Comment Central - Times Online - WBLG

Today's Web Grab

You might enjoy:

• Gerald F. Seib and Sara Murray in Political Perceptions: Obama's damage-control day
• Peter Stothard: Bond, James T.L.S. Bond
• Jonah Goldberg in The Corner: Thinking outside of the box
• Rosa Prince in Three Line Whip: Boris Johnson, forlorn in the drizzle
• Andrew Sullivan in The Daily Dish: Cool ad watch

More on Obama and Wright

For those interested in the Obama-Wright saga, this Chicago Sun Times article is worth a read.

(Hat Tip: Giles)

When you believe in things that you don't understand...

Anyone out there feel comfortable smashing a mirror? Well, then you can sympathise with John McCain's superstitious tendencies. Unless, that is, you are Stephen Colbert.

Great Britain: mocked by The New York Times

Oh dear. Put like this you can see their point...

The Mayoral race goes to the dogs...

The Boulton & Co blog has a gem today.

Last night each greyhound at the Wimbledon racetrack competed under the name of a mayoral candidate. First, imagine the kennel negotiations...I want Ken. Fine. Boris's hair goes better with my collar, anyway...

Next, guess who romped home?

Alice Fishburn

Magazine Rack - Issue 216

You might enjoy:

• Drake Bennett in Globe Ideas: The future of dirt
• T.A. Frank in Washington Monthly: Confessions of a sweatshop inspector
• Robert Kagan vs. Robert Cooper in Prospect: Is democracy winning?
• William Finnegan in The New Yorker: The countertraffickers

Curiouser and curiouser

The one and only Michael White points out the following:

As a conscientious Guardian reader you may well have seen on Monday's news pages that David Abrahams, the Tyneside property developer at the centre of last winter's "Donorgate" uproar, has been told by the police that he has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

He feels the Guardian's story deserved more attention than it got.

He is quite right. This decision by the police follows one in which they decided not to pursue Peter Watt Labour's General Secretary. And it is intriguing.

Surely deliberately using third parties to give donations in order to disguise the origin of the donation must be against the law. If it isn't the law is badly broken. Parties will be able to do what they like.

If the law is not broken in this way it means the police determined that Watt and Abrahams had not deliberately disguised the origin of the donation. I am quite happy to accept this but it turns on its head what was reported at the time. We need to learn more.

The Right to Roam

Dr Greg Clark, the talented economist and MP for Tunbridge Wells, had a ten minute rule debate in the House of Commons yesterday.

Here's the thrust of what he had to say:

In this country, mobile phone companies restrict people to their networks without transferring them to where signals are strongest and best.

It is not as if we have blanket mobile phone coverage in this country—only 65 per cent of the population is currently covered by all four 2G mobile phone companies.

That figure drops to 28 per cent in Wales, an area that several of my hon. Friends represent. Given that we do not have blanket coverage, it is worrying that we do not allow people to access the optimal coverage to which they should be entitled.

The Bill is simple and would achieve two things. First, it would allow mobile phone subscribers in this country the right to roam. If their home network did not offer a strong signal, they would be flipped automatically to the next strongest available signal. Secondly, it would encourage mobile phone operators to share masts throughout the country so that they had the same equipment.

Bring an end to those cut-off-on-the-train blues.

How Obama can play the Wright crisis right

This business with Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a disaster for Obama, right?

Not according to Bill Clinton's former strategist Dick Morris. Here's his view:

At the start of his campaign, Obama ran in counterpoint to the previous candidacies of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Here was a black man running for president on issues that had nothing to do with race as he rose above the victimization rhetoric that characterizes so many speeches of African-American political figures.

Now, in attacking the Rev. Wright as he did Tuesday, Obama can further define himself in contrast to Wright, just as he did earlier vis-à-vis Jackson and Sharpton.

So if, as the Chinese ideogram suggests, crisis is a synthesis of danger and opportunity, the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright presents plenty of both for Obama.

I think he is correct.

That Wright poses a great danger to Obama is obvious. How the Senator deals with his identity as an African-American is central to his candidacy. Wright threatens his control of this issue. He might also make Obama look weak (he can't shut his old friend down), less than honest (did he really not know what this man was about) and threatening (maybe Wright's views are secretly Obama's).

But as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton demonstrated again and again, every crisis is really an opportunity.

Obama can exploit the attention now being paid to Wright to show that he is strong (he slaps down those who cross him, even old friends), on the level (he speaks out clearly) and on your side (he defines himself against Wright).

This is a difficult trick because the story has started badly and it is always quite a challenge to turn such things round.

But one reason I believe he can pull it off is this - he is going to win the Democratic nomination anyway. he is too far ahead to be stopped. If he plays it right he can have his victory (actually won for other reasons) portrayed as partly the outcome of resilience and courage in the face of the Wright issue.

He can make it look like a triumph. And if he does, then pretty soon it will be a triumph.

Wednesday's comment from the papers in...

Today in Times Comment

• Daniel Finkelstein: Some sage advice: ignore the results
• Alice Miles: Great evil took place in that cellar
• Magnus Linklater: A grin goes a long way in politics
• Carl Mortished: Hurrah! Oil profits are up
• Joe Joseph: Bare white walls? Yes, it's art
• Bronwen Maddox: US blundered by crying wolf and keeping secrets
• Peter Riddell: David Cameron is profiting from 10p tax row, but for how long?
• Ann Treneman: Hubris, that was so last month

And from the rest of the papers...

• Simon Heffer: (The Telegraph) - Why treat the London election as a joke?
• George Pitcher: (The Telegraph) - Rowan Williams will not be driven out of office
• Jan Moir: (The Telegraph) - Is a Fritzl horror happening in Britain?
• Simon Jenkins: (The Guardian) - The only message being sent is of cowardice and stupidity
• Marcel Berlins: (The Guardian) - We like to tell the world how fair our elections are. But the shameful truth is out: postal voting is a farce
• Jonathan Freedland: (The Guardian) - It's Labour stalwart versus Tory fop - dress rehearsal for the really big one
• Johann Hari: (The Independent) - It's the policies that count – and that means Londoners should vote for Ken Livingstone
• Hamish McRae: (The Independent) - We will never have cheap oil again
• David Steel: (The Independent) - There is no case for changing the Abortion Act
• Allison Pearson: (The Daily Mail) - The McCann campaign must NOT go on for ever
• Martin Wolf: (The Financial Times) - Food crisis is a chance to reform global agriculture

And from around the world...

• Maureen Dowd: (The New York Times) - Praying and preying
• Thomas L. Friedman: (The New York Times) - Dumb as we wanna be
• Harold Meyerson: (The Washington Post) - Landing the white whale
• Karl Rove: (The Wall Street Journal) - Getting to know John McCain
• H.D.S. Greenway: (International Herald Tribune) - Cracking race, I say. Albion tunes in to the saga of Barack and Hillary
• John Sutton: (The Sydney Morning Herald) - Guest workers are not the answer, training our own is