And after we bomb Cambodia, I’ve instructed the National Guard to shoot four students at an Ohio college… Michael Smith, the London Sunday Times reporter who broke the story of the Downing Street memo has followed up with two more pieces. It seems, in his piece from last Sunday, that the Americans were bombing Iraq … Read more
One of the dumb things about the New Yorker’s website is that it is virtually impossible to find recently outdated articles. You can actually guess, by looking at the naming conventions, and discover that most of the content they have published on the site remains anchored in placid waters to a permanent URL. But the … Read more
All summer I’ve had a retired shop teacher in my skull, trying to teach himself to play the marimba. I liked it better when he stuck with hammers and power tools. I know my tongue’s tucked away somewhere in my face, but I can’t feel the damn thing. The world outside my windows looks like … Read more
Look, there’s not a bigger Tom Brunansky fan in all of Twins Territory, but this team’s in trouble and in dire need of some pop in the middle infield. So, as much as it pains me to say this, I think it might be time for Andy MacPhail to pull the trigger on that long-rumored … Read more
The body count our government doesn’t want us to remember I started to laugh today at David Brooks’s piece in the NY Times. But then the feeling turned more to nausea. According to Brooks, we shouldn’t run our Iraq policy based on polls that say most Americans think we should pull out. I couldn’t agree … Read more
Jeff Wechter writes: These pictures were taken in Switzerland on March 10, 2005. The Crap Bar was at a ski area called Laax. Crap was everywhere. www.laax.com. The other was taken in a small town near Flims called Sogogn. Author(s) and Location: Jeff Wechter
Your mission this coming Saturday afternoon: without upstaging the happy couple. It behooves you to be both fashionable and appropriate, because the mother of the bride might cast you a disapproving glance if you are anything less. So grab your pastel neckties, dust off some chic but not overly sexy footwear, and wiggle into those strapless gowns. Provided … Read more
Two pictures were taken at sea level on the decent to the Dead Sea in Israel. We thought it appropriate to read about conservative politics in The Rake while visiting the places where it all started. The other pictures are at the River Jordan where John the Baptist did his work. Note in particular the … Read more
Took the Rake to France with me, just for giggles. Spent a week on the Yonne Canal floating on a barge with two other couples, drinking cases of cremant, (the local name for champagne) and speaking French very poorly. This photo was taken from a 16th Century bridge in a town called Mailly de Chateau. … Read more
One hundred and fifty years ago, when a Methodist pastor stumbled into what became Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, he thought he’d found the Garden of Eden. Dotted with apple trees and surrounded by lush green bluffs, no other place, he argued, conformed so closely to the biblical description of Eden. Even now, despite upstream polluters that … Read more