World

Via Cato, comes this report from The Times: They turn out in their hundreds in Stetsons and boots as hits such as the Crazy Foot Mambo and the Cowboy Strut echo around their village halls. They are drawn by a love of American culture – although definitely not American politics – and a passion for line dancing… Now country and western has become so big in France that the country’s bureaucrats have decided to bring the craze under state control. The French administration has moved to create an official country dancing diploma as part of a drive to regulate the fad. Authorised instructors who have been on publicly funded training

In the Republican corner it is to be John Sidney McCain III, white, age 71. In the Democratic corner we have Barack Hussein Obama, black, age 46. No American election battle since the days of Franklin Roosevelt has attracted so much worldwide attention. A recent visitor to North Korea, a nation supposedly hermetically sealed from the rest of the world, tells me that the first question his ‘minder’ asked was: ‘Who will win the American elections?’ His concern is unsurprising: a President McCain would favour continuing existing multilateral pressure on North Korea to eliminate its nuclear weapons, and might even give some meaning to the phrase ‘or else’. President Obama

Ezra Klein asks if Jim Webb is “too good for the Vice-Presidency”. And perhaps he is. Or rather, he’d be more useful to Democrats if he remained in the Senate, uninhibited by the restrictions imposed by the Vice-Presidency. And perhaps that too is so. Nonetheless Ezra’s piece also demonstrates the extent to which Webb is by some way the most interesting but also, perhaps, riskiest choice Obama could make. Still, here’s another notion: Obama might consider naming some members of his cabinet this summer, creating a British-style shadow cabinet to act as spokesmen for his campaign during the general election. Clearly, all such nominees would remain subject to Congressional confirmation,

Are Paris Saint-Germain the worst football team in Europe? This obviously depends upon how one measures or defines “worst”. PSG, despite another appalling season, would (thankfully) still be expected to defeat, say, Shamrock Rovers. But in a pound-for-pound sense is there a more pathetic club in europe? I’s not just that they only narrowly avoided relegation this season, it’s that they continue to squander resources. Even when they were owned by Canal Plus, PSG under-performed. Indeed, since the club was formed in 1970 they’ve only won the French championship twice (in 1986 and 1994), despite being one of the richest clubs in France and the only major club in Paris.

How many people really think of Che Guevara as a romantic, if occasionally headstrong, revolutionary? Outside Latin America, I mean. Perhaps it’s a generational thing, but does anyone under the age of 35 really give even half a damn about Che Guevara? Certainly, the anti-Che forces continue to write as though he remained a clear, present, danger to all things good and holy. Here’s John J Miller at The Corner, for instance: I have no objection to a movie about the life of Che Guevara. At least in theory. Yet it’s probably impossible for Hollywood to make an honest film about this awful man — case in point being the

In one sense there’s little point in writing about Hillary Clinton anymore. She’s lost. Still, if there is any truth to the notion, much-favoured by Washington reporters, that you can gain a sense of character and, indeed, governing style from the way in which a candidate campaigns then, by gum, we should be glad that Hillary Clinton is not going to be the next President of the United States. Her caterwauling about the perceived injustice of not counting the Florida and Michigan primary results on account of their determination to break DNC rules, has conquered many peaks of absurdity lately. Norm draws my attention to this one: People go through

American breakfasts are pretty good, or at least as fine as can be expected from a meal that doesn’t include black pudding. But there’s no doubting that the United States’ greatest culinary marvel is proper BBQ. It’s the finest American food there is. Porcine perfection. And BBQ is going international, according to this lovely piece in the Washington Post: It’s difficult enough for any new team to compete in the Super Bowl of Swine, which sends smoke wafting over downtown Memphis for three days every year. There are rules (written and unwritten) and traditions aplenty in this 30-year-old contest, which drew 125,000 spectators to one of the cradles of American

The Los Angeles Times’ Don Frederick claims Barack Obama has “disrespected” Kentucky by declining to campaign in the Bluegrass State. Does this mean he disrespected Guam too? More interestingly – if no more usefully – Frederick asks what might have happened if Clinton had, as her then deputy campaign manager Mike Henry urged, simply skipped the Iowa caucuses entirely? Well, yes, there’s something to that. At the risk of stating the obvious, Iowa was by some clear distance the most important state in the race. That seems clear now. But that importance is qualified: Iowa would not have been as significant if John Edwards had won. True, Edwards would presumably

Looks as though I’m going to have to get Joseph O’Neill’s new novel Netherland. The NYT explains: The idea of publishing a novel in the United States about cricket gave him commercial qualms but not artistic ones, Mr. O’Neill said in an e-mail message. “You want a novel to tap as directly as possible into your most unspeakable preoccupations,” he added. “And in America, in particular, cricket is pretty unspeakable.” New York cricket is “bush cricket,” one of the characters in the book complains, played on wickets of cocoa mat instead of grass and on weedy, substandard pitches, where to score a run you need to bat the ball in

Say what you like about this United States Senate resolution, but it probably did less damage than most bills that make their way through Washington. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES December 6, 2007 Mr. KOHL (for himself, Mr. PRYOR, Mr. SCHUMER, Mr. JOHNSON, Mr. BROWN, and Mr. CHAMBLISS) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary March 11, 2008 RESOLUTION Designating March 11, 2008, as National Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day. Whereas the death of a family member, friend, or loved one is a devastating emotional event; Whereas the memorialization and celebration of the decedent’s life is the fabric of today’s funeral

The question itching le tout Washington is simple: why won’t Hillary Clinton do the decent thing and quit? Well, my friend Mike Crowley has a grand piece in the latest edition of the New Republic that may explain why. The Clintons have been here before and, against the city’s expectations, prevailed. Mike suggests that we should view Hillary’s campaign in the light of her husband’s impeachment. It’s a persuasive thesis and, frankly, one that leaves you kicking yourself for not thinking of it before. The parallels cannot be exact, but they’re sufficiently compelling to be useful. As Mike lays out the scene: The Clintons find themselves victimized and under siege.

From the New York Times today: In a sign of what could be an extremely unusual fall campaign, the two sides said Saturday that they would be open to holding joint forums or unmoderated debates across the country in front of voters through the summer. Mr. Obama, campaigning in Oregon, said that the proposal, floated by Mr. McCain’s advisers, was “a great idea.”…The rivals are openly discussing staging forums across the country to speak directly to voters, an idea that is by any measure unconventional for a general election campaign. Asked about the idea on Saturday, Mr. Obama told reporters in Oregon, “If I have the opportunity to debate substantive issues

At TAPPED Paul Waldman hails this Arizona Republic piece questioning MCain’s “maverick” credentials and then asks: One thing I’ve noticed lately is that there are a bunch of Chicago reporters (like Lynn Sweet and Jim Warren, for instance) who have become regulars on cable TV, presumably because they know a lot about Barack Obama. But the reporters who have known John McCain the longest and know him the best — the ones from Arizona — are nowhere to be seen. Why do you think that is? Clearly, we’re supposed to impute some pro-McCain or pro-conservative bias here. But it’s much more likely that the truth is that while the BHO

What would Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion have said if, on the day that he declared the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, he had known that six decades thence Israel would be encircled by its enemies, hopelessly outnumbered and fighting for its existence? He would surely have said: so what’s new? Next week, on 8 May, Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of that declaration. With every decade that it clocks up, people ask the same question: will Israel still be there for the next one? It is indeed astonishing that it has not only survived but is flourishing. Its situation as a permanently embattled nation is