Tweet Do you have a Google search app on your phone or iPad? I do. And Google uses it to entice me to click on things. On the home page, there are all these links to things Google is convinced fascinate me. Most have something to do with the Beatles, or the Sopranos, or Key […]
TweetI mean, seriously, how does the idea even occur to them? And when it occurs to them, what insanity causes them to go ahead with it? My wife and I were wondering about this last night, and trying to figure out who would do such a thing. The usual story is that these people did […]
TweetMy family thought this was hilarious. It was during the televised debate on the night of July 31. I was together with most of the fam down at the beach. I had said something dismissive about Bernie Sanders, as I am wont to do. Then, I was busy writing a Tweet about something that had […]
TweetOver the last couple of weeks, as we waited for the finale, I read a bunch of stuff written by people with serious perspective issues. So it is that my favorite thing written so far about the last episode is this: It’s likely you’re already aware of the dissatisfaction with the conclusion tweeted hither and […]
TweetI subscribe to an app for The New Yorker on my iPad, and it is through that that I read the magazine. Through that, but not on that. I mean through the subscription, but not on the app. Although I read practically everything else — The State, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and sometimes […]
TweetDavid Leonhardt had a good piece in the NYT last night. He promoted it this way: There’s a roiling debate about whether Democrats should move to the political center to win back Trump voters or focus on energizing the party’s progressive base. On some issues — like abortion, guns and immigration — Democrats really do […]
TweetA few quick topics: Source: Santee Cooper chief Lonnie Carter to leave job Friday — You know, it was Lonnie who first told me how bad the situation was with the project. I ran into him at an event in Bamberg back in March and asked how things were going. He shared his worries about […]
TweetFor the first time probably in decades, I actually saw two movies on the big screen in one weekend. Seriously, I can’t remember doing that since I was the reviewer for The Jackson Sun back in the ’70s and used to spend my weekends in Memphis seeing the new releases before they came up the road […]
Tweet Late on election night, the folks on PBS (Judy Woodruff, David Brooks, Mark Shields, and others), utterly flabbergasted and in desperate search for something to say, somehow got on the subject of “Whither the Republican Party?” Or something like that. I forget exactly how they got on the topic, but they got to talking […]
TweetI’m trying to blog smarter by converting long comments into separate posts. Here’s the latest. In this case, I had — in the interest of using words economically — referred to myself as a “centrist,” as I frequently do. Both Bud and Harry Harris took exception to the reference. I replied… Dang, dang, dang! I […]
TweetWriting about George Will’s column about Paul Ryan and Donald Trump earlier this week reminded me of a recent piece he did while in England writing about Brexit. The column I have in mind consisted mostly of marveling at what a total flake Jeremy Corbyn, the current leader of the Labour Party, is. An excerpt: […]
TweetReading The Washington Post this morning, I saw that some of the nation’s top Lippmans (to borrow a term from Heinlein) were really pounding House Speaker Paul Ryan, which was fine by me because I can hardly think of anyone who more richly deserves it after his abject surrender to Donald Trump last week. Richard Cohen’s column was […]
Tweet After reading this piece by the wonderfully named Feminista Jones, arguing that putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill would actually undermine her legacy, I got to thinking: Who would I rather see on the double sawbuck in place of Andrew Jackson? I mean, you know, demographics aside. Me not being all that big on identity […]
TweetWell, it’s gratifying to see that plenty of other people hated the Hillary Clinton campaign launch video as much as I did. Some may even have hated it more. From a Ruth Marcus column headlined, “Hillary Clinton’s insultingly vapid video:” The more I watch Hillary Clinton’s announcement video, the less I like it. This may […]
TweetI really, really hated to see the first sentence of this story about the Richland School District 2 election: Race has become the defining issue in the Richland 2 school board election, as rumors circulate of a shift in power from a white-majority to a black-majority board. Fueled by the activism of an African-American parents’ […]
Tweet Back when he was elected governor in 2002, Mark Sanford was an outlier in the Republican Party. He called himself a “conservative,” but his words and actions in his first months in office made it increasingly clear that he was not that at all, but was a rather extreme libertarian — which is to […]
TweetI have to confess I did not watch the convention last night — during the portion of the evening I devoted to television, I watched the last episode of the “Breaking Bad” season from Sunday night — although I plan to catch Bill Clinton’s act this evening. Watch for my comments on Twitter in real […]
TweetJust a quick post to give y’all a chance to comment on today’s two main trending stories. First this: Rep. Todd Akin said Monday that he will not give in to calls for him to end his Missouri Senate campaign after his controversial comments about “legitimate rape.” “I’m not a quitter. My belief is we’re […]
TweetHaving decided it was time, after 10 years, for me to leave The Jackson (TN) Sun, I started putting out feelers in the spring of 1985. Just before I flew out to Wichita to interview for a job I would eventually take, I got a call from an editor at The Charlotte News, who wanted […]
TweetMaybe y’all have time to read this piece by John Heilemann in New York Magazine. I don’t, not today. If you do, please get back and tell me that things don’t really look as dark as they do at the beginning: The contours of that contest are now plain to see—indeed, they have been for […]