March 14th, 2014
Galley Friend J.S. points us to this intensely funny piece asking Ezra Klein about whatever happened to the Loose Nuke hunters who were going to be fired because of the Sequester, or debt ceiling, or whatever. (Here’s the Klein explainer where he worries that “The people responsible for tracking down loose nukes will lose their jobs.”) Sample awesome:
Last year, Ezra Klein was among the first to break the news that if there were a ‘sequester’, the first item on the chopping block would be our unheralded crack squad of heroes who Track Down Loose Nukes. . . . [I]f the government budget is ever constrained in any way, you also gotta fire ‘em. Immediately. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, Ezra Klein doesn’t like it, President Obama doesn’t like it, but it’s the law.
Well now fast forward to 2014 and Ezra Klein is forming a new media whatchamacalit with Yggie, or Nate Silver or whoever the hell. Some 19 year olds. I know they all have close cropped brown hair and careful stubble and possibly thin hipster sideburns and glasses and they like Arcade Fire or The Arcade Fire (or is it An Arcade Fire). They are ‘wonks’ because they know how to make graphs on a spreadsheet, as so few people do. And they all, every last one of them, went to the Dalton school followed by Princeton. (Or Middlebury, whatever it’s called).
But I digress. Ezra’s media venture, or possibly app, which at press time I believe is going to be called “Vonk”, is going to explain the news to us. Because how often are you paying attention to the news and you’re reading or hearing the words and you’re like Yes yes, this is all very well and good, but where’s the part that explains what’s being said here? And that’s why there’s Vlok. Every piece of news, every event, will now be helpfully Explained to you, either by some kid who 2 years ago was getting up at 6:45 and grabbing his French horn case to catch the bus to that faraway magnet school, or by Ezra Klein who knows how to Explain what’s what because he apparently cultivated some friendships with and hangs out with some people who work in the White House.
It is to the latter then that I wish to direct our attention. Ezra Klein. He told us about the Loose Nuke Tracker-Downers. He warned us about the constitutional requirement to fire them immediately anytime a projected spent-dollar was eliminated from a budget. Again and again. And for this, we thank him. But we need him again. Because now it occurs to me: it’s been over a year since our Loose Nuke Tracker-Downers were almost fired. That means they’ve been on the job, 24/7, for more than a year. So here’s my question for Ezra Klein, and I sincerely hope he can discover, from his trendy fellow molecular-gastronomy aficionado White House contacts, and then tell to us, the answer to this question:
How many Loose Nukes have been Tracked Down in the past year? At least a ballpark figure please. And then what was done with them once they were Tracked Down?
Nedward March 15, 2014 at 10:58 pm
I begin to wonder, what’s the point of dutifully consuming/enduring so much Journolism In The Public Interest, as an engaged progressive citizen, etc., when my most pressing questions *still* are not addressed: namely, wasn’t “Broken Arrow” technically about an empty quiver? And, forget nukes-gone-wild for a moment, what’s the location of Samantha Mathis’s career? I’m just now finding out there was **another** Punisher movie?? How many of those got loose, or do we bring in IATA/Interpol