So, Ummm, What’s Happening at NNSA?

We’re four months and counting into the new Administration, and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), overseer of the nation’s nuclear stockpile, continues under the same leadership, in the same old rut. Take the RRW, for example. Even though ArmsControlWonk declared it “dead” way back in 2007, no such message has yet been heard at NNSA. There it’s still, “Full speed ahead!”

Well, I suppose the lack of a new hand at the helm at NNSA isn’t for lack of trying to find one. One problem is that it would be nice if the new Administrator had at least some face to show in the company of Nobel Prize winner Secretary Chu and his high-powered Undersecretary for Science, Steve Koonin. Finding someone like that to take a job as custodian of the nuclear stockpile at a time when things nuclear are distinctly out of political favor won’t be easy.

Still, it does seem like the nation’s nuclear policy is a matter of some importance. Perhaps it would be best not to simply let it drift.

Whatever Happened to Sully?

Andrew Sullivan

It seems to me he’s changed a lot, and not for the better. It could be he’s just changed away from my point of view, but I don’t think so. I’m on “his side” when it comes to the torture issue, and several others. The problem isn’t with his point of view. The problem is that the spark of intellect, of originality, just isn’t there anymore.

His slide downhill seemed to start with the Iraq war. As he said later, he supported it “like a teenaged girl supporting the Jonas brothers.” Once we were in the war, he became one of the more strident and hysterical defeatists. As a Vietnam veteran, perhaps I took it too personally that he seemed to be doing his level best to demoralize the troops and the country in a war he did so much to promote, but, regardless, as history has shown, his defeatist attitude was as irrational as his earlier warmongering.

Things haven’t gone uphill in the meantime. Lately, his posts have begun to dwell more and more on the various moral shortcomings of the people with whom he disagrees. In other words, he sounds like everyone else. The most notable example is his recent bout of Palin Derangement Syndrome. One wonders what it is about Palin that sets him off so. Is he really afraid the rest of the media will ignore her faults? Why this fanatical crusade to expose her every deviation from the Sullivan standard of moral rectitude? From a purely practical point of view, it doesn’t hurt Palin, and just supplies ammunition to the people on the right who loathe him.

Reading Sullivan now is like reading the last novels of Sinclair Lewis for someone who loves “Babbitt” and “Main Street.” Perhaps there’s some connection between his physical and intellectual health. Hard to say.

Well, apparently his readership is up, so who am I to complain? After all, he is, at least, still smarter than the editors of the Washington Post.

Memes to the Right of Me, Memes to the Left

Today’s specimens are from the left, including the ubiquitous “Rush Limbaugh is head of the Republican Party” meme:

“Rush Limbaugh on his radio show yesterday accused the eight of voting for the bill sponsored by Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts because of Wall Street’s influence and argued that they should be voted out in 2010 along with Democrats who supported the legislation.”

and the “Wild and crazy extremist Republican Party meme”:

“The eight House Republicans who voted in favor of the bill generally represent the remains of the party’s moderate wing and some have to deal with political circumstances that are unique in the GOP caucus.”

You’ll find variations repeated over and over again, ad nauseum, ranging in style from “in your face” to “subliminal,” pervading the “news,” the left bank of the blogosphere, etc. Some nascent Ph.D. in sociology should devote a thesis to how these bits of the Narrative get started, and how it is that all the canaries on the left or the right, as the case may be, begin chattering them in unison.

*Hat tip for the NYT article link to Moe Lane, via Little Miss Attila (apparently she was a little testy when she woke up this morning. She’s not always like that.)