FORMER GOP OFFICIAL ADVOCATES DEATHS OF CHILDREN. Yes, I'm spinning, but now that I have your attention ... The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations has been holding a series of presentations on how the rest of the world views the United States. Wednesday's speaker was former trade negotiator Clyde Prestowitz, now of the Economic Strategy Institute, working off of his new book, Rogue Nation. I will have some substantive things to say about the book, and the others I've purchased during this series of presentations, once I've finished it (there was too much excitement on tonight's train to get very far) but I did get through his chapter on energy dependence, which is much too snarky about sport utility vehicles and the "Bubbas" who drive them, and far too willing to buy the argument that U.S. driving habits are funding the House of Saud (that, when he noted in the summation of his talk that the Europeans import a lot more oil from Araby, is a bit much) and he repeats the National City Lines canard as part of the usual "why can't we have Euro-style mass transit" riff. As there does appear to be some stuff of substance in the book, you might not want to judge all of it by its transportation and energy errors.

Mr. Prestowitz made a statement that I've heard from a few others: the United States is now turning its back on institutions it created to serve its own interests (referring to the United Nations, the North Atlantic alliance, and, the European Union, begotten of the Marshall Plan.) That argument falls a bit flat. This weblog has been updated intermittently, as I have been working on a railroad in the basement. I built some trackbed and laid some tracks, only to discover that cars came uncoupled on a vertical curve. I immediately tore up that trackbed and reprofiled it. Perhaps international treaties ought not be abandoned for small flaws, but they ought not be held onto past any usefulness.