Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Because of the real risk that a butterfly might flap its wings in China and thereby trigger a hurricane that might kill a member of our legislative branch, I propose that we outlaw butterflies.
Think of it as a sort of preventive war on butterflies.
For a long time I assumed Obama was a communist. How else to explain his support for the Honduran Chavista Manuel Zelaya? Ideological sympathy on Obama’s part seemed the simplest explanation.
However, documents from WikiLeaks suggest an even worse possibility, namely that the whole sorry affair was driven by incompetence at a level that’s astonishing even by the low standards of the Obama administration. Were they really so eager to appease Chavez? That’s crazy even if Obama is personally sympathetic to Chavez. It was easily predictable that Chavez would pocket any concessions and go for more and that’s what happened. And now an emboldened Chavez appears to have invited Iran to install ballistic missiles in Venezuela, and we do nothing. We are cruising toward another Cuban Missile Crisis but with weaker leadership on our side, adversaries who are less stable than the Soviets were, and erstwhile allies scared off by our fecklessness. How much trouble might have been prevented if we had taken a firm line in support of the elected Honduran government and warned Chavez to stay out?
If we’re lucky Obama will be out of office before the inevitable crisis occurs.
UPDATE: Jed Babbin on The Coming Venezuela Missile Crisis:
That crisis will consume much international attention next year, though a more important spread of Middle Eastern conflict to the Americas – the partnership between Iran and Venezuela – will likely be ignored until it is too late to resolve by any means short of war.
For my Family
For my Home, my Country. A wonderful experiment in self-governance that, despite deep difficulties and irregularities, remains a dream-beacon.
For the Brave: Project Valour-IT.
For Beauty and for Books and for Art:
How delightful it would be to be a governess! To go out into the world; to enter upon a new life; to act for myself; to excercise my unused faculties, to try my unknown powers; to earn my own maintenance, and something to comfort and help my father, mother, and sister, besides exonerating them from the provision of my food and clothing; to show papa what his little Agnes could do; to convince mamma and Mary that I was not quite the helpless, thoughtless being they supposed.
Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte.
My copy of the Bronte book has a cover painting of great quietness, symmetry and mystery: Interior, by Vilhelm Hammershoi.
As long as we are discussing art, the flickr page for iPad created art is here. This wonderful experiment in self-governance frees us to create more and more and more. All hail the creators!
For Humor:
In “Whiter Shades of Pale,” Mr. Lander’s targets are more far-flung, and it’s a treat to watch him take aim. He takes note of the industries, in addition to classical music, that survive solely on white guilt: “Penguin Classics, the S.P.C.A., free-range chicken farms, and the entire rubber bracelet market.” About the chef Anthony Bourdain’s TV show — during which Mr. Bourdain eats arcane dishes and complains about tourists — the author writes, “There hasn’t been a show this reaffirming to white people since ‘Seinfeld.’ ”
Yes, I am aware that I linked a Penguin Classics book above. That’s humor, too :). (Plus, I really love the books.) And for those not familiar with Mr. Lander’s brand of satire, he is making gentle fun of a certain mindset and attitudes, not race.
For Friends. Be well.
That’s the title of a report just issued by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) — but it may not be about what you might think it’s about — depending which side of the Atlantic you’re from.
It’s about “dissident republican groups in Northern Ireland such as the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA, who continued to oppose the peace process”. And the phrasing of the title makes a neat illustration of Bernard Shaw’s aphorism about “two countries divided by a common language”.
I’m “divided by a common language” myself, as a Brit who has been here in the US more than half my life. And yes, I know, technically “Republicanism” should mean the sentiment that led to the War of Independence — but I checked with some American friends, and they reassured me that there’s “usage” of the phrase to refer to GoP philosophy…
Myself, FWIW, I’m a monarchist. Which I suppose makes me “conservative” — another divided word in our deliciously divided common language.
Or something like that.
1. Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations
2. Pioneer Farm Cooking (Exploring History Through Simple Recipes)
3. The I Love Lucy Cookbook (Hollywood Hotplates)
4. The First American Cookbook: A Facsimile of “American Cookery,” 1796
5.
Chris Kimball had a few friends over for dinner in Boston. The menu included oysters, mock turtle soup, rissoles (fried puff pastry with various sweet and savory fillings), Lobster à l’Américaine, saddle of venison, wood-grilled salmon, fried artichokes, roast stuffed goose and a variety of homemade jellies made using a calf’s foot gelatin. This sounds like pure decadence. But Mr. Kimball, the founder of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and host of “America’s Test Kitchen” on PBS, was trying to re-create a traditional 12-course meal from the famed 1896 edition of Fannie Farmer’s “Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.”
