July 16, 2008
Israel, AIPAC, and God
I’m sitting here with a bottle of Padre Kino red, listening to a burro honk outside and trying to figure out Israel and AIPAC and life itself. It’s hard going, I tell you.
Why is everybody mad at AIPAC? Everybody, I mean, everybody that’s heard of it, which means maybe five percent of Americans. Apackers are [...]
May 31, 2008
Miss Emily Anne: An Unbiased Jazz Music Review
A while back I went to San Francisco to see a young jazz singer of my acquaintance, Miss Emily Anne. She’s short and cute and I like her voice. Who knows, you might too. (If you are interested, and have speakers, click [...]
Comments (1) Filed under: Entertainment, Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 2:47 pmApril 16, 2008
On Generals Testifying Before Congress
Whenever I see that some dismal general will testify to Congress regarding the war against Iraq, I imagine the first paragraph of his Power Point presentation:
“All metrics show a downsurge in the violence in Iraq, and a continuing improvement in indicators of the production of a better life. Next slide. The Iranians are aiding the [...]
February 16, 2008
The Illusion of Competence
Empowered Dingalings, Magical Supersecret Whatevers with Lots of Flashing Lights, Total Cluelessness, and Other Chronicles of Washington
Fraud is rife, I tell you. At a glance the citadels of power in Washington seem imposing. One thinks of imperial Rome, or the intergalactic empires of science fiction. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, on Capitol Hill, in Foggy Bottom, in [...]
January 16, 2008
Mexican Deaths: The Failure of the International Press
I dont like to be unduly critical of the media, having some connection with them, but enough is enough. Particularly they fail to cover Latin America well, as evidenced by their inattention to what has been going on here in Central Mexico.
I live on the shores of Lake Chapala, the largest lake in Mexico, roughly [...]
January 7, 2008
How We Were: Chronicles of an Adolescence No Longer Available
You need to know about how in 1962 I was a half-wild country kid of sixteen in the wilds of King George Country, Virginia, and drove a derelict 53 Chevy that shouldnt even have started but in fact went places that would have terrified Rommels panzers at their brazenest. (You may think you dont need [...]
Comments (0) Filed under: Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 3:40 pmDecember 29, 2007
Dulce et Decorum Est (If Someone Else Has to Do It)
I have just received the November issue of the magazine of the American Legion, in which I discover an article by one Ralph Peters, reminding me of why, having joined the Legion on impulse, I have never gone to the Post. The piece is [...]
Comments (3) Filed under: OP/ED, Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 10:03 pmDecember 11, 2007
Learning from Diversity (The Case for Expatriation)
Again it happens. In Baltimore a young white woman boards a bus and wants to sit down. Each time she tries to take a seat she is told by nine black middle-schools students, ages 14 and 15, including three girls, that she cant. [...]
Comments (7) Filed under: Current Events, Media, OP/ED, Society, Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 2:00 pmSeptember 29, 2007
A Laudable Hiatus
All good things come to an end, and some bad ones, or at least go into hibernation for a bit. Fred on Everything is going to take a month off and ponder, and perhaps come back refreshed. Or perhaps not. [...]
Comments (5) Filed under: Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 1:02 amJanuary 8, 2007
Liberty and Equality for Some (Same as Usual, but a Different “Some”)
An industry exists today in the writing of pieces proclaiming the weakness of men and the superiority of women, a favorite word in the description of men being “fragile.” I weary of it. Women of course engage [...]
Comments (11) Filed under: Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 8:34 pmDecember 17, 2006
It Floats (Addendum to Clausewitz)
It’s all but official: The war in Iraq is lost. Report after leaked report says so. Everybody in Washington knows it except that draft-dodging ferret in the White House. Politicians scurry to avoid the blame. One day [...]
Comments (23) Filed under: Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 2:42 pmNovember 8, 2006
Night in Joco (Thoughts, or Approximations Thereof, Little Organized)
Recently we celebrated the Day of the Dead, el Dia de los Muertos. As the shadows over Jocotepec lengthened with coming night, Vi and I went up on the rooftop patio. She began setting up the altar [...]
Comments (1) Filed under: Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 1:06 pmNovember 4, 2006
Peeing on Hydrants: A Brief Explanation of All History
I sometimes think that the defects of men, and the virtues of women, are equally understated. An unreconstructed male will say that men have invented all sorts of things and built this and that, which is true. Feminists measure [...]
Comments (12) Filed under: Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 5:43 pmOctober 11, 2006
A Bush In Need Of Pruning (Too Many Powers)
I miss the days of smoke-filled rooms when crooked pols chose corrupt presidential candidates who were approximately sane. Today we have a sort of presidential bus-station lottery. We choose as ruler any beer-hall putz who can shake [...]
Comments (11) Filed under: Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 7:26 amOctober 1, 2006
“Not Today, Sir.” (Awaiting The Rebellion)
When, one wonders, will mutiny begin among the troops in Iraq?
Recently I talked by email about the war with Jim Coyne, an airborne-infantry friend who served two tours as a gunship door-gunner in Viet Nam and then made a career in journalism. I [...]
September 25, 2006
What’s Fred Smoking? (An Essay In Cultural Psychiatry)
Letters pour in from desperate readers (or would if they did) saying, “Fred, explain America today. Say something tendentious and irritating about what is going on in this curious country. Why do we do what we do? Sock it to us.”
All right.
The United States is [...]
September 12, 2006
Pursuing The Elusive Euro (Tribulations Of An Expat)
Fred. A dangerous criminal. Surveillance camera photo taken during bank robbery.
I’m going to tell you how I entered the underworld, and became a money launderer, and international drug wallah, and remorseless criminal, just like Carlo Gambino or Bin Laden or [...]
September 3, 2006
Plastic and Foam Only: A Washington Insider’s View Of Nine-Eleven
Broadcast Dave Winslow, exemplary Deckhead and terrorist observer. Phredphoto
Oh help. I am still getting nutcake email from the deranged telling me about various conspiracies involving those wretched buildings in New York. Stop sending them. My hard drive is not an asylum. I don’t know how to email Haldol. Try taking rat poison.
Two of these [...]
August 21, 2006
The Greezy Wheels (Dispatches From A Parallel Universe)
Damn! Cain’t believe it! Hoo-yeeha-wow! And all.
Let me try to get this to make sense, though the odds are long. I was tending the computer in the bedroom of my house in Jocotopec in darkest Mexico, maybe ten in the morning. The Mamas and the [...]
August 17, 2006
Julius Streicher, Catharine MacKinnon, Jesse Jackson, And David Duke (Deciding Which Is Which)
I found myself some time ago under social circumstances in a group that included an angry radical feminist, which is to say a radical feminist. Out of nowhere that I remember, she announced, “Men are sexist pigs.” Such assertions are [...]
Comments (1) Filed under: Vox Populi — Fred Reed @ 8:58 pm
