In the past I’ve had the occasion to suggest that Steve Martin no longer wants to get laughs, or at least doesn’t want to get laughs if it means he has to work at it. Well, these days Steve is touring with a blue grass band, the Steep Canyon Rangers, and he’s not phoning it…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Courtly Court: The Supremes make the tough decisions so we don’t have to
Politics are messy, aren’t they? And so are politicians. They’ll vote for feel-good legislation like the Voting Rights Act and the Defense of Marriage Act despite the many adverse and unfair impacts of the legislation because it helps them win elections. And then they’re saved from having to undo the messes they’ve made because the…
Peggy Noonan 2013—colder, sordider, and stupider than ever you could imagine
The Republicans never seem to hit bottom. Latest in the hit parade of Republican folly is the “theory,” earnestly advanced by Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute and promoted in a fury by Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, that the 2012 election was stolen from the Republicans by those light-fingered liberals at…
Mitch McConnell, Absolute Asshole
For a glimpse at DC ego in action, check out Kentucky Sen. Mitch “Mitch the Bitch” McConnell berate, belittle, and bedrabble AEI policy nerd Norman Ornstein for having the temerity to ask the senior senator from the Bluegrass State, aka “the Chinless Wonder,” a question he didn’t want to answer. I suppose that a right-wing…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here. “Ever since Bloomberg turned over the whole ‘Beautify New York’ campaign to Anna Wintour, things have been in high gear. And I mean high!” “I understand the venial sinners get off in Weehawken.” “Well, they’re finally cracking down on the ‘too dumb for New York, too ugly for LA’ crowd. No, it…
Opinion or Advertising? The Times’ lazy red pencil
A dude named Lowell G. McAdam has an opinion piece in the New York Times today praising the “regulatory restraint” practiced right here in the U.S.A. regarding broadband access to the Internet, contrasting it with the mort main of the regulatory state in Europe. I’m quite willing to believe that everything in Mr. McAdam’s piece…
Thank you, Orson Welles!
The recent death of the late James Gandofini makes a convenient if tasteless springboard to a wonderful rap from the not so recently late Orson Welles that appeared this week in New York magazine, reproducing conversations Orson had with Henry Jaglom back in the early eighties, promoting Jaglom’s soon to be published book containing more…
“Why Are Corporate Titans So Clueless at Politics?” How about “Why Are Corporate Titans So Clueless at Economics?”?
Over at Bloomberg, Christopher Flavelle asks the excellent question “Why Are Corporate Titans So Clueless at Politics?” Chris covered a recent Business Roundtable shindig, and here’s what he has to say: The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of the largest U.S. companies, held a lunch for reporters this week on what’s wrong…
Obama, losing credibility in order to gain it
“He kept us out of Syria!” sounds like faint praise indeed for an American president, but it’s an encomium one can no longer utter in good conscience regarding Barack “the Disappointer” Obama. The only pleasure one can take in this latest administration folly—and it’s grim indeed—is how gracelessly the administration has gone about announcing and…
Fat Republican Congressman from Texas talks like a fat Republican Congressman from Texas with his hand between his legs
Right-wing Texas lard-butt Rep. Michael Burgess raises self-parody to a new level by explaining why fetuses are just like us: “Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” said Burgess, a former OB/GYN. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their…