That seems to be the question. Reason’s Jacob Sullum serves up an interesting summary of a recent roundtable discussion at the New York Times magazine, “Restarting America Means People Will Die. So When Do We Do It?”, pointing out that crippling the entire U.S. economy and blighting the lives of tens of millions of young…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Maine Senator Susan Collins is very, very stupid
At first I thought I would come up with something witty for this head, you know, the way I usually do, but then I figured, why should I bust my ass for the likes of Susan “Dumb Little Bitch from Maine” Collins? Amirite or Amirite? Back in the day, a fairly recent day, Susan said…
Are we having fun yet? Why living at the end of history has become the living end
When I went to first grade, I learned to print my name and hide under my desk in case of a nuclear blast. When I went to the movies, I saw news reels of U.S. above-ground atomic weapons tests in Nevada. (Nobody worried about fallout then.) In 1968, my parents could stand on their front…
Nancy Pelosi, not afraid to look stupid
Well, she isn’t. Back in the Obama administration, in an incident that few but I remember, Nancy insisted that the federal budget was a lean, mean spendin’ machine with literally no fat at all: “The cupboard is bare,” quoth Nancy, back in 2013. “There’s no more cuts to make.” You have to give credit to…
Jonah Goldberg, still not getting it
Over at the National Review, the sometimes sensible Jonah Goldberg (but only sometimes) has a cri de cœur so poignant that I feel I have to give poor Jonah a helping hand. In a bitterly worded piece, Jonah explains the suffering he endures watching President Trump’s daily briefings on the coronavirus: “I hate them with…
Soo June Kim—“Let’s Cool One”
Young Woo Lee, piano; Jae Shin Park, bass; Jun Ho Song, guitar; Soo June Kim, drums. Posted by Soo June Kim
Well, this is depressing. Hilaire Belloc’s 1922 anti-Semitic screed “The Jews” is available from Amazon in 59 different formats and editions.
I don’t know how Amazon decided I might be interested in Hilaire Belloc’s pretentious anti-Semitic tome, unless they are counting all my keystrokes (they aren’t, are they?) and found out I looked him up on Wikipedia recently—because I was quoting him, favorably, for his critique of the ultimate justification for western imperialism—“For we have got/The…
Shorter National Review: Daddy only hits us when we make him mad
Yes, that’s the way both Dan McLaughlin and Kylie Smith are spinning it over at the National Review. Listen up, Media! We all know that the president is “unusually thin-skinned and capricious, that he is keenly and perhaps unhealthily focused on what the media are saying about him at any given nanosecond, that he has…
Shorter Trump Administration: “F*ck yeah we’re getting the f*ck out of Afghanistan! Pronto! We’re raring to go!
What if we gave a retreat and nobody noticed? That seems to be the situation in Afghanistan, where Secretary of State Michael Pompeo recently made a flying visit to tell the locals to shape the fuck up before Uncle Sam got pissed, or as the Washington Post put it: “U.S. vows to cut $1 billion…
26 Ways of Listening to Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight”
At least 26, starting off with Miles Davis, back in 1967, with earlier dates as far back as 1948, and as recently as last year, including several with Monk himself, along with vocals by Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn, and, well, a host of others, pulled together rather randomly by me over the past six…