Yes, there's a lot in what you say.  The causation, I'm sure, runs both ways.  And more's the woe.

Well-spotted, Fredo:  The photo of Lenin is indeed post-stroke.  At the same time, though, we know that, although weakened and partially paralyzed, Lenin remained lucid, if that's the word for a murderous tyrant, until the end.

iWcThe thing I love about this song is that he puts on blackface to "blend in." The joke is that the song, words and music, is from the yiddish theater. So the Jazz Singer features a Jew impersonating a black man by singing Jewish music.Only in America, iWc. Only in America.

Thanks for spotting this, Judith.  (I'll glance over the print edition of the New Yorker every so often, hoping for something by John McPhee or Richard Preston.  But read the New Yorker website?  I long ago lost the stomach for it.)  And you're quite right:  This is a very, very big domino.

2).

I don't know that, of course.  But my sense is that the White House--meaning the president himself and those closest to him--was at the very center of the decision-making in all this.

Come to think of it, an experience of clairvoyance--or something like it--just came to mind:

When my mother and her sister got home from the hospital to tell their father that their mother had just died, he already knew.  According to my mother, who found the experience reassuring, somehow, her father said simply, "She was just here.  She came to me to say goodbye."  He hadn't seen or or spoken with her--he had not, in other words, experienced a vision.  But he had had a sudden, firm sense of her presence...and the she was gone.

Does that count, Paules?

This whole conversation strikes me as borderline spooky, I have to admit, and yet I'm enjoying every comment.  One reason?  Paules.  I'm a sucker for that guy.  A truly fascinating mind and gorgeous, tensile prose.

Brilliant.  Just brilliant!

Exactly so.

Chris Christie is tough, smart, articulate, and willing to fight.  He has all but eliminated New Jersey's budget deficit without raising taxes, he has stood up to the teachers' unions, and he has proven unapologetically pro-life.  That's good enough for me.

As for his comments when President Obama toured New Jersey just after Hurricane Sandy, Christie got the tone wrong, seeming to gush and fawn.  But as to the substance?  No less experienced a figure than Haley Barbour, who, as governor of Mississippi had to deal with Hurricane Katrina, told me not long ago that "Christie was just doing his job."  If your state suffers a natural catastrophe, Haley explained, you're going to need to work closely with the federal government for several years whether you like it or not.  That's simply the way the programs are structured.

And if Haley Barbour is willing to forgive Christie his comments about Obama--well, once again, that's good enough for me.

You know what, Paul?  Harsh as that sounds, I'd be very inclined to agree.  Friedman's argument amounts to something no more intellectually or morally elevated than the old saw that Mussolini made the trains run on time.

Peter, I couldn't agree more.  That the Speaker has brains everyone knows.  What so few realize is that he's also tough, adroit, and utterly fearless.

EJ, I am sitting in my pajamas, performing one last troll across the Internet--and I find this.  My bedtime chamomile tea nearly came out my nose.

This should have been a front page story on newspapers all over the country.  Instead, we read it here.

Thanks, Joseph.  You've provided us another example of Ricochet at it's best.   

That's it!  And you're right.  I should've thought of that myself.  Behind nearly every insane situation lies a regulation, tax, or, as in this case, subsidy.

Beautiful.  I had more or less the same response to David Brooks this morning--that although he wasn't quite wrong, he certainly wasn't right--but could never have elaborated it with your sophistication.