Fixing the Afghan election

Not much sign of a silver lining in a chastening dispatch from that seasoned reporter, Ahmed Rashid

The rigging defied expectations. There were hundreds of foreign observers from the US and other embassies. Both UN officials and a European Union delegation were assigned months ago to make sure this would be a credible election. Afghans and other experts were warning the embassies about possible rigging...  Yet the entire Western community in Afghanistan was caught napping by the widespread fraud. In fact, as I recently wrote elsewhere, the fraud was assured months ago when Karzai began to align himself with regional warlords, drug traffickers, and top officials in the provinces who were terrified of losing their lucrative sinecures.

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Rush Limbaugh & the school bus

"Look, I think it's important to talk about black male violence... But good grief, Limbaugh is up to something wicked..." Is the talk radio host playing up an incident to make a racially inflammatory point about Obama? Rod Dreher - who has taken down his original account of the fracas - says yes. I recommend reading the whole post.

UPDATE: Jeffrey Goldberg asks if The Drudge Report  (of which more below) is any better. You'd have thought Obama's opponents would have been content to stick to exploiting the ACORN story, which does at least seem to be genuine.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  On second thoughts, I don't know why I'm surprised. After all, we're talking about people who don't miss a chance to run the Obama-as-Manchurian-Candidate angle:

The best friend of his maternal grandfather, who raised him, was an avowed communist...

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Notebook

Three months at Winchester  were followed by two weeks at Matlock in Derbyshire. Here for the first time the word intelligence came up, although the only instruction we received  was in lecturing "other ranks" on security. "It's a good thing to get off on the right foot and put them at their ease," the officer said. "You'll find it helps to address them as 'you fuckers'."

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The decline of Drudge?

Do journalists still pay attention to him? The NY Observer believes his moment has come and gone. Gawker, though, argues that he's still in a class of his own as an "engine of right-wing paranoia", and the Telegraph's tech expert Shane Richmond insists it's too early to write the obituaries:

For his audience, Drudge is a kind of search engine but one that has already answered their question. It’s a simple idea, executed brilliantly.

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Eminent Victorian

It's a long time since I was ten or eleven, so I can't say with any certainty which Victorians I learned about at my primary school. I'm pretty sure that Charles Dickens's must have been mentioned at some point. But Carlyle, Ruskin? No way.  As a matter of fact (I'm talking about the late 1960s) I don't think we "did" the Victorians at all. If I had to name one person from that era that children of that age should learn about, I'd say Brunel. Gladstone and the rest can come later.

I can see why my new neighbour, Rod Liddle (welcome aboard) might think Mary Seacole is a symbol of "politically correct stupidity", but I think she's a very astute choice, especially in multiracial London. True, I have no idea how teachers approach the subject - for all...

Continue reading...

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