This is shocking, if true. Continue reading →
It’s the economy again, stupids
I’ve said several times that economics is one of my weakest areas. But there are a few things I do know about the current crisis, and here are three of them: there’s a lot of greed out there, loans were made that shouldn’t have been, and now we’re all likely to have to pay.
Is it a Democrat or Republican problem? I don’t think it’s either, or maybe it would be more accurate to say it’s both. Is it clear which party would be better at fixing it? Not at all. But each side will definitely be doing some scrambling to come up with a plan that sounds like it knows how to deal with the mess. And I am fairly sure that, although John McCain is on record as saying he’s no economics expert, he’ll talk to advisors and try to start sounding as though he is. As will Obama.
Mike Allen of Politco writes that this will affect the election, and it makes sense to think so. Continue reading →
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the stupidest of them all?
According to many Democrats, liberals, and Leftists, leading Conservatives and/or Republicans seem to fall mostly into one of two molds: the evil clods and the evil geniuses. Bush is one of the former and Cheney and Rove the latter.
McCain is a bit different; he doesn’t clearly fall into either category. That’s why Democrats and the press have had to attack him in other ways: age, recklessness, and loudly and repetitively that he’s Bush in McCain clothing.
Palin, however, is much easier to work into the template: she’s another evil clod. Gibson’s “gotcha” interview that “proved” she didn’t know all the answers to his pop quiz on foreign policy was part of this strategy. She’s a dummy, see? Continue reading →
A liberal tries to understand the Palin phenomenon
Judith Warner seems to be trying to get it.
In a meandering, unfocused piece in the NY Times, she tries to work through her confusion about Palinmania. Along the way, there is the usual condescension, barely contained.
But towards the end she seems to begin to understand something she may have never grasped before, Continue reading →
Another goof from the well-managed Obama campaign: never mind
Obama will be appearing on Saturday Night Live tomorrow. This makes a certain amount of sense, since lately his campaign seems to be headed into previously uncharted Emily Litella “never mind” waters.
When I heard about this ad I immediately thought it was an error of judgment:
What could Obama possibly gain by alienating people who, for one reason or other, don’t use computers? Continue reading →
The media: they’re not going to take it anymore!
Remember this?
That was a character named Howard Beale in the movie “Network.” And now comes another Howard—Kurtz by name—of the WaPo. He’s pretty mad, too, and he’s not going to take it any more.
Who’s Kurtz mad at, and who’s he saying the MSM is mad at? Continue reading →
Mettle fatigue
I’ve got a piece up at Pajamas entitled “Is Obama Buckling Under Pressure?” Please take a look; there’s even some poetry in it!
But I liked my original title (see above) better. Ah, well.
Thoughts on the Gibson-Palin interview: the Not-So-Grand Inquisitor
I was constantly distracted by two things: the shockingly choppy editing, and Gibson’s profoundly inquisitorial demeanor.
It wasn’t just his game face, and the peering over the eyeglasses (he gave new meaning to the expression “looked down his nose at her”). It was his remarkable condescension: “I got lost in a blizzard of words…” That crack sounded more like one side of a couple’s quarrel overheard in a restaurant than the statement of a neutral interviewer. Continue reading →
Stupid or malicious?
Why do we have to choose? I vote both.
Palin unhinges feminists on the Left
I hadn’t been following the women’s movement all that closely since its relatively sedate days of “equal pay for equal work.” Yes, I knew that at some point rather long ago it had been taken over by a radical fringe on the Left with some zany ideas that had turned off the vast majority of women—and men—and had given the movement a bad name. But I had no idea.
Repeat, shouting: I HAD NO IDEA!
The nomination of Sarah Palin has acted as a sort of plaque discloser for the display of a fulminating rage which until now I had assumed was directed by these activists solely (and all too often inappropriately) towards the men they felt had oppressed, assaulted, and otherwise done them wrong. Continue reading →
Seven years
It’s been seven years since 9-11.
Seven years, a Biblical number. I’m not sure whether they were seven lean years or seven fat ones on the whole. But one thing I do know is that they’ve been seven astonishing and gripping ones.
Things I never imagined back on September 11, 2001:
—That we would not be attacked again within the next seven years.
—That a mere seven years later, the attacks would seem as though they happened a very long time ago.
—That I would end up admiring a great deal about George Bush.
—The growth of the blogosphere, and my place in it.
—The widening and increasingly bitter divisions in our country.
—A war that would open up the wounds of the Vietnam era and teach me to reconsider things I thought I already knew.
—That I’d ever vote for a Republican President, and even volunteer to help elect one.
—So many readers who would enrich my life immeasurably.
Reflections on 9/11
[This is a slightly edited version of a piece first published two years ago.]
Does it seem as though seven years have passed since that dreadful day of the stunningly blue sky, the orange flames, the plumes of grey-black smoke? Continue reading →