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From the Department of Why Didn't I Think of That*: London to Sydney? Sure. London to Sydney by bus? Sign me up (cash and 12 weeks free time permitting, admittedly). What next? Tierra del Feugo to Alaska along the non-existent NAFTA superhighway? Cairo to the Cape? Well, why not? *Partly, you dolt, because you don't know how to drive. True.
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God knows how reliable this sort of sillyness really is (not very, probably) but: Students at many of the country's most prestigious colleges and universities are graduating with less knowledge of American history, government, and economics than they had as incoming freshmen, with Harvard University seniors scoring a "D+" average on a 60-question multiple-choice exam about civic literacy. According to a report released yesterday by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the average college senior at the 50 colleges and universities polled did not earn a passing grade. You can take the test yourself here. I confess I did so with much trepidation. It turns out that I don't know much about judicial review or how the bond market works.
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By which I mean to say that - surprise! - there's evidence that the apocalyptic scenario beloved on the nutty right that Europe will be living - if such an elevated term can be applied to our miserable future - under Sharia law sooner than you can whistle up the call to prayer is, well, a hysterical exaggeration. From the Financial Times: Jytte Klausen, a professor of politics at Brandeis University who studies European Muslims, says: “It’s being advocated by people who don’t consult the numbers. All these claims are really emotional claims.” Sometimes they are made by Muslim or far-right groups, who share an interest in exaggerating the numbers.
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Daniel Larison as already done yeoman work dismantling elements of David Gelernter's appalling piece in The Weekly Standard. But more needs to be done and, that being the case, let's have at it in this and a number of posts to follow. Gelertner's piece, cheerily headlined "Defeat at Any Price" makes the case, natch, that Democrats and liberals in the United States want to see America defeated in Iraq. Of course, they're devilishly clever and never actually come out and say this (Gelertner declines to buttress his case with any quotations from Messrs Clinton, Obama, Edwards et al that would support his claim that they believe "America would be better off if it lost"). Nonetheless, being in thrall to "Appeasement, pacifism and globalism" Democrats want to see America laid low.
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George W Bush invited some friendlies to the White House this afternoon for a friendly little chat. K-Lo was there to gush: Asked what traits people should look for in choosing a President, George Bush responded immediately: “Be comfortable with your family. Work hard to make sure there is love in the White House.” He went on to talk about how a president needs to have “rock solid” principles and warned that D.C. is a town where they will be constantly challenged. “If your principles ever get eroded, I don’t know how you will look in the mirror.”He also said it was important to “soak in the beauty and greatness of America.” And whoever gets to the White House, he says: “Enjoy it as best you possibly can.
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The anti-land mines brigade are claiming victory (of a sort). The NYT's The Lede is too charitable by far: No one gets into arms control for the glamor and the primetime awards shows, but the International Campaign to Ban Landmines just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to celebrate their 10th anniversary punctuated with a pragmatic rejoinder: “Success in progress.” Emphasis added of course. Equally obviously, that's exactly why many people "get into arms control". Ditto tree-hugging and fretting about global warming and lord knows how many other causes.
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President George W Bush has just finished his post-Petraeus address to the nation. Yet again he reported that progress was being made in Iraq - far from the headlines of course - and that this could be measured by the fact that, yes, schools are being rebuilt. Given the frequency with which this nugget of good news is displayed one might conclude that every school in Iraq must have been rebuilt and reopened at least three times. Other, more considered thoughts, later. PS: Megan is not too impressed that Iraq has passed a budget. Or rather, as she says, that's a low bar for progress...
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George W Bush's speech on Iraq and Petraeus and all the rest of it yesterday had a pretty simple message. Hold tight. Stay patient. Endure. Something extraordinary will turn up. Since the President's transformation into Mr Micawber seems complete, this passage from David Copperfield seems somewhat troublesomely apposite. If Mr Bush is Mr Micawber; then the American (and Iraqi) people are the other Micawbers: Mr Micawber...then addressed himself to me, and proffered me the satisfaction of "witnessing the re-establishment of mutual confidence between himself and Mrs Micawber". After which, he invited the company generally to the contemplation of that affecting spectacle.
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Gordon's just a regular bloke, don't you know. Not like poor old Phoney Tony. That, at least, would seem to be the message of Saatchi & Saatchi's first advert for Labour: But if we're talking about Flash Gordon, then, really, a more appropriate slogan would be Kala's threat: "We're going to empty your memory as we might empty your pockets." Please leave your own suggestions for better captions in the comments section... UPDATE: Commenter Gabriel suggests "No Gekko, Just Gordon" which is quite good but a little too Broon-friendly to be considered ideal. Still, he's leading the way and putting the rest of you lubbers to shame.
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Neil Harvey-Smith, gingerly returning to blogging after time in the Canadian wilderness, observes the latest example of Gordon Brown's cynicism. Today's message: he admires Margaret Thatcher very much. Yesterday's message: her "doctrinaire prejudice" failed Britain. That's not, incidentally, a view from 1983 but from a 1989 book he published titled, Where There Is Greed; Margaret Thatcher and the Betrayal of Britain's Future.
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No words required, mes amis. Peter Martin's commentary for Radio Clyde is almost as good as the goal itself.
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Matt Yglesias sees Fred Thompson jump into a tie with Rudy Giuliani, despite having next to nothing to offer the country beyond shop-soiled platitudes and observes: All-in-all I continue to find it surprising that the press seems more interested in the Democratic primary (and I've heard conservatives complain about this, so I'm not making a partisan complaint), which seems frozen in a locked pattern, than in the much more fluid and objectively interesting GOP race. But there's a simple reason for this: the press assumes that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will also be the next President.
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On, the other hand TNR's John Judis wins the prize for being the first (I think) to speculate upon the likelihood of us all actually being able to enjoy the delicious pleasure of a brokered convention: With former Senator Fred Thompson's entry into the presidential race, the Republicans now have at least three candidates who could have the money and votes to compete, if necessary, all the way to June 2008. And they might have to do so. Indeed, when the Republicans meet in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September 2008 to choose their nominee, they might be looking at a brokered convention. Of course, the party has had multiple strong candidates before--in 1980, for instance, and 1988 and even in 2000. But the old schedule of primaries and caucuses was designed to winnow down the field.
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Two questions: oh god, will it never end? And, how can winning be more fraught with terror than losing? I write, as you will have guessed, of Scottish football. Today's remarkable, nay logic-defying, triumph in Paris - our first on French soil in, oh, 57 years - was unbearable stuff. I can cope with despair; it's hope I can't stand. Here's the thing then. With three games left in our murderous Euro 2008 qualifying group, Scotland are - astonishingly - top of the table, ahead of France and Italy (last year's World Cup finalists) and Ukraine (who reached the last eight in Germany). This is not the way the world is supposed to work. Find me the man who predicted the Scots would defeat the French home and away and I'll show you the papers committing him to an asylum.
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Chris Orr wonders why Fred Thompson's work - albeit just a handful of hours - on behalf of the Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing is not receiving more attention. Fred Thompson, Terrorist Lawyer! Well, OK. Thompson says his opinion was sought on the venue question, leading Chris to say: Thompson's mention of "venue" issues, too, is a little misleading. We're not talking about whether someone is tried in Manhattan or Queens here. As far as I can tell, we're talking about whether two indicted terrorists would be extradited from Libya to face justice. (It took years, but in 1999 they were finally handed over for trial in the Netherlands.) I'm loathe to defend Thompson, a man whose candidacy has no compelling rationale justifying it, but Chris being unfair.
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Via Prospect's blog, here's Matin Amis: "…my principal objection to the numbers [”9/11″] is that they are numbers. The solecism, that is to say, is not grammatical but moral-aesthetic—an offence against decorum; and decorum means “seemliness”, which comes from soemr, “fitting”, and soema, “to honour”. 9/11, 7/7: who or what decided that particular acts of slaughter, particular whirlwinds of plasma and body parts, in which a random sample of the innocent is killed, maimed or otherwise crippled in body and mind, deserve a numerical shorthand? Whom does this “honour”? What makes this “fitting”? So far as I am aware, no one has offered the only imaginable rationale: that these numerals, after all, are Arabic.
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Steve Chapman hears Joe Biden ask a decent question: At each of his four stops today, there was a moment when he got the attention of his audience. It came when he noted, ruefully, that he's often mentioned as a possible secretary of state in a Democratic administration. "I have a rhetorical question for you," he said in Algona. "Are you prepared to vote for anybody for president who isn't capable of being secretary of state?" He went on: "If you're not capable of being secretary of state, are you capable of being president in 2008?" Now obviously the Secretary of State is, in these post-Kissinger times, somewhat akin to being the chief Presidential envoy.
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Era Klein flags up this decade-old James Fallowes piece as his "paragraph of the day". Fallowes is addressing the vexed, nay controversial subject of why some people - especially women! - throw "like a girl": If you are right-handed, pick up a ball with your left hand and throw it. Unless you are ambidextrous or have some other odd advantage, you will throw it "like a girl." The problem is not that your left shoulder is hinged strangely or that you don't know what a good throw looks like. It is that you have not spent time training your leg, hip, shoulder, and arm muscles on that side to work together as required for a throw.[...] What Goodman discovered is what most men have forgotten: that if they know how to throw now, it is because they spent time learning at some point long ago...
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Opera Chic has all you need to know about Luciano Pavarotti's death, including a collection of terrific YouTube clips. If only the Washington National Opera's forthcoming Boheme could feature a voice such as this... But, of course, the point is that it can't.
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There was plenty to enjoy at last night's GOP debate in New Hampshire. From Rudy Giuliani's incessant and somewhat vulgar determination to relate any question on any subject to his time running New York City to John McCain's mild recovery (though he should be worried that other candidates were being nice to him; clearly they consider him irrelevant) and the excellent spat on Iraq between Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee which will, I suspect, benefit both candidates. The second best moment of the debate, however, was when Fox's Chris Wallace accused Ron Paul of "taking marching orders from al-Qaeda" only for Paul to slap him down with a "NO! I'm suggesting we take our marching orders from our Constitution..." Whatever else one may think of Paul, this was terrific. Refreshing too.