Month: October 2011

“When Tim Met Marco”

For some reason the Republican blogosphere is swooning over the above exchange. What you see, in my view, is an exchange between someone making high school debating points and someone actually making decisions about governing when there are no great choices. Geithner logically destroys Rubio here. But because the right has become uninterested in governing, or the compromises of responsible politics, and is essentially a talk radio racket pretending to be a serious political party, they see a triumph. A commenter at NRO proves not every conservative has succumbed to the delusion: 

[I]f Rubio made anyone look like an idiot, it was himself. Shorter Rubio: "How come we can't just cherry pick the ideas we want without giving anything back? Why can't we take an idea out of its context? … Republican politicians have refused to play ball. And if Republican politicians like Rubio think they are going to pocket the tax cuts while also making deep spending cuts, they are completely delusional.

A Tale Of Two Presidents

A reader writes:

Bush and Saddam – One Trillion dollars and thousands of US lives.

Obama and Qaddafi – One Billion dollars and zero US lives.

Meep Meep indeed.

And this time, the Arab world loves us as well.

To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now.

Self-Driving Cars Come Of Age

Google is on a mission:

Thrun and his Google colleagues, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are convinced that smarter vehicles could help make transportation safer and more efficient: Cars would drive closer to each other, making better use of the 80 percent to 90 percent of empty space on roads, and also form speedy convoys on freeways. They would react faster than humans to avoid accidents, potentially saving thousands of lives. Making vehicles smarter will require lots of computing power and data, and that's why it makes sense for Google to back the project, Thrun said in his keynote.

Newer, longer, and more detailed video on Google's self-driving cars here.

One Difference Between Israel And Hamas

The core test of a civilization: how well does it treat its prisoners of war? Sam Roggeveen:

The images of a gaunt and weak Shalit, reportedly suffering from malnutrition and lack of exposure to natural light, contrast with images of the first group of Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for the Israeli soldier's freedom. I know from talking to former Palestinian detainees in the past that Israeli prisons are hardly holiday camps. But that only serves to underline how appalling the conditions that Shalit endured for over five years must have been.

Sic Semper?

The military council has just announced that Qaddafi was captured and killed in Surt today. A ghastly picture of his alleged corpse is making the rounds. We're not running it, because we can't confirm it truly is him. And getting a thoroughly authenticated corpse will matter. Nonetheless, the signs are unmistakably good. Another Mid-Eastern tyrant has met his come-uppance. The difference this time is that the West helped; indeed, it's hard to see how the anti-Qaddafi forces would have pulled this off without NATO.

I was against this, both substantively and procedurally. I stick by the latter point. I concede the former, with obvious caveats about the unknowns ahead. The manner of the coalition was perhaps the most innovative part of this achievement, as Fred Kaplan elaborates here. But any day a tyrant falls, an American should celebrate. Assad can't be too thrilled this morning.