Bill Moyers has done it again. To observe some of my fellow countrymen acting like imbeciles is disturbing. I suppose one should be inured to it by now. Still, it is deplorable. If you saw the program, you know what I am talking about. If not, it was Bill Moyers Journal from Friday, October 5th, on PBS, entitled “Endgame in the … [Read More]

Hillary Clinton’s unsatisfactory explanation why she voted for Wolfowitz’s War is worth revisiting. “Operation Iraqi Freedom” must be an embarrassment to her and to all the other establishment politicos who “authorized” the war. As it is, she blames Bush and Cheney for mismanagement. For the Democrats, Bush has become a wonderful punching bag and a gift from the gods. Like John … [Read More]

To a certain extent, all of us are what we think. And what we read determines our thoughts. Ergo, we are the product of what we read. No wonder I am confused most of the time. What I have been reading lately is terribly confusing and contradictory. I would prefer to be enjoying the poetry of Andrew Marvell and Robert Herrick, … [Read More]

Great. That’s all we need. There is a cholera epidemic in Iraq caused by the “decrepit water supply system”. The outbreak started in northern Iraq, aka Kurdistan, the peaceful portion of the former nation-state of Iraq, now rendered a bloodbath thanks to “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. The outbreak has spread to Baghdad, where all hell happens without warning on a daily basis. … [Read More]

The Baker-Hamilton Report has come and gone. The Petraeus Report has come and gone. Nothing has changed. There is no exit. More to the point, there is no plan for an exit. Give credit to Cheney and Bush. They do what they please, and get away with it. They are blinkered and we are bamboozled. The White House is staying the … [Read More]

There was the latest issue of Avenue magazine on the desk in my Palm Beach hotel room last November. I have a soft spot for Avenue, ever since it published a short story of mine, back in 1983, entitled “Night of the Mariachis”, inspired by some all-night hijinks in Mexico City with a prep school pal who grew up there. I … [Read More]

For all of you out there who think G.W. Bush deserves to be impeached—I’m with you, of course—we may now have the “smoking gun” which would force the Democrats in Congress to act, even if they do not want to. This is a matter of principle, not politics. I believe a fair reading of Sidney Blumenthal’s investigative report on Salon.com of … [Read More]

The biggest scandal at the moment in Washington is a subset of the biggest scandal in Washington ongoing for decades. For the latter, read about it in the most important book on U.S. foreign policy in a long time, entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by professors Mearsheimer and Walt, published this week, highlighted here Monday. For the former, … [Read More]

The venerable, highbrow publisher—Farrar, Straus and Giroux—is publishing the bombshell book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy this week. In a recent blog entry, “The Lobby Strikes”, Justin Raimondo gave us a heads-up on the book. You may have wondered, as I have, if it was really necessary for researchers at Harvard and at the University of Chicago to do … [Read More]

It is rather late in the day, granted, but perhaps we can learn something from the track record of the British, especially from their mistakes. The British went everywhere, it seems, for various reasons, some good some bad, and created along the way the greatest empire the world has ever seen or ever will see. The problem was, they lost all … [Read More]