From our UK edition
Via Yglesias, here's a charming leaflet from the Republican Jewish Committee that helps demonstrate just why the GOP deserves - even needs - to lose on Tuesday. Nice touch too, that the photograph used shows Barack Obama speaking in Germany. Obviously Obama is, rather oddly, Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain. Equally obviously, it scarcely needs saying that Neville Chamberlain was not in fact to blame for the Holocaust.
From our UK edition
Anyone whose had to spend much time in the company of Scottish football journalists and members of the Scottish Parliament could only hope that a "charity" football match between the two groups could end in serious injury, fiasco and with both sides losing. In that last sense, then, it's just like the Iran-Iraq war. Happily, in a story I missed earlier this week, this seems to have been the case. More or less. A football match between politicians and journalists was called off after tempers boiled over, it has emerged.The match was stopped after 55 minutes following a number of contentious challenges between the MSPs and the sports journalists they were facing.
From our UK edition
Good grief. Needless to say, one of the more depressing elements to this story is the fact that it won't prove terribly controversial. That's to say, there won't be a fuss or a rumpus and you won't - alas - see any outrage from politicians in any party. Pub-goers in Aberdeen are facing a drugs test before entering bars as part of a crackdown by Grampian Police.Officers in the force will be the first in Scotland to use an Itemiser - a device which can detect traces of drugs from hand swabs in a matter of seconds.The test is voluntary, but customers will be refused entry if they do not take part. They could be searched and even arrested if traces are found.The device was trialled by the police force in the area earlier this year.
From our UK edition
Looking west up the Ettrick Valley during the second half of Selkirk's tremendous 6-0 victory against Boroughmuir at Philiphaugh this afternoon. The defending Scottish champions were rightly favoured before kick-off but proved unable to breach the home side's line. A terrific game of rugby, however, played in great spirit by two committed, courageous sides. Great stuff.
From our UK edition
So, back from Dublin. As expected, the students heartily endorsed an Obama presidency. A shortage of McCain backers led to my speaking against the Democratic candidate. That meant standing up for, er, "angry apathy" (whatever that is) and, if pressed, a vote for Bob Barr. Rather like the staff at Reason, I suppose. But it was all good fun and grand indeed to be back in Trinity. Blogging will be back on track over the weekend. Meanwhile, courtesy of ABC, here's Sarah Palin providing toda's reason for running like hell away from the McCain-Palin ticket.
From our UK edition
Cracking obituary in the Telegraph the other day: Julia Pirie, who has died aged 90, spent two decades as an MI5 agent at the heart of the Communist Party of Great Britain, most of it as personal assistant to the party's general secretary. A small, dumpy woman with the appearance of a confirmed and rather matronly spinster, Julia Pirie was the most unlikely of spies. But her unassuming demeanour masked a sharp intellect and the powers of observation essential for the task of a secret agent. She was recruited to infiltrate the party at the beginning of the 1950s, at a time when many Britons still remembered the Soviet Union as a valued wartime ally and Communists retained considerable influence within the trades union movement.
From our UK edition
Simon Jenkins signed off from his Sunday Times column with a spankingly good piece last weekend: Is Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, a pocket dictator? Is there no drop of liberalism in her veins, no concept of personal freedom, no fear of a repressive state? Or is she just another home secretary? This month she apparently felt obliged by dark forces beyond her control to add another weapon to the armoury of illiberal power. She wants to record at her Cheltenham communications headquarters every mobile phone call, text and internet message of every Briton living. This is close to madness. Home secretaries always speak with forked tongues...Each new repressive law is abused, sometimes blatantly.
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Yup, it's another game of answer-some-questions-and-discover-how-few-people-agree-with-you. This quiz is better than some, however. Apparently, like John Schwenkler (from whom I lift the format of this post) I am a "hardcore libertarian" but also a "social progressive" who "probably" considers myself a "citizen of Earth first rather than a citizen of my country". Additionally, I'm a "capitalist purist" who is a "moderate" on defence issues. Anyway, take it yourself and let me know how you get on... After the jump: my answers...
From our UK edition
Regular readers may have noticed - but not necessarily been disheartened by - the absence of much cricket-related commentary here. There are a couple of reasons for its absence. First, I've been reading a lot in preparation for what I hope may become a longer-term project. Secondly, so much of the news these days is sufficiently depressing as to make one think that the game - that is to say, the game one knows and loves - is scarcely worth the candle. And yet, despite this, there are occasional sparks of light. Consider the comments of Darren Ganga, for instance. The West Indian is no-one's idea of a titan, but he seems to have the sport's best interests at heart. "Really and truly, this [Twenty20] is not really a benchmark for judging players.
From our UK edition
More jobs Americans won't do: write their own novels. Mind you, I wrote this post, so I'm in no position to carp or quibble. Still, this is ingenious: Admit it. Certain things make you desperately unhappy, and you don't know why--the Sbarro at the mall, the taste of Jolly Ranchers in winter, the woman in the Buick station wagon you saw at the Kwik Trip, the Food Network after ten p.m.In 100 words or less, please answer the question, "What makes you so unhappy?" in the comments field below. Selected answers will appear in Dean Bakopoulos's new novel, My American Unhappiness, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in late 2009 or early 2010.
From our UK edition
Apart from a couple of pre-prepared items, there's not likely to be too much blogging in these parts for the next couple of days. The reason? I'm off to Trinity College, Dublin to speak at the College Historical Society's* US presidential debate on Wednesday. We shall be arguing the motion "This House Would Vote for Obama". They were having some trouble finding folk who would argue for McCain so I may be on the opposition side - in which case I shall make the case for Bob Barr, not McCain. Actually, whichever side of the motion I'm on, I shall be making a case against McCain. Just possibly against Obama too. Anyway, Dublin-based readers are welcome to come along. At the very least we can sink a few at the Stags Head after the debate. It all kicks off at 7.30 in the GMB.
From our UK edition
Reviewing Thomas Frank's new book The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, last week, Michael Lind wrote: But “The Wrecking Crew” is a polemic, not a dissertation. With rare exceptions like John Kenneth Galbraith, conservatives — from Juvenal and Alexander Pope to H. L. Mencken, Tom Wolfe and P. J. O’Rourke — have been the best satirists. In Thomas Frank, the American left has found its own Juvenal. Consider his update of a 1945 civics primer, “We Are the Government,” which followed the cheerful wanderings of a dime that paid for a variety of enlightened New Deal regulations.
From our UK edition
Oh dear. The days of the free lunch may be numbered: This blog aims to do one thing: track the forecasts of Britain pundits, bloggers and others on politics and elections, foreign affairs and economic trends. It is often said that there is no accountability for newspaper pundits - they can guess wrong time and again and see no consequences. With this blog and the way in which it highlights pundits' forecasts, that may change. But our aim is not to catch out or embarrass pundits, or to record only mistaken predictions. We aim but to keep a record for posterity of all forecasts - those that are proved right, those proved wrong and those that fall somewhere in between. If a pundit is particularly good at predicting what is to come, this blog will highlight this just as much.
From our UK edition
On the other hand, occasionally there is some good news. Plans for a "Britishness Day" have been dropped, it has emerged.The plan for a national holiday, like July 4 in the US or Bastille Day in France, was proposed as part of Gordon Brown's plan to celebrate Britishness.It was one of the key recommendations of a citizenship review he commissioned from Lord Goldsmith last year.But minister Michael Wills told MPs that while some ideas from the review would be taken forward, there were no plans to introduce a national day. So at least we're spared this naff embarrassment.
From our UK edition
So, Twitter is the new rock'n'roll. Or something like that. Perhaps it is. Did you know, for instance, that Stephen Fry is a Twitterer? Well, he is and you can follow his feed here. (Mine is here, incidentally.
From our UK edition
Kudos to Frank Foer for alerting one to this priceless passage from David Gelernter's most recent article in the Weekly Standard: Granting the importance of the topic, the difference in moral stature between presidential candidates has rarely been as enormous as it is today--not (or not only) because Obama's is so small but because McCain's is so large. There is no single English word for McCain the hero, the moral entity. But in Hebrew he would be called a tsaddik--a man of such nobility and moral substance that he approaches holiness. If this assertion sounds crazy, that only shows how little we have thought about the issue. OK, we'll have to go away and think about it. Mr Gelernter concludes: "Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place?
From our UK edition
Sure, you could read about an EU investigation into Peter Mandelson's (dodgy) relationship with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. You might even enjoy the Observer telling Macavity Broon that he cannae escape responsibility for this recession. All fine stuff and worthy and useful and so on. But what you really want to read is this story about Geoge Osbourne's alleged fascination with dog collars and rubber underpants. No "public interest" whatsoever. Great fun, in other words. God bless the News of the World.
From our UK edition
Via Clive Davis, I see that Niall Feguson has abandoned John McCain. In a Guardian interview he says: He denies suggestions that Colossus, specifically, was written with half an eye on influencing the White House - but he became, for a time, one of John McCain's foreign policy advisers. "I must say that since he won the nomination, which I was very happy about, I've played virtually no role. In fact, I've played no role. Because, uh" - he is suddenly, uncharacteristically halting - "how to describe it? - I felt much less ... enthused, I think is probably the word, now that it's between him and Obama. And I felt much more uncomfortable with some of the positions he has had to take in order to secure the conservative vote.
From our UK edition
This won't surprise everyone but it turns out that Rush Limbaugh is an idiot. To wit: Going after moderates, independents, and all these yokels is not the blueprint. The blueprint’s there, 1994, taking back the House, the blueprint’s there. Why are these people ignoring it? Of course, as Daniel Larison points out, the GOP won in 1994 in large part because it was able to appeal to many more independent voters than it had in 1992. (Clinton's less than stellar first two years in office obviously also helped). As I have suggested, once a party's brand has become contaminated - as was the case with the Tories in the mid-1990s and the GOP now - you cannot simply retreat to first principles and assume that the public will forgive and forget your sins.
From our UK edition
A cynic might say David Cameron has an interest in a strong SNP. After all, a meaningful Tory revival in Scotland seems as far away as ever (though it would be closer if the SNP withered away) and this being so, the Tories have an interest in seeing the nationalists win Labour seats at the next election. In that limited sense then, to vote for the SNP is, in one respect, to express the preference that Cameron, not Gordon Brown be Prime Minister. And, of course, there are plenty of nationalists who think that a Tory victory at Westminster will be Scotland's opportunity. (More on this later). Perhaps. So, a temporary alliance of convenience? Well, only up to a point. As I say, that's the cynical view of Cameron's comments in Scotland on Thursday. I think there's more to it than that.