Politics

Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, Pp. 406-7.

Jacob’s Summary

“ The biblical counterpart of Odysseus, Jacob must solve the fundamental human difficulties illustrated in the pre-Abrahamic chapters of Genesis. ”

Enjoy President Obama’s excellent stand-up at the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He delivered much better than the amateurish host, Jimmy Kimmel.

UBS: The three letters explaining why Sarkozy will lose the French presidency?

The New Yorker on the Daily Mail.

Sober and crisp analysis of Britain’s 2012 budget from an income tax perspective.

Jeffrey Goldberg, who seems to be seeing a lot of the President lately, relates what happened when he presented Barack Obama with a copy of the New American Haggadah.

Milton Friedman’s “How to Cure Health Care”, required reading, whether you lean left or rightward.

Jeffrey Goldberg interviews a very articulate, reasonable-sounding President Barack Obama prior to Netanyahu’s visit.

More refreshment from Edward Luttwak. I am enamored.

Revenge of the Sunnis: What the Arab Spring is really about. By Edward Luttwak. In Foreign Policy.

Marxist academic Slavoj Žižek on what are not proletarian protests but protests against the threat of being reduced to proletarians.

Some of what you might have wanted to know about scientology by Rachel Aviv.

How Tariq Ali both gave and received on-the-spot guidance in North Korea.

Conrad Black. What he said.

It’s not the economy, stupid. Much like the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, Daniel Bell, co-founder with Irving Kristol of The Public Interest, believed that the economic, the political and the social are separate realms and must be kept in healthy balance.

A Riche history: The café at the heart of revolutionary Cairo.

The English-speaking Left’s Orwellian language war against Israel continues without subtlety. The Yom Kippur War is now called merely the 1973 Middle East War, the Six-Day War the 1967 Middle East War. First it was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then Israel-Palestine, then Israel/Palestine, and now, in December 2011, for the first time I see in a transcript from the UK Houses of Parliament, Palestine-Israel. The next logical step is Palestine/Israel, then finally just Palestine. But then what happens when Israel stubbornly refuses to disappear despite this spell? Probably nothing. How frustrating for venal yafei nefesh everywhere.

Koshering the White House kitchen.

Scotland’s early industrialisation produced great wealth and great poverty and after two centuries is yet to tackle that fundamental inequity. Lesley Riddoch compares Scotland’s failure and Finland’s success.

An argument that at the euro summit Cameron overplayed his hand.

Walter Russell Mead argues that after the 20th century Age of Hamilton, the time is ripe to re-explore Jefferson.

David Brooks on Charlie Rose discusses the new political schism in America, the recent rise of narcissism in the culture, and some general trends in the thousands of life summaries he’s solicited from readers over 70.

The Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Economics blogs.

Israel’s new fence along the Egyptian border is going up fast.

China and Walmart: the symbiosis, the similarities.

Defeated US politician sues for loss of livelihood. What next.

Was the ’60s a rehearsal for this? Occupy Wall Street, and The Guardian’s page about it.

Dead. Qua-daffy. The NYT’s potted (and potty) history. “By the time he was done, Libya had no parliament, no unified military command, no political parties, no unions, no civil society and no nongovernmental organizations.”

Today: a world where big stuff can never get done.

Conrad Black, facing more jail time, remains irrepressible.

Masterful summation by Herb Keinon of the significance of Obama’s speech to the UN on voting for a Palestinian state.

Springtime from Hitler — the new face of the Arab Spring.

Aluf Benn’s depressing wrap-up of Israel’s position today. Me, I think it’s not as bad as it looks; to be beleaguered and passive is also to remain above the fray, ignoring the hateful rhetoric as well-nigh meaningless by staying focused on the true hidden conflicts among the neighbors themselves. Iran, Turkey and to a lesser extent Egypt and Saudi Arabia each compete for the same pie of Middle East dominance, while Israel just wants to be left alone to be itself — a liberal democratic ideal that bestows true power, as Ataturk understood.

Walter Russell Mead: The slow motion collapse of the postal service, like some great prehistoric mastodon inexorably sinking into the La Brea Tarpits, deserves close attention.

The Weekly Standard gives credit where credit is due to President Obama on Libya.

Krauthammer visits the new King memorial in Washington.

Warren Buffett’s “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich” article and discussing it on Charlie Rose.

This profile of Avigdor Lieberman in Commentary Magazine provides a nice survey of current Israeli politics.

Text of David Cameron’s address to Parliament on the looting outbreak.

On the rise and alleged fall of Los Angeles.

An investment manager’s view of the top 1%.

Al Schwimmer, founder of Israel Aircraft Industries, dies at 94. Haaretz obit.

Environmentalism in microcosm in Why your dishwasher no longer works by Jonathan V. Last. The science more often than not isn’t science, the issue snowballs into a platform for political grandstanding, and nobody benefits from the massive waste.

Walter Russell Mead waxes deep on Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. “…The people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul.”

This repeated lunge for the sour spot — WRM on the Obama presidency.

Syria’s about to join the UN Human Rights Council. Well.

Barry Rubin cuts to the chase re prospects for success in the Syrian uprising compared to Egypt, Libya, etc.

A primer by an Egyptian liberal on how to achieve at least something in the upcoming elections.

What is the $6b cut in the US budget in terms of a Big Mac meal?

Until the 1980s, Qaddafi improved life for Libyans.