helpful, please, if you were to take this one too. Although it's obviously non-scientific the results are extremely consistent across the surveys and also tend to track quite well, to the extent that they overlap (with, for example, the percentages of domestic or foreign listeners), the site logs, and, again non-scientifically, with your correspondence. My sense is that the results are probably reasonably representative and they do, indeed, guide me in programming decisions. Plus which, I think it's a heuristically fascinating exercise. The survey will close on Sunday, December 26th, after which I'll release selected results.Thanks very much for taking a couple of minutes!!
December 15, 2010
Holbrooke's Little Helpers
In the latter phases of Yugoslavia's Civil War there were an unusually large number of reports from Kosovo alleging Albanian harvesting and trafficking of organs from Serb prisoners. It long seemed to me that, although there was insufficient evidence to be certain, the circumstantial evidence was strong and merited serious investigation. Coincidentally with Holbrooke's death, we now have a report from Dick Marty, an EU human rights investigator, that lays out the details. How long will it take historians to conclude that America's Kosovar-Albanian clients are one of the most barbaric criminal gangs in the world? And why, I wonder, is it so difficult to find a photograph of Richard Holbrooke and Hashim Thaci together?
December 14, 2010
De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum
It's astonishing to me that Richard Holbrooke has acquired such a lustrous reputation. His role in the Indonesian genocide in East Timor has been completely forgotten. His role in Yugoslavia's Civil War has been completely rewritten. His hawkishness on Afghanistan and Pakistan has been completely overlooked. It's just icing on the cake that he was on the board of directors of AIG from 2001 until 2008. Well, OK. We seem to live in a world where truth is fiction, black is white, and everything rides on the back of an eternal turtle. What I'm wondering then is, if there's any kind of an afterlife, will Holbrooke conveniently forget reality or will he have to explain himself to the millions of people he had so grievously harmed? Or, worse, might he actually remember and want to come back to do it all over again?
December 13, 2010
Free Advice for the Chinese Politburo
The Chinese government is mad at the Nobel Prize Committee for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the dissident Liu Xiaobo, currently residing in a Chinese jail. Lacking a deft touch, the Chinese government issued unspecified threats to governments who sent representatives to the awards ceremony. A lot of governments were no-shows. The Chinese feel that they've made their point, diplomats can now clean up the mess. The back story, however, the one nobody talks about — and for a reason, Comrade — is that Liu Xiaobo seems to have rather extreme neoconservative views. See Tariq Ali in the London Review of Books for details.
The Manchurian President
Just as mainstream economists tend to argue that the U.S. financial meltdown involved a series of "mistakes," and have difficulty noticing the low class financial gangsters behind the worst of it, most left-leaning mainstream commentators still fumble their deciphering of Mr. Obama's policy choices. Case in point, this morning's column by Paul Krugman. Krugman very eloquently marshals arguments to explain why the tax deal won't help matters and sensibly points out (yet again) what the government should be doing instead. But Krugman concludes that the White House will be "in for a rude shock," when things turn out the way that they're most likely to do. No. Wrong. It won't. Mr. Obama has delivered the Republican goods on tax cuts and he's made significant inroads into gutting Social Security. Why should we think that these actions represent anything other than his true intent?
December 12, 2010
Perfect Prime Rib
At last, the perfect technique for cooking prime rib. Slightly altered from Alton Brown. The trick is, instead of searing the roast at the beginning, to sear it at the end. And a probe-style oven thermometer
December 10, 2010
A Podcast Vacation
For anyone who's tuned in this morning who hadn't heard my recent announcements, I'm on a podcast vacation. I'll still be blogging, but our regular podcast schedule will resume on Friday, January 7th, 2011. I hope everyone has a joyous holiday season!
December 7, 2010
This Economy's Winners and Losers
Tax Cuts for the Super Rich
The American system of "representative democracy" doesn't have so much democracy in it, but it sure does represent. When the top twenty percent of the population owns eighty five percent of the stuff in the country, well, those are the people who get represented. In a way it's unfair to blame Mr. Obama for giving away outrageous sums of money to the super rich. He's just playing his part in a broken system. Nevertheless, people will blame him personally. For a lot of liberals who haven't been paying enough attention this is a five alarm wake-up call that Mr. Obama does not in any meaningful sense share their liberal values, but the meretricious nature of the system itself does not seem to be in play. Not yet. But just wait. When modern empires collapse, they collapse unexpectedly and very fast, always accompanied by frolicking choruses of "I'm sure everything will be OK."
December 5, 2010
Iron Man
December 3, 2010
More Reflections on the State Department's Leaked Cables
Having looked through more of these things, I think there are quite a few nuggets to be found. If you're curious and inclined to search for yourself, this search engine may be of help. I reckon it'll take some weeks, or maybe much longer, to put important pieces of the puzzle together. But bear in mind: these are not the Crown Jewels. Despite their fancy classifications, these are run-of-the-mill State Department telegrams which every day of the week, by the hundreds, land on the desk of an average Assistant Secretary of State.
Continue reading "More Reflections on the State Department's Leaked Cables"...
