Instead of one excerpt from today’s Morning Jolts, a few bits here and there:
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Happy Groundhog Day. I tried to explain the holiday to my toddler son this morning, and realized it makes no sense whatsoever. “Indeed, son, the groundhog in Pennsylvania has the ability to determine what the weather is going to be like six weeks from now based on whether or not he sees his shadow.” You might as well say, “Also, a platypus in Oklahoma can tell us whether to take the Packers and the points in the Super Bowl based on how deep he dives in a river.”
Now That Mubarak’s Reign Appears Doomed, Obama Tells Him To Leave
Late Tuesday afternoon, Mubarak said he won’t run for another term in one of Egypt’s traditional sham elections and that he had never intended to run for another term, either. In related news, those grapes are probably sour anyway…
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Donald Douglas at American Power is deeply disappointed: “At WaPo, ‘Mubarak Announcement Disappoints Obama Administration.’ Well, what’d you expect, Barack Hussein? It’s not like you were out in front of the crisis jawboning Mubarak to step aside. And now you’re displeased? That takes chutzpah… Hey, for the overly cautious, standing on the sidelines of history is good foreign policy. But I think most folks have seen this White House shaking in its boots amid an epic “3:00am” moment…
Continuing a theme from yesterday, I suspect that when you give Obama a menu of options ranging from bad to worse – say, as he faced his first major decision on Afghanistan in his first year in office – he gets paralyzed. President George W. Bush, for better or worse, went with his gut, and we all probably see the flaws in that approach. Having had his intellect and great analytic mind praised since his college days, Obama probably believes that with enough time and study, any great thorny problem can be resolved with some solution that minimizes all of the risks and flaws and drawbacks. Unfortunately, life, and particularly presidential life, isn’t like that; sometimes the best option is still pretty darn bad. And that’s how he ended up spending four months studying Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s report that within a year, the war in Afghanistan would be un-salvageable. There’s this “analysis paralysis” that sets in, as he becomes convinced that the situation will become clearer with one more briefing, one more meeting, one more collection of data, and one more conversation…