This is a little embarrassing. I thought I might write my way out of here. Setting messages in virtual bottles adrift in the electronic ether. Someone would find one, send out a search party. I would finally join society, whatever that meant. I had an idea of what it was, gleaned from a lifetime ofContinue reading “cowardice”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Sacred and the Vulgar
Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ day is not. So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things. –Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
Lone Wolf Tickets
A question. Has anyone yet attempted to leverage yesterday’s tragedy at Fort Hood into a defense of the Patriot Act’s “lone wolf” provision? Maybe the question is not if, but when. I’m thinking of starting a pool.Of course it may not be necessary. Yesterday* the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to extend three provisions: roving wiretaps;Continue reading “Lone Wolf Tickets”
Blockhead, Insomniac Olympics Sparks, I Wish I Looked a Little Better (1983)
Narrative Blowback
Has the media’s recoiling fascination with the Angry White Mobs of health care reform’s roadshow crippled that effort and stalled the Obama administration? Marshaling evidence to that effect, liberal codger E.J.Dionne, for one, draws the only relevant conclusion: there is no such thing as a “liberal media bias.” In giving the “tea-baggers” all that sneeringContinue reading “Narrative Blowback”
Oblivironia
That’s my suggested word for oblivious to irony. An example. Republican Congressman Eric Cantor, in Israel as part of a 56-member Congressional contingent summoned by AIPAC, repeating a theme developed there to criticize US foreign policy: “I’m very troubled by that, because I don’t think we in America would want another country telling us howContinue reading “Oblivironia”
Summer ends over a weekend here, usually right about now. The grey cloak shrinks the sky, the fall chill shrinks the skin, my spirit lets out a pathetic whimper, but, as if by design, I’m returned the energy I’d thought, as every year, lost for good to one last August. Doors will reopen this Sunday,Continue reading
Dennis Does Democracy
I went to my congressman’s (Rick Larsen, Democrat) “health care forum” yesterday, having been compelled by one of the Moveon-type liberal activist organizations that send me emails (I think it was “BarackObama.com”). I arrived at the stadium (of the Seattle Mariners’ triple-A baseball team, the Everett Aquasox) two hours early as the email suggested; thereContinue reading “Dennis Does Democracy”
Slog Days
I’m out on the back porch because the house just won’t cool down. Tanned and tawny haired from the sun, looking like an aging surf bum and moving like the just plain aged in the oppressive heat, I swear I’ll never complain about the Northwest’s lack of sunshine again.I have my legs crossed–habitually in whatContinue reading “Slog Days”
…but we can’t get our picture…
My latest TAC contribution is online.Also offered gratis: Wilson Burman on Bernanke, Chase Madar on Samantha Power, Stuart Reid on the Pope and James Antle on Joe Scarborough.“Ben Bernanke, Samantha Power, and the Pope walk into a bar…”Subscribe here.
untethered 