World

It’s actually quite hard to know where to begin when it comes to criticising Pete Wehner’s stunningly bone-headed, paranoid critique of President Obama’s alleged disdain for the United States of America. This part was especially illuminating, however: What leaves me with a queasy feeling, though, is the growing sense that Obama is willing to denigrate America in order to boost his own personal popularity in other countries. As President, Obama has a responsibility to explain and interpret America to the rest of the world — in a way that is truthful and corresponds to reality for sure, but in a way that explains his country and its history and actions.

Let’s make one thing crystal clear. When I refer to jihad in the headline of this piece, I mean it in the non-violent sense of “holy struggle”, rather than the nastier “holy war” kind. This is an important distinction and I’m happy to make it straight away. You can’t be too careful these days. I waded into serious “dar al-harb” (land of conflict – the Islamic scholars among you will understand) by taking issue with the individuals who signed a letter to the Observer calling on Nick Cohen to find another column to write. Their leader, Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society, has always insisted that his intention was not to

Quote of the day comes form Steve King, a Republican Congressman from the Great State of Iowa: If we don’t save marriage, we can’t remain pro-life. “Saving” marriage obviously means objecting to gay-marriage. But what does this have to do with abortion? Can someone please explain to me what on earth King means? Seriously, I have no idea. I’m going to guess that the pro-gay marriage, pro-life segment of the population is pretty small but that it may be larger than folk imagine. Anyway, that’s a different question. I’d really be interested in an explanation of the so-called argument King is making here. [Via Chris Good]

By which I mean, now that Opening Day is finally here, is he good for the New York Yankees? The evidence suggests he might be. True, Megan McArdle – herself a Yankee in fine standing – warns one to be sceptical about the apparent ease with which a causal relationship may be deduced from a brace of strongly correlated variables but has she considered the startling fact that the last time the Yankees haven’t won a World Series title under a Republican president since the Eisenhower administration. In fact fully 19 of the Bronx Bombers’ 26 championships have been claimed while a Democratic president sat in power in Washington. George

I have stolen the headline to this post from a breakfast discussion held by “reputation management firm” Fishburn Hedges, where I was a guest speaker this week. Me and my fellow panelists were there to talk about the budget  (coming your way on April 22nd) and give some idea of how the media gears up to the great day. I suggested that part of the problem with newspaper Budget coverage is that political journalists know very little about economics. Robert Cole, a senior writer at the Times and the man who has run the paper’s Budget coverage for many, many years, explained the excitement of the day and his biggest fear

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has a very interesting interview with Benjamin Netanyahu which includes this passage: Netanyahu offered Iran’s behavior during its eight-year war with Iraq as proof of Tehran’s penchant for irrational behavior. Iran “wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash … It didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness. It wasn’t Britain after World War I, lapsing into pacifism because of the great tragedy of a loss of a generation. You see nothing of the kind.” He continued: “You see a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” I asked Netanyahu if he believed Iran would risk its own nuclear annihilation

At the Washington Independent Dave Weigel – Delaware’s finest* – has an entertaining piece on some of the differences between the British and American attitudes to journalism. The occasion for this rumination is the departure from DC of Tim Shipman**, formerly the Sunday Telegraph’s man in Washington, who is returning to Blighty to be Deputy Political Editor at the dear old Daily Mail. Weigel’s piece is suitably entertaining, but perhaps my favourite bit was this: That isn’t the view of Democrats who have been burned by the Telegraph’s stories. “They use anonymous sources to a degree that makes you wonder if they actually have them,” said Bob Shrum, the retired

Bartle Bull thinks he has! Already! His article in Prospect is a curious thing indeed. Part of it, perfectly reasonably, is deeply concerned by Obama’s economic agenda. When the numbers are mentioned in trillions, not billions it’s sensible to be sceptical of some of the more grandiose and sweeping promises the new administration is making. But some of the piece is also a mash-note to the Clintons, accusing Obama of “dismantling President Clinton’s economic legacy” as though nothing at all had happened in the last eight years. Then there’s this: Thus the big question in Democratic circles today: “What does Hillary do about this?” Her supporters still feel that the

Dan Drezner asks his “realist colleagues” if they can think of any reason why Iran should or would give up its nuclear ambitions. Stephen Walt offers some reasons why, unlikely as it might seem, Iran should consider doing so for its own advantage. I think Walt makes some good points but that they may not seem quite so persuasive when viewed from Tehran. In the end, too much of his argument is based upon the notion that the United States is Really Crazy, which risks leaving Walt making an argument that is the mirror image of the Mad Mullahs are Mad and Cannot Be Trusted Not to Do Mad Things