The U.S. missile defense system, Ronnie Reagan’s beloved Star Wars, has failed again, the second flopperoo in a row, and seventh out of fifteen tries, according to Reuters. “This is a tremendous setback for the testing of this complicated system,” said Riki Ellison, chairman and founder of the Virginia-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance and a…
TNR: Batting 111 and leading the league
A week or so back I made fun of the New Republic for running a slideshow on Obama Administration sleaze, when only one out of the nine sleazoids fingered, Peter Orszag, actually appeared to be exploiting his service in office for gross financial gain. Well, TNR may have overreacted, but at least they, you know,…
Cruel and Unusual Punishment: It’s getting to be a habit with us
Glenn Greenwald tells the massively depressing story of our government’s treatment of Bradley Manning: “Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for…
How very wrong you are, Clive Crook, how very wrong indeed
“It is not every day that Krauthammer is backed into an absurd and dishonest position by his own logic.” Thus, Clive Crook, struggling to understand why Charles Krauthammer is mad about President Obama’s tax compromise with Mitch McConnell. Why is Charlie so pissed? As Clive points out, in a very nice column, Krauthammer presumably approves…
Richard Nixon, latent Jew
Yeah, it’s the Nixon tapes again, the gift that never stops giving. Our sides are splitting, our jaws are dropping, our eyeballs are rolling, and our tongues are crying “Mercy!” but Dick isn’t listening. Instead, he keeps hitting the line, harder, harder, harder. In the latest revelations, Dick lets us know that the Irish can’t…
When Obama officials cash out—a sordid tale, at least 11.1111111111111111111111111111% of the time
The New Republic has a snappy slide show, “Obama Officials Cash Out,” a rogue’s gallery that leads with Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, now hanging with Citigroup, decidedly not my favorite bank. Orszag probably won’t spend all his time doling out million-dollar bribes to high-end Manhattan pre-schools in order…
Bill Evans & Lee Konitz—“Melancholy Baby”
“Melancholy Baby,” semi-forgotten now, was supposedly the song that drunks demanded to hear, much to musicians’ distress. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker recorded it (with Thelonious Monk on piano) as a semi-gag. Here Bill and Lee take it for a ride in the mid-sixties, with Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass and Alan Dawson on drums….
Martha Redux
In my recent review of Charlie Chaplin’s painful misfire Monsieur Verdoux, I paid brief homage to “Martha Raye’s memorable performance as the grasping, guileless Annabella Bonheur, the one woman Verdoux can’t kill. I’ve always found Martha’s act hard to swallow, but it seems churlish here to deny her her one moment of glory.” Well, let’s…
NYT wins slanted but pretty much true headline contest
Who is more irritating, Steve Martin or 92Y? Also, Elaine is dead, Elaine’s is not
Last week I ran a piece highlighting Steve Martin’s so-bad-the-Y-gave-everyone-their-money-back appearance at the 92nd Street Y on Nov. 29. Even though Stevo generally came across as a pretentious old fart (he’s almost as old as I am, after all), I noted that Steve managed to end the conversation with a winner: “As for the Y’s…