Archive for October, 2005
Learning from Pakistan
I’ve mentioned previously that the Bush administration’s plan to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan seems like exactly the kind of misguided decision that usually results in a bloody nightmare, so the news that the sale might not go through is certainly welcome. But it’s the reason that is especially interesting and potentially instructive: “Pakistan [...]
Putting The Onion Out of Business
On Monday came the bizarrely vindictive (even for this administration) news that the White House prefers their sandwiches sans Onion: “It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site,” Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28…Citing the United [...]
Racist or Just a Bad Capitalist?
This, the day after the passing of Rosa Parks. We still have a long way to go in this country. …barber Herbert Leger put the sign up Saturday morning after having to over and over again turn down customers he says he’s not qualified to help. “The difference is the technique that you use and [...]
Why Can’t Karen Count?
In her “Irritating Muslims 2005 Tour,” U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes has lived up to our expectation that absent any substantive policy changes, her repackaging would do little good. After a largely counterproductive trip to Egypt, Hughes tried her luck in Indonesia: At a public debate with university students in Jakarta, [...]
Living in Westchester: Not Gully
We’ve been covering the saga of DMX‘s legal problems for a while, and now it seems to be coming to a head: The rapper DMX faces 60 days in prison after he pleaded guilty Tuesday to violating the conditions of his release following a car crash last year at John F. Kennedy International Airport, officials [...]
How Right Wing Pundits Get Ahead
There seems to be a time in every backbench Republican talking head’s career when they look at the more successful, much wealthier pundits at the deep end of the media trough and think to themselves (or their agents): “Why isn’t that me down there with slop from ear to ear?” And who can blame them [...]
The Fitzgerald Investigation: Variations on a Theme
(1) Reuters, 10/24/05: Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group, said Republicans were “starting to undermine the prosecutor by implying that he’s only going to be able to indict on technicalities.” [See (2) below.] “But perjury is not a technicality,” Sloan said. No, it’s not. In [...]
Never Saw That Coming
Apparently the credit card companies were the only ones caught by surprise: Bankruptcy filings were supposed to snowball in the months before the tough new law went into effect on Oct. 17. But the avalanche of petitions, and the lines of debtors streaming out the courthouse doors caught even the credit card issuers who supported [...]
Where O Where is Dick Cheney
No one is under any illusions about Dick Cheney‘s priorities, but is he still technically a government employee? His office, oddly, or nervously, or defensively, refuses to supply a daily schedule of his recent activities, and, furthermore, makes this refusal off the record. (Truly—a spokesperson refused to provide information only under the condition that I [...]
An Audible Sigh of Relief
Considerably better than it could have been: Wall Street staged an impressive rally Monday after the nomination of top White House economist Ben Bernanke as the next Federal Reserve chief, with the Dow Jones industrial average soaring nearly 180 points. It’s possible that the Street was actually happy with Bernanke’s nomination, he seems by many [...]