Category Archive: POLITICS
Moot
“Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why it Matters” By Steven E. Koonin (2021) “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” This book posits facts, hypotheses, and urging which we are not qualified to judge. It is also full of graphs that gave us acute conjunctivitis. So what we will do here is attempt a summary of what Mr. Koonin is saying, much of which he says very well, and attempt to explain our reaction to the work, located somewhere on the spectrum between skepticism and a resigned…
Continue Reading →The Faucian Bargain
(With apologies to Christina Rossetti and her “Goblin Market”) Morning and evening Folks heard the coolies cry: “Come buy our pangolins, Come by, come buy; Bats and lemurs, Bits of Uyghurs, Human femurs, Embargoed seegars – All ripe together In wintry weather,- Morns that pass by, Fair foreign bats fly; Come by, come by; Pass the wet market.” ♠ Evening by evening Beyond the fence and bollards, Shi Zhengli bowed her head to hear, Her Wuhan boss, who hollered “Lady, veil your blushes Crouch in your office like a cave In the cooling weather; With cautioning arms and clasping lips,…
Continue Reading →Elegy for the Tank Man
[Tiananmen Square, Peking, 5 June, 1989] — A stand-off in the liquid heat of Tiananmen Square Caused Deng’s conga-line of tanks to begin rolling there. They rumbled down the avenue… Scoping tired students; waiting for their cue. — Suddenly a man appeared and stood before the ranks, Armed only with shopping bags – He defied the tanks, The lead tank turned and tried to pass, the man moved in its way; Then firing came, a soldier yelled but still he chose to stay. — He clambered on a tank and knocked, no friendly answer came, And finally the cameras stopped…
Continue Reading →Ship of Fools
(By Tucker Carlson) (2018) The brilliant TV pundit Carlson (one of the few Americans in the public square who understand irony) is perhaps better on screen than in print. Still, this is an amusing, engaging, stimulating and un-footnoted overview of America’s political and corporate elites, and how they, like the Emperor with no clothes, disport their naked ambition with a staggering immunity from introspection. Carlson is a rock-solid conservative, and has plenty to say about American liberal idiocy and childishness, but that doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t train a metaphorical AR-15 on the Republican Party as well. In fact,…
Continue Reading →The Cuomosexuals’ Ardour is Dimmed
Three years is a long time in politics. In April 2018 we suggested that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo might make a run for President in 2020. He didn’t, but clearly nursed hopes in that regard. He should have been nursing other things: now hopes and ambitions have turned sour for Mr. Cuomo, suggesting that hubris leads to nemesis, particularly in political life. After all, in 2020, the ‘Governator’ was walking tall: he was seen as the natural heavyweight opponent of the left’s bête noire, President Trump, doing the heavy lifting in the semi-absence of the party’s actual presidential candidate,…
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