Month: March 2009
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A.T.I.N Has a New Look and a New Address
After a lot more effort than I expected, I’m pleased to unveil version 2.0 of All That Is Necessary. For those who care about such details, I’ve migrated my original Blogger blog to the WordPress platform, hosted on my personal domain, kirkpetersen.net. (I’m .net because kirkpetersen.com, no relation, had already been snapped up by a […]
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Oliphant’s Cartoon Is Not Just Despicable, It’s Dangerous
At Israel Insider, Barry Rubin does the best job I’ve seen of describing precisely why Pat Oliphant’s recent cartoon — featuring a goose-stepping, headless swordsman pushing a Jew-shark-on-a-unicycle — is so powerful, and so powerfully offensive. Hat tip: Andy McCarthy. Is the cartoon truly anti-Semitic, or is it “merely” anti-Israel? I say both, but whatever. […]
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Funny, He Doesn’t Sound Like a “Greedy Bastard”
I’ve held my tongue about the AIG bonuses because I haven’t had the energy to take on the torch-and-pitchfork brigades. But although I can understand the populist anger, and maybe even share it a bit, the frenzied response has turned me off since the day the story broke. Comes now an AIG executive named Jake […]
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Responsible Economic Policy is a National Security Issue
John Bolton, who gets my vote for America’s best-ever ambassador to the United Nations (plus I love the mustache), describes how Rahm Emanuel’s never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste mentality will weaken the security of the United States, by devaluing the dollar and making us more dependent on financing from China and other countries that do not share our values. […]
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Financial Follies: Plenty of Blame to Go Around
A straightforward guide to the financial mess. I missed it when it first came out, but the New York Review of Books last month published one of the best comprehensive explanations I’ve seen of the causes of the current economic unpleasantness. Weighing in at just over 5,000 words, it’s not a quick read — but […]
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Current Recession Not (Yet) As Bad As 1982
After repeatedly invoking the specter of the Great Depression to frighten the public into supporting the “stimulus” bill, the Obama administration has moderated its rhetoric. Professor Mark J. Perry of the University of Michigan offers statistics to show just how inappropriate it is to even talk about comparisons with the Depression: The chart above shows […]
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Freeman Screed Shows America Dodged A Bullet
Chas Freeman — who would have been in charge of producing policy-neutral reports synthesizing the findings of America’s 16 intelligence agencies — described the opposition to his appointment thusly: The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the […]
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Freeman Withdraws, And He Finally Makes Page 8
On page A8 of the New York edition, today’s New York Times finally publishes its very first article about Charles Freeman, after nearly two weeks of blogospheric controversy that was severe enough to scuttle the nomination, but not severe enough to attract the attention of the mainstream media. The Times reports: WASHINGTON — Charles W. […]
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Obama Honeymoon-Over Watch: Jon Stewart and Chas Freeman
I’ve been neglecting the “Honeymoon-Over Watch” category of my blog because the notion of “watching” for something implies infrequent sightings, not a target-rich environment. The media certainly has not been hounding Obama as mercilessly as it did his predecessor, and I’m quite confident that will never happen. But the stimulus fight and economic news have […]