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Your 2016 Advance Tip Sheet
I generally think that the first time when sane people should start talking about prospects for the 2016 presidential election is two-plus years from now -- that is, well into springtime of the...
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Why Obama Never Said 'Not Red States or Blue States but the United States...'
Several days ago, in my annotation* of this year's State of the Union address, I mentioned that I'd remembered Barack Obama having said the following in his debut speech [right] at the 2004 Democratic...
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The Nightmare of Sequestration Hits Home
The always-popular Air Power Over Hampton Roads air show, featuring the USAF Thunderbirds, has just been called off, as the Pentagon hunkers down in preparation for "the sequester."More from local ABC...
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Dave Chappelle, Political Visionary
How much of this illustration, now zooming around the Internet, is actually "true"? I don't know. But if you haven't seen it yet, enjoy. The top part, a picture of Chappelle during his TV heyday, does...
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Infrastructure Watch: Buffett as the Next Carnegie
Everyone moans about the collapsing U.S. infrastructure. Here is a suggestion of one public/private step toward its reconstruction. Over the years I've often quoted David H. Rothman of Alexandria, Va.,...
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Barack Obama, Editor
The hoary joke in the literary world, based on Dreams From My Father, was that if things had worked out differently for Barack Obama, he could have made it as a writer. Not as a pro basketball player,...
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What Do We Make of the Chinese Hacking?
Today's China topics:1) Chinese hacking, as reported in the lead front-page story of today's NYT (and a fascinating story in Bloomberg Bus Week). Is this really something new? Or merely our old friend...
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Is There a There, There for the Chinese Military?
Following this item last night on the latest Chinese-hacking reports, readers discuss a fundamental question about Chinese "policy." That question is how we balance the contradictory, but...
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Glad That's Cleared Up: Chinese Military Resolutely Deplores Hacking
I've mentioned over the years the difficulty official Chinese spokesmen frequently have in engaging outside-world opinion. The heart of the difficulty is that it is too easy to confuse a real,...
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False Equivalence Watch: WaPo Edition, Chapter 3,219
An item today by Jonathan Chait, on the NY Mag site, is as clear a dissection of "false equivalence" as you will ever see. It is worth reading carefully, for reasons of both tactics and strategy....
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About That Chinese Carbon Tax
I mentioned yesterday that while the Chinese hacking story was, deservedly, getting headlines, the Chinese government's decision to impose a kind of carbon tax could be the more important long-term...
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False Equivalence: It's Worse Than We Think
Mike Lofgren, long-time Republican Senate staffer and author of The Party Is Over, says that both Jonathan Chait and I went too easy on the Washington Post editorial that presented an "all sides are to...
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Book Tip: 'The Insurgents'
In the new issue of the American Prospect, available online now (but subscribe!), I have a long review of Fred Kaplan's book The Insurgents. Short version: this is a good and important book that you...
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False Equivalence: The Ur-Text
I hope that the on-line conversation this afternoon, between David Brooks of the NYT and Ezra Klein of the WaPo, is captured and stored in a time-capsule somewhere. People can look at it years from now...
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On the Atlantic's Scientology Ad (and Aftermath)
I agree with (my former Atlantic colleague) Andrew Sullivan that the bright new age of "sponsored" online content creates all kinds of challenges for publications, readers, and even advertisers.But his...
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Will We Learn Anything from Afghanistan? William R. Polk, Part 1
William R. Polk's first appearance as an Atlantic author came 55 years ago. While Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House, while Americans were absorbing the impact of the launch of Sputnik, while the...
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False Equivalence in One Tweet
This is nicely done.To anticipate 99% of incoming hostile mail and online trollery: the point of this distillation is not what it says about the two political parties. You can reverse them if you want....
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Suddenly My Financial Problems Are Over
From the inbox -- actually, my wife's email inbox. Fortunately we live in a community-property state. From: Date: Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:38 AMSubject: MGHTo: DxxxThe Microsoft is glad to pronounce you...
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Getting Out of Afghanistan: William R. Polk, Part 2
William R. Polk is a long-time scholar and analyst of U.S. foreign policy who published an Atlantic article called "The Lessons of Iraq" back in 1958. Two days ago, I posted the first part of his long...
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Involving the Taliban in Afghanistan Solution: William R. Polk, Part 3
William R. Polk's first installment in this series, about the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, is here; the second, about Afghan realities constraining U.S. options, is here. This is the third and...
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