I agree with the Wall Street Journal on a dismaying number of issues. Free trade is an easy one—increasing incomes abroad while decreasing the cost of living at home has always seemed like a no-brainer to me. Like the Journal, I have a hearty dislike of subsidies—farm subsidies of course, but energy as well. Clean…
Search Results for: north korea
Fred Kaplan, getting scared again
Unlike the rest of us, Fred Kaplan—Cap’n Fred, as we like to call him—is always on the alert for new dangers. Fred’s latest worry? North Korea! As Fred accurately (for once) notes, we know practically nothing about the new leader, Kim Jong-un, although “meet the new boss, just like the old boss,” wouldn’t be a…
Chait and Frum, telling the truth all the way to the water’s edge
Over at NYMag, Jonathan Chait, liberal, and David Frum, conservative, take turns talking out of school and dumping on their respective parties. Chait has the easier task, because, as he tells it, it’s only the “liberals” who are out to lunch, but for Frum it’s the whole fucking party (which is totally fucking true). Chait…
Robert M. Gates, totally full of it. Totally.
“Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned on Thursday that North Korea was within five years of being able to target the continental United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile, and said that, combined with its expanding nuclear program, the country “is becoming a direct threat to the United States,” today’s New York Times reports. According…
But we were relying on it so heavily!
The U.S. missile defense system, Ronnie Reagan’s beloved Star Wars, has failed again, the second flopperoo in a row, and seventh out of fifteen tries, according to Reuters. “This is a tremendous setback for the testing of this complicated system,” said Riki Ellison, chairman and founder of the Virginia-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance and a…
Robin Wright’s Magic Disappearing Video, Robin Wright’s Magic Disappearing Story
Readers of the Washington Post were greeted with the following front page story on April 24 by Post reporter Robin Wright: N. Koreans Taped At Syrian ReactorVideo Played a Role in Israeli RaidA video taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced the Israeli government and the Bush administration that North Korea was helping…
The Washington Post, searching for purpose
Why are we in Iraq? Good question! Damned good question! Originally, it was stop Saddam from attacking us with “weapons of mass destruction,” nukes in particular, or at least that dreadful yellow cake. There was no chance that Saddam would attack us, of course—he wasn’t that dumb—but the mere fact that he had those WMD…
Yeah, I flunked Econ 101! What’s your point?
As a matter of fact, I I didn’t flunk Econ 101, because I never took it! So what? To quote Mel Brooks, I’m an old man and I’ve got a right to talk. And, to quote another old man, Richard Nixon, “I am not an intellectual, but I do read books!” Well, I do and…
The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party? Part II Part 2: Matthew Continetti and The Right
A few years ago, I wrote an extended piece bearing the title The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party?. Recently, in response to a couple of engaging (relatively) meas culpas—Matthew Continetti’s The Right The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism and Tim Miller’s Why We Did It—I began preparing an update. I originally planned to…
Another $2 trillion down the rathole
“Another $40 billion down the rathole,” Secretary of the Treasury Gordon Humphrey used to sigh, contemplating the Defense Department’s annual budget requests under the Eisenhower administration.1 But that was then. Now we’re up to $2 trillion! Well, on the one hand, that $2 trillion, to update our nuclear deterrent, will be spread out over 25…