New York Review of Books
Sixty thousand years after the appearance of the species
Homo sapiens on the planet Earth, and, according to Bill McKibben
banging the pots and pans over at the NYRB, it has all come to
this:
2009 may well turn out to be the decisive year in the human
relationship with our home planet.
(June 11, 2009)
The Progressive
Professor Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the
United States (which people is not clear), proffers his plan for
more wide-open spaces in lower Manhattan:
Obama has talked about a vision for this country. You have to
have a vision, and now I want to tell Obama what his vision should
be.
The vision should be of a nation that becomes liked all over the
world. I won’t even say loved—it’ll take a while to build up to
that. A nation that is not feared, not disliked, not hated, as too
often we are, but a nation that is looked upon as peaceful, because
we’ve withdrawn our military bases, for all these countries.
We don’t need to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars on
the military budget. Take all the money allocated to military bases
and the military budget, and—this is part of the emancipation—you
can use the money to give everybody free health care, to guarantee
jobs to everybody who doesn’t have a job, guaranteed payment of
rent to everybody who can’t pay their rent, build child care
centers.
(May 2009)
Pravda
Enlightened commentary on the Obama economic renaissance
from a belletristic Russian at Pravda, now staunchly
neocon:
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the
American decent [sic] into Marxism is happening with breath taking
[sic] speed, against the back drop [sic] of a passive, hapless
sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the
past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing
grounds was [sic] conducted upon [sic] our Holy Russia and a bloody
test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up
our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street
poured into the fists [sic] of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the
American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to
the whims of their elites and betters.
(April 27, 2009)
New York Times
Is this another lunatic squawk lifted from the neurotic
correspondence page of the revered Times? Not at all—it is the
Times’s schoolgirl columnist, Maureen Dowd, the one who writes
books about her failed love life. Nothing can be done to help
her:
Cheney’s numskull ideas—he still loves torture (dubbed
“13th-century” stuff by Bob Woodward), Gitmo and scaring the
bejesus out of Americans— are not only fixed, they’re jejune. He
has no coherent foreign policy point of view. He still doesn’t
fathom that his brutish invasion of Iraq unbalanced that part of
the world, empowered Iran and was a force multiplier for Muslims
who hate America. He left our ports unsecured, our food supply
unsafe, the Taliban rising and Osama on the loose. No matter if or
when terrorists attack here—and they’re on their own timetable, not
a partisan red/blue state timetable—Cheney will be deemed the
primary one who made America more vulnerable.
(May 13, 2009)
Wealth of Nations
(Newsweek Blog)
Newsweek senior editor Michael Hirsh, another of American
journalism’s men who rose without a trace, demonstrated that he
weathered 25 years of unprecedented economic growth and thought it
came from the Fairy Godmother:
If the Republican Party had only followed his [Jack Kemp’s]
advice about reaching out to the inner cities and underclass—and
ignored his happy talk about supply-side economics— the GOP might
not be in nearly the fix it is today.…[Kemp] was a classic case of
an amateur econo-cultist whose understanding never reached quite
deep enough. In mid-life, when he decided to switch from sports to
politics, Kemp became enamored of simplistic free-market ideas, in
particular a toxic combination of Arthur Laffer and Ayn Rand. He
then sold another gifted amateur, Ronald Reagan, on the idea that
drastic tax cuts would so stimulate the economy that the ensuing
growth would more than make up for the loss in revenues....The
damage was done, and thanks in part to Jack Kemp the supply-side
fantasy endured, producing the vast Reagan deficits.
(May 4, 2009)
The Nation
The voyeurs at the Nation protest the Obama administration’s
latest efforts to prevent them from seeing healthy young men in
their underpants:
No one expected Obama to reveal all the secrets of the temple
when he became president. But Americans did expect him to favor
transparency and accountability. Unfortunately, with each passing
week he stumbles deeper into the thicket of secrecy he promised to
clear away.
The administration’s reversal of its agreement with the ACLU to
release photos of detainee abuse by military and intelligence
agents is unsettling and wrongheaded.
(June 8, 2009)
The Stephanie Miller Show
MSNBC’s David Shuster, full of admiration for the American
citizenry, explains how Fox News Channel manages to top his network
day after day:
Look, if Fox wants to consider themselves the GOP house organ,
that’s fine. They completely backed it up. When Fox starts
describing themselves as journalists or a news organization, that’s
where I think it’s appropriate to describe Fox as disgraceful.…
Their coverage on the Fox News Channel has been atrocious. The
stuff that comes out of Sean Hannity’s mouth has been infuriating.
The stuff that Bill O’Reilly says has been illogical. You go up and
down the schedule and it’s insanity over there.… The number of
lies, perpetuated, promoted by Fox News is just shameful and it
hurts everybody.
(April 30, 2009)
American Prospect
Another bolus of the inscrutable heaved into the American
Prospect, American Liberalism’s most dependable cuspidor:
Going a few years further back, the explanation for Republican
decline may lie in the strategy of governing adopted when the right
was in power. With a narrow majority based in the white South, and
with demographic trends running against them, the Repub licans
pulled out all the stops and tried to wring every possible
advantage from the moment, a strategy exemplified by former House
Speaker Dennis Hastert’s “majority of a majority” rule, under which
he would refuse to bring to the floor any legislation that wasn’t
supported by a majority of Republicans, blocking many bipartisan
coalitions. Trained to govern in this desperate, high-stakes mode,
the Republicans have no ability to step back into the role of a
constructive minority that actually tries to collaborate in
governing. They governed more like a high-flying hedge fund than an
investor with a long view. In opposition, they take the same
approach.
(June 1, 2009)
From the Archives
Timeless Tosh
from Current wisdoms Past
(July 1989 & August 1989)
Washington Post Magazine
Mr. Richard Cohen demonstrates with charming ambivalence
that she is indeed a woman:
In fact, I would like to be almost anything or anyone that I am
not. The list is a long one, but it includes, among other things, a
woman. I would like to be a woman—not permanently, mind you, or,
even really.
(May 28, 1989)
New Woman
New Woman’s vision of the New Age Marlboro Man, this one
named Norman:
“Sometimes I think I’d rather experience a good cry than good
sex,” says Norman. “The cry is much more elusive. I know it’s a
cultural phenomenon— we men are supposed to want sex constantly,
and we’re not ever supposed to cry. It’s like crossed signals in
our bodily fluids; we’re allowed to emit sperm, but not tears.”
Life is so mean. Let’s order those men a few crates full of
Kleenex, then put on our teddies and show them what we really
want.
(March 1989)
