(NOTE: Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park series is one of the best franchises on film, particularly if you like dinosaurs. For the past several months I’ve been running a strikingly unbalanced review of the four films, because I’m a big fan of parts 1 & 3, while distinctly unenthusiastic over parts 2 & 4. Today’s chapter…
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The foreign policy debate: Wouldn’t it be nice if we had one?
I realize that the recent terrorist attack in San Bernardino may forbid rational discussion of any topic for the next six months, or even longer. Still, wouldn’t be nice to have foreign policy discussion that consisted of more than a choice between Tweedle-Dick and Tweedle-Hillary? I mean, I’m not asking for six degrees of separation,…
Jurassic Parks: Stevie and the Dinosaurs, Part 4
NOTE: Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park series is one of the best franchises on film, particularly if you like dinosaurs. For the past several weeks I’ve been running a strikingly unbalanced review of the four films, because I’m a big fan of parts 1 & 3, while distinctly unenthusiastic over parts 2 & 4. If you’re…
The Democratic Hole
Matthew Yglesias has a piece over at Vox that is deservedly getting some recognition: “Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble”. But while Matt talks a lot about the facts on the ground—deep weakness at the state level and in both house of Congress, with no obvious way out—he doesn’t talk…
Paul Ryan, taking more, giving less, aka More Gratuitous, Uninformed Political Speculation!
Consider yourselves warned, eh? Yes, Paul Ryan says he’ll take the job of Speaker of the House of Representatives, but only if the Republicans really, really love him. This means, among other things, that they all have to vote for him, that he gets his weekends off, that he doesn’t have to spend a lot…
Regressin’ to Jeb: the Renascence of the Republican Mean
The recent, entertaining demise of Scott Walker has caused many to embrace Marco Rubio as the once and future king of the Republican Party, something I’ve been known to do myself. Well, not so fast, conventional wisdom. Let’s step back and take a serious look at the tea leaves. It seems that Donald Trump, while…
Donald Trump or Donald Paul?
Lately, a few percipient observers, including myself have remarked that Bernie Sanders has been sounding just a bit Trumpy on the subjects of immigration and international competitiveness. Now, it seems, Donald Trump has been sounding a bit Rand Pauly on the Middle East. Bloomberg Politic’s Melinda Henneberger reports on the scene with the Donald at…
Is New York the New Beige?
Not the real New York, of course, the place located about 220 miles north of DC, but the New York of the mind, and, more specifically, the New York of the movies and TV. The notion that New York is the only place in the world where a cool person could possibly live was due,…
Alan Vanneman visits the world’s most notorious jazz club
That should be “visited 45 years ago,” because that’s when it happened. I recently came across an article in Jazz Times that revisited the memory of Slugs, a club on the lower East Side that was, according to James Gavin, “jazz’s most notorious nightclub, the gates of the underworld.” “[N]ight fell, and the unlit streets…
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…