The New Republic

Jon, Your own blog! Congratulations. I love your TRB columns and will be a regular reader of this new blog. KG

- MrCookie1

January 5, 2010 at 5:44pm

Who says the marriage wasn't working? The problem was that it was working too well; made him a billion, didn't it? Both Hefner and Woods (what's with referring to his first name?) traded on their lifestyles; Hefner's was truer to the mark, and bully for him; Woods sold a false image and is reaping what he sowed. The problem was precisely that the marriage worked too well: if you sell the blond wife and the kids for a billion, don't screw the floozey in the bar, is all I'm sayin'.

- icarusr

January 5, 2010 at 5:58pm

So is this the replacement for "The Plank"? And what happened to previous posts? My RSS feed now shows this blog in the Plank's place but no older entries.

- tnmats

January 5, 2010 at 6:04pm

This is one of the annoying things -- web site changes happen over 20 minutes with no warning. On the Plank this afternoon rhubarbs posted a long and thought-out comment on the nuclear disarmament story, with replies by butchie b and myself. They are now vaporized. I mean, I'm not claiming we said anything earth-shaking, but it might be courteous to regular subscribers and discussion participants to give a little advance warning on the lines of "tomorrow at 5 pm the blog is all over, so don't bother posting any deathless thoughts from now on!"

- ironyroad

January 5, 2010 at 6:38pm

Irony -- I totally agree. This is a big faux pas on the part of TNR. There was no warning, nor was there even any ex post explanation for what happened to the Plank until you get to Foer's post. The TNR editors may not realize that the comment-threads on these blogs have as much or more substantive value than the original posts do. Often the original posts are rather cryptic or shallow, but trigger really interesting and informative, if often heated, discussions. The discussions often go on for days. For TNR to just cut those discussions off without warning is an extremely clumsy thing to do.

- dhurtado

January 5, 2010 at 8:31pm

irony and dhurtado: you're so cute! dhurtado wrote: "The TNR editors may not realize that the comment-threads on these blogs have as much or more substantive value than the original posts do." Does the whale stop to think about the krill stuck in his baleen? Not likely, unless he's thinking, "I have a check-up in a few weeks; I really should start flossing beforehand. Who knows what kind of decomposing microscopic food is stuck down there!" Not to imply that we're essentially decomposing microscopic food but... well... we are. It's a good thing, though, to be taken for granted. It reminds us of our true place in the universe. Think of TNR as God (I know I do); now, doesn't God have better things to do than warning us before She, oh, I don't know, unzips the San Andreas Fault right down the middle of California? Tosses an asteroid the size of Cleveland at, say, Cleveland? Look in the mirror. What do you see? I'll tell you what you see: Krill.

- williamyard

January 5, 2010 at 10:09pm

irony, I don't mind the vaporization. My first drafts are always embarrassingly verbose. So here's the punchier second draft: Use the nuclear strategy review as a pivot to reemphasize and rebuild our degraded conventional deterrent. Let the Air Force's disgraced nuclear-force generals try to rally the GOP in Congress; make it a choice of nukes vs. troops and force Republicans to choose. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps leadership will back the president. Also, the GOP is the party of military weakness. See? Much more concise.

- rhubarbs

January 6, 2010 at 8:52am

Aha, good work rhubs! Now I'm just hanging around waiting for butchie's response, so I can jump in and tell him how he's wrong six ways from sunday.

- ironyroad

January 6, 2010 at 12:00pm

Glad to be of service, gents! I'll be concise, too. You and whose party, rhubs? Cause Dems won't spend the money on conventional defense. The GOP will, believing as it seems to that DoD is not really part of the federal government. Oh, and degraded deterrent? I don't remember your verbose premise on that one. Besides, who needs a conventional deterrent (if one could exist) because this guy won't use one anyway. OK, irony, do your worst.

- butchie b

January 6, 2010 at 1:34pm

I have to say, butchie, that I got a concise laugh from your second para, third sentence :) But again, what's with the "this guy" stuff? To the best of my knowledge, "this guy" has just committed the largest possible force, given the conditions, to the Af/Pak region. As he's not stupid, I suspect he also knows that we still have now around 120,000 troops in Iraq and -- as rhubarbs pointed out -- we would have real problems if a major crisis erupted tomorrow requiring conventional forces. I haven't heard a single peep from Republicans on that crucial issue and it was indeed John Kerry who set out a force replenishment plan in '04, not Bush.

- ironyroad

January 6, 2010 at 2:00pm

Some data points: 1. Since 1996, each Democratic candidate for president has run on a platform of higher defense spending and more military personnel than his Republican opponent. 2. Since the Cold War ended, Dem-controlled Congresses have increased core military spending (personnel and deployable materiel, as opposed to big-ticket R&D) more than GOP-controlled Congresses. 3. In the Bush years, Republicans, not Democrats, starved the military during wartime to finance their extravagant domestic agenda. 4. Defense spending under Bush 43 ranged between 18-20 percent of total spending. Two wars, and the Bush 43 and his Republican-majority Congress never saw fit to raise military spending above the 16-19 percent range of the peaceful Clinton years. Even Jimmy Carter and the most liberal Democratic Congress in American history, during peacetime, kept defense spending above 23 percent! Anyone who wants to weaken the U.S. military has only to scan his ballot for the candidate with the "R" next to his name. Personally, it's precisely because I value a strong national defense that I can no longer vote for any Republican for federal office.

- rhubarbs

January 6, 2010 at 2:42pm

1. Like to see some numbers on that, not that campaign material, like party platforms, mean much. 2. Big-ticket R&D programs BECOME deployable materiel. end-strength went down in the 90s regardless of party, because of the end of the Cold War. Both parties were for it, Ds slightly more than Rs. Peace dividend and all that. 3. Starved? Please. Defense budgets continue to rise, as they should. As should end strengths. 4. % spending means only that we spent more $$ elsewhere than on defense. What are the absolute numbers? Oh, and those "liberal" Congresses passed defense budgets by a combo of Southern Dems (remember them?) and Rs. Your view is thaht Rs weaken the U.S. military. Mine is that the Ds can't be trusted with the nat'l security of the country. What a pair! Irony, I support the President on Afghanistan, and I note that for all his windiness, we don't seem to be heading for the exits in Iraq. But I don't expect any more action out of him, and in fairness, it's probably enough.

- butchie b

January 6, 2010 at 3:17pm

Campaign promises don't mean much? How, then, should we choose between candidates? Most presidents do attempt to act on their campaign agendas. Then again, the shock George W. Bush created among conservatives when he did as president exactly what he spent the two years prior to his election promising to do may indicate that Republicans use criteria other than "listening to what he says" when judging candidates. Certainly, when a man promises to spend $5 trillion of a $4 trillion surplus, I'm not surprised when he leaves office with a $1 trillion deficit. (Technically, Bush promised to spend $5 trillion of a $4 trillion surplus and still have $1 trillion left over. I paid attention to his promise to spend the money and ignored his promise to repeal the laws of arithmetic, and if you subtract 5 from 4 you get negative 1, which is exactly what Bush delivered.)

- rhubarbs

January 6, 2010 at 4:23pm