Rick Perry was in Aspen last week long enough to disappoint a packed room of western conservatives. The Texas governor, you might have heard, is primping for the presidency. And let's admit: He's the kind of candidate to get tea party hearts arrhythmic. It’s not just the hair. It’s not just the square jaw.…
What we’re seeing is this: a cross between The Missiles of October and Dr. Strangelove — a standoff of nuclear proportions. A nation stands on the brink of — stock-market armageddon? A credit-rating mushroom cloud? By air, the missiles of a warring party — the tea party — are observed registering red on the map,…
Face it. Regression is in. Let us return to yesteryear. Actually, let’s return to the day before that. A marginal candidate wins the Senate seat from Kentucky saying the Voting Rights Act is obsolete. An even more marginal candidate emerges as the Republican presidential favorite in Iowa. Her husband makes his living…
Having seen what I did of the Casey Anthony trial, I must agree with the general public consensus. Having seen, that is, zero seconds of the gripping proceedings, zero seconds of the breathless analysis pre- and post-verdict, and having read zero words about the result save for headlines. Life is short. If everyone says the…
“Our children,” wrote Marshall McLuhan decades before Facebook and Twitter, “are engaged in extraordinarily hard work, and that work is growing up — because to grow up in a modern electronic environment is a fantastically complex and difficult job.” “Pshaw,” will come the auto-rejoinder. “Their lives are too easy — and nothing the…
I wanna grow up to be a politician, and take over this beautiful land. — The Byrds Eric Cantor needs to grow up. Unfortunately, the Republican House majority leader equates a tantrum with statesmanship. He is prepared to hold his breath until, well, until the federal government ceases to operate. …
In Blazing Saddles, cross-eyed Gov. William J. Le Petomane, hearing the town of Rock Ridge has met disaster at the hands of outlaws, announces to his coterie: “We’ve got to protect our phony baloney jobs, gentleman. We must do something about this immediately, immediately, immediately.” “Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!” goes his…
The sad thing is that bad things always come with “war.” Sure, war is a bad thing unto itself. And when will we study something other than war when we measure ourselves and our leaders? Dylan songs aside, when? But the concern here is the term — war — which we…
One can’t paint recent job figures as anything but dismal. However, anyone who says the economy is grim across the board isn’t paying attention. “Board” is an apropos word. Boards — as in “chairmen of the” — have been doing spectacularly of late. In the last year, annualized corporate profits rose 42 percent. In…
So, the space race took off, and the United States stayed behind. John Kennedy had great ambitions for it and for us, but as 50-year-old tapes now reveal, he was concerned that budget hardliners would shoot it down. And so they did, and the Soviets draped the heavens in red. …