Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican who would kill Medicare, the man without fear, is sort of wishing that some Republican would do something that he’s afraid to do—run for president. “It is not too late,” Ryan tells Politico. “Look it is 2011 still. The election is in 2012.” I give the guy credit. He has…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Egyptology II; Plus, Eunuchs!
I’m back to piling on Francis Fukuyama (see below), who totally disses not only “Western Civilization” but the Ancient Middle East as well in order to glorify the role of China in his recent book The Origins of Political Order. For Fukuyama, channeling Max Weber, “civilization” really means “an impersonal bureaucracy possessing a monopoly on…
Matt Welch and Hillary Clinton: Whom is meaner?
Hillary Clinton—“I make a mean tossed salad.” Matt Welch—“ I can still do a mean box-step, if pushed” As Lily Tomlin, channeling Jane Wagner, once said, “No matter how cynical I get, I can never keep up.”
Steven Brill, not entirely brilliant
I’ve been reading Steven Brill’s Class Warfare, his free-swinging account of the latest chapter in America’s ever-continuing education wars. Filling us in on the historical background, Steve tells us how Albert Shanker’s American Federation of Teachers pumped up starting teachers’ salaries in the Big Apple from $5,300 in 1962 to $45,530 in 2007, “more than…
The New York Times, Shamelessly Misspeaking
The NYT has a headline: “Political Cartoonist Whose Work Skewered Assad Is Brutally Beaten in Syria.” Um, guys, don’t you mean “Political Cartoonist Whose Work Skewered Assad Is Harshly Interrogated in Syria”?
Cheney releases memoirs; heads fail to explode
Well, they’re out—Dick Cheney’s memoirs—and contrary to Big Dick’s prediction, nary a head has exploded, in DC or elsewhere. Because it’s not news that Dick Cheney is in fact as big an asshole as everyone assumed all along. A thoughtful (five second) perusal of the matter suggests that Dick’s revelations are limited to the following:…
Why Do the Heathen Rage, Part XLVIII
One of the many projects that I have—lumbering towards completion like weary mammoths journeying across the darkened Arctic landscape of my mind—is a political novel set in the near present-day, with the lives of its characters coming to a halt shortly before the 2008 election. To pick up a little background, I’ve been reading, among…
Charles to Rick: You’re embarrassing me!
Hear that moanin’? It’s right-wing intellectuals, a-wishin’ and a-hopin’ that someone other than Rick Perry and Mitt Romney would run for president.* “I would hope that whoever the Republican candidate is, he or she will not tell us that creationism or intelligent design is the equivalent of evolution — just another theory about the origins…
Reihan Salam: Why it’s OK to hate and fear people like me
National Review dude Reihan Salam, who, I confess, often makes a good deal of sense, comes a cropper in his defense of Rowdy Rick Perry at “The Daily” here. Salam argues, loosely* but reasonably, that Perry’s record in Texas shows no hint of racism. Salam does concede that American conservatives tend to be awfully, well,…
When will they ever learn, Scientific American edition
“Better, Greener, Smarter Cities: We have seen a brighter future, and it is urban”. This is the rap the Scientific American is using to sell its new “special issue” about all the cool, efficient shit we could have if everyone—everyone in the whole damn world, that is—would just do what the Scientific American tells them…