Kamala Harris came out of the gate like gangbusters, but now she’s slowed to an indifferent cantor. What’s the deal? The deal is, largely, the same as Hubert Humphrey’s, Al Gore’s, and Hillary Clinton’s: they can’t run away from their president’s record. Now, it’s easy to say that Joe was the victim of circumstance, though…
Tag: Ukraine
Lawrence Freedman and Eliot Cohen: The Silence of Two Very Black Pots
Lawrence Freedman—or “Sir Lawrence” as they call him at Kings College in London, where he is Emeritus Professor of War Studies—has an interesting blog, “Comment Is Freed”, and an interesting post at that blog, Assessing the Assessors What did analysts get wrong about the Russian invasion?, which considers a recent paper, The Russia-Ukraine War: A…
Shorter Jamie Dimon: You’re calling me a “whore”? I prefer the term “businessman”.
Sorry, Jamie, but even by “businessman” standards—if they still exist—you’re a whore, and a pretty goddamn big one too. Here’s Jamie talking to CNBC about the state of the world, after meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Ukrainian spelling as per Wikipedia): But, you know, my heart goes out to the guy. I mean, people…
F*ck yeah I’m a Wikipedia-surfin’ Kissinger wannabe! Ugottaproblemwitdat?
My old buddy/bête noir Dan Drezner brings me this message, Are "Wikipedia-Surfing Kissinger Wannabes" Killing the Political Risk Field?, jumping off a fulminatin’ post by one Tina Fordham, a serious, totally non-amateur political risk chick who now runs her own company, Fordham Global Foresight. Writing in the Financial Times, Tina ripped a new one for…
Shorter Ramesh Ponnuru: Sure, Hitler went too far, but so did his critics!
Haven’t had your morning coffee yet? Well, too bad, because I am playing the Hitler card this morning, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I will do Mr. Ponnuru the favor of quoting him according to the letter rather than the spirit, to wit: DeSantis lacks moral clarity on Ukraine. His critics lack…
Yo, “conservatives”! Haven’t you heard? You’re totally f*cked!
Yes, it’s schadenfreude time around the Literature ‘R Us corral once more, and, yes, it is morally lazy in the extreme to snicker at the other side’s weaknesses without considering one’s own, but life is short, after all, and we’ll soon be in the clay, so before we submit to the clammy embrace of viscous…
Is Ross Douthat smarter than Joe Biden? Probably.
I have, in the past, beat on poor Ross Douthat so lustily that the poor man recently moved to have me declared a public nuisance. But now I feel compelled to admit that, despite the appalling mendacity of his pseudo “Never Trumper” posturing/apologetics, Ross can still serve an occasional winner, and he did so with…
Shorter India: “The United States of ‘America’? Isn’t that one of those little western countries?”
That’s the perspective from New Delhi, Varanasi and Chennai, as reported by NYT guy Roger Cohen in his long post, Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World, suggesting that the Biden administration’s moralizing attempt to turn the current world situation into Cold War II isn’t playing too well beyond the Atlantic community of nations, almost…
Alan Vanneman is very disappointed in Paul Krugman
Fuck yeah, I am. The source of my disappointment is Paul’s latest, Why America Is Getting Tough on Trade, the very title an irritant for the homage it pays to the meme that “getting tough” is always a good idea. Paul’s “nut graph” (I think that’s what it is) reads as follows: This is a…
George Packer, Packin’ the Con in “Neocon”!
I’ve never actually met George Packer, but I have read him, in the current issue of the Atlantic, so I’ll go out on a limb and say I can probably throw him farther than I can trust him. Yes, I am hip to old Georgie’s jive, right from the get-go—right from his “head”, as a…