Hillary: “flailing?”
The problem that began for Hillary Clinton in the debate a week ago seems to be lingering on. According to Yuval Levin at The Corner and Mickey Kaus at Slate, the issue is not so much her position on the … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Politics
Giuliani and the Red Sox: strange bedfellows
Ah, the compromises politicians will make. Now it turns out that New Yorker Giuliani, the quintessential Yankee fan, is rooting for the Red Sox in the World Series. This has earned him no end of condemnation. It’s also a bit … Continue reading →
Let’s give Turkey a feel-good tongue-lashing: it’s bound to prevent further genocide
This Congress has one of the lowest approval ratings in modern memory. Perhaps that’s because it has accomplished so very little. Then again, perhaps that lack of success is a good thing, seeing the caliber of many of the bills … Continue reading →
Memo to Rudy: Hey, I thought of it first
Michael Hirsh, who thinks Giuliani is suspect for cozying up too much to those nasty, unpopular neocons, offers an interesting quote in his recent Newsweek piece [emphasis mine]: [Giuliani]’s positioning himself as the neo-neocon,” jokes Richard Holbrooke, a top foreign-policy … Continue reading →
The Democrats’ antiwar strategy: wishing will make it so
The antiwar faction of the Democratic Party seems troubled. How, when things looked so bright back in November of last year, could it have all gone so horribly wrong? It’s not that they’re about to give up pressuring those swing … Continue reading →
Fighting the previous war and dissing General Petraeus: the historical underpinnings of MoveOn’s move (Part I)
The antiwar, anti-Bush Leftist organization MoveOn isn’t keen on preemptive strikes—except for its own towards its designated enemies, who now seem to include General Petraeus. MoveOn has drawn quite a bit of metaphorical flak for its ad in the NY … Continue reading →
Another act in the surge theater: setting the stage for Petraeus’s testimony
I’ve likened the political machinations around the surge to theater. And today, as we await General Petraeus’s testimony, the usual players are taking on their customary roles. The MoveOn Left continues to consider it important to disqualify Petraeus as a … Continue reading →
Berating the Democrats: Osama, meet Arianna
What do we learn from the latest Osama videotape? (1) He’s alive. (2) He looks like crap, between his dyed beard and his cadaverous mien. (3) The appeal he’s making is to the useful idiots in the US whom he … Continue reading →
Bill and Bush: the comeback kids
Bill Clinton referred to himself as “The Comeback Kid” during the 1992 campaign, when his moribund candidacy was revived in the state of New Hampshire. Now Clinton might be poised to quite literally come back—to the White House, that is, … Continue reading →
Figure/ground: perceptions of the Vietnam and Iraq wars
Remember those tests of perception known as figure/ground drawings? As a child I was fascinated by their magical “now you see it, now you see something else” mutability. Here are two of the most popular—the vase/profiles one and the young … Continue reading →
Bill: been missin’ ya, miss kissin’ ya
Yesterday I saw my first one of these: Can’t say as I do. But that’s just me. I was never a big fan, even though I voted for him—twice, with vigor. But in the NH primary of 92, I was … Continue reading →
Religion and the Presidency
Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani is a Catholic, although—as this column by Richard Cohen points out—his marital history isn’t precisely what the Catholic church would consider ideal. Cohen compares Giuliani’s recent answer to a question about his Catholicism with that of … Continue reading →