Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• “Proust is important for everyone”
  Mario Vargas-Llosa is no man of the right, but even he worries about cultural amnesia: If culture is purely entertainment, nothing is of importance. If it’s a matter of amusement, an impostor can undoubtedly amuse me more than a profoundly authentic person. But if culture signifies more than this, then it’s worrying. And I believe […]
• Government Motors, Government Airplanes
  Airbus and GM are both getting beaten like a drum by their competition.  At least Airbus admits government interference is part of the problem: But the fact that executives at Airbus concentrated so myopically on the A380 jumbo jet was also a product of politics at parent company EADS, where the French and German governments […]
• Turn, Turn to the Anglosphere
  Conservative MP Dan Hannan lays out the reasons why Britain shouldn’t fear leaving the EU if a new relationship can’t be negotiated.  Where it’s liable to stick? Hardest of all is the issue of the single market. Almost everyone agrees that Britain should remain part of a European free trade area. The trouble is that […]
• Calibrating The Messaging
  The Diplomat takes us through the problems in calibrating your rhetoric to signal just the right level of commitment to both friends and enemies. Messaging with adversaries can be just as fraught with problems.  Robert Dreyfuss’ recent post on how the United States and Iran managed to avoid a fracas over an air combat scrum in the Gulf […]
• 20 Breathtaking Examples of Winter Landscape Photography
  Yes, it’s cold.  But without winter, we’d never get shots like this: Go look at the rest.
• The Fiscal Cliff Deal From Overseas
  Mostly, and understanding that not much has really been resolved, and the President, like it or not (not), and despite promises that he’s “not gonna play that game again,” will have to negotiate with Congress over spending. Britain’s The Commentator: Megaphone politics doesn’t work and Obama should know this. Or at least he would if he […]
• Death Panels and CLASS
  Controlling only the House, Republicans will, for a little while at least, have to be satisfied with rear-guard actions against Obamacare, at least at the federal level.  But there is some small good news on that front. First, the CLASS Act, which was sold as reducing the deficit but would have ended up increasing it, […]