History

Most of the criticisms I hear about President Obama's foreign policy generally fall either into the "he is disengaged" category or represent some version of  "he wants to be friends with the world instead of accepting the U.S. superpwer status as a good thing." Those are pretty general, tough. It's possible to think a little more specifically.

Well, duh:

President Obama insists he will not have “boots on the ground” in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but the line between a combat and advisory role is blurry.

Obama plans to send more than 1,600 troops to Iraq as “advisers” to the military, and all of them could find themselves in harm's way.

A few words from the president to commemorate Constitution Day yesterday:

During this 50th anniversary year of the War on Poverty, that effort is being called a "colossal flop" because, 1: it has cost taxpayers a whopping $22 trillion but, 2: around 14 percent of Americans are still poor. In fact, we were doing pretty good at whittling away at poverty and the War on Poverty seemed to have stopped the progress dead.

With the Industrial Revolution came the Great Concentration -- an agglomeration of territories, a centralization of capital and production that propelled the world into a new and prosperous era but also gave rise to the lunatic Marx and all who came after him. Now, with the Communications Revolution, we have the Great Re-Weaving:

I confess to sometimes getting caught up in the just-short-of-hysterical reporting and commentating that seem to be the common practice these days:

I've tried to follow the debate over Scottish independence, honestly I have. But I can't really work up enough enthusiasm to care much one way or the other. But I found this interesting:

The commentariart has had a lot to say about President Obama's apparent newfound toughness about ISIS and what he will or want say in his address to the nation on Wednesday. Guess I'll wait to see what he actually proposes and then what we actually do before I get too worked up one way or the other. I was struck by this, however:

Mollie Hemingay at the Federlist: Why calling Rand Paul an isolationist is and was stupid.

Hey, James Foley was just one guy, so everybody calm down. I mean, let's not start a war over one little beheading: