Over at the American Conservative, which isn’t entirely Pat Buchanan being stupid, Daniel Larison struggles to understand Sarah Palin and the other opponents of the START treaty. Apparently, the Russians have been moving some tactical nuclear weapons around (maybe), and Sarah and her kind are claiming that this is a deal-breaker. Dan is puzzled by…
Suffer, Christians
I’m such a goddamn baby. That fucking Ross Douthat beats me like a fucking drum. It’s my own goddamn fault, and I fall for it every goddamn fucking time. I go to the fucking New York Times to read Paul Krugman like a good fucking liberal and what do I see? Douthat: A Tough Season…
U.S. bad guy identification technology no longer lighting Fred Kaplan’s fire in Afghanistan
Well, that was quick. It seems like it was only two months ago—on Oct. 21, to be precise—that Slate’s Fred Kaplan was raving about our abfab, state of the art Guided Multiple-Launch Rocket System (aka “the 70-kilometer sniper round”), our High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (a “a 15-ton wheeled vehicle carrying a computerized fire-control system…
But we were relying on it so heavily!
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….