I agree with UCal Berkeley econ dude Brad DeLong maybe 75% of the time, though I almost always confine my comments about him to the 25%. Well, this is one of those times. Like so many of the cool kids, Brad has a substack blog, Brad DeLong’s Grasping Reality and recently he took what struck…
Search Results for: Donald Trump
The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party? Part II Part 2: Matthew Continetti and The Right
A few years ago, I wrote an extended piece bearing the title The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party?. Recently, in response to a couple of engaging (relatively) meas culpas—Matthew Continetti’s The Right The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism and Tim Miller’s Why We Did It—I began preparing an update. I originally planned to…
Shorter Bill Barr: Yes, I am a complete tool. Surprised?
Well, I am, for one, not. In fact, there never was a doubt in my mind that William Barr was a super shit, a super shit—to muddy the metaphor—of the very first water, a sentiment I have expressed any number of times, in exuberantly fecal prose. If there ever were any doubt in anyone’s mind—and…
Hypocrisy is the homage that Ross Douthat pays to virtue
If, as increasingly appears to be the case, Donald Trump’s wild career will end, not with a bang but a whimper, then, sighs NYT opinionist Ross Douthat, more in sorrow than in anger, there will not be any accountability for Trump’s soft enablers within the Republican Party. There was a certain political accountability when the…
Karl Marx, plagiarist
Back in 2016, I wrote a post, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald Trump, echoing one of Karl’s greatest hits, remarking as follows: In 1852, Karl Marx wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, commemorating in contempt the seizure of power of Napoleon’s nephew in the previous year and coining the immortal one-liner, “History, Hegel tells…
Alan Vanneman is very disappointed in Paul Krugman
Fuck yeah, I am. The source of my disappointment is Paul’s latest, Why America Is Getting Tough on Trade, the very title an irritant for the homage it pays to the meme that “getting tough” is always a good idea. Paul’s “nut graph” (I think that’s what it is) reads as follows: This is a…
George Packer, Packin’ the Con in “Neocon”!
I’ve never actually met George Packer, but I have read him, in the current issue of the Atlantic, so I’ll go out on a limb and say I can probably throw him farther than I can trust him. Yes, I am hip to old Georgie’s jive, right from the get-go—right from his “head”, as a…
Misinformation at the Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart edition
Misinformation courtesy of the Washington Post? It does happen! Just last year I fact checked Fact Checker Glenn Kessler for his mis/disinformation regarding the godawful Donald Trump/Paul Ryan/Mitch McConnell tax bill rammed through Congress back in 2017, and now I’m on the trail of WashPost columnist Jonathan Capehart for his seriously uncritical take on Al…
Joe Biden’s foreign policy: regressin’ to meaninglessness and following the path of greatest stupidity
Gee whiz but I wish I wasn’t so prescient. A whole six months ago I wrote a post Joe Biden likes being a Cold War President, moaning a bit theatrically about Uncle Joe’s “senile swagger.” Well, it seems like Joe was just getting warmed up. United States Enters a New Era of Direct Confrontation With…
The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party? Part II Part 1: Tim Miller’s Why We Did It
A couple of years back, when, it seems, I was feeling particularly down in the mouth, I wrote an extended piece bearing the title The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party?. Recently, a couple of actual Republicans have written books asking themselves the same question, viz. Matthew Continetti (The Right The Hundred Year War for…