Obama is down in the polls, and only has himself to blame
It’s easy to be confused about this year’s presidential election.
Throughout the latter part of 2011, President Obama was faring badly in opinion polls. Unemployment remained stubbornly high and a majority did not approve of his job performance. The talk was that almost any Republican could beat Obama. But then, as we headed into a new year, Obama’s ...
This week’s articles of note
“The book that drove them crazy: Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind 25 years later,” Weekly Standard, by Andrew Ferguson
“Battleground America: one nation, under the gun,” The New Yorker, by Jill Lepore
“Hilary Rosen was right: Ann Romney is out of touch with most women,” Time, by ...
Is America committing “superpower suicide”?
Yes, claims that America is rotting like the Roman Empire are over the top, but two new books swing too far in the other direction.
Read my review of The World America Made by Robert Kagan, and ...
This week’s articles of note
“Liberal illiberalism,” PJ Media, by Victor Davis Hanson
“Please stop apologizing,” New York Times, by Bill Maher
“Obama heading for defeat in Keystone fight,” Washington Examiner, by Byron York
“Chinese capitalism is just another knock-off,” Reuters, by Ian Bremmer
“The anti-Walmart: the secret sauce of Wegmans is people,” The ...
Goading Goldman Sachs: a new sport
Half self-promotion, half banker-bashing, there was nothing brave about Greg Smith’s resignation letter.
Read my spiked article in full here.
Breaking news: Goldman Sachs is no longer a charity
Last week the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Greg Smith, a 33-year-old midlevel banker with Goldman Sachs in London, in which he explains why he is resigning from the Wall Street firm. In his view, the culture in Goldman Sachs is “toxic and destructive”, and the ...
This week’s articles of note
“The lost party,” New York Magazine, by John Heilemann [on the Republican primary contest]
“The emperor of vanished kingdoms,” Wall Street Journal, by Raymond Zhang [Interview with Norman Davies, historian of Europe]
“Party crasher: Ron Paul’s unique brand of libertarianism,” The New Yorker, by Kelefa Sanneh
“True innovation,” The ...
Greece: no rescue
The eurozone finance ministers’ €130 billion bailout package for Greece announced on Tuesday, the second in two years, will not “rescue” Greece. It makes the economic situation worse, and represents a further tightening of the European Union’s stranglehold on national sovereignty and democracy in Greece.
Euro bureaucrats claimed the deal was ...
Food prigs and “happy” pigs
Mark Bittman is a food journalist and the author of the recently-published book Food Matters, which he describes as ” a look at the links among eating too much meat, obesity, global warming, and other nasty features of modern life”.
Naturally, Bittman is a critic of ...
Republicans taking the bait on the contraception issue?
In the cover story for Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan argues Obama’s compromise offer on the birth control and religious freedom controversy has “set a trap for the right”:
The more Machiavellian observer might even suspect this is actually an improved bait and switch by Obama to more firmly identify the religious right with opposition ...
ABOUT SEAN COLLINS
I write about American current affairs for Spiked, the online magazine. I am a native New Yorker, and I divide my time between New York City and upstate New York.
In addition to articles for Spiked, The Australian and other publications, I contributed an essay, "BDS: Demonizing Israel, Destroying Free Speech," for the book Unsafe Space: The Crisis of Free Speech on Campus (2016). I also wrote a chapter on New York City's economy for the book London After Recession: A Fictitious Capital? (2012).
My writings have been cited in American Conservative, Arts & Letters Daily, the Financial Times, Fox News, the Huffington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the New York Times, Real Clear Politics, and the Times of London, among other media.
For more about The American Situation site, go here.
