Competitive Victimization
The Hillary/Obama race vs. gender dustup has just given the country a taste of why the Democratic Party spent so many years in the wilderness. The game of competitive victimization reminds swing voters...
View ArticleThe Bloody End
Despite the consensus view that P.T. Anderson’s latest film is a searing, visionary work, numerous critics have complained about the final scene of There Will Be Blood. The New Yorker’s David Denby...
View ArticleDemocratic Dissembling on Iraq
If they were being honest, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would say: “I want to pull all of our combat troops out of Iraq regardless of the consequences. Sure, a huge civil war could break out which...
View ArticleThe Artificial Neocon
I know there are a few competing priorities, but at this moment in our long life as a nation I can think of no more urgent task for Congress than to pass emergency legislation banning the further use...
View Article“Patriotic” Chinese Protests
Sunday, thousands of angry Chinese took to the streets in anti-foreigner protests in major cities in China, including Wuhan, Harbin, Jinan, Xian, Qingdao, and Dalian. The demonstrations followed those...
View ArticleEmbraced
There’s a very “balanced” piece about the planned Flight 93 memorial in today’s New York Times. But this surreal tale has been kicking around the blogosphere for a few years now. In the name of Islam,...
View ArticleWhat If He Goes?
The RNC is working overtime trying to embarrass Barack Obama about his failure to visit Iraq for a couple of years. After a day of this Obama now suggests he might go–just not with John McCain. If he...
View ArticleNor Any Drop to Drink
The man-made water shortage plaguing California is usually called “man-made drought,” but this bumper-sticker description doesn’t capture the essence of the issue. It focuses us on the frightful word...
View ArticleCrime Going Extinct?
In one of the more hopeful and underreported stories in recent months, we learned that for the first half of 2009 — a period of considerable economic distress in our country — crime fell by 4.4 percent...
View ArticleWhere’s the Good Will?
Has Barack Obama lost the liberal elite? To hear Matt Damon tell it, yes. “I’m disappointed in the health care plan and in the troop buildup in Afghanistan. Everyone feels a little let down because, on...
View ArticleKlein of Arabia (Again)
Joe Klein has a characteristically paranoid post in which he says that the criticisms of Barack Obama lodged by AIPAC and other “American Likudniks… teeter on the brink of treachery.” The AIPAC...
View ArticleThe Left Is Grouchy
Reuters reports: Five million first-time voters turned out in 2008, many drawn by Obama’s promise of hope and overwhelmingly voting for Democrats. Now disappointed, or at least apathetic, they may not...
View ArticleProgress on Crime
According to the FBI’s Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report (see here and here), compared with data from 2008, violent crime in America decreased by 5.5 percent; property crime declined by 4.9...
View ArticleFlotsam and Jetsam
It took Barack Obama to turn an ex-president into a sleazy “bag man.” What will it take for the left to break with the anti-Semites, racists, and Israel-bashers? “Democracy for America, the progressive...
View ArticleHollywood Celebrates
Will there be fireworks at the Hollywood Bowl? A fantastic bash in his honor, albeit with the guest of honor absent? Yes, from coast to coast, the moral zombies who populate the big and small screen...
View ArticleFlotsam and Jetsam
Good advice to conservative pundits from Michael Gerson (in defending Karl Rove): “[A commentator] owes his readers or viewers his best judgment — which means he cannot simply be a tool of someone...
View ArticleA No Good, Rotten Time for Big Labor
Big Labor is having a tough time. You’d think that after spending millions in hard and soft money to get Obama and a Democratic Congress elected, they’d be flying high. But alas, the public’s approval...
View ArticleRE: Two Big Losers: Obama and Gerrymandering
John, it is certainly the case that ultra-gerrymandered districts have left California House races largely uncompetitive. Living in California for nearly 40 years — in several locations — I never saw a...
View ArticleMuslim Leaders Blame FBI for Foiling Portland Bomb Plot
While most around the country breathed a sigh of relief after undercover FBI agents foiled an Islamist extremist bomb plot in Portland, Oregon, this past weekend, apparently some Muslim leaders are...
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Review: Where Things Are Allowed to Have Complexity
Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia (New York: Scribner, 2011). 235 pp. $24.00. Nobody much likes the term literary fiction, but nobody knows what else to call it. Publishers and booksellers feel the need to...
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