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The Obama Doctrine Is to Not Have a Doctrine

by jurekjans Posted on May 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Fareed Zakaria takes on the cult of foreign policy toughness—far too common even among centrists and some liberals—that instinctively equates military force with decisiveness and everything else with hesitancy and weakness:

Obama is battling a knee-jerk sentiment in Washington in which the only kind of international leadership that means anything is the use of military force. “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” he said in his speech Wednesday at West Point. A similar sentiment was expressed in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a strong leader who refused to intervene in the Suez crisis, the French collapse in Vietnam, two Taiwan Strait confrontations and the Hungarian uprising of 1956. At the time, many critics blasted the president for his passivity and wished that he would be more interventionist. A Democratic Advisory Council committee headed by Acheson called Eisenhower’s foreign policy “weak, vacillating, and tardy.” But Eisenhower kept his powder dry, confident that force was not the only way to show strength. “I’ll tell you what leadership is,” he told his speechwriter. “It’s persuasion — and conciliation — and education — and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know — or believe in — or will practice.”

Maybe that’s the Obama Doctrine.

Please spare me from more doctrines. But Zakaria is basically saying that the Obama Doctrine is not to let yourself get seduced by the straitjacket of doctrines. I guess that’s a doctrine I can live with.

You know, the one time I felt a little sorry for Sarah Palin was when she got so much grief for not knowing the Bush Doctrine. Hell, I didn’t know it either. You’re either with us or against us? Bring ’em on? We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud? The truth is that I still couldn’t tell you. Nor could I really tell you about the Carter Doctrine or the Reagan Doctrine or any other doctrine more recent than the Monroe Doctrine. They never really meant all that much, did they? Every president has an underlying worldview, and that’s about all we can expect. I think Obama has articulated his as well as anyone has.

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The Obama Doctrine Is to Not Have a Doctrine

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Who’s Watching the National Spelling Bee Tonight?

by EmmaY68hrsarhc Posted on May 29, 2014

Mother Jones

I’m just curious: Am I the only one who thinks the National Spelling Bee jumped the shark years ago? The escalating ridiculousness of the words, the World Series-esque television coverage, and the inexplicable geek chic surrounding the event have made the whole thing kind of nuts.

Besides, we all have spell check these days, right?

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Who’s Watching the National Spelling Bee Tonight?

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Two Brief Notes About the VA Scandal

by ForrestWalter Posted on May 29, 2014

Mother Jones

I have a couple of things related to the VA scandal that I wish everyone would get straight on:

There is a difference between (a) the backlog in initial applications for VA benefits and (b) wait times for appointments at VA hospitals. They are completely different things with completely different roots. Don’t slide confusingly between the two in a single story.
You should always try to compare the performance of the VA to private sector care. Saying that the average wait time for non-urgent appointments is 23 days tells us nothing. Is that longer or shorter than it is elsewhere? Ditto for treatment mistakes, breadth of service, availability of pharmaceuticals, etc. All large organizations have large numbers of problems. That’s inevitable. The only way to judge them properly is to compare them to other large organizations doing the same thing.

That’s all for now. I might have more later.

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Two Brief Notes About the VA Scandal

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Please Help Me Interpret Michael Kinsley

by MiguelDelgadill Posted on May 29, 2014

Mother Jones

Yesterday I was pondering whether to write something about the great Kinsley-Greenwald-Sullivan-Etc. contretemps related to Michael Kinsley’s unflattering review of Glenn Greenwald’s latest book. Long story short, I think the entire thing is idiotic, and maybe I’ll blather about that at greater length someday. Then again, maybe not.

But there is one thing I’d like to get a crowdsourced opinion about. Here’s a paragraph Kinsley wrote about whether people like Greenwald have the right to expose secrets that the government thinks are dangerous to reveal:

The question is who decides. It seems clear, at least to me, that the private companies that own newspapers, and their employees, should not have the final say over the release of government secrets, and a free pass to make them public with no legal consequences. In a democracy (which, pace Greenwald, we still are), that decision must ultimately be made by the government. No doubt the government will usually be overprotective of its secrets, and so the process of decision-making — whatever it turns out to be — should openly tilt in favor of publication with minimal delay. But ultimately you can’t square this circle. Someone gets to decide, and that someone cannot be Glenn Greenwald.

So here’s my question: what do you think Kinsley is trying to say in the bolded passage? Here are a few possibilities:

  1. The government should adopt policies that reduce the number of secrets it keeps.
  2. When the press gets its hands on a secret, it should “tilt” in favor of publication—but the government should still get the final say.
  3. When the press gets its hands on a secret, it should “tilt” in favor of publication—but it should also listen seriously to the government’s arguments in favor of continued secrecy.
  4. Something else.

For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this was #2. Is this wrong? Help me out in comments. What’s your reading of this?

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Please Help Me Interpret Michael Kinsley

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Patent Court Judge Steps Down After Cozy Relationship to Patent Attorney Becomes Public

by JanetteRichmond Posted on May 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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Tim Lee writes about a recent scandal at the federal circuit court that specializes in patent cases:

Last week Judge Randal Rader, the court’s chief judge, admitted that he wrote an effusive email to patent attorney Edward Reines. The email praised the attorney’s work and encouraged him to share the email with potential clients, a breach of judicial impartiality. The revelation has forced Rader step down as the court’s chief effective this Thursday. Rader plans to stay on the court as a circuit judge. The Federal Circuit was also forced to re-consider two cases involving Reines after Rader retroactively recused himself from them.

Rader’s indiscretion is the last straw for Jeff John Roberts of GigaOm (no relation to the chief justice, as far as I know), who writes: “the Federal Circuit looks beyond salvaging. It’s time for Congress to disband the court.”

The problem with the patent court is that it seems to have suffered the equivalent of regulatory capture. I don’t know the backgrounds of the judges on the court, but they’re awfully prone to upholding patent claims. They’re sympathetic in terms of broad legal interpretations, widening the scope of software patents far beyond what Supreme Court precedent requires (or even suggests), and they’re sympathetic in terms of specific cases, where they rule in favor of plaintiffs well over half the time (see chart on right).

I don’t know if getting rid of the patent court and simply allowing patent cases to be heard by ordinary circuit courts is the right answer. That’s how patent cases used to be heard, but there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. Besides, that would require congressional action, and what are the odds of that? What’s more, if Congress did rouse itself to do something about this, a better course of action would be legislation that explicitly reins in the scope of software patents and does more to make patent trolling less lucrative. That would be the right thing to do. We can keep hoping, anyway.

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Patent Court Judge Steps Down After Cozy Relationship to Patent Attorney Becomes Public

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‘In Eighteen Hundred Sixty Four the Burying Began’ – Arlington Cemetery at 150

by Myrna Posted on May 26, 2014

One hundred fifty years after the first burial at Arlington, the national cemetery is running short of room. Continue reading: ‘In Eighteen Hundred Sixty Four the Burying Began’ – Arlington Cemetery at 150 Related ArticlesPope Francis: ‘We Are Custodians of Creation’Research on Malaria-Resistant Children in Tanzania Leads to Promising New Vaccine TargetGavin Schmidt on Why Climate Models are Wrong, and Valuable

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‘In Eighteen Hundred Sixty Four the Burying Began’ – Arlington Cemetery at 150

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Chris Christie Takes Blowhardism on the Road

by JoleenRayner Posted on May 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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Being a blowhard has worked well for Chris Christie at home, so it’s no surprise that he endorses blowhardism as a foreign policy too. In a speech on Sunday, he assured everyone that a Christie administration would….would…..well, something:

In Sunday’s speech, with rhetoric reminiscent of President Bush’s first speeches after 9/11, the governor made a moralistic case for clearly distinguishing between “good” allies and “evil” enemies.

….Though Christie offered few specifics, he particularly trashed Obama’s policies on Russia, Syria, and Iran. “We see Russian activism once again rearing its head in the world, we see an America that backed away from a commitment made by the president of the United States in Syria, we see a country, our country, permitting even a thought of a terrorist state like Iran having nuclear capability,” he said. “Here’s something that should not be up for debate, that once you draw that red line, you enforce it — because if you don’t, America’s credibility will be at stake and will be at risk all over the world.”

There should be a constitutional amendment or something banning speeches like this unless you’re willing to explain, in some detail, exactly what you would have done instead. Cut and run, like Christie’s hero Ronald Reagan did in Beirut? Lie your way into a disastrous war like his hero George Bush did? Or what? I’m really tired of hearing nonsense about how we should have “supported” one side or another in Egypt or Syria or Ukraine. Or how we should have sent heavy arms over, even though no one was trained to use them and in some cases we didn’t even have anyone reliable to send them too. Or that somehow just giving another “evil empire” speech would have sent the mullahs screaming into the night.

We didn’t win the Cold War because Reagan gave some speeches. We won because of low oil prices, a foolish war in Afghanistan, poor harvests, and the effective bankruptcy of the Soviet Union. We’re not going to win any of these other conflicts with bluster either. So let’s hear it. Is Christie planning a military strike against Iran? Troops on the ground in Syria? Cruise missile strikes against Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border? If Christie doesn’t have the guts to say this stuff outright, he should keep his bluster to himself. Without specifics, this is just laughable schoolyard bravado.

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Chris Christie Takes Blowhardism on the Road

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How the Iraq War Influenced the "Godzilla" Reboot

by Roxie6891no Posted on May 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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You might have already heard that the images of destruction in the new Godzilla movie (starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe, and Bryan Cranston) were largely inspired by real-world disasters. “As we were writing the film, the horrible events in Fukushima where a tsunami caused a nuclear meltdown happened and we had to make the decision: Do we stay away from that or do we acknowledge that you’ve opened this Pandora’s box of nuclear power, and when it goes wrong, it really does go wrong?” director Gareth Edwards told the Daily News. (The original Godzilla film, Gojira, was cleverly critical of US nuclear testing, and the critically maligned 1998 Godzilla, directed by Roland Emmerich, blamed Godzilla’s wrath on nuclear tests in French Polynesia.)

The 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina are also given visual nods in Edwards’ version of Godzilla. Furthermore, the director drew on the horrors and devastation of modern warfare. Edwards says that he and his crew revisited images from Iraq, Afghanistan, World War II, and other conflicts.

“You sit down on Day One with all of the different heads of department and you say, ‘OK, let’s take this seriously, let’s do this realistically,'” Edwards tells Mother Jones. “There’s never really going to be giant monsters that come out of the ocean and smash a city and cause a tsunami and things like this. But, there are events that smash cities and cause tsunamis within nature and war, and so you don’t have to think very hard to recall that imagery. It’s so scarred in our minds that as we are creating the movie, we are getting all of those reference images and it’s nearly impossible not to be influenced by them.”

One of the first things Edwards did when he started this project was he went out and bought photography and history books and then studied them closely with his team. “We literally sat down and had a hundred different books,” Edwards says. “A lot of war books, a lot of aftermath, whether it be terrorist or natural disasters; just because people are so familiar with that imagery that…now we have a reference for what it’s supposed to look like when a giant monster comes…Science fiction is not really about the future. It’s about the time today when it was made and it’s reflecting the things of the moment.”

Here are a couple shots from the film that have a wartime or natural-disaster vibe:

Images courtesy of Warner Bros.

The Department of Defense cooperated with the filmmakers, which gave Edwards and his crew access to aircraft carriers and US soldiers, some of whom appear in the movie as extras.

If you’d like to check out a full transcript of the roundtable discussion a few critics and I had with Edwards, click here. Now, here’s the trailer for the latest Godzilla:

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How the Iraq War Influenced the "Godzilla" Reboot

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People Aren’t Buying Houses Because They Have No Money

by ShanonR15tcrerq Posted on May 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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This is from the “Gee, ya think?” file. It’s from a Financial Times story summarizing various theories about why the housing market has turned flat. After acknowledging that none of the usual theories seem “quite sufficient” to explain things, we get this:

Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at Corelogic said he believes “it’s structural”, pointing out that as long ago as the 1990s, there was growth in population and employment, “but during that entire time period we have not had median incomes growth”.

Although the US economy has added several million jobs in the last few years, there has been little incomes growth for the average American, and that may have reduced housing demand. New household formation has been exceptionally low, with many adults in their 20s and 30s continuing to live with their parents.

That helps to explain some of the divergent trends in the housing market. For example, builders are putting up much bigger homes, to cater to wealthy Americans who are doing well, which helps to explain why the number of starts is low.

Yeah, that could explain it, all right.

None of this snark is meant for Robin Harding, who wrote this piece. At least he put a spotlight on the obvious problem of stagnant incomes. That’s more than most business writers have managed to do.

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People Aren’t Buying Houses Because They Have No Money

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Raw Data: America Is Still Producing Lots of Inventive Young Companies

by JanessaChubb Posted on May 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s a quick follow-up to my post last week about the decline in new business startups over the past few decades. Does this suggest that America is getting less entrepreneurial? In one way, yes: some of it is probably due to big national chains making it harder to start small family businesses, and some of it is probably due to an aging population. Economically, however, the triumph of gigantic chain stores isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and the aging of the baby boomers should be thought of as a separate demographic issue, not a business startup issue.

Still, economists all agree that the key to a healthy economy is young, growing companies (not small businesses pe se). So how are we doing on that score? Over at Slate, Jordan Weissman points to a study by Paul Kedrosky that tries to quantify the number of startups that grow to $100 million or more in a fairly short period. The chart on the right shows his results. There’s a spike during the dotcom boom of the late 90s, and a dropoff during the Great Recession—a period too recent to have yet produced very many $100 million companies anyway—but there’s basically no secular decline at all. Roughly speaking, America has been producing about 150 small, fast-growing companies per year for the past three decades.

This is just a single data point, and Kedrosky warns that his data is necessarily pretty rough. But it does suggest that although America might be producing fewer new coffee shops and boutique clothing stores, it’s not necessarily losing its inventive edge.

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Raw Data: America Is Still Producing Lots of Inventive Young Companies

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