The New Republic

Frieze New York, up and running through Monday, is a fashionista’s wet dream of what an art fair ought to be. Take a look if you want to know how the people who buy and sell contemporary paintings and whatnots are amusing themselves right now. Set in a meandering white tent on Randall’s Island in the East River—it’s just a quick taxi ride (or Frieze-organized bus or ferry ride) from Manhattan—Frieze New York is our Gilded Age art world’s answer to the perfect Edwardian country house party. The bleached-chic style can make ignorance and mendacity look pretty. READ MORE >>

Yesterday The New York Times reported that the Central Intelligence Agency has been funneling tens of millions of dollars to the Afghan government for more than a decade, in the form of "bags of cash." For anyone surprised to discover that a foreign intelligence service would underwrite the daily operations of President Hamid Karzai’s National Security Council, it is perhaps worth noting that the paper exposed a simila READ MORE >>

You know how the end of a cash register tape has that thick pink line running through it, to alert the user that the roll is about to run out? Same thing with credit card paper—when the roll is near the end, you get that annoying colored streak running through the receipt. READ MORE >>

The riches of recession-proof Washington, a media obsession for years now, was bound to be a source of resentment READ MORE >>

Twenty five years ago I quit a job on Wall Street to write a book about Wall Street. Since then, every year or so, UPS has delivered to me a book more or less like my own, written by some Wall Street insider and promising to blow the lid off the place, and reveal its inner workings, and so on. By now, you might think, this game should be over. READ MORE >>

What, you ask, is going on? The honest answer is that no one in Britain really knows what is happening with our election. Just a few months ago, it was all very simple: Fiscal collapse and a much-loathed prime minister equals stonking victory for David Cameron's remodeled Conservative Party. READ MORE >>

How Barack Obama Can Sell His Afghanistan Policy So That It Won't Destroy His Presidency, by Patrick J. Egan and Joshua A. Tucker Irving Kristol and the Hijacking of Neo-Conservatism, by Nathan Glazer READ MORE >>