Americans, encumbered with a love of all things military and the notion that those in uniform can do no wrong, quickly forget the sins of the most higher-up, the generals: the Petraeuses and McChrystals and their ilk. Pride went before their fall, but it’s all a ho-hum, let’s-move-on matter. But generals do matter: […]
Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Lincoln & Obama, General-ly Speaking
February 1, 2014THE BULLSHIT SCANDALS
May 27, 2013Republicans believe that God loves them again. Having lost all foothold on their anti-Obama attacks since his re-election, and staring at the chance of a mid-term electoral disaster, along came some red meat not even of their making. Well, the Benghazi smear is their creation, given that it was all they had–before the […]
COMPARING PRESIDENTS
May 22, 2013Presidents Day occasioned my annual peek into history, bringing me this time to Eisenhower, about whom no one seems to know jack. But he is vaguely recalled with fondness because time colors current perceptions. Ike was commander of all Allied forces in Europe during WWII, and when we and our pals won, he […]
Obama Up, Petraeus Down
November 16, 2012Who’s the real General here? Obama faced daunting enemies: the GOP and its mouthpiece, Fox News. All of Wall Street. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United. Karl Rove and his political angels–Adelson, the Koches and others who threw good money after bad to cook the presidential goose. And a liberal cohort that was shaking in […]
Of Game-Change, Cinderella, and the Supremes
March 30, 2012The HBO documentary, “Game Change,” regarding the weird inclusion of Sarah Palin into the GOP presidential campaign of 2008, is as the title suggests, about the attempt of the McCain team to rearrange the dynamics of a failing election enterprise. McCain, his wife and the Palin family all said they would not watch […]
Current Looks Are Deceiving
September 15, 2011“Americans will flirt with and hear out any voice or opinion but will at last tend toward moderation. My last post told why Romney, at campaign’s end, will be the Republican nominee, and I stick with that prediction. Just a little over a month ago, Michelle Bachmann was the flavor of the […]
Why It’ll Be Obama and Romney in 2012
August 20, 2011With all the pointy-headed intellectuals in Washington and their supposedly prissy ways, thank god for a cowboy to freshen up the political dialogue. For that, of course, we need a real cowboy, and they typically have little interest in politics. The laconic speech of strong, silent types makes for poor rhetoric, as in: […]
Murdoch: Or, When They Do It to Themselves
July 13, 2011I love dead poets, and dead philosophers too. Thank goodness for liberal arts educations and their classical referents. They won’t make you rich like an MBA does, but they help to make important sense of the world. Aristotle’s definition of tragedy is among the truest of insights: people and institutions that have the […]
Ichabod's Kin 