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Bird has, as Slate’s Josh Levin makes clear, always been ambitious and willing to enter dark emotional territory. That’s very much to Bird’s credit, and that willingness to not condescend can make for great kid’s movies. ~Reihan Salam
Reihan is talking about the director of Ratatouille, the new animated feature that is apparently brilliantly made and which is […]
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Filed under: film
This just in: Fred Thompson is a superficial and media-driven candidate. Who would ever have guessed?
Here was the best part from the news report:
“He looks good onstage, but I don’t know if he has the gravitas,” said Kathleen Williamson, a conservative Roman Catholic from North Weare. “It seems like he’s trying to win over conservatives, […]
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Filed under: politics
Fascinating what-ifs all, but mostly irrelevant. Immigration reform was defeated by a conservative revolt that spread to the wider public. Senate opponents, gloating over their success in killing the bill, were essentially correct in insisting the American people had rejected immigration reform. ~Fred Barnes, “Things Fall Apart”
You can hear the sound of Barnes’ disappointment. What […]
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Filed under: politics, populism, immigration
These Are My People
Via Marc Ambinder
Nice touch with the pink.
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Filed under: politics
In a sense, it’s almost too easy to engage in this piling on. Then I say to myself, “Oh, why not?” So here it is. Jim Henley is a very funny blogger.
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Filed under: politics
Success Is Never Final
Islamists see the currents of history flowing their way. They reign in Iran, installed Hamastan in Gaza by putsch, threaten Lebanon’s government and crow that they brought down the Soviet Union. ~Steven Huntley
One might say the same thing about democratists, c. 2005. They saw the currents of history flowing their way. They […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Yes, the Iraq turmoil often resembles a civil war, which was of course the goal of al-Qaida’s attacks on Shiite mosques and civilians. And, yes, the Iraqi leadership has failed to make the compromises vital to hopes of political reconciliation and failed to build security forces strong and competent enough to shoulder a fair share […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Many, maybe even most, Americans have come to believe that Iraq is a diversion from the war on terror, that the primary battlefield against Islamist radicals is in Afghanistan. But the “insurgents” — led by al-Qaida in Iraq — have been very clear that for them Iraq is the central front in the war against […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Palmer is surely smart enough to know that fascism is a more complicated subject than he makes it sound. “I know John Mackey, John Mackey is a friend of mine, and he’s no fascist,” is a pretty vapid argument, to the extent it’s an argument at all. It’s even dumber as a retort to a […]
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Filed under: politics
What does this mean? First, let’s consider idaafa. Idaafa is a construction that expresses the possessive relationship between two nouns in Arabic. The other day I likened it to the German genitive, and the more I learn about idaafa, the more I think that this is a very good analogy. It is a very useful way to understand this idea, at least […]
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Filed under: history, language
Thou desired the Kingdom of God, pleasing Him in thy earthly life, especially in increasing Thy God–Given talent for good deeds, for which Thou dedicated all Thy life: Therefore, Christ God rewarded thee with the painful prize of martyrdom, to Whom we pray for salvation, singing the name of Lazar. ~Troparion for Tsar-Martyr Lazar of […]
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Filed under: Orthodoxy
Overlooked in my earlier remarks on Hanson and Kurdistan was this slightly puzzling claim:
Israel lost some of its precious capital of deterrence in the last war, but ultimately the real loser was a bankrupt Iran who lost far more materially than did a far wealthier Israel.
I call this puzzling for two reasons. One reason is that […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
This is undeniably kinder, gentler, and less political. ~Timothy Noah on Goldberg’s re-subtitled Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation From Hegel to Whole Foods
Timothy Noah has a knack for making me make mild, quasi-defenses of Jonah Goldberg. Does he have any idea how wrong he has to be for this to happen? When Goldberg says that his […]
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Filed under: politics
At the Scene, I have some new posts on Kurdistan, the continuing diversity debate, and finally one in which I attempt (apparently to no good effect) a joke about trite political rhetoric.
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Filed under: miscellaneous
Feeding America’s natural isolationism — no country relishes sending its sons and daughters to fight in a far-off desert — can create a momentum of irresponsibility that moves beyond control. ~Michael Gerson
So says that deeply realistic man who wrote the speeches for Mr. Bush in which the President declared that America would “end tyranny” on earth. He understands foreign […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
From George Ajjan and another commenter at the Scene, I have learned that the Arabic for blog is mudawwinah. You never know when a piece of information like that may be useful.
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Filed under: miscellaneous
The missing Republican realists have been worrying Ross for a while now, so he may be gratified by the recent speech of Sen. Lugar on Iraq, which reads like an “internationally-minded” realist’s how-to guide for Near East policy. The speech has begun having an effect on the Senate GOP, mainly among those members, such as […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
From the film Nagin (1954), the instrumental theme composed by the great Hemant Kumar and Man Dole Mera Tan Dole.
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Filed under: music, Bollywood
Take a look at my Scene posts on Johann Hari’s new TNR article, Western (mis)perceptions of Iraqi and Yugoslav identity and the charge of Dolchstoss in the Iraq/foreign policy debate
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Filed under: miscellaneous
The new American Scene is up and it is looking good (or tayyib, to use a word I have heard about 100 times in the last week). My first posts there should be up before too long.
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Filed under: miscellaneous
Many pages toward the end are devoted to building up Wendell Willkie—a man risen from the world of business, like Hoover (and like him called a “wonder boy”)—as a sympathetic, charismatic anti-Roosevelt, but it all comes to anticlimax with Roosevelt’s easy electoral victory, for an unprecedented third term, in 1940. Willkie in his campaign indicted […]
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Filed under: politics
Scratch a liberal, and you’ll often find a fascist underneath. ~Jack Kelly
Since we’re engaging in hyperbole, shouldn’t that be Islamofascist? This is an old line, and I know what Kelly means, but it seems to me that the far more damning criticism of liberals is not that they are crypto-fascists, but that they are liberals. […]
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Filed under: politics
Of course, Obama is being dishonest when he pretends that the U.S. government was trying to “ignore the rest of the world” prior to 9/11. Isolationism did not provoke the terrorists. On the contrary, the terrorist attack was partly a result of decades of U.S. intervention overseas–precisely the kind of meddling that Obama euphemistically calls […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy, hegemonism
Thompson’s luxury is that, in his stint as senator, he was basically a party regular. So he doesn’t have to shout his fealty to the right from the rooftops. He can send out more subtle signs. ~Jonathan Chait
More subtle signs? If his anti-Michael Moore YouTube, his RedState blogging, his work on behalf of Scooter Libby’s […]
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Filed under: politics
Here is a man of taste and discretion.
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Filed under: politics