David Brooks has, in no particular order, left his wife of 27 years, married a woman 23 years his junior—his “research” assistant; who could see that coming?—and found Christ. He’s written a book on the latter, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, which apparently involves, well, dumping your old wife and finding…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Who could have seen this coming? Except everybody, I mean
Politico has the word: “Big businesses paying even less than expected under GOP tax law”. That’s right, according to Brian Faler, “Federal tax payments by big businesses are falling much faster than anticipated in the wake of Republicans’ tax cuts, providing ammunition to Democrats who are calling for corporate tax increases.” It gets worse, says…
The irresistible charm of the outlier updated: New York Times Edition
It seems like only yesterday—because it was— that I was riffing on the tendency of the lamestream media (and everyone else) to generalize on the follies of our times not on the average but the extreme, to wit, an article in the Washington Post decrying the alleged abysmal performance of the Arlington County, Va. English…
Herodotus Redux. Or, the irresistible charm of the outlier
“After three years at one middle school, a student still didn’t know how to use a bilingual dictionary” So read a recent headline on the “front page” of the Washington Post web edition, leading the reader to a story by Theresa Vargas with the headline, “Arlington Schools has agreed to improve how it supports English…
Carriage House Days
Just off the corner of Connecticut and N Streets in Washington, DC is a reasonably imposing red-brick urban mini-mansion, which, a small plaque informs you, once belonged to General Henry Robert, who, you probably don’t know, wrote Robert’s Rules of Order. But back in 1975 when I worked there as a file clerk, we called…
More short takes
Fred Hiatt wants to make sure you know he’s a COMPLETE idiot Well, he does. “We knew who Trump was but elected him anyway. We can’t impeach him for that.”, writes WashPost editorial page editor Fred, ignoring the fact that “we” didn’t elect Trump, the Electoral College did. I myself am opposed to impeaching Trump,…
Imani Williams—“Round Midnight”
No information on her backup, unfortunately. Posted by K-dub-U
Takes, short and not so short
Nancy Pelosi is invisible, says George F. Will In a not bad considering column, George F. Will urges congressional Democrats to “temper their enthusiasm for impeachment with lucidity”, listening to words of wisdom from others, including Greg Weiner, “Madison scholar par excellence” and author of a new book that Mr. Will has either read or…
Just because I don’t loudly s*ck the president’s c*ck every day doesn’t make me a traitor, loudly exclaims an aggrieved Ramesh Ponnuru
My apologies to those who, like me, prefer their vulgarly sexual terms of abuse unasterisked and unexpurgated, but you never know whose algorithm you’re going to trigger these days. Anyway, to the point: Right-winger Ramesh Ponnuru, whom I last blasted for gratuitously taking sides with Donald Trump against U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts with regard…
Yes, Donald Trump is destroying America. Surprised?
The present brouhaha1—or is it a kerfuffle?—over Robert Mueller’s “I said what I said” announcement may, or may not, slow down Attorney General William Barr—or as we like to call him in DC, “Michael Cohen II”—and his “plan” to rummage through the files of the federal government’s entire intelligence community and declassify anything he damn…