Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
With focus on lame Republicans, Obama’s prospects have improved
The latest New York Times/CBS News pollconfirms a recent trend since the end of last year: President Obama’s political standing is improving. Obama’s job approval rating is now 50 percent, an “important baseline in presidential politics” according to the Times. The president’s approval rating has not been around 50 percent since the end of 2009, which was just […]
Why the contraception controversy matters
American liberals are wrong: Obama’s contraception rule is a violation of important religious liberties. Read my spiked article in full here.
Contraception and religious liberty: a debate liberals don’t want to have
Liberals who support the Obama administration’s rule that requires insurance plans operated by Catholic-affiliated institutions, such as universities and hospitals, to offer contraception generally think that the criticisms raised by Catholic bishops, Republican politicians and other are driven by narrow political concerns, rather than the principle of religious freedom. They are right in one sense: […]
The corruption of American politics
From Occupy to the Tea Party, the obsession with corruption is far more damaging to democracy than politicians’ alleged shady dealings. Read my review of Throw Them All Out, by Peter Schweizer, and Republic, Lost, by Lawrence Lessig, published in spiked, here.
A political fiasco of historic proportions
Obama is ailing, yet the bunch of political misfits posing as Republican presidential candidates can’t make any mileage from that. Read my spiked article in full here.
Blaming all the president’s men
Journalist Ron Suskind’s scintillating account of chaos and dissent in Obama’s White House would be better if he had shaken off his teenage habit of blaming everything on Wall Street. Read my review of Confidence Men, in the spiked review of books, here.
Frustration with democracy in the US
In an essay for spiked, Frank Furedi argues that the oligarchs of the European Union have turned decisively against democracy, in favor of elevating technocrats to positions of power in order to impose punitive austerity measures that do not have the backing of the electorate. Reading Furedi’s article, I was struck by how there are similar trends […]
Occupy at Wal-Mart calls shoppers “cum-sumer whores”
Here is a video with Occupy types on Black Friday handing out leaflets to Wal-Mart shoppers, urging them not to be “cum-sumer whores”. This is the level of wit and analytical thinking we’ve come to expect from the Occupiers, who have set themselves up as directly opposed to the masses who submit to “consumer slavery”. The narrator’s references to “feeding frenzy” says […]
Occupy’s “Buy Nothing Day”: a grotesque call for mass austerity
The Occupy protesters have launched a “Buy Nothing Day” to coincide with Black Friday. Their campaign oozes with disdain for the working class, and reveals the group’s true colors. It is truly grotesque that, at a time when people are struggling to get jobs and maintain living standards, Occupy is calling for austerity. It shows that their calls to rein […]
Occupy: the sad reality and the mad fantasies
Far from being clear-eyed, Occupy Wall Street is a blank slate on to which every opportunistic op-ed writer is scribbling his or her pet concerns. Read my spiked article in full here.