When I saw this review of the biography of George Kennan, I thought of how the U.S. might have done better with him as Secretary of State during the Kennedy period. I see that Kissinger had some recent comments on Kennan also.

For Gingrich

I'd have to agree. What bothers me most about Romney is his attitude that he's going to tell China what to do about their currency and remind Iran that it forgot to grovel, not to mention running over Perry on humanitarian issues. I'm afraid it's the fat man with the sexual past. Here are the reviews of books he has done on Amazon; the beginning of them, the most recent, are about the campaigns of Grant & Lee in the last phase of the Civil War.

Peggy Noonan had a column in the WSJ yesterday that resonated with me. Perhaps more later. In brief, the product vs. salesmanship.

I read the review of this, And the Show Went On, in the WSJ and read part of it at my daughter in laws house, fascinating. Riding also wrote a book on Mexico, Distant Neighbors, I'd like to look at.

The Recent Chinese Transformation

Book on Deng Xiaoping recommended.

Tom Maguire argues for Huntsman at this point.

Following a thread: Jews, Communists and Jewish Communists at Volokh. References there on the history of the Communist takeover of China and U.S. Asian Foreign Policy prior history in the area.

Was going through the comments on 'Rage of a Privileged Class, TNC, Atlantic, and thought this solved something:

There were psychological studies of Nazi war criminals using Rorschach tests and other instruments which don't have obvious face saving answers. The lower level were unimaginative people with a simple view of order and what was proper. Being drug addled would not have been part of that or their behavior. The higher level such as Goering were at least at one time drug addicts but not that simple minded. The fact that Eichmann put on the pose of a banal bureaucrat,

Adolf Eichmann was, of course, in no way a banal bureaucrat: He just portrayed himself as one while on trial for his life. Eichmann was a vicious and loathsome Jew-hater and -hunter who, among other things, personally intervened after the war was effectively lost, to insist on and ensure the mass murder of the last intact Jewish group in Europe, those of Hungary,*

suggests a readily available pose or personality. Perhaps the rebellion inside that personality struggling to get out would find some identification with the Hebrew meaning of Isra el, he fought with God, but not having in some sense survived the fight with the internal imago of their parents, hate Israel and Jews for having done so. I am not familiar with Galbraith's report though.

* Ron Rosenbaum's article in Slate with better picture of Hannah Arendt.

It took 2000 years, but we've finally made the big time.

He said his teacher, Marsha McDonald, gave him an anti-Catholic pamphlet. The eighth-grade teacher handed it to him in his English class at Mineral Wells Junior High, he said. “It said ‘Are Roman Catholics Christian,’ and ‘Catholics only think about money,’” Velazquez said.

Maybe Richelieu was a clue.