Several dog lifetimes ago, Bob Newhart was on the Tonight show, and he told Johnnie Carson “You know, Johnnie, truth is stranger than fiction. And even if it isn’t we’re going to pretend that it is, because if you buy the frame, you buy the bit.” The accuracy of Bob’s words of wisdom were perfectly…
Search Results for: north korea
Alarmism? Oh, yeah, we got alarmism!
“When the final accounting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years [since] such data has been compiled,” intoned National Intelligence Director James Clapper, speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. Of course, the director may have been lying, something Big Jim does on…
Militant Wilsonian What the Fuck?
Okay, that was a little rude. The subject of my latest outburst is a posting in The National Interest (the “Buzz” column, to be precise) by Zachery Keck, providing a synopsis of a recent symposium held by the Center for the National Interest. Among the speakers was Robert Kaplan, a Senior Fellow at the Center…
Vanneman v. Gates, the struggle continues
Back on Jan. 11, 2011, I unloaded rather loudly on then SecDef Robert M. Gates, in a post rather testily entitled “Robert M. Gates, totally full of it. Totally,” expressing skepticism with regard to Gates’ statement that in five years North Korea would be able to target the U.S. with an intercontinental ballistic missile, which,…
Fanatical Muslim terrorists resent being caricatured as fanatical Muslim terrorists
2014-2015 is definitely shaping up as “The Great Death to Comedy Winter.” The basic premise of both the North Koreans and the Muslim terrorists is that no one can say vicious, funny things about them because they only say vicious, unfunny things about us. This leaves the Obama Administration in the awkward position of saying…
Kevin D. Williamson, kind of an asshole
I’m sometimes tempted to consider National Review “roving correspondent” Kevin D. Williamson a “thoughtful conservative,” but then sometimes Kev, as in his Jan. 1 “2015 Non-predictions”, thinks like this: “The Iranians will almost certainly continue pursuing nuclear weapons, and the United States will almost certainly continue doing nothing very credible to dissuade them. It won’t…
Obama tosses the Castros in the dustbin of history, while Republicans rage
If they gave prizes for walking corpses—and maybe they should—the Castro brothers’ brutal farce in Havana would certainly win at least an honorable mention—“ugly but ambulant for more than two decades!” has a nice ring to it. But the Republican mainstream seems determined to prop up the beast. Reason’s Matt Welch gives a nice rundown…
Chuck Hagel—“Pour encourager les autres”*
One of the comparatively few attractive things about President Obama is his dislike of the “ritual dismissal”—the Washington practice of figuratively beheading a pre-eminent DC playa, not really because his departure will make a difference as much as the sheer pleasure involved in seeing an important somebody get his butt publicly kicked. Well, a foolish…
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…
Time is Running Out! Again!
Time is running out, Secretary of State John Kerry writes, in the June 30 Washington Post: July 20, the deadline to negotiate a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, is fast approaching. All along, these negotiations have been about a choice for Iran’s leaders. They can agree to the steps necessary to assure the world…