Steyn on Clint Eastwood, Powerful Broke Governments, and the Weather

Just some gems from some recent articles.

The United States has the most powerful government, with the longest reach, of any nation in history. It is also the Brokest Nation in History. Resolving that contradiction is unlikely to be pretty.--The Paramilitarized Bureaucracies

No dictator will ever need to declare martial law in America. All he’ll need to do is issue a “severe weather advisory” and everyone will stay indoors until they’re told it’s safe to come out.--Rain of Terror

And some very interesting points about Clint Eastwood.
Excerpts:

...Clint is a brilliant actor, and a superb director of other actors (and I don’t just mean a quarter-century ago: In the last five years, he’s directed eight films). He’s also, as Mr. Gavin observed, a terrific jazz improviser at the piano — and, in film and music documentaries, an extremely articulate interviewee. So I wouldn’t assume that the general tenor of his performance wasn’t exactly as he intended. The hair was a clue: No Hollywood icon goes out on stage like that unless he means to...

the hard lines packed more of a punch for being delivered in the midst of a Bob Newhart empty-chair shtick from the Dean Martin show circa 1968. Indeed, they were some of the hardest lines of the convention and may well prove the take-home (“We own this country . . . Politicians are employees of ours . . . And when somebody does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go”), but they seemed more effective for appearing to emerge extemporaneously from the general shambles...