Yeah, I got Daniel Drezner—“Obfuscatin’ Dan”, I like to call him—on my mind, on my mind. I got Daniel Drezner on my mind. Again! I just got finished praising ole Obfuscatin’ Dan to the skies in a recent post for his recent post at Reason, “There Is No China Crisis”, calling it “absolute gold”. As…
Tag: military spending
Old Man War Machine, he jes’ keep rollin’ along
(Editor’s Note: I wrote this piece to describe the military intellectual complex’s endless search for a new Cold War. But Donald Trump seems to be looking for a hot one.) The Washington Post’s recent release of the “Afghanistan Papers”, which reported at least a significant portion of the near-infinite number of lies told to justify…
Shorter Admiral McRaven: Will invade foreign countries for food
Okay, that should be “Will invade foreign countries for rank and appropriations” but Literature R Us puts snark over accuracy every time. What is indisputable is that retired Admiral William McRaven is shit fit petrified that drunken Donald Trump might actually knock over the punchbowl that has, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, ladled…
Who’s dumber, Elizabeth Warren or Max Boot?
To my mind, Elizabeth Warren is basically a Hillary Clinton who doesn’t summer in the Hamptons. That is, a well-meaning know it all who wants to run your life for you. So when disillusioned conservative Max Boot took aim at her in the Washington Post—“Elizabeth Warren has lots of ideas. Bad ideas.”—I was (largely) content…
War! What is it good for! APPROPRIATIONS!
Some time ago—well, thirty years ago, more or less—I read a reminiscence on the journalism biz by Michael Kinsley, recalling the words of journalistic wisdom he received as a tyro from a legendary pundit whose name I have forgotten: “Always sell the same piece at least three times.” By that standard, I’m a motherfucking journalistic…
Who’s dumber, Trump or the “Intelligence Community”?
I won’t keep you in suspense. IT’S TRUMP! The bad news—or, I guess, the worse news—is, it’s a close contest. And the worst news—for now—is that it’s not just funny dumb but, all too likely, disastrous dumb. Because the real objective for both sides—though they’re choosing different routes—is a new Cold War, with ever-tightening tensions,…
“Grow up, Conservatives!” bellows the Weekly Standard, in its very best grown-up voice
Yes, grow up, conservatives, demands the Weekly Standard’s Chris Deaton, bemoaning the right’s “short game” critique of U.S. representative-elect and left-wing babe o’ the millennium Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Stop making fun of her wardrobe, particularly when, as it turns out, the outfit was a loaner, and concentrate on refuting her wacko long game, which as it…
Shorter Donald Trump: What’s the deal with evil? It ain’t so bad! Hell, sometimes, I feel a little evil myself!
Yes, the lion lay down with the lamb in Singapore, with the meeting of El Donaldo and Kim Jong-un. The only problem was, no one could tell which caudillo was which. Okay, I’m being unkind to El Presidente, as is more or less my wont. He rips children from the arms of their parents, but…
Reihan Salam: Now with new, improved HYPERSONIC Bullsh*t!
Reihan Salam—the “thoughtful” bald conservative without the big, bushy beard—is off on a seriously non-thoughtful tear at the National Review, warning us of existential doom and existential boom in the form of the “Sarmat”, a hypersonic ICBM that Russian President Vladimir Putin is waving in our faces. According to Putin, who has never been known…
We now interrupt this regularly scheduled bad news to bring you much much worse bad news
Several weeks ago—about a decade in Trump years, I would estimate1—I planned to write yet another article ridiculing our nation’s massive addiction to wasteful military spending, category “Star Wars”, springing off an article in Bloomsberg, by “the Editors” themselves, no less, “How to Blow North Korean Missiles Out of the Sky”, bemoaning the fact that,…