If I had all the resources of the National Security Agency and spoke with the tongues of angels and men I’m not sure I could disentangle all the disingenuousities of President Obama’s recent speech promising the end of the NSA’s “Section 215 bulk metadata program as it currently exists.” For starters, I might observe that…
Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers: Why was this book written?
Christopher Clark is no amateur historian. He is a professor of modern history at Cambridge University and author of Iron Kingdom: The rise and downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, among other works. His current bestseller, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914, was acclaimed one of the best books of 2013 by the New…
Fred Kaplan: Getting Gates right
I’ve taken out some, though only some, of my many frustrations over our bloody and pointless war in Afghanistan by frequently ridiculing the columns of Fred Kaplan on the war. Writing for Slate, Kaplan, who has a lot of experience with foreign affairs, slowly metamorphosed from Afghan cheer leader to cautious skeptic to outright disbeliever…
“The Ayatollah’s Disarming Wit”—because what’s funnier than a fatwa!
Roya Hakakian, a producer at 60 Minutes and author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, must be easily amused. Her column in yesterday’s New York Times, “The Ayatollah’s Disarming Wit,” claims that living under Iran’s theocratic regime, “more brutal than the one they overthrew in 1979,” is a barrel of laughs. Those ayatollahs! They’re wacky!…
Nastya Vorovey Trio—“Epistrophy”
Monk’s closing theme, performed by Nastya on guitar, O. Yangurov on bass and S. Kosix on drums. Posted by Igor Trekus
Chris Christie: Fading fat, white hope?
Somewhere along the line, I believe I promised not to make fun of CC’s weight. I also promised myself that I would never use the cheap journalistic trick of justifying a “provocative” headline that’s unlikely to be true simply by tacking a question mark on the end of it. Well, today I feel like wallowing…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here. “I told you that Kent guy was trouble!” “Relax! He’ll never make it to Jersey in this weather!” “Uh-oh! Big Chris ain’t gonna like this one bit!” “See, asshole! It was a granny knot!” “Don’t sweat it! A da Vinci he isn’t!” “‘Maybe we should have shot him,’ Louie? Maybe?” “A lot…
Double Down, Dude! Double Down!
Jim/Joe/Bob/Jimmy Joe Bob couldn’t believe it! Obama/Mitt/Newt/Attila the Hun wasn’t backing off! He was doubling down! Yes, people double down a lot in Double Down, the not so hot off the presses tome du jour from Mark Halperin and John Heilmann rehashing the 2012 presidential election. The book received mixed reviews when it was published…
What Robert Gates said that no one said he said
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, former Secretary of State Robert Gates’ memoirs of his years as SecDef, have been excerpted and/or discussed by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. If you follow this sort of thing, you know that Bob loved Hillary, definitely a feather in her…
Artie Zaitz Quintet—“I Mean You”
At “Peter Parker’s” in London, featuring Artie Zaitz: guitar, Laura Jurd: trumpet, Duncan Eagles: tenor sax, Peter Randall: bass, Andy Chapman: drums. Posted by The Jazz Hot Dog Channel