Tuesday, March 10, 2026

The Architects of Fear Redux


Neocon John Podhoretz just yesterday dismissing legitimate, reality-based criticism of Trump's colossal Iran war fuckup as antisemitism:


Neocon David Brooks 23 years ago dismissing legitimate, reality-based criticism of Dubya's colossal Iraq war fuckup as antisemitism (dead link because The Weekly Standard no longer exists):
It's Back
The socialism of fools has returned to vogue not just in the Middle East and France, but in the American left and Washington.
...

AFTER JOE LIEBERMAN completed his unsuccessful campaign for the vice-presidency, I pretty much concluded that anti-Semitism was no longer a major feature of American life. I went around making the case that the Anti-Defamation League should close up shop, since the evil they were organized to combat had shrunk to insignificance.

Now I get a steady stream of anti-Semitic screeds in my e-mail, my voicemail, and in my mailbox. It transpired that I couldn’t have been more wrong. Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. It’s just that its epicenter is no longer on the Buchananite right, but on the peace-movement left...

I mentioned that I barely know Paul Wolfowitz, which is true. But I do admire him enormously, not only because he is both a genuine scholar and an effective policy practitioner, not only because he has been right on most of the major issues during his career, but because he is now the focus of world anti-Semitism. He carries the burden of their hatred, which emanates not only from the Arab world and France, but from some people in our own country, which I had so long underestimated...


This has been another edition of...


No Fair Remembering Stuff



Monday, March 09, 2026

Welcome To "Pique Oil" (™)

From CNN:

Oil prices soar past $100 a barrel as war escalates in Iran

Based on past experience, I felt it prudent to post this term I coined today on a more-permanent platform as a hedge against the day when, well, it's a long story...


Don't Get Me Started About "Dumpster Fire"


The Phrase "Go, Lemmings, Go"...

...is at least 45 years old and dates back to a musical revue based on the satirical songs of Tom Lehrer from the 1950s & 1960s.



No Fair Remembering Stuff


Well, Let Me Tell You ‘Bout the Way He Looked



The way he acts and the color of his hair
His voice was slurred and dumb, his eyes were cruel and dull 
And he's not there...



I Am The Liberal Media


Sunday, March 08, 2026

So. Much. Winning.



A year ago the promises filled the air like ticker-tape confetti.  $2,000 rebate checks in every mailbox, DOGE sleuthing out $2 trillion in government waste to balance the books, tariffs so painless and juicy we’d never have to pay income taxes again, gas and electric bills sliced in half, and, of course, no new wars.  

A vision of effortless prosperity, where the money rolled in, the bills disappeared, and reality was chloroformed and stuffed in a closet.


Burn The Lifeboats


Me on The Hal Sparks Radio Program Mega-Worldwide

In these evil times -- especially if you spend much of the day behind a keyboard -- it’s easy to start thinking you’re alone out in the tall grass. That’s why the chance to spend a couple of groovy hours in good company with fellow travelers is a jewel beyond price. Many thanks to Hal (and Andrea) for inviting me to hang out with him, Johnny Million, and Phil Ittner while my wife was off communing with her knitting cult in Chicago.




I Am The Liberal Media


Looking Forward To Third Way Inviting Newly Minted "Independent" James Wood...


...to keynote their next Even Bigger Tent Revival.



This pathetic burbling of this broke-brained creature means it is time again for the PSA in which I remind readers of a fun word, coined by Kurt Vonnegut his 1963 satirical novel "Cat's Cradle" , which I began using in a political context all the way back in November of 2009.  

The occasion was David Fucking Brooks trying to pass off the post-Dubya spike in "independent" voters as some brand-new constituency which Democrats needed to appease instead of what it obviously was:  Republican Bush-voters rebranding themselves as "independent" in the hopes of dodging responsibility for the disasters they unleashed on this country by voting for Bush twice. 

From The "Independent" GranfalloonNovember 08, 2009:

Nobody knows what “independents” want, because “independent” as a modern political category is a textbook example of what Kurt Vonnegut defined in "Cat's Cradle" as a "granfalloon":

"...a proud and meaningless association of human beings"

Because “independent” can mean any-damn-thing, or nothing at all.



I Am The Liberal Media


Thursday, March 05, 2026