Charles Krauthammer: Obama’s New Start
Charles Krauthammer, the conservative editorialist of the Washington Post, warns his Republican friends that Obama is not to be written off. It is useful to remember that in politics, just like in any sport or busines, you don’t have to be perfect. You only have to be better than the compeitition.
Riding the lamest of ducks, President Obama just won the Triple Crown. He fulfilled (1) his most important economic priority, passage of Stimulus II, a.k.a. the tax cut deal (the perfect pre-re-election fiscal sugar high - the piper gets paid in 2013 and beyond); (2) his most important social policy objective, repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”; and (3) his most cherished (achievable) foreign policy goal, ratification of the New START treaty with Russia.
Picture: “Die Hard with a Vengeance”
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WikiLeaks Exposing the Psychology of America
It is difficult for individuals to change their personalities; it also also difficult for countries to change their personalities. Derek Leebaert desribes the lens through which American diplomats have thinking about the world for a long time.
Our Envoys, Ourselves (NY Times)
A GLOBAL power’s diplomatic archives are inevitably full of caustic dispatches. In Britain, a new batch of Foreign Office records is declassified each January under the “30-year rule” (a “50-year rule” before 1968). Historians can peruse elegantly handwritten mockeries of President Eisenhower’s name as exotically Eastern European, or files deriding Americans as the planet’s “most excitable” people—other than Bangladeshis.
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Rainer Maria Rilke: First Duino Elegy
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic
Orders? And even if one were to suddenly
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is terror.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the cry
of a darkened sobbing. Ah, who then can
we make use of? Not Angels: not men,
and the resourceful creatures see clearly
that we are not really at home
in the interpreted world. Perhaps there remains
some tree on a slope, that we can see
again each day: there remains to us yesterday’s street,
and the thinned-out loyalty of a habit
that liked us, and so stayed, and never departed.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of space
wears out our faces - whom would she not stay for,
the longed-for, gentle, disappointing one, whom the solitary heart
with difficulty stands before. Is she less heavy for lovers?
Ah, they only hide their fate between themselves.
Do you not know yet? Throw the emptiness out of your arms
to add to the spaces we breathe; maybe the birds
will feel the expansion of air, in more intimate flight.
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Hich 22: If you can hold it down on the smokes and the cocktails you may be well advised to do so
Christopher Hitchens recently was diagnosed with cancer. More often than not I disagree with his positions, but I am never bored by what he has to say. He is also a superb writer. I wish I could write so quickly and eloquently as he can. Andrew Anthony interviewed the pugnacious and hard-driking author this fall to find out if his views have mellowed a bit now that he is staring death in the face.
Christopher Hitchens: ‘You have to choose your future regrets’
In June Christopher Hitchens, the hard-drinking polemicist and atheist, met his toughest opponent yet when he was diagnosed with cancer. The question on many lips was: would his illness alter his beliefs - on Iraq, on Islam, on God? At home in Washington, with a large glass of Johnnie Walker to hand, he responds with characteristic combativeness.
Continue ReadingThe Midterm Election Analysis: In politics, perceptions often matter more than facts
Hendrik Hertzberg provides the facts behind the defeat of the Democrats and highlights that Obama can show in the next two years that he is a great president by overcoming huge challenges.
ELECTORAL DISSONANCE (New Yorker)
Barack Obama had the mot juste last Wednesday for what had just befallen him and his party: a “shellacking.” The President’s choice of word was one syllable (and one “g”) longer than his predecessor’s summary after a parallel midterm debacle. But, then, Obama’s shellacking was several syllables worse than the “thumpin’ ” that George W. Bush and the Republicans took in 2006. That year, President Bush’s party lost thirty seats in the House of Representatives; this year, President Obama’s lost more than twice as many. It was a historic defeat. The Democrats retained their Senate majority, now much reduced, only by the grace of the Tea Party, which, in Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada, saddled Republicans with nominees so weighted with extremism and general bizarreness that they sank beneath the wave so many others rode. Come January, for only the second time in eight decades and the first in more than six, the House will have fewer than two hundred Democrats in it. And because Democrats also lost eleven governorships and control of nineteen state legislative chambers, the decennial festival of gerrymandering will put their congressional starting line for 2012 at least twenty seats farther back.
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Why you need to take naps
I welcome any scientific evidence that proves what I am doing is healthy. Readers of my blog will remember that I took a strong position againt the so-called “power-nap killers.” New scientific research shows that naps help your brain to learn better. I sometimes even take two naps to rejuvenate my body and mind. If your boss does not believe in powernaps, show him or her the evidence and say: Don’t you want me to be more productive!
An afternoon nap markedly boosts the brain’s learning capacity By Yasmin Anwar
If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don’t roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour’s nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.
Continue ReadingWikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Trailed by Notoriety
There is often a fine line between a hero and villain. Many people have a hard time realizing: just because people have done a good thing it does not mean that they are nice people. By the same token, just because somebody is nice, it does not mean that they make a positive difference in the world. Life is complicated and people are complex!
By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA (NY Times)
LONDON—Julian Assange moves like a hunted man. In a noisy Ethiopian restaurant in London’s rundown Paddington district, he pitches his voice barely above a whisper to foil the Western intelligence agencies he fears. He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own as other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends.
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