If you’ve lived in Russia, you know that just before anyone big gets charged with corruption or other high crimes, they always have a way of suffering conveniently-timed heart attacks and winding up in the hospital before the heat arrives and drags him away for some good ol’ fashioned “justice,” Putin-style. We do it here in America as well–it’s an old Mafia lawyer’s trick that Scorsese brought to the screen in that grand finale in Casino. That’s when Remo Gaggi and the other Vegas crime bosses take a break from their trial, pull off their oxygen masks, and hold a vote on whether or not to ice everyone who knows too much.

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What George W. Bush loved best about his job was being a war president. Playing war, that is, as opposed to making war like a grown-up. Remember him strutting onto that carrier in his little flight jacket? You never saw Eisenhower, a real general, playing out his martial fantasies this way. You can take the drink out of the drunk, but you can’t take the swagger out of a fool. (more…)