Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
The White House press corps is being quite properly ridiculed for throwing a hissy fit over President Obama’s decision to ban correspondents from covering his round of golf with Tiger Woods on Sunday. But Ed Henry, president of the White House Correspondents Association, is doing his best to defend their whining: This isn’t about a… Read more.
I have listened to enough State of the Union Addresses to know that they invariably amount to a triumph of style over substance. And nothing demonstrates this quite like the most memorable thing about President Obama’s first address last year being not something he said, but a congressman yelling, ‘You lie.’ (“2011 State of the Union Address,”… Read more.
Yesterday Barack Obama became the first president of the United States to visit Myanmar (otherwise known as Burma). But it was hardly a cause for universal celebration. Specifically, international human rights groups criticized him for conferring legitimacy on this country’s oppressive regime. Not least because it is perpetrating the kind of ethnic cleansing of minorities… Read more.
Just when it seemed all politicians involved in the post-Sandy relief and recovery efforts were rising above the politics of personal ambition comes word that the Republican mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg, declined a request from the White House last night for President Obama to survey the damage. Bloomberg reasoned, disingenuously, that because the Republican… Read more.
Nobody in his right mind doubts that President Obama fully appreciates the existential threat Israel faces by having Iran, which seems hell-bent on building nuclear weapons, continually threaten to wipe it off the map. In point of fact, he has repeatedly vowed that the United States will not allow Iran to build those weapons, let… Read more.
I trust my commentaries make it plain that I am far too cynical (aka informed) to be disappointed by anything in American politics. And nothing justifies my cynicism quite like the way political debates and election campaigns have been reduced to little more than hurling partisan talking points that have no regard for objective facts.… Read more.
I am loath to join the members of the inside-the-beltway commentariat who spend every day frothing at the mouth over the latest poll or political development that supposedly either portends Obama’s doom or reaffirms his messianic stature. But I simply cannot remain above the latest fray in this respect. Because there seems to be rare consensus… Read more.
[F]ar too much of this criticism is fickle, hypocritical and emotionally wrought… The real narrative arc of course is that progressive columnists (like Maureen Dowd of the New York Times) who once fawned over Obama’s style are now criticizing it. But I hope Obama shows the same indifference towards their criticisms that he showed when… Read more.
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama always seemed indifferent to media pundits swooning over him. But instead of acting scorned, they made a virtue of this diss by propagating a narrative about him as a preternaturally cool, intellectual dude who never gets fazed by anything: remember “no drama Obama”? Well, that was then. Because these same… Read more.
And, just like Daniel, he comes out unscathed! To be fair, there was never any doubt that President Obama would be cheered more than jeered at Notre Dame. After all, despite the media hype about abortion, he could have begun his commencement address there yesterday by paraphrasing the way he began his speech at the… Read more.
