Monthly Archives: December 2010

Netanyahu’s Pyrrhic Victory

As Netanyahu Gloats – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan After the mid-terms, Netanyahu was assured by his US operation (from Cantor and Cheney and Krauthammer on down via the Washington Post to McCain and Lieberman and Graham) that

Posted in Miscellany

to blog or not to blog or to notblog-blog

…am not much moved by current events… almost everything I’ve written over the last few weeks has had no particular peg to “what’s happening in the world” beyond the fact that it happened to be what I happened to be

Posted in Meta, Miscellany, Philosophy Tagged with: , , , ,

Xappy Xolidays, or Linus Sings the Police

XMASTIME: Holy Crap: I feel this should be the most famous thing in the world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZujLW2-d3Jo&feature=player_embedded (check out the rest of the blog if you’re in the mood for some major Palin snark)

Posted in Miscellany

Weimar Istanbul

Weimar Istanbul by Claire Berlinski, City Journal Autumn 2010 The City was proud: it was the new vanguard, the greatest metropolis in the world! It was ashamed: look at what had been lost, how ugly it had become! The City

Posted in Miscellany

How the Wikileaks Cables Would Have Read If Obama Had His Act Together

Hillary Clinton’s WikiLeaks fantasy : The New Yorker DATE: 2010-09-01 SOURCE: Embassy Moscow SUBJECT: MISSILE-DEFENSE SITE   1. (S/NF) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov entered meeting in a combative mood, denouncing the Pentagon’s proposed ballistic-missile-defense site in Poland in the

Posted in Miscellany

The real threat of resource war is over water, starting in the Middle East

Will Water Pressures Spark the Next Middle East Conflict? | Defense Spending In this volatile arena burgeoning populations are outstripping supply, in the process creating a looming freshwater crisis. Such a crisis may herald the very resource wars prophesied by

Posted in Miscellany

Clinton and Obama have been suckered

Robert Reich: Why Bill Clinton’s Favorable View of Obama’s Tax Deal Should Be Disregarded Bill Clinton presided over an economic boom engineered by Fed chair Alan Greenspan, who felt confident he could drop interest rates far lower than anyone expected

Posted in Miscellany

I don’t like it, but I agree with Sullivan that O ate the Rs lunch on the tax cut deal

Charles Krauthammer – Swindle of the year At great cost that will have to be paid after this newest free lunch, the package will add as much as 1 percent to GDP and lower the unemployment rate by about 1.5

Posted in Miscellany

Wikileaks 12 days later, worldwide

After 12 days of WikiLeaks cables, the world looks on US with new eyes | World news | The Guardian Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted furiously to US diplomatic cables that suggested he was a corrupt closet Islamist.

Posted in Miscellany

Iran is winning, Israel is losing

Juan Cole: Leaks Suggest Iran Is Now Winning in the Middle East – Juan Cole’s Columns – Truthdig From 2005 through 2006, Iran appeared to be on the retreat in the eastern Mediterranean. Pro-Western Sunnis and Christians took over in

Posted in Miscellany