Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Friday

Alex Massie

Ron Paul’s Non-Existent Jewish-Anarchist Problem…

From our UK edition

I was going to write something about this post over at Jewcy's new politics blog (splendidly named The Cabal) but when I saw that the author describes himself as a "libertarian socialist*" it seemed rather pointless to continue. How much headway can you make with someone as confused as that? Suffice it to say that "Ron Paul's Jewish problem" amounts to some of his supporters having highly unpleasant views and his campaign's suspicion that there's no real need to return money given by racist supporters. In a saner world that would be quite sensible: it's their loss of cash after all and accepting money from someone is no sort of endorsement of their views on any given issue.

Alex Massie

Washington, there ain’t no town like it…

From our UK edition

Via, GFR, the latest gem from the perennially entertaining DC government: On May 21, 2004, Emerson Crawley ran up a $225 tab at one of the District's swankiest strip clubs. Then he stuck schoolchildren with his bill. He turned in a reimbursement request to the school system describing his visit to Camelot Show Bar as a "school planning meeting." Over two years, Crawley and his colleague William R. Jones billed more than $13,000 worth of expensive meals, drinks and entertainment to a student activity fund at Shaw Junior High School, audit records show. As someone who, once upon a time, was professionally required to spend some time at a Glasgow lap-dancing lounge, I have every sympathy for Mr Crawley. It's tough out there, you know...

Alex Massie

Bowling, Shane!

From our UK edition

Warning: Cricket blogging! Via Norm, I find that The Guardian asked Phil Simmons and Gary Kirsten to debate the question, Is Shane Warne better than Muttiah Muralitharan? A superficial analysis of the numbers might suggest that Murali has the edge. But then you need to remember that Murali's figures are padded by the fruits of no fewer than 25 tests against hapless Zimbabwe and Bangladesh (Warne has a total of three tests against such feeble competition). Secondly, Wanre's record away from home is just as good as his record at home; Murali is less effective away from the comforts of Sri Lankan wickets. Thirdly, their records when they confront the world's best players of spin in India are broadly similar. You can make an eminently defensible case for either man.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Spook chief’s craven surrender to voices of appeasement? Which means, of course, that he’s speaking sense.

From our UK edition

I'm not quite sure why Marty Peretz seems so invested in the idea that many New Republic readers believe, as he puts it, "that the notion of an Al Qaeda threat to the West is a hokey fantasy of the Bushies". Perhaps Mr Peretz's blog has a cadre of leftist readers who rarely crop up at TNR's other blogs or on the magazine's letters page. Anyway, Peretz then says that everyone should pay attention to what the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, had to say recently. If you don't believe me, Marty says, perhaps you'll believe him: The Post quotes Evans: "Terrorist attacks we have seen against the U.K. are  not simply random plots by disparate and fragmented groups....

Alex Massie

Calling Walt, Mearsheimer: Time to look at the Cuba Lobby

From our UK edition

Although I'm rather suspicious of all the Obama-as-Messiah slavering one sees these days, it is true that in some policy areas he offers a better approach than Hillary Clinton. One obvious example is Cuba. Hillary, for reasons best known to herself but doubtless involving trimming and calculation and a determination to leave no opening any opponents - even the mad ones - could try and exploit, seems to think that current US policy towards the island is dandy.

Alex Massie

Signs of the Times

From our UK edition

Deroy Murdock's remarkable National Review Online column saying Americans should be "proud" of waterboarding prisoners was bad enough. In response Ramesh Ponnuru suggested that the logic of Murdock's argument was that the Bush administration should be waterboarding more prisoners. Murdock now tells Ponnuru that: [T]he whole point of my piece is that I AM complaining that we do NOT waterboard enough. Yes, we need to waterboard more. At the moment, waterbaording appears to have been banned by both the CIA and the Pentagon. As I say pretty directly in my piece, Bush should reinstate waterboarding publicly and proudly, and I called him deluded for thinking he would gain anything by going along with the Left and ditching waterboarding. . . .

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Hillary Abroad | 7 November 2007

From our UK edition

Welcome, Andrew Sullivan readers. Lovely to have you here. Hope you have a nice stay. Feel free to wander around the blog... Hillary Clinton makes a great deal of her experience as First Lady, suggesting that the eight years she spent in the White house constitute an ideal training programme for the Presidency. Where Hillary was not actively involved in making decisions, she had the opportunity to see how the White House operates in good times and bad. Those lessons, she says, have been digested. Doubtless there is something to this, even if it's not he traditional apprenticeship. But how are we to know how Hillary the First Lady would translate to President Hillary? Returning to her book Living History is not quite as helpful as it might be.

Alex Massie

Oneupmanship Tutorial: War and Peace Division

From our UK edition

I've had occasion to write about Not Reading Books before. As a public service I've also mentioned the importance of Oneupmanship. Today's text, then, is the new and handsome translation of War and Peace. Clearly this is the kind of gift horse no self-respecting Lifeman looks in the mouth. Needless to say it is not necessary to read the translation. Indeed, it is not strictly necessary to even possess a copy of the the book, though it must be admitted that casually leaving the book out on a sideboard or coffee table at home will intimidate any visitor, leaving you One Up and your guest One Down before you've so much as made reference to Tolstoy's Greatest Work.

Alex Massie

Rudy Giuliani, the Terrorists’ Worst Enemy?

From our UK edition

Well, not always. From the New York Times, September 29th 1994, less than a month after the declaration of a (temporary as it proved) IRA ceasefire: Artfully casting off his old role as official outcast, Gerry Adams, the political spokesman for the Irish Republican Army, beamed from the steps of City Hall yesterday as New York politicians vied to be at his side and hail him as honored guest and newborn statesman... ...A relatively small lunch-hour crowd of a few hundred cheered him, but the domestic political value of Mr. Adams's official turnabout was demonstrated by the throng of local politicians who crowded about Mr. Adams. They pressed him to accept three different government proclamations, the Crystal Apple award extended by Mayor Rudolph W.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Ron Paul’s Moment Arrives!

From our UK edition

Ron Paul has just raised $4m today. I'll repeat that: Ron Paul has raised four million dollars today. That's four times what Mike Huckabee - the latest media darling - raised in the whole of the last quarter. Paul has now raked in more than $7m from bright-eyed patriots this quarter and now has the money to both make a run for New Hampshire and hang around for some time after that. Sure, he's still not going to win the nomination, but this is going to be one hell of a ride. No-one's going to be able to kick Paul out of the debates now. And admit it, anything that throws a spanner into the works, upsetting all the careful plans laid out by the front-runners has got to be a good thing. Every underdog deserves his day. Some of Paul's policies seem odd to me.

Alex Massie

Ron Paul: This Land Is Your Land

From our UK edition

OK, one other fun Ron Paul observation. You think he takes property rights seriously? Like all the other candidates Paul has an online store where supporters can purchase t-shirts, hats, buttons, yard signs and so on. As best I can tell, however, Ron Paul is the only candidate who warns his fans that:  Note: Campaign materials should never be placed on private property without the permission of the property owner and, because certain state and local laws limit the placement of campaign materials on public property,  please research local restrictions before placing campaign materials on public property or rights-of-way.

Alex Massie

Imagine how confused they must be in Liverpool?

From our UK edition

A sign of the times. Hell in a hand basket and all that. The Manchester Evening News reports: A LOTTERY scratchcard has been withdrawn from sale by Camelot - because players couldn't understand it. The Cool Cash game - launched on Monday - was taken out of shops yesterday after some players failed to grasp whether or not they had won. To qualify for a prize, users had to scratch away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the figure displayed on each card. As the game had a winter theme, the temperature was usually below freezing. But the concept of comparing negative numbers proved too difficult for some Camelot received dozens of complaints on the first day from players who could not understand how, for example, -5 is higher than -6.

Friday

Alex Massie

Back to school: “Choice is for me, not for thee” edition…

From our UK edition

To return to schools. Did you know that it's a bad thing for a school to be popular? Nor did I. But according to Scott Lemieux a voucher programme is pointless because it can't save every child overnight and, anyway, there aren't enough places at private schools in the first place. This rather conveniently ignores the fact that real school choice is not just a question of competition between private and state-sponsored schools but within the state sector itself. Anyway, Mr Lemieux writes that: A market in education wouldn't function like other markets. Whereas more customers (within reason) for a department store mean more profits, more students for a school makes it harder to educate everyone, and places substantial demands on physical spaces that can't be easily expanded.

Alex Massie

What’s in a name?

From our UK edition

Way back in the day when I first arrived in Ireland to go to college I remember thinking how odd - and how quaint - it was that so many seats in the Dail seemed to be inheritable assets to be passed on through the generations. It was as though the 19th century had been extended by another 90 years. But of course Ireland is scarcely alone in that respect. Look at the United States. As Henrik Hertzberg points out: Of the two hundred and forty-four women who have served in the House and the Senate, forty-six succeeded their husbands and twelve their fathers. That's a striking proportion ain't it? So how would you classify Hillary Clinton? Whatever her own (formidable?

Alex Massie

What’s all the fuss about?

From our UK edition

Calm down people. Reasons' Brian Doherty has it right: Bush comes out with a blood-curdling threat to Congress: if they don't confirm Michael Mukasey for attorney general, why then the U.S. will just have to go to bed without any attorney general at all for the remainder of his term. Can justice survive? Will chaos reign? Why don't we find out? Elsewhere, Belgium has had no government for 144 days with, as best one can tell, precious few adverse consequences. At the very least no new bad laws are being passed which puts the Belgians one up and leaves the rest of us, naturally, one down.

Alex Massie

“Get Money”

From our UK edition

You don't need to like - or know anything about - rap music or cartoons to still think this is pretty neat*: *Though not entirely safe for work since it would be plastered with warning stickers in the stores. But, sod it, it's Friday...

Alex Massie

“The Politics of Parsing”

From our UK edition

Here's an internet ad from John Edwards campaign. It's not pretty for Hillary. (And you gotta love that sly reference to it all depending upon what the meaning of "is" is) I still think that she actually performed better than Obama at the Drexel debate this week, but the media has decided that she came off worst.Well, whatever. Edwards is doing his best to do Obama's work for him. This ad has the considerable advantage of being, well, true: Hillary will trim her sails to get the best from the prevailing wind, while being prepared at all times to tack if the breeze shifts. And yet, let's say this for Hillary: she doesn't waste much time on vanity, especially not of the moral sort. Though tediously preachy she isn't quite as holier-than-thou as Edwards or Obama.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Trick or Treat or Voucher?

From our UK edition

Megan McArdle has been on a rare old tear recently, pushing the argument for school choice, here and here and here and here and here. It will not surprise some readers that I rather agree with her. Clearly, however, this just proves my foolishnesss. Did you know that it's impossible to make a good faith argument in favour of school choice or any programme that gives poor families greater input into where their children are educated? Me neither. Time for me to be telt, obviously. Exhibit A) Matt Yglesias: ...the United States already "allows" poor parents to withdraw their children from inner city school systems in much the same way that it allows rich and middle class parents to withdraw their children from inner city school systems.