Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Abe Greenwald has an interesting post on the Iraq problems Obama doesn’t have.
Imagine for a moment that you are George W. Bush. You switch on 60 Minutes last night and there is Barack Obama telling Steve Kroft, “Sometime my team talks about the fact that if you had said to us a year ago that the least of my problems would be Iraq . . .”
Which brought to mind Bret Stephens WSJ piece on the strategic importance of a democratic Iraq.
Imagine yourself as Barack Obama, gazing at a map of the greater Middle East and wondering how, and where, the United States can best make a fresh start in the region.
Your gaze wanders rightward to Pakistan, where preventing war with India, economic collapse or the Talibanization of half the country would be achievement enough. Next door is Afghanistan, where you are committing more troops, all so you can prop up a government that is by turns hapless and corrupt.
Next there is Iran, drawing ever closer to its bomb. You’re mulling the shape of a grand bargain, but Israel is talking pre-emption. Speaking of Israel, you’re girding for a contentious relationship with the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, the all-but certain next prime minister.
What about Israel’s neighbors? Palestine is riven between feckless moderates and pitiless fanatics. Lebanon and Hezbollah are nearly synonyms. You’d love to nudge Syria out of Iran’s orbit, but Bashar Assad isn’t inclined. In Egypt, a succession crisis looms the moment its octogenarian president retires to his grave.
And then there is Iraq, the country in the middle that you would have just as soon banished from sight. How’s it doing? Perplexingly well. …
Yesterday’s market increase has been attributed to the latest bail-out plan. Pickerhead thinks much of the euphoria comes from the increasing realization Obama’s budget is dead on arrival because a number of centrist Dem senators have announced reservations. In addition, this was the weekend when the NY Times had seen enough of the kid president. Peter Wehner has the story.
The New York Times carries a good deal more weight in Obamaland than it did within the Bush Administration. (It was a Times editorial that convinced Senator Daschle to withdraw his nomination as HHS Secretary, for example.) And so, as Politico.com pointed out, yesterday could not have been a good day for President Obama and his aides, particularly given the fawning coverage and commentary reserved for Obama in the past. …
Joe Nocera’s article in Saturday’s NY Times has received a lot of attention. Mark Steyn is first with his comments. Also from the Corner, Andrew Stuttaford. Jennifer Rubin too.
Even the New York Times has figured it out. Well, at least one columnist. Joe Nocera writes:
By week’s end, I was more depressed about the financial crisis than I’ve been since last September. Back then, the issue was the disintegration of the financial system, as the Lehman bankruptcy set off a terrible chain reaction. Now I’m worried that the political response is making the crisis worse. The Obama administration appears to have lost its grip on Congress, while the Treasury Department always seems caught off guard by bad news. …
Jonah Goldberg and Mark Steyn post on the White House Whiner.
We hear a lot about narcissists these days. Pickerhead is guilty of using the word as a substitute for Bubba (aka Bill Clinton). Slate has a scientific piece on the subject.
The narcissists did it. Some commentators are fingering them as the culprits of the financial meltdown. A Bloomberg columnist blamed the conceited for our financial troubles in a piece titled “Harvard Narcissists With MBAs Killed Wall Street.” A Wall Street Journal op-ed on California’s economy suggested that Gov. Schwarzenegger’s desire for voter’s love (“It’s classic narcissism”) helped cause the state’s budget debacle. A forthcoming book, The Narcissism Epidemic, says we went on a national binge of I-deserve-it consumption that’s now resulting in our economic purging.
This is the cultural moment of the narcissist. In a New Yorker cartoon, Roz Chast suggests a line of narcissist greeting cards (“Wow! Your Birthday’s Really Close to Mine!”). John Edwards outed himself as one when forced to confess an adulterous affair. (Given his comical vanity, the deceitful way he used his marriage for his advancement, and his self-elevation as an embodiment of the common man while living in a house the size of an arena, it sounds like a pretty good diagnosis.) New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley wrote of journalists who Twitter, “it’s beginning to look more like yet another gateway drug to full-blown media narcissism.” And what other malady could explain the simultaneous phenomena of Blago and the Octomom? …
… Those involved with someone with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) frequently say they feel as if they are interacting with a kindergartener. In some way they are. According to a study in the journal Advances in Psychiatric Treatments, narcissists are stuck with the emotional development of 5-year-olds. It’s about at age 5 that children start realizing their feelings are not just the result of other people or events but occur within themselves, and that they have control over them. But this understanding does not take place for the narcissist, who continues to see all internal states as having an external cause. Because of narcissists’ inability to control their own emotions, they unconsciously experience the world as constantly threatening—thus the tendency toward inexplicable rages, the wild overreactions to the slightest perception of criticism. …
Speaking of narcissists, Newser’s - Off the Grid posts on the Leno appearance.
Sheesh, this guy’s so Jimmy Carter. …
… It’s instructive and humorous to remember that Carter ran a brilliant campaign that succeeded largely because his voice was new. Simple, direct, basic, human. And then, of course, he turned into a sad-sack twit.
What happens when you move into the White House?
Well, shit, of course. The true secret of the power of language is in quickness. Barack Obama can’t keep up. He evidently needs too much preparation. …
Couple of items today on the Kindle. First Roger Simon.
As some may recall, I bought Sheryl a Kindle for her birthday this year, just before the new version came out (typical of me). So to make it up to her – and so I could have one for myself – we purchased a Kindle II for Sheryl and I took over her Kindle I, reregistering it in my name. The new one arrived the other day and it’s obvious the Kindle 2 is better, especially in the important area of page advancement. Nevertheless, I have been ploughing through Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man on my Kindle I and am already a convert. (I know – beware the convert, but read on.)
Reasons? Let’s start with that other important area: book-shelving. It’s almost a given that every time you either buy, or have built, new bookshelves, they are not enough. …
Then Jacob Weisberg at Slate.
I’m doing my best not to become a Kindle bore. When I catch myself evangelizing to someone who couldn’t care less about the marvels of the 2.0 version of Amazon’s reading machine—I can take a whole library on vacation! Adjust the type size! Peruse the morning paper without getting out of bed!—I pause and remember my boyhood friend Scott H., who loved showing off the capabilities of his state of-the-art stereo but had only four records because he wasn’t really that into music.
So apologies in advance if I’m irksomely enthusiastic about my cool new literature delivery system. …
Club for Growth has a good post on U-Haul Economics.
A long time ago, I blogged about how U-Haul reservation rates can help identify which states people are leaving from and which states they are flocking towards. Today, I used Dallas as an anchor in the following examples. It’s a large city in the very low-tax, business-friendly state of Texas. I then picked large cities from high-tax, business-hostile states. …
Borowitz reports Bernie Madoff will help sell the toxic assets.
News Biscuit says Wildebeests are tired of being portrayed as victims.
Click on WORD or PDF for full content