The haters are in charge of immigration “reform”, Sahil Kapur reports for Bloomberg Politics. President-elect Trump has chosen for his transition team the notorious Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, author of Arizona’s “Papers, Please” law, which allows police to stop anyone they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally. Hey, no danger of racial…
Tag: Daniel Larison
Why did the GOP fail to stop Trump? Because Republicans voted for him
At the Washington Post, Dan Drezner serves up “My very peculiar and speculative theory of why the GOP has not stopped Donald Trump”, receiving an approving nod from the American Conservative’s Daniel Larison, “How the GOP Failed To Stop Trump”. Drezner’s take: “My hypothesis is that GOP decision-makers also read the same analyses [from political…
Barack Obama ignorant of history, says George Will, ignorantly
George F.—“F for Fabulous!”—Will has his definitive take on the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran. Like 97% of George’s columns, the real point here is not to say anything substantial about anything, but rather to allow George to look down his presumably Georgian nose at his inferiors, said inferiors, of course, being just about everyone…
Thomas Friedman, still wanting to blow things up
Poor Thomas! He’s supporting Obama’s Iran deal, because, because, I guess, because the guys at the water cooler at the Times wouldn’t speak to him if he didn’t. Damn that peer group pressure! But Tom isn’t a total pussy. No way, John! According to Tom, once we make the deal with Iran, we include this…
What Daniel Larison gets wrong about what Iran hawks get wrong
I find The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison to be indispensable reading. Dan never wearies in his pursuit of interventionist nonsense from both the right and left. His only problem, shockingly, is his overabundance of innocence. All too often, he really believes that the neo-cons, and their liberal interventionist counterparts, really believe what they say. A…
Cart before the horse
Daniel Larison has a post about Sen. Ron Johnson’s less than brilliant demand for military action against Iran. Dan remarks that “Iran hawks such as Johnson support preventive war against Iran because they are excessively afraid that Iran will eventually acquire nuclear weapons.” Actually, that’s backwards. It should run like this: “Iran hawks such as Johnson pretend…
Daniel Larison is confused
The mills of God grind exceeding slow but exceeding fine. Mine grind exceeding slow. A decade or two ago in blog years, the American Conservative’s Daniel Larison, writing in a post labeled “George Will and ‘Cuba Derangement Syndrome’,”1 proclaimed himself mystified by Georgie’s “strange conclusion” regarding a dispute between Ky. Sen. Rand Paul and Fl….
President Obama makes Lynne Cheney look like a [insert opprobrious sexual reference here]
“We need a war!” famously exclaimed Lynne Cheney1 back in the reign of Bill Clinton. President Obama’s motto seems to be “We need another war!” Mainstream Democrats remain terrified of pissing off the Pentagon and the CIA, who will have their toys, and their budgets. This will be a cheap war, of course, but since…
Is Obama a realist? Well, that depends on what your definition of “reality” is
Over at the American Conservative, Daniel Larison struggles manfully, as is his wont, over the minutiae of American foreign policy, in particular whether President Obama is a “realist.” Quite reasonably, he concludes that he isn’t. Realists don’t start pointless wars, as President Obama did by launching an air assault on a harmless country (Libya) because,…
Daniel Larison, still failing to penetrate the depths of the hawkish mind
Over at the American Conservative, Dan gives it his best shot in a post labeled “Almost All Sanctions Are ‘Unserious’”, but still comes up short. Maybe it’s the damn feathers, Dan. In dogged fashion, Dan tries his best to make it clear to hawks why arguing about “serious” versus “unserious” sanctions are a waste of…