A few months ago, WashPost columnist Daniel Drezner blossomed forth with a series of articles on the future lying before us whose tone was so gloomy that I may start wishing I won’t live long enough to see it. His biggest “big picture” picture appeared in Reason last April, titled “Will Today’s Global Trade Wars…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Donald Trump not a good guy, Paul Ryan discovers
“Those of us around him really helped to stop him from making bad decisions. All the time. We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was. Now I think he’s making some of these knee-jerk reactions.” Thus former House Speaker Paul Ryan on Donald Trump, in…
The four-star general with a two-star mind
Okay, that headline is more euphonious than accurate, not to say meaningful, so here’s the gist of what I’m trying to say: Politico has a story up by Eliana Johnson claiming that Donald Trump held off bombing Iran on the basis of comments on Fox News by retired four star Jack Keane, to wit: “Our…
Ponnuru doubles to left
Or right. Or center. Whatever. Supply your own metaphor. While others seem too polite to speak, my sometime pal Ramesh lays the wood to Judy Shelton, one of President Trump’s two new picks for the Federal Reserve, to wit: “Trump’s choice for the Fed Board is now disavowing some of her terrible economic ideas. It’s…
Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie—“Round Midnight”
More Diz, actually playing this time, with Thelonious himself, and the rest of the "Giants of Jazz," including Sonny Stitt, sax, Kai Winding, trombone, Al McKibbon, bass, and Art Blakey, drums. The Giants were not happy campers, because only a few years before, they’d all been headliners, and now they were a nostalgia act. Remarkably,…
Jay Nordlinger, conservative with a conscience
It seems like every day—because it is every day—that Donald Trump will say something so gross and offensive that one wants to say—and should say—“if a Democratic president had said that, the conservative media would have exploded in outrage and disbelief, following which they would have immediately demanded impeachment.” Of course, no one wants to…
Sarah Vaughn, Milt Jackson—“Round Midnight”
Not too shabby! Also Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet (but largely MC), James Moody, sax, Al Haig, piano, Ray Brown, bass, and Kenny Clarke, drums. Also not shabby! From 1976. Posted by SOGLIDER
Questions that should not be asked, much less answered: What was the deal with “guest stars” on Murder, She Wrote?
Murder, She Wrote, the (very) long-running 80s-90s TV series featuring Angela Lansbury as the intrepid J. B. Fletcher, is today widely known as the “insomniac’s delight”, not because it’s always available on reruns—though it is—but because it puts you to sleep. Who needs Nytol when you’ve got J. B. Fletcher on the case? Yet, even…
That is no country for old men. And neither is this one.
Democrats continue to pay the price for the “Democratic Drought”, the absence of new faces for the party during the Obama years, either because existing new faces went down to defeat in the disastrous elections of 2010 and 2014 and never re-emerged or simply never appeared at all, leaving us with fuddie-duddies like Hillary, Bernie,…
Who’s dumber, Elizabeth Warren or Max Boot?
To my mind, Elizabeth Warren is basically a Hillary Clinton who doesn’t summer in the Hamptons. That is, a well-meaning know it all who wants to run your life for you. So when disillusioned conservative Max Boot took aim at her in the Washington Post—“Elizabeth Warren has lots of ideas. Bad ideas.”—I was (largely) content…