The "Consequentialist"

Ryan Lizza, one of my favorite political writers, has an expose in the New Yorker on Obama's foreign policy in light of the recent "Arab Awakening." It really draws out the friction between the realist and idealist factions in Obama's administration (and in Obama's own mind) and on Obama's somewhat strained and haphazard handling of Mubarek and Tunisia and Lybia.

Oh yeah - and this is the article where, the much decried on the right, "leading from behind" comes from.

Where the Buffalo Roam

(via Syd O) Mother Jones reports on American Prairie Foundation's efforts to restore thousands of acres in the de-populated plains back to Bison Range. The last half page describes the dilemma - and the contradictions - extremely thoughtfully.

Frank nods as he chews through a forkful of pasta. "I am absolutely in awe of the guy," he proclaims, shifting into enthusiast mode. "An older pioneer type who you don't see in the Berkshires. I am fascinated by that."

[ ]

I tell her about the view of the prairie from the top of a buffalo jump near the APF's base camp, where native hunters stampeded short-sighted bison off a sheer 150-foot cliff. The scene of waving grass, exposed riverbeds, and rolling green land below seemed iconic, like something drawn from the collective human unconscious, I add, as Deborah nods.

Part of the paradox of our appreciation of nature is that we put ourselves in the landscape even as we want to remove ourselves from it, I suggest. Out on the prairie, shadows of passing clouds move across the open spaces just as the landscape itself is shadowed by the human presence, light but always visible in the man-made scars on a nearby rock—perhaps recording a bison kill—or the outlines of a vanished corral.

Removing ranchers from the land to which they have given their lives is no less a deliberate and destructive human act than exterminating bison. An empty landscape that reminds us of the origins of our species is no less a reflection of human imagination and priorities than a ranch. The imagined past is the same as the imagined future. Both are figments of our imagination. The question is, which do we value more?

What would Roderick Nash say?

Boehner Caught in the Middle - for the foreseeable future

Heilemann describes how Boehner and is caught between a rock and the Tea Party on the budget standoff, and things aren't going to get better anytime soon.