Blogs Feed
Why ObamaCare is Failing
14 March 2010
Anyone looking for an explanation of why, despite the supposedly unimpeachable logic of the thing and the Democrats' majority in both houses of Congress, Obama's health care plan is going down the tubes should look no further than these two, succinct explanations:
First, Forbes magazine's Shikha Dalmia:
"Even if Democrats extract the votes to put ObamaCare over the top, it will at best be a Pyrrhic victory for them. Regardless of the outcome, this monstrosity might cost the Democrats the Congress this November, ruin the party for a long time and prematurely render Barack Obama a lame duck president for the rest of his term. . . . In fact, the real reason why ObamaCare is so unpopular is that it is proposing a giant expansion of the entitlement state precisely when this state everywhere is coming apart: here and abroad; at the federal level and the state; in the public sector and the private. Suggesting a giant government takeover of a sixth of the economy can’t be a popular selling point in a country whose DNA has a programmed hostility to Big Government.”
Second, Commentary magazine's Jennifer Rubin:
"Something more fundamental is going on here: Obama seems not to respect his fellow citizens — the uninformed rubes who crashed the health-care town halls — nor care what they think. All his energy now is devoted to disregarding their strong aversion to his idea of health-care reform and forcing through a vote on something the public doesn’t want. It’s hard to bond with the American people ... when your agenda conveys disdain for their concerns."
Republicans have lots of long-term problems of their own, but at the moment they are blessed by having the best of enemies.
Flight Delay
12 March 2010
His health care plan is in tatters: Depending on you talk to, he’s only got as few as 201 Democrat Congressmen willing to vote yes on ObamaCare. At the same time, his poll numbers continue to sink with his Gallup approval rating at its lowest point yet.
But that may not be the worst news for Barack Obama.
According to The Australian’s Brad Norington, it looks like the President may wind up delaying his long-anticipated trip down under.
It seems the President's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was coy when asked about the Obamas coming trip to Guam, Indonesia and Australia, saying only "I don't have any updates for you right now on the trip, except to say the President is going on that trip" - while refusing to speculate on potential delays. The President has indicated that he wanted a vote before taking off.
Norington also notes that, unlike Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who received the honour last week, Prime Mister Kevin Rudd would not be presenting Obama with an Order of Australia gong.
Unlike the Nobel Peace Prize, apparently one has to actually achieve something to earn an OAM.
Falling out of love?
11 March 2010
It is no secret that Kevin Rudd wants to be thought of highly by Barack Obama – or rather, that he wants to be thought of as being thought of highly by Barack Obama. After all, who could forget this cringe-making moment at the G20 Summit in April?
Yet with the US President’s overall disapproval numbers hitting 56 per cent - a number it took George W. Bush a whole six years to achieve – one has to wonder if Mr Rudd is now reconsidering his infatuation. One place to look for cues is in Parliament, where on a number of occasions, Mr Rudd has turned to the United States to illustrate how an economy should not be run. Recent Question Times have seen Mr Rudd defend various programs to jack up the economy by pointing to the “seven million jobs lost in the United States” versus the “nearly 200,000 jobs gained” in Australia during the Global Financial Crisis.
Of course, Mr Rudd’s macroeconomics are off-kilter. Given that both the US and Australia have embarked on massive “stimulus” spends but have wound up at wildly different places suggests that the something other than the Rudd Government’s pump priming is responsible for Australia’s present economic security.
But with the Obama family dusting off the suitcases for their coming Australian adventure, it will be very interesting to watch how the two leaders get on, and see if the US president’s damaged reputation comes with him overseas.
Celebrate diversity!
30 October 2009
Coming on the heels of White House advisor Valerie Jarrett's ludicrous assertion that the Obama administration is "speaking truth to power" in issuing a fatwa against Fox News, it is time for another look at how dissent, which under the Bush administration was considered the highest form of patriotism, is now as fashionable as Aunt Edna's house coat.
I mean, remember when Australian Elizabeth Blackburn won the Nobel Prize for medicine? Everyone from the Sydney Morning Herald to Salon lauded her not for her achievements in the lab, but for supposedly having "stood up to Bush". (Barack Obama won his Nobel in largely the same spirit, it seems).
Today, however, dissent is not treated anywhere as favourably - or fashionably.
Having been embarrassed by their electors at town hall meetings across the country, the federal government is using those same voters' tax dollars to research and report to Congressmen on the topic of how avoiding constituents can boost one's poll numbers.
Meanwhile, according to this report Attorney General Eric Holder tried to heavy an interest group into killing an ad supporting school vouchers. Imagine the outrage if such shenanigans had occurred during the Bush administration!
And further afield, Democrat John Kerry is trying to get the Law Library of Congress to stifle a report on Honduras - because it doesn't match up with the Obama administration's bizarre reading of events in that country, where the Supreme Court legally removed a president who was attempting to violate his constitution's term limits.
It seems Barack Obama's supporters could use some lessons in tolerance and celebrating diversity - of opinion, that is.
Truth to power?
29 October 2009
For a conservative like myself, who is always ready to see left-wing bias under every media bed, the response of many Washington journalists to the White House's smash-mouth tactics has been heartening. Whether it be ABC's Jake Tapper, press corps doyenne Helen Thomas, or the bureau chiefs who refused to go along for an audience with the "pay czar" (and how creepy is that position title?), Washington's journalistic elite are increasingly aware that even if today their competitors are in the frame, next week it could be them.
Which is why Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett's comments that her team is "speak[ing] truth to power" at is such an amusing own goal for the White House.
First, they made a huge mistake declaring war on Fox News (Roger Ailes' network's ratings are through the roof while CNN's are in the sewer): in doing so they violated a basic tenet of media management, namely, always fight upwards. By sniping at a cable news channel from the lofty heights of Pennsylvania Avenue, they lowered themselves while conferring dignity on Fox.
Then they show themselves again clueless about the nature of power, an amazing thing for a gang of community organisers supposedly schooled in the ways of Saul Alinsky. Rather than framing and freezing their target, in saying that they are speaking truth to power the White House is playing the role of the victim.
Is it any wonder that they are not speaking truth to the powers that matter - in Tehran, in Pyongyang, in Moscow?
In the frame
21 October 2009
American journalism is in trouble. Yesterday the New York Times, smarting after a series of scandals, accusations of bias, and bad business decisions, announced that it was cutting another 100 newsroom jobs. Meanwhile the Obama White House has stepped up its Nixonian campaign against its enemies in the press, especially Fox News. The message to other editors is clear: don't criticise us, or you'll find yourself beyond the pale as well.
And amazingly, with a few exceptions - White House Press Corps doyenne Helen Thomas and ABC's Jake Tapper among them - much of the American media has decided to play along. Thus they ignore legitimate news items such as revelations that the White House Communications Director (and wife of Barack Obama's personal attorney) is an admirer of mass-murder Mao Tse-Tung while happily repeating unsubstantiated slurs against the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
No wonder Americans are switching off.
Here at home this abdication of responsibility would be less serious if Australians could rely on local news outlets' own Washington and American correspondents to pick up the slack. While there are some honourable exceptions, too many Australian journalists wind up winning one of the sweetest plums in their profession only to fritter it away by never bothering to so much as pick up a phone.
Take Fairfax's Anne Davies, who once used a single line sourced from an obscure right-wing blog to support the idea that American conservatives, troglodytes that they are, were up in arms over Michelle Obama's veggie patch. Just this week, she offered readers a thumb-sucker on Barack Obama that opened with the question, "Is it possible for a world leader to be too rational, calm and deliberative?", and then went on to answer it with second-hand quotes sourced from CNN, the New York Times, and Saturday Night Live.
Why is this important? Well, for one thing, it sheds a lot of light on the reason why traditional journalism is on the wane in both countries: readers are less inclined to trust journalists who they see as having been co-opted by a political agenda.
And it makes it that much more difficult for Australians to understand what is going on in one of their most critical economic, strategic, and cultural partners.
Mau-mauing the Maoist flak-catcher
19 October 2009
One of the first rules of public speaking is, "be careful whom you quote". If you're a reasonably educated human being, therefore, it should be obvious that you don't cite Pol Pot if you're giving a speech about agricultural policy, and you don't look to Adolf Hitler, vehement anti-smoker that he was, for words to back up an address on the evils of tobacco.
Nor should one, if addressing a group of high school students (or anyone else, really), refer to a man whose reign of terror resulted, conservatively, in the deaths of 60 million people as one of your favourite political philosophers - which is just what White House Communications Director Anita Dunn did recently.
Watch the tape - it's pretty damning. Or if you don't feel like wading through the speech, here's the choice bit: "In 1947, when Mao Tse-tung was being challenged within his own party, on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side and people said how can you win, how can you do this, how can you do this against all odds against you, and Mao Tse-tung said 'You fight your war and I'll fight mine.' Think about that for a second, you don't have to accept the definition of how to do things and you don't have to follow other people's choices in the past."
Even if it was a joke, it was not a funny one. Indeed, it sounds more like outright admiration for a man whose perverse brand of anti-intellectual Marxism that was simultaneously brutally centralised yet scarily anarchic gave his countrymen the horrors of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and a gulag system that exists to this day. (Perhaps this is why Barack Obama was so quick to snub the Dalai Lama?)
Look, forget the Obamas' long-standing friendship with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. The fact is, the Obama White House is rapidly becoming a big tent for the sort of cranks who set up card tables on the fringes of growers' markets and pass out hand-xeroxed fliers.
Yes, 9/11 "truther" Van Jones lost his "green jobs" czar role, but that leaves plenty of largely unaccountable individuals like science advisor John Holdren who used to advocate forced abortions and a "planetary regime" to control population, or legal advisor Harold Koh.
Koh, let's not forget, is the high-ranking legal advisor who has spoken out in support of sharia law, discounted the notion of the US Constitution as the supreme law of the land (he prefers global, transnational arrangements), and written the still-confidential advice the Obama administration has used to brand the constitutional removal of Honduras's Chavezista president "a coup".
In this depressing context, it's no wonder Anita Dunn fits right in.
All the more reason for her to be kicked out.
Fools rush in
15 October 2009
A commentator over on Australian blogger Tim Blair's site asks a relevant question: "How is it that when Righties quote Lefties, they have video, audio, and notarized confirmation from the Pope, but when Lefties "quote" Righties, they have Wiki entries contributed by ‘Cobra'?"
It's an important point to keep in mind given the current smear campaign underway in the US against Rush Limbaugh, a man who has occupied an unhealthily large place in the psyche of the American Left for nearly two decades. Not for the first time, offensive - and completely unsubstantiated - quotes attacking blacks and supporting slavery have been attributed to the radio host, his enemies forcing him essentially to prove a negative.
This latest smear campaign comes at a particularly sensitive moment, as Limbaugh's potential purchase of an NFL team is now in jeopardy because of the rumours, which the League is considering using as a pretext to scotch the sale.
This, of course, is the same NFL that has happily rehabilitated Michael Vick after his prison stint for involvement in dogfighting ring that was busted when cops raided his property and "found the bodies of dead dogs buried on the premises, along with evidence that some of the animals there had been tortured and electrocuted."
Not for nothing do they call it the National Felons League.
On the other side of politics the burden of proof for bad behaviour is, and always has been, much higher. It took mountains of damning evidence about his divisive views about "white polluters", Republicans, and 9/11 conspiracy theories to get Van Jones to give up his salary as "Green Jobs Czar".
Robert Reich still commands an audience and Sarah Palin is still lambasted for her "death panels" comments, despite audio tapes from 2007 surfacing in which the ex-Clinton advisor and health care guru admits he thinks that older people should die because they're too expensive to keep alive, that younger people should pay more for their health costs, and that no one should expect to live longer than their parents.
(Amazingly, his audience can be heard on the tape applauding these statements - I'll leave it to others to draw their own conclusions about the nihilist nature of large segments of the intellectual Left).
And this is not even to mention other left-wing ranters, who happily abuse their opponents in the worst possible terms. Just this week we have seen Chris Matthews luridly fantasising about Limbaugh's murder ("At some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we'll be there to watch") and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann saying that, take away her "mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred", Michelle Malkin "would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it".
Remember this the next time someone talks about Fox News being lowbrow and full of hate.
Bailing out the autocrat industry
8 October 2009
It says a lot about a president's priorities when he approves sending $400,000 of taxpayers' hard-earned money to "foundations" run by Muammar Qaddafi's kids, but cuts off funding to an Iranian human rights group which had, to date, been diligently documenting the human rights abuses committed by the atomically aspirational Tehran regime.
Remember, this is the same Muammar Qaddafi who recently welcomed a convicted Lockerbie bomber home with open arms.
And this is the same Tehran regime which has, since stealing elections earlier this year, has committed murder, rape and mayhem against its opponents (not that it was a model of good governance beforehand) and which has made clear its intentions to obtain nuclear weapons while also threatening to wipe a UN member state off the map.
I have quizzed a number of my liberal friends and associates on this matter, asking them how this can be justified, but I still have not been able to get an answer more coherent then a spluttered, "Um, but, George W. Bush! Hey, look over there!".
Look, it is easy - and dangerous - to be naïve in the foreign policy arena. Nations, like individuals, who choose only saints as friends soon find themselves lonely indeed. But Barack Obama came to office on a promise of a more idealistic foreign policy, one that abandoned cynical Cold War calculations along the lines of, "they may be bastards, but at least they're our bastards".
And since that time, he has shown a remarkable degree of affinity with autocrats and hard men who don't let pesky things like the democratic will of the people get in their way (a view that is increasing in favour among certain segments of the coastal elites who supported Obama's candidacy). In recent weeks and months he has broken precedent and refused to meet with the Dalai Lama to avoid rubbing Beijing the wrong way.
He has stuck his nose in the affairs of a sovereign Latin American nation, Honduras, in support of Manuel Zelaya - a Hugo Chavez wannabe whose supporters are full of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
He has sold out the democracies of Eastern Europe to appease a resurgent Russia offended by America's missile defence plans. Yes, Democrats have claimed that the move was a strategic one, designed to get Moscow on-side in the quest to contain Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
But as TV's Dr Phil might say, "How's that working out for you?"
Dismiss it as feel-good pap or dangerous neoconservatism if you will. But there was a time when the United States stood for the spread of democracy and freedom. It may not have always lived up to this ideal, but as a governing principle, it was a good one, defeating the twin menaces of fascism and communism.
Today, as demonstrated by Barack Obama's recent speech to the UN General Assembly, his discomfort with the idea of American "victory" in Afghanistan, and his clear over-arching desire to consign notions of American exceptionalism to the dustbin of history, it is clear that the US under the current administration is more concerned about being one of the guys than standing up for principle.
This discarding of hard-earned moral capital, after a presidential campaign that aimed at the sweet spot of Americans' better natures, is one of the most disappointing aspects of Obama's presidency thus far.
And it is one of the many reasons why the Democrats are heading for a shellacking in 2010, and why the words "one" and "term" are increasingly being used in discussions about a presidency that is as simultaneously moralistic and disastrous as that of Jimmy Carter.
Times columnists go rogue!
6 October 2009
Lyndon Johnson famously quipped that when he lost Walter Cronkite, he lost Middle America. Today there is no single journalist or news outlet that commands the same audience or respect as the silver-haired broadcaster who died last July at age 92. But reading the last few days' broadsheets out of America, it's becoming clear that Barack Obama is losing the New York Times - and with it, much of liberal America that elected him.
Folks, when even the most reliably liberal columnists at the Grey Lady - which in recent weeks has found itself utterly overtaken by the Van Jones controversy and caught out airbrushing quotes from a report on the President's Olympics embarrassment - are now speaking truth to power, a sea change has occurred.
Frank Rich, who is to post-modern urban coastal dwellers what Henry Luce's Time magazine was to an earlier generation of middle Americans, was first off the mark on Sunday, with a column decrying the end-of-Rome decadence of the lobbying culture that infects the Obama White House. Read the whole thing, though this should give you a flavour: "We're not even nine months into the new administration, yet these swaggering, utterly un-self-aware influence peddlers seem determined to prove that nothing except the party affiliations has changed in the Beltway's pay-for-play culture since Tom DeLay."
Rich was followed by Bob Herbert - Bob Herbert! - a man who when it comes to Obama has carried more water than the Kamchatka Current. Yet in his latest column he noticed that something that conservative bloggers have been discussing for months: namely, that the President's stimulus package hasn't done much good on the jobs front.
Asking "Does Obama get it?", Herbert complains about the President's blasé attitude towards jobs, and specifically Obama's cavalier assertion that they "tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last."
As Herbert notes, "Faced with the relentless monthly costs of housing, transportation, food, clothing, education and so forth, they have precious little time to wait for this lagging indicator to come creeping across the finish line...Americans need jobs now, and if the economy on its own is incapable of putting people back to work - which appears to be the case - then the government needs to step in with aggressive job-creation efforts."
Perhaps someone forward Herbert this invaluable chart which demonstrates the epic gap between Obama's promises and reality - something which seems to be opening up more and more each day.
Recent Posts
- Launch of the Dow Sustainability Program
- Sustainable supply chains
- David Brady: The Obama Presidency and the outlook for the coming year
- US Ambassador meets students at the US Studies Centre
- US Business Leadership Forum with Rupert Murdoch
- Celebrating the launch of American Review
- One year of Obama: A discussion with James Fallows, Paul Kelly, Robert Hill and Geoffrey Garrett
- James Fallows: One year of Obama
- Obama: One year in the making
- Meeting of the US Studies Centre Council of Advisors
- Costello discusses post-GFC financial reform
- Jim Johnson: How is Obama responding to the financial crisis?
- Jim Johnson seminar with US Studies students
- US Politics in the Pub: The rebirth of the Republican right?
- Dennis Richardson discusses the state of Australia-US relations
- "US in the World" High school lecture
- 2009 National Summit: Dinner
- 2009 National Summit: John Micklethwait Keynote Speech
- 2009 National Summit: Human health and sustainability - What are the challenges for globalisation?
- 2009 National Summit: Expert Sessions 2
- 2009 National Summit: Business solves poverty - The new approach to corporate social responsibility
- 2009 National Summit: Corporate social responsibility - How should business behave in the GFC?
- 2009 National Summit: Climate change and energy security - Looking towards the Copenhagen Conference
- 2009 National Summit: Breakfast
- 2009 National Summit: Public Forum
- 2009 National Summit: Expert Sessions 1
- 2009 National Summit: Labour and human rights - Can we afford them in a global financial crisis?
- 2009 National Summit: Malcolm Turnbull Keynote Speech
- 2009 National Summit: Governing the global economy - Economic nationalism vs. Bretton Woods 2.0
- 2009 National Summit: Obama's America - Globalisation headaches and protectionist impulses
- 2009 National Summit: Peter Garrett Opening Address
- 2009 National Summit: Welcome Address
- 2009 National Summit: Welcome Reception
- 2009 National Summit: Masterclass
- Thomas Mann: The Obama Administration and its Outlook on the Asia Pacific
- Thomas Mann: The First 100 Days of the Obama Administration
- Robert Burgelman: Leading Strategically in a Turbulent Environment
- Robert Thomson: The Obama Administration and the Actions Shaping the Global Financial Crisis
- Barry Jackson: Evaluating the Obama Stimulus Package
- The Great American Recession: What Does It Mean For You?
- Edward Leamer: The Financial Crisis and the Outlook for the US
- Inauguration Watch: Manning Bar
- Inauguration Watch: Breakfast
- Harry Harding: China in the 21st Century and Policy Implications for Australia, the US and the World
- Christmas Function
- fdgdfsg sdf sdfg
- The President-Elect: What Can We Expect?
- David Brady: The US Under the New President
- Election Day Spectacular
- Michael Parks and Simon Jackman: America at the Crossroads
- 'US in the World' High School Lecture
- Foreign Policy of Obama and McCain: Which is Australia's Gain?
- Mike Chinoy: Global Crisis Points - The War on Terror, Loose Nukes and American Foreign Policy
- James Gibbons: Replicating Silicon Valley - Lessons for Australia
- Vice Presidential Debate Screening
- Visit by the Australian Political Exchange Council’s 25th US Delegation
- Derek Shearer: Obama v McCain - Who Will Win, Does it Matter?
- John Howard Dinner
- McCain's Acceptance Speech: Republican National Convention
- New Horizons: Breaking into the US market
- Sydney Uni Live!
- Obama's Acceptance Speech: Democratic National Convention
- Hedley Bull Book Launch: Address by Bob Hawke
- Great White Fleet Centenary Ball
- Dick McCormack: Global Financial Risk and the Role of Central Banks and Regulators
- Jonathan Pollack: US-North Asia Relations
- Jeffrey Sachs Dinner
- ANZASA Conference
- Peter Scher: Will US Trade Policy Change After the 2008 Elections?
- Peter Scher: The Next President's Challenge - Global Trade and the 2008 Elections
- Matt Bai: US Political Journalism - The Next Generation
- Bob Pisano: Positioning Australian Screen Content in the US Marketplace
- Marvin Goodfriend: The Outlook for the US Economy and the State of the Financial Institutions
- American Foreign Policy After Bush: Frank Fukuyama in Conversation with Geoffrey Garrett
- Frank Fukuyama Meets US Studies Students
- Frank Fukuyama: Contemporary Issues Facing America
- Super Tuesday screening at the Manning Bar
- 2007 National Summit: Public Forum
- 2007 National Summit: Networking and Research Forum
- 2007 National Summit: America Then, America Now
- 2007 National Summit: Climate Change or Islamofascism
- 2007 National Summit: Dinner
- 2007 National Summit: How Countries Compete
- 2007 National Summit: Will the Next US Foreign Policy Look Surprisingly Like the Current One?
- 2007 National Opinion Survey: Australian Attitudes Towards the US (Part 2)
- 2007 National Summit: Opening
- 2007 National Summit: Welcome Reception
- Role of Arts and Humanities in Building International Understanding: Harriet Mayor Fulbright
- 2007 National Opinion Survey: Australian Attitudes Towards the US (Part 1)
