Readers awaiting the announcement of my M XI of test cricketers should fret not. It will appear. And soon. In the meantime the estimable Norm has challenged me to a game of fantasy cricket. As he explains, the idea is that we shall each select a side, playground style and then see how the XIs may match up against one another in a subsequent, enjoyably imaginary, series. You can follow - as I imagine you'll want to - the game here and at Norm's place.
It's August and there are still acres of newsprint and hours of newstime to be filled. Something has to be published or aired. And in any case everyone agrees that we need a new storyline, right? So what's it to be? The obvious answer - and the one selected by thirsty hacks desperate for any refreshment during the dog days of summer - is Why isn't Barack Obama Doing Better? Happily a couple of national tracking polls have popped up that show McCain and Obama more or less tied. Juicy stuff that will furnish at least a week's worth of breathless commentary... And nor is it just conservatives who are slyly arguing that not winning by more means Obama is actually losing, some liberals are also getting just a teensy bit jittery.
Apparently in 2002 the Pentagon commissioned a study (which I've not read yet) of imperial power entitled the "Military Advantage in History," with a view to appreciating what the United States could learn from previous imperial adventures. Since the US is an imperial power, that's not too daft a project. More on this later, perhaps. But for now I was struck by Dana Goldstein's response: It's fascinating that although Roman history can be read as a cautionary anti-imperial tale, the ONA [Office of Net Assessment] report lauds Rome as the foremost example for an American empire, without even nodding toward Rome's failures or fall.
The US Army is proposing to pay Arabic-speaking recruits bonuses of $150,000. James Joyner explains how this situation is largely one of the Army's own-making, dating back more than a dozen years.
There's no need for the Scottish football league to kick-off on Saturday. Cancel it. The season can't* get better or more more amusing than this. *OK, it can. It would be too perfect, even too much to hope for, if Celtic were also turfed out of europe in their first match. Ah, sweet, sweet schadenfreude how I love you so...
Via Andrew, a fascinating collection of cartoon maps from the First World War.
So, as expected, Kevin Pietersen will captain England against South Africa at the Oval. A dubious gamble in my view, given the potential for the captaincy to adversely impact impair (thanks mystery commenter!) his batting, just as it did Michael Vaughan. Then again the selectors ensured that they had very few options, thanks to their criteria. As Geoff Miller said today: "In choosing a new captain, we were keen to identify a player who could lead the team in all three forms of cricket and bring fresh enthusiasm and ideas to the role of captain." In other words slap and tickle 20/20 cricket helped determine the choice of a captain for the test match XI. Since Pietersen and Flintoff are the only players guaranteed a spot in 20/20, 50 over and five day cricket it had to be him.
Ross Douthat makes an excellent suggestion: I think it would be an excellent discipline for pundits deeply invested in the ideal of the "independent" politician to attempt, at least once a year, a column praising a public figure for taking an independent, maverick position with which they disagree. Obviously this applies to the blogosphere as well as to the talking heads on TV and newspaper columnists. I don't think I'd actually agree with all that many of Senator Jim Webb's positions, for instance, but I admire his willingness to state his mind, free from the cant and humbug in which politicians customarily swaddle their pronouncements.
Panorama tonight: The Olympic Games are special. The biggest show on earth - with an estimated global television audience of four billion people. But hosting the Games brings extreme attention and extreme scrutiny. Chinese Premier Wen Jibao promised that foreign media would be free to report on Chinese politics, economics and society in the build-up to the Games, a pledge at odds with the Western perception of China as a restrictive and secretive state. In Panorama: China's Olympic Promise, reporter John Sweeney sought to put this assurance to the test as he travelled across China following the path of the Olympic torch. Well, fine.
Lord knows, there are times when the BBC is a frustrating service. And then there are times when one is thankful for the Beeb given the alternatives out there. Consider these screen grabs, taken at 11.35pm UK time this evening. (Click on each for a larger, clearer image if you like. The point is that the BBC has the big news front and centre and the others, er, don't.) BBC: Fox News: ABC News: UPDATE: At 1.35am, UK time, neither Fox nor ABC has Solzhenitsyn's death prominently featured on their frot page.
And art lovers... If you find yourself in the Scottish capital this week you might consider popping in to the Flaubert Gallery in Stockbridge where you will find an exhibition of my sister's excellent paintings. The show runs until August 10th.
I read Polly Toynbee today and assumed it had to have been written by some pluck-faced intern charged with writing nonsense in the style of La Toynbee while she gets away from it all at her Tuscan villa. But apparently not. It is not a spoof or a parody. Anyway: Gordon is dead, long live the boy Dave! Seriously. Even so, it's worth noting that even Brown's most deluded defenders are now switching sides. Suddenly everything changed. The burst of optimism was so startling it dazzled those too long trapped deep in a dungeon. In that one moment it was all over for the old leader who had plunged them into these depths. Suddenly here was the chance of escape everyone was waiting for.
The test match at Edgbaston is bubbling up nicely. If they can snaffle Graham Smith's wicket England will be favoured to mop up the South African tail and claim a victory that looked unlikely after their careless batting displays. Hurrahs for Paul Collingwood and, with the ball, Freddie Flintoff. UPDATE: OK, so that didn't work out did it? But I'd have also been happy to have been at Headingly today where, in his 11th innings after he struck his 99th first-class century, Mark Ramprakash has made it to the top of the mountain. The 100 Century Club has a new member. What's more, Ramps' may be the last admitted to that exclusive gathering.
If you think John McCain has problems or you think George W Bush is unpopular, spare a thought for poor Gordon Brown. I can't recall when I last saw a poll as brutal as today's Daily Telegraph/Yougov survey. Look at this: 15%! To repeat, 15%! Hell, Brown's plight is so severe that 42% of voters now feel "sorry" or "very sorry" for him. You'd put a dog out of it's misery and pain if it were suffering like this...
Matt Yglesias alerts one to the latest nonsense in the Presidential campaign. This time the guilty party is the Wall Street Journal: "But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them." It's bad enough that any poor hack should have to churn out this guff but it verges on criminal that an editor would publish it. I was going to say that this must prove that the Silly Season is upon us, then I remembered that the Silly Season, at least on the campaign trail, never ends.
At Passport Lucy Moore says this Paddy Ashdown speech on Bosnia's future is " a compelling call". Maybe so. Ashdown argues: Bosnia's predominantly Serb entity, Republika Srpska, Karadzic's creation, has seen the vacuum where will and policy should be. Its premier, Milorad Dodik, is now aggressively reversing a decade of reforms. He has set up the parallel institutions and sent delegations to Montenegro to find out how they broke away…. Meanwhile, in European capitals the growing view goes like this. We invested 13 years of hard work and huge resource in Bosnia. Now it is stable and peaceful and we are rather tired. Kosovo has proved it is possible to divide a country. What matter if Bosnia becomes another Cyprus?… This is folly of a very dangerous order.
Radley Balko, one of my favourite journalists, has a list of questions for Barack Obama that the candidate will never, obviously, be asked. These range over matters as varied as the drug war, the farm bill and school choive. The last one also made me smile: Your wife said that as president, "Barack Obama will...demand that you shed your cynicism... That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual." How is any of this remotely the responsibility of the president? Where in the Constitution does it say that the president should be our personal motivator and spiritual leader? Will you help us lose weight and eat our vegetables, too?
Since Camilla Cavendish makes some points in her Times column today that are similar to some I made about David Miliband's leadership challenge yesterday, I obviously think she's written a fine, penetrating piece. As she says, In policy terms, it is the Conservatives who have so far seemed optimistic about the ability of people to make decisions for themselves, and Labour that has made devolving power to a few hospitals and headteachers look like an am-dram production, involving more histrionics and agonising than Racine. The irony is that where it has devolved most power - to Scotland and Wales - it has let nationalists hollow out its core vote. This last point - about devolution - is not quite right.
George W Bush wouldn't have beaten Al gore or John Kerry without being able to rally evangelical Christians to the polls. Right now folk are concentrating on McCain's foolish adverts casting Obama as the Paris Hilton of the campaign trail, but given Obama's appeal to moderate voters it's worth remembering that McCain's bigger problem is his continuing inability to rally the Republican base. Doubtless that inability owes something to the fact that neither the candidate nor the evangelical leadership like one another. Still, you'd have thought that they might need to find an accommadation at some point. How's that going? Well, there's still some way to go.
As Time's Michael Scherer writes, McCain's decision to portray Obama as nothing more than a flashy celebrity better known for being famous than for any great achievement is, well, strange. Here's McCain strategist Steve Schmidt: "It's beyond dispute that he has become the biggest celebrity in the world," [McCain Campaign head Steve] Schmidt said of Obama. "The question we are posing to the American people is this: Is he ready to lead? . . . Do the American people want to elect the world's biggest celebrity or do they want to elect an American hero, somebody who is a leader, somebody who has the right ideas to deal in a serious way with the problems we face? . . .