By now, you may have read that Hillary Clinton’s interview with Jeffrey Goldberg was not quite the unadulterated love-fest that Goldberg described in his intro to the rap session. It was only 99 percent unadulterated. At the Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky wants us to believe that Hillary isn’t really a neocon. She’s just a “muscular…
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Ross Douthat’s Obama Outrage O’ the Week
I’m in the habit of reading Ross Douthat’s blog “Evaluations” at the New York Times, which, when he is not ruminating about the reverberative, not to say rebarbarative, phallocentricity of John Melius, is largely devoted to Ross’s mostly honest account of “thoughtful” conservatives like Ross to craft a domestic policy for the Republican Party that…
The time the U.S. blew up an airliner and lied its ass off trying to cover it up
A serious hat tip to Slate’s Fred Kaplan for refreshing our memory of an unsavory episode from America’s recent past, in July 1988, when a missile launched from the USS Vincennes blew up an Iranian airliner flying a regularly scheduled flight, killing all 290 on board. Fred, in his account, uses a slightly less inflammatory…
John Kerry: Yes, I am beneath contempt and unworthy of high office. Why do you ask?
I guess John Kerry wants me to hate him. Here’s what our secretary of state has to say about Edward Snowden, the dude who exposed massive and ongoing illegal and unconstitutional spying by our government: ““Edward Snowden is a coward. He is a traitor. And he has betrayed his country. And if he wants to…
Larry Summers so very smart and Larry Summers not so very smart
Larry Summers, star-crossed former president of Harvard and, more recently, head of President Obama’s National Economic Council, has written an excellent review of Thomas Piketty’s endlessly reviewed (even by me) best seller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, praising Piketty for both his timing (publishing a massively researched book on inequality when the topic is all…
James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide, Part 12
INTRODUCTION This is the 12th 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 12 continues discussion of Thurber’s The Middle-Aged Man on…
Mr. Will writes the Constitution. Again.
When I was in college, I had an idea that was so profound that, even now, I find it hard to believe that I actually had it, but I did. The situation was this: back in the day, Oberlin College had a graduate school of theology, with a wonderful old library, of some 50,000 volumes….
Donald Rumsfeld: “Yes, I am an untrained ape, smearing myself with my own feces. Why do you ask?”
I’m only sorry I can’t make that headline a little tougher. Big Don bemoans the fact that President Obama failed to obtain a “status of forces” agreement with Afghanistan. “We have status of forces agreements probably with 100, 125 countries in the world. This administration, the White House and the State Department, have failed to…
Foxy Nate Silver just doesn’t understand the data
Nate “I call ‘em as I see ‘em” Silver is being booted about the Internet for not living up to expectations with his widely heralded new site “FiveThirtyEight,” whatever the fuck that means.* Nate has been roughed up by the likes of Tyler Cowan and Paul Krugman,† not to mention Mike “I’m a putz” Allen,…
Obamamotto: Hate the torture, love the torturer. A lot.
“The creatures outside looked from CIA to Obama, and from Obama to CIA, and from CIA to Obama again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” George Orwell remains unfortunately on-point 30 years after, thanks to the absolute determination of our “most open administration in history” president to ensure that there shall…