As Bertie Wooster would say to Byron York, were he here, and were he reading this, rem acu tetigisti. You have touched the thing with a needle. Now that Pawlenty has dropped out on the basis of his third place finish in the Iowa straw poll, and Bachmann has won it, it is time to …
The White House TV Remote
I don’t want to do a lot of typing for nothing, and so much of this question should probably be deferred for later — if Michele Bachmann is still in the race. At the Republican debate last night, Bachmann was asked if she was a submissive wife. She deflected the question, and answered in terms …
A Great Big Outbreak of Lucidity
H.L. Mencken once defined democracy as the art and science of running the zoo from the monkey house. Perhaps it need not be that way. There was good news this morning from Wisconsin. The recall elections there were some union push-back, in an attempt to recapture the state senate. If they were successful in that …
Our Peter Principle President
Coleman Young was the first black mayor of Detroit and, while it was hailed as a milestone at the time, if we look at how Detroit is doing today — you know, as in, being a reasonable place to move to — we should conclude that something went seriously off the rails. Maynard Jackson became …
Lollygaggers at the Somme
After the clowns-on-tiny-bicycles show that we have all just witnessed, which clown show obtained for us our debt ceiling deal, it would be easy for conservatives to think that it all was, in fact, just a show, just for show. Since there was so much fuss and bother, with so little result, it is easy …
Where Our Real Shortage Is
As we are seeking out categories to help us understand the debt crisis our nation is in, there is a basic distinction that has gone missing. I mean the distinction between money past and money future. I mean the distinction between money that exists and money that doesn’t. Now everything we have is in the …
Another Plate of Sausages
I don’t often commend Republicans, so let me do so here. Throw in all of the qualifications — not all of them, they could still flake, and so on — and yet a commendation is still in order. There are times when countries run out of money/credit absolutely. The cash is simply not there anymore, …
Calvinism and Conspiracy
We live in a time when conspiratorial theories abound, and when tracts, screeds, and web sites advancing such theories proliferate. If you have the time, you might want to research and answer every box on the flow chart (the one with the Masons, the Illuminati, and the Bilderberg Group on it). But if you don’t …
Fatherless Under the Fig Tree
Hard libertarianism and/or anarchy is a function of what might be called civic fatherlessness. Just as the antitheist regards the eternality of the Father as tyrannical on the face of it, so also the hard libertarian regards any civic authority whatever as something to chafe the soul. Within this paradigm, all political authority is based …
The Baseball Cap of Punditry
Let us talk about the problem of Marcus Todd, and by this I am not referring to what ought to be the name of an upscale men’s clothier, but rather to the problem of Marcus Bachmann and Todd Palin. Anyone with an Internet connection and an interest in politics should know that in the last …