Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Friday

Alex Massie

Friday Animal Blogging

It started with Friday cat-blogging. Then there was a dog-blogging splinter group. I predict, however, that chicken-blogging will be the sensation of 2009. Here's one of the cockerels, the one I call Lescarboura, surveying his manor...(Oddly, all cockerels here are named after French* rugby players. We've had Serge Blanco and Michalak and Yachvili before...) *UPDATE: Or Italian. See comments. UPDATE 2: As noted in the comments, George Orwell was a proto-chicken blogger too.

Thursday

Alex Massie

The Ambassadors

The President of the United States often really seems to be a kind of elected Priest-Monarch. One area in which this is obviously apparent, is his ability to reward cronies and fundraisers with agreeable Ambassadorships overseas. Matt Yglesias, who is too wise to buy the wisdom himself, offers the official justificatory fig-leaf for this patronage: I had always just thought of this is a kind of casual, widely accepted corruption. But recently I did learn the official story as to why this is good practice, namely that an important political supporter or a friend of the president is likely to have a much easier time of getting access to the Oval Office than any mere foreign service officer would.

Alex Massie

Amazon

I've finally got round to joining amazon's Associates programme. Unless I've made a complete hash of things then anytime you click through to via the little Amazon button on the right I should receive a commission on anything you purchase. Clearly this is the way to do your Christmas shopping... Also, a friend said that I should really have an Amazon "Wish List" of stuff I've been meaning to purchase but, er, haven't. So here it is. I mean it would be embarrassing, but kind of wonderful, if anyone paid any attention to this sort of thing. However, shopping at amazon via this site costs you nothing more than what you'd be paying if you just went straight to Amazon...

Alex Massie

Obama and Europe, Cont.

Dan Drezner politely suggests I'm talking (or writing, rather) through my hat in this gloomy assessment of the transformational potential of the Obama presidency. Dan prefers to see the potential rather than the pitfalls. And he may be correct. It would probably be better for all if he were. As it happens, I do think he's right to argue that many european policy elites - and certainly much of the think tank world - do believe that Afghanistan must and can be saved. And it is certainly possible that withdrawing form Iraq (if that proves possible) could create the space and manpower needed to refocus on the "Good War".

Alex Massie

Department of Consultation

I don't mean to pick on Tom Harris. After all, I think it a very good thing that MPs should have their own blogs. And, as it happens, I have no firm opinion either way on the desirability or not of a third runway at Heathrow airport. But I thought this a telling part of Mr Harris's latest post on the matter: I’M DISAPPOINTED by the announcement that we’ll have to wait until next year to get a decision on a third runway at Heathrow. But I concede that 70,000 submissions to the consultation will have to be considered and that might take a little while. And given that a judicial review - whatever the decision - is inevitable, consideration must be seen to be thorough.

Alex Massie

The Politics of Being Way Down in the Hole

Back to The Wire: Ross is of course correct to argue that one of David Simon's great achievements was creating a television show that was open to multiple legitimate interpretations. Though I might see the show as grist for a certain libertarian strain of thinking, I can quite see why an ardent drug warrior could also find plenty of evidence to support his analysis. As much as anything else, in fact, its this argument between competing worldviews that proves the shows' brilliance. "Shakespearian" is a word bandied around far too often, but it's apt and worthwhile in this instance. And of course the validity of these multiple interpretations is in no way compromised by the fact they may be very different from, or at odds with, Simons' own views.

Alex Massie

Department of Names

Much blogospheric hand-wringing on whether to refer to a great Indian city as Bombay or Mumbai. This is a road I've been down before. Ezra Klein says that "Bombay is the term of the colonialist oppressors. Mumbai is the term of the people who live and vote and die there." Well fine. Does this mean Americans will cease referring to Edinburgh as Edinboro? UPDATE: Commenter Deiseach makes the essential, and correct, point: "I presume when you were in college in Dublin you referred to Kingstown, Kingsbridge Station and King's County? Anyone who thinks they have a consistent way of using place names in these situations is kidding themselves." As it happens, um, I did from time to time refer to Kingstown and Sackville Street and all the rest of it.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Tomfoolery from the Labour Backbenches

Tom Harris's blog is a very useful creation. Now as it happens I don't think that parliamentary democracy is under threat because Damien Green was arrested, disgraceful though that arrest certainly was. Nonetheless, there's little doubt that this government has, time and time again and to an extent that may be as modern as it is largely unprecedented, ignored ancient parliamentary procedures and consistently demonstrated a contempt for "old-fashioned" concepts of liberty and the rule of law. Thus Mr Harris's latest post is usefully illuminating. He writes: As the right-hand man to Shami Chakrabarti the then Shadow Home Secretary, David “Remember him?

Alex Massie

On Evangelicals and the American Future…

Hurrah for Alan Jacobs at the fabulous American Scene for alerting me to this excerpt from Laura Miller's new book in which she visits Wheaton College, Illinois. (Wheaton is Billy Graham's alma mater and the college at which Jacobs teaches.) Miller's book is about how a religious sceptic can still lose themselves in Narnia, but it's her comments about evangelicals that concern me here: I arrived at a different historical moment, just before the midterm elections of 2006 took Republican hubris down several notches. By that time, the GOP had enjoyed control of the White House and Congress for six years.

Alex Massie

Bush 2016!

Seriously. Well, not impossibly. Perhaps. Weirder things may have happened*. Yup, Jeb Bush is apparently considering running for Mel Martinez's soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat. I imagine Jeb would win handily. These days I think people forget that Jeb was the Bush who was supposed to be President. One of the hinge moments in recent American political history is election night 1994** when George W won the Texas gubernatorial race and Jeb lost his race to become governor of Florida. By just 63,000 votes. If memory serves, Bill Minutaglio writes in First Son (still, in my view, the best book about Dubya's pre-White House life) that W was furious that Poppy and Barbara Bush were more saddened by Jeb's defeat than elated by W's victory.

Alex Massie

The Death of Ink

Another sign of the times: every single employee of the Glasgow Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times was sacked today and told to reapply for their jobs (on changed  - that is, less favourable - terms and conditions of course) if they hope to have some sort of a future in newspapers. Or at least at the Herald Group. Early indications are that the company wants to cut the workforce by something like 20%. But journalists and readers alike should not fret: Managing director Tim Blott said: "We are creating an efficient operation fit for the 21st Century which will provide even more compelling and unique content for readers of all three titles and our websites.

Alex Massie

Mexico Dispatch

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times: At least 38 people have been killed in Tijuana since Saturday, nine of them decapitated, in escalating drug-related violence that appears to have left in tatters a Mexican military offensive launched two weeks ago. To which NRO's Mark Krikorian responds: "Better Get That Fence Built". I suppose that's a point of view, but a more rational response might be to rethink the drug policies that have a) been such a success in Colombia and b) are now being exported to Mexico. That might do more good than fretting about the possible impact all this might have on the American border.

Alex Massie

Waiting for the Call

Steve Clemons posts a very droll email purporting to be from an anxious Democrat wondering what, if any, job he (or she) might receive in the Age of Obama... Like you, I keep a secret "A list" of positions I would kill for, including all manner of ambassador slots, sub-secretary -ships and senior director positions. I have my secret "B list" of fall back positions I would also kill for, including senior advisor, special assistant, and even the Deputy Assistant Secretary-ship. Of course, I tell almost no one about these lists. If people saw the B list, that might reduce my chances of getting an A list job. And if they saw the A list, people might think I was too arrogant, too demanding, and too self-delusional to serve in the administration.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Bombay Lessons

Bruce Schneier suspects we'll probably learn the wrong ones. After all, as he points out, there's very little you can do to stop 18 men with guns and grenades once they've begun their attack. I suspect John Robb would agree. Well-planned low-tech attacks that "leverage" a city's own infrastructure are one of the nightmare scenarios. Yet since this kind of mission is more likely than not to end in the deaths of the terrorists themselves (cf the Chechen attack on a Moscow theatre) it remains, happily, an unpopular career choice. And for that one should be truly thankful. Imagine how easy it would be to cripple the railways, or, armed with just a bag or two of grenades to knock-out much of a city's electriciy system.

Alex Massie

Scottish Politics Update

For those of you interested in Scottish politics, it's not a bad thing to be able, not before time, to welcome the country's newspapers to the blogosphere. So, huzzahs for The Steamie then, a new blog devoted to tartan politics written by the political journos at the Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News. I think they're having what's known as a "soft launch" and it will doubtless take them some time to become accustomed to blogospheric ways, but it's good to see them swimming in these waters...

Alex Massie

Obama’s European Gambit

Matt Yglesias wrote a column last week in which he disputed what he termed the "counterintuitive" view that President Obama's relations with Europe will not necessarily improve as much or as swiftly as is commonly imagine. On the contray, he suggested, simpley a) not being George W Bush and b) not going out of his way to insult or alienate Europeans would indeed go a long way towards reviving a spirit of transatlantic comity. Robert Kaplan made some similar points in the Atlantic: Obama enters the market at a time when US foreign policy stock is so depressed, the only way is up. Now clearly there's something to this.

Alex Massie

The Continued Absence of a Golden Age

Commenting on the future of transatlantic relations, Anthony writes: The plain fact of the matter is that there are structural issues at play that will ensure tensions remain. One of the great pieces of historical revisionism spurred by the Bush 43 tenure is the conviction that has emerged that under Clinton Euro-American relations were going well. They weren't. Most of the time it was poison. Even between Clinton and Blair things turned fairly sour...We should hope for the best with the emergence of the Obama administration. And at the very least it'll give me an excuse to start having a go at the Continentals again. But managing expectations, so to speak, is undoubtedly the right way to go. There are plenty of issues that have the potential to cause ructions.

Monday

Alex Massie

The Politics of The Wire

Jonh Goldberg says that The Wire should be more popular amongst conservatives. He argues that conservatives should love The Wire because it shows what happens when you let Democrats run a major, if declining, American city. Well! At a certain point this is too dull for words: have we really reached the stage where even TV programmes have to be apportioned between conservatives and liberals so that watching television becomes a dreary act by which one demonstrates ones political allegiance? In any case, if you have to investigate The Wire's politics, it seems to me that you might be tempted to conclude that it endorses a libertarian view of local politics, rather than  conservative or liberal perspective. No wonder it's such a trendy show to like...

Alex Massie

Message from Ottawa

Andrew Coyne defends Stephen Harper from his critics. Or at least, from some of them: While this laissez-faire, do-nothing government contents itself with spending more than any government in the history of Canada — 25% more, after inflation and population growth, than at the start of the decade — and pumping tens of billions of dollars into the banking system, what Canadians demand is “stimulus.” And stimulus, we all know, in a sophisticated, 21st century economy, can be delivered in only one way: by hiring large numbers of unionized men to dig holes in the ground (see “infrastructure.”) Loosening monetary policy doesn’t count. Tax cuts don’t count. It only counts as “stimulus” if the government spends it.