Daniel Finkelstein has a must-read column on Seymour Martin Lipset, who died last week. Unlike most people who use the phrase 'neocon', Daniel understands what it means. But his most interesting point is at the end:

One more episode in the intellectual journey of Seymour Martin Lipset is worth recording. Very near the end of his life, before a debilitating stroke rendered him unable to speak, the great political scientist turned his attention to a new development — the third way social democracy of Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder.

America, he argued, was still different, but it had become less exceptional. Europe — now more meritocratic, more rights-orientated, more libertarian — was becoming like America, and it too no longer provided good soil for the traditional Left.

It’s a change I welcome but, reading Lipset, I wonder. Perhaps modern anti-Americans do not really dislike how different they are. They fear how similar we are becoming.

I think those last two sentences merit a column on their own.

I first came across Seymour Martin Lipset when I was at the Fabian Society, and I wrote a series of articles for the Fabian Review on his work (which I am trying to dig out from the pit which is my archive), and the neocons. Reading them, I realised that the neocons described almost my entire political outlook. It was a revelation, and I've called myself a neocon since the early 1990s, long before the foreign policy element came to wider notice (albeit in almost every instance, completely misunderstood).

Now, where are those articles...

CNN reports a compelling reason for Americans to vote Republican:

Arab governments are looking for change in U.S. policy in the Middle East after the midterm elections.

One thing they hope for is that a politically weakened President Bush would talk with Iran and Syria. They also hope he would show greater interest in the Palestinians and find a way out of the crisis in Iraq.

It's an appealing prospect: vote Democrat for an impotent President who'll appease Iran and Syria and cut and run in Iraq.

The newspapers and TV, as well as the political classes here and in the US (and especially in Brussels, where I write this and where it is reported with glee) are full of stories about the forthcoming Republican meltdown. Certainly, the evidence seems to point that way and sometimes - as in Britain in 1997 - the polls and pundits can be bang on in reporting a wave of antipathy to a governing party.

But I think a word of caution is in order. Last week, I spoke to two of the most politically savvy analysts in DC, and both - one a hard core Republican activist, the other a mainstream Democrat columnist - told me the same thing: the polls don't reveal the real story, which is that the races which matter are too close to call, that the Republicans are so much shrewder in their tactics and spending than the Democrats, that the Democratic 'one issue campaign' (Iraq) is irrelevant to most Americans, and that the received wisdom is wrong.

Both gave me the same prediction: that the Republicans would hold both the House and the Senate, and that the Democrats might take as few as 10 seats in the House.

That said, they both said the Foley affair had been a huge problem for Republicans. It wasn't so much that it was reducing support; rather, it came at a time when the Republicans were on a roll and regaining previously lost support, and the scandal put the brakes on that.

It may be that both of them are dead wrong, and the Democrats do indeed run away with the elections. But I think it sensible to remember these observations.

UPDATE: And the Telegraph has a similar report here.

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You know a party is in big trouble when a headline like this is run of the mill:

Hastert, Reynolds Drop Out Of Campaign Event For GOP Rep. Accused Of Choking Mistress

UPDATE: The headline's now changed to something more anaemic.

This series of articles shows a big difference between US and UK politics at the moment.

In the US, Bush’s internal GOP opponents would rarher their party lost the next elections than that its leader emerged victorious. Here, on the other hand, it’s the Blairites themselves who would rather their party lost the next election than that its new leader emerge victorious.

(2)

Anyone else who loves US politics as much as I do will love this ad from 1960, in which Jackie Kennedy sells the merits of her husband to Hispanic voters.

The 2008 campaign starts here:

Sen. John McCain, often mentioned as a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2008, has reactivated his political action committee, known as Straight Talk America.

I broke US electoral law in 2000. Candidates are not allowed to take foreign donations, but I snuck in a donation to the McCain campaign using a friend's US address. I'll do it again, most likely, in 2008.

Kristin Gore, you are my heroine. Ms Gore is the daughter of Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, and she is the author of a new American bestseller, a piece of chicklit which has just been published here, called Sammy’s Hill.

If you or I were dreaming up the protagonist for such a book, I doubt if we would decide to make her a health policy analyst, and then to make the first scene of the book centre on a Senate hearing into the importing of pharmaceuticals from Canada to the US. But that is what Ms Gore has done. And I love her for it.

Wearing my think-tank hat, I specialise in healthcare, especially the different arrangements that EU member states make for the purchase of pharmaceuticals, and the consequences of drug importation for patients.

Last month, I went to Washington to testify before the Senate on those issues, which are raging at the moment in the US. I was, I confess, rather daunted. Would I face a grilling along the lines that the House Un-American Activities Committee meted out to suspected communists in the 1950s?Daunting as it nonetheless was, I was quite wrong to be so awed. When it comes to sustained questioning, the Senate hearing did not come close to Commons select committees.

I long ago understood that, far more than in the UK, American politics can best be understood by the axiom of Tip O’Neill, the former Speaker of the House, that “all politics is local”. Pharmaceutical importing is an issue of national importance and has profound consequences not just for patients but for the US economy itself. I assumed that the chairman of the hearing, Mike Enzi, a Republican senator from Wyoming, would use his introduction to address the subject. But I witnessed within one minute of taking the stand just how local politics is.

Mr Enzi’s initial concern, as with his fellow senators, is getting press coverage in his home state. So he spent most of his time reminiscing nostalgically about his time as a shoe shop owner and eulogising the Wyoming landscape. The other senators adopted a similar style in their first round of questions. The issue might be national, but the style is decidedly local.

British politicians are, in their own way, no less shameless about getting local coverage. Prime Minister’s Questions is full of MPs asking about their local hospital or school. It goes with the territory. But having also given evidence to a select committee, it is noticeable that, whilst committee members might not necessarily understand an issue, they pursue it. No less than 17 senators due to be at the session that I attended, however, simply didn’t turn up. I did not take it personally — not least because Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld were testifying in the adjacent rooms. The future of freedom across the world might, I realise, be slightly more of a draw than a policy wonk from Brussels talking about the price mechanism.

Each senator is given five minutes in which to ask a question and get an answer. I was warned that senators — as is politicians’ wont everywhere — like to speak for most of their allotted time, leaving only a small gap for an answer. The warning was prescient. “Don’t worry,” I was told. We might not have had time to cover some of the most important ground, “but you can add that in to the written record ”.

There is an even starker difference with Parliament. The majority party in the Senate gets to select almost all the witnesses. So only one of the four witnesses testifying at my session did not agree with my argument, and the questions were overwhelmingly favourable to my view.

Select committee hearings may sometimes be one-sided, but they usually even out the balance of the witnesses across hearings. In the Senate, however, it’s winner takes all.

I had always been slightly dismissive of select committees, and had viewed Senate hearings as far more powerful and purposeful. After my own experience, I have had to reverse my view. The Senate may be more powerful and its members more important than backbench MPs, but select committees display more sustained analysis and seriousness of purpose.

Right from the start, the contrast with the Commons, and British reluctance to be positive about our institutions, was obvious. Telling someone here that you have given evidence to a Commons select committee inspires no more of a reaction than telling them that you prefer Rice Krispies to muesli: a complete lack of interest. But I saw a very different response in Washington when I was asked why I was in town: gratitude “for coming all this way”, and an expression of honour that they had met someone engaged in such an elevated act of citizenship.

I knew before I left London that it would be sensible to play on that pride. If I turned up at a select committee wearing Union Jack cufflinks, I would no doubt be regarded as a BNP supporter. Worse, if I described myself in London as a supporter of Tony Blair, I would provoke derision.

I guessed, however, that if I wore my favourite Stars and Stripes cufflinks at the Senate hearing, I would be greeted favourably. I was right. On the record, Senator Johnny Isakson (from Georgia) congratulated me on my wise choice of cuffs. And for praising the Prime Minister, I was told by the chairman that “there are quite a few of us here who are also proud to call ourselves Blairites”.

Truly, the US is a foreign country.

There's a brilliant fisking today by The Daily Ablution of a truly awful column by Johann Hari on US evangelicals.

Coming soon to a Labour election campaign near you: disaster. Soon, that is, but not — for the Conservatives — soon enough.

On Wednesday, a man called Bob Shrum announced his retirement. Unless you have an obsessive interest in the minutiae of American politics, it is unlikely that you will have heard of Mr Shrum. He is one of the most renowned speechwriters and political consultants in the business, having worked on eight presidential campaigns. That alone is a record.

His reputation is legendary — so much so that, at the start of each US presidential campaign, the Democrat candidates are said to take part in an informal “Shrum primary”, competing to become his client. The latest winner of that race was John Kerry, who beat John Edwards and Dick Gephardt for his services and brought in Mr Shrum as his closest adviser for last year’s election. Indeed, the only two recent campaigns in which his services were not used were those of 1992 and 1996.

Mr Shrum’s advice comes at a price: he is said to have earned around $5 million for his role on Senator Kerry’s campaign. But the more pertinent cost is not financial. It is that hiring Mr Shrum for a presidential race means that you guarantee — stone cold, nailed on, utterly certain — that you lose.

The two campaigns in which Mr Shrum and his advice were spurned were won by Bill Clinton, who had no time for him. His eight campaigns, beginning with Edmund Muskie and George McGovern and ending with Al Gore and John Kerry, produced a 100 per cent record of failure. Eight from eight, as they put it in America. As the polls refused to budge in Mr Kerry’s favour last year, one of his aides suggested that his staff wear T-shirts with the slogan “Reverse the Curse” over a picture of Mr Shrum.

He made at least one critical misjudgment last year. He told Mr Kerry to go easy on George Bush: all out attack on a wartime President would be a mistake. The Kerry campaign was thus lacklustre from the very start. Oppose the President! But, er, why? The Democratic candidate and his campaign began to spark into life only after Mr Clinton rang, from his hospital room before heart surgery, to criticise Mr Shrum’s advice and urge Mr Kerry to take the gloves off.

To be fair to Mr Shrum, although he holds an unenviable presidential campaign record (it would have ended at the third attempt had he not walked out of the 1976 Carter campaign after ten days), he has had unparalleled success in Senate contests. He was an adviser on 26 winning campaigns and helped to elect about a third of the current Democrat senators.

That is all very well. But unless you are as fascinated as I am by American politics, you might wonder why any of this matters — and especially why it spells disaster for Labour. It matters because of one man: Gordon Brown. Mr Shrum, like many Democrats, has a number of friends on this side of the Atlantic. One of the best is the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

From a technical campaign perspective, Tony Blair’s instincts are unequalled (except perhaps by Harold Wilson). Since the same holds in the US for Mr Clinton, it is little surprise that Mr Blair has strong connections both with the former President and with some of his political strategists. Just as Mr Blair has turned to them for advice, so Gordon Brown, if he does eventually succeed him, will turn to his own friends, and thus almost certainly to Mr Shrum.

The parallels are glaring. Bob Shrum first made his name in 1980 when he wrote Edward Kennedy’s farewell speech at the Democratic National Convention: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.” Those words live on in the hearts of many Democrats, who still look to Senator Kennedy as the conscience of their party. When Mr Clinton was reducing welfare rolls, Mr Kennedy was acting as the leader of the internal opposition. Yet his campaign was almost a caricature of the unelectable liberal Democratic Party, whose themes and policies spoke only to true believers. Instead of building arguments and policies to reach out, Mr Kennedy’s politics massaged only his own supporters’ political erogenous zones.

Just as Democrats still look to Mr Kennedy as their conscience, so Mr Brown is viewed by Labour Party members as the prince over the water, who one day will take over the crown and govern as the taxing, spending, regulating prime minister that nature always intended; Mr Blair is just a horrible aberration. Soon it will be Gordon.

There is only one problem: eight from eight. That record is not a fluke. It is because, different as our two electorates may be, both evince the same broad dislike of ideological liberals and broad support for pragmatic centre politicians.

Attach the leadership of Mr Blair and the label “new” to Labour, and victory is guaranteed: 1997, 2001 and, soon, 2005. Ditch them, and return to normal: a Labour Party which struggles to win. Welcome to the Shrum curse. How about one from one in 2009, Gordon?

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I know, I know. I should let it go. We won. But the Bush is a moron theme remains live and recurring.

So I was especially interested in this story from the Times of India which was linked to by one of my commenters:

President Bush is not a bozo; in fact, he may be a near-brainiac.

...Based on various academic and military school records including his SAT score (1206), conservative columnist Steve Sailer has calculated that Bush's IQ is between 125 and 130.

That would put him in the "very superior intelligence" category and in the 95th percentile, which means only one out of 20 people would score higher.

In comparison, similar (but not same) records and tests suggest John Kerry's IQ is only around 120, says Sailer...

Sailer looked at school records and tests both men took when there were enrolling into the US military at age 22 and extrapolated the results to arrive his conclusion. "They provide no evidence that Kerry is smarter. If anything, Bush is smarter than Kerry," he concluded.

I happen to think the very notion of IQ is fraudulent nonsense, so I wouldn't usually dream of using such figures. But then sometimes it's useful to fight and destroy crap on its own terms.

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Oh I see. That explains it:

David Aaronovitch claims: 'George W Bush and his voters are not dumb. Those who think so are the really dumb ones.' (Comment, last week.) But analysis in the Economist reveals that the average IQ of those states which voted for Bush was 91 compared to 100 for Kerry states. Sam Tomlinson London SW4

(12)

Phew.

(3)

John Hood exposes some of the myths of the Presidential election:

[T]he notion that Bush won primarily because religious voters turned out for him does not seem to be backed up by any real evidence. Few reporters or commentators appear to have gone back to examine the 2000 exit polls, which would seem to be necessary if one wishes to assert a trend.

I did. I found that the percentage of voters sampled who said they attended church at least weekly was the same—42 percent—in both 2000 and 2004. The percentage never attending church was also the same, at 15 percent. The middle group, those attending occasionally, was, you guessed it, 42 percent each time. Interestingly, while Bush slightly improved his standing among frequent churchgoers, by about a point in 2004, his support grew by 3 to 4 points among those attending seldom or never.

Yep, it was the atheist vote that really put Bush over the top in 2004.

...OK, what about issue positions? In 2000, about 40 percent of voters in the exit poll said that abortion should be mostly or always illegal. In 2004, it was 42 percent. Not exactly a huge jump. And we don't know how many of those are single-issue voters on abortion. Both parties have significant minorities who disagree with the official party position: about a quarter of pro-lifers voted for Kerry, while around one-third of pro-choicers picked Bush. On same-sex marriage, the issue was not polled in 2000 so it is impossible to say with certainty how the two electorates compare, but it is unlikely that this year's voters were significantly more conservative on it. In fact, the public's position is more nuanced here than the insta-spin would have you believe. About as many favored civil unions but not official marriage (35 percent) as favored neither (37 percent), and Bush was preferred by both groups over Kerry.

Well, perhaps there was no national trend but it happened in selected states such as Ohio. Nope. In the 2000 exit poll for Ohio, the percentage of frequent churchgoers was higher (45 percent) than in 2004 (40 percent). Bush did win a larger majority of religious Ohio voters in 2004 than he did four years ago, but there were fewer of them proportionally. Besides, saying that the religious-vote affect mattered in a few key states changes the nature of the media spin, which has been trying to assert it as a sweeping national "explanation" for Bush's popular vote.

...[Y]ou can track the impact of foreign policy over time. In 2000, only 12 percent said that "foreign affairs" was the most important issue in the presidential race, and they broke 54 percent to 40 percent for Bush over Gore. In 2004, a combined 34 percent identified foreign policy (either Iraq or the war on terrorism) as the most important, and they appear to have broken for Bush by 59 percent to 40 percent. Put it all together, and the increase in salience and small increase in Bush preference for foreign policy constitutes a gain of 13.5 percentage points in the Bush vote in 2004.

Obviously, he didn't win by that much. He lost ground on economic issues, because of the recession. But without his edge on war on terrorism, Bush would have lost. And that proposition—unlike the "it's all about gay marriage meme"—is testable and fits the available data. Voters worried about partial-birth abortion, same-sex marriage, and other cultural issues are obviously an important constituency within the current GOP majority, but they are no more responsible for Bush's national victory on Tuesday than voters motivated by other issues to re-elect the president.

(8)

Harry has an excellent post on his reaction to the election - or, rather, to many Brits' reaction to it.

He writes:

If we take the candidates at their word then 99 percent of American voters chose candidates who backed the liberation of Iraq and who are committed to finishing the job and to defeating Islamist terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere.

Quite. I wonder how many people who say how depressed they are by the result of the election actually know what the campaign centred on? Both candidates agreed the need to fight. Both supported the invasion of Iraq. Both agreed the need to fight a war on terror. Kerry was not the peacenik candidate. His message was one of competence - he claimed that he would fight it better than Bush.

Unlike some of those few Brits who do see the need for the West to defend itself, I would not have despaired had Kerry won. He was explicit that he believed in killing terrorists - he said he would do that better than Bush. I just happened to think that Bush is a better leader, had a greater strategic vision and deserved re-election. The main consolation of a Kerry victory would have been the sight of his European supporters squirming when they realised that Kerry was a fighter, too.

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Fascinating post at Samizdata, which shows that Kerry was the '60s candidate in more than policy. His electoral college successes would have meant victory in the 1960s:

1960 census (1964, 68 elections) -- Kerry 270, Bush 268
1970 census (1972, 76, 80 elections) -- Kerry 270, Bush 268
1980 census (1984, 88 elections) -- Bush 276, Kerry 262
1990 census (1992, 96, 2000 elections) -- Bush 279, Kerry 259
2000 census (2004, 08 elections) -- Bush 286, Kerry 252

(22)

Read David Carr, please. Now.

(3)

Understatement of the day. Stephen Pound MP, on the ITV News Channel:

I am extremely worried about the consequences of a Bush presidency for the universe.

Well, yes. I'm sure they're scared witless on Alpha Centauri.

(5)

There are, it seems, a few countries in which those of us who hope President Bush gets re-elected aren't regarded as freaks:

A Globescan international survey of 35 countries showed Mr Bush leading in only three: Nigeria, Poland and the Philippines, while opinion in India and Thailand was divided. Israelis generally favour Mr Bush and the latest Russian polls show that 52 per cent back him.

(6)

Great letter in the current Weekly Standard:

FRED BARNES is right when he argues that what John Kerry says in a debate is more important than how he says it. Indeed, what Kerry says may come back to haunt him later, such as his remark about our foreign policy needing to pass a "global test."

Perhaps we should ask Kerry if it is also an interstellar test. In attempting to explain his debate remark later on CNN, Kerry said, "I can do a better job of protecting America's security because the test that I was talking about was a test of legitimacy, not just in the globe, but elsewhere."

Not just in the globe? Does he mean in addition to the United Nations we also need the approval of the United Federation of Planets before defending America? And Dubya is supposed to be the inarticulate one?

Daniel John Sobieski
Chicago, IL

(4)

Terrific letter to US voters.

(via Samizadata)

(5)

Personally, I'm not sure which of the correspondents to the Guardian I'm with.
It's either this one:

Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ... I don't give a rat's ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don't. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit. Oh, yeah - and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals. Wading River, NY

or this one:

Consider this: stay out of American electoral politics. Unless you would like a company of US Navy Seals - Republican to a man - to descend upon the offices of the Guardian, bag the lot of you, and transport you to Guantanamo Bay, where you can share quarters with some lonely Taliban shepherd boys. United States

On the other hand, this one is spot on:

Hey England, Scotland and Wales,
Mind your own business. We don't need weenie-spined Limeys meddling in our presidental election. If it wasn't for America, you'd all be speaking German. And if America would have had a president, then, of the likes of Kerry, you'd all be goose-stepping around Buckingham Palace. YOU ARE NOT WANTED!! Whether you want to support either party. BUTT OUT!!!
United States

But this one has it just right:

THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS HAVE SPENT TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS PROTECTING THE PEOPLES OF THE EU, AND WHAT DO WE GET IN RETURN. BETRAYAL, BETRAYAL, BETRAYAL. I HAVE BEEN TO YOUR COUNTRY, THE COUNTRY OF MY ANCESTORS, AND I KNOW WHY THEY LEFT.

MAY YOU HAVE TO HAVE A TOOTH CAPPED. I UNDERSTAND IT TAKES AT LEAST 18 MONTHS FOR YOUR GREAT MEDICAL SERVICES TO GET AROUND TO YOU. HAVE A GREAT DAY.
Harlan, Kentucky

(32)

Fascinating email from a retired US diplomat:

I don't dispute some of Kerry's criticisms of the current Administration's conduct of foreign policy. But KE04 presents no actual solutions on foreign policy from which we can derive a reasonable belief that his performance would be better than the current White House. In fact, it just might be worse.

Many of Kerry's policy proposals on foreign affairs strike me as nastily disingenuous. His "fair trade" mantra raises the specter of protectionism at a time when America's continued global economic engagement remains a lynchpin of the "soft power" Kerry so ardently wishes to use as leverage in the war on terror. His fulminations on a lack of allies in Iraq don't pass the red face test -- French, German and Russian interests are now clearly arrayed in a classic balance of power position against the U.S. This will not change with Kerry in the White House. As for other allies (minus the UK and Australia), we're the victims of our Cold War success - most participants in Iraq are already projecting about as much power as they possibly can, having comfortably atrophied under our security umbrella for the past 60 years. This is the burden of hegemony, and I'm not quite sure Senator Kerry, whose mind still fully inhabits the Vietnam paradigm, is up to the task of bearing it forthrightly.

...Kerry hasn't grasped this fundamental change. He hasn't comprehended that the UN, as well as other multilateral institutions, has stopped being a preserve of internationally agreed rules and collective action backed by broad consensus. These institutions have become, instead, vehicles for the pursuit of narrow self-interests by any number of major regional powers which aspire to great power status. (France, Russia, Germany, India, Brazil, China). This is a drastically different international order from the one Kerry presumes to know.

You also have to ask yourself, who is going to carry out Kerry's multilateral approach? And on that score, things simply get worse. A Kerry White House would mean the Madeleine Albright B Team moving into senior foreign policy positions. And, with the notable exception of Richard Holbrooke (his hair may be on fire, but he gets things done), this would be disastrous. These are the same folks who fiddled for 8 years on counter terror, negotiated a terrifyingly naive nuke deal with North Korea, and generally treat foreign policy as a rhetorical exercise. This is a team who has demonstrated, in past position of influence, an alarming propensity to get rolled by their foreign counterparts. Let's pick just two: Susan Rice? Jamie Rubin?! Are you serious?? During her sojourn as assistant secretary for Africa in Albright's State Department, Rice had to be consistently bailed out of trouble by career diplomats. As for Rubin, he is anti-gravitas. He's Edwards-lite.

(2)

Superb piece by Charles Krauthammer:

After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry.

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

For what it's worth, my view of the debates is that it really doesn't matter who 'won' them. Whether or not Bush or Kerry outpointed the other is irrelevant. All that matters is that Kerry emerged from them looking like a credible candidate for President. And since the received wisdom has been that he has looked anything but that in recent weeks, the debates have clearly done him a power of good.

That has nothing to do with whether he is right or wrong in his policy stances.

(4)

A major revelation in today's Wall Street Journal, which confirms the impact which bloggers are having on the Presidential election. A blogger called bkm has discovered the truth about the Democrat nominee for President.

You may know him as John Kerry. This is, it seems, a brilliantly executed deception. He - it, I should say - is, in fact, C-3PO, the robot from Star Wars. bkm's case is impregnable; he cites a number of C-3PO's lines which prove the true identity of the imposter known as Kerry:

We'll be destroyed for sure. This is madness!

We're doomed!

Secret mission? What plans? What are you talking about? I'm not getting in there!

Are you sure this thing's safe?

How did I get into this mess? I really don't know how.

No more adventures. I'm not going that way.

That malfunctioning little twerp. This is all his fault! He tricked me into going this way, but he'll do no better.

I'm only a droid and not very knowledgeable about such things. Not on this planet, anyways. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure which planet I'm on.

I told him not to go, but he's faulty, malfunctioning; kept babbling on about his mission.

Captain Solo, this time you have gone too far.

Why doesn't anyone listento me?

Surrender is aperfectly acceptable alternative in extreme circumstances.

The WSJ adds some more:

Hey! You're not permitted in there! You'll be deactivated for sure! Don't you call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease!

How did we get into this mess? I really don't know how. We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.

Where do you think you're going? Well, I'm not going that way. It's much too rocky. This way is much easier.

What mission? What are you talking about? I've just about had enough of you! Go that way! You'll be malfunctioning within a day, you nearsighted scrap pile! And don't let me catch you following me, begging for help, because you won't get it!

That malfunctioning little twerp! This is all his fault! He tricked me into going this way, but he'll do no better.

Protocol? Why, it's my primary function, sir. I am well versed in all the customs.

No, I don't think he likes you at all. No, I don't like you either.

I suggest a new strategy, R2: Let the wookie win.

Help! I think I'm melting! This is all your fault!

(4)

David Carr has unearthed a stunning piece of evidence of Bush's activities during the Vietnam War.

(2)

Quote of the day, from James Taranto in the WSJ:

A guy on a bicycle stood just off the Sixth Avenue curb, wearing a T-shirt that said "F--- Bush" (except there was an actual obscenity in place of the hyphens) and shouting slogans like "Billions for war, nothing for the poor." Now there's a policy we could get behind!

(2)

Watching The Governator's truly fabulous speech last night, I hit upon a new game: Fantasy Elections.

How about this for a fantasy 2008 Presidential election: Schwarzenegger versus Obama. Wouldn't that be the American Dream at its best?

Do post some suggestions in the comments box.

(And yes, I know Arnie can't be President. That's why it's Fantasy Elections.)

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Sometimes one has simply to doff one's hat in respect. Whoever is responsible for this site, which aims to link to all the 'Bush = Hitler' allusions, is performing a service which is at once both useful and futile.

Go figure, as they say.

(via Harry.)

(3)

Paddy Power are giving away free money. On their politics page, they are offering 100/1 against BBC Olympics presenter Sharron Davies speaks at convention igniting Nipplegate controversy.

I'm remortaging my flat to back that.

(2)

The Corner conclusively proves that the KKK and - perhaps still more worrying - an unknown dog are behind the anti-Kerry ads.

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This - an archive of US Presidential campaign ads - is just fantastic!

(via Harry's Place.)

From The Corner:

James E. McGreevey

Practiced to deceive. He

Lost his job in Trenton

Because of an affair the pursuit of which he was foolishly bent on.

UPDATE: Here's another, written by a friend:

The Governor of the Garden State

Was not content with his legal mate.

He only had eyes for

A fellow from Israel whom he hired as his homeland security advisor.

(5)

One of the best Reagan anecodotes, as told by his (awful) biographer, Edmund Morris:

Perhaps the best of Reagan’s one-liners came after he attended his last ceremonial dinner, with the Knights of Malta in New York City on January 13, 1989. The evening's m.c., a prominent lay Catholic, was rendered so emotional by wine that he waved aside protocol and followed the President’s speech with a rather slurry one of his own. It was to the effect that Ronald Reagan, a defender of the rights of the unborn, knew that all human beings begin life as "feces." The speaker cited Cardinal John O’Connor (sitting aghast nearby) as "a fece" who had gone on to greater things. "You, too, Mr. President — you were once a fece!"

En route back to Washington on Air Force One, Reagan twinklingly joined his aides in the main cabin. "Well," he said, "that's the first time I've flown to New York in formal attire to be told I was a piece of shit."

(via Andrew Sullivan.)

(2)

The Reagan Foundation has opened a condolence book - here.

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It seems somehow appropriate that news of the death of President Reagan should have come on this of all weekends. The ceremonies in Normandy commemorate the sacrifice and bravery of allied soldiers in freeing Europe from an evil regime. Reagan did more than any other politician in the post-war world to do the same thing.

This weekend's papers are unique in my recollection. I haven't spotted a single cynical comment about the D-Day commemorations. I can't remember another event which has not prompted at least one commentator to take a contrarian view. Yesterday and today - nada.

But you can bet that by tomorrow some of the press will be full of sarcastic comments about Reagan. I don't compare for a second the sacrifices made. The D-day veterans risked their lives, each of them genuinely deserving of that over-used word, brave. Reagan was a politician who, although he was the victim of an attempted assassination, in theory risked no more than electoral defeat.

Those, however, who will soon be sneering about him - just as they did when he was in power - might care to think about the good that he did. Just as no one soldier was responsible for the Allied powers' victory in 1945, so no one politician brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in the reckoning of those who helped freedom to prevail, Reagan stands at the very top. Truly, a great man.

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Oliver Kamm has a lovely quote from Christopher Hitchens about Mike Moore:

[S]peaking here in my capacity as a polished, sophisticated European as well, it seems to me the laugh here is on the polished, sophisticated Europeans. They think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they‘ve taken as their own, as their representative American, someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.

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A man who knows says Slick Willy wants The Bouffon to lose.

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Well, stranger things have happened...

(via MightyRighty.com)

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The Edge has a suggestion for a GOP button:

I voted for John Kerry, before I voted against him.

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Sen Kerry is a hypocrite, pure and simple.

One of Kerry’s big campaign themes has been attacking ‘outsourcing’ of US jobs (an attack which is gaining ground here, too, over call centres).

Kerry’s family business, H.J. Heinz Co., has 22 factories in the United States. Fine and dandy. But it also does what any competitive business does in a free trade world: it has 57 factories in foreign countries.

Outsourcing - and hypocrisy - pure and simple.

UPDATE: One of my commenters points to this Instapundit link which makes me think I am unfair and wrong to call him a hypocrite.
As if he'd care what I think, but apologies! What's not unfair, though, is to say he is 100 per cent wrong.

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Joy!

(via Andrew Sullivan.)

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The State of the Union speech, in brief...

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Remember Peter Mandelson's victory speech at Hartlepool in 2001? Eat your heart out, Mandy...coz you've got nothing on Howard Dean.
At least Mandelson won.

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This 'fundraising map' of the US is terrific - it shows who has raised what, where.

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