Aug
31
It’s Your Presidency, Charlie Obama.
Filed Under American Politics | 50 Comments
By Israel
I have been asked for my views on the Obama administration so far, and as you can see from the title it’s not as l had hoped. I did see it a bit like a scene from Charlie Brown. Not the brilliant Frank Miller inspired piece from Timothy Lim and Jean Luc Pham or my all time favourite “She’s a good Skate, Charlie Brown” where Woodstock Whistles “O Mio Babbino Caro”, one of my favourite pieces of classical music.
No. the scene l am thinking of is the one synonymous with Charlie Brown. The one that everybody thinks of. Charlie Brown , Lucy and the football. This scene is so iconic that you don’t even have to link to it, you know what happens. Charlie Brown the eternal optimist yet again believes Lucy when she says she will allow him to kick that football, and yet again his hopes are dashed as she pulls it away for him to do a gigantic air kick and land painfully on his back.
Now why would l think that? The Obama administration has done a lot in it’s first term so far, in terms of trying to move the economy and trying to pass healthcare reform, but the frustrating thing to me and some others is the president’s slavish adherence to keep reaching out to republicans even though he keeps getting that football swiped away.
There have been other decisions too that have failed to keep me and others fully behind him:
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; the channeling of the Bush administration on DOMA; the failure to close Guantanamo; the support in keeping secret those involved in the Warrentless Wiretapping scandal; the continuation of the Rendition programme and worst of all the failure to prosecute those in the Bush White House involved in torture.
But nothing has seen his support from me and others begin to waiver as much as with healthcare reform.
There have been calls by some, notably Bill Maher for the current president to act more like the previous one, something that you see the linked piece’s author disagrees with and makes a pretty good point but the problem is this:
It only works when both sides are willing to come together.
Look at the Stimulus Bill. The Obama administration agreed to a lot of the demands of the republicans and watered down the bill to the extent that even economists like Paul Krugman began to doubt it’s effectiveness. But they did it anyway and what was the result? Not a single Republican vote in the House.
After that we had Bobby “Kenneth the Page” Jindal attempting to mock the bill and it’s inclusion of things like Volcano Monitoring before retreating into the netherworld again with egg on his face after Alaska’s Mt. Redoubt erupted and still remaining silent as $500,000 is used by Louisiana for the purposes of upgrading flood-monitoring technology. Of course this hasn’t stopped the shameless oppotunist from going around the state handing out big cheques for restart and work programmes using the money he spent time criticizing.
The worst thing is that Jindal isn’t the only Republican berating the president over the stimulus yet going back to their state to brag about all the work being done while conveniently forgetting where it came from and still we have seen from the administration so vilified by the right more examples of hope over expectation, expecially on healthcare.
Chuck Grassley is supposed to be the man who democrats are working with on healthcare reform, but what have we heard from him in the last few weeks?
Agreement with “Deathers” that the president is going to kill granny, refusal to name an amount that he would be happy to commit to for healthcare reform, and a statement that if he cannot get a bill passed without broader Republican support HE WOULD VOTE AGAINST IT EVEN THOUGH IT’S HIS BILL leading the Quad City Times to produce a scathing editorial demouncing him.
Grassley is important in this because he is supposed to be the man the Obama administration is negotiaing with but it just seems to me that the racist, mysoginistic, obese, half-deaf, thrice divorced, drug addict behind the curtain is the one who Grassley and other Republicans are listening to, hoping for a failure of the country.
There is Republican Healthcare Plan out there (thanks cabbie) but who can say the last time you heard about it? Yet still we have this outreach programme to people who have no qualms in sitting back as the president is called a Nazi or one of the main hosts on their media channel defames him by saying that he is a “racist” with a “deep seated hatred of white people”.
The Research 200 tracking poll for Daily Kos has the president at 55/40 fav/unfav, something that amazingly Republicans crow about, as if people are flocking to them. The Republican numbers (14/73 for Congressional Republicans, 14/64 John Boehner and 18/64 Mitch McConnell) makes me wonder why a group called “a bunch of Chicago Thugs” would waste time doing their best to bring them into the process of lawmaking when there has been no real sign of that so far.
My personal view is that more and more people are coming around to the Bill Maher point of view, demanding to know why the president is so intent on trying to reach out to people who have no intention of working with him and not slapping down the “blue dogs” his chief of staff helped bring to the Democratic side.
Will things improve for President Obama? Well, we know how much the Republicans fear healthcare reform, because just like the election of Obama and the financial downturn it is an indictment on their political worldview as well as a rejection of their core political and economic principles. It’s been stated that the vast majority of US citizens class themselves as conservatives but 77% of the country all see the value of the Public Option when it comes to healthcare, a message that has been lost so far with the astroturf rent-a-mobs screaming down reform advocates.
How will the president get the message through on any of his plans if he continues to try to work with the party of no and it’s media arm which this weekend grew to include The Washington Post and the disgusting decision by Fred Haitt to allow the piece torture to be printed in the once great paper?
The president has to do something and soon, because his bipartisan approach isn’t getting the results he wants. I’m afraid that by the end of September, AT THE LATEST, he will have to ditch the Republicans and go it alone, stepping on the necks of the “blue dogs” in the process to get it done or the progressive community who got him elected will do it for him. Not a popular viewpoint amongst those on the right but remember the reaction to the three Republicans who voted for the stimulus before you act in high dudgeon.
It’s customary to give a grade on what you think on a lot of these things, but l don’t really like that. All l hope is that the president, while remembering he is there for ALL the people in the US, thinks a bit more about the parts that got him to where he is now.
The others don’t want your help Mr President. Stop trying so hard and wasting your time doing stuff for them, they don’t seem to be worth it.
Aug
31
I Like This
Filed Under Videos | 3 Comments
I do like it when an advert appeals to one’s own prejudices. Best not tell THX about this one.
Aug
31
Managing Change, Not Resisting It.
Filed Under Conservatism | 31 Comments
I was listening to an interview today on the radio. It was with a lesbian solicitor who was working to help gay couples become parents either through sperm donation, adoption or surrogacy. I’ve stated previously my view that conservatives should welcome gay marriage because it represents good conservative values like responsibility and duty. But I was interested by my reaction to gay parenthood. To be honest, I recoiled from the thought of it. This less to do with an anti-gay prejudice and more to do with the belief that children brought up in a mixed sex family unit have better outcomes.
But those mixed sex family unit statistics are used to compare childhood outcomes with children from single parent families. I’m sure there are statistics on gay parenting, but I would think that they are fairly meaningless owing to small sample sizes.
I found that as I thought about the issue, I found myself becoming less and less opposed to the idea of gay parents having children. The conservative in me says that the traditional view of families, that they are the preserve of one man and woman committing for life is the ideal. But we do not live in an ideal world, we live in a world where being gay is a fact, is not a lifestyle choice (usually), and acknowledging those factors, is a world in which being gay is no longer something to be ashamed of thankfully.
So in my linear way of thinking, I moved from opposing gay parenting to realising that being gay is a reality that conservatives have to accept to then thinking that if those were true, shouldn’t conservatives, as with gay marriage, realise that children raised in a loving gay family are much more likely to be well brought up functional children than those raised in single parent families (note that I am not criticising single parents necessarily, there will be a significant number of great ones, but the statistics probably don’t lie on this issue). But we’re not about to prohibit single parents from having children, so how can we do the same to gay couples?
And all this led to me thinking about how conservatism should handle issues such as these. One problem I see for conservatism is that resisting change is a lose-lose scenario. The fact is, in the last thirty or forty years, the world has changed almost beyond recognition. If conservatism resistance was being demonstrated, it has failed badly. But by always being the voice of resistance, conservatism has failed in another way too. It has lost control of society. However, if instead of resisting change, conservatism had accepted the inevitability of it, it would have been in a much better position to manage change with conservative values in mind. By welcoming gay families, conservatives can more easily make the argument, in the face of liberal opposition, that marriage and families have a moral and functional component. And a similar approach to change can be applied to American Health Care reform, immigration and environmental issues.
Conservatives should be expending their energies on making sure that inevitable change should be the right kind of change rather than on a quixotic resistance to inevitability.
Aug
30
Reagan And Kennedy
Filed Under American Politics | 1 Comment
Peggy Noonan has written a piece for the WSJ about a speech, written by her (does this revelation break the first rule of speechwriting – never take credit?), which was to be in honour of JFK. For the scene setting, read the article.
This is an outstanding speech (perhaps we should allow her to take credit, it’s well deserved) that demonstrates some of the class that is missing from today’s politics.
It always seemed to me that he was a man of the most interesting contradictions, very American contradictions. We know from his many friends and colleagues, we know in part from the testimony available at the library, that he was both self-deprecating and proud, ironic and easily moved, highly literate yet utterly at home with the common speech of the working man. He was a writer who could expound with ease on the moral forces that shaped John Calhoun’s political philosophy; on the other hand, he betrayed a most delicate and refined appreciation for Boston’s political wards and the characters who inhabited them. He could cuss a blue streak—but then, he’d been a sailor.
He loved history and approached it as both romantic and realist. He could quote Stephen Vincent Benét on Gen. Lee’s army—’The aide de camp knew certain lines of Greek / and other things quite fitting for peace but not so suitable for war . . .’ And he could sum up a current ’statesman’ with an earthy epithet that would leave his audience weak with laughter. One sensed that he loved mankind as it was, in spite of itself, and that he had little patience with those who would perfect what was not meant to be perfect.
“As a leader, as a president, he seemed to have a good, hard, unillusioned understanding of man and his political choices. He had written a book as a very young man about why the world slept as Hitler marched on, and he understood the tension between good and evil in the history of man—understood, indeed, that much of the history of man can be seen in the constant working out of that tension.
“He was a patriot who summoned patriotism from the heart of a sated country. It is a matter of pride to me that so many young men and women who were inspired by his bracing vision and moved by his call to ‘Ask not’ serve now in the White House doing the business of government.
“Which is not to say I supported John Kennedy when he ran for president, because I didn’t. I was for the other fellow. But you know, it’s true: When the battle’s over and the ground is cooled, well, it’s then that you see the opposing general’s valor.
“He would have understood. He was fiercely, happily partisan, and his political fights were tough, no quarter asked and none given. But he gave as good as he got, and you could see that he loved the battle.
“Everything we saw him do seemed to show a huge enjoyment of life; he seemed to grasp from the beginning that life is one fast-moving train, and you have to jump aboard and hold on to your hat and relish the sweep of the wind as it rushes by. You have to enjoy the journey, it’s unthankful not to. I think that’s how his country remembers him, in his joy.
“And when he died, when that comet disappeared over the continent, a whole nation grieved and would not forget. A tailor in New York put a sign on the door: ‘Closed due to a death in the family.’ The sadness was not confined to us. ‘They cried the rain down that night,’ said a journalist in Europe. They put his picture up in huts in Brazil and tents in the Congo, in offices in Dublin and Danzig. That was one of the things he did for his country, for when they honored him they were honoring someone essentially, quintessentially, completely American.
“Many men are great, but few capture the imagination and the spirit of the times. The ones who do are unforgettable. Four administrations have passed since John Kennedy’s death, five presidents have occupied the Oval Office, and I feel sure that each of them thought of John Kennedy now and then, and his thousand days in the White House.
“And sometimes I want to say to those who are still in school, and who sometimes think that history is a dry thing that lives in a book, that nothing is ever lost in that house. Some music plays on.
I have been told that late at night when the clouds are still and the moon is high, you can just about hear the sound of certain memories brushing by. You can almost hear, if you listen close, the whir of a wheelchair rolling by and the sound of a voice calling out, ‘And another thing, Eleanor.’ Turn down a hall and you hear the brisk strut of a fellow saying, ‘Bully! Absolutely ripping!’ Walk softly now and you’re drawn to the soft notes of a piano and a brilliant gathering in the East Room, where a crowd surrounds a bright young president who is full of hope and laughter.
“I don’t know if this is true, but it’s a story I’ve been told, and it’s not a bad one because it reminds us that history is a living thing that never dies. . . . History is not only made by people, it is people. And so history is, as young John Kennedy demonstrated, as heroic as you want it to be, as heroic as you are.
Aug
30
An Analytical Tour De Force
Filed Under American Politics | 26 Comments
I write a blog about American politics. I don’t really have the knowledge or analytical skills to provide genuine analysis. Martin Meenagh does, and he has written an epic post about the state of American politics at this moment in time. It’s not a pretty picture for either side.
I’m not going to quote from it, save one paragraph, because I really want you to go and read it in it’s entirety, but here is the paragraph that jumped out at me:
Are we looking at a wasted year of change that never was, and a disastrous inability to see the full scale of a crisis which will only reveal itself over time? Because a healthier country would recognise a desperate need to reform health care, and do it, and to fix the deficit, and do it, and to reign in the insurance companies and the lawyers and the politicians, and do it. America, it seems, can’t.
Now Martin is perhaps overly pessimistic. I don’t think America is doomed, although I agree that a fundamental realignment is required. If you agree, I’d like to know how you think that should happen. I think that America has had 60 years of centralised government. It hasn’t worked. The states need to reassert their authority and a new generation of politicians are required. Conservatives who don’t see conservatism through a fundamentalist lense, and liberals who recognise that the people are sovereign, not the state.
So come on, how can we, the cabbie bloggers help America. Advice is needed.
By the by, my next post is a verbatim speech made by Ronald Reagan in honour of John Kennedy. I think Reagan may give us an insight into how America can be fixed. Be nice to people, even if you disagree with them.
Aug
30
The Leopard Has Changed Its Spots
Filed Under American Politics | 11 Comments
By Original Tony
While looking at the video of Beck, courtesy of The Daily Kos, I became intrigued by the person or persons behind “The Kos” and so headed for Wikipedia.
The Daily Kos was started by a man called Markos Moulitsas, hence the shortened title of the blog as ‘Kos’
I wanted to get inside Markos’s head so to speak and read up some more on him.
Wiki calls him a “American progressive” and fortunately had a link to what a progressive is, in their opinion.
I have cut and pasted one section from the link
“Progressives such as William U’Ren and Robert La Follette argued that the average person should have more control over their government {emphasis by Original Tony}. The Oregon System of “Initiative, Referendum, and Recall” was exported to many states, including Idaho, Washington, and Wisconsin. [5] Many progressives, such as George M. Forbes—president of Rochester’s Board of Education—hoped to make government in the U.S. more responsive to the direct voice of the American people when he said: {emphasis by Original Tony}
“[W]e are now intensely occupied in forging the tools of democracy, the direct primary, the initiative, the referendum, the recall, the short ballot, commission government. But in our enthusiasm we do not seem to be aware that these tools will be worthless unless they are used by those who are aflame with the sense of brotherhood…The idea [of the social centers movement is] to establish in each community an institution having a direct and vital relation to the welfare of the neighborhood, ward, or district, and also to the city as a whole”
and even more glaringly:
Philip J. Ethington seconds this high view of direct democracy saying
- “initiatives, referendums, and recalls, along with direct primaries and the direct election of US Senators, were the core achievements of ‘direct democracy’ by the Progressive generation during the first two decades of the twentieth century.”[7]
Progressives also fought for the secret ballot and women’s suffrage.
While the ultimate significance of the progressive movement on today’s politics is still up for debate, Alonzo L. Hamby asks:
“What were the central themes that emerged from the cacophony [of progressivism]? Democracy or elitism? Social justice or social control? Small entrepreneurship or concentrated capitalism? And what was the impact of American foreign policy? Were the progressives isolationists or interventionists? Imperialists or advocates of national self-determination? And whatever they were, what was their motivation? Moralistic uptopianism? Muddled relativistic pragmatism? Hegemonic capitalism? Not surprisingly many battered scholars began to shout ‘no mas!’ In 1970, Peter Filene tried declared that the term ‘progressivism’ had become meaningless”.
So here we have a “progressive American” running a blog that rips its founding principles to shreds! And on top of that, his very ideals, as Peter Filene states, are totally meaningless.
It seems progressives and liberals have abandoned their founding ideology and have sailed straight to the extreme left, into communism or Marxism and dare may I ask is Mr Moulitsas even aware of his hypocrisy and ignorance, like most of the left today?
Aug
29
Right Wing Assassins
Filed Under Uncategorized | 30 Comments
I don’t know a lot about Mike Malloy, he seems to be the liberal equivalent of a Rush Limbaugh. Here’s a comment from a blog post by him on the death of Edward Kennedy:
He was, of course, the only Kennedy brother we got to watch grow old. Joe died young fighting in WWII; Jack and Bobby were assassinated in each of their life’s prime by the right-wing, neo-Fascist madness that continues to poison this country
And here’s Chris Matthews evoking the spirit of Dallas, 1963:
Jack Kennedy was killed in an open car in Dallas in the midst of the most hated–it’s like the mood we’re in right now.
Erm. Wasn’t Jack Kennedy assassinated by a communist? Wasn’t Sirhan Sirhan an Arab nationalist dismayed by Robert Kennedy’s support for Israel?
In fact, the last three assassinations or attempts on Presidents or senior politicians, were either committed against Republicans or by people with decidedly un-conservative leanings. So how can those on the left, whipping up the hysteria about guns at Obama’s appearances, draw any comparisons between the events of the past and those of today? Well they can’t unless they’re being blatantly dishonest.
Aug
29
Ted Kennedy=Benedict Arnold?
Filed Under American Politics, Foreign Policy | 29 Comments
I find this story stunning:
The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.”
Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election.
O.K., the first caveat to this is that this is a story from the K.G.B. files, a memo from a K.G.B. officer based on what was said by an associate to Ted Kennedy so it is third hand information.
But if it is true, I’m amazed that this hasn’t been a bigger story (another reason for my caution). Senator Edward Kennedy was prepared to give information to the Russian Premier on how to deal with the current U.S. President over arms-negotiations. I’m sorry, but is there any other way to look at this other than as a treasonous act?
Perhaps my prejudices about Kennedy and the ‘nuanced’ approach the American liberal-left have towards foreign policy (ie. America-second) are colouring my judgement on this. Please feel free to point out what I’m missing here.
Aug
29
Glenn Beck Talking Sense?
Filed Under American Politics | 8 Comments
The Daily Kos edits sections of Glenn Beck monologues to show what a loon he is:
Except…
A section starting at 1:16 had an interesting effect on me.
Beck: “I don’t believe in coincidence. When I see a huge bill after huge bill after huge bill, all hurried and given the same emergency, must pass now label, my reaction is whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. Why the rush? Clearly this is a strategy and it is working. It is overwhelming the system. Why would you want to overwhelm the system? You do it to collapse the system, and once that system is collapsed, a new one is put in it’s place. Well what system could possibly be ready to go? I don’t know but what a better time..is there a better time to implement the 1960’s radical ideology?”
Since Melanie Phillips at The Spectator started on her Obama is a marxist/Alinskyite puppet mantra, I’ve never bought into the conspiracy theory. I still don’t. And there is a case to be made that America’s problems require far-reaching solutions. I don’t agree with the policies, or the need for dramatic change, but I can see why a liberal would. Mind you, a liberal would want far-reaching dramatic change even if everything was hunky-dory. It’s what they do. But it is the speed of change, the ‘make the most of a crisis’ rationale behind the bills that makes me think Beck might not be too far from the truth.
Obama is not a pragmatic politician. He is a left-wing ideologue. His comments, his voting record and his actions always tie him to a far-left ideology.* He is about as progressive as they come. and progressives aren’t going to be prepared to take a pragmatic, only what works approach to governance. They have an agenda for change, and what better time is there to effect dramatic change, than when they can paint the country in a crisis. Sell the crisis, and it becomes much easier to sell change as a solution.
This is not necessarily a criticism of Obama. Progressivism is one answer to dealing with the world. Naturally, I don’t agree with this view, as a conservative, I much prefer a more cautionary and considered response to problems. However, America is not a progressive or liberal nation. Whilst it is no longer as conservative as it once was, there is still a general under-current of a mistrust for government.
I’m just not sure that we are going to see a mundane, steady as she goes two term Presidency here. Even if the economy recovers, or Obama passes Health Care reform and/or Cap and Trade, I do not see his progressive urges being satiated. This is particularly true if the Democrats retain power in Congress. Obama is a master at selling himself as the middling voice of reason in a partisan world. Even on health care, he has the left in jitters over the Government (public) plan. But I am sure that no matter how much he talks about bi-partisanship, or suggests moderating the bill, there will only be a health care bill with a radically orientated agenda. I’m sure the same will apply to Amnesty and other legislation that he or the Democrats try to pass in the next 3-7 years.
This will certainly be an interesting Presidency to watch. Unfortunately, for me as a conservative, I am much more disposed to watching a boring inactive Presidency.
* The one aspect of his Presidency that gives me pause on just how far-left his agenda is, is national security. Whilst rhetorically distancing himself from the previous administration on this matter, Obama has actually continued much of Bush’s national security agenda. The cynic in me thinks that Obama realises that a security breakdown will doom his Presidency and thus he does enough to avoid that possibility to protect his ability to carry out a radical domestic agenda,. But part of me is also more tolerant of his motives. Liberalism has a naive, idealistic view of world affairs. But the truth of international security is much more complicated than that. I think Obama now understands this, being in the hot seat will do that. But we shall see.
Aug
28
Open Post
Filed Under Uncategorized | 57 Comments
Have fun and be nice 