Taki's Daily Blog
Undeniably, a powerful tide is running for the Democratic Party, with one week left to Election Day. Bush’s approval rating is 27 percent, just above Richard Nixon’s Watergate nadir and almost down to Carter-Truman lows. After each of those presidents reached their floors—in 1952, 1974, 1980—the opposition party captured the White House. Moreover, 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans think … [Read More]
There are two types of people who may find this article interesting. If you’re involved in a 12-step program of any kind and maintain your sobriety, but secretly delight in the confessions of relapse or of wild times before Antabuse, you might enjoy what follows as your daily does of Schadenfreude. If you’re a traditionalist chagrined over the infiltration of the … [Read More]
When the Soviet Union collapsed, it seemed for 20 minutes or so that America might revert from being a crusade back into a country. For 50 years, we’d served as the arsenal of democracy, its moneybags, its poolhall bouncer. With the cave-in of Communism—accomplished through means miraculous, by unarmed Polish dockworkers, without a war—it appeared we might catch a break. Our … [Read More]
Okay, of late I’ve been a really lousy political commentator. Not much of a citizen, either. I would have cheered on our guys and gals in the Olympics, had I known they were going on. (I’m a big fan, in theory, of beach volleyball and synchronized swimming.) But the games just plain slipped my mind, so all I caught was a … [Read More]
So there I was at the 21 Club, eating raw meat with The Gun Lady…. That was the best journalistic lede I ever wrote—and it never saw print. My editor at a second-tier business paper snipped it right out of the profile I’d done of a high-powered female gun rights activist on Capitol Hill. This large-caliber dowager (she’d dubbed herself the … [Read More]
Life is a circus, and we pundits are the ringmasters, and so, as we segue into the weekend, let’s take a look at what the clowns are up to .... The Prosecution Rests -- In a new report issued by Physicians for Human Rights, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba—the officer in charge of the Abu Ghraib investigation—writes: “ “After years of disclosures … [Read More]
Some people never learn: “I don’t think the lessons of Iraq necessarily discredit liberal internationalism, or realism, or neoconservatism, or any of the many theories of U.S. engagement with the world that were invoked to justify support for the war. I don’t come away from the events of the last five years convinced that we should never intervene abroad on purely … [Read More]
Hypocrisy Watch -- Okay, so Egypt is brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and meetings have been held between the three parties in Cairo, so will somebody please remind me why-oh-why negotiating with one of the few elected governments in the Arab world is so terrible? This underscores—as if underscoring were needed—the complete and utter hypocrisy of the Israel Lobby … [Read More]
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