Last week I ended a post on the imminent (well, end of the year) withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq with a melodramatic flourish, comparing the U.S embassy in Iraq to an empty skull staring out across the desert sands with sightless eyes—the idea being that the embassy, built by the Bush Administration at the…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Centaur talking!
It does look like the analyst is talking here in this New Yorker cartoon. But why waste a centaur? I don’t understand. Go here to see the New Yorker cartoon contest. “Hell yes I blame my parents! Wouldn’t you?” “Recognition I get, but what I want is chicks.” “I shit on this guy’s rug once,…
Look who’s talking, Part II
So who is talking? It seems like both of them are. So what are they saying? As the man says, you pays your money and you takes your choice. Rick: “Save it for the shower, girlfriend.” Rick: “Stop talking and pull my damn finger.” Rick: “That is so not high C.” Rick: “Do that one…
Murder most foul, continued
I seem to spend an unconscionable amount of time making fun of the New Yorker on this blog, but sometimes they nail it. The nailer, in this case, is Amy Davidson, with this blog entry on the Obama Administration’s latest triumph, the murder of Anwar al-Awlaki’s 16-yer-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, which, Amy says, makes her…
Disaster, Death, and Destruction—the Bush Legacy
In its more than 1200 years of existence, Baghdad has accumulated many monuments to human greed, stupidity, and folly. The city got off to a very good start in 762 when the caliph Al Mansur founded it as the capital city for the Abbasid Empire and for centuries it was one of the greatest cities…
Bellevue Jazz Festival Rising Stars —“Brilliant Corners”
Colin Ramsay, Max Bates, Eddie Bond, Joe Gladow, Mal Muntz, and Ariel Pocock. Sorry, but I don’t have the instrumentation. I’m guessing that it’s Ariel on piano. Posted by alecramsay
Editorial standards at the New York Times: What has four legs and goes “Woof, Woof, Woof”?
Over at the New Yorker, Ken Auletta devotes what appears by my count to be about twenty column feet to the long, happy career of NYT Executive Editor Jill Abramson. Somewhere around the twelve-foot mark Ken mentions that while Abramson was managing editor of the Times, she “began writing a popular online column for the…
Touching words, disastrous deeds
It was very moving to hear President Obama speak at the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial yesterday. A black President of the United States, speaking of the career of the man symbolized, more than any other, the American civil rights movement, is something worth hearing. I wish that President Obama’s deeds were…
Look who’s talking!
The rats are doing all of the talking in this latest exercise in Harrisburg surrealism. More cartoons here. “I have no idea either, but if it will get us a flat-screen I’m for it.” “Because he has no life, that’s why.” “Yeah, the sign’s shitty, the cheese is shitty, everything is shitty, but I’m still…
Obama Administration: “We are so that stupid!”
President Obama seems so determined to burnish his butt-kicking rep that he’s willing to turn himself into an international laughing stock, based entirely on information supplied by a Mexican gang member/informant regarding the activities of Iranian-American master spy/used car salesman/party boy Mansour Arbabsiar. As in the plots previously exposed by the federal government to cut…