Over at the National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru provides some serious right-wing inside baseball regarding whatever the fuck it is Donald Trump is doing playing footsie with Nancy for God’s sake Pelosi—which, if you like serious, right-wing inside baseball, is worth reading. But in his final paragraph, mighty Ramesh whiffs mightily, as it were, with the…
A World of Struggle at Harvard Law
(Author’s Note: The following is a sprawling takedown of David Kennedy’s A World of Struggle, a book that clearly got my goat.) Pankaj Mishra is the author of several fascinating books, including From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia and his new one Age of Anger, which I am struggling to get…
George F. Will Still Hates Football!
There are many things about George F. Will–“F” for “Fucking Amazing”–that I, well, that I totally fucking hate!, but there is also one thing that I find totally fucking amusing, and that is that Georgie, in open and explicit opposition to “America”, totally fucking hates fucking football!. George’s latest harange on the evils of America’s…
Jerry Lewis, you’ll jamais walk alone
Since the American media agenda looks to be waterlogged for the rest of the week, it might be “appropriate”, faute de mieux, to revisit the recent passing of Jerry Lewis. For my money, the greatest contribution Jerry ever made to comedy was to inspire Martin Short’s deliciously malicious SCTV parody, “Jerry Lewis, Live at the…
Jonah Goldberg, down with both the Inquisition and the Crusades!
Well, first of all, there were a lot of inquisitions, which is just Latin anyway for “inquire”, which is what, you know, inquiring minds do—a lot!—because, you know, they want to know! And the Crusades, well, they were “largely defensive wars intended to beat back the aggression of Muslim colonizers”. My own “take” on the…
O Captain! My Captain!
Some years ago, I did some reading regarding the downing of Iran Airlines Flight 655, shot down, with the loss of 290 lives, by the USS Vincennes in 1988, a cruiser captained by one Will Rogers III. Rogers, known for his aggressive attitude, deliberately took the Vincennes into Iranian waters, in contravention of his standing…
Serious people can change their minds, can’t they?
Max Abelson at Bloomberg reminds us that only a few short years ago, all the “serious people” on Wall Street were demanding that President Obama just had to cut entitlements to save America from economic collapse brought on by massive budget deficits. Unfortunately for the unity of the Democratic Party, Obama bought this line. Fortunately…
I cannot keep silent! Part Deux
This not talking shit is hard! Yesterday, I couldn’t/wouldn’t keep silent about some year-old bullshit from David Ignatius. Well, today it’s the National Review’s Rich Lowry, opining about General Trump’s plans to reignite the war in Afghanistan: “At the end of the day, this is Trump concluding that he doesn’t want to lose a war…
I cannot keep silent!
A whole week ago I swore off blogging for a couple of weeks in order to engage in some “deep thought”, which I totally have been doing, remarking that I hoped our president would not blow up the world while I did so. Well, Sir Donald isn’t blowing up the world, because he’s so preoccupied…
David Ignatius thinks you’re an idiot (Redux)
Perhaps I should say, David Ignatius hopes and prays you’re an idiot. This is the way Dave begins his latest column, “America is no longer guaranteed military victory. These weapons could change that.” “The fight against the Islamic State may get the headlines. But it’s the military threats from Russia and China that most worry…