Archive for the tag 'politics'

Hillary

I voted for Hillary Clinton today in the DC Democratic primary.
Why? Let me put it this way. The Homer Simpsons and Montgomery Burnses and Mayor Quimbys and Kent Brockmans have been in charge forever and have managed to make a pretty good mess of things. It’s long past time for Lisa Simpson to have a [...]

Forsooth

Larry Derfner, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, asks a rhetorical question you won’t find anywhere in the US media:
How long are Israel and its lobby in Washington going to go on living this ridiculous, transparent lie? How long are they going to hock the world about the Holocaust while acting as Turkey’s number two [...]

Flashback

Старые привычки … I don’t know if there’s a Russian equivalent for the English phrase: “Old habits die hard.” It would certainly apply to recent events in the Russian hinterland, where workers were ordered to attend pro-Putin rallies in a number of cities.
The Guardian reports:
A telegram from Sergey Lemikhov, a railways boss in western Siberia, [...]

Marching

The Iraq war protest on Saturday was much smaller than in January, and there were more counterprotesters lining a section of the route to engage in colloquy (ahem) with the antiwar folk. The most common preprinted prowar signs said “PEACE THRU STRENGTH” and “BETTER THERE THAN HERE.” But one hand-drawn sign said it all, really, [...]

Zinger

Joe Conason is not only a well-informed and savvy guy, he’s also a stylish writer who can be wickedly funny at times. Along with the rest of the world, he wrote about Karl Rove’s “retirement.” (If you think that conniving SOB is leaving politics for good, I’ve got a surge I’d like to sell you.) [...]

Impeachment

I’m for it. (Just thought I’d get that out there.) Actually, impeachment × 2.
I’m not alone, of course. I’ve resisted the urge to talk about it, though, because I felt it was a dead issue. In a chat with Thomas Nephew the other evening, I mentioned that I didn’t see impeachment going anywhere until a [...]

Fallout

The New York Times ran an analysis of the Libby case today that argues the verdict will change the way the press covers the government. Would that it does.
“Every tenet and every pact that existed between the government and the press has been broken,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a media lawyer who represented Time [...]

Armenophobia

Thomas Nephew has done such a fine job demolishing the insipid op-ed by Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post on H.R. 106 (the Armenian Genocide Resolution) that it seems almost sufficient to merely point to his blog entries (here and here).
Every year around this time, as the April 24 anniversary approaches and Congress bestirs itself [...]

Libbyphilia

It’s been a banner week over at the Washington Post. On Monday they run a rotten op-ed piece pooh-poohing the Armenian genocide (more on that later this week). And today’s Post brings a truly execrable editorial on the Libby verdict. The editorialist (presumed to be Fred Hiatt, head of the Post’s editorial board) says the [...]

Protest

It’s progress of sorts. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post described how “tens of thousands” marched in Washington on Saturday in protest against the Iraq war. In September 2005, an even bigger march was characterized by the Times as “thousands” of protesters. Technically true, but oh-so-misleading. The coverage—scant and dismissive—provoked a massive [...]