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: Israel
Samantha Power, powerless in Gaza
One would have to be cynical indeed—and I am not such—to enjoy the dilemma of Samantha Power, who once advocated U.S. intervention to avert whatever even looked like genocide at the drop of a hat, and who is now, as head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, presiding over what looks an awful lot…
Socio-political notes from all over: The Ivies go down, Haas keeps covering aass, and Ryan Grim covers, and covers up for, “The Squad”.
The Ivies took a pounding, and New York Representative Elise Stefanik received a publicity boost more valuable than gold, and it couldn’t have come to a less deserving person.1 The supposedly brilliant scholars heading Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and M.I.T. came across as scripted robots, not responding actively to Stefanik’s leading questions—that “intifada”, which…
Israel versus Palestine: When Dreams Collide
“What a dreary compromise is life!” exclaimed the hero of Norman Mailer’s abortive magnum opus, The Man Who Studied Yoga.1 And so life is a dreary compromise for most of us, which is why we go to films to see people who do all the things we don’t do in real life, like punch out…
There is some good in all of us, some of the time
Today is Mea Culpa day at the Literature R Us corral, when I pause to stop making vicious fun of people I generally don’t like, like Eugene “Jan. 6? Wasn’t that a Tuesday?” Volokh and Ross “Yeah, I think it was a Tuesday” Douthat because, well, because they impressed me. I’ll talk about Gene first,…
Ross Douthat, devout Catholic or lying sack of sh*t? I report, you decide.
Writes Ross in his recent column re 9/11 versus present times, regarding our disastrously unnecessary and grotesquely mismanaged invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, In each of these case [the two invasions], the achievement of something relatively basic — preventing terrorist groups from existing in the kind of comfort required to pull off another Sept….
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…
Yo, Jennifer Rubin! Who’s changed, Benjamin Netanyahu or you?
Meet the new Netanyahu. Not the same as the old Netanyahu, says WashPost rightie turned leftie gal Jennifer Rubin, more in sorrow than in anger. In case you haven’t been paying attention, frequent Israeli prime minister (and frequent AV non-fave rave) Benjamin Netanyahu has sunk from, well, atrocious to abysmal. Simply put, the man hath…
Robert Menendez surprises me. And so does Thomas Friedman!
Democratic senator Robert Menendez has made but fleeting appearances in this blog, for no more purpose than to be jeered at by me as “the senator from AIPAC”, thanks in particular to his unrelenting and despicable opposition to the Obama administration’s nuclear weapons deal with Iran, overturned by the Trump administration and now very unlikely…