An expression emerged during Watergate that it wasn’t the crime but the cover-up that doomed Nixon. It mostly came from his defenders, who envisioned a wall between the burglary at the Watergate and everything that followed, with an innocent president drawn into the cover-up of a crime he hadn’t known was happening. Tapes and testimony […]
I don’t know that stupidity always wins, but I do know it has the inside track. The fad of biting into detergent pods passed by quickly, but it did happen and was quite a tribute to peer pressure and general idiocy. OTOH, looking back on my own misspent youth, I don’t picture 10 kids standing […]
In case you missed it, and particularly if you didn’t, FIFA has capitalized on the clear path to success in the United States. On the eve of the World Cup tournament, they guaranteed something or other by creating a gaudy, ridiculous “Peace Prize” and awarding it to Dear Leader, whose country will be co-hosting the […]
If I were still editing a kid-written weekly feature, we’d have already had our annual Nutcracker-or-Christmas-Carol discussion. I miss the kids, but I don’t miss trying to cover this pair of mandatory holiday extravaganzas. The Nutcracker was easier, because, while it barely changes each year, we had enough kids who actually knew something about ballet […]
It was a pleasant surprise to see Signalgate back in the news yesterday. I thought it was gone and forgotten, but it turns out somebody had been looking into it all this time and now there is a report saying that what everybody knew happened happened. Rowe combines it with the ongoing, not-to-be-forgotten Epstein saga. […]
This may seem a trivial place to start, but stick with me. Tariffs are not hard to understand. When a country wants to discourage people from buying goods from another country, they can require a tariff, so that the person who is importing the product has to add an additional cost to the foreign product, […]
Nice timing, since I was just talking about this to someone yesterday, but, then again, it’s a topic I think about a lot. We used to joke about 150 channels and nothing good on, which was a reaction to growing up with four or five channels and nothing good on. I’m no snob and I […]
For those keeping track, Mamdani won’t be mayor of NYC for another month, so it’s a little early to be panicking over what he might do if he becomes the first candidate in recorded history to accomplish everything he promised. Though I say that as someone who lives in a small (14,300) city with free […]
Older people shouldn’t fret over the ACA, since they’ve got Medicare, but don’t put those paddles down yet. I got an email October 24 from Social Security suggesting I log on and see my new rates, so I logged on and was told they didn’t have them yet. Then, on the 31st, they announced that […]
I agree with Kelley so rarely that it’s only fair to let him start off this post-Thanksgiving edition. He’s right. If Democrats said to do those things, it wouldn’t give you permission, though if you wanted to import 400 tons of cocaine into the US, the president might pardon you as a good guy. But […]
I’d like to apologize to the world for somehow having exported Black Friday around the globe. There are a lot things we Americans could apologize for, though Dancing with the Stars was not our idea, nor was the Amazing Singing Head, another program I only know about because they run promos during more interesting things. […]
I went looking for interesting Thanksgiving cartoons of the past but didn’t find much I hadn’t seen repeatedly since. But having praised big, wide newspapers yesterday, I got a kick out of this 1925 piece by Gluyas Williams. As for this year’s Thanksgiving, Tom Tomorrow offers a panoramic survey of the mess we’re in. It’s […]
My friend got some bad news at the doctor’s this week. A new endocrinologist said he was very impressed with how she handled her various health issues and assured her that she had several more decades ahead of her. That’s the sort of prognosis that would have been welcome in our 50s but isn’t particularly […]
An easy choice for lead-off, given the serious nature of the issue and the joy of seeing Jones back in the saddle, though he’s far from over his stroke. But if the drawing hand still requires more focus and effort than before, his essay writing is as sharp as ever. Bok offers what I take […]
“From the least of them to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; from prophet to priest, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all. Are they ashamed of the abomination they have committed? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.” […]