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Say what you will about the President’s pre-prime-time speech yesterday justifying his inexplicable (“Hillary made me do it?”) decision to inject American military forces on the rebel-side of the evident civil war going on in Libya, but I note that uber-neocon Bill Kristol liked it… a lot. Look… we’re already hearing about photos of the victims of “kill teams” in Afghanistan, we’re still in Iraq… and over 100 other countries… So why not place our personnel in a position to commit yet more atrocities (or have some inflicted on them)? I’m sure that like most stopped clocks, Bill Kristol is...

Gorgeous day here in NYC– high 40’s, low 50’s– full sunshine. And so, the weather is probably just fine in Turtle Bay, just a few miles away in mid-town Manhattan, where the UN Security Council authorized the mother of all jihads a no-fly zone and other international military intervention against the Libyan regime (and in favor of Libyan rebels), after the United States government finally got behind such a proposition, it seems that the President shifted in favor of same because Hillary wanted him to. (on this point, Althouse goes much farther than I would, or than is reasonable… and...

The devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan that has killed countless numbers of people (thousands are still reported missing) hit home, literally, as the tsunami washed away at least one California man who was too close to the ocean as he tried to take pictures of the waves. Ginormous earthquakes are just something else to consider when thinking about the benefits of… nucular power… although some of the danger appears to be receding, Japan has about five of the suckers on high alert right now, because, ironically, the loss of electricity caused by disruption of a big earthquake prevents the...

For no particular reason, I’ll pass along this primer on a government/military industrial complex program so insidious, it might well kill us all… before everything else does, of course. Not to make light of it… just to… you know… put it out there. This rain-soaked and wind-swept Sunday, your talking dog hit a rare feat– a personal best in a road race, albeit only my third try at the distance, in this case the Caumsett Park/USATF National Championship 50-K race… Frank at Run Dangerously has a report on the race (I finished too far back to figure in any of...

On this final day of February, I offer you this graphic depiction of United States revenue and expenses by somewhat controversial financial world figure Henry Blodget. It notes that for 2010 fiscal year, U.S. revenue was approximately $2.2 trillion, against expenses of $3.5 trillion (the article doesn’t say it, but GDP is estimated at around $14.7 trillion). It’s an interesting chart– I for one, thought that interest on the debt was a much larger chunk of the budget; it does explain why the Fed has been so desperate to keep interest rates so low for so long, of course. Mr....

The mirth and merriment that seems to be re-shaping Middle Eastern governments at far greater speed and lower cost (especially human cost) than American imposed mass-homicide ever did (or could)… has reached Libya. Some reports show hundreds dead and the Libyan parliament building ablaze as Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi (the man of a thousand spellings) appears to have fled Tripoli… for points unknown. Meanwhile, in a hopefully less violent comparison, this Weekly Standard piece asks a most interesting question, to wit, given general Democratic support for the effective shut-down of the Wisconsin government to protest Republican budget cuts (which, of...

You’all know my view on where we’re headed… the only question (if it’s even that relevant anymore) is how fast we’ll get there, collectively. As individuals, some of us may reach it sooner than others… but… For those not reading Dmitry Orlov… he’s pretty much the one guy out there who’s putting the various world and domestic events and trends in context, such as his latest post, “Ron Paul Joins the Collapse Party.” We are really rapidly coming to the point where Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale may be a tad too optimistic. Item: key American ally (and home of...

After saying “happy Valentine’s Day,” we’ll start with a visit to Yemen, where street protests against the government (on a somewhat modest scale, as around 1,000 or so protestors are reported) continue for the for the fourth straight day. Yemen has fairly tight command and control– at least in this area– and few doubt that should the order be given, police and troops would open fire on protestors without a second thought. Because of “domestic concerns,” Yemeni president Saleh has canceled a scheduled visit to the United States later in the month. I really want to make that point as...

Happy birthday, Abraham Lincoln. But for that bastard John Wilkes Booth, Honest Abe would be 202 years old today. But that’s not important right now… The Grey Lady treats us to this dicussion of the two man military junta ruling council that will babysit Egypt for the foreseeable future until a new constitution and elections can be implemented. On the one hand, I’d like to think we’ve seen a popular revolution unfold in front of us– well-intentioned, well-organized street mobs brought down a dictatorship. Of course, Mubarak holds the rank of air marshall and Sulayman has the rank of general…...

And so, just days after signalling that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak must unconditionally go, and take his ruling apparatus with him, today… the position of the United States (as expressed by the much put-upon Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) is that Mr. Mubarak should resign immediately in favor of Vice President Suleiman, who in turn should supervise a transition to… something democratic, whatever that is. Fortunately for the stability of the world… the rest of the world seems to regard American pronouncements as… utterly irrelevant. One hopes that something is going on “behind the scenes”… but one doubts the institutional...