If you think the news from the Middle East couldn’t get any worse, well, wait ten minutes. This once inconceivable sequence of horrifying events seems destined to rumble on until, well, until it stops. I am generally a fan of finger pointing, but this constant barrage of disasters is, naturally, spawning an orgy of outrage…
Tag: Barack Obama
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…
Barack Obama, wise before the fact, but not, alas, during
Timothy Shenk, a professor of history at the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, which is “within” (somehow) George Washington University, has a nice article up at the New York Times, A Lost Manuscript Reveals the Fire Barack Obama Couldn’t Reveal on the Campaign Trail. What the good professor is talking about is a 250-page…
CRT v. Anti-CRT: Wait, Wait! You’re BOTH Right! Occasionally.
OCTOBER 6, 2022 UPDATE: In the course of this report—somewhere in the middle—I discuss crime data from the FBI. I should have pointed out that these data are estimates rather than complete tallies. We don’t know, for example, that there were 10,440 homicides in the U.S. in 2020, although the FBI says we do. I…
Terror From The Skies! Well, sort of.
“Iran-backed militias turn to drone attacks, alarming U.S. forces in Iraq” bellows the headline in the Washington Post. Louisa Loveluck and John Hudson unload a pulse-pounding narrative that is heavy on atmosphere, speculation, and innuendo, but short on, you know, facts, not to mention casualties. Because all this shrieking about those devilish Iranian devils and…
Barack Obama, still not getting it after all these years
I confess that I have not read President Obama’s recent memoir, A Promised Land, nor am I likely to, because I have convinced myself that the political pressures on American politicians make it impossible, or at least exceedingly unlikely, for them to ever write anything that resembles an honest book. I would say that this…
Political Notes From All Over, Volume II
Barack Obama and the Ministry o’ Truth Oy vey, mon president! In a recent interview with the BBC former President Barack “if you like your health care plan you can keep it” Obama complains about the lack of truthiness currently available in the USA: There are millions of people who subscribed to the notion that…
George F. Will showing some signs of improvement. Emphasis on the “some”
Recently, I’ve slackened off making fun of George F. “the ‘F’ stands for ‘Frabjous’, son” Will, first because George has largely been a good boy, leaving the Republican Party in disgust with its abandonment of free market policies, doubling down on that disgust at the nomination of Donald Trump, and going the extra mile by…
Well, this is embarrassing! Donald Trump will probably/possibly/maybe do what Barack Obama should have done. Get us the heck out of Afghanistan!
Yes, it’s true! Or maybe it is, as Donald Trump would say. Who knows? Tune in next week! Indeed, the agreement signed between the U.S. and the Taliban contains a lot of if thens and if whens. As Adam Wunische, over at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explains, in his article “The U.S.–Taliban Deal…
Samantha Power and the art of looking away
(Editor’s note. Sometimes I write ‘em short, and sometimes I can’t shut up. This is one of the latter occasions.) Several hundred news cycles ago, Samantha Power’s autobiography/memoir The Education of an Idealist was in the news. Well, I am nothing if not slow, so I am just getting caught up with Samantha, who really…