Add reference to "instability," stir, season to taste

Sunday night here, and I take a last check of the news before shutting off the computer, which I probably should have done a while ago.

What do I find? An AP story informing me that Kim Jong Il has died and going on to say that the S. Korean military is on high alert and that Asian stock markets have moved down, fearful that this may mean increased "instability" on the Korean peninsula. N. Korea is of course a closed, highly authoritarian regime in which the leader had already handpicked a successor, who happens to be one of his sons. There may be jockeying for power among factions of N. Korea's elite, and the son in question is rather young. So what? Why should this mean more instability on the Korean peninsula? Does anyone actually think about these things or is this just a pre-scripted quasi-robotic scenario in which an editor on the AP desk says to one of his subordinates: "Hey Joe (or Mary, or Pedro, or Li or whoever), make sure you throw in the word 'instability'." And the subordinate replies: "aye aye sir, one reference to 'instability', coming right up."

Addendum (added later): Commentary over the last couple of days indicates people see various reasons for concern, including possible difficulties of the 'great successor' in consolidating his power. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

An original prescription

Lead-in to Wash.Post story:

"In what advisers billed as a major address, [Pawlenty] calls for tax cuts and smaller government."

Oh yeah.

Especially more tax cuts for the very highest brackets. Definitely. Why should we settle in the U.S. for having the most unequal distribution of income and wealth since the late 1920s? Why shouldn't we aim to have the most unequal distribution in U.S. history? Why shouldn't we try to duplicate the distribution of, say, Honduras in the 1950s? After all, there's no point in doing something unless you do it well.

I thought it was Hallmark

"...as Plato said, I just want to remind you to be nice to one another...."
-- Sarah Palin, in a speech in Hamilton, Ontario

[HT: House of Substance]

You can say that again

"I'm not one to 'turn the other cheek,' to let ideological bygones be bygones."
-- Donald Douglas, at his right-wing blog American Power

Homage to Che Guevara

A.O. Scott does not like Steven Soderbergh's movie about Che:

"...treat[s] complicated and consequential political events — the Cuban revolution, for starters, and nearly everything that followed, by implication — in purely tactical terms. The precision with which Mr. Soderbergh charts the progress of Castro’s army across the Cuban countryside — and the even greater meticulousness in his depiction of the unraveling Bolivian campaign — has something in common with the exertions of Civil War re-enactors or online gamers."

It's four hours long (actually a bit more). I think I'll wait for the dissertation comparing it to Lawrence of Arabia.

Howl time is extended

I find in the mailbox a card from the publishing company Elsevier that informs me I may purchase the second edition of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict for a mere $795.00, a reduction from the list price of $995.00.

Uh-huh. Right.

Hello? Elsevier marketing department? Anyone home? No, I didn't think so.

The editor with the action-packed rolodex

HC, who reads the New York Times for me (just kidding), draws my attention to this article about the launch of the new Tina Brown web thing, The Daily Beast (the name's from Evelyn Waugh, naturally).

The article mentions her "gilded e-Rolodex." For some reason I immediately thought of the 1950s radio figure Johnny Dollar, "America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator," the "man with the action-packed expense account." (No, I hadn't been born yet in the early '50s when Johnny Dollar was really in his heyday -- I'm not quite that old -- but I've heard the show on old-time radio revival hours.)

Anyway, Johnny Dollar had an action-packed expense account; Tina Brown has an action-packed rolodex. I already do not read Huffington, Daily Kos, TPM, Sullivan, Yglesias, Douthat, etc. Now I can add The Daily Beast to the list of hip sites that I do not read.