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Barack Obama: Reduce World Nuclear Weapons to Zero
Tweet Share on Facebook January 30, 2009 Comment (7)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.
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Stimulus No Votes Were a Republican Mistake
Tweet Share on Facebook January 29, 2009 Comment (26)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.
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Ricky Gervais Needs a Sense of Humor Regarding Kate Winslet and the Oscars
Tweet Share on Facebook January 28, 2009 Comment (150)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.
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Bill Kristol Moves from the New York Times to the Washington Post
Tweet Share on Facebook January 27, 2009 Comment (8)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.
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Democrats, Leave Grease Out of the Stimulus Package
Tweet Share on Facebook January 27, 2009 Comment (6)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.
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Kate Winslet Nominated for an Oscar? Life Imitates Fiction
Tweet Share on Facebook January 26, 2009 Comment (25)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.
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On the Fight Between Evolution and Creationism in Texas Classrooms
Tweet Share on Facebook January 23, 2009 Comment (36)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Let's hear it for Pat Hardy and Tincy Miller.
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The Washington Post, Online News, and the Obama Inauguration: You Get What You Pay For
Tweet Share on Facebook January 22, 2009 Comment (2)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I have spent some time in recent weeks praising The New York Times, as an example of the journalism we will come to miss if we don't recognize that paid and trained professionals do a better job than amateurs at finding and presenting the news.
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On Timothy Geithner, Taxes . . . and Caroline Kennedy?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 22, 2009 Comment (8)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Many long years ago, I opened a letter from the Internal Revenue Service and discovered that I had erred on my taxes. I cannot remember what the offense was. Perhaps it was listing the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue as a deduction under "professional journals." In any case, the computer caught me.
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From Barack Obama to Martin Luther King Jr. to Mohandas Gandhi
Tweet Share on Facebook January 21, 2009 Comment (5)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
As I boarded the train home from Barack Obama's inauguration, it occurred to me how, in so many parts of the world, the coming of a member of a different tribe to power would not have been good news for the Farrell family.
