At the National Review, more vituperation re the Koch boys, and their determination to teach the Cato Institute a lesson in humility, which has never really struck me as a libertarian virtue. Was Mencken humble? Ayn Rand? Milton Friedman? I’m thinkin’ Dave and Charlie have a tendency to confuse humility with, you know, oriental despotism,…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Pseudo-New Yorker
Legal humor here. “Yeah, I look goatish. But, you know, I don’t feel goatish.” “Horns are a symbol of virility. But only to other goats.” “Yeah, there are days when I would just like to butt someone, really hard. But apparently that would be illegal.” “I think I look a lot like Hell Boy. But…
The New York Times has issues, even if you don’t
Over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald keeps his hair close-cropped, the better to avoid pulling it out in rage and frustration over the manifold lies and crimes of the U.S. government and its frequent mouthpiece, the New York Times. On April 4, the Times ran a breathless piece headlined “U.S. Sees Iran in Bids to Stir…
“Hundreds of rules,” “inconsistent,” “uncoordinated,” still allow JPMorgan to haul in $19,000,000,000
Felix Salmon (actually, Ben Walsh) highlights the woes of JPMorgan, and outlined by Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, moaning in his letter to the company’s shareholders about the iniquities of Dodd-Frank, inflicted on Wall Street by those ham-handed rubes down in DC. Still, the “record” $19 billion the firm hauled in in 2011 was up…
Kevin D. Williamson says it’s okay to marry a nine-year-old girl
Well, pretty much. Over at the National Review, Kevin gets mad at Lawrence O’Donnell for making fun of Mormons, because founder Joseph Smith had 48 wives. Kevin believes this is not a big deal, because both Abraham and Solomon had lots of wives, and Muhammad married a nine-year-old girl—and, apparently, almost as bad, Lawrence O’Donnell…
Allan Bloom: Doctor, or Symptom, of Our Distress?
Over at the Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson has a piece commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Allan Bloom’s ponderously titled The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. Back when the book was published, I don’t think I was the only one to wonder how…
Kagan, Drezner, and the Umbrella that Doesn’t Exist
Foreign Policy devotes an entire issue to a review of Robert Kagan’s 10-year-old essay “Power and Weakness,” which famously—or once famously—declared that “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.” I can’t say that you won’t learn something by reading the issue, but I also can’t say that the exercise will be worth your…
Who writes this guy’s copy?
President Obama has just launched this mighty missile at the Supreme Court: “Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Well, if overturning an act of Congress were unprecedented,…
Upper Austrian Jazz Orchestra—“Ask Me Now”
The Upper Austrian Jazz Orchestra plays “Ask Me Now” by Thelonious Monk, arranged & conducted by Michael Gibbs, featuring Christian Maurer on tenor saxophone and Primus Sitter on guitar. Recorded on April 16th 2010 in Zagreb at the Vatroslav Lisinski Hall. Posted by “UAJO1991”
If centipedes could talk ….
I don’t know if we’d bother to listen. Yeah, that’s a centipede on the table and a duck in the sauce pan. Or is it a swan? Bauhaus Ben, the Pennsylvania puzzler, whose work is rarely confused with Andrew Wyeth, comes up with this kitchen group, where it’s so quiet you can hear the myriapods…