Tag Archive 'American'

A Rosy Future for Anti-Americanism?

Lee on Sep 10 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008

Longtime Clinton ally Leon Panetta pronounces Barack Obama “intimidated” by Sarah Palin, and lost in a deepening cycle of reactive defense. With McCain now winning a majority of independents and erasing the gender gap, the blood is most definitely in the water. It’s now a legitimate question to ask whether McCain can finish him off. My sense is that the Obama campaign isn’t too many more mistakes removed from a serious structural collapse in a significant segment of its support outside the Democratic ranks. Panetta is quite right, Obama needs to regain the initiative and fast.

On that matter Jonathan Freedland is pessimistic. So much so, that he is evidently consumed with stomach pains of grief. He warns us that the entire planet will seek revenge against the United States if we fail to appoint Obama president.
(more…)

Sphere: Related Content

1 Comment »

A Republican Atavism

Lee on Sep 04 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008, History, Media

John Podhoretz thinks the Palin speech might be among the most dazzling debuts in American political history. I don’t know about that, but I do know it was the most powerful, important, and effective speech by a vice presidential candidate since Nixon’s “Checkers.” John later notes that McCain looked relieved by it all. Again, I thought of Checkers and and a smiling Eisenhower addressing the convention: “tonight I saw courage…”

The parallels are pretty striking actually. The week of acrimonious scandal, the uncertainty of the party leadership, the lack of truth to the charges, and ultimately the triumphant personal redemption through a national televised address, which transformed a very young party favorite into a powerful national voice. Interestingly, the most notable departure from this historical recreation is the conduct of McCain throughout. He cut a superior and more loyal figure than Ike did and that’s impressive.

(more…)

Sphere: Related Content

2 Comments »

War of Conquest

Lee on Aug 29 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page

A couple of days into Russian-declared, universally unrecognized independence (excluding Hamas and Belarus), South Ossetian officials have expressed their desire to be annexed by Russia. The brave new defenders of Russian imperialism on the American Left have thus suddenly found their arguments for fake Ossetian self-determination on Georgian soil dealt a sudden blow.

Apologizing for Russian foreign policy ventures is historically always a tricky business. The sensibility of which is perhaps now restricted to the brief thaw of Yeltsin’s dream of a benign commonwealth of trade and friendship. A dream now sustaining an excruciatingly painful death on the world stage.

Sphere: Related Content

1 Comment »

Surprise, Central Planning is Still Stupid (Even in China)

Lee on Aug 07 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page, Uncategorized, Urban planning and development

shanghai housing construction china
(photo: 2 Dogs)

Modern China has a curious capacity to make otherwise very sensible capitalists instantly forget every experience they’ve ever had with government central planning. The Western businessman on a trip to Shanghai looks up and sees all those gleaming skyscrapers going up on the Yangtze, and he thinks massive state planning must be different somehow in the People’s Republic. It isn’t.

(more…)

Sphere: Related Content

No Comments »

McCain as Sarkozy?

Lee on Feb 10 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web

John McCain and Nicholas Sarkozy

Grover Norquist suggests that public disatisfaction with the Republican party is driven solely by hostility to President Bush. McCain’s differences with the Bush administration and its supporters thus strengthen his appeal with the county. As Grover puts it: “This is Sarkozy saying, ‘I’m not Chirac. I’m the change, and she’s [opponent Segolene Royal] the socialist.’” Too bad McCain doesn’t have Sarko’s innovative ideas, vigor, youth, rhetorical skills and party popularity too though no? Sarkozy the American notes that excluding Iraq, McCain is far more Chirac than Sarkozy.
(H/T: Freedom’s Lighthouse)

Sphere: Related Content

No Comments »

Bonkers in Berkeley (Again)

Lee on Jan 31 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web

The Berkeley City Council has passed several resolutions denouncing the “barbarity” of the USMC recruiting office in their rather ridiculous city, as well as encouraging Code Pink to protest it regularly (including giving CP reserved parking in front of the Marine office). Big Dog argues for an American boycott of Berkeley as retaliation. I thought about joining in, but realized my budget for patchouli scented hemp oil peace vigil candles was already at zero.

Sphere: Related Content

1 Comment »

Love in a Foreign War

Lee on Jan 23 2008 | Filed under: Books, Culture, Lee's Page, Military Matters

Portrait of a lady
(photo: trish brunner | blog)

This morning I stumbled into the story from last year of James and Lena Ahearn. James, the American officer, Lena the Iraqi woman who was apparently the first war bride in Iraq in 2003. They’d met in Baghdad’s Green Zone and it was a rather charming romance of flowers, with perhaps the customary intensity one so easily finds in marriages made in wars. But it’s a tragic story, as James was killed last year by a roadside bomb. As Lena tells it: “This is the man I always dreamed of but he got to go so fast.”

Such marriages are rather rare in this war, perhaps illustrating the seemingly immutable gulf that separates our civilization from theirs. Or the greater the violent interest of some to keep it that way. But stopping them altogether no matter how considerable the cultural divide, always seems to be impossible.

Which got me to remembering a rather lovely passage that appears in Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific. A story about a very different war, but one with similar problems for men and women brought together by the seemingly eternal savagery of history. And inexorably, the crueler debts of war romance are always paid by women:

All over the world at that moment men torn from their homes were meeting strange girls and falling love with them. On every girl’s tongue was the question she almost never asked: “Are you married?” At first she reasoned, “well, we’re not in love, so it doesn’t matter.” Later she reasoned “we love each other, so it doesn’t really matter.” In strange ways they discovered that their lovers were married men, or in jubilation they found that they were not. But rarely did they ask the simple question: “are you married?” For they knew that most men would tell them the truth, and they did not wish to know the truth.
(Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener)

Sphere: Related Content

No Comments »

The Scale of the American Economy

Lee on Jan 20 2008 | Filed under: Economics, Lee's Page

The GDP of Japan, Germany, China and the United Kingdom expressed as US Gross State Product regions on a map of the United States
Click to enlarge

I thought the map Lance posted from the other day (originally from Strange Maps), which expressed the GDP of foreign countries as US states, based on their approximate equivalent GSP, was a pretty interesting visualization. However, I got to thinking what the same exercise might produce if the big boys were projected onto US geography. If you take the top five national economies in the world minus the US (Japan, PRC, Germany, UK), they easily fit into four macro GSP regions in the contiguous United States. I threw together the quick little map above from the data.

Incredibly, once you’ve applied the big four to the map, you will find that you still have around 800 billion dollars left to play with (including Alaska and Hawaii, which are not depicted). Underneath each country I included (in parentheses) how much additional money in US dollars you would have to add to the economies of each economic superpower to make them genuinely equal the collective GSP of each US region.

Sphere: Related Content

No Comments »

Toward a New Italian Left

Lee on Jan 18 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web

Here’s a fascinating little article on Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome and the new leading light of the Italian Left. Vetroni has worked to create a more moderate and flexible social democratic political culture in Italy. Modeling his new party in name and substance expressly on the US Democratic Party, he’s sought to create a very American kind of Left in a country so often fractured by the rancor of political extremism. His fierce criticism of Iran and his rejection of ossified socialist economic theory represent substantial breaks from the ideological status quo. While many of his positions and views aren’t entirely welcome, perhaps a Blairite “third way” is finally coming to the Italian Republic.

Sphere: Related Content

1 Comment »

Get rewarded at leading casinos.

online casino real money usa