Is this an omen? Those who were watching the live Sky News at 8.50am may have heard scaffolding coming crashing down above the entrance of 12 Downing Street. Needless to say, its causing much meriment in Conservative HQ. “As we have said repeatedly: Gordon Brown didn’t fix the roof while the sun was shining” says one wag.
On a recent visit to Henan Province in China I hurt my back and had the good fortune to come across the best doctor in the country. This is Doctor Wang Daifu. Being the top medical student in the most rigorously elitist and competitive system in the world is serious. Just as there are 20 million people studying the violin or engineering in China there are also tens of millions studying medicine — Eastern or Western, or both. Wang Daifu studied Western medicine in the People’s Liberation Army for seven years and Chinese traditional medicine for six. And he came out top of the class. Tall, angular, handsome and aged
Mike Kinsley famously defined a “gaffe” in Washington as an accidental, inadvertent moment of truth-telling. Well by that standard Geraldine Ferraro, Mondale’s 1984 Vice-Presidential pick who is supporting Hillary Clinton, has committed a gaffe. She seems to have caused a minor-rumpus with these comments: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position… And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” Dana Goldstein despairs, while Toby Harnden is merely incredulous: What? So being black, with the middle name
What is going on over school admissions? Last week, Jim Knight, the schools minister, urged disappointed parents to make greater use of the hopelessly bureaucratic appeals system. Today, he and his boss, Ed Balls, said they had evidence of schools – they won’t say how many – breaking the admissions code and asking parents inappropriate questions about their backgrounds – even, apparently, asking them for donations to the school. Nobody would defend such practices, but what has to be asked is why ministers are cracking down so hard and so publicly on what must surely be quite a small-scale problem. The answer is that the admissions code has now moved
As the psephologists continue to argue how many caucus members can dance on the head of a pin, political folklore has already settled around the idea that Hillary was saved by the famous “3am ad”. Like the destruction of Michael Dukakis by the Willie Horton ad in 1988, this aimed squarely at Obama’s most vulnerable flank: his inexperience. “It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep,” the announcer says. “But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing — something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.” To which the implicit answer is: not some glamour-boy from Illinois who’s been a
Did Rush Limbaugh win Texas for Clinton? Dave Weigel crunches the numbers and finds that he quite possibly did. Hilarious.
It’s an election, of course, so no card must be left un-played. Nonetheless, there’s something a little unseemly about trying to exploit war crimes and massacres for personal, political gain. In fact it’s grotesque. I assume this press release* was supposed to appeal to Polish-Americans in Ohio. Statement from Senator Hillary Clinton “We will soon mark the 68th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre of Polish prisoners during World War II. “This is a time to remember the victims of the Katyn massacre and also to reflect on the importance of remembrance itself. Only by preserving the memory of past inhumanities can we hope to avoid inhumanity in the future. Only
As Guido reports, Nick Clegg has accepted the first Lib Dem front-bencher resignation over Europe. No news of who it is, though. How many more will follow? UPDATE: According to CoffeeHouser, Oscar Miller, Andrew Neil says differently: “According to Andrew Neil the resignation story put about by Crick is “pants” i.e. not true…” Stay tuned.
More on trade. Jagdish Bhagwati says that Obama’s better – or, rather “a less disturbing prospect” – on trade than Clinton. He gives five reasons: First, Mrs Clinton, in an infamous interview with the Financial Times, responded to a question on support for the Doha round with the need for a pause, whereas Mr Obama has not done so. Second, whereas Mr Obama’s economist is Austan Goolsbee, a brilliant Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD at Chicago Business School and a valuable source of free-trade advice over almost a decade, Mrs Clinton’s campaign boasts of no professional economist of high repute. Instead, her trade advisers are reputed to be largely from
Mr Eugenides has the details about how the Scottish government’s advertising campaigns presume that we’re all criminals. Depressing stuff. Mind you, when I saw this poster I assumed it was a police recruitment campaign, not a warning to prostitutes’ customers.
The Canadians say the Clinton campaign has also told them that her abysmal campaign rhetoric should not be taken too literally. One hopes that is the case. This leads Noam to add, tongue in cheek (I hope): What is it with these Canadians? Are they running some sort of entrapment operation up there? Why do they keep trying to torpedo Democratic candidates? But why shouldn’t the Canadians respond to threats made against them? NAFTA isn’t all about the USA after all, Canada and Mexico have interests too. Or, to put it this way, imagine if a British would-be Prime Minister ran on a platform that called for opting out of
Larry Kudlow, who normally sees brilliance in every aspect of the Bush administration’s record, now sees only disaster. Here he is at The Corner: If Sen. John McCain wants to run as a candidate of change, and if he’s truly interested in distancing himself from President Bush, he should reverse the declining fortunes of the Bush wartime dollar. America’s prestige is on the line… The falling U.S. greenback has become a symbol of American decline… Folks are making fun of the dollar. Our enemies around the world are pointing to the unreliable dollar as evidence of American weakness. It’s as though the administration’s neglect of the dollar is “peso-izing” or
George W Bush’s malapropisms aren’t really terribly interesting anymore. (And, to be fair to the President, he’s a much better speaker now than he was eight years ago.) Still, this one seems especially unfortunate given that he was speaking to Lt-Gen Ray Odierno, the former commander of the multinational corps in Iraq: “I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who were trying to defeat us,”
A powerful Panorama was shown tonight about the Broken Society (as the BBC didn’t call it). It was about how if communities get together they can reclaim control of the streets. What the documentary didn’t look at was the roots of these problems: why do kids wander around like this? What has caused communities to disintegrate in this way? Answer – mass joblessness/ welfare dependency. I looked up the data (Excel) for two areas in the programme: East End Park in Leeds and Bulwell Hall in Nottingham. In both areas, a staggering 28% of adults are on welfare (but just 5% on jobseekers allowance). This was called a “Great Depression”
When Barack Obama first came on the scene, his supporters called him the “black Blair” (a phrase used to compliment him in America, and insult him in Britain). But is David Cameron becoming the white Obama? Look at his speech yesterday and it’s laden in similarities. It’s all about the mission. Obama is not just running against Hillary but at the entire US political system. He seeks to tap into a separate force: discontent with the system. And as this is perhaps the strongest force in British politics (we’re about the only country in the world where more abstained than voted for the ruling party) then it’s a vein which
It would be something of a stretch to compare Hillary Clinton to Napoleon Bonaparte and Barack Obama to the Duke of Wellington. Nonetheless, as this campaign has progressed and Hillary has struggled to find an effective counter to Obama’s organisation and tenacity (to, er, say nothing of the hopes of millions of democrats who hope he can finally topple the tyrant, thus liberating a continent), one of the Iron Duke’s famous lines from Waterloo seems to sum up the plodding uselessness of the Clinton campaign. To wit: They came on in the same old way and we sent them back in the same old way. I think this is the
Was Fleet Street right to cover up the fact that Prince Harry is in Afghanistan? Many in cyberspace would see this as an Old Media cover up. Journalists have known about this for ages, some have great photographs ready for when the lid comes off the story. But now Matt Drudge has yanked the lid, with the BBC (and tomorrow’s papers) rushing to follow. My take: Harry couldn’t serve in Iraq as news that he was out there would endanger his life, and those of his troops. The same would have been true for Afghanistan. I know several bloggers knew this, and suspect Guido did too – and censored himself. My
The News reported yesterday that US diplomats have told PPPP Co-Chair Asif Ali Zardari that they “Will not allow anyone to destroy” their “huge investment” of more than $10 billion in President Musharraf: “Sources said the fact of the matter was that Musharraf was the most unpopular man in Pakistan but he was still the most popular Pakistani in the White House and very popular in New Delhi. Top Indian officials have given many hints to international media before February 18 that they like Musharraf more than anyone else in Pakistan… …The Bush administration needs Musharraf to stay in power not only for the war against terror but also for
New Hillary attack! “If speeches could create jobs, we wouldn’t be facing a recession.” And as the old saw has it: “If ifs and ans were pots and pans, there’d be no call for tinkers.” Also: Does this mean Hillary Clinton thinks speeches should be able to create jobs? Or does she just regret the fact that hers can’t? Would a mute President be best? (Well, yes, probably.) (Granted, Obama is no better. He and Clinton both seem to be of the view that poor old King Canute’s sycophants were right – the monarch really can turn back the waves. The oft-maligned Canute knew better of course and organised his
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum publishes an entertaining provocation here: Sen. Barack Obama’s admirers sometimes compare him to John F. Kennedy, sometimes to Ronald Reagan, sometimes to Abraham Lincoln. (That is, when they are not comparing him to Jesus Christ.) But is not the most apposite analogy … William Jennings Bryan*? Like Obama, Bryan was a charismatic young political (just 36 at the time of his first presidential run!) with a thin political record. Yet on the strength of one legendary speech at a Democratic national convention, he was clutched to heart by the party’s left wing and made the repository of its grandest hopes on a whole range of