Matt Yglesias has an article about our doomed American democracy that’s getting a lot of play on the Internet. I’m not sure I’ll bother with a comprehensive “reply,” since I’m more cranky than pessimistic these days, but I would like to call attention to a rather stunning flaw in a quote that Matt takes from…
Joey DeFrancesco—“Evidence”
Joey DeFrancesco (organ); Frank Vignola (guitar); Joe Ascionne (drums). Posted by Roger Bridgland
Alarmism? Oh, yeah, we got alarmism!
“When the final accounting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years [since] such data has been compiled,” intoned National Intelligence Director James Clapper, speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. Of course, the director may have been lying, something Big Jim does on…
Ross versus Ezra: No way! Your crazies are way crazier than our crazies!
Ross Douthat picks a fight with Ezra Klein over whether Obama Derangement Syndrome is more intense than Bush Derangement Syndrome.Klein links BDS to 9/11, but struggles to find comparable causality for ODS: “Bush Derangement Syndrome sought extraordinary explanations for extraordinary events; Obama Derangement Syndrome seeks extraordinary explanations for an ordinary presidency.” Sniffs Ross, “This … does…
Ask not for whom the probationary flags fly. They fly for thee.
A week or so ago I had a good laugh at the expense of National Review roving correspondent Kevin D. Williamson, who worked himself into a tizzy over the State of the Union circa 2015, bouncing off of Rowdy Rudy Giuliani’s celebrated banalities regarding President Obama’s supposed lack of patriotic fervor. Kevin concluded his rant by citing, and expanding…
Oscar Peterson, Barney Kessel, & Niels Henning Oersted Pederson at Ronnie Scott’s 1974
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here. “Basically, he says we’re in big fucking trouble, but for ten grand he can make it all go away.” “Okay, this is weird. He says he has three names—‘Rip’, ‘Van’, and ‘Winkle’. So I say we eat him.” “He says he’s from the future. If that’s true, it knocks our entire understanding…
Dylan Byers, explaining why Bill O’Reilly hasn’t said what Bill O’Reilly has said
Politico’s Dylan Byers attempts to clear the air regarding the charges made against Bill “Golden Boy” O’Reilly: Had O’Reilly falsely claimed to have been on the Falkland Islands when he wasn’t, the Fox News host might be in serious trouble. But he never really said that. He has said that he was “in a war zone in…
Freeman Dyson and the continuing myth of the international freemasonry of science
Freeman Dyson has an interesting—alas, far too interesting—review of Frank Close’s new book, Half-Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy, which I guess should be titled “Physicist and Spy,” although Dyson pretends he isn’t sure if Pontecorvo, a brilliant experimental physicist who worked with the legendary Enrico Fermi, actually was a spy,…
Obama failed to predict future, experts say
Graeme Wood has an article in the Atlantic that’s getting lots of play, explaining that “we” have been getting those ISIS guys all wrong, that what they really want is a big battle in Dabiq, a place in Syria, to fought by the Muslim faithful against the armies of “Rome,” a battle that will ultimately…