One of the many projects that I have—lumbering towards completion like weary mammoths journeying across the darkened Arctic landscape of my mind—is a political novel set in the near present-day, with the lives of its characters coming to a halt shortly before the 2008 election. To pick up a little background, I’ve been reading, among…
Tag: politics
Charles to Rick: You’re embarrassing me!
Hear that moanin’? It’s right-wing intellectuals, a-wishin’ and a-hopin’ that someone other than Rick Perry and Mitt Romney would run for president.* “I would hope that whoever the Republican candidate is, he or she will not tell us that creationism or intelligent design is the equivalent of evolution — just another theory about the origins…
Reihan Salam: Why it’s OK to hate and fear people like me
National Review dude Reihan Salam, who, I confess, often makes a good deal of sense, comes a cropper in his defense of Rowdy Rick Perry at “The Daily” here. Salam argues, loosely* but reasonably, that Perry’s record in Texas shows no hint of racism. Salam does concede that American conservatives tend to be awfully, well,…
Sabine Trio—“Ask Me Now”
Posted by “SabinePothierjazz” For a nice vocal version, in German, by “Milli” and the Tatort Jazz Orchester, go here.
Because he can’t win, or because he can?
The Wall Street Journal editorial page, easily my least favorite site on the web, bemoans the weak Republican field. Michele Bachmann, they claim, “has a record of errant statements” (as if the Journal doesn’t), has seemed “on occasion less principled than opportunistic” (Oh, snap!), and (the topper) “Americans are already living with the consequences of…
The use and self-abuse of history, William Kristol edition
Over at the Weekly Standard, William Kristol is musing about history, or at least pretending to. After muttering and mumbling about Ames and such, Billy posts his nut graph (three of them, actually, but they’re short) at the very end of his column: Should Republicans yield to history, and resign themselves to a Romney-Perry choice?…
The Good Ship Varyag, still making waves
In my recent fulmination regarding Time Magazine’s trumpeting of the non-existent danger posed to America by the launch of China’s first aircraft carrier, the reconstituted hulk formerly known as the Varyag, I assumed that only Time would be crass enough to try to make geo-political hay out of the launch of a naval museum piece….
Moods of Thelonious—“Ask Me Now”
Eric Montigny, piano; Ronald Alphonse, sax; Daniele Israel, trombone; Laurent Bernarnd, bass; Stéphane Lambotte, percussion; Dimitri Granger, percussion; David Patrois, vibraphone & marimba. Posted by “tostud”
Hard-headed CEOs demand that Obama show leadership and solve their problems for them
Just when you feel totally exasperated by President Obama’s mealy-mouthed, don’t hit me reasonable man meme, along come a passel of two-fisted, tough-talking CEOs to make the President look good. Over at the Daily Beast, Lloyd Grove and McKay Coppins corral a bunch of business big-wigs to get the low-down on the mess in Washington,…
George Will: Eating words if not mincing them
Over at the American Conservative, which is not entirely All Pat Buchanan, All the Time—and Pat, as the only living American Falangist, deserves more respect than he gets—Daniel Larison has a chuckle over George Will’s discomfiture over the “circus” known as the Ames straw poll. Last March, George announced, in the sort of neo-Burkean harumph…