Al Gore won the presidency in 2000 by almost half a million votes. Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by almost three million. Joe Biden would have won the presidency in 2020 sans COVID-19 by, probably, about six million votes. Yet, in fact, Gore lost to Bush, Hillary lost to Trump, and sans COVID Joe very…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Good News? Are you sure?
Okay, Joe Biden’s in the White House, and that’s GREAT NEWS! But there’s more! One hundred and thirty four civil rights groups have joined the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to send a letter to Congress saying that the U.S. already has plenty of statutes that allow the federal government to address the…
Beegie Adair & The Real Thing—“Rhythm-a-ning”
Pianist Beegie Adair explains the origin of Thelonious Monk’s “Rhythm-a-ning”, one of the endless riffs on the chord changes for George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”. Then she plays both tunes in a sort of medley, sans video, with Roger Spencer on bass and Chris Brown, drums. Check out Beegie here.
Please, Mr. Beinart, try harder
Over at the New York Times, Peter Beinart has a column, “Why Are There So Few Courageous Senators?”, which takes as its text—well, in its first half, anyway—John F. Kennedy’s “famous” book, Profiles in Courage, citing two profiles, “two legendary Southerners, Thomas Hart Benton and Sam Houston, who a century earlier had become pariahs for…
McConnell to Trump: “You weren’t supposed to use me! I was supposed to use you!”
WashPost reporters Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker fill us in on what future historians will undoubtedly refer to as “the Revolt of the Bitches”—the painfully reluctant decision of Vice President Mike Pence not to fulfill President Trump’s demand that his Veep piss all over the U.S. Constitution and unilaterally declare Donald Trump effectively President for…
The Billiard Ball Causality of Francis Fukuyama, Together With Other Considerations
I have recently finished reading Francis Fukuyama’s excellent book, Identity The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, published back in 2018, trying to explain why the world isn’t behaving the way Francis and I think it ought, and not doing a bad job of it at all. I’ve written round and about Dr….
William Barr, very late but apparently wise
Okay, William Barr, perhaps my least favorite attorney, has suddenly surprised me, via a cryptic “statement” to the Associated Press, that the AP, in its story, quotes in fragments—fragments that are, nonetheless quite welcome to the ear. Says the AP Former Attorney General William Barr says President Donald Trump’s conduct as a violent mob of…
The Republican Party Has Its Reward
After kissing Donald Trump’s ass for more than four years, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally noticed his mouth was getting dirty. Said McConnell, shortly before all Hell broke loose: We’re debating a step that has never been taken in American history, whether Congress should overrule the voters and overturn a presidential election. I’ve served…
Andrew McCarthy is shocked, shocked to discover that Donald Trump hath no bottom
Writing more in sorrow than in anger, “The Risky Wager of Betting on Trump”, the National Review’s Andy McCarthy has had it up to here—okay, maybe not all the way up to “here”, but almost all the way—with Donald Trump: Since the election, we’ve had two months of a president publicly insisting the election was…
U.S. Bombing Raids: American War Crimes or Commie Propaganda? Or both?
George Blake, a British spy for the Soviet Union whose information apparently led to the deaths of many operatives for British and American espionage agencies, is dead at 98. Blake, who was employed by the British as a spy, was turned by the Soviets after being captured during the Korean War. But, according to his…