Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Wednesday

Alex Massie

A Picture of Putin

Rod has an excellent and rather moving wee tale about how Time magazine ended up with a photograph of Vladimir Putin not an icon to illustrate its decision to hail Putin as its Person of the Year. It's a reminder that non-believers can find much to admire in believers. Or, to put it another way, religious devotion that is sincere and modest and personal - and thus the exact opposite of how religion has come to be used in the American political arena - is a tough road to follow but one who's virtues ought to be apparent even to those of us who remain unpersuaded by organised religion.

Alex Massie

Tired, huddled masses too tired, too huddled for own/our good?

Today's reading assignment: Kerry Howley's* excellent Reason cover story on immigration, what the United States could learn from Singapore's guest-worker programme and how liberals are as confused as nativists: The moral calculus, then, is to be weighed between the welfare of potential workers and the preservation of an idealized American narrative. Does it reflect better on the American character to lock poor people out than to permit them entry on limited terms? Guest worker programs do clash with deeply held mythologies about our relationship to the global poor. We live in a state of relative political equality nested awkwardly within a deeply unequal world, and it can seem better, kinder, to keep the inequality outside, walling it off and keeping our hands clean.

Alex Massie

Postcards from the Edge

Via Tyler Cowen, here's today's eBay ploy. The current winning bid is a startling very reasonable $190: You are bidding on a rare chance to traumatize a treasured friend or relative with baffling, mind-numbing, mystery correspondence from abroad.Here is the arrangement:I will be spending the Christmas holiday in Poland in a tiny village that has one church with no bell because angry Germans stole it. Aside from vodka, there is not a lot for me to do.During the course of my holiday I will send three postcards to one person of your choosing.These postcards will be rant-ravingly insane, yet they will be peppered with unmistakable personal details about the addressee. Details you will provide me.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

St Rudolph of the Dead

Bonus Andy  McCarthy! Since 9/11, when the problem of interoperability of first-responder communications systems became starkly apparent, NYC, NY state and the Department of Homeland Security have all spent goo-gobs of money addressing it, thus far with questionable success, mainly due to its technological complexity.  Giuliani was mayor for eight years before 9/11, during which time interoperability, to the extent it was an issue at all, had to compete with various other budgetary demands... ...Ramesh says Giuliani should have solved it before 9/11, when there was no 9/11 to use as an example for why it was so important.  OK, but if it was that easy, why has it proved so difficult to solve since then?

Alex Massie

A Brit’s-Eye View

American readers wondering how this cazy election caper seems to foreigners could do much worse than check out Toby Harnden's  blog. Toby is The Daily Telegraph's US Editor (a fancy term for Chief American Correpondent) and his blog is consistently spiky and entertaining. Also never knowingly under-opinionated... It's also fair to say that he is not Hillary Clinton's greatest fan. Here's how he starts his piece on Magic Johnson campaigning with Bill Clinton in Iowa today: Lock up your daughters, Iowans. Two of the world’s most famous philanderers are being let loose together in the state today as “surrogates” for Hillary Clinton.

Alex Massie

When the law is an ass it will make an ass of you…

Of course there are plenty of sound reasons for not wanting a prudish scold such as Hillary Clinton back in the White House.  But National Journal's Athena Jones gives us a new one: In a funny moment on the way out of the store, a woman asked Bill [Clinton] to sign a greenback. Bill obliged, while pointing out "this isn't legal" to the amusement of folks standing nearby. A few minutes later, the same request was made to the senator, who said that she couldn't do it. "I can't sign money. That's illegal. I'm so sorry," she said. Jesus wept, as the good book says. This would score well on the John Kerry patented scale of sheer gawd-help-us humour-free ghastliness...

Monday

Alex Massie

Pass the sick bag | 17 December 2007

Hillary in Iowa on Sunday: 'There's so much we can do together if we work together as a world. Remember that movie Independence Day, where invaders were coming from outer space and the whole world was united against the invasion? Why can't we be united on behalf of our planet? And that's what I want to do, to get more and more people to understand that and to be involved to protect our environment." Oh shut up. Whoever wrote this should be fired. The folks at The Corner are having some fun for once, noting that in Independence Day the First Spouse, er, dies. Mark Steyn also points out that: even in Primary Colors they could only get a Brit to play her, which puts Hill in the same category as Hannibal Lecter and the Jeremy Irons character in Die Hard.

Alex Massie

Tough times at the Elysee Palace

Nicolas Sarkozy: still doing well for himself: Charles Bremner explains: They don't call him Speedy Sarko for nothing. It's exactly two months since President Sarkozy very reluctantly confirmed that Cécilia, his wife, had left and divorced him. Today, he has presented France with a new girlfriend, Carla Bruni, who turns 39 this week. Sarko being Sarko, he chose as the venue the Christmas parade at Disneyland Paris. Bruni, a singer-songwriter and former model -- who resembles Cécilia -- is a household name in France and her native Italy... Known as a tempestuous and intellectual beauty, she is celebrated for a busy romantic life. Newspapers today discreetly mentioned her reputation as une dévoreuse d'hommes, a man-eater.

Alex Massie

Hitchens on Huckabee

Hitch gets in touch with his inner Mencken today: However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. My right to say and believe that is already guaranteed to me by the First Amendment. And the right of Huckabee to win the election and fill the White House with morons like himself is unaffected by my expression of an opinion.

Alex Massie

Europe: Still Not Dead

Not content with permitting itself to be swamped by Muslim immigration (Quick: man the Viennese barricades!) it seems that poor old Europe is also committing cultural suicide by forgetting to worship god. In fairness, Rod, being smart, doesn't quite share the apocalyptic vision of Europe's future that has become oddly popular amongst American conservatives. Nor, also being smart, does James Poulos who weighs in here. In any case, the extent of European "godlessness" is exaggerated. For instance, though only 12% of Scots remain official members of the Kirk, the proportion of church going Scots rises to somewhere between one in five and one in four once all other religions and sects are added.

Alex Massie

No One likes Us, We Don’t Care

National Review's Andy McCarthy on a foreign policy difference between John McCain and Rudy Giuliani: McCain is business as usual — even though there is no good reason why the quest for peace between Israel and the Palestinians should be a priority, much less that we should intensify our commitment to a settlement in the absence of Palestinian fitness for statehood. Giuliani says we can talk about it after the Palestinians grow up. That's rather a large difference, and it's far from the only one.

Sunday

Alex Massie

Charlatans everywhere, I tell you

Sure, I'm not persuaded by all of Ron Paul's policy positions. But, sod it, any candidate who happily uses the word mountebank in a rallying call to the masses has my vote*. How very splendid. Today, incidentally, is the anniversary (alas) of the Boston Tea Party. More happily it's the occasion for another Ron Paul Moneybomb. The last one raised more than $4m. Here's the good doctor's message which is, sound money aside, not half bad at all: Message from Ron (12/15/07) What an amazing mission you and I are on. What great ideas we uphold -- the legacy of the most important thinkers of liberty in our country’s history, and the most important doers of liberty in America. At the top of that list are the donors and volunteers of this campaign.

Alex Massie

Clinton: My Wife’s Part in Ulster’s Downfall

Daniel Larison points out an extraordinary passage from Bill Clinton's appearance on The Charlie Rose Show on Friday. Bafflingly, Clinton seems to believe that the Northern Irish peace process qualifies his wife to be President: Clinton:...The only way to overcome our differences is not basically to try to erase the past, it's to get used to working together. I mean it's kind of a metaphor for the Hillary argument. If you look at last Monday, the... Charlie Rose: You are people are pushing me, so it's not my -- Bill Clinton: The new leaders of Northern Ireland came to Washington to see the president. They -- it represents a stunning change. I think everybody we met, right, stunning change in Northern Ireland. Charlie Rose: It's unbelievable.

Saturday

Alex Massie

The Experience Primary

This interesting snapshot of voters' hopes and fears and immediate impressions of Barack Obama comes from The Washington Post's campaign blog The Trail:The Post explains that the cloud: includes the top thirty-nine words mentioned, each of which was cited by 8 or more people. The size of each word represents the number of people who said it. So in this instance, the biggest word, "inexperienced," represents 123 people, the next largest, "young," represents 83, etc. No wonder Bill Clinton decided to hammer Obama on the experience issue.

Friday

Alex Massie

More on Hillary, Obama, and “Surprises”

My pal Mike Crowley has a fine post on Hillary's determination to play the At Least I Was Never A Drug Dealer card herself: "I’ve been tested, I’ve been vetted," she said. "There are no surprises. There’s not going to be anybody saying, 'I didn’t think of that, my goodness, what’s that going to mean?'" "I'm a known quantity," she added at the press conference, at which she received the endorsement of Iowa Democratic Congressman Leonard Boswell. "We need to nominate a candidate who can win." This threw the media into a low-grade frenzy.

Thursday

Alex Massie

It’s all in the way you tell them…

According to the Adam Smith Institute's blog, this was recently voted the funniest joke in Belgium: Why do ducks have webbed feet? To stamp out fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? To stamp out burning ducks. Who says foreigners aren't funny?

Alex Massie

Today’s shocking news

Comes from poor Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe's governing party has endorsed Robert Mugabe as its candidate for next year's presidential elections. The vote by delegates at the Zanu-PF conference in the capital, Harare, allows the 83-year-old president to seek a sixth term in office in March.... Mr Mugabe's selection was by open acclamation and all 10 of Zanu-PF's provincial bodies backed him. "I did not hear any dissenting voices," John Nkomo, the Zanu-PF chairman said, according to the French news agency. "It means this congress has fully and unreservedly declared Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe as the presidential candidate for next year's presidential elections." Killer quote (literally): "Every one of them matters to me. Can I let them down?

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Des Moines Register Debate: Random Thoughts

A plea: could Presidential candidates please cease using the term "bully pulpit" as though it meant anything other than "terrific" or "splendid". Also: could someone please rid us of both Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney?  The others, of course, are pretty awful but their dreadfulness is insignificant compared to the hideousness of Romnabee. Plus: Why hasn't Alan Keyes been permitted to take part in the other Presidential debates? He's a magnificent loon who a) fits right in with this motley crew and b) enlivens the debate no end with his special brand of madness. At least John McCain comes out against the absurd ethanol boondoggle so beloved of Iowans. Good for him: "I will open every market in the world to Iowa's agricultural products.

Alex Massie

Exceptions don’t prove the rule

Marty Peretz writes: Torture is a repugnant practice, and especially so if it becomes a habit.  It may have become that, although I don't know.  No one outside the alleged practitioners does.  But, believe me, I'm not trying to shrug the matter off.  Andrew Sullivan has persuaded me of its centrality to a humane society. So far so sort of good. Then, alas, he concludes: One last point.  The two prisoners the tapes of whose questioning were destroyed by the C.I.A. were certifiable monsters: Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda planner of the 9/11 atrocity, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the Aden bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.  It's a bit strange that such monstrous men should evoke so much concern.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Scotland, oh,Scotland

Well, that's that. So close to glory, yet so far. If ever anyone asks you to explain the quintessence of the Scottish footballing experience you need merely point them towards this afternoon's game at Hampden Park. Every essential element was duly present. Hope. Fear. Calamity. Melodrama. Passion. Joy. Purgatory. Glory. And finally, that familiar friend Disaster. As it always seems to be, watching Scotland play football was to hop on a switchback that would take you to the top of the highest mountain - with just a momentary pause to admire the splendour of the view and the freshness of the air - before plunging back into the deepest, darkest valleys of despair. And then repeat the process just for fun. Whatever else it might be, it's one hell of a ride.