At the NATO meeting, we had a much more important and focused test of President’s ability to get a oui, nous pouvons.

The United States is stretched thin and it is increasingly looking like a bad situation is going to disimprove rapidly as the tribal elements on the Pakistani border grow bolder. There already appears to be a process in hand to sideline Hamid Karzai and his cabinet-of-warlords, but without significant international assistance, the US military will be politically isolated. Barack Obama needed to deliver real troop commitments.

The result? 30 trainers from Belgium and half as many from Spain.

The American people must be furious. If the whole gesture of reconciliation with the rest of the world that was the election results in little more than a cursory nod, the maybe the previous administration’s opinion of a lazy, febrile Europe was the right one. Maybe electing Barack Obama was a mistake because the thanks you got from the rear of the world was superficial and mocking. At the height of his mintiest-fresh, he could not turn his own allows to help him.

The obvious answer is that thinking the American people elected Obama for the rest of the world is infantile. Like all politics, it’s 98% internal. However, I could feel a tangible frustration from the US that it’s still business as usual from the allies.

On the, err, third hand the Americans are playing a dangerous game in merging the Afghan border’s two sides into one AfPak border. There is a substantial Pakistani population in Britain & Europe, and escalation into the territory of an ally with strong links to your population would have to make Britain nervous.

In the interim, I have a few fun internet things to post. None of them is a post of its own, but together, they might be nice.

Irish Lawyer Fergus O’Rourke points to interesting figures from the Economist, that explore the details about the mind of the Irish electorate.It seems that Europe is still popular in Ireland, and the final analysis seems to point to the notion that the case was simply not made for the treaty. It points to the fact that there is a clear need for an Irish political body which is pro-Europe, but more skeptical than our current parties.

Techdirt has an article on university patents and how they have harmed basic research. It’s an area of considerable interest to me, especially as I am moving towards a big research project. There is huge pressure in Ireland to get IP income out of research, but it seems to me that since most of the IP goes to startups, and that very few patents anywhere make money, the restrictive nature of the current model *is* hurting innovation. On the other hand, patents can work. The University of Nottingham has MRI (I think) machnes to thank for being differentiated financially from a whole slew of Universities in the UK.

You probably missed Hug a Developer Day, if you did, shame on you. Code Monkeys are people too.

Ok, I know everyone is sick of the election already, so I held these to the end: Hating Obamawith Gerard Baker in the Times. McCain is a lying liar by Krugman in the NYT.

It’s weak sauce, but it might help in keeping working-class males in the McCain pen, possibly.

With George Bush looking like one of the most unpopular Presidents ever, there is a need for the Democratic party to take the field. I don’t actually think that a Democratic candidate would help the world much, if they follow the worst of the party rhetoric and dump NAFTA, followed by caving the unions on tariffs and outsourcing.

However, if we are lucky, we will get a President who is a good economic centrist with his eye on lowering inflation and opening trade barriers as wide as possible. America is still the prime market, and it will be for a very long time.

I have two journalist pieces that are worth looking at for more thoughts on Obama. The first is an op-ed piece from the Wall-Street Journal called ‘Baghdad, Berlin, Barack‘. It’s interesting because it points to the fact that Obama is a highly consensual candidate, and that a lot of people like him.

It’s striking that his critics talk of him being ‘only’ 4% ahead, he’s on the sliding scale of expectation. It could be argued that that margin is inside the Bradley number, but I’m not convinced.

The second piece is from Reuters, ‘Obama message sinks in [...]‘. It’s a good piece on the nuance of what Barack Obama actually asked the people of Berlin for, and what the real cost to Europe will be if they get what they wish for.

Whatever happens, it’s hard to imagine we’ll see a Johnson or Nixon-style landslide. I think Obama will take 50-51% of the vote and be happy.

When it comes to the EU, Irish political debate goes from the stupid to the random. The yes side trot out the dire warnings about lost influence and lost opportunity. They tell us that Ireland will be so hated that the only food we will be able to import will be leftover Soviet-era sausages, still in rusty radioactive cans.

On the other side, the No people warn us that we will all be conscripted into a European Vierte Reich, and that this new super army will be used to oppress the free dictators of the world. The No camp is somewhat undecided as to whether EU fascism is a puppet of American Imperialism, or its own brand.

The most recent additions to this movement have been a rejuvenated Catholic extreme right, who are anti-gay and worry that the EU will make us all gay. As Dixie has shown, the damage that gay rights have done to California have left it a dry, arid wasteland.

My favourite poster is one presented by flickr user Editor_tupp:

The vote is on Thursday, June 12^th. In ‘Coven tradition, I am not going to tell you how to vote, but I am going to say that if you don’t vote, you’re letting the terrorists/neo-cons/gays/straights/lolcats* win.

*delete as appropriate

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Yep, still married.

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There has also been quite a stir in my two primary extracurricular activities (knitting and Doctor Who — gaming, sadly, has taken a back seat since everyone I gamed with has moved away or the games have dissolved). I’ve been collecting links for a Ravelry newsletter article, and will cross-post here once that’s done. (The Rav links won’t do most of you any good, but there’s a good handful of external links as well.)

Am I the only one heartily amused that the Florida and Michigan Democratic parties sacrificed their constituents’ voices so they could have an earlier (presumably more important and influential) primary date?

(Apologies if this observation has already been made; I’ve been living under a rock for the past month or so and therefore have no idea if people have been giggling about this for some time.)