Oh, yeah, a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on, and what’s shakin’ from the tree looks pretty goddamn gamy these days, starting with Elon Musk, who’s been giving an excellent impression of the world’s richest 13-year-old for some time now, but recently upped the ante by about a 1000 percent, half destroying the company he just…
Robert Menendez surprises me. And so does Thomas Friedman!
Democratic senator Robert Menendez has made but fleeting appearances in this blog, for no more purpose than to be jeered at by me as “the senator from AIPAC”, thanks in particular to his unrelenting and despicable opposition to the Obama administration’s nuclear weapons deal with Iran, overturned by the Trump administration and now very unlikely…
Shorter Ross Douthat: Donald Trump is my daddy!
Yes, ole Ross is in love, with you know who! When all seemed lost, gushes our boy a leader emerged who persuaded the G.O.P. to abandon its fixation on deficits and just run the economy hot, who endorsed universal health insurance and pledged to protect entitlements, and who acknowledged that the Iraq war had been…
Biden administration to Ukraine: Hey! Did you guys see that letter people were talking about a couple of weeks ago?
You know the one. It said stuff like “The alternative to diplomacy is protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks”, and, well, a lot of stuff like that, about why calling for “total victory” over a country four times your size, armed with nuclear weapons, might not be the perfect…
Alan Vanneman totally lied! Falls Church bike shelter totally rocks!
Yes, I did get carried away in last year’s tasteless, sneering post regarding the $2 million bike shed at the East Falls Church Metro station. Now, I still maintain that $2 mil for a bike shed is too much, but as for the sneer that the shed was practically empty—well, again, that was true then,…
Shorter Josh Barro: If I shut my eyes very tightly, Donald Trump will go away
You know, he’s got a point there! If you shut your eyes very tightly, Donald Trump will go away! And so will everything else! Like Josh, I wish that Joe Biden were more than minimally competent. I wish he didn’t sound like a 79-year-old man (I’m 77) who’s tired of all your back talk and…
Kenny Barron. Kiyoshi Kitagawa, Brian Blade—“I Mean You”
This is why we can’t have nice public toilets
Well, actually, we can. This is an existing public toilet in San Francisco—note the charming pumpkin tile to match the fall foliage (when it’s, you know, fall). It’s just that we can’t have too many of them, because they cost about $1.7 million apiece and take about three or four years to build. Slate’s Henry…
Another $2 trillion down the rathole
“Another $40 billion down the rathole,” Secretary of the Treasury Gordon Humphrey used to sigh, contemplating the Defense Department’s annual budget requests under the Eisenhower administration.1 But that was then. Now we’re up to $2 trillion! Well, on the one hand, that $2 trillion, to update our nuclear deterrent, will be spread out over 25…
Congressional Progressive Caucus speaks common sense to power: DC goes insane
If you live within 200 miles of our Nation’s Capital, you probably heard that enormous squeal of terror last week when, on October 22, 2022, the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to President Joe Biden making the not too remarkable suggestion—one would think—that the current bloody war in Ukraine can only be brought to…