If the crimes of what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal had been investigated the way they should have been — which is to say, had they been investigated all the way up to criminal indictments at the top of the executive branch, and impeachment inquiries into the conduct of relevant officials, including the president — the political world would have been changed utterly, as Mr. Yeats once put it.
His concern with alienating conservatives is wholly unproductive: it is unlikely that he can be more hated by the Tea Party than he already is. Nonetheless, he continues to relentlessly pursue compromises with Republicans that will never happen. Indeed, so concerned is he with his own degree of belonging that he jeopardizes the sympathies of those who actually have felt a natural and authentic connection to him.
N.B.A. and Players Reach Deal to End Lockout – NYTimes.com The deal was reached about 3 a.m. Saturday, on the 149th day of the lockout, after a final 15-hour bargaining session at the law offices of Weil, Gotshal & Manges…
The crisis that makes centrist political science untenable would correspond to, be the same as, the crisis that makes centrist politics untenable.
The kind of comic-book-oriented cinema that has afflicted Hollywood for 10 years now, since Spider-Man, has degraded the cinematic art, and has varnished over what was once a humanist form, so Hollywood can do little but repeat the platitudes of the 1%. And yet Hollywood tries still not to offend.
A dreary African American America brought to power through the African American president, versus a (ca. 99%) White America everywhere associated with Mitt Romney.
Thanks to the obstructive power of minority parties in Washington, a comparative election will not necessarily empower the winners of either the presidential or the congressional elections to govern effectively. But it’s far more likely to produce accountability for winners and losers alike, hastening the day when the country is not lurching from one status quo referendum to another with each cycle’s losers choosing to deny the winner any sort of mandate.
Liberals are dissatisfied with Obama because liberals, on the whole, are incapable of feeling satisfied with a Democratic president.
Sooner or later, we may always end up seeing our own moment as the hinge point of some grand historical narrative. Resisting that temptation, or taking cognizance of its dangers, should not prevent us from being aware that the plates do shift, typically at the moment you think they have finally gone completely still.
via GoodShit Recorded circa March 1930 in Grafton, Wisconsin. Don Kent has described “Last Kind Words” as “one of the most imaginatively constructed guitar arrangments of its era….” Twould be interesting to hear someone try to re-produce or expand upon…
