George w. bush

Kid Rock feels like he emerged from a time capsule left for us in the Nineties, perhaps along with Dunkaroos and the decaying corpses of the Simpsons, who were replaced with inferior clones around the dawn of the millennium. In those heady days of nu-metal, Jackass and the Attitude Era, bored suburbanites and neglected “rednecks” unleashed their frustrations into jubilantly crass and confrontational entertainment that turned the raising of a middle finger into a kind of sacred ritual. Mr. Rock's breakout hit “Bawitdaba” hailed “the topless dancers” and “the...heroes at the methadone clinic,” and scorned “the crooked cops” and “all you bastards at the IRS.” Both he invited to, well, “Bawitdaba da bang da bang diggy diggy diggy.

Last Wednesday, Rep. Liz Cheney seized the opportunity during a House Armed Services Committee hearing to apologize to Gen. Mark Milley. She went on to assail the 'despicable' questioning of her Republican colleagues, who wanted information about phone calls Milley had made to a Chinese official last fall, in which the general had assured him that, were President Trump to launch a nuclear attack against China (presumably out of sheer frustration, or perhaps idle curiosity to learn what the result would be), he would tip him ahead of the fact. This, of course, was a direct affront to the 70 percent of Wyoming citizens for had voted for Trump in 2020. Several days before that, Cheney had confessed to 60 Minutes that she had been wrong to oppose gay marriage in the past.

I never wanted any of this. I came to Los Angeles like any broken, lost 19-year-old searching for fame and fortune, running from myself, my past and my family. As I made a beeline for the West Coast a mere six months after getting out of rehab for heroin addiction, I daydreamed about what my life would look like. I envisioned myself sitting on the deck of my Malibu beach home, idly flipping through scripts after my morning yoga session. Against the backdrop of the mighty Pacific, I would eat mango, listen to the waves, watch dolphins and smoke that sweet California weed. A superstar must always flip through scripts idly. I wanted to be a superstar.

What kind of man was Donald Rumsfeld? A successful one, by almost every measure. Ivy League scholar-athlete, captain of Princeton’s football and wrestling teams. Successful candidate for office, easily reelected to Congress twice before he left to join the Richard Nixon administration. There he proved a success at navigating both the federal bureaucracy and the internal politics of the scandal-consumed administration. He survived Nixon’s resignation and soon became Gerald Ford’s chief of staff — and after that, the youngest man ever to serve as secretary of defense, taking charge of a newly-minted all-volunteer force whose morale and discipline were in shambles after Vietnam.

President Joe Biden hit the golf course for the second time since taking office on Sunday, continuing something of an American presidential tradition. Unlike his predecessors, however, Biden appears to be a duffer. It's possible that at one point in time Biden was a decent golfer. He's been a member of Wilmington Country Club in Delaware since 2014 and reportedly had as low as a 6 handicap. That's a bit hard to believe as former president Barack Obama said he had an 'honest 13' handicap after playing 300 rounds of golf. A video of Biden on the links this past weekend further confirms that his golf game has gone the same direction as his mental acuity. The clip shows Biden well to the left of the green behind a short stone wall.

When Donald Trump took his famous escalator ride, the Republican party was too attached to abstract principles at the expense of the material interests of its own voters. It wasn’t even doing a particularly good job of adhering to its preferred ideological abstractions. Whatever the Democratic party’s ideological failings, its leadership understands the importance of delivering tangible benefits to the electoral coalition that puts them in power (although their newfound suburban voters could be in for a rude awakening if the Democrats ever get too much power). Trump presented an opportunity to change this.

Soon enough, Congress will hold hearings to investigate the federal response to the Wuhan virus pandemic. It is almost a guarantee those efforts will find failures, as no government is ever really prepared for 100-year catastrophic events. We’d like to think our government can handle anything, but, as countless Inspector General reports show, the federal government routinely fails to do the ordinary work of government. Expecting flawless execution with the extraordinary is delusional. I should know because 15 years ago I served as a senior-level official at the US Department of Homeland Security. My various roles exposed me to several events that contained valuable lessons I see playing out yet again in America’s response to the Wuhan pandemic.