Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Sunday

Alex Massie

Jim Devine

From our UK edition

It would be easy to highlight this Channel Four News interview with disgraced Livingston MP Jim Devine and observe that it highlights so much of what is so wrong with the Scottish Labour party. Easy and true. But while it's obvious that the Jimmies are pretty grim, the broader point is that there are clueless fools (and worse!) in all political parties and it's incumbent upon voters to choose the best man or woman for the job, regardless of their party affiliation. That means there are plenty of sitting Tory and Lib Dem MPs you shouldn't vote for either.

Saturday

Thursday

Alex Massie

New US Army Division: The Fightin’ Hermaphrodites

From our UK edition

Given that homosexuals are permitted to serve in the armed forces of, I think, every NATO country bar Turkey and the United States and that none of these countries have reported any great difficulty as a consequence of ending this discrimination, it's hard to see how lifting the ban on gays serving in the military can really destroy the United States military. For that matter, in the draft era, thousands of gay men obviously served in the army and, as best I can recall, this didn't have any significant operational impact. Still, it's grimly amusing seeing what excuses the opponents - including a flip-flopping John McCain - can come up with to justify the ban on homosexuals.

Alex Massie

Cricket & Tobacco: A Match Made on a True Pitch

From our UK edition

I have many more enthusiasms than convictions (in any sense of the word) but I am certain about some things and enthusiastically so. Cricket and tobacco, for instance. They're as natural a fit as ham and eggs. If the government really wants to clamp down upon smoking they should probably consider banning cricket - for in no other sport does Lady Nicotine provide such a useful, nay vital, service. There are the cigarettes you smoke when you're waiting to bat and the wicket looks a little lively and the other mobs' fast bowler has a vindictive look about him and you're just hoping that he'll have exhausted his allotted overs by the time you shuffle in to bat or that, failing this, you'll be out before the bastard comes back. These might be considered fretting cigarettes.

Alex Massie

Only War Can Save Obama

From our UK edition

Still, if we want to talk about cynicism I offer you, as Exhibit A, Daniel Pipes who believes, apparently seriously, that Obama can rescue his Presidency by going to war with Iran: He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations. Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity. [...]Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Vote for the Sheep!

From our UK edition

It's not the Coroner's race in New Orleans, but this GOP ad in California is still pretty special. In the race for the GOP Senate nomination it seems that the problem is, as Jon Chait points out, that Tom Campbell isn't a sheep. And that's bad. Very baaaad. (Sorry.) Among his crimes? Thinking that California's fiscal predicament might be alleviated, just a little, by increasing taxes on gasoline. The whole thing has a mesmerising quality that is quite splendid and well worth your time. We need this sort of political advertising in Britain...

Alex Massie

Small Drama at Holyrood; Not Many Bothered

From our UK edition

A reader asks for a comment on the Scottish Budget "debate" at Holyrood. Well, I'm always sometimes happy to oblige: It passed. OK: the Tories and the Greens supported the SNP in return for promises to publish details of government expenditure online and set up an independent budgetary review commission (Tory demands) and bung more money to people wanting to insulate thier lofts (the Greens' sweetie).  But this was a phoney budget and not just because so much depends upon what happens to the block grant handed down from Westminster. Longer-term questions weren't even addressed, let alone answered. And, ultimately, a budget that dispenses spending but doesn't raise money isn't a real budget. Which is one reason why Holyrood needs fiscal autonomy.

Alex Massie

Better MPs, please…

From our UK edition

  As we all know Her Majesty's Armed Forces have spent the last seven years fighting in far-flung parts of the world. Their deployments have hardly been uncontroversial. So you'd think that the release of a new Green Paper on the "way forward" for the armed forces might be a moment of some interest and, indeed, even at this stage of the electoral cycle, some importance. Not so. At least it doesn't interest our parliamentarians. As Think Defence points out only one in twenty MPs bothered turn up to listen to and debate the Green Paper. I think that's a grand total of six Labour MPs on the governmentback-benches.

Alex Massie

The Virtues of Cynicism and the Limits of Obstructionism

From our UK edition

Some readers, Andrew, Reihan and a couple of other bloggers all argue, to one degree or another, that this post is depressingly cynical* [typo fixed]. It wasn't meant to be! I wasn't meaning to endorse Republican obstructionism, rather I was trying to point out that, viewed from a GOP perspective, a policy of knee-jerk opposition to anything and eveything proposed by the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress made or makes a certain amount of sense. That's all! I don't pretend that this is necessarily good for the country. But in a two party system which also massively favours incumbents at elections time and in which a 53-47% victory is considered a mini-landslide, there's little incentive to try and improve bills proposed by the majority.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Mandelson: the Great Entertainer

From our UK edition

These days, Peter Mandelson is the only Cabinet Minister who ever seems to do anything to spread a little joy and happiness about. If it weren't for him this might be the most depressing government in living memory. Take, for instance, his reaction, to Georgie Osborne's speech on the economy today: "I have read George Osborne’s speech with incredulity. He must have made some mistake. I realise his speech was thrown together in haste but he or his researcher appear to have dropped in policies, paragraphs indeed almost whole pages of the speech I made on January 6. "If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery I certainly feel sincerely flattered.

Alex Massie

Because nothing enhances security like torture…

From our UK edition

The worst column I've read* today was written by the Washington Post's Richard Cohen who, I think, likes to style himself some kind of liberal. Note: this doesn't mean he's my kind of liberal. Anyway, here's how his execrable piece begins: There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America's critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

Alex Massie

The Problem with Mo

From our UK edition

David enjoyed the Mo Mowlam biopic Channel 4 showed on Sunday; I wish I could say the same but am not surprised that I can't. (You can watch it here, incidentally.) Yes, Julie Walters was just as excellent as one imagined her to be and, yes, it's carping to complain about what wasn't in the film (though an acknowledgement that the Peace Process didn't start on May 2nd 1997 would have been usefu) and it can't be terribly surprising that the movie gives the impression that the Peace Process was somehow Mowlam's own possession. Despite that I thought the film was, in terms of the politics of the matter, quietly devastating.

Alex Massie

Lessons for 2012 from 2010: GOP Edition

From our UK edition

Reihan Salam has a very good column on GOP tactics and oportunities that I heartily recommend. He concludes: The Democrats have offered a series of bloated, heavy-handed bills to tackle real problems facing the economy, and Republicans have been right to take them to task. But they're now in a position to offer more cost-effective, scalpel-like proposals of their own that can demonstrate their readiness to govern. And besides, Republicans will still be well within their rights to criticize the Democrats for their major missteps in 2009—President Obama spent most of his 2008 presidential campaign running against George W. Bush's first term.

Alex Massie

How to Survive a 35,000 Foot Fall…

From our UK edition

Popular Mechanics offers some tips: You have a late night and an early flight. Not long after takeoff, you drift to sleep. Suddenly, you’re wide awake. There’s cold air rushing everywhere, and sound. Intense, horrible sound. Where am I?, you think. Where’s the plane? You’re 6 miles up. You’re alone. You’re falling. Things are bad. But now’s the time to focus on the good news. (Yes, it goes beyond surviving the destruction of your aircraft.) Although gravity is against you, another force is working in your favor: time. Believe it or not, you’re better off up here than if you’d slipped from the balcony of your high-rise hotel room after one too many drinks last night. Or at least you will be.

Monday

Alex Massie

Monday Night Country: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

From our UK edition

Bryan Curtis has an excellent piece at the Daily Beast on the current state of country music. Well, the state of commercially successful, Grammy-nominated country music anyway. As you might expect, it's depressing stuff. Basically, you have a choice between Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift and perhaps the best that may be said of this is that it might be marginally less gruesome than the era of Shania Twain and Garth Brooks. Marginally. As Bryan explains: To reduce Taylor vs. Carrie to style points would be a mistake. Their music has deep thematic differences, too. If you favor Swift, you are embracing a Weltanschauung that says that all of life is a high-school melodrama. Swift’s aesthetic is unapologetically teen angst; her songs can be divided into “Yay!

Alex Massie

New Tory Tactic: Match Labour’s Blundering

From our UK edition

The Tories are quite right to point out that, when it comes to repairing the public finances, Labour are making it up as they go along. Unfortunately, so are they. Pete thinks that, despite this, the Tories still have the advantage and he may well be right. But if, for now anyway, a hung parliament looks more likely than it did a month ago, that's surely because of Tory mistakes rather than any brilliant manoevre from the government or any game-changing shift in the underlying economic fundamentals. And there have been Tory blunders. Consider the famous poster*: At first glance, it looks good doesn't it! But no, it's a terrible poster because... 1. It's too complicated and too clever by half.

Alex Massie

Helping Haiti | 1 February 2010

From our UK edition

How best to help Haiti? Plenty of people will tell you that writing off Haiti's debt would be a good start. And, in truth, there's an argument to be made for doing just that. But no-one should think that will really have much of an impact on Haiti's ability to recover. What might make a difference, then? Letting Haitians leave Haiti, that's what. Alex Tabarrok has a handy chart: The downside: What if all the best, most energetic people leave? Haiti may be a special, especially awful case but it bears saying that Haitians aren't the only people who would benefit from greater international freedom of movement. Plenty of other third world countries would too.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Holden Caulfield’s State of the Union

From our UK edition

Courtesy of Erica Grieder: Good evening, Madame Speaker. I'm always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. But I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me last year. It started with the economy. Bailout. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it. We all hated each other's guts after that. You could see there wasn't any sense trying to have an intelligent conversation. I was sorry as hell I'd started. But if you're supposed to sock somebody in the jaw, and you sort of feel like doing it, you should do it. I'm just no good at it though. I'd rather push a guy out the window or chop his head off with an ax than sock him in the jaw.

Alex Massie

Blair vs Chilcot vs his Critics

From our UK edition

I've a piece up over at the Daily Beast on Blair's appearance before Chilcot yesterday during which he showed, once again, that he's the last member of the War Party capable of explaining and selling the mission. All the others have fallen silent (Bush, Aznar) or been discredited (Cheney, Rumsfeld). Only Blair remains. The build-up to Tony Blair's appearance on Friday before the Public Inquiry investigating the Iraq War was dominated, above all else, by two things: a palpable thirst to see the Prime Minister publicly humiliated and a nagging sense that Blair's testimony would be anti-climactic. Both expectations proved ill-founded. Protesters outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Center chanted "Tony Bliar! [sic] War Criminal!

Alex Massie

Help This Soldier

From our UK edition

Warrant Officer Mac McGearey, who serves in the Royal Tank Regiment and is due to ship out to Afghanistan in June, has a blind daughter who contracted meningitis when she was just three days old. This left her blind and suffering from, one gathers, a range of other disabilities. At first Ciara, who is now 13, was educated at the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh. Then McGearey was posted to Suffolk. Now he and his family have been posted back to Edinburgh, the City Council is refusing to pay for his daughter to return to the Royal Blind School, insisting instead that she be enrolled at a different school that, whatever its merits, does not specialise in educating blind children.