Three Things That Other People Had To Say

Local paper had two great editorial bits in one issue this past Tuesday. Tore them out and stuck them on my desk, planning to link to them when I had the time.

One is from Gail Collins. In "Perry's Bad Night" she laments the fact that we will be stuck with Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee in 2012 ("I don't want to believe I live in a country that would seriously consider the bestowing the nation's highest office on a man who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car") because Rick Perry seems intent on self-destruction.

She throws out some great Perry quotes from the recent debate (perhaps you've heard them already on NPR?). I like this one:

“I think Americans just don’t know sometimes which Mitt Romney they’re dealing with. Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of — against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it — was before — he was before the social programs from the standpoint of — he was for standing up for Roe versus Wade before he was against first — Roe versus Wade? Him — he was for Race to the Top. He’s for Obamacare and now he’s against it. I mean, we’ll wait until tomorrow and — and — and see which Mitt Romney we’re really talking to tonight."

That's great, isn't it? I mean, that almost takes it to a Palin level.


On the conservative side, there was Michael Gerson's piece on the "end of innocence." It's a good piece on the scary parts of human nature and the answers to overcoming those scary parts, with The Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird as reference points, if you will. No funny quotables, but good stuff.


This morning, I pulled out a month old New Yorker that I'd missed. Particularly good was David Remnick's "Talk of the Town" comment, "Behind the Curtain." It's a discussion of Obama's foreign policy, specifically focused on Libya. After some comment on the success of Obama's strategy in Libya (I mean, Qadaffi fell, right? and that without the US again experiencing the scorn of the Muslim world for being "crusaders," without massive loss of American lives and money, etc, etc), and after the obligatory mention that, hey, it was during the Obama presidency that we finally got Bin Laden, there's this quote, which kind of sums it up for me:

"The trouble with so much of the conservative critique of Obama’s foreign policy is that it cares less about outcomes than about the assertion of America’s power and the affirmation of its glory."

Chest-thumping, good. Results, unnecessary. That about says it, right?