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…
Tag: foreign policy
Dan Drezner Impresses Me!
Damn straight he does! I’ve often been awfully hard on Dan, but, well, when Dan changes, I change too, and Dan has, in my opinion, served up a real stunner, bouncing off a recent piece by Paul Krugman, The Strange Decline of the Pax Americana, something I did too, but Dan and I bounce differently,…
Stop the world. I want to get off. Immediately.
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…
The Coalition of the Swilling
Here are two questions that few today can answer, to wit: “During the Vietnam War, what could you buy in a Filipino PX that you couldn’t buy in an American PX?” “Johnnie Walker Black Label and Chivas Regal.” “What else could you buy in a Filipino PX?” “Nothing.” After Lyndon Johnson sent American ground troops…
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…
Yo, Francis Fukuyama! Righteous rage may be hazardous to your health! And mine too!
Francis Fukuyama, who is probably my most favorite living neo-Hegelian, has sadly gone off the rails more than a little with this ecstatic, triumphalist treatise, Why Ukraine Will Win, which sounds to me a lot like the late Charlie Krauthammer on steroids and scotch circa 2004, rejoicing over the new American empire, on which, he…
Memo to Peter Beinart: Physician, heal thyself!
AV fave rave Daniel Larison has a post up1 quoting Peter Beinart from an interview Pete did with John Glaser of the Cato Institute as follows: We also don’t have…we don’t really have a learning process that I think then shapes the public debate. So one of the things that’s really frustrating to me, and…
Shorter Nancy Pelosi: I cans so be dumber than Joe Biden!
What is the deal with Nancy Pelosi? Is she thinking “Well, I’ve fucked up domestic policy, now I got foreign policy to deal with”? She’s already visited Ukraine (“They gave me a medal! That’s how important I am!”) and I guess maybe she’s expecting to get one from Taiwan, though, really, no one seems to…
Shorter Danielle Pletka: Murder is my business
Well, in case you were wondering, we now know why Danielle Pletka, distinguished senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, hasn’t been found in an alley with a bullet in her head: she isn’t important enough to kill! Because murder works! Okay, Danielle isn’t quite that brazen. In her recent, unfortunately (or not) paywalled article…
Socio-political notes from all over
God Bless Niall Ferguson! (Pretty much) It’s hard to think of anyone I have trashed so consistently and so contemptuously as Niall Ferguson, whom I once grudgingly praised with a thoroughly uncivil leer as a Thelonious Monk-loving slimeball, while also urging readers not to read his then most recent book, whose title will go unmentioned…