Us politics

Thursday

Paul Wood

Forget Geneva: the real US-Iran carve-up is happening in Iraq

 Washington DC and Iraq   We stood on a bleak hillside in eastern Iraq looking at a makeshift grave. It held a dozen Shia Arabs, according to the Kurdish troops escorting us. The dead were men, women and children murdered by fighters from the so-called Islamic State as they retreated, said the Kurds. We stepped gingerly around scraps of women’s clothing and a bone poking out through the dirt. In the town on the dusty plain below, Shi’ite militias were busy taking revenge on Sunnis, our escorts said, looting and killing. The town’s Sunni Arab population had fled to a miserable camp. Streams of sewage ran between their tents. But

Friday

Sebastian Payne

Nigel Farage tells Republicans to ‘reach out to the grassroots’. But should have stayed at home?

Nigel Farage is becoming a jet setter. Yesterday evening, he addressed the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) of Republicans in Maryland. Later today, he is delivering the final speech at Ukip’s spring conference in Margate. It’s a tough life, but why did he bother going 3,000 miles for a 20 minute speech? His friendly style appeared to go down well with the Americans, far more customised to his style of politics, but it he did not draw a huge crowd: I’d estimate 250 people listening to Farage in a vast room that can seat 5,500. But those here are loving him. pic.twitter.com/0TRkieUGxo — Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) February 27, 2015 The topics were

Thursday

Florence King

America’s greatest tradition: inventing spurious traditions

  Fredericksburg, Virginia Obama forgot he had a cup in his hand as he saluted and nearly poured the contents over his own head Americans crave traditions. The older they are the more we cherish them. Thanksgiving, which beats out Christmas, was invented by Abe Lincoln in 1863 but it is an outgrowth of the timeless harvest festival celebrated by the generations of mankind that formed the earliest agricultural communities. Much harder is inventing traditions from something new. In this we are unsurpassed. Take the president’s annual State of the Union address to congress. Ever since Thomas Jefferson’s time, a clerk from the House of Representatives read it in a

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Mindfulness, addiction, and dinner with Richard Nixon

Mind games Sir: I hope that people are not unduly put off by Melanie McDonagh’s misrepresentation of mindfulness as a cop-out for navel-gazers who lack the moral fibre to engage in ‘proper’ religion (‘The cult of mindfulness’, 1 November). She describes it as a ‘practice of self-obsession’, but it is the opposite: it creates a space in which the self can be seen for what it is as it hops around, generating superfluous judgments. You begin to obsess less about what your ‘self’ compulsively comes up with, and to approach life from a more anchored perspective. May I invite those who think that sounds bogus and flaky to engage in

Wednesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

The real winner at the US mid-terms? Hillary Clinton

Washington, DC The American election cycle is beginning to resemble the 1993 comedy Groundhog Day. In the film, you may recall, Bill Murray plays an egomaniacal Pittsburgh weatherman named Phil Connors who discovers that he’s stuck in a time loop in which the same day repeats itself over and over. He goes bonkers, driving a truck over a cliff in a suicide attempt, only to wake up again the next morning. Substitute the American public for Connors and you have a sense of the prevailing political atmosphere in the US. Ever since 9/11 shattered its illusion of omnipotence, the United States has been unable to escape its troubles. Instead, it

Anne Jolis

Lame duck unleashed – Bulgarian in London asks ‘what next’ on US immigration

London Careening through the city in a minicab last night, en route to a pub in Bloomsbury that had promised to screen US election results, the mustachioed driver confirmed my accent and inquired: ‘So, what will happen after the elections?’ I issued the run-down: left-ish Democrats lose control of the Senate to right-ish Republicans, who also expand their House majority. The Republican gains won’t be enough to have too much fun (for instance, re-reforming health care) without meeting the President‘s veto pen; but should prove enough to justify more executive action from the White House, bypassing Congress in areas such as immigration and border control, if Mr Obama’s pre-election promises can

Tuesday

Mark Gettleson

The Republicans will win the Senate tonight. Here’s how

The Republicans will win the Senate tonight in their biggest such win in a generation, even though two states may vote again in December and January. The Senate is currently made up of 53 Democrats, 2 independents who caucus with the Democrats and 45 Republicans. As such, the Republicans need 6 gains for control. They will achieve that.  This is how the races match up in each key state. Alaska (Democratic seat: Mark Begich) The scandal embroiled-Ted Stevens, Alaska’s most celebrated Senator, was hotly tipped to lose his seat in 2008 – as he did, by the narrowest of margins. Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, the son of a former Governor,

Thursday

Tim Stanley

Rand Paul is like Nigel Farage – except he might win

When America’s National Institutes of Heath said that it hadn’t cured Ebola yet because of budget cuts, Senator Rand Paul had an acidic answer. No, he told an audience of Republicans, the problem was not underfunding. It was bad priorities. ‘Have you seen what the NIH spends money on?’ he asked. ‘$939,000 spent to discover whether or not male fruit flies would like to consort with younger female fruit flies. $117,000 spent to determine if most monkeys are right-handed and like to throw poop with their right hands.’ And best of all, $2.4 million for an ‘origami condom’, which suggests something shaped like a swan. In fact, it’s modelled on

Thursday

Peregrine Worsthorne

Bourbon from Bush, envy from Nixon… and running into Herbert Hoover: encounters with eight presidents

I feel a bit of a fraud writing about the ‘presidents I knew’, since journalists do not really get to know the great figures they interview or shake hands with. Indeed the relationship between journalist and great personage is about as false as any relationship can be, since each is trying to make use of the other. So in all likelihood my dreamed relationship with President Herbert Hoover — which began and ended in 1933 when I was aged 11 and only lasted for about a minute — came nearer to being a genuine human relationship than all the other journalistic ones later — which included Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower,

Thursday

Andrew Roberts

Henry Kissinger interview: ‘I don’t see the wisdom there once was’

Henry Kissinger doesn’t believe in retirement. At 91, having had a heart-valve operation three months ago, he is nonetheless publishing a book entitled World Order. As I happened to be interviewing him about it on 11 September, I asked him about his memories of 13 years ago. ‘I was in Frankfurt addressing a business group,’ he recalled in that voice of his that sounds like gravel has found its way into your car’s exhaust pipe. ‘A member of the audience had just asked a question when someone came on to the stage to say that he had an important announcement to make. I said that that may be, but I

Friday

Freddy Gray

Obama moves against ISIS. This time, it’s a war worth fighting

Back to Iraq, then. President Obama’s announcement last night that America would intervene militarily in defence of the Kurds is by any standards a stunning development. The President, whom hawks loathe for being a ditherer and a peacenik, has turned into action man, albeit still rather a cautious action man. Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham – the most reliably war-thirsty politicians in Washington – released a statement approving his decision, though of course they used it as an excuse to berate Obama for his failures in the Middle East: ‘The President is right to provide humanitarian relief to the Iraqi civilians stranded on Mount Sinjar and to authorize military

Thursday

David Frum

David Frum’s diary: When Hamas shoots at Israel, they’re shooting at my kid

 Wellington, Ontario A British visitor to this village might be disoriented by the flags. They look almost exactly like the Union Jack, but not quite. These banners omit the Cross of St Patrick, which was bundled into the flag of the United Kingdom only in 1801: this is the earlier version, carried north to Canada by the losers of the American revolution. My wife and I and our three children have been spending summers in Wellington since the late 1980s, when her parents bought a disused tomato farm with a vast view of Lake Ontario. Back then, this part of Ontario was bypassed by modern development. In the years since,

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Ed Miliband comes to Washington — and nobody here notices

Washington, D.C. Ed Miliband met with Barack Obama yesterday, haven’t you heard? The British press covered the visit with their usual gusto but the visit barely registered on the radar of American outlets. Out of the country’s most influential papers, neither the New York Times nor the Wall Street Journal wrote a single word about the potential next prime minister of the United Kingdom meeting the president. Miliband wasn’t covered on any of the blogs or TV stations either. Only one US paper said anything about the visit. In yesterday’s Washington Post, I described the lack of interest in Miliband’s visit from Washington’s point of view and why the trip matters for the Labour leader: ‘The Miliband brush-by would not be the first

Thursday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Impeaching Obama would be crazy. But the Republicans will probably try

 Washington DC So it’s come to this: the only thing that can save President Obama from his own complacent and lofty self-regard, not to mention his serial failures, are his enemies, and that is what it appears they are about to do. Even as his poll numbers sink to new lows that not even George W. Bush or Richard Nixon sunk to, even as the economy continues to falter, even as the so-called US-Mexico border devolves into chaos, even as al-Qa’eda’s successor establishes its own state in the ruins of Syria and Iraq, and even as the Democrats appear on the verge of losing the Senate as well as the

Wednesday

Steerpike

Michael Dobbs shuffles Cards in the House of Lords

Filming of season three of Netflix’s House of Cards will begin in four weeks’ time in Maryland, creator Michael Dobbs revealed at Norman Tebbit’s book launch last night. Lord Dobbs, who was an advisor to Thatcher, said that he had to ‘tone things down a little bit’ to make the plot ‘credible’, although he’s clearly proud of his work, telling Mr S: ‘Kevin [Spacey] is wicked. It’s like the West Wing for Werewolves’. When he’s not the toast of America’s TV, Dobbs sits on the Lords’ standards committee. Channelling his inner chief-whip, Dobbs says he’s ‘tightening up on behaviour’ in the upper chamber: ‘We are doing things properly, making sure rules

Friday

Ed West

America’s Left is just as ‘eccentric’ as its Right

Rory Sutherland writes in this week’s magazine that the Mozilla/Brendan Eich affair has finally put him off his dream of moving to the United States, quoting Andrew Sullivan that ‘The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society.’ The issue of gay marriage has changed politics in the English-speaking world in a way that perhaps people didn’t expect – breaking the liberal-Left’s final link with the ideal of John Locke that permitting something did not mean approving of it. This notion has been coming under pressure for some years, especially with discrimination laws, but SSM has snapped it. (Brendan O’Neill has

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

Why I no longer want to live in America

A few years ago I would have quite liked to live in America. I’m not sure now. For one thing, most of the things perfected by Americans (convenience, entertainment, technology, a very small bottle of Tabasco to accompany your breakfast) very soon make their way over here. On the other hand, the things Europeans do well (cathedrals, four weeks’ annual holiday, more than two varieties of cheese, general all-round classiness) don’t travel in the other direction. In fact, once the right-hand-drive version of the Ford Mustang reaches the UK in 2015, it is hard to think of any remaining reason to emigrate at all. Besides, the political scene over there

Thursday

James Delingpole

I’ve seen the future of conservatism at CPac – and it doesn’t work

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_March_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Delingpole and Freddy Gray discuss the ups and downs of CPac” startat=1124] Listen [/audioplayer]About the coolest guy I saw at CPac this year was this wild-eyed, middle–aged crazy wearing ‘statement’ spectacles, faded Levis and a badge on his immaculately cut, grey wool Timothy Everest suit-coat saying ‘2012 WTF?’ I was looking in the bathroom mirror at the time and the drugs were just starting to kick in. Not proper Hunter S. Thompson drugs, unfortunately. Just some imported Indian-made version of the anti-narcolepsy drug Modafinil, kind of a low-level, legal amphetamine, which I’d taken to ward off the effects of the truly Babylonian party at Breitbart’s Capitol Hill

Thursday

Stephen Robinson

Harry Shearer on bringing out Richard Nixon’s feminine side

Hollywood tends to treat Richard Nixon as an oafish B-movie villain, so it is ambitious and original of Harry Shearer to try to convince a British audience of the very feminine side of the 37th American president. As a veteran comedy actor and the ‘voice’ of several of the Simpsons cartoon characters — including Mr Burns, Smithers, and Ned Flanders — Shearer has the vocal range to get almost anyone right if he puts his mind to it. But voice work was not the main challenge in the forthcoming Sky Arts drama. Shearer is more intrigued by the physical aspects of the central role in Nixon’s the One, which he

Thursday

Hugo Rifkind

The only way to end the war on drugs is to stop fighting it

It’s surprisingly boring, legalising weed. In Colorado, where recreational doobie has been utterly without censure for, ooh, about a week and a half now, the Department of Revenue (Marijuana Enforcement Division) has published Permanent Rules Related to the Colorado Retail Marijuana Code, which is 136 pages long and no fun at all. Were I actually in Colorado, I suppose I could always spark something up to help me get to the end. ‘The statutory authority for this rule is found at subsections 12-43.4-202(2)(b), 12-43.4-202(3)(b)(II), 12-43.4-202(3)(b)(III), and 12-43.3-301(1), C.R.S,’ it drones, at the top of the final page. If you like, imagine that read out by a posh girl in a