Has it really been four months since I made fun of Dan Drezner? Well, it is, and, again, I’m saying that Dan just isn’t pessimistic enough. The last time around, in October of 2020, I snickered at Dan for snickering at Donald Trump’s “shambolic campaign” for reelection, Dan endorsing Ross Douthat’s picture of Trump as…
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Mike does Stuart: Michael Grunwald holds Stuart Stevens’ turncoat Republican feet to the fire, with interesting results
In a recent—well, “tirade” is probably too strong a word, but “riff” is a bit cute—in a recent post on “conscience Republican” Ross Douthat’s semi-snarky take on Republican with a different conscience Stuart Stevens’ mea culpa It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, I noted that Stu, unintentionally, I’m sure,…
Political Notes from All Over: Paul Krugman is cool, Ross Douthat is mad, Kamala Harris is “necessary” (probably), and Black Lives Matter is living down to Billy Barr’s expectations
Tough to be a man! Or a woman! Or even just a little kid. But stuff happens, as Donnie Rumsfeld liked to say, and this is some of the stuff that’s happening. First up is the good news: Paul Krugman is cool! I’ve frequently though not necessarily bitched about the way the Krugman too often,…
This is why we can’t have nice things: Like peace
Over at the American Conservative, Barbara Boland fills us in on the sad news with her article Senate Hearing Farce: Venezuela Is A ‘Clear And Present Danger’. Yes, bipartisan ninnies agree, Venezuela, one of the saddest, weakest countries in the world, a country seemingly bent on starving itself to death, will bring down the mighty…
Daniel Drezner, you shall not escape my wrath!
Well, you won’t, Dan. Just because I’m painfully slow and stumbling off the mark, and not much better down the stretch, you thought you could slip a few fast ones by me, but nuh-uh. I’m onto your game, and you’ll pay the price. The first of Dan’s “curve balls” (to vary the metaphor) came a…
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…
When William Gladstone died, did something else die too?
Somewhere or other I remarked that my “hobbies” include reading books about dinosaurs and British prime ministers. Well, I do, and recently I read my third biography of one of the greatest, William Gladstone, a Victorian figure second only to Victoria herself, born in 1809 and entering Parliament at age 22, where he would serve…
Samantha Power and the art of looking away
(Editor’s note. Sometimes I write ‘em short, and sometimes I can’t shut up. This is one of the latter occasions.) Several hundred news cycles ago, Samantha Power’s autobiography/memoir The Education of an Idealist was in the news. Well, I am nothing if not slow, so I am just getting caught up with Samantha, who really…
Yo, Jeff Bezos! Who writes your scripts, John Bolton?
If, like me, your so-called life has significant late-night gaps, empty hours when you’re too tired, or too lazy, to do anything improving, like reading another history of the Thirty Years War, whose impact still echoes down the corridors of time, or “significant”, like watching a new version of Don Giovanni,1 you might, if you’re…
Yo, “conservatives”! Donald Trump is destroying the rule of law, and you didn’t even notice!
It is a long-running rap of Trump apologists that while the Donald may be a little rough around the edges, substantively (which is what counts, of course) he’s done little more than enact the standard Republican menu of tax cuts, increased defense spending, and, best of all, conservative judges! Well, we can pass over (for…