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Ever wondered what happened to Rick Santorum after he lost his Senate race in Pennsylvania last year? Fret not, Michael Brendan Dougherty has done the yeoman work of listening to the appalling codswallop Mr Man on Dog is peddling these days. The whole thing is worth reading, but really Mr Santorum’s loony-tunes sing for themselves:
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Three cheers for Peter Suderman who is properly exasperated by this quotation from a WaPo piece: “It’s just like the Wild West,” said Frank O’Donnell of the group Clean Air Watch. “There are no controls, no standards.” Yeah, ‘cos, you know, chaps like Pat Garrett and Wyatt Earp and many, many others didn’t ever live…
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Tony Blair has engaged the same lawyer – Robert Barnett – that negotiated Bill and Hillary Clinton’s respective books deals. Blair is reported to be wanting as much as £8m for them (please lord, let his book be better than either Bill or Hillary’s). My mate James Forsyth asks readers to submit working titles for
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Whew! In a bold statement of intent, the Tories said today they “will consider” cutting taxes. Wear them medals with pride, boys. You’ve earned them. Predictably Labour are calling proposals – mere proposals, not policy mark you – to trim a mere £14bn from government spending a “lurch to the right” that would leave Britain
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Few journalists merit memorials; Bill Deedes, who died today aged 94, is an exception to that general rule. Most famously, he was the inspiration for Evelyn Waugh’s William Boot in Scoop*, but Lord Deedes was more than that. A Telegraph institution, editor of the paper, former cabinet minister, roving reporter, winner of the Military Cross,
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PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, STRENGTH THROUGH JOY, JOY THROUGH WAR Apparently policing the world really is like cleaning up Gotham: “In this decade, for the first time in human history, half of the world’s population will live in cities. I know from personal experience that when security is reliably established in a troubled part of a
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This Tim Luckhurst piece for (who else?) The Guardian may be the dumbest thing even this professional contrarian has ever written. Apparently Elvis made “dull music for duller people” and “affection for Elvis is a workable predictor of anti-intellectual attitude”. Mr Luckhurst concludes that: The only credible claim that can be made on Elvis Presley’s
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The Assault on Reason continues: A-Level results are out today in the UK and, amazingly, our kids is learning even betterer – more than one in four papers is now given an “A”, ensuring, natch, that everyone can have a prize. 96.9% of papers received a passing grade. The always excellent Burning Our Money has
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From the AP: The son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is preparing for deployment to Iraq next year. Capt. Beau Biden, a Judge Advocate General in the Delaware National Guard and the state’s attorney general, is part of the 261st Signal Brigade that has been told to prepare for duty in Iraq in 2008.
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UPDATE: Welcome, Ross’s readers. Feel free to have a poke around. Should you be so interested, other stuff I’ve written about Scottish politics and the like can easily be found by clicking on “Scotland” in the categories column on the right. Meanwhile, in Scotland… It’s been a startlingly successful first 100 days in office for
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Every political party has its share of clowns; still, it will be worth keeping an eye out for Idaho Republican Bill Sali. Here’s what the Congressman had to say recently, objecting to, well, non Judeo-Christian faiths being heard in Washington: “We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a
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By which I mean only this: is Barack Obama more of a narcissist than the average egotist running for the Presidency? Ryan Lizza’s interesting GQ piece on Obama prompted Daniel Larison to suspect that “In other words, underneath the megalomaniac is a con-man, and underneath the con-man is the guy with the delusions of grandeur.
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So, as expected Jack McConnell has resigned as leader of the Scottish Labour Party. A friend emails me the best, most accurate (albeit unintentionally so) reaction to this news: “Let’s remember where he took this party from to where it is now and I think that’s a great contribution not just for the Labour party
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If you’re a British resident or citizen (subject, surely?) might I suggest you add your name to the petition calling upon Her Majesty’s Government to provide refuge in the United Kingdom for those Iraqi translators and other Iraqi civilians who have risked their lives working for the British armed forces in southern Iraq and who,
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I’m quite prepared to believe there has been some military progress in Iraq and that it might be possible for the US to move some troops from some areas to others where they could be more profitably engaged. But I’d be much more comfortable taking General David Petraeus’s report at face value if the Los
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On the other hand, via K-Lo at the Corner, Giuliani did have some redeeming features: America is an immigrant nation with a long and proud tradition of inclusion and diversity. This tradition has helped our country to grow into the world’s leading economic power. Forward-looking and enlightened Americans joined together to stop the “Know-Nothings” of
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John Daly, Man of the People, Hero: [Tiger] Woods, who won the USPGA on Sunday, said his opponents could have combated Tulsa’s heat better with a fitness regime like his. Daly, who weighs 100kgs and has had well-documented alcohol problems, briefly led at Southern Hills before fading to tie for 32nd place. But he said:
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Readers with elephantine memories may recall a discussion on the merits of not-reading and on Oneupmanship. With regard to that latter cause, I present The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, reviewing the Library of America’s new and handsome edition of four Philip K Dick novels: While he served a fairly long apprenticeship—a series of almost unreadable
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Ah, August. Season of twits and sillyness. How else would the papers ever be filled? Even so, I confess to being mildly startled to discover that a story headlined “‘Chav Chasing’ public schoolboys criticised” concerned my own dear old alma mater. But yes, as this video demonstrates, it seems some public spirited members of the
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Sigh. I know we don’t expect much from Polly Toynbee. But perhaps she should read some Irving Kristol before she starts referring to John Redwood as a neocon throwback to the Thatcher era. If she added some other books to her reading list she might remember that the Thatcherites were, to some extent at least,