Saturday, May 15, 2004

Posted here Saturday, May 15, 2004 at 9:02:52 PM     from Eliot's Middlemarch, the character of a person who sees himself not good at capital management.. His classification of human employments was rather crude, and, like the categories of more celebrated men, would not be acceptable in these advanced times. He divided them into " business, politics, preaching, learning, and amusement." He had nothing to say against the last four; but he regarded them as a reverential pagan regarded other gods than his own. In the same way, he thought very well of all ranks, but he would not himself have liked to be of any rank in which he had not such close contact with " business " as to get often honorably decorated with marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of the woods and fields. Though he had never regarded himself as other than an orthodox accept any number of systems, like any number of firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best land-drainage, solid building, correct measuring, and judicious boring (for coal). In fact, he had a reverential soul with a strong practical intelligence. But he could not manage finance: he knew values well, but he had no keenness of imagination for monetary results in the shape of profit and loss: and having ascertained this to his cost, he determined to give up all forms of his beloved " business " which required that talent. He gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of work which he could do without handling capital, and was one of those precious men within his own district whom everybody would choose to work for them, because he did his work well, charged very little, and often declined to charge at all. It is no wonder, then, that the Garths were poor, and "lived in a small way." However, they did not mind it. ********

Posted here Saturday, May 15, 2004 at 4:02:48 PM     I missed the obvious http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4386,251267,00.html ITALY greeted Mrs Sonia Gandhi's triumph with a mixture of pride and apprehension as her family rejoiced in the return of India's political dynasty and recalled its tragic past. Born Sonia Maino, she had married the late Rajiv Gandhi in 1968. As the dust settled on an election battle a world away, the media briefly laid siege to her childhood home in this quiet suburb of Turin, but family members at the mustard coloured three-storey house were keeping a low profile on Friday. Her mother Paola, recently returned from India, lives here, but the doorbell by the garden gate, under overhanging rose bushes, went unanswered. ********

Posted here Saturday, May 15, 2004 at 9:02:32 AM     Look at these poll results. http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval.htm What it sugggests is that Bush was doing badly after the 2000 election. since then the up has been 9/11, attacking Iraq, capturing saddham. the questionis, what does it suggest as a republican strategy, and what does it suggest for kerry? At the moment the whitehouse feels in dissarray, but Rove is probaably spending half of his time on the what to do now question. ********

Posted here Saturday, May 15, 2004 at 8:43:55 AM     One of the things these last two articles point out is, we do not have a community of discourse. Bush just did his thing. But we all see vulnerable. I have too many friends who seem stuck on reading what they agree with, and they have little idea of what those with differing perspectives think - not the opinions - but the logic of their positions. All the way to the top we have no united community of discourse where we take each other seriously. ********

Posted here Saturday, May 15, 2004 at 8:32:30 AM     I wonder if this is not also true of the US. This from a good interview about Blair. http://www.magatopia.com/magazines/001atlantic.html Four years ago or so, I was talking to somebody who knows Blair and the government quite well. We were talking about William Hague, who was then the leader of the conservatives—the opposition—and was doing disastrously badly. My friend said, "Well, you can see poor Hague's problem. There's only room for one conservative party in this country." A bit of a cheap shot, but there's some truth in it. If Bush and Kerry are both fighting for the middle right, and the urban/rural poor, arts and intelligencaia, college youth, and urban professionals really have no party... ********

Posted here Saturday, May 15, 2004 at 7:21:47 AM     This puts the issue. It is important to think through at the larger level, what this means, and what the alternative - not doing it - might imply. Think of Pakistan, the need for nuclear controls, a more coherent world economy. What gets us there? This was written in nov 2002. The Fifty-first State? http://www.magatopia.com/magazines/001atlantic.html Going to war with Iraq would mean shouldering all the responsibilities of an occupying power the moment victory was achieved. These would include running the economy, keeping domestic peace, and protecting Iraq's borders—and doing it all for years, or perhaps decades. Are we ready for this long-term relationship?   by James Fallows What really hampers thinking is that anything that says "make a difference now" in Iraq, seems like it supports Bush and accepts the legitimacy of starting this war. "Clean up the mess" is about where its at. ********