Like a lot of people, I’ve felt that Cal. Sen. Dianne Feinstein never objected to the CIA spying on people until she found out they were spying on her. Nonetheless, the senator has done something, in a city that, when it comes to the staggering series of crimes, lies, and abuses that have occurred during…
Search Results for: george will
Michiko Kakutani does the (almost) impossible; she makes me feel sorry for President Obama
After Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, almost everyone who ever knew him lined up to say what a shit he was. Moaned Richard Cohen, “I hate Richard Nixon’s friends. They make me feel sorry for Richard Nixon.”1 Well, Barack Obama is no Richard Nixon, and I don’t hate him, but still. I don’t like…
James Pethokoukis is shocked, shocked to discover that Republicans aren’t really interested in entitlement reform
James Pethokoukis is that rarity of rarities, a sensible conservative who is actually sensible. Even harder to believe, Jim actually hangs his hat at the American Enterprise Institute, aka “Fruitcake Central.” But his most recent post, titled, with supreme intellectual dishonesty, “Is the GOP changing its stance on entitlement reform?”, Jim demonstrates he can lie…
Leon Panetta, backstabbing asshole
If the U.S. spends the next 30 years wallowing aimlessly, and profitlessly, in an endless succession of Middle Eastern wars, one of the people you can blame is former CIA Director former SecDef Leon “The Sky is falling and it’s all Obama’s fault” Panetta. I bitched about Leon in the past for a long time…
James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide, Part 28
INTRODUCTION This is the 28th episode of “James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide,” a rambling consideration of Thurber’s works, examining his life and work in some detail. Generally, these appear every Friday. The links to the first part and the most recent part are given below. Part 28 continues the discussion of stories in Thurber’s 1953…
President Obama: Bush Lite or Bush Heavy?
What has Harvard done to us? I know it’s not surprising that a graduate of Harvard Law School would think like a grad of Harvard Business School, but do they have to be an exact match? That’s what “everyone’ has to be thinking after President Obama’s UN address last week. If George W. Bush didn’t…
James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide, Part 26
INTRODUCTION This is the 26th episode of “James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide,” a rambling consideration of Thurber’s works, examining his life and work in some detail. Generally, these appear every Friday. The links to the first part and the most recent part are given below. Part 26 continues discussion of Thurber’s five-part series on radio…
The War Lovers
From 1929 to 1989, Americans lived in a state of almost perpetual crisis—the Great Depression, World War II, and then forty-four long years of contention with international communism. When the U.S.S.R. finally fell apart, the resulting silence was, it seems, more than America could bear. George H.W. Bush and his gang of “realists” conducted wars…
Nicholas Burns, fortunately no longer with the State Department
“It was one of the most unfortunate weeks of his [Obama’s] presidency,” moaned Nicholas Burns, former State Department official (under George Bush), now at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, to intrepid Politico reporters Josh Gerstein and David Nather, referring to that shocking occasion when President Obama actually consulted with Congress before launching an assault on…
The dormition of the theocons*
I recently stumbled across a piece by Damon Linker—one not related to the burning question “Would you like your daughter to be a whore?”†—that intrigued me to the point of tracking down and reading his little book The Theocons, published back in 2006, telling the tale of Richard John Neuhaus and the First Things gang,…