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In the new issue of TAC, Eve Tushnet sings the praises of Dupont Circle, and along the way expresses her annoyance with the “paeans to rural community” with which she is supposedly inundated by other Americans on the right. If the American right were suffering from an undue attachment to rural life and small towns, [...]
Filed under: miscellaneous, politics
Jonah Goldberg is probably not working from deep familiarity with Cyril of Alexandria, so he probably doesn’t realize how this sounds: Oprah promised Obama would help us “evolve to a higher plane.” Deepak Chopra said Obama’s presidency represented “a quantum leap in American consciousness.” Last month, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas proclaimed that Obama stood “above [...]
Filed under: miscellaneous, religion
I haven’t said anything about the so-called “Birther” lunacy, because, well, it’s lunacy that really doesn’t deserve a moment’s consideration, but Steve Benen made a remark about it that I want to discuss briefly. Benen wrote: Outside the South, this madness is gaining very little traction, and remains a fringe conspiracy theory. Within the South, [...]
Filed under: miscellaneous, politics
With respect to Alexander Cockburn, he is being far too generous to Obama when he tries to explain Clinton and Biden’s recent statements this way: At best Obama is presiding over an undisciplined cabinet; at worst, he is facing mutiny, publicly conducted by two people who only a year ago were claiming that their qualifications [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
There used to be a lot of Saakashvili apologists writing in Western papers and magazines, but it takes a special kind to outdo them all in sheer servility. I give you Andre Glucksmann: If only such a vibrant opposition could exist under Putin’s regime—with newspapers, two television channels, and the privilege of blocking major arteries [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Past TAC contributor Trita Parsi has a new article in Foreign Policy making the argument for a “tactical pause” in engaging Iran. The core of Parsi’s argument is this: Although diplomacy must remain the policy, the momentous upheaval in Iran has completely changed the political landscape. Opening talks with Iran’s current government at this decisive [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Following up on my column, I found the analysis from various Russia experts in this interesting Scoblete piece unconvincing. Scoblete writes: Be that as it may, experts expect the Biden flap to blow over and not derail the Obama administration’s “reset” strategy. “In the long term this will pass,” Charap said. “I don’t think it [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
My new column for The Week on Biden’s calculated “blunders” is now up.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
It shouldn’t be happening this way, but at the moment it seems as if 2010 will be a rather lousy midterm election for the GOP. All the usual caveats apply, and the passage of an unpopular health care plan or the failure to pass it could have significant effects on Democratic chances next year, but [...]
Filed under: politics
The Russians, and particularly Putin, took away a different lesson than the West did. The West assumed that economic dysfunction caused the Soviet Union to fail. Putin and his colleagues took away the idea that it was the attempt to repair economic dysfunction through wholesale reforms that caused Russia to fail. From Putin’s point of [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics