Entries for January 2009

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

It has been two years since those four wrinkled handmaidens of the Military Industrial Complex—George Shultz, Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger and William Perry—chose the unlikely venue of the Wall St. Journal op-ed page to suggest that humanity should embark on a quest to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world to none.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

I think that, looking back, the Republican Party will conclude that it made a political mistake in opposing President Obama's economic stimulus plan in lockstep unanimity.

I say that as someone who has argued here, in agreement with the GOP on several of the points (It's not enough stimulus. The bill bears hidden agendas. The big construction projects will take too long. There should be more tax breaks.) made by House Republicans in yesterday's debate.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Okay, maybe I was too subtle for Ricky Gervais and his fans.So I will go slow.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Well, I obviously have a lot of clout with the folks at the Washington Post.   

After I suggested the other day that the writers on the Post op-ed page are as old and predictable as Supreme Court justices, the paper announced today that it was rehiring yet another stale and aged baby boomer—Bill Kristol, on the rebound from the New York Times.

Just what we need. More of the same tired exchanges from the same exhausted faces fighting the same old irrelevant ideological battles of their college days. And we wonder why newspapers are dying.

I guess we can hope that the Times will fill Kristol's slot with somebody who doesn't qualify for an AARP card.

But don't count on it.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

And so. It turns out that the House Republicans and conservative Democrats who claim that the proposed $800 billion stimulus package is significantly larded with long-term spending projects are correct.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Are they having a laugh—those august members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?

How else could they nominate Kate Winslet for an Oscar for her performance as a concentration camp guard in the movie The Reader?

It is not that Winslet cannot act. But it was Winslet, on the funny (and lately departed) sitcom Extras who played (?) a self-absorbed star who takes a role in a World War II movie because Nazi flicks score big at awards time.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Let's hear it for Pat Hardy and Tincy Miller.