Brooks: Is it Safe? (”Security Leads to Freedom”)
Friday, March 30th, 2007 Posted in Authoritarianism, Brooks, Essays, Right Wing | No Comments »[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG5Qk-jB0D4] There are legitimate conservative arguments to be made, but David Brooks' latest column does not make them. In fact, the basic point of the column is that if Republicans need to jettison every value they've ever stood for in order to ...
The Seinfeld Strategy
Friday, March 30th, 2007 Posted in Iraq, War | No Comments »Michael Fullilove on America’s ‘Seinfeld’ strategy in Iraq, which means doing the opposite of everything your instincts tell you to do, a tactic once tried by Seinfeld's Costanza: First, military and diplomatic resources are finite and should be directed towards your ...
Skepticism, Conservatism, and War
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 Posted in Conservatism, Essays, Skepticism | No Comments »Andrew Sullivan is right that passion and skepticism are by no means at odds. The point of skepticism is not that we should vacate (we can't anway) our passions and the irrationality that grounds, at least in part, our most ...
Andrew Sullivan’s Conservative Soul
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 Posted in Conservatism, Skepticism | No Comments »An accurate and in some places devastating critique of Andrew Sullivan's career of fickle naiveté: What is baffling is why such an ardent disciple of Oakeshott came to sign himself up for the Bush program in the first place—a decision that ...
The Spanish Civil War
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 Posted in War | No Comments »Edward Rothstein writes on the ambiguities of the Spanish Civil War. The civil war, in fact, had more to do with Spain than with fascism. Hugh Thomas’s encyclopedic “Spanish Civil War” reveals stupefying patterns of legislative failure and manic enterprise in ...
Write a Dubya Speech
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 Posted in Bush Administration | No Comments »For fun.SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Write a Dubya Speech", url: "http://www.ketchupandcaviar.com/bush-administration/write-a-dubya-speech/" });
Iraq War Coalition Fatalaties Chart
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 Posted in Iraq | No Comments »An amazing flash timeline of Iraq coalition fatalities (it would be nice to see something similar for Iraqi casualties).SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Iraq War Coalition Fatalaties Chart", url: "http://www.ketchupandcaviar.com/iraq/iraq-war-coalition-fatalaties-chart/" });
Creepy Iran Kidnapping Roundup
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 Posted in Iran, Of Interest | No Comments »Apparently the Iranians have been reading Semour Hersh articles and aren't yet satisfied that they've given Britain and the U.S. enough excuses for a round of bombing. The whole "we'll show you by making you our captive photo-op guests and have ...
Bukowski reads “The Secret of My Endurance”
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCrn1LDDoRc]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Bukowski reads “The Secret of My Endurance”", url: "http://www.ketchupandcaviar.com/of-interest/bukowski-reads-the-secret-of-my-endurance/" });
Bush to Raise our Taxes?
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 Posted in Bush Administration | No Comments »Here. the Joint Committee projects that the President's proposed standard deduction for health insurance, coupled with repeal of the exclusion for employer-paid health insurance, self-employed health insurance deduction, and itemized medical deductions, would result in a $333 billion tax increase over ...
Let’s Revisit …
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »Recent Essays: Christ 2.0, A Parable of Innocence Exactly What Christopher Hitchens Means to Say SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Let’s Revisit …", url: "http://www.ketchupandcaviar.com/of-interest/lets-revisit/" });
The Travel-Raging of A. A. Gill
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »Two offensive classics from A. A. Gill, who writes like someone with tourette's syndrome and a gift (and is apparently severely dyslexic and has to dictate his articles): The land that time forgot Hunforgiven There are other little things which tell you that, ...
Berube vs Cockburn
Monday, March 26th, 2007 Posted in Anti-War, Iraq | 1 Comment »Alexander Cockburn shows us just how nasty the internecine squabbles of the left can get: Have any of them, from Makiya through Hitchens to Berman and Berube had dark nights, asking themselves just how much responsibility they have for the heaps ...
Be a Mind-Sticker
Monday, March 26th, 2007 Posted in Advertising, Media | No Comments »For fun: a horrifying Tab ad in which the voice-over/jingle consists of what sounds like a mellow pedophile cajoling the ethereal, high-pitched superego of a 14-year-old, eating-disorder afflicted girl: "he wants you with a good shape" and "be a mind-sticker". [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDBJ2ktSZpI] Hat ...
Andrew Sullivan — Either/Or
Monday, March 26th, 2007 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »My love-hate relationship with Andrew Sullivan. His intemperate relationship with Islam: The current state of Islam is the problem; and only Muslims can find the solution. His humility: I take a few, and largely deserved, whacks at my solar plexus for various hyperbolic blog ...
Brits in New York
Sunday, March 25th, 2007 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »A very funny piece by A.A. Gill: Indeed, Brits are rarely seen in New York without their magic cloaks of invisible irony—they think that, on a fundamental level, their calling here is as irony missionaries. They bless everything and everyone with ...
Self-Inflicted Terror
Sunday, March 25th, 2007 Posted in Of Interest, War on Terror | No Comments »Zbigniew Brzezinski on the "War on Terror": The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against ...
Roll, TIDE
Sunday, March 25th, 2007 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »But one said keeping tabs on your citizens is easy: But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. Just ...
The Sophisticated Language of Fascism
Sunday, March 25th, 2007 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »Just another bit of experimental dilettantism, to see if the police state suits us after all: But potential troublemakers were hardly the only ones to end up in the files. In hundreds of reports stamped “N.Y.P.D. Secret,” the Intelligence Division chronicled ...
Scamming the Scammers
Saturday, March 24th, 2007 Posted in Of Interest | No Comments »A brilliant and hilarious way to lead on Nigerian scammers (The Adventures of Wendy Willcox and her dog WillisSHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Scamming the Scammers", url: "http://www.ketchupandcaviar.com/of-interest/scamming-the-scammers/" });
