Barack Obama will probably make a decent US senator once he gets running for president out of his system. Fortunately for those who think the Senate can benefit from his undivided attention, the happy day approaches ever faster: his strategists have apparently decided that they can do without the support of gays and the . . . → Read More: Obama nails down the vital liberal homophobe bloc
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The San Diego Air Show was in town a week ago and my residence was squarely in the flight path. The noise was nervewracking, and that’s without the expectation that missile or bomb strikes were imminent. Imagine what Iraqis who live in the vicinity of the air strikes conducted by the US military must be experiencing. As of September 30, US aircraft have conducted nearly 1,500 airstrikes in the country, up from fewer than 300 last year. The USA Today story on the increase says the figures don’t include helicopter assaults, so add that apocalyptic noise into the mix atop the jets. (In Afghanistan, the number of air strikes has climbed from around 1,700 last year to more than 2,700 through September of this year). One inescapable feature of air strikes is that they kill civilians. No matter how “smart” a bomb or missile may be, it can’t account for bad intelligence or technical malfunctions or bad luck on the part of civilians who are in the wrong place at the wrong time (e.g., at home). Dead civilians are built into the equation. To US military planners, the deaths are unfortunate byproducts of necessary actions. To the propagandists for al Qaeda, the Taliban and the various Iraq insurgents, the deaths are red gold. To the friends and families of the victims, they’re horrors. And every jet howling overhead is a reminder of them. I Don’t Know How She Does It, by Allison Pearson (A-) It always makes sense to expand your horizons, and this month (this month and then some–sorry) I thought I’d look at contemporary women authors. Not talking canonical stuff here, but more popular literature, the sorts of things that are informed by the female experience, and in two cases, marketed toward women. I don’t like getting deep into sex-based generalizations to second-guess authorial intent, but it can be an interesting exercise to look at how authors treat them. My friend Cell Whitman emailed me a few days ago about a C-SPAN interview with the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler. Kessler was discussing U.S. – Soviet relations, and the difficulties they present putative Russia expert Condoleezza Rice, when he let fly with this little gem about Bush and Putin: [A]t his very first meeting . . . → Read More: Bush and Putin’s soul: a masterpiece of product placement The New York Times has discontinued its subscriber-only Times Select service and unleashed columnist Tom Friedman upon the world once again. In what cannot be a coincidence, Friedman celebrated his release with one of his most deeply stupid columns in years. Six years on from 9/11, Friedman has realized that his reaction to the attacks was stupid. He says, with the emphasis his, “9/11 has made us stupid.” And he says, with the emphasis his, that “[the U.S.] can’t afford to keep being this stupid!” Yeah well. No shit. But what’s really stupid here is that many Americans weren’t stupefied by 9/11, and many of those who were are victims of Friedman and his stupid pundit colleagues. Americans didn’t rise up en masse and demand that our government alienate the world and invade Iraq; despite the best efforts of Friedman, his satellites, the press collectively and the Bush administration to sell Iraq as an existential threat in the starkest possible terms, polls from 2002 and 2003 show majorities and substantial minorities of Americans (depending on the framing of the questions) in favor of diplomacy and opposed to the invasion right up to the point that the intent to invade became inescapably clear to even the dimmest or most optimistic observers. We, many of us, weren’t deranged: it was just Tom and a bunch of his influential friends. Continue reading Is Thomas Friedman the stupidest pundit on the planet? |
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One billion and one reasons to subscribe to Human Events
According to Ronald Reagan, Human Events magazine offers “aggressive reporting, superb analysis and one of the finest collections of conservative columnists to be found.” Of course much of that collection as Reagan knew it is under glass now, but the magazine has others who are still alive or are cleverly simulating life.
So that’s one reason to subscribe to the magazine. You also get free books, including ones explaining the menace posed by a billion bloodthirsty Muslims pounding on the wrought-iron gates of America’s finest pundit communities. One billion and one.
There are bonus reasons, too. Human Events writers aren’t just aggressive, superb and fine, but unbelievably brave as well. Take Robert Spencer, for instance.
Continue reading One billion and one reasons to subscribe to Human Events