“Where there is no solution, there is no problem,” geostrategist James Burnham once wryly observed. Ex-Sen. George Mitchell, the latest U.S. negotiator to take up the Palestine portfolio, may discover what it was that Burnham meant. For Israel’s three-week war on Gaza, where Palestinians died at a rate of 100 to one to Israelis, appears to have been, like Israel’s wars … [Read More]

Metaphor of the month: Jack Shafer, in Slate, writes: “Nobody in TV news stir-fries his ideas and serves them to the audience faster than MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Drawing from a larder filled with old anecdotes, unreliable metaphors, wacky intuition, and superficial observations, the always-animated Matthews steers whatever’s handy into the hot wok that is his brain. The sizzling free-associations skitter through … [Read More]

As a conservative I have little use for Obama’s politics, but as an American and more specifically a Southerner, I think I can understand the excitement, particularly in the black community. Listening to urban radio this week, black nightclubs advertised Obama inauguration parties and drink specials. A black-themed clothing store in downtown Charleston advertised deals on suits for Obama’s swearing in. … [Read More]

GSTAAD—If someone bet that The Spectator issue of 10 January outsold or was read by more people than any other weekly — and that includes best selling popular crap like Hello! and OK! — they’d be collecting their winnings as I write. This, of course, in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland, where Gstaad lies. I suppose it had to do … [Read More]

With a host of near 2 million gathered on the Mall to see him sworn in, Barack Obama delivered an inaugural that was the antithesis of a rallying cry for the “it’s-our-turn!” faithful assembled below. Rather, it was an admonition, a warning to the American people of the gravity of our condition, and an invitation of inclusion to that part of … [Read More]

I received a very interesting email from a reader. He said he is helping a friend’s daughter write a college essay on xxxx speech, and “after much mutual painful time spent, she still didn’t seem to grasp it—not the language, but the principle and its application.  They were only sentences to her, not statements she could understand. She is an honors … [Read More]

Some people look at actress Jeri Ryan and see the former cover girl for Maxim and FHM. Some recall her days in a latex catsuit as Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager. Show biz junkies call her a show killer because she’s appeared in so many doomed series, from Dark Skies to Shark. But for me she will always be … [Read More]

I recently read Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century by Jeffry A. Frieden.  As in many books in this genre the first age of globalization which ended in 1914 receives a great deal of treatment.  This was a period of free movement of capital, goods and labor.  Frieden observes that though there was agitation and organization against … [Read More]

It’s poetry in motion and now she’s making love to me. The spheres are in commotion, The elements in harmony. She blinded me with science! —Thomas Dolby, “She Blinded Me With Science,” 1982 It was one of those headlines that automatically gets a Drudge link: “Wealthy men give women more orgasms,” the Times of London declared Sunday. Before we launch our … [Read More]

As President Barack Obama delivers his inaugural address to a nation filled with anticipation and hope, the vital signs of the loyal opposition appear worse than worrisome. The new majority of 49 states and 60 percent of the nation Nixon cobbled together in 1972, that became the Reagan coalition of 49 states and 60 percent of the nation in 1984, is … [Read More]