Democrats continue to pay the price for the “Democratic Drought”, the absence of new faces for the party during the Obama years, either because existing new faces went down to defeat in the disastrous elections of 2010 and 2014 and never re-emerged or simply never appeared at all, leaving us with fuddie-duddies like Hillary, Bernie,…
Who’s dumber, Elizabeth Warren or Max Boot?
To my mind, Elizabeth Warren is basically a Hillary Clinton who doesn’t summer in the Hamptons. That is, a well-meaning know it all who wants to run your life for you. So when disillusioned conservative Max Boot took aim at her in the Washington Post—“Elizabeth Warren has lots of ideas. Bad ideas.”—I was (largely) content…
The Ecstasy of St. Dave
David Brooks has, in no particular order, left his wife of 27 years, married a woman 23 years his junior—his “research” assistant; who could see that coming?—and found Christ. He’s written a book on the latter, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, which apparently involves, well, dumping your old wife and finding…
Who could have seen this coming? Except everybody, I mean
Politico has the word: “Big businesses paying even less than expected under GOP tax law”. That’s right, according to Brian Faler, “Federal tax payments by big businesses are falling much faster than anticipated in the wake of Republicans’ tax cuts, providing ammunition to Democrats who are calling for corporate tax increases.” It gets worse, says…
The irresistible charm of the outlier updated: New York Times Edition
It seems like only yesterday—because it was— that I was riffing on the tendency of the lamestream media (and everyone else) to generalize on the follies of our times not on the average but the extreme, to wit, an article in the Washington Post decrying the alleged abysmal performance of the Arlington County, Va. English…
Herodotus Redux. Or, the irresistible charm of the outlier
“After three years at one middle school, a student still didn’t know how to use a bilingual dictionary” So read a recent headline on the “front page” of the Washington Post web edition, leading the reader to a story by Theresa Vargas with the headline, “Arlington Schools has agreed to improve how it supports English…
Carriage House Days
Just off the corner of Connecticut and N Streets in Washington, DC is a reasonably imposing red-brick urban mini-mansion, which, a small plaque informs you, once belonged to General Henry Robert, who, you probably don’t know, wrote Robert’s Rules of Order. But back in 1975 when I worked there as a file clerk, we called…
More short takes
Fred Hiatt wants to make sure you know he’s a COMPLETE idiot Well, he does. “We knew who Trump was but elected him anyway. We can’t impeach him for that.”, writes WashPost editorial page editor Fred, ignoring the fact that “we” didn’t elect Trump, the Electoral College did. I myself am opposed to impeaching Trump,…
Imani Williams—“Round Midnight”
Takes, short and not so short
Nancy Pelosi is invisible, says George F. Will In a not bad considering column, George F. Will urges congressional Democrats to “temper their enthusiasm for impeachment with lucidity”, listening to words of wisdom from others, including Greg Weiner, “Madison scholar par excellence” and author of a new book that Mr. Will has either read or…