What You Missed . . .
What You Missed If You Didn’t Read Today’s NYTimes
- Black women in South Carolina are afraid to vote for Barack Obama because he might be assassinated.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin. Oh, what a character.We have this: “We cannot build Russia’s future by tying its many millions of citizens to just one person or group of people,” he said last month. “We will not be able to build anything lasting unless we put in place a real and effectively functioning multiparty system and develop a civil society that will protect society and the state from mistakes and wrong actions on the part of those in power.”
But what he does is this: “Putin has methodically over the last seven years been reducing the power of any other locus in the system that is independent,” [Andrew C. Kuchins, director of the Russia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington] Kuchins said. “This is the final nail in the coffin. And it doesn’t look like that coffin is going to get opened anytime soon.”
- Should the U.S. and Europe buy poppies (which make heroin) instead of trying to eradicate them? (Sorry, trying to get a vein over here.)
- What’s up with tortured artists? Does Charles Schultz, the creator of “Peanuts” qualify?
- Some people pay far more than the new Radiohead album’s probably worth. (Others are smart enough to get it for free.) Begs the question: Too rich or stupid?
- Stephen Colbert doesn’t read, but he writes for Maureen Dowd in the Times.
- On a more serious note, junior active-duty Army officers are uniquely vocal in their debates about the Iraq War at the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. It’s a fairly superficial article regarding a highly newsworthy development within the Army and Marines (and, I hate to say, less so within the Air Force and Navy). Paul Yingling’s wonderful indictment of America’s generals for failure to protest a wrongheaded invasion and occupation can be found here.)