I Told You So, RN Would've Said

Jonathan Martin:

[I]n his first real taste of diplomacy, Obama is finding out that, like in domestic politics, the gushing praise that other leaders may bestow doesn’t necessarily translate into support for the entirety of his agenda. In other words, simply not being George W. Bush wasn’t enough.

Moderately Victorious

How Sen. Arlen Specter triumphs while maneuvering between left and right.

AIGgh

Did New York's crusading anti-AIG attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, know about the AIG bonuses all along?

Guess We'll Need Metal Detectors In Anaheim

A leader in the American Anglican Council, and a proponent of the "Anglican Church in North America," chooses a violent metaphor to describe his movement:

Fr. Ashey compared the AAC to the Special Forces of the U.S. military.

“Like Special Forces, we go behind the scenes and we blow up things,” he said, adding quickly that what the AAC blows up is principalities and powers.

Smart Songs: "Dumb Things" (1987)

Paul Kelly (and my 1000th post!)

On The Haiti Beat

Nicholas Kristof deserves high praise for covering stories most in the media ignore, such as the consequences of the world's failure to promote humane family planning in the developing world.

The Stones In Winter

From Alan Light's review of superfan Bill German's new book about the the greatest old rock and roll band in the world:

The Stones themselves come off more or less as you’d expect: Jagger is mercurial and imperious; Richards is down-to-earth, wild and soulful; Wood, still slightly insecure as the “new kid” in the band, compensates by being the most social; and Charlie Watts is so private and detached that he proved constantly elusive.

Will Ford Be Company One?

As the feds profess no interest in running GM while replacing its CEO, packing its board, and chiding it for making too many big cars, George Will, who seems especially sardonic lately, writes:

The stunning shift in consumer preferences that should make the White House's freshly minted auto experts feel vulnerable has been reported under headlines such as "Like a Rock: Hybrid Car Sales Plummet" (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 9) and "Hybrid Car Sales Go from 60 to 0 at Breakneck Speed" (Los Angeles Times, March 17). Absent $4 gasoline, customers, those nuisances with their insufferable preferences, do not want the vehicles the politicians want them to want, even with manufacturers now offering large rebates and other incentives.

The two best-selling vehicles in America this year are large pickup trucks (Ford F-Series and Chevy Silverado). In February, Toyota sold 13,600 Tundra and Tacoma pickups and 7,232 Priuses. It sells the Prius at a loss, which it can afford to do because it makes pots of money selling pickups. Has the Car Designer in Chief, aka the president, considered the possibility that what he calls "the cars of tomorrow" will forever be that?

If Ford can ride out the recession without government subsidy, it will be interesting to see how it fares in the long term, in comparison with its tw0 dole-full competitors, without Washington telling it what kinds of cars to build.

They'll Really Be Able To Relate In Aspen

Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn, preparing for a show in Aspen, Colorado on Tuesday, tells a local reporter about one of his new songs:

[I]t grew out of an attempt during the George W. Bush years in the White House to “rehabilitate the image of [former President] Richard Nixon. It struck me, what would it mean to really rehabilitate Richard Nixon.”

So he wrote a song, in the first person, about Nixon reincarnated as a black, single mother trying to make it in a white world.

“It’s kind of a personal song,” he said, “and it’s not, really, that dark.” He said he may play it in the Aspen show.

Kwangmyongsong-2 Blues

The North Korean launch was a dud.