Monthly Archives: November 2003

Hugh Kenner, RIP

This week Warner Bros. released “Looney Tunes Golden Collection,” a four-DVD set of Looney Tunes cartoons from the ’40s and ’50s. In today’s Wall Street Journal Terry Teachout pays tribute to the collective artistic genius expressed in these cartoons in a wonderful column made available online on OpinionJournal: “That’s not all, folks!” Like millions of baby boomers, I grew up on Looney Tunes, so to speak, but only learned that »

Krugman on Civility

Today’s column by Paul Krugman is titled “The Uncivil War.” In it, he indicts Republicans for being “uncivil.” Exhibit A is the current Republican television ad, which supports President Bush against his critics in the mildest possible terms. The ad’s offending language–“Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists”–is denounced by Krugman as “as hateful as they come.” Well, not really. Apparently Krugman has forgotten his last 300 »

President Bush at Fort Carson

Driving home tonight, I listened to Hugh Hewitt’s show; Hugh was playing President Bush’s magnificent speech to an audience of soldiers at Fort Carson, Colorado. The full text of the speech is available at the White House site, but the written text, while excellent, cannot convey the President’s conviction, or the enthusiasm with which he was received by the troops. It’s too bad that more people don’t hear these speeches; »

More mush from Milbank

Today’s musings from Dana Milbank (see link below) also include this silly shot at President Bush: “In a speech at Whitehall Palace, Bush gushed about the Special Relationship [with Great Britain]. ‘America is fortunate to call this country our closest friend in the world, he said. Really? But he has said in the past that Israel has ‘no better friend than the United States,’ while Poland has ‘no better friend »

Dana Milbank gets it backwards

Today’s Washington Post includes a piece by its Democratic mouthpiece, Dana Milbank called “The Making of the President: The Nixon in Bush.” Milbank’s thesis is contained in this quotation from Yale professor David Greenberg: “Ideologically, Bush is the son of Reagan; stylistically, he’s the son of Nixon.” I would submit that, if anything, Milbank and the professor have it backwards. Bush’s style is far closer to Reagan’s than to Nixon’s, »

Paranoia Strikes Deep

Yesterday the Democrats sent out an email to their base titled “GOP Revs Up Attack Machine.” The email said: “[T]he Bush attack machine has crossed the line again. The RNC has released an advertisement that questions our Democratic candidates’ commitment to keeping America secure. And they’re going to keep doing it — unless you help stop them. “Bush and the Republicans dream about a country with no debate and no »

What really happened in 2002?

Steve Sailer has analyzed the 2002 election in demographic terms. The results are extremely interesting, and perhaps surprising, but surprising only to those who have not been following Sailer’s ongoing bout with the conventional wisdom. He has ungraciously headed his piece “Sailer 1, stupid party strategists 0.” According to Sailer’s analysis of 2002 ethnic voting patterns, “The GOP’s fraction of the black vote declined, from eleven to nine percent. Asians »

The old rules just don’t apply anymore

I’m no fan of the Republican Medicare prescription drug bill, but this rant by E.J. Dionne brought a smile to my face. It seems that the Republicans broke the rules by sticking together and supporting the president. They are on an “ideological march” (Hillary Clinton’s phrase) that manifests itself in enacting new bank-breaking entitlements. The Democrats lack such cohesion, according to Dionne. Maybe the party strongmen used up too many »

Growth Figure Revised Upward

The Associated Press reports that the revised 3rd quarter GDP growth figure is 8.2%, a full percentage point higher than the number estimated last month. “The economy roared ahead at an astounding 8.2 percent annual rate in the 3rd quarter, the fastest pace in nearly two decades,” says the AP. More bad news for the Dems. UPDATE: More good news: “U.S. consumer confidence surged to its highest level in over »

Attacks on Troops Declining

General John Abizaid said today that attacks by Iraqi insurgents on American forces have declined by about 50% over the last two weeks. He and Paul Bremer attributed the decline to a combination of pre-emptive raids by American forces and the Baathists’ recognition that their attacks were having no impact on American policy. As long as President Bush remains in office, that will remain a rational calculation. To some degree, »

Was Walter Duranty “credulous”?

Roger Kimball has an excellent post on the Pulitzer Prize board’s decision not to revoke the award given to New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, who concealed the evidence of Stalin’s terror famine from Times readers in the early 1930’s. Kimball is the managing editor of the New Criterion magazine, and he has posted his comment on the New Criterion’s Web blog, Armavirumque. »

The world’s greatest deliberative body at work

The Washington Times story on the procedural votes necessary to bring the Republican prescription drug bill to a vote would be funny if you didn’t care that they presage the adoption of seriously destructive, retrograde legislation. The story is “Senate rejects Medicare tactics.” Here’s a highlight: “Republicans managed to persuade Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a liberal from Rhode Island who often bucks party leaders, to vote with them, after he had »

In denial

FrontPage carries Jamie Glazov’s probing interview with John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr on one of the most important books of the year, Haynes and Klehr’s In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage. For Glazov, the subject has a personal relevance. Among other things, both his grandparents were murdered by the Soviet secret police. Here’s a portion of Klehr’s response to Glazov’s initial question: “Why does it all matter? Why should »

Justice Brown’s bum rap

Nat Hentoff, on old-time civil libertarian (staunch and principled) shows how Senate Democrats are distorting the record of Janice Rogers Brown, the latest of President Bush’s judicial nominees to be blocked. Hentoff cites a series of opinions by Brown, in her capacity as a member of the California Supreme Court, that give the lie to Ted Kennedy’s lazy claim that Brown has “a deep-seated and disturbing hostility to civil rights, »

Heads I win, tails you lose

Michael Barone on the Democrats’ dilemma. They can either nominate Dean or un-Dean. Nominating un-Dean will dampen the enthusiasm of many party activists, and cause some to support the Green Party candidate. Nominating Dean will alienate what Barone calls the “American exceptionalist” wing of the party (I would be tempted to call it the patriotic wing) — the wing that doesn’t believe the United States should simply “take its place »

Warren Spahn, RIP

Warren Spahn was one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. He won more games–363–than any other left-hander. Spahn was an All-Star 14 times and won at least 20 games 13 times, leading the National League in victories eight times. He pitched two no-hitters, the first coming when he was 39 years old. Yet Spahn’s first major league win came at age 25, after he had served for three years »

Krugman Descends Further

Paul Krugman, the former economist who now churns out anti-Bush hate speech for the New York Times, is a very sick man. Here is the cover of his book (screed, really) titled The Great Unraveling, with the U.S. edition on the left and the United Kingdom edition on the right: President Bush as Frankenstein’s monster, and Vice-President Cheney as Hitler. Charming. See Donald Luskin for more. Krugman’s response to questions »