In addition to taking [...]]]> After what were 30+ hours of grueling labor (for me mostly, though my wife seemed to be in some type of pain as well – I’ll have to check back with her on that), Eric Jae-Young Lee Martin finally decided to join us on Saturday, October 10th at 11:36 a.m. 

In addition to taking his time once the whole show got under way, my son also decided that the fact that dad had tickets to Friday night’s Yankee playoff game was entirely beside the point.  Luckily, my good friend Steve (who benefitted from my son’s irregular sense of timing) was kind enough to phone me after what was one of the more dramatic playoff wins for the Yanks in a while to let me know that Mark Teixeira’s game-winning, 11th inning, walk-off home runs landed 5 rows in front of my his seats.

Still, I think it’s clear I came out the winner.  I believe he calls this look “Velvet Steel” but it’s hard to make out his words as he tends to mumble. 

Related posts:

1. More Rubble, More Trouble?
2. The Timing of It
3. Guest Post: The Long Game of Nuclear Disarmament

Since arriving at Harvard in June last year, [Stewart]has been consultant to several members of Barack Obama’s [...]]]> Quote of the day material from Rory Stewart who cleverly sums up the mindset of our "strategic class" – an echelon of "experts" that establish a disturbing level of continuity in outlook from one administration to the next, Republican or Democratic:

Since arriving at Harvard in June last year, [Stewart]has been consultant to several members of Barack Obama’s administration, including Hillary Clinton, and is a member of Richard Holbrooke’s special committee for Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. “I do a lot of work with policymakers, but how much effect am I having?” he asks…

“It’s like they’re coming in and saying to you, ‘I’m going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?’ And you say, ‘I don’t think you should drive your car off the cliff.’ And they say, ‘No, no, that bit’s already been decided – the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.’ And you say, ‘Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.’ And then they say, ‘We’ve consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says …’”

Well, that and we’ve got a better driver for the plummet.  Stewart continues:

On the day we meet, the New York Times reports that it looks as if Obama’s policy of increasing troops in Afghanistan will work. Stewart has a different take. “The policy of troop increases will look ridiculous in 30 years,” he says. “They’re not going to make America safer from al-Qaeda. The theory of state-building is suspect. I’m not sure that the state they aim for is conceivable, let alone achievable. We should be pursuing a much more conventional development strategy in Afghanistan. And, if you want to combine that with a Special Forces unit that would make things uncomfortable for Osama bin Laden, then so be it.” He sighs. “But you can’t say that sort of thing to the policymakers. They’re grand, intelligent, busy people who have no interest in this kind of abstraction. They’re not interested in values, virtue, outlook …

Or "Very Serious People," to use the parlance of our times. 

Related posts:

1. We Chiseled and We Switched
2. Premature Evacuation?
3. Can’t Write Them Out of the Script Entirely