About 30 years ago, my mother made a pilgrimage to central Europe to take my dad to Vienna, to see where she worked in the labor brigades clearing bomb damage and then on to Auschwitz. Oddly, my mother was interned at the infamous Mauthausen concentration camp but couldn’t bear the thought of returning to the…
Month: September 2015
Trump Is Obama with A Different Agenda
Some of what I have heard from Donald Trump is viscerally pleasing. His immigration reform and border control policies are exactly what I want to hear from a candidate. Well…actually….just some of it, if I ignore the really stupid parts like making Mexico pay for the wall, and creating a minimum wage for H1B visa…
Dear Peter Jackson; I Hate You. A Short Review Of “The Hobbit.”
My first memory of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books was during an interminable cross-country trip when I was 10 or 11. We followed the signs to Wall Drug Store (as, I am confident, did much of America), but it was not quite as exciting as I had anticipated in my fervid imagination. As a consolation prize, my…
(Sort of) Happy New Year!
This evening begins the Days of Awe, or the ten days between the start of Rosh Hashanah and the end of Yom Kippur. For an interesting take on it, take a look at The Lid’s explanation. I am not particularly religious, identifying myself as a cultural Jew who is woefully lax in his religious observance….
What Hath Liberalism Wrought, Part 3
Thousands of students who failed the California High School Exit Exam over the past decade may finally be able to graduate under a bill now awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature. Source: Senate sends high school exit exam suspension to Jerry Brown | The Sacramento Bee Ten years ago California instituted the California High School Exit…
Thoreauly Disgusted
Since Ed Koch introduced the “pooper-scooper” law back in 1977 and then into the Dinkins (I give credit where it’s due in this instance) and Giuliani years with quality-of-life laws, the crackdown on windshield washermen, hookers, turnstile jumpers and the revitalization of the subway, Jackie O’s rescue of Grand Central Station and the transformation of Times Square-42nd…
The Lesson Has Been Unlearned
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war. 14 years later America has lost whatever martial spirit we had in the aftermath of the…
14 Years Later…
Rest in Peace.
Lighten up, Francis.
As the official hippie era was fading into the polyester, puka shells and post-Vietnam America of the 70’s, one bedraggled beatnik bitter-clinger by the name of David Peel was discovered by John and Yoko whilst playing (where else?) in Washington Square Park, and they in turn inflicted him upon the rest of us. I’d like to think that…
The Language Of David Brock: Orwell Would Be Proud
Jay Guevara beat me to the punch….his post below mocks David Brock and his ridiculous contention that the NY Times is a “megaphone for conservative propaganda.” But Brock does the Devil’s work here by contorting language beyond all rational understanding. His goal is clear: make any criticism of Hillary Clinton a conservative plot — an…