The Swedish author Henning Mankel who created the "Kurt Wallander" series has written a novel about Africa, where he lived for twenty years. In "The Eye of the Leopard", a young Swede travels to Zambia on a two week trip and stays eighteen years. It is the late 60's, post independence, and the white farmers are carrying on their work in a dangerous and uneasy balance with the Africans. The country is a pressurized tank of steam ready to blow. The Swede takes a "temporary" job as the foreman of a farm but has never managed workers. 

"How should I treat them?", he asks.

"Firmly", the owner says. "The Africans are always looking for your weak point, those moments when you can be talked into something. Give them nothing; find something to complain about the first time they wash your clothes. Even if there's nothing; then they'll know that you make demands...."

It is not hard to imagine bwana Gingrich in the role of the privileged farm owner. Following his quick rise in the polls Gingrich's messages quickly became focused on the degrading "southern strategy" of using coded messages for blacks and minorities to scapegoat them for the nation's ills. The strategy apparently appeals to a large part of the Republican base. "Poor people in the projects don't know about work", "they get their money from drugs", they'd make good janitors if you got them young enough. And of course, their leader, Barack Obama, is the best "food stamp President" we've ever had.

It will be more than a month before we get final, official results of elections to Egypt’s lower house. But even partial results from the first round (runoff voting is still taking place) tell the story: Islamists have won a stunning mandate.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s coalition collected 37 per cent or so of votes, close to what many had predicted. The shocker is that the next-biggest bloc, with a quarter of the votes so far, is that of the Salafists – religious fundamentalists who back a rigid application of sharia.

Newt Gingrich is now the front runner in a discordant Republican primary process as beautiful as angry alligators mating in a swamp or birds fighting over a smeared hamburger wrapper from a fast food dumpster. One might think that troubled times at home and abroad would bring forth American citizens from great traditions of military service, public service, economics, science or notable business careers. Instead Republicans have a field of flawed candidates. If these candidates somehow managed to slip into a conference of distinguished Americans they would be seated at a table by themselves in the corner of the banquet hall fighting over rolls and butter like a flock or voracious grackles. What is the cause of such low brow Republican candidates and a selection process which seems to go against our better nature? Why an ugly bird like Gingrich? 

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased."
- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

On NPR tonight, commentators were saying the $40 billion cut back in the Department of Defense's 2013 budget would require the planning to start soon. Wrong. It will  require immediate actions. Like cancelling contracts next month.

To save $40 billion in 2013 the DOD has got to not buy things. Those not-bought things will be things that were supposed to have been built either under contracts already signed or ones in the late stages of procurement