[SCENE: The United States of America, every New Year’s Eve since 2016.]PERSON #1: “Well, that was an awful year. Good riddance.”PERSON #2: “Yeah. I sure hope the new year is better.” [Clock strikes midnight.]THE NEW YEAR: “Hold my beer.” Because I’m not on Twitter, I’m not automatically creating a sort of personal record for posterity of the past week’s events… Read more »
With the news of Germany standing fast against “Eurobonds,” and the Eurozone crisis worsening as a result of the impasse, I posted this silly tweet last night: Fear! Fire! Eurobonds! Awake! #PANIC Political Math said he found this very funny, to which I replied with a faux-quote from Angela Merkel: “Let the little people blow.” This caused a brainstorm, as… Read more »
…I’ve just had no time to blog for the last week-and-a-half. My evening free time is largely taken up holding a baby, and, well, it’s hard to type while you’re doing that. But hey, at least nothing newsworthy/blogworthy has happened during that time, like, oh I don’t know: • Michelle Bachmann wins the Iowa Straw Poll; • Generic Republican drops… Read more »
I don’t follow Scottish politics, so perhaps Alasdair or my dad or somebody can tell me: is this a fair summary of yesterday’s election results? FREEDOM!!!!! 🙂 P.S. Meanwhile, it’s FPTP FTW, and I believe Nick Clegg is saying to his enemies that they may take his Alternative Vote, but they’ll never take his adorable cats!!!
Jolly Old England (and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) are set to begin counting the votes in their referendum on whether to switch from the First-Past-The-Post system to the Alternative Vote system. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a video (produced by AV supporters) explaining how it works for cats:
Thomas Friedman nails it, or so it seems to me, in his analysis of what Andrew Sullivan calls the Middle East’s 1848 — starting with the line “This is really hard stuff, and it’s just the beginning.” When an entire region that has been living outside the biggest global trends of free politics and free markets for half a century… Read more »
We can remove the question mark now. The people have spoken, the dictator has (finally) heard them, and Hosni Mubarak has stepped down after three decades as Egypt’s ruler. What happens next? A true move toward some form of democracy, or Military Dictatorship II: Egyptian Boogaloo? Who the hell knows? For now, the protesters are jubilant. I heard a correspondent… Read more »
At the end of a fantastic column about Egypt, Ross Douthat says something I was trying to say recently, and says it better: The long-term consequences of a more populist and nationalistic Egypt might be better for the United States than the stasis of the Mubarak era, and the terrorism that it helped inspire. But then again they might be… Read more »
I’m not paying nearly enough attention to events in Egypt, but from the tweets I’m seeing here & there, it’s clear that things are pretty damn serious. What I can’t figure out is whether I should be #PANIC!!!-ing (instability!), rejoicing (democracy!), or both. Anyway, here’s a live feed of Al Jazeera English (though it may be shut down soon, apparently).
Jeffrey Goldberg, writing the cover story of next month’s Atlantic, newly online today, gives us something new — well, not new, but something newly revived — to #PANIC!!!! about: Israel attacking Iran in the near future. Outlining the scenario that he envisions potentially unfolding, Goldberg writes: When the Israelis begin to bomb the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, the formerly secret… Read more »