If, in January 2015, someone had asked me if I could imagine that, in November 2024, the American people would be ready to re-elect as president a man who, on losing his first attempt at re-election in 2020 had summoned a mob on January 6, 2021 with the express purpose of pressuring the U.S. Congress…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Jeff Bezos thinks you’re stupid
Jeff Bezos, shown here with his lovely fiancé Lauren Sánchez, clearly has bigger things on his mind than the freedom of the press, and, really, who can blame him? Jeff, who, his intimates say, prefers to be addressed as “Hef”, also has to think about things like, well, his space program “Blue Origin”—which, unlike, say,…
A Trump victory in November will usher in a period of overt lawlessness at the national level without parallel in our history
As you may have heard, Amazon Chief and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has decided to pull an Elon Musk and grab ankles for the pleasure of his all-conquering Jefe, El Donaldo, even before Trump is in the White House. Because after Trump is in the White House, he’s going to remember, all too well,…
Why Harris is struggling: Joe Biden’s record
Kamala Harris came out of the gate like gangbusters, but now she’s slowed to an indifferent cantor. What’s the deal? The deal is, largely, the same as Hubert Humphrey’s, Al Gore’s, and Hillary Clinton’s: they can’t run away from their president’s record. Now, it’s easy to say that Joe was the victim of circumstance, though…
Lawrence Freedman and Eliot Cohen: The Silence of Two Very Black Pots
Lawrence Freedman—or “Sir Lawrence” as they call him at Kings College in London, where he is Emeritus Professor of War Studies—has an interesting blog, “Comment Is Freed”, and an interesting post at that blog, Assessing the Assessors What did analysts get wrong about the Russian invasion?, which considers a recent paper, The Russia-Ukraine War: A…
Samantha Power, powerless in Gaza
One would have to be cynical indeed—and I am not such—to enjoy the dilemma of Samantha Power, who once advocated U.S. intervention to avert whatever even looked like genocide at the drop of a hat, and who is now, as head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, presiding over what looks an awful lot…
The New Yorker disgraces itself with its disgusting hit piece on Ta-Nehisi Coates, accused of, you know, TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT ISRAEL!
Break out the black crepe and send for the undertaker, folks. The New Yorker just committed journalistic suicide with its publication of “Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Temptations of Narrative”, staff writer Parul Sehgal’s pathetically dishonest pseudo-takedown of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “shocking” (and shockingly accurate) description of Israeli apartheid directed at Palestinians contained in his new book…
Jack Goldsmith is an honorable man. ALLEGEDLY!
Yes, Jack Goldsmith, probably my absolute favorite mushmouth, phony baloney, “evenhanded” Harvard law professor, is at it again, with a major decepticon offering via the ever-gullible New York Times, Jack Smith and Robert Hur Are the Latest Examples of a Failed Institution, in which he pretends that he’s mad at the Department of Justice’s “special…
Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” Q: How would it be if smart girls ruled the world? A: Not so hot!
Mattel’s legendary high fashion gal on the go Barbie is pushing 65. Most of the jokes in Greta Gerwig’s monster, monster hit of the same name have a similar vintage. Seriously, is there a single gag in this movie that couldn’t have appeared on Saturday Night Live back in 1975? But the monster success of…
Oppenheimer? Meh!
Two thirds of the way through Oppenheimer, I asked myself “Why did Christopher Nolan make this picture?” Because, except for a few cheesy nits, which I will most assuredly pick later, what we have gotten, about two hours in, is essentially a pseudo documentary, a laboriously accurate, $100 million reconstruction of the events leading up…