World

Via Yglesias, here’s a charming leaflet from the Republican Jewish Committee that helps demonstrate just why the GOP deserves – even needs – to lose on Tuesday. Nice touch too, that the photograph used shows Barack Obama speaking in Germany. Obviously Obama is, rather oddly, Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain. Equally obviously, it scarcely needs saying that Neville Chamberlain was not in fact to blame for the Holocaust.

Good grief. Needless to say, one of the more depressing elements to this story is the fact that it won’t prove terribly controversial. That’s to say, there won’t be a fuss or a rumpus and you won’t – alas – see any outrage from politicians in any party. Pub-goers in Aberdeen are facing a drugs test before entering bars as part of a crackdown by Grampian Police. Officers in the force will be the first in Scotland to use an Itemiser – a device which can detect traces of drugs from hand swabs in a matter of seconds. The test is voluntary, but customers will be refused entry if they

Yup, it’s another game of answer-some-questions-and-discover-how-few-people-agree-with-you. This quiz is better than some, however. Apparently, like John Schwenkler (from whom I lift the format of this post) I am a “hardcore libertarian” but also a “social progressive” who “probably” considers myself a “citizen of Earth first rather than a citizen of my country”. Additionally, I’m a “capitalist purist” who is a “moderate” on defence issues. Anyway, take it yourself and let me know how you get on… After the jump: my answers…

Apart from a couple of pre-prepared items, there’s not likely to be too much blogging in these parts for the next couple of days. The reason? I’m off to Trinity College, Dublin to speak at the College Historical Society’s* US presidential debate on Wednesday. We shall be arguing the motion “This House Would Vote for Obama”. They were having some trouble finding folk who would argue for McCain so I may be on the opposition side – in which case I shall make the case for Bob Barr, not McCain. Actually, whichever side of the motion I’m on, I shall be making a case against McCain. Just possibly against Obama

Kudos to Frank Foer for alerting one to this priceless passage from David Gelernter’s most recent article in the Weekly Standard: Granting the importance of the topic, the difference in moral stature between presidential candidates has rarely been as enormous as it is today–not (or not only) because Obama’s is so small but because McCain’s is so large. There is no single English word for McCain the hero, the moral entity. But in Hebrew he would be called a tsaddik–a man of such nobility and moral substance that he approaches holiness. If this assertion sounds crazy, that only shows how little we have thought about the issue. OK, we’ll have

Via Clive Davis, I see that Niall Feguson has abandoned John McCain. In a Guardian interview he says: He denies suggestions that Colossus, specifically, was written with half an eye on influencing the White House – but he became, for a time, one of John McCain’s foreign policy advisers. “I must say that since he won the nomination, which I was very happy about, I’ve played virtually no role. In fact, I’ve played no role. Because, uh” – he is suddenly, uncharacteristically halting – “how to describe it? – I felt much less … enthused, I think is probably the word, now that it’s between him and Obama. And I

This won’t surprise everyone but it turns out that Rush Limbaugh is an idiot. To wit: Going after moderates, independents, and all these yokels is not the blueprint.  The blueprint’s there, 1994, taking back the House, the blueprint’s there.  Why are these people ignoring it? Of course, as Daniel Larison points out, the GOP won in 1994 in large part because it was able to appeal to many more independent voters than it had in 1992. (Clinton’s less than stellar first two years in office obviously also helped). As I have suggested, once a party’s brand has become contaminated – as was the case with the Tories in the mid-1990s