Ferrari Launches F60 America In Beverly Hills, Auctions First 458 Speciale A For Charity | Oct 13, 2014

First Ferrari 458 Speciale A charity auction in Beverly Hills, California.

Ferrari marked 60 years of sales in the U.S. on Saturday night with a star-studded event at Beverly Hills City Hall. The famous building was bathed in red and featured a giant Prancing Horse logo on its facade, and out front was parked the first of 10 F60 America supercars that Ferrari is building to celebrate the milestone.

Beverly Hills mayor Lili Bosse opened the evening and was joined by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles chairman John Elkann as well as FCA CEO and new Ferrari chairman Sergio Marchionne. Also in attendance were Ferrari CEO Amedeo Felisa and Enzo Ferrari’s son and current Ferrari vice chairman Piero Ferrari. Noticeably absent was longstanding Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo, whose last day with the automaker was on Sunday.

Some of the celebrities on hand included singer Mary J. Blige, actress Megan Fox, director Michael Mann and racing drivers Derek Hill (son of Phil Hill) and Dan Gurney.

For automotive fans, the F60 America was easily the biggest star, however. It’s a roofless car based on the bones of the F12 Berlinetta and only ten examples are destined to be built, all of them already sold to 10 of Ferrari’s most loyal customers within the U.S. This first example features the famous blue and white livery of the North American Racing Team.

Also on show was the new 458 Speciale A, whose production will be limited to just 499 units. The car is essentially the convertible version of last year’s 458 Speciale and the rights to the very first car were auctioned at Saturday’s night gala event, fetching $900,000 once the hammer dropped. All proceeds from the sale will go to help Daybreak, a charity organization that aims to advance research towards a cure for rare genetic diseases.

via Motor Authority

The famous building was bathed in red and featured a giant Prancing Horse logo on its facade

Out front was parked the first of 10 F60 America supercars that Ferrari is building to celebrate.

Dallas Nurse Tests Positive for Ebola | October 12, 2014

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A Dallas health worker who helped treat the Liberian man who died of Ebola last week has tested positive for the virus, according to state health officials. “We knew a second case could be a reality, and we’ve been preparing for this possibility,” said Dr. David Lakey, the Texas health commissioner. “We are broadening our team in Dallas and working with extreme diligence to prevent further spread.”

The identity of the worker was not disclosed, though CNN confirmed she is a female nurse working at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died last week. The nurse, who is in stable condition, was isolated on Friday night when she reported a low-grade fever.

via The Daily Beast

America has become more racist since Obama was elected but that doesn’t mean EVERY injustice is down to race | By Piers Morgan for MailOnline | Oct 10, 2014

Some have claimed that having Barack Obama in the White House means that racism is dead

White attorney stops police arrest of innocent black man’ screamed the headlines this morning.

Here we go again, I thought.

Yet another inflammatory case involving white American cops racially profiling black people and acting inappropriately.

This seemed a particularly ugly example. The man concerned, Dennis Stucky, is 64, disabled and a well-known local handy man who’s lived in the neighbourhood of Foxhall Cresecent, Washington for 30 years.

The white attorney, Jody Westby – who knew Mr Stucky and had previously employed him – raced out of her house to confront the two police officers arresting him and demanded to know what the hell they were doing.

‘We have a burglar alarm,’ one officer replied, ‘he’s coming with bags.’

It turned out the incident had occurred nearly a mile away in a completely different neighborhood.

Furthermore, there was in fact no burglary at all. The home owner concerned had accidentally keyed in the wrong number to his garage, setting of the alarm.

So an innocent black man minding his own business was being arrested on suspicion of committing a burglary that never even happened.

All captured on video by another neighbor.

Outrageous!

But here’s the twist…

Both the arresting officers were black themselves.

My cynical old news hound eyes bulged wide at that revelation.

Everything I had presumed about this story just changed dramatically.

These weren’t racist cops, they were just bad, lazy cops.

Now, let’s consider this story in a different way.

What if the police had been white?

Then, I strongly suspect all hell would have broken loose. Mr Stucky would have become a cause celebre, feted by black activists and liberal media as a racially profiled victim abused by ‘racist’ cops.

And what if the cops had been white and the heroine attorney had been black?

As Washington Post columnist Clinton Yates points out, the two black officers show Mrs Westby, a white, educated woman, ‘an incredible amount of leeway and deference’. He adds: ‘She’s pointing her fingers and gesturing toward the car window. That’s the type of behaviour that coming from many other people would be considered dangerous, threatening or violent in some way.’

He’s absolutely right. There has been a spate of incidents recently that unfortunately show exactly what some white American policemen do when faced with black people behaving in what they perceive to be a ‘dangerous, threatening or violent’ way.

Three happened within a few miles of each other in the last month alone:

Unarmed black teenager Michael Brown shot dead by a white cop in Ferguson, Missouri.

Young black shoplifter Kajieme Powell shot dead by two white cops in St Louis, Missouri after stealing two energy drinks from a store and urging them to ‘Shoot me! Shoot me!’

This week, black teen Vonderrit D. Myers, 18, shot dead by a white cop in St Louis. Police chiefs claim he had a gun, his family insist he was only brandishing a sandwich. Shades of George Zimmerman gunning down 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was armed only with a bag of skittles.

In another dreadful episode recently, a white cop in South Carolina shot an unarmed black man called Levar Jones at a gas station just outside Columbia.

The video is absolutely shocking. The cop challenges Mr Jones for a highly spurious alleged ‘seat belt violation’ and then demands he show him his driver license. As Mr Jones slowly turns back to his truck to get the papers, the cop becomes hysterical, repeatedly screams ‘GET OUT OF THE CAR!’ and then opens fire.

‘What did I do, sir? Why did you shoot me?’ cries Mr Jones as he lies on the ground, wounded. (He survived, thankfully).

To which the obvious conclusion, I’m afraid, is that you were shot because you were black and therefore inherently suspicious, Mr Jones.

A fascinating poll published on Wednesday detailed the huge disparity between the way whites and blacks view race issues.

Just 16 per cent of whites believe there is a ‘lot’ of discrimination in America today – compared to 56 per cent of blacks.

Incredibly, white perceptions of anti-black bias have plummeted to the point where many think anti-white bias is a bigger problem.

A plainly ludicrous sentiment. Blacks in America remain the most impoverished, poorly-educated, imprisoned and discriminated-against section of society. To pretend otherwise is to be seriously deluded.

However, it’s also an incontrovertible truth that the place where most young black Americans are shot dead is Chicago – and the vast majority are killed by other young black Americans, in the ongoing gang wars that shame that city.

My belief is that America remains a racial tinderbox. Many people assumed Barack Obama’s ascent to the highest office in the land meant the end of racism in the United States.

‘How could we elect a black president if we’re still racist?’ was the logic.

But if anything, I’d argue that America is now more racist than it was before Obama was elected.

Or at the very least, the angry racist minority (but still many millions of people) is more vocal – enraged by the whole notion of a black man living at the White House.

Having said that, America is clearly massively less racist than it was 40 years ago. It has come a long way, very fast.

What is desperately needed now is a sustained period of calm, rational reaction on all sides to the myriad incidents that occur on a daily basis in the United States where race might be seen as an issue, even where it isn’t.

I was all ready to explode with indignation over the treatment of Dennis Stucky.

It still angers me, but not as much as it would have done if those cops had been white.

That is obviously an inexcusable shift in emotion on my part. But it’s the inevitable consequence of America’s tendency to view everything through the prism of race.

Ugly: Police in Washington D.C. stopped a black, disabled man – Dennis Stucky – over a burglary

Jody Westby – a local attorney who knew the police’s actions were preposterous – stepped in.

Complication: Had the officers been white this would have been another inflammatory case of race.

Police in St Louis, Missouri, take aim at Kajieme Powell, who had shouted ‘shoot me!’ at officers

Mr Powell was shot 12 times – and officers handcuffed his dead body after he had fallen

Video Captures NYPD Beating Surrendering, Unarmed Teen During Marijuana Arrest | By Ben Mathis-Lilley | OCT. 7 2014

This video captures NY police beating a surrendering, unarmed teen during a marijuana arrest

A video uncovered by the DNAinfo news site captures an unarmed 16-year-old being hit in the face with a gun by an NYPD officer after raising his hands to surrender during a marijuana arrest. The teen, Kahreem Tribble, was accused of possessing “17 small bags of marijuana” and disorderly conduct. In the video, he can be seen running before stopping and turning around to face officer Tyrane Isaac, who throws a punch at him. Another officer, David Afanador, then arrives with his gun drawn and pointed at Tribble before hitting him in the face with it. After a few moments, Isaac punches Tribble again. Afanador then returns to the scene with a canvas bag—the bag that Tribble was allegedly using to carry marijuana—and hits Tribble in the face with it.

The footage, from Aug. 29, appears to be from a surveillance camera attached to a nearby storefront.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/10/07/nypd_beating_video_teenager_surrendering_during_marijuana_arrest_is_attacked.html?wpsrc=fol_tw

via Slate

The Isis of biological agents?’: CNN is asking the stupid Ebola questions | By CHRISTOPHER HOOTON | October 7, 2014

The Isis of biological agents?’: CNN is asking the stupid Ebola questions

On US rolling news, Ebola has to be the something of something.

Tuesday 07 October 2014
Zombies… Akon in a bubble… the Ebola outbreak has been riddled with misinformation, and though the situation is very serious, rolling news stations like CNN and Fox News aren’t helping by trying to contextualise the pandemic with comparisons to other disasters.

Is Ebola the MH370 of diseases? The Isis of infections? The Voldermort of viruses? These are the types of questions being blasted across the bottom of the screen in capital letters during discussion segments this week, most of the time drowning the interviewee expert’s answer that “No, no it isn’t.”

“Does that mean that it is that deadly, that dangerous or just that it needs to be treated with the same kind of strategy?” CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield asked yesterday.

The chances are if a highly effective Ebola treatment is discovered it won’t be by relentlessly bombing the virus, making stern public addresses or winning over the hearts and minds of endothelial cells.

VIDEO

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-isis-of-biological-agents-cnn-is-asking-the-stupid-ebola-questions-9779584.html

via Independent

First case of contracting Ebola outside Africa | By Ben Brumfield and Josh Levs, CNN

(CNN) – A nurse’s assistant in Spain is the first person known to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa in the current outbreak.

Spanish Health Minister Ana Mato announced Monday that a test confirmed the assistant has the virus.

The woman had helped treat a Spanish missionary and a Spanish priest, both of whom had contracted Ebola in West Africa.

Both died after returning to Spain.

Health officials said she developed symptoms on September 30. She was hospitalized Sunday.

An investigation is under way to find everyone she may have had contact with while contagious. So far, there are no other known cases.

She was one of about 30 health professionals in Spain who helped to treat the Ebola patients.

The news came amid growing fears in the United States that the disease could spread.

Texas Gov.: Quarantines at borders

To avoid an outbreak, the federal government should start enhanced screening and quarantines at borders, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Monday.

New York Is Cataloging, and Returning, Bloody Relics of 1971 Attica Assault | By SAM ROBERTS | OCTOBER 5, 2014

Inmates of Attica state prison voicing their demands in 1971.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Forty-three years later, it remains a grisly benchmark: Aside from the Indian massacres of the late 19th century and an infamous 1921 race riot in Tulsa, the State Police assault that quelled the four-day uprising at Attica prison in upstate New York in 1971 was, investigators concluded, “the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War.”

When it ended, 10 correction officers and civilian employees and 33 prisoners were dead — all but one guard and three inmates killed in what a prosecutor branded a wanton “turkey shoot” by state troopers.

Prosecutions stemming from the uprising were resolved long ago; scores of inmates and one state trooper were charged. Civil suits by relatives of the dead and injured were settled (the state paid $12 million, including legal fees, to families of the inmates, and another $12 million to families of prison employees).

But even after more than four decades, the scars have never healed.

This year, state officials finally began cataloging the bloodstained uniforms of both guards and inmates, barrels of baseball bats, a homemade cannon, makeshift knives and other ephemera that had been stored in a Quonset hut to determine which were personal belongings that could be returned to the victims’ families, and which other artifacts to ultimately discard or to retain for research or eventual display in the New York State Museum.

In August, property belonging to 12 state employees was identified. Their families were invited privately to Attica on Sept. 13, before the solemn annual public memorial service held to mark the end of the siege.

Eleven of the families accepted the state’s invitation. All but one left with some memento — a bloody or bullet-ridden uniform, a wallet, keys, a thermos, a cap — that the state Department of Correctional Services could establish as having belonged either to an individual or to an unknown colleague. The twelfth family was still considering the state’s offer.

“It was a shock,” recalled Vickie Menz, who discovered a package of personal items belonging to her father, Arthur J. Smith, when she returned to the prison for the memorial. “There was a box of my father’s things, the clothing that he was wearing for the five days he was a hostage. The pants were caked with mud. They hadn’t been laundered.”

Mr. Smith, who had been a guard at Attica for more than two decades, was badly beaten on the first day of the uprising. Then, on the last day, he said he was pushed into a trench that had been dug by the inmates and filled with gasoline. “He did survive, but was beaten so badly on the first day of the riot that he had internal scarring,” Ms. Menz said. He died of cancer in 1995, at 68.

One common goal of state archivists, correction officials and relatives of the former guards and inmates is that what happened at Attica should not be forgotten. The objects collected from the prison yard and cellblocks after the uprising was quelled offer one tangible way of remembering.

“Those pieces of clothing, they’re not pristine, they’re dirty, bloodstained, ripped, have bullet holes in them — it’s not pretty stuff,” said Dee Quinn Miller, whose father, William Quinn, was the only guard killed by the inmates during the uprising (he was severely beaten and died two days later in a hospital). “For the families it’s meaningful, but incredibly difficult. All they want is information and a piece of something.”

The state also plans to return personal items to families of inmates.

“God knows what’s in that stuff,” said Elizabeth M. Fink, lawyer for the Attica Brothers Legal Defense, which represents former inmates and their families. “It’s a record of a big event in American history. It’s also their lives.”

Archivists turned over about 400 objects to the state’s correction department, mostly those identified as having belonged to guards or inmates. Another 1,700 are described as “general contraband,” including weapons fashioned from sports equipment, the typed first page of the prisoners’ original manifesto and the key to the prison’s front gate, which was found on a dead inmate.

“These are enormously significant objects embedded with a story,” said Mark Schaming, director of the New York State Museum in Albany. “They help tell the story of this terrible event.”

He hopes to eventually open the collection to researchers and possibly mount an exhibition.

Correction officials said that Acting Commissioner Anthony J. Annucci, who attended the annual memorial this year, was the highest ranking member of the department to have done so.

“Contrary to popular belief, time does not heal all wounds,” Mr. Annucci said. “There are certain wounds and certain scars that just run too deep to ever completely heal, regardless of how much time has elapsed although those events occurred many years ago.”

For the time being, Ms. Menz is keeping her father’s uniform in her living room in the wooden box prison officials presented to her last month, deciding whether to share it with her siblings or to donate it to a museum.

“I’ve gone back every year,” she said, of the memorial service. “Going and being part of the group, as hard as it was, brought comfort and I guess I feel that it’s my duty to my father to go.”

“After my father was released, state investigators came to the house and he gave them a statement,” she added. “He told his family, ‘I want you all to read this and we will discuss it and we will never discuss it again.’ And we never did,” she said. “It was so long ago, but I take it as my mission to keep educating people.”

via The New York Times

Vickie Smith Menz holding the uniform worn by her late father, Arthur Smith, an Attica guard

Interactive Feature | The Times’s Coverage of the Attica Prison Revolt in 1971

Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock, first female pilot to circle globe, dies at 88 | Oct 1, 2014

Mock flew her single-engine Cessna 180 “Spirit of Columbus” 37,000 kilometres in 29-plus days.

CINCINNATI: The first female pilot to fly solo around the world has died. Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock was 88.

Mock’s grandson, Chris Flocken, said today that she died at her home in Quincy, Florida, on yesterday after being in failing health for months.

Mock flew her single-engine Cessna 180 “Spirit of Columbus” 23,000 miles (37,000 kilometres) in 29-plus days before landing in Ohio’s capital city on April 17, 1964.

On her trip, she made stops in Casablanca, Cairo and Calcutta. Dubbed “the flying housewife” at the time, the native of Newark, Ohio, was a suburban mother of three but also an experienced pilot who studied aeronautical engineering at Ohio State University.

A life-sized statue of Mock was unveiled in April at Port Columbus airport.

AP

The focus on first US Ebola case shows how cheaply we value African lives | By Owen Jones | Wednesday 1 October 2014

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo: Reuters

The sad reality is that African victims continue to suffer an excruciating death, while westerners are flown out, treated and become near-celebrities

The life of a westerner is judged to be of greater worth than that of a black African – and by a number of factors, too. That it’s such a statement of the obvious, rendered glib, met with an instinctive “Well, duh”, simply underlines the point. And so it is unsurprising that the case of Ebola in the US should attract headlines. We do not know yet whether the patient is a US citizen – but the widespread media attention is due to the threat being transported to US soil and therefore putting westerners at risk.

That is not to belittle the suffering of the victim, and I hope the treatment that has been successful with the westerners who contracted the virus returns them to good health. But in due course, we will undoubtedly learn more personal details about this victim treated in a Dallas hospital than we know about the 3,000-plus Africans who have so far perished.

When aid workers have succumbed to Ebola, they have been invariably flown out and given ZMapp, an experimental drug that seems to have saved their lives. British nurse William Pooley is one and – having been flown out and saved – he wants to return. But this treatment is denied to Africans dying from an agonising hemorrhagic fever, which leaves victims bleeding on both the outside and the inside.

One defence of this practice is straightforward. The safety and effectiveness of ZMapp has not been proven through clinical trials. For westerners to start using such a drug on African victims – with consequences we cannot be entirely confident about – would risk claims that pharmaceutical companies are using Liberians and Sierra Leoneans as experimental fodder. But it has, after all, already been judged to be worth using on westerners. No wonder human rights activists in Africa are saying that it proves that “the life of an African is less valuable”.

My colleague Joseph Harker wrote two weeks ago about his brother-in-law’s sister, Olivet Buck, a Sierra Leonean doctor risking her life to help the dying. When she contracted the disease, a campaign was mounted to evacuate her to Germany where a hospital in Hamburg was ready to take her. But the World Health Organisation refused to fund such a lifesaving move, and Dr Buck died.

According to Médecins Sans Frontières, the western response has been “lethally inadequate”. But you can be sure that if such an epidemic had broken out in, say, Chicago, Paris or Rome, every possible resource available to the western medical world would be thrown at the problem.

But instead the western response too often has been “what about us?”. The Bloomberg Businessweek carries an alarmist Ebola Is Coming front cover. This is a nonsense. Ebola is a disease of poverty. It is very difficult to spread, and depends on direct contact with the bodily fluids of the infected, rather than being an airborne (and thus catastrophic) illness. If Liberia had a functioning public health system, the epidemic would be shut down. It needs trained health workers, isolation wards and protective gear to combat it – infrastructure that, in our grossly unequal world, simply is not there in a countries like Liberia or Sierra Leone. In Nigeria and Senegal, where there is a far more effective public health system, the countries appear to have put a stop to the onward march of Ebola. The disease has no real chance of spreading in western countries, because any victims would be quickly isolated and treated.

The sad reality is that African victims will continue to suffer an excruciating death, denied of basic dignity, drowning in their own fluids. As they do so, they will remain nameless and forgotten, except to their forever mourning relatives. Westerners, on the other hand, will be flown out, treated and become near-celebrities. Perhaps some are resigned to such a disparity, believing that this is the inevitable way of the world. I tend to differ: it is perverse, and it is unjust.

via Guardian

America’s Foreign Policy Needs a Shakeup | By Charles Kenny | September 29, 2014

A café customer in Beirut watches Barack Obama’s 2009 speech. Photo: by Hussein Malla/AP Photo

In June, 2009, President Obama gave a speech at Egypt’s Cairo University titled “A New Beginning.” He reaffirmed Americas’ insoluble bond with Israel but called for partnership between Islamic countries and the U.S.  And he promised “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.” In March of the same year Hillary Clinton met with Russia’s foreign minister and brought along a ‘reset button’ to emphasize relations between the two countries were about to get a lot better.

Five years later, the hopes for a new beginning look slim.  Tensions in the former USSR and the Middle East are (at least) as high as they were at the end of the Bush Administration. Pew Research polling suggests that the percentage of Russians who have a favorable view of the United States fell from 46 percent in 2008 to 23 percent in 2014.  The percentage of Egyptians who had favorable views of America did rise from 22 percent to 27 percent between 2008 and 2009 when Obama gave his speech, but are now at a historic low of 10 percent.  U.S. popularity in Jordan, Lebanon and Pakistan has also fallen since the last days of the Bush presidency.  By and large, the countries that have long disliked America still do.

This shouldn’t be all that surprising. Every President, Obama included, comes into office promising new beginnings and policy resets. More often than not, however, those hopes remain unrealized by the time they leave office. Far more than in domestic policy, continuity is the norm when it comes to national-security issues. Yet while a certain amount of caution is inevitable and even desirable, it’s debatable whether simply conducting business as usual really serves America’s long-term interests.

To be fair, the President’s ability to chart a new course have been limited first and foremost by events on the ground. Russia’s occupation of Crimea and continued intervention in eastern Ukraine constitutes an egregious violation of international law; it was hardly likely that the ‘reset’ with Russia–already on life support by that point– could survive under the circumstances. The rise of ISIL in Iraq and Syria, meanwhile, demanded a U.S. response. And it’s not the most straightforward moment to be brokering a deal between Palestinians and Israelis.

But options for a new start were also limited by both U.S. popular opinion and Beltway groupthink. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs surveys Americans on their attitudes towards foreign policy on questions like the use of force, military dominance, diplomacy and economic assistance. The survey team reports “the most striking finding of the 2014 Chicago Council Survey is the essential stability of American attitudes toward international engagement, which have not changed all that much since the Council conducted its first public opinion survey 40 years ago.”   The Council asks Americans to rate their feelings towards countries on a scale of zero (cold) to 100 (warm). Canada tops out at 79, while North Korea manages a 23. The Palestinian Authority is at 33 (compared to Israel at 59). Russia is at just 36.

Russia’s favorability was higher in 2008, at 47, but favorability of the Palestinian Authority has changed by only one point on a 100 point scale since 2008.  On many of the issues where Obama was hoping to drive a new agenda, popular attitudes just don’t change that fast.

Within the political elite, there has been little pressure from either party to change from foreign policy as usual over the past few years — including the instinctive reaction to lead with military options. Although spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq declined under President Obama, U.S. military expenditure as a percentage of GDP in 2013 was still higher than it was in 2004 and more than 30% higher than in 1999. A Congress keen to cut the budget has also been keen to save the Pentagon.  Opposition to drone attacks, or the recent Syria operation, or pressure to help end violence in Gaza was muted. There’s been limited interest among either Democrats or Republicans to take apart much of the intelligence apparatus put in place over the last decade, despite the outcry from allies over spying on friends.

Perhaps it isn’t surprising that elite foreign policy views are ossified. In surveys of foreign-policy specialists asked to pick most influential thinker in their field, the top three answers are Joseph Nye (77 years old, chaired the National Intelligence Council two decades ago), Samuel Huntington (passed away age 81 in 2008, served on the National Security Council 36 years ago)  and Henry Kissinger (91, served as Secretary of State four decades ago).  When your major thought leaders were all born before the Cold War even began and one of them has been dead for six years, attitudes are going to change slowly.

Business as usual means failure as usual to deal with issues like Palestine and Israel. But it also means trying to fit the problems of the 21st century to a worldview of the 1950s: a constant desire to find a new existential threat to replace Communism (see: Global War on Terror) and view China as the new Soviet Union. Both responses lead to over-reaction that risk making those problems worse.

Again, the relative importance of global threats from climate change to pandemic disease has grown over the past 30 years, but the Cold War mindset helps explain why the foreign policy establishment has been so flat-footed in its response to rising temperatures and the Ebola outbreak–these problems don’t fit the model. Meanwhile, the risk of major global armed conflict has been reduced, but we’ve let the civilian parts of our foreign policy apparatus atrophy so badly that the panicked response to Ebola, when it finally came, could only be to send in the troops.

And U.S. influence, while still considerable, is waning as developing countries grow. But a dated view of our power means the U.S. is only willing to work with international organizations when they do exactly what we want. Until the foreign policy establishment and the American people accept that the world has changed, even an Imperial President will have limited room to make the right choices abroad.

Bloomberg Businessweek