Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Months before General David Petraeus resigned as Director of the CIA, an anonymous reader wrote a letter to the New York Times’ Ethicist column complaining about an affair his wife, presumably Paula Broadwell, was having with a “government executive”. In response to the letter, Chuck Klosterman of The Ethicist wrote:

The fact that you’re willing to accept your wife’s infidelity for some greater political good is beyond honorable. In fact, it’s so over-the-top honorable that I’m not sure I believe your motives are real. Part of me wonders why you’re even posing this question, particularly in a column that is printed in The New York Times.

Your dilemma is intriguing, but I don’t see how it’s ambiguous. Your wife is having an affair with a person you happen to respect. Why would that last detail change the way you respond to her cheating? Do you admire this man so much that you haven’t asked your wife why she keeps having sex with him? I halfway suspect you’re writing this letter because you want specific people to read this column and deduce who is involved and what’s really going on behind closed doors (without actually addressing the conflict in person). That’s not ethical, either.

It seems to me Klosterman hit the nail on the head.

I had predicted an electoral landslide for President Obama with a 332-206 win. I had also predicted a popular vote margin for Obama of 51.5% to 48.5% head to head.
How did I do?
With Florida now in Obama’s column, he won with 332-206. So, I hit the electoral result exactly right.
Though some votes are still being counted, the popular [...]

From NBC News First Read:

From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.
Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer [...]

7pm: Polls close in Virginia
7:02pm: Virginia too close to call. Not surprising.
7:10pm: Exit polls: Democrats outpacing Republicans and independents in Virginia.
7:10pm: Romney is toast if Virginia goes blue
7:30pm: Polls close in the big enchilada, Ohio. Too close to call. Again, not surprising at poll closing.
7:38pm: FYI. Usually rural counties come in first in Virginia. So [...]

The Romney campaign has decided to make a last minute push into Pennsylvania and the political scribes are now spinning the story that Pennsylvania, long considered to be leaning Obama, may suddenly be in play since the polls have tightened. This has a number of Democrats nervous. I’m not buying it.
This is what I wrote [...]

It has been a long long time since I’ve written a blog post. However, it’s time to make election predictions. So here goes mine.
I predict that this Tuesday President Barack Obama will be re-elected for a second term. I predict a national popular vote margin of 51.5% to 48.5% for Barack Obama. I predict an [...]

8:58:24 PM: There is a reason Afghanistan is referred to as the graveyard of foreign armies.
9:00:48 PM: Obama gettting ready to thread the needle on Afghan policy.
9:01:19 PM: Any Afghan policy that ignores the Pak military’s incubation of Islamists is destined for failure.
9:02:25 PM: Obama takes the stage at West Point. Here we go…
9:03:37 PM: [...]

The House just reached 218 votes on the final passage of the Health Care Reform bill. Congratulations Madam Speaker for pushing hard to get this done.
Final vote tally is 220-215 as the House passes HR 3962. Well done.

A funny thing happened on the way to the exhibition.
On Sunday, Bangladeshi police descended upon Drik Gallery in Dhaka to prevent the launch of a photo exhibition on Tibet. BDNews24 reports:
Dhaka, Nov 1 (bdnews24.com)—Police prevented Drik Gallery in Dhanmondi from launching an exhibition, titled ‘Into Exile: Tibet 1949 – 2009′, on Sunday.
The exhibition was organised [...]

[Click image to see all photos from the conference]
Last Sunday I attended a conference on the Bangladeshi Genocide. It was organized by the Human Rights Institute and the Bangladesh Genocide Study Group at Kean University. This was the second such conference at Kean. The first one, which I also attended, was held in December 2007.
The [...]