It's the Oil, Stupid, and Two More

In LRB, Jim Holt explains it's the oil, stupid.

Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.

The New Statesman reviews Naomi Klein's latest, Disaster Capitalism.

In fact, human beings consistently and everywhere vote for mixed economies. They want the wealth that markets generate, but they also want them to be counterbalanced by strong government action to make life in a market economy liveable. (Even Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were not permitted by their electorates to tinker with anything but the outer fringes of social regulation and the welfare state.) The right has been unable to accept this reality, and unable to defeat it in democratic elections. So in order to achieve their vision of "pure capitalism, cleansed of all interruptions", they have waited for massive crises - when the population is left reeling and unable to object - to impose their vision.

More speculation on the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe, this one pointing to an oldie and a goodie: brain tumor. More theories on Poe's death here and here.