Ralph, explaining why things didn’t quite work out the way they should have under Dub-Ya: If the Medicare Part D expansion had been combined the reforms to Medicare the Bush White House originally wanted, if the push Social Security reform hadn’t gone nowhere, and if tax reform hadn’t died along with the rest of Bush’s…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here. “Fuck it. I’m outa here. I did my job.” “It’ll fall when it’s ready to fall. There’s no sense in forcing these things.” “What’s its problem? How should I know? I just chew ‘em, I don’t explain ‘em.” “Damn birches are slower than AOL. I’m going for a swim.” “You wait for…
Two and a half hours of the Roy Hargrove Quintet!
Roy Hargrove -trumpet, Justin Robinson- alto sax, Gerald Clayton – piano Danton Botler – bass, Montez Coleman- drums Posted by “n1ghtprwlr,” which sort of means “nightprowler,” I guess. 1.Commaraderie 2.Style 3.Strasbourg 4.Divine 5.Trust 6.Never let me go 7.Nothing serious 8.Theme 9.Depth 10.Close your eyes 11.A time for love 12.Starmaker 13.Im not so sure 14.Speak low…
Podhoretz Does Disney
Is it always a bad idea to read the Weekly Standard? Well, if you’re unlucky, you may stumble across William Kristol, calling for more world wars, or at least bemoaning the fact that World War I gave mass slaughter a bad name. On the other hand, you may come across John Podhoretz taking a poke…
President Obama: Yes, I am intellectually dishonest and morally corrupt. What’s your point?
If I had all the resources of the National Security Agency and spoke with the tongues of angels and men I’m not sure I could disentangle all the disingenuousities of President Obama’s recent speech promising the end of the NSA’s “Section 215 bulk metadata program as it currently exists.” For starters, I might observe that…
Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers: Why was this book written?
Christopher Clark is no amateur historian. He is a professor of modern history at Cambridge University and author of Iron Kingdom: The rise and downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, among other works. His current bestseller, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914, was acclaimed one of the best books of 2013 by the New…
Fred Kaplan: Getting Gates right
I’ve taken out some, though only some, of my many frustrations over our bloody and pointless war in Afghanistan by frequently ridiculing the columns of Fred Kaplan on the war. Writing for Slate, Kaplan, who has a lot of experience with foreign affairs, slowly metamorphosed from Afghan cheer leader to cautious skeptic to outright disbeliever…
“The Ayatollah’s Disarming Wit”—because what’s funnier than a fatwa!
Roya Hakakian, a producer at 60 Minutes and author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, must be easily amused. Her column in yesterday’s New York Times, “The Ayatollah’s Disarming Wit,” claims that living under Iran’s theocratic regime, “more brutal than the one they overthrew in 1979,” is a barrel of laughs. Those ayatollahs! They’re wacky!…
Nastya Vorovey Trio—“Epistrophy”
Monk’s closing theme, performed by Nastya on guitar, O. Yangurov on bass and S. Kosix on drums. Posted by Igor Trekus
Chris Christie: Fading fat, white hope?
Somewhere along the line, I believe I promised not to make fun of CC’s weight. I also promised myself that I would never use the cheap journalistic trick of justifying a “provocative” headline that’s unlikely to be true simply by tacking a question mark on the end of it. Well, today I feel like wallowing…