One would have thought that Vladimir Putin’s* end zone victory dance in the New York Times would have produced an outraged chorus of right-wing “I told you so’s” loud enough to be heard on Mars—if, contrary to fact, sound waves could travel through a vacuum. But even they could, they still wouldn’t, because the right’s…
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The “Golden Hour” that wasn’t; an old Iraqi hand pretends that we could have gotten it right
James Clad is an adjunct fellow at Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. According to NDU’s website, “Before joining the National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies James Clad was U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia from 2007-09. He also served as…
Reid Wilson, not getting it, and not getting that he’s not getting it
Over at Slate, Dave Wiegel, whom I usually enjoy, links without irony to the National Journal’s Reid Wilson, who files a heartfelt moan titled “When Washington Forgot How To Negotiate Dispute over the farm bill is a textbook example of the dysfunction within Congress.” Speaking of the farm bill debacle, Wilson explains the current Democratic/Republican…
Chris Christie, suddenly my least favorite fat New Jersey Republican
I’ve been known to say both kind and unkind things about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, but last week’s performance earned the big guy a whole year of lazy, tasteless fat jokes. Denouncing the recent, shocking trend among certain “libertarian” types in the Republican Party to consider the endless violations of our civil liberties by…
This Town boring as this town
This Town, New York Timesman Mark Leibovich’s shocking piss-and-tell, chattering class takedown of the chattering class is, in fact, causing a lot of chatter amidst the chattering class. Old DC hand Lois Romano goes full chattering class in this exercise in suppressed hysteria, accusing “Leibo” of undermining the networks of “dinner parties and receptions [where]…
Don’t Know Much About Communist Spies
Several months ago, in a posting at the American Conservative, bearing the snappy title “Our American Pravda,” Ron Unz bemoaned the many failings of the American media, claiming that, among other things, the media had conspired to conceal the fact that communist penetration of the federal government was rife during the Roosevelt Administration, “Over the…
Barack Obama, sending the Machiavel to school. Again.
Is there glee in the White House over the latest revelations of National Security Agency mega-snooping? I wouldn’t be surprised. Sen. Rand Paul has another arrow in his quiver, and daddy Ron Paul even praised leaker Ron Snowden, saying that Snowden has “done a great service for telling the truth.” That kind of crazy talk…
Ramesh Ponnuru—“Yes, I am a partisan hack. Why do you ask?”
Several dog years ago I pegged, or tabbed, Ramesh Ponnuru as an intelligent conservative. Obviously, Ramesh resented the charge and has been doing his level best to refute it. He’s at it again here, with the seriously fatuous “Obama’s Second Term Already Looks Like a Failure,” aggressively gliding over such Republican embarrassments as the virtual…
It’s not too soon to tell that Paul Wolfowitz is a lying asshole
Yes, Paul Wolfowitz, everyone’s favorite lying asshole, is up to his old tricks again, acting like the lying asshole he is, claiming that “it is too soon to tell” if the invasion of Iraq was a good idea. After all, Paulie tells us, for decades after the Korean War ended, South Korea “struggled.” But sixty…
Why Can’t Prominence Equal Competence?
David Aaron Miller has a weekly column in Foreign Affairs, which may be half the problem. He is vice president for new initiatives and a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. But this week’s “Reality Check,” with the omniscient title “Why Obama Failed in the Middle East,” reads like it was…