Marc Lynch thinks the UN speech proves the president is going to play hardball with Netanyahu and his supporters:
Put bluntly, in exchange for an evening's backslapping and triumphant TV play, they got a pissed-off President who is more committed than ever to doing exactly what he said he would do and who is more -- not less -- inclined to demonstrate his determination to play the role of even-handed broker...
Netanyahu won September 22, but Obama and his team aren't playing to win a day. They're playing to win the game... I've had plenty of criticisms of the Obama team's tactical choices along the way -- letting the settlements battle draw out, not acting to alleviate the Gaza disaster, unreasonably expecting Arab concessions in response to tepid Israeli statements, and do on. But they've made it clear that the time for games is coming to
Meanwhile, Lynch's Foreign Policy co-blogger David Rothkopf says the man in the White House needs more help from the outside:
While Barack Obama may have looked statesmanlike at the U.N. podium... he is still just an employee of the American people who works in a system of robust checks and balances. (Which is just a nice way of saying he has a Congressional albatross around his neck, a screwed-up political climate and a skittish constituency that is ill-informed on many vital international issues.)
...As a consequence, he will need the international community to help him at home as much as they seek America's help with their issues. In short: without some early international wins, the world may see the promise of this new era in foreign policy fade quickly away. This is a hard lesson for foreign leaders to grasp. I have been in meetings in which
I was almost going to work myself into a fit of indignation over Mi chael Henderson's throwaway reference to jazz in the Telegraph. ("Why is it not one of the high arts? Because nothing is at stake. 'Kind of Blue', brilliantly played and absolutely cold, proves the case.") Er, does it? As I'm feeling under the weather at the moment, I'll wait to see if Norm Geras tackles this one. The art-vs-entertainment question is certainly one that's worth airing: Benny Green and Ted Gioa, for instance, have both written excellent books with very similar titles: "The Reluctant Art" and "The Imperfect Art". Over at Sebastian Scotney's blog they're discussing the question "Is rock criticism dead?". Mercury Prize judge Simon Frith joins in the comments. Sebastian and Peter Hum also deserve our thanks for highlighting a clip - from Mike Judge's new film, "Extract" - which provides the last word on a certain kind of fusion fan.
His polemic about Islam and Europe gets a drubbing in The American Prospect:
Few of his audacious generalizations can survive serious scrutiny. European elites are not uniformly "self-loathing." (His own examples of their complacency and snobbery suffice to refute this claim.) Europe is not a "spiritual void." "Islam itself" is not a unified actor capable of formulating aims and carrying out strategies. Islamist criticisms of the market economy are, at best, half-truths. Non-Muslim immigrants in Europe will not rally behind the Islamist flag....And, above all, immigrant communities in Europe are not "beachheads" for a likely Islamic takeover. Caldwell's suggestions to the contrary are sophomoric fantasies, contributing little to the understanding and nothing to the resolution of the very real problems surrounding immigrant communities in Europe today
I have to admit that I'd never even heard of The School of Life until Sunday, when I went for a coffee with my eldest son, who's just starting university. I looked across the road, and there was the eye-catching slogan. The evening after I dropped my boy off in the big city he was mugged down in Elephant & Castle. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt. Not having read any of Alain de Botton’s books, I don't know what his advice would be.
I have to admit that I'd never even heard of 
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