Barack Obama and the Ministry o’ Truth Oy vey, mon president! In a recent interview with the BBC former President Barack “if you like your health care plan you can keep it” Obama complains about the lack of truthiness currently available in the USA: There are millions of people who subscribed to the notion that…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Political Notes From All Over
Steven Pearlstein: Even-handed or Empty-Headed? I report, you decide. In a recent column, WashPost business dude Steven Pearlstein says what I have been saying about the Republican Party: …[B]roach-no-compromise obstructionism has been the strategy of congressional Republicans since the mid-1990s. Since then, two Republican House speakers have been run out of town for their lack…
Talia Rubinstein—“Think of One”
Up for some serious recorder? I thought you were. Posted by Talia
Yes, Donald Trump is destroying American democracy and the Republican Party is helping. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
Only eight years ago—how time flies!—Republicans were actually embarrassed by the fact that since 1988 their nominee for president had won more votes than his opponent only once, compared to five second-place finishes. Now if you ask a Republican “strategist” about the fact that it’s now one out of eight, he’ll explain to you genially…
Happy Days Are Here Again! Comparatively speaking, I mean.
Anyone reading this under—well, under fifty, I’m afraid—may not get the reference, to the once famous Democratic victory song, which goes back to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, but getting Donald Trump out of the White House is sweet indeed, though taking the 2020 election results as a whole, it’s rather like sitting down to eat…
Today the Struggle Begins, Part II
Okay, I was a little overly pessimistic yesterday. Uncle Joe is, I don’t know, 60% of the way to the White House? 75%? 85%? So that’s better. Everything else, not so much. Yes, getting Trump out of the White House will be a staggering improvement, but other than that, it was Democratic failure all the…
Today the Struggle Begins
The odds for a Biden victory do not look good. Possibly the Democrats will win the Senate. Probably they gain strength in the House. Our long national nightmare just got longer. Obviously, we cannot surrender to Trumpism. We have to endure, so that, eventually, when the emotions that brought Trump to power exhaust themselves, the…
Beirut Jazz Vocal Ensemble—“Strollin’” (Charles Mingus) and “Blue Monk”
Donna Khalife, Marita Sbeih, Tagreed Darghouth, Raghda Allouche, Roya Semaan, Naima Yazbek, Lama Kabbanji, Nisrine Yassine, and Lama Abou Ali, with Donna also supplying the piano. Frankly, their take on “Strollin’” strikes me as a little flat-footed, but their “Blue Monk” is quite sprightly. Anyone doing bop vocals in Lebanon in 2017 is an inspiration…
Good news! (Sort of) Other countries have been even more f*cked up than we are!
Big consolation, n’est-ce pas? Well, at this time of the “Big Wait”, when I am pathetically hoping for a Biden blow-out and even more pathetically trying not to think, really, not to think about anything at all, it is “nice” to think that other nations have, at other times in their history, endured internal distress,…
Has Boss Schumer’s Hour Come Round At Last?
“I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Thus Charles Schumer, senior senator from New York and possible new majority leader of the Senate, to be…