Recommended Reading and Viewing
Top Billing! SWJ Blog Warlord’s Writing Tips
The Warlord is Colonel John Collins, who has over a half century of national service as a military officer and analyst and now is the proprietor of the national security listserv, The Warlord Loop. His tips fit in well with my review of Do the Work.
Research Techniques
*Peruse a broad spectrum of opinion with an open mind. Never reach conclusions first, then prepare a paper to support them. You will often find that initial impressions were poorly founded.
*Take nothing for granted. Challenge conventional wisdom to see if it is sound, regardless of the source.
*Document important ideas with footnotes, so readers can pursue selected topics in greater depth, if they so desire
Dave Schuler – Deluged With Budgets, Overwhelmed With Questions
…There’s the Ryan plan, the “People’s Budget” produced by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the “Gang of Six” plan produced by Democratic and Republican senators, and now President Obama’s plan. Paul Krugman characterizes them aptly in his column:
For the contrast between Mr. Ryan last week and Mr. Obama on Wednesday wasn’t just about visions of society. There was also a difference in visions of how the world works.
Indeed there were and I found them visions that varied from mistaken to delusional to demagogic. But it likely explains why the 2011 budget was so late: there are conflicting and irreconcilable visions of how the world works and all parties finally came together on the single point they could agree on (getting re-elected).
Dave, with trademark evenhandedness, gives each plan a fisking and finds them all wanting.
….Understand that Washington had wanted Germany to pick up a big share of the tab for funding the Nabucco nightmare, which, when Wikipedia last checked, still hasn’t found funding.2. U.S. and British machinations in Ukraine, which egged on Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko to escalate his cold war with Putin. This included holding Europeans who were dependent on Russia natual gas hostage to the prospect of freezing in the winter, and which threatened to crash a good chunk of the EU economy. And which by 2008 also had something to do with a cold war between the Kremlin and the British foreign office over a joint oil deal involving British Petroleum — er, “BP.”3. The very same war in Georgia that Herr Schockenhoff delicately alluded to. You remember that war, right? The one where presidents Bush and Putin had to learn while sitting next to each other at China’s Olympics that Georgia’s president — the necktie-chewing Mikheil Sakaashvili, installed as Georgia’s President in a U.S.-orchestrated putsch (“The Rose Revolution”) — was trying to start World War Three?Yeah. That war.There are surely additional reasons not specifically related to the United States — the economic crisis for one, which brought home to Germans that they couldn’t continue bankrolling the expansion of the European Union at the rate they’d done in the past.
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