Doughnut Orbitals

Jeffrey Goldberg is in Durango. He writes:

There aren't any hot chili peppers in the blistering sun, just a really crappy Best Western motel and a tourist railroad that runs to Silverton that seems like a nightmare to someone such as myself, who is always looking for an exit from crappy tourist adventures.

City folk...sigh. The railroad is actually pretty cool--a genuine old-time narrow-gauge steam engine on the old route, which is spectacular and sorta scary. Get one of the open cars, and it's well worth the money. Also, you can use it as a taxi for a hike up into Chicago Basin, which is absolutely amazing. A bit crowded for a mountain valley, but it's tightly regulated and the mountain goats are very friendly.

Apparently about a week ago, a bunch of human rights workers, journalists from 11 countries, and a a former US congresswoman (Cynthia McKinney) were en route to Gaza with humanitarian supplies, but were halted and imprisoned by the Israeli navy. Juan Cole has more. Also see here.

It seems the point of this exercise is classic nonviolent resistance, MLK-style. You attempt to provoke a violent, disproportionate response from the oppressors to sway moderate opinion in your direction. In this case, though, the response of the media is crucial, and in this case I haven't seen a single story from a major US outlet. Currently an American Idol retrospective is on my television, which is clearly more important than a humanitarian crisis perpetrated by an blockade in obvious violation of the Geneva Conventions.

From #2: "It seemed to me that science fiction writers were writing about the most important issues of our time, and that the mainstream writers and those most respected by critics were still dealing with the subtleties of human character and motivation and all that. Meanwhile, we've created these monstrous engines and social schemes and so forth which are having more influence on us than anything else. So I created Kilgore Trout to say 'maybe these guys can't write so well, but they're sure talking about what needs to be talked about.'"

Lo! I was just talking about how Megan McArdle often makes ridiculous arguments--and often about things I sort of agree with! Here she comes with another doozy...but Ezra Klein got there first:

You know, I'd been wanting to write a post semi-agreeing with those questioning the massive savings to be gained by replacing the relatively high administrative costs of the private sector with the relatively low administrative costs of the public sector. But then Megan McArdle and Alex Tabarrok began making a lot of really weird arguments about the Soviet Union -- seriously -- and, sorry, but that's where I get off the train.

We live in a world with actual examples of national health-care systems. France, Germany, Britain, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Italy, Taiwan and Israel all have them. They are cheaper. With lower administrative costs. And comparable health outcomes. And they somehow exist within a largely private economy (Also: Read Jon Cohn!).

Pretty much what I was thinking, except smarter. Also check out his next post.

I've never been able to pin down exactly why, but Megan McArdle bugs the crap out of me. Today, Yglesias in his deadpan way eviscerates a McArdle post on relative economic performance of presidents.

Maybe it's just leftover bad taste from the Hilzoy/McArdle spat a while back, but nearly every post I read of hers makes me cringe. I think it has something to do with the often non-sequitur nature of her arguments.

He died today at 93. I've always been fascinated by him. A troubled soul, who it seemed was never really able to come to grips with his role in life, but tried to make up for it in his own, halting, self-serving and ineffectual way. Yet I can't help but view him with a lot of sympathy.

Clearly an astoundingly brilliant man, and clearly a product of the technocratic fetishism of the 50s. Driven, wound to the breaking point.

One must remember that other figures of that time--George McGovern comes to mind--did oppose the Vietnam War from the start, and deserve moral accolades far greater than that of McNamara. Yet not many others who were neck-deep in the conflict tried to deal with the lessons of Vietnam in any way. It's fair to say that he was devastated, haunted by his role in the war, and spent most of the rest of his life trying to atone for it, unlike say Nixon or Kissinger.

I also don't think he can be compared with Rumsfeld. One must remember that in the 60s, the memories of WWII were still fresh. Hitler's march across Europe was not the tired conservative platitude it is today. The USSR was not the broken industrial distopia we remember now, but rather the massed tanks of the Red Army, defeating Germany basically singlehanded. Vietnam was still doubtless a boneheaded war, but its stupidity does not even register compared to the utterly-batshit fever dream of Iraq.

See Kevin Drum for a similar take.

just up in the mountains. Pictures shortly.

This is why I added him to the blogroll. He writes for the American Conservative:

Americanists believe that any statement from the President that fails to build up and anoint Mousavi as the preferred candidate is discouraging to Mousavi and his supporters, because they apparently cannot grasp that being our preferred candidate is to be tainted with suspicion of disloyalty to the nation. It is strange how nationalists often have the least awareness of the importance of the nationalism of another people. Many of the same silly people who couldn’t say enough about Hamas’ so-called “endorsement” of Obama as somehow indicative of his Israel policy views, as well as those who could not shut up about his warm reception in Europe, do not see how an American endorsement of a candidate in another country’s election might be viewed with similiar and perhaps even greater distaste by the people in that country.

Good old fashioned hard-headed realism.