Well, he does. In a recent post, “Trump’s Record on Clemency”, written before the president’s most recent (to date) rogue’s gallery of releases, Mr. Ponnuru acknowledges that, well, the president can do anything he goddamn pleases when it comes to pardons, including pardoning a bunch of murders and corrupt political pals whenever the mood strikes…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Feuds, Zoom, and Italian Food. Oh, and also bullshit. How Politico makes Mitch McConnell’s slimy deal sound cute.
Paul Krugman, not always my favorite knee-jerk liberal, gets it right: Mitch McConnell spent $900 billion to elect two Republican senators from Georgia, but once the election’s decided, won’t spend a dime to help 300+ million Americans, because economic stimulus only makes sense when a Republican president is in office. Politico, to its discredit, weighs…
Woke and Broke: The New York Times wants to destroy the city’s public school system
In today’s editorial, “Reopen Schools, and Reform Them”, the pathetically “correct” New York Times argues that “Scrapping the high-stakes admission tests for New York’s specialized public high schools is long overdue. They severely disadvantage talented Black and Latino students.” A more accurate head would be “Reopen schools, and then destroy middle class support for them,”…
The “Solar Winds” Fraud: Special Hot Air Edition
It’s an ill wind that blows no good, and the latest fake news regarding “Solar Winds”, the Russian super hack that wasn’t, is a good example. It’s just coincidence, I’m sure, that a sudden leak regarding Russian perfidy should emerge just as Joe Biden was taking office. The odds were already roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000 to 1…
It’s My Latest! And It’s My Greatest!
Okay, maybe Alternative Worlds Elvis and Others isn’t my greatest book, but it is my latest, the eleventh, if you’re keeping score, available from Amazon in both ebook and paperback format. Alternative Worlds reaches out to the multiplicity of universes that surround us on all sides, accessible only through the imagination, universes that contain versions…
Monday is Monk’s Day, courtesy of Stéphane Tsapis
And every other day of the week too, thanks to French pianist and composer Stéphane Tsapis, but Mondays are now special because Stéphane is posting videos featuring himself and another performer giving us a new version of some of Monk’s classic tunes. The first installment features violinist Mathias Lévy, performing “Ask Me Now”, “Let’s Cool…
Fake news! Fake news hot off the press from the New York Times! Supplied to you courtesy of Elliot Ackerman
When is a war not a war? In his recent column for the Gray Lady, bearing the highly dubious title “The Afghan War Is Over. Did Anyone Notice?”, Mr. Ackerman, described by the Times as one of the paper’s “contributing opinion writers”, explains it all for you: Afghanistan in 2009 is not Afghanistan in 2020….
The Literary Offenses of William Faulkner
(Author’s note: Easily the greatest piece of literary criticism in American letters is Mark Twain’s “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses”, though I believe Mark might have titled it more euphoniously. My piece takes a much more somber hue than Mark’s, exploring, to be blunt, Faulkner’s frequent failure to free himself emotionally from the limitations of his…
Allstate regrets nothing, not even using Edith Piaf to hustle car insurance to gays
Okay, I’m not saying that all thirty-something dudes with neatly trimmed beards and, you know, fabulous hair, who are good drivers and keep goldfish and live in “charming” houses are gay, but, well, I have my suspicions. But, anyway, what is the deal using “Non, je ne regrette rien”, the theme song of ultimate Greenwich…
Barack Obama, still not getting it after all these years
I confess that I have not read President Obama’s recent memoir, A Promised Land, nor am I likely to, because I have convinced myself that the political pressures on American politicians make it impossible, or at least exceedingly unlikely, for them to ever write anything that resembles an honest book. I would say that this…