Harry's Boner

Desultory Eclecticism does not like to comment on the 24-hour news cycle.  If you would like a sane analysis of Harry Reidgate, see Ta-Hehisi Coates at The Atlantic.  That said, The Daily Show should have no shortage of material tonight with the Senate Majority Leader "on the trolley."

All Bad Poetry is Sincere

Glance to the right as you cross fifty-fifth;

Recession has come for Fifth Ave.

Furred women leave Prada and hail their cabs,

Small shopping bags signs of their thrift.

At Starbucks: free tables! And some near bereft.

Are sandwich and scone no more craved?

And what of these lattes, all tall and none grand,

Can such cure the afternoon drifts?

Glance to the left as you cross fifty-fifth;

A larva 's crept south from the Park.

A blanketed mass with a Starbucks-cup hand

Lies curled in front of St. Barts.

The city eyes pass, drifting north t'wards the Park,

Where lilies ne’er toil, but freeze in cold land.

Iran Into a Civics Lesson

Desultory Eclecticism will elucidate his Eastern European observations once the jet lag wears off.  For now, its time to catch up on last week's developments.

At Foreign Policy, Gary Sick reveals the machinations behind the Obama Administration's quiet political coup on Iran policy.  By granting exclusive interviews to The Washington Post and The New York Times, the administration was able to divert media coverage towards old successes at a time when the punditocracy was set to pounce on diplomacy's failure to meet an arbitrary deadline.  The ploy is Judith Miller-esque, although Desultory Eclecticism feels less prone to moral outrage when prominent media shills shill for the right side.  The article would be a helpful addition to any high school--or university--civics curriculum.

Elsewhere, legal architect John Yoo grants an interview to The New York Times Magazine.  Some fun:

"Which president would you say most violated laws enacted by Congress?
I would say Lincoln. He sent the Army into offensive operations to try to stop the South from seceding. He didn’t call Congress into special session until July 4, 1861, well after this had all happened. He basically acted on his own for three months.
Are you implicitly comparing the Civil War with the war in Iraq, in order to justify President Bush’s expansion of executive power? 
The idea is that the president’s power grows and changes based on circumstances, and that’s what the framers of the Constitution wanted. They wanted it to exist so the president could react to crises immediately."   


Lincoln certainly outstepped formal Constitutional bounds during the Civil War, and Yoo is likely correct that most framers would have approved.  Conversely, liberal scholar Juan Cole sums up the Bush-era Constitutional infractions and its former henchmen's response to Obama, hyperbole in-kind:

"Cheney wanted to use the nonsensically phrased 'war on terror' as a wedge to destroy the Bill of Rights and permanently undermine the US constitution, and is annoyed that all the groundwork he laid for the return of rightwing monarchy has been sensibly tossed aside by the constitutional lawyer who succeeded him." 


Lincoln's benevolent dictatorship earned him a national monument, portraits on the penny and $5 bill, and everlasting regard in human history occurring outside of the postbellum South.  George W. Bush's proposed lecture tour was called off when it became evident that the former leader of the free world would not be able to fill a moderately-sized auditorium at $15 a ticket.  Not all abuses of power are created equal.

Back From the Former USSR

Desultory Eclecticism has been on unannounced hiatus for the past week and a half conducting informal pre-election polling in southern Ukraine.  More to come.

Desultory Eclecticism's Christmas Gift to You

The alma mater didn't make a bowl game, but you can still find it on iTunesU.  Here's a full semester of Desultory Eclecticism's favorite professor lecturing on Desultory Eclecticism's favorite writer.  You'll never read As You Like It the same way again.

Get your Ralph Williams here.

Вибори vs. Bыборы

The latest poll from Kyiv Post has newcomer Serhiy Tihipko pulling ahead of Yulia Tymoshenko (11% to 10%) for second place in the January 17th election.  While Victor Yanukovich maintains a comfortable lead, it must be remembered that the first electoral round will function more like a primary.  While the eastern half of the country is firmly behind Yanukovich (giving him a total of 34% nationwide), he simply does not have enough support to reach the 50% threshold necessary to obviate a second round of balloting.  The former Orange Coalition has fractured, and a handful of competing politicians is competing for its former constituency.  While most polls still favor Tymoshenko to finish second, whoever reaches 15% on January 17th will pick up nearly all of Arseniy Yatsenyuk's 6% and President Victor Yushchenko's 3%, in addition to the third-place finisher's 10-12%.  Expect to see--to the extent that it is covered at all--a rash of "End of the Orange" stories following Yanukovich's landslide victory in January.  The final vote is penciled in for February 21st--expect to see a much closer race.

Iran Out of Puns

Desultory Eclecticism had the pleasure of spending a good part of the weekend at Columbia University's "Iran: After the Election" conference.  13 Iranian and American academics and retired officials, including headliners Ervand Abrahamian and Gary Sick, spent all of Saturday presenting and discussing various Iran-related themes.  Three points of consensus:

1) The revolution (1979) has come full circle.  Mansour Farhang recounted his own experience from adolescence of being imprisoned and beaten by the Shah's secret police (this predated SAVAK) for his role as a propaganda mule for Mosaddeq.  Then he described Maziar Bahari's recent experience.  The difference?  Farhang's interrogator/abuser spoke with an upper-class accent and had no problem looking his victim in the eye.  Bahari's kept his prisoner blindfolded, leaving his "rose water" cologne as his most identifiable trait.

2) Nobody makes a good prognosticator.  Academics, analysts, journalists, diplomats, the participants themselves--they'll all extrapolate differently from the present and recent past.  One of them may be right, owing to luck rather than prescience.  Nobody knows exactly what June means or what it leads to.  

3) A hardline U.S. approach produces the best outcome for the Islamic regime.  Refusing to negotiate allows the Khamenists to continue branding dissidents as CIA tools.  Sanctions give the regime an excuse for economic stagnation.  This interpretation provides a rational actor explanation for Iran's recent nuclear bluster.  

The Orange and Green revolutions may have been inspired by similar events and infused with common sentiments, but Ukraine had no Basij.  Like the Shah in 1979, Kuchma's government refused to open fire on protestors; the Khamenei regime did not.