Movie tip of the week – from a bit different world of corporate folks, but some nice reminders about the rough patches of life, and some good acting too.
Tag Archives: weekend
Daily Pix: Las Vegas, NV.
Daily Pix: Four Boroughs – from Above.
WH Politics – The First Lady.
There’s a long feature on the up-coming “Obamas” book in the Ny Times this morning, and it’s not all gossip.. Some of these stories are important to understand some of the strategic movements in Obama’s 1. term – and it also seems to reveal a couple of the rookie mistakes that were being done early on, due to Barack’s lack of management skills and experience.
It’s also a reminder that the third year has brought some palpable changes to the Presidents choice of acitivities (spending lots of hours on touring/selling the Jobs Act), and to his shift of attitude from always consensus and “legitimate viewpoints”, to sometimes spelling out that some of these extremist’s positions are just plain “wrong”.
Full story here.
South Carolina Debate.
South Carolina. The Candidates.
Yet another GOP debate was held in South Carolina last night, but this one was far better then many of the previous hyper-drive circuses from the past few months. This time the tone was different; the backdrop colors were a lot calmer and more soothing, the questions more substantial and issue-oriented, the candidate’s detours were quickly drawn back into place, and pleads for more time and irrelevant interruptions were shut down. All in all a huge improvement.
As for a general summary – friend Moe has a great one here.
And a few notes:
- Some in the crowd boooed Cain’s yes to waterboarding!
- Same crowd then cheered Paul’s “waterboarding is torture and un-American”. A frantic female candidate was immediately shut down.
- A general tone of more sanity, with Romney, Santorum, Paul and Huntsman (and Newt in form, though not substance) almost dominating as a group.
- “We will not have booing” from the moderators seemed to work well
- Perry jumbles China-will-go-the-way-of-Soviet analogy
- Now China is “stealing our jobs”, not 1% is outsourcing for profits!
- Questions from Senators Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint was a nice twist. It added some kind of seriousness and relevance to the whole thing. In one year one of those on the stage could be their “boss” in the White House.
- Newt says “science” is important!
- Others think we should scrap “The Great Society” by LBJ and do like China. They grow better than US.
Other than this, there was probably very little movement in relative strength and positions before the primaries in January. Most of the candidates seem to just do their thing by now, seeking publicity or pushing a view.
Full debate here.
Boardwalk Empire, Season 2.
The first season was good, but this second is on a whole other level. And it might end up as one of the best shows ever.
To get a taste of it:
Boardwalk Empire: Great Show.
Just starting watching a new series from HBO today – with a great pilot from Atlantic City in the 1920s and Prohibition. 18 Emmy nominations, directed by Martin Scorsese, great music and visuals, nice characters. Steve Buscemi is doing a great job, same with Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. Off to a promising start.
Speed read: Monsoon by R. Kaplan.
Indian Ocean as the new nexus.
This was a bit disappointing. Kaplan has written many good books, but this one got lost from the outset.
Main thesis is interesting, if not good. The western-dominated 20th century is now gone, with the Atlantic as a protagonist. Now it’s time for the Indian Ocean to be the center of things, as a nexus between between Asia, Mideast and partly Africa.
Maybe.
But it sounds a bit thin. Yes India and China is rising, yes Central Asia is in the middle of the Great Chessboard, and yes, the Middle East is a crossroads and strategic prize of energy and partly geopolitics. But still, the west is close to 2/3 of the world economy, and the rest of Asia is heavily dependent on Europe and US for their own health and development.
And maybe some of the problem with the whole thesis is the remnants of old thinking about the world as “one system” – as it has been for a long time. The concept of a multi-polar world is a notion of more independent and regional power centers, with perhaps less influence on each other than before. So as the Indian Ocean might become more important for the regions at the coastal rims, it doesn’t “replace” the Atlantic in any meaningful way – as the whole collection of different societies around the world has become more fragmented – and perhaps more similar to how it’s been for most of our thousands years of history.
And with that as a nudge – the rest of the book becomes more of a travel guide and cultural study of the countries in the region, and less of an analysis of global politics for the 21st century.
