U da Man, Fareed! Yeah, a couple of months ago I made fun of Fareed, who was then singing those “Why can’t we be more like China?” blues, claiming that “With an absent United States, China marches on”. According Fareed, while Uncle Sam sits on his ass, “China marches forward, except now it is not…
Search Results for: george will
Less than Zero
This shot of Ronnie and William F. Buckley, taken in 1988, Reagan’s last year in office, fascinates me. Ronnie looks pretty much stuffed, ready for Madame Tussaud’s. But even though he may not remember what he had for breakfast, or the name of the dude in the cheap suit who keeps talking his ear off,…
Oberlin’s Gridiron Glory
A week or so back I was delighting in George Will’s annual disparagement of the Super Bowl and suggested that perhaps, when young George was at Princeton, he’d been humiliated by some football hearties, leaving him forever embittered, and suggested that if he had only gone to Oberlin, like me, where there are none such,…
Daniel Larison is confused
The mills of God grind exceeding slow but exceeding fine. Mine grind exceeding slow. A decade or two ago in blog years, the American Conservative’s Daniel Larison, writing in a post labeled “George Will and ‘Cuba Derangement Syndrome’,”1 proclaimed himself mystified by Georgie’s “strange conclusion” regarding a dispute between Ky. Sen. Rand Paul and Fl….
James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide, Part 24
INTRODUCTION This is the 24th 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 24 is given over almost entirely to discussions of…
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,…
Robert Samuelson, idiot
I have been in the past quite complimentary of Wash Post columnist Robert Samuelson. Well, I can’t take it all back because Bob often gets it right. But in this wretched post, “Defunding defense,” Bob gets it grossly and gratuitously wrong. It’s the “gratuitously” part that I can’t forgive, although the “grossly” part is, in…
Ukraine—It’s like catnip for neocons!
I’m not going to bother linking to any of the multitudinous stories ruminating about the meaning of Putin’s latest folly. I’m sure that William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, et al. are fulminating at length over the Crimean Invasion. Putin is laughing at us! He’s eating our lunch! He is playing chess with tanks and we are…
Obama Woes, and how the Republicans never fail to remind us that they would only make things worse
President Obama, if he isn’t looking mortal, is at least looking awkward these days. The current “triple scandal” will, I think, end up costing the President little, but it does give the Republicans something to yell about, and yelling to no effect is what the current crop of Republicans does best. The Administration’s handling of…
Hatin’ on Keynes, Part II: Adam Smith, total homo
To return to the topic of whether Keynesian economics should be avoided because Keynes liked boys and ballet better than girls and football, let me point out that Adam Smith, the King of Laissez Faire,* never married, and was suspiciously fond of his mother, kind of like Liberace, without all the furs. As Jeet Heer points out in…