Pete Spiliakos

My long-promised thoughts on the subject are one of today’s On the Square columns. . . . . Continue Reading »

Breaking Bad’s creator Vince Gilligan has said that while he wants to believe that there is a heaven, he cannot believe there is no hell. The characters in Breaking Bad surely sin and suffer, and God is not silent. But there is more to the God of Breaking Bad than judgment. He also offers grace to characters who, like those in Flannery O’Connor’s stories, ignore or misinterpret it time and again… . Continue Reading »

I think Beinart’s article should be read in light of this College Republican report on the attitudes of young voters.  Young voters are more ideologically ambivalent than Beinart lets on. A larger fraction of young voters have “conservative” positions on major issues than . . . . Continue Reading »

The finale was a very entertaining and sometimes moving disappointment - though a disappointment by the extremely high standards of the show. There were many things to like (spoiler alert, of course). The reptile part of my brain enjoyed watching Jesse choke the life out of Todd. It was even better . . . . Continue Reading »

1. I have no idea how the continuing resolution/defund Obamacare/delay Obamacare maneuvering are going to play out. 2. President Obama just isn’t that popular. He is closer to unpopular. His RCP job approval average is down to 43.5% even though the economy continues to grow slowly and the . . . . Continue Reading »

I was going to blog about Breaking Bad and Flannery O’Connor, but that would take too long and I have a few more thoughts about Ted Cruz. Over on twitter, Ross Douthat described Cruz as having become the leading candidate among “the axis of talk radio/Breitbart//RedState/etc.” . . . . Continue Reading »

Ross Douthat shrewdly notes the differences between Ted Cruz and guys like Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Mike Lee. Rubio is trying to move the Republican position on immigration in the direction of amnesty-first + expanded low-skill immigration. Rand Paul has developed an articulate, . . . . Continue Reading »

Carl Scott points us to this excellent Jonah Goldberg essay on Breaking Bad.  More tomorrow (maybe). . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m up to the fourth season, but I have also been watching the last half of the fifth season. Here are several thoughts, The money isn’t really about the money for hardly anybody. One of the conceits of the show is that the drug money can’t really be spent in large, visible . . . . Continue Reading »

There is this new sitcom called The Goldbergs that is set in the 1980s. The trailer doesn’t look all that funny. When I first heard that there was going to be a sitcom set in the 1980s, my first thought was that the producers would be kind of sloppy and treat the 80s as some kind of . . . . Continue Reading »