Unqualified Offerings

Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk says We Are Not Going to Nuke Iran, despite what Seymour Hersh writes in the latest New Yorker, because we have conventional bunker-busting munitions that will serve as well. (Via The Poorman.) There are a few problems.
The sheer grandiose insanity of nuking Iran makes the nearly-as-mad notion of launching [...]

Dave Weigel has a very good article on Reason about the “Red Tide” engulfing South America. His advice: Don’t worry about it:
The best example is Brazil’s Lula. When the three-time loser started leading polls in 2002, investors scattered and the currency collapsed. As Lula crept to certain victory, Chavez gloated about the continent “seeing the [...]

The newest Miss Iraq steps down in the face of threats from religious extremists, “making this the shortest reign in the pageant’s 60-year history.”
Pageant organizers had hoped to pass the crown to the runner-up, or “Maiden of Beauty,” Mona Hilmi, an Iraqi Sunni Muslim. One of the organizers said she was “equally intelligent and beautiful.”
However, [...]

“Blog” is still running! I confess that there will be a string of three or four posts where I figure, this thing is played out, then someone finds some angular momentum.
Some time ago I realized that, youthful ambitions aside, I’m partial to what we might call “the democratic arts” – blogging, roleplaying games, probably something [...]