Some friends think I'm too quick to see the absurdity of McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as running mate. We'll see. But it doesn't take much of a crystal ball to predict the outcome of her speech to the Republican
Yikes. If US Weekly is laying into Sarah Palin, it really is all over bar the shouting. I've long held to the political science truism that vice-president picks don't have much influence on people's votes, but there are always exceptions.As
Blood and Treasure reacts to the reports of Sarah Palin's membership in the Alaskan Independence Party:And let's not forget that the US would be a lot less trouble to everyone else if it split up into small, eccentric countries, each
I'm watching an absurd discussion on Newhour with Jim Lehrer. A supposedly serious question is posed to an Alaskan writer: "What can you tell us about her achievements on the city council and then as mayor?" There was no real
Mark Kleiman:Could McCain have possibly made a more un-serious choice? Esepcially given his age and health problems? Think about the former Mayor of Wassilia confronting Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. Think about it hard. Now none of this is any reproach
If anyone was deluded enough to think the post-Bush Republican party was going to change, how about this from the party platform, according to The Washington Post:In one controversial vote, the platform committee approved a total ban on embryonic stem
I just caught up with this excellent advice from Brad DeLong:Don't trust them. Don't patronize their advertisers. Don't believe them. Listen, instead, to people with substantive expertise and knowledge trying to convey that knowledge rather than the ignorant trying to
I've adopted a daily mantra: ignore the noise.It's not about the construction going on at the house next door. It's about the constant drumbeat from so much of the political media. Obama's too passive. McCain's a fighter, but a good
When I saw the announcement, I thought Google's Power Readers was a good idea. I'd like to know what feeds people are reading. But if you actually look at the feed lists, they are all boring to a fault and
Douglas Muir at Fistful of Euros provides a pithy, essential summary of political leadership following the collapse of the Soviet bloc. In my Davos role, I saw many of this crop and it wasn't a pretty sight:All across Eurasia, in
If, like me, you're an obsessive reader of the political blogs, you probably have encountered references throughout the political season to Richard Ben Cramer's What It Takes. By all accounts, it's the landmark work on presidential primaries. When I first
If you want to be depressed, but informed, read Clive Crook's Financial Times column about the plight of the US economy. He starts with an excellent run-down of the poor shape of the economy:The US economy may not be in
I gave money to Barack Obama in January and, as much as I'd like to give his campaign more, I thought I'd reached my personal limit. But so repellent has the McCain campaign been - and I'm sure it will
I'm mystified by the growing public support for offshore oil drilling. I know it's been a Republican talking point for weeks, and seems to be just about the only policy John McCain has on anything. But even the most rudimentary
One fact from a column by Richard Milne in yesterday's Financial Times really shocked me:The situation [on female directors] is even worse in Germany, which shamefully only has one female management board member from the 200 or so executives in
When we were in Italy earlier this month, my children had a chance to learn something essential about Italian life: lo sciopero. Our plan was to travel from Venice to Rome by train on Monday afternoon, so we could catch
I loved this Martin Kettle suggestion:However, senator, we also now advise a late change to your London schedule. The truth is that you have a lot more to offer the UK politicians than they have to offer you. So we
Charles Arthur passes along the word that US television news is absolutely appalling. That's not a novel idea in my household, but my wife and I were literally open-mouthed the other evening when we made the mistake of watching the
From RBC:Obama is either very good or very lucky. Somehow "troops out of Iraq to add to Afghanistan" and "go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan without asking Musharraf's permission" and "negotiate with Iran" have all become not just mainstream views but
