Rod has an excellent and rather moving wee tale about how Time magazine ended up with a photograph of Vladimir Putin not an icon to illustrate its decision to hail Putin as its Person of the Year. It’s a reminder that non-believers can find much to admire in believers. Or, to put it another way,
Today’s reading assignment: Kerry Howley’s* excellent Reason cover story on immigration, what the United States could learn from Singapore’s guest-worker programme and how liberals are as confused as nativists: The moral calculus, then, is to be weighed between the welfare of potential workers and the preservation of an idealized American narrative. Does it reflect better
Via Tyler Cowen, here’s today’s eBay ploy. The current winning bid is a startling very reasonable $190: You are bidding on a rare chance to traumatize a treasured friend or relative with baffling, mind-numbing, mystery correspondence from abroad.Here is the arrangement:I will be spending the Christmas holiday in Poland in a tiny village that has
Bonus Andy McCarthy! Since 9/11, when the problem of interoperability of first-responder communications systems became starkly apparent, NYC, NY state and the Department of Homeland Security have all spent goo-gobs of money addressing it, thus far with questionable success, mainly due to its technological complexity. Giuliani was mayor for eight years before 9/11, during which
American readers wondering how this cazy election caper seems to foreigners could do much worse than check out Toby Harnden’s blog. Toby is The Daily Telegraph’s US Editor (a fancy term for Chief American Correpondent) and his blog is consistently spiky and entertaining. Also never knowingly under-opinionated… It’s also fair to say that he is
Of course there are plenty of sound reasons for not wanting a prudish scold such as Hillary Clinton back in the White House. But National Journal’s Athena Jones gives us a new one: In a funny moment on the way out of the store, a woman asked Bill [Clinton] to sign a greenback. Bill obliged,
Hillary in Iowa on Sunday: ‘There’s so much we can do together if we work together as a world. Remember that movie Independence Day, where invaders were coming from outer space and the whole world was united against the invasion? Why can’t we be united on behalf of our planet? And that’s what I want
Nicolas Sarkozy: still doing well for himself: Charles Bremner explains: They don’t call him Speedy Sarko for nothing. It’s exactly two months since President Sarkozy very reluctantly confirmed that Cécilia, his wife, had left and divorced him. Today, he has presented France with a new girlfriend, Carla Bruni, who turns 39 this week. Sarko being
Hitch gets in touch with his inner Mencken today: However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate
Not content with permitting itself to be swamped by Muslim immigration (Quick: man the Viennese barricades!) it seems that poor old Europe is also committing cultural suicide by forgetting to worship god. In fairness, Rod, being smart, doesn’t quite share the apocalyptic vision of Europe’s future that has become oddly popular amongst American conservatives. Nor,
National Review’s Andy McCarthy on a foreign policy difference between John McCain and Rudy Giuliani: McCain is business as usual — even though there is no good reason why the quest for peace between Israel and the Palestinians should be a priority, much less that we should intensify our commitment to a settlement in the
Sure, I’m not persuaded by all of Ron Paul’s policy positions. But, sod it, any candidate who happily uses the word mountebank in a rallying call to the masses has my vote*. How very splendid. Today, incidentally, is the anniversary (alas) of the Boston Tea Party. More happily it’s the occasion for another Ron Paul
Daniel Larison points out an extraordinary passage from Bill Clinton’s appearance on The Charlie Rose Show on Friday. Bafflingly, Clinton seems to believe that the Northern Irish peace process qualifies his wife to be President: Clinton:…The only way to overcome our differences is not basically to try to erase the past, it’s to get used
This interesting snapshot of voters’ hopes and fears and immediate impressions of Barack Obama comes from The Washington Post’s campaign blog The Trail:The Post explains that the cloud: includes the top thirty-nine words mentioned, each of which was cited by 8 or more people. The size of each word represents the number of people who
My pal Mike Crowley has a fine post on Hillary’s determination to play the At Least I Was Never A Drug Dealer card herself: “I’ve been tested, I’ve been vetted,” she said. “There are no surprises. There’s not going to be anybody saying, ‘I didn’t think of that, my goodness, what’s that going to mean?'”
According to the Adam Smith Institute’s blog, this was recently voted the funniest joke in Belgium: Why do ducks have webbed feet? To stamp out fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? To stamp out burning ducks. Who says foreigners aren’t funny?
Comes from poor Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe’s governing party has endorsed Robert Mugabe as its candidate for next year’s presidential elections. The vote by delegates at the Zanu-PF conference in the capital, Harare, allows the 83-year-old president to seek a sixth term in office in March…. Mr Mugabe’s selection was by open acclamation and all 10 of
A plea: could Presidential candidates please cease using the term “bully pulpit” as though it meant anything other than “terrific” or “splendid”. Also: could someone please rid us of both Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney? The others, of course, are pretty awful but their dreadfulness is insignificant compared to the hideousness of Romnabee. Plus: Why
Marty Peretz writes: Torture is a repugnant practice, and especially so if it becomes a habit. It may have become that, although I don’t know. No one outside the alleged practitioners does. But, believe me, I’m not trying to shrug the matter off. Andrew Sullivan has persuaded me of its centrality to a humane society.
Well, that’s that. So close to glory, yet so far. If ever anyone asks you to explain the quintessence of the Scottish footballing experience you need merely point them towards this afternoon’s game at Hampden Park. Every essential element was duly present. Hope. Fear. Calamity. Melodrama. Passion. Joy. Purgatory. Glory. And finally, that familiar friend
