O’Rourke is an American icon. His fusion of Gonzo-esque journalism and straight-forward-no-bullshit approach to our national politics is absolutely unique and will never be duplicated.
Could someone explain to me why Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidential election and as far as I know has no plans to run again, would need to spy on the sitting president?
Firstly, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to Mona Charen for finally puncturing the bubble of "give Trump credit for China", which even smart Trump critics like JVL fell victim to at one point. The phrase "even broken clocks are right twice a day" isn't meant to give credit to broken clocks, and nobody should give Trump credit for redirecting his rhetoric against China (once again) out of political expedience when he needed a scapegoat for his COVID failures. As if he was somehow the first to recognize China's malign threat; the TPP was the product of *years* of negotiations whose express purpose was to counter Chinese economic influence. Trump's stance on China was like his attitude toward most things - mercurial, transactional, and rooted almost entirely in the present moment (as expected from someone ignorant of the past and indifferent toward the future). As with other world strongmen, he'd talk tough from a distance and be eating out of their hand after meeting in person.
Secondly, Brian Stewart's article nicely calls out the supposed anti-imperialists of the Left. I'm a progressive myself, so I think I have enough credibility to just come out and say it: if Ukraine was full of brown-skinned people, you'd be hearing a much different kind of rhetoric from our side. Probably still overly dovish, and still probably seeking to somehow lay the blame on the U.S., but one that would at least be forced to confront the malignancy of Putin's ambitions. The lack of an explicit racial dynamic to animate the far Left leaves the Left's foreign policy "realists" to fall back on myopic middle class anxieties about gasoline prices to argue that Ukraine isn't worth the effort.
The American Left's "anti-imperialist" mindset is an entirely passive one, utterly ignorant of the fact that it is rooted in a modern concept of national sovereignty that is made possible only through the American hegemony they so despise. For the foreign policy doves, it isn't that they're opposed to imperialism in general; it's an opposition to *us* doing the work of maintaining a world free from imperialist ambitions - reframing this work as imperialism in and of itself is what allows them to capitalize on the more race/culture focused anti-establishment tendencies of the far Left's culture warriors. In fairness, this is partly due to an understandable lack of trust in American judgment given recent past failures. But it's also due to a lack of commitment to American ideals and yes, some cowardice, borne of years of spoiled indifference to the ways in which our stake in world affairs underwrites our privileged lifestyle.
I am unsure how Democrats are supposed to "answer" Republicans since the Republican narratives about police, immigration, CRT, etc. doesn't actually engage in reality and really amounts to a caricature of what a handful of Democrats have said.
Really it doesn't matter how they "answer" Republican lies because the Republicans will just lie some more about whatever they do.
With the exception of immigration about which neither party will take the political risks required to actually come up with solutions MOST of these Kulterkampf issues Republicans see as their bread and butter issues are LOCAL issues and must be resolved locally. Republicans have nationalized these issues.
Instead of making performative gestures or virtue signaling Democrats need to emphasize their support of local governments and schools working WITH citizens and parents to manage local issues. The heavy handed policies of both the federal and state governments should be reserved for only the most urgent needs.
Whenever Republicans attack on these culture war issues Democrats should return the focus to the local nature and the need for local control and power and supporting that. Do not engage on the wisdom or stupidity of some of the suggestions made just stress that localities are best able to address the issues.
Democrats also have to rethink how they address issues. Too often Democrats run to find a federal solution before all the possible local and state solutions have been given a chance to work themselves out. It isn't so much a question of Big Government or small government it is seeing that government power is spread out and the closer to the people the better.
In college in the 1970s, I was a fan of National Lampoon, where I read many of P.J.'s articles. One of the most fantastic bits of satire he edited was the Lampoon's "1964 Parody Yearbook." It offers both childish and hilarious humor of that time of our life.
When I was a high school teacher for a few years later, I inherited the role as yearbook advisor. Since I had no high school or college yearbook experience, I relied on this magazine to guide me. I had the staffs read the parody, in hopes of moving them away from being overly serious as 17/18 year-olds can be sometimes in such roles.
If nothing else, they could enjoy some great satire!
The following link is not easily read, but the pictures tell all. BTW, that is P.J. photographed as Miss Marilyn Armbruster, the Girls P.E. Teacher a few times within.
I have a P.J. O'Rourke story. It was the 1980s in NH and I was in 11th grade. My english class that semester was journalism. I was a big fan of P.J. O'Rourke and found out he lived in the next town over. I told my journalism teacher and asked if I could try to invite O'Rourke to speak to our class. My teacher said go ahead and give it a try.
This was sometime in 1985 and you couldn't just google contact info on someone. I got the phone book and went to the "O"'s and sure enough his phone number was there. I gave him a call and after a couple of rings P.J. picked up the phone. I was kind of shocked it was that easy. I introduced myself and told him what I was calling about and without hesitating he said he would love to come and talk to my class.
We arranged a time and I met him outside the school. We went and got him a visitor pass and since it was a few minutes before class I took him to the cafeteria to hang out and bought him one of those half-pint cartons of chocolate milk. We sat at one of the tables and he talked about his experience in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas just drinking our chocolate milks.
When it was time for class we went to my classroom where I introduced him to my teacher. I was the one to introduce him to the class and it went about as well as you think an introduction would go from a skinny, introverted 11th grader having to speak in front of class. P.J. got up, laughed and said whatever I do in life I should never go into the Emceeing business.
He did all of that for some high school kid he didn't know from Adam that just called him up out of the blue.
P.J. O'Rourke was acerbic, sarcastic, cutting and one of the nicest guys I've ever met.
Outside of O'Rourke, a fine offering of horse apples to peruse today, the steadily wafting odor of which through the tents on both sides of the political divide is one of the primary reasons for my never having stepped through the flap and paid the dues for membership in either camp. Which of course leaves me often screaming from the Far Middle WTF is wrong with these people? And the answer to that is that none of them have even a smidge of the sense or sensibility of O'Rourke. RIP.
Why are Republicans never punished for their fringes by concerned moderates? Surely, Gosar paling around Fuentes and VDare people being in Trump's administration are as worse than SF's schoolboard because they have/had national reach
I'm terribly confused. The Durham hullabaloo is that Hillary Clinton's campaign infiltrated White House servers while Obama was in office, and therefore she was spying on Trump? I'm going to need someone to explain that one to me. This is a job for Frank Lee/J Boone.
The Barnes stuff is not encouraging, and sounds like a recipe for another 6 years of Ron Anon. Barnes is in that no-man's-land where a lot of Republicans find themselves with respect to Trump: Barnes could denounce the Defunders and Abolish ICEers to appeal to moderates, but he would piss off the far left upon which he relies heavily, and no matter what he does it seems like he's not going to get enough votes to win a general election. There is no strategy he can pursue at this point. You can't win by just appealing to the far left, but you also can't win if you alienate the far left.
I wonder if part of Johnson's decision to run again was his estimation that his likely opponent would be Barnes.
JVL in his piece about P.J. O'Rourke wrote: "No matter who you were, he’d talk to you." In the mid-90s I was an undergrad and tagged along with a friend who was going to interview P.J. for the student newspaper. I thought I'd get to say 'hi' and maybe shake his hand. Six hours later and many drinks at the hotel bar, P.J. gave us the best college seminar in Political Science and English rolled up into one. Truly a kind spirit.
O’Rourke is an American icon. His fusion of Gonzo-esque journalism and straight-forward-no-bullshit approach to our national politics is absolutely unique and will never be duplicated.
Could someone explain to me why Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidential election and as far as I know has no plans to run again, would need to spy on the sitting president?
Some really good stuff in the Bulwark today.
Firstly, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to Mona Charen for finally puncturing the bubble of "give Trump credit for China", which even smart Trump critics like JVL fell victim to at one point. The phrase "even broken clocks are right twice a day" isn't meant to give credit to broken clocks, and nobody should give Trump credit for redirecting his rhetoric against China (once again) out of political expedience when he needed a scapegoat for his COVID failures. As if he was somehow the first to recognize China's malign threat; the TPP was the product of *years* of negotiations whose express purpose was to counter Chinese economic influence. Trump's stance on China was like his attitude toward most things - mercurial, transactional, and rooted almost entirely in the present moment (as expected from someone ignorant of the past and indifferent toward the future). As with other world strongmen, he'd talk tough from a distance and be eating out of their hand after meeting in person.
Secondly, Brian Stewart's article nicely calls out the supposed anti-imperialists of the Left. I'm a progressive myself, so I think I have enough credibility to just come out and say it: if Ukraine was full of brown-skinned people, you'd be hearing a much different kind of rhetoric from our side. Probably still overly dovish, and still probably seeking to somehow lay the blame on the U.S., but one that would at least be forced to confront the malignancy of Putin's ambitions. The lack of an explicit racial dynamic to animate the far Left leaves the Left's foreign policy "realists" to fall back on myopic middle class anxieties about gasoline prices to argue that Ukraine isn't worth the effort.
The American Left's "anti-imperialist" mindset is an entirely passive one, utterly ignorant of the fact that it is rooted in a modern concept of national sovereignty that is made possible only through the American hegemony they so despise. For the foreign policy doves, it isn't that they're opposed to imperialism in general; it's an opposition to *us* doing the work of maintaining a world free from imperialist ambitions - reframing this work as imperialism in and of itself is what allows them to capitalize on the more race/culture focused anti-establishment tendencies of the far Left's culture warriors. In fairness, this is partly due to an understandable lack of trust in American judgment given recent past failures. But it's also due to a lack of commitment to American ideals and yes, some cowardice, borne of years of spoiled indifference to the ways in which our stake in world affairs underwrites our privileged lifestyle.
I am unsure how Democrats are supposed to "answer" Republicans since the Republican narratives about police, immigration, CRT, etc. doesn't actually engage in reality and really amounts to a caricature of what a handful of Democrats have said.
Really it doesn't matter how they "answer" Republican lies because the Republicans will just lie some more about whatever they do.
With the exception of immigration about which neither party will take the political risks required to actually come up with solutions MOST of these Kulterkampf issues Republicans see as their bread and butter issues are LOCAL issues and must be resolved locally. Republicans have nationalized these issues.
Instead of making performative gestures or virtue signaling Democrats need to emphasize their support of local governments and schools working WITH citizens and parents to manage local issues. The heavy handed policies of both the federal and state governments should be reserved for only the most urgent needs.
Whenever Republicans attack on these culture war issues Democrats should return the focus to the local nature and the need for local control and power and supporting that. Do not engage on the wisdom or stupidity of some of the suggestions made just stress that localities are best able to address the issues.
Democrats also have to rethink how they address issues. Too often Democrats run to find a federal solution before all the possible local and state solutions have been given a chance to work themselves out. It isn't so much a question of Big Government or small government it is seeing that government power is spread out and the closer to the people the better.
In college in the 1970s, I was a fan of National Lampoon, where I read many of P.J.'s articles. One of the most fantastic bits of satire he edited was the Lampoon's "1964 Parody Yearbook." It offers both childish and hilarious humor of that time of our life.
When I was a high school teacher for a few years later, I inherited the role as yearbook advisor. Since I had no high school or college yearbook experience, I relied on this magazine to guide me. I had the staffs read the parody, in hopes of moving them away from being overly serious as 17/18 year-olds can be sometimes in such roles.
If nothing else, they could enjoy some great satire!
The following link is not easily read, but the pictures tell all. BTW, that is P.J. photographed as Miss Marilyn Armbruster, the Girls P.E. Teacher a few times within.
https://gonzotoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/National_Lampoon_1964_High_School_Yearbook_Parody_1979.pdf
Gasp! "Canadian-style tyranny"? Abort! Abort! I've been compromised! Carlson knows!
*jumps through window*
Police departments should not be defunded, period. You can already read about cities that are trying.
I have a P.J. O'Rourke story. It was the 1980s in NH and I was in 11th grade. My english class that semester was journalism. I was a big fan of P.J. O'Rourke and found out he lived in the next town over. I told my journalism teacher and asked if I could try to invite O'Rourke to speak to our class. My teacher said go ahead and give it a try.
This was sometime in 1985 and you couldn't just google contact info on someone. I got the phone book and went to the "O"'s and sure enough his phone number was there. I gave him a call and after a couple of rings P.J. picked up the phone. I was kind of shocked it was that easy. I introduced myself and told him what I was calling about and without hesitating he said he would love to come and talk to my class.
We arranged a time and I met him outside the school. We went and got him a visitor pass and since it was a few minutes before class I took him to the cafeteria to hang out and bought him one of those half-pint cartons of chocolate milk. We sat at one of the tables and he talked about his experience in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas just drinking our chocolate milks.
When it was time for class we went to my classroom where I introduced him to my teacher. I was the one to introduce him to the class and it went about as well as you think an introduction would go from a skinny, introverted 11th grader having to speak in front of class. P.J. got up, laughed and said whatever I do in life I should never go into the Emceeing business.
He did all of that for some high school kid he didn't know from Adam that just called him up out of the blue.
P.J. O'Rourke was acerbic, sarcastic, cutting and one of the nicest guys I've ever met.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Why is it that spirits like O'Rourke die way too young and ones like Trump live into their '90's?
I loved O'Rourke. I don't know why it is that the one's like him die way too young and the ones like Trump live into their '90's
The point is that he will LOSE to Ron Johnson. Nominate Barnes == 6 more years for RonAnon.
Outside of O'Rourke, a fine offering of horse apples to peruse today, the steadily wafting odor of which through the tents on both sides of the political divide is one of the primary reasons for my never having stepped through the flap and paid the dues for membership in either camp. Which of course leaves me often screaming from the Far Middle WTF is wrong with these people? And the answer to that is that none of them have even a smidge of the sense or sensibility of O'Rourke. RIP.
Why are Republicans never punished for their fringes by concerned moderates? Surely, Gosar paling around Fuentes and VDare people being in Trump's administration are as worse than SF's schoolboard because they have/had national reach
I'm terribly confused. The Durham hullabaloo is that Hillary Clinton's campaign infiltrated White House servers while Obama was in office, and therefore she was spying on Trump? I'm going to need someone to explain that one to me. This is a job for Frank Lee/J Boone.
The Barnes stuff is not encouraging, and sounds like a recipe for another 6 years of Ron Anon. Barnes is in that no-man's-land where a lot of Republicans find themselves with respect to Trump: Barnes could denounce the Defunders and Abolish ICEers to appeal to moderates, but he would piss off the far left upon which he relies heavily, and no matter what he does it seems like he's not going to get enough votes to win a general election. There is no strategy he can pursue at this point. You can't win by just appealing to the far left, but you also can't win if you alienate the far left.
I wonder if part of Johnson's decision to run again was his estimation that his likely opponent would be Barnes.
Point taken...
JVL in his piece about P.J. O'Rourke wrote: "No matter who you were, he’d talk to you." In the mid-90s I was an undergrad and tagged along with a friend who was going to interview P.J. for the student newspaper. I thought I'd get to say 'hi' and maybe shake his hand. Six hours later and many drinks at the hotel bar, P.J. gave us the best college seminar in Political Science and English rolled up into one. Truly a kind spirit.