No Time for Boring Things Like Governing

My take on why Palin is resigning is that there is not much more here than meets the eye. Many are guessing that a woman who has been surrounded by scandal and sensationalism since she was tapped to be VP would never run away from a fight unless the scandal was a quantum leap in difference from all the others, that there is some huge revelation right around the corner. Certainly possible, but my guess is that she simply got tired, bored and frustrated with governing. She seems like an extremely unserious person, one who's sense of responsibility to Alaska is overwhelmed by her personal issues with the media and her own love of self. She probably realized she didn't really need this crap, knew she could make tons of money writing books or speaking and would be able to dedicate herself to whatever self-loving career would come next. Being governor may have become a waste of her time.

A related, but slightly different take -- which I also think could be true -- is from Dahlia Lithwick, at Slate:

If you think of Palin as someone who never felt herself to be fully heard or understood, not truly politically realized in the eyes of the American public, her rage toward the country, the media, and those of us who fail to love and understand her is easier to comprehend. Think of an American visiting France who believes that if he just speaks louder, he will be speaking French. Palin has done everything in her power to explain herself to us, and still we fail to appreciate what she is all about.

I do have to say, the one thing that speaks for an approaching scandal is the fact that her press conference was so quickly thrown together that not even Fox News was given advance warning. When Fox News is out of the loop, I do have to wonder if she was trying to hide something.

Obama and Russia

An interesting interview on Obama's trip to Russia. This seems to me to be a story that hasn't gotten much play, but has long term import. The Russia-U.S. relationship is a key relationship with many issues that don't make the daily front pages, but have the potential for huge impact: nuclear proliferation, NATO expansion, conflict in Georgia (like last year) and the Ukraine, U.S. missile defense. One of the things that I've been most happy about with Obama is his long-time interest in banning nuclear weapons. He worked on legislation as a senator and made it a central point of one of his major speeches in his first trip to Europe. It really matters to him. To me, it seems like an issue no one thinks about much, but is always lurking in the background. One day it rears it's ugly head and we'll all realize that these two countries have thousands of weapons capable of wiping humanity off the face of the earth.

Stephen Cohen on Obama and his advisors:

the original sin was committed by the Clinton administration when it decided to treat Russia as a defeated power and broke promises made to Russia by Reagan and H.W. Bush, like NATO expansion and the bombing of Serbia. Those policies were made by members of the Clinton administration.

Obama has surrounded himself with these people, beginning with Mrs. Clinton herself. Biden was a Clintonite, Richard Holbrook, McFaul, Jim Jones was the head of NATO during Clinton administration, Robert Gates. Can these people look at what’s happened in the ’90s and say, “We pursued the wrong approach to Russia. We’re going to advise the president to change course”? Not likely. So that leaves us with President Obama. Can he transcend his own advisers?

This ties in with what I think is the overall questions about Obama in general. What are his core issues? What is he willing to fight for? How much is he willing to push an issue that isn't on the national radar and that his advisors are skeptical about?

The Daily Show... From Iran!

My first post is a cheat, but so what? Jason Jones, fearless foreign correspondent for the Daily Show was sent to Iran just before the election. He managed to come back with a week of great segments. To my mind they seem like the kind of thing that the MSM could do more of. This one is my favorite:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jason Jones: Behind the Veil - Ayatollah You So
thedailyshow.com
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I'm Back. Finally.

When last time we met and I said I was going to take a "bit of a break", well... clearly, I lied. It was a very big break. I don't think it's worth it to get into why it was so long. It's enough to say that it was too long. I will also say that writing a blog at any serious level, keeping up with the news -- and what's written about it -- and doing anything else that takes time is freakin' tough. So I need a long-term strategy if I want to keep this up: For now, I'm going to write 1 post a day and only in the mornings. Hopefully this should be enough to keep people interested and myself sane. Blogging can be compulsive. It's an act that needs to be kept tightly under control. We'll see what happens.