Apostate Republican David Frum and apostate jerk* Robert Samuelson both back the camera up from the current fray di DC to give us the big picture. Says Frum: Why are American politicians playing so rough? We have moved into an era of scarcity. Once it seemed possible to have the spending Democrats wanted, financed at…
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New York Times: We’re the good newspaper!
“Qaeda Plot Leak Has Undermined U.S. Intelligence”: that’s the ominous headline attached to a report in the Sept. 29 issue of the New York Times by Eric Schmitt and Michael S. Schmidt. The article penned by Schmitt/Schmidt contains a lot of huffing and puffing from nameless, faceless talking heads in the U.S. intelligence community—in other…
Republicans who want to break things
Back in the day, we talked a lot about smashing the state.* Well be careful what you wish for, eh? Because now the state actually is being smashed, but it’s the Republicans who are doing the smashing. How did this role reversal come about? Newt Gingrich is certainly one of the architects of disorder, a…
Robert Samuelson: Yes, I am an idiot. Why do you ask?
Robert Samuelson, several eons ago a competent reporter, ends a column on a housing market still constrained by tight credit in the following manner: Public policy faces a contradiction. There’s a powerful impulse to blame banks for the financial crisis and to “make them pay.” Just recently, the Obama administration sued Bank of America, charging…
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…
The Mysterious, Disappearing Chinese Aircraft Carrier Resurfaces
An aircraft carrier that can disappear? Apparently, the Chinese have perfected such a craft. Back in the day, I used to riff almost monthly on the good ship Varyag, a rusting Soviet hull that the Chinese recently bought and relabeled the good ship Liaoning. The Liaoning had just about disappeared, but resurfaced recently in the…
Calling Justice Scalia
I don’t know if Nino can protect me, but I’m putting through a call on, yes, my Verizon cell. Obama only wants to protect me, of course, regardless of what that awful Glenn Greenwald has to say. Or that awful New York Times. One can hope that reaction to this latest outrage will be the first step…
Ramesh and Yuval, less than generous, less than ingenuous
Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin have a heavy rap on how to replace Obamacare over at the National Review, a piece that occasioned less than reverent comment on the left, to which Ponnuru and Levin respond, rather tartly, here. The piece has drawn some critical responses in the past few days — from Ezra Klein,…
President Obama, sweating in his underwear
One hardly knows how to take the belated tick-tock, “How a U.S. Citizen Came to Be in America’s Cross Hairs,” turned in by Mark Mazzetti, Charlie Savage, and Scott Shane in Saturday’s New York Times. Did NYT Executive Editor Jill Abramson fill Scott’s bowl with Kibbles and Bits* and then say “Okay, you guys! Get…
Bill Keller may have made a glaring mistake in his latest NYT column? No, Bill Keller told a big fat lie in his latest NYT column
Felix Salmon’s “Countparties,” which should be “Counterparties,” executes a ludicrous euphemism in linking to the Wash Post’s Greg Sergent’s nice takedown of former NYT executive editor Bill Keller’s smoke-blowing complaint that the sequester is all President Obama’s fault. Felix inexplicably titles the link “Bill Keller may have made a glaring mistake in his latest NYT…