Last week, Jonathan Chait, heretofore one of President Obama’s most passionate defenders, wrote a bitter piece in New York magazine entitled “How Obama Tried to Sell Out Liberalism in 2011,” bouncing off the latest “what went wrong” tick-tock in a long series of what went wrong tick-tocks on the Obama Administration, this one written by…
Tag: politics
Murmur, Murmur
OK, this is pretty late, like 20 years, but over at Salon Steve Kornacki has an interesting (to me) piece on attempts by various would-be presidential candidates to win their party’s nomination by announcing a choice for vice-president prior to the convention. Back in 1992, Jerry Brown was hounding Bill Clinton in the New York…
Liberalism and the white working class, expanded
A few posts back, I ended a rant on Charles Murray (one of two, actually) with a cheap shot at liberals, to wit: “So why doesn’t the white working class vote Democratic? Because liberals don’t care about them.” Let me unpack that, just a bit. Liberals have in fact done a fair amount for the…
Newt goes down: the party’s over
I guess I’m not really ahead of the crowd on this one: the odds are very good that Mitt Romney will squash Newt Gingrich tomorrow like a thrice-married June bug. It gets worse: Despite all his bravado—and, surely, despite all his anger at being outspent by a margin of more than five to one—Newt will…
Rod Blagojevich: Moptop Dickhead*
So now Rod Blagojevich is going to jail for fourteen years for running his mouth. I find this utterly repulsive. Martha Stewart became a convicted felon for the crime of telling a cheesy little lie that essentially did no harm to anyone, but gave a “crusading” district attorney the chance to kick some celebrity ass.†…
The Newtator-in-Chief Lord Spare Us
Over at the New York Times, Republican truth-teller Bruce Bartlett has a column headed “Gingrich and the Destruction of Congressional Expertise,” explaining how, as Speaker, Newt “did everything in his power to dismantle Congressional institutions that employed people with the knowledge, training and experience to know a harebrained idea when they saw it,” said harebrained…
Princeton history professors and Berkeley economic professors: which is worse?
Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and he writes like this: “Although President Ronald Reagan was mocked by some as an actor in the White House who followed his script, Reagan was like Gingrich in that he spent much of his early adulthood deeply immersed in journals such…
Chait and Frum, telling the truth all the way to the water’s edge
Over at NYMag, Jonathan Chait, liberal, and David Frum, conservative, take turns talking out of school and dumping on their respective parties. Chait has the easier task, because, as he tells it, it’s only the “liberals” who are out to lunch, but for Frum it’s the whole fucking party (which is totally fucking true). Chait…
The Barack Obama Chinese-American Naval Full Employment Act of 2012
Last week President Obama traveled to the quasi-god-forsaken site of Darwin, Australia to twist the tail of the Chinese dragon by announcing that 2,500 U.S. Marines would now be spending time in Australia. “As a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future,” the…
Ho, ho, ho, Ho, ho, ho. Gingrich got $1.6 million from Freddie Mac
No wonder the dude could stand straight at Tiffany’s.