Archive for the tag 'U.S.'

Pseudoconservatism

The other day my friend Thomas (aka The Newsrack Blogger) got into a fistfight at a local bookstore over the question of impeachment.
Okay, it wasn’t a fistfight—he had shouting match with Eric Alterman, author of Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America, during the Q&A at a book signing.
Okay, okay, the exchange wasn’t [...]

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 [...]

Attention

A few weeks ago I saw a Ford commercial on TV that really depressed me. I wasn’t sure I heard it correctly, so I went online to verify the bad news. It was true: e-mail will be infiltrating Ford automobiles. And not just e-mail—you’ll be ensconced in a 55-mph cellphone. Or is it a 70-mph [...]

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 [...]

Ottomania

I have been waiting for Christopher Hitchens to weigh in on the Armenian genocide resolution (H.Res. 106) for weeks now. I used to agree with Hitchens a lot more in the past—back in the days when he thought “terrorist” was a stupid label and “terrorism” a blanket excuse for a brutal but ultimately pointless response, [...]

Turkophilia

The Armenian genocide resolution (H.Res. 106) is due for a committee vote today. Last week the Turkish government took out a full-page ad in section A of the Washington Post in an attempt to throw sand in everyone’s eyes, and today the Post again dished out its Realpolitik garbage in support of its good friend [...]

Fleshification

Every time I watch The Simpsons, I think: “This stuff is brilliant!” And yet I don’t watch the show religiously. I figure I’ll see every episode eventually. Why rush things?
The writing is fantastically good. It captures so much of the America of the 90s and 00s it’s uncanny. But the voices—unforgettable. So what a treat [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

Watched

Who said it?
I’m struggling with seeing the deployment of cameras in our local villages as being a benefit to policing. If it’s in our villages—are we really moving towards an Orwellian situation with cameras on every street corner? I really don’t think that’s the kind of country that I want to live in.
If it weren’t [...]