[NOTE: This is another installment in my series on literary leftists.] You may know Will and Ariel Durant as the authors of a series of books on world history called The Story of Civilization, which I read one long-ago summer … Continue reading →
About a week ago marked the 75th anniversary of the disappearance of Juliet Poyntz. She’s hardly a household word, but her story is not atypical of those highly-placed Communists who turned on their former colleagues. Poyntz was a Barnard history … Continue reading →
Obama’s speech on economics yesterday was remarkable in that it failed to impress even the sycophants at MSNBC: And Dana Milbank of the WaPo was not the least bit happy with Obama, either: I had high hopes for President Obama’s … Continue reading →
…should Obama be more like LBJ? Perhaps he should have asked, “could Obama be more like LBJ?” But either way the answer is (drum roll please): NO, because the question is absurd. This is like asking should (or could) a … Continue reading →
President Obama commits the gaffe of calling Romney by Mitt’s father’s name, George: During a speech at the New Amsterdam Theater in Times Square, the president mixed up his Republican opponent with former Michigan Governor George Romney while contrasting their … Continue reading →
By now you probably know that Obama has committed another huge boo-boo: he has managed to outrage the Poles by referring to a Nazi death camp in Poland as a “Polish death camp.” The occasion was some scripted remarks during … Continue reading →
[NOTE: Like yesterday’s post, this rumination was sparked by Martin Amis’ book Koba the Dread.] Here’s a tragic quote about political change, from Dmitri Volkogonov, a man who wrote biographies of Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky: “Perhaps the only thing I … Continue reading →
I’ve been wading through Martin Amis’ Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million, a book about Soviet Russia and its crimes and betrayals. The reason I’m reading that particular book is that one of Amis’s goals in writing it … Continue reading →
Richard Cohen advises Obama to read Robert Caro’s latest biography of LBJ and learn how to make friends and influence people like Johnson did. Dream on. In an alternate universe, maybe. In this one, a person can learn a few … Continue reading →
Obama’s big campaign talking point is that he’s the cool one. And the MSM seems to agree. Ah, but you heard it first at neo-neocon. Back in early June of 2008, in a post entitled, “Wanting a cool and sexy … Continue reading →
The quote in the title of this piece is from Bobby Green, one of four black people who were heroes in the LA riots of twenty years ago. But there’s no “just” about it; the acts were rays of hope … Continue reading →
It’s come to this: dueling unshaggy dog stories. So, is it worse to put a dog in a crate on the top of a car, or to have eaten dog as a child? I love dogs, but my answer would … Continue reading →