Ben Folds Ode to Merton – Chatroulette live
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfamTmY5REw[/youtube]
Telegraph: Impeach Obama (update x3)
Writing for the Telegraph, Gerald Warner argues that President Obama could face impeachment if he signs the healthcare bill:
The nasty car crash that is Obamacare is dragging down Barack Obama’s presidency. The cancellation of his visit to Indonesia and Australia to stay at home offering pork-barrel enticements to doubtful House Democrats is the kind of desperate expedient we expect from Third World dictators apprised of a potential coup at home. It advertised to the world the precarious nature of a presidency that has all but lost control.
In his obsession with his healthcare fantasy, Obama is prepared even to allow the subversion of the US Constitution. For what else is the so-called Slaughter Solution [click for an explanation]? Leaving aside the grim irony of this name being associated with legislation that seeks to promote an explosion of abortions in America by injecting billions of dollars into state support of that abomination – and thereby making every taxpayer complicit in abortion – the fact remains that the fundamental purpose of the Slaughter Solution is to bypass the American Constitution.
Expect much more of this in the coming years – especially if Obama wins a second term – with the London papers pursuing their traditional role of trailblazing stories that are not yet mainstream enough for their American counterparts to print.
Depressing though to see the Telegraph get in on the action this early in the game…
Update: With reports suggesting that deem and pass (aka the Slaughter Solution) will not now be used to pass healthcare, a constitutional challenge is now likely to be directed at the individual mandate. Wonder if Warner will update (or even tone down) his post…
Update II: More on constitutional challenges here. Michelle Malkin says the first lawsuits are imminent.
Update III: After passage of the bill, Warner doubles down:
The struggle is no longer simply to avert a corrosively socialist imposition, but to reclaim the American governmental system and democracy from an Emperor-President. The Obama healthcare coup d’état is naked Bonapartism and, as such, must be overturned.
Germany to Europe – do as we say and do
A few weeks ago, I questioned German wage restraint, pointing out that other Eurozone countries would prefer Germany to allow salaries to rise, thus stimulating domestic demand, and helping address Europe’s economic imbalances.
French finance minister, Christian Lagarde recently made the same point:
Clearly Germany has done an awfully good job in the last 10 years or so, improving competitiveness, putting very high pressure on its labour costs. When you look at unit labour costs to Germany, they have done a tremendous job in that respect.
[But] I’m not sure it is a sustainable model for the long term and for the whole of the group. Clearly we need better convergence.
In the FT, Otmar Issing – who did his best to ensure the European Central Bank was run on Bundesbank-approved lines – reacts to the suggestion with characteristic restraint and good humour:
This idea, presented as a panacea for Europe’s problems, is so economically erroneous and politically dangerous that it would hardly deserve being taken seriously – were it not for the risk that it might actually prevail…
At a time when the EU has launched a new initiative to make the continent’s economies more competitive, after the failure of the “Lisbon agenda”, an approach that deliberately tried to reduce the competitiveness of one of the most successful exporters in world markets would look like a bad joke.
I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then. Issing, who has been lobbying hard against a Greek bailout, reflects a worrying trend in German opinion. According to this line of thinking, other Eurozone countries should buckle down, cut wages and public spending, and do what their richer and more prudent masters in Berlin Brussels tell them to.
And if this medicine is too bitter, then they should bugger off, re-adopt the drachma, lire or peseta, and spend the next hundred years or so paying back the Euro-denominated debt they have incurred while in the single currency.
It’s a depressing vision. And, for Europe, it looks like it’s stagnation ahead.
A rare display of EU common sense on the G20
Regular (or obsessive) readers will be familiar with my exasperation at the EU’s inability to rationalize its presence in the G20, G8 and similar loose-knit multilateral forums – this would be much easier to achieve than, for example, altering the EU presence in the Security Council. During the economic crisis, EU members have gone the other way, with numerous European leaders trying to squash into the G20. So hurrah for Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso, who have managed to work out a mechanism to streamline their respective roles in these forums:
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU Council chief Herman Van Rompuy have decided who will speak on which subject when they both represent the union at international meetings such as the G20. “The two presidents have decided that the EU delegation will be composed of both presidents in one single delegation. That’s quite normal, as their roles are complementary,” a spokeswoman for the European Commission said during a press briefing on Thursday (18 March).
One of the novelties introduced by the EU’s new treaty is that the permanent president of the EU Council, former Belgian premier Herman Van Rompuy, also represents the bloc abroad in foreign policy and security matters. But in other areas, such as climate change, President Barroso will speak on behalf of the 27-member club. In areas where the two overlap, for instance energy, which is both a security and a commission policy area, they will decide on a case-by-case basis who will take the floor.
There’ll surely be tiffs on these “case-by-case” divisions of labor (and where does Catherine Ashton fit into this picture?) but this is a common sense approach. And common sense hasn’t been the leitmotif of Europe’s attitude to the G20 so far…
Still, the news could have come at a better time. The very idea that Europe can speak with a single voice on global economic governance has been shaken up by the growing controversy over how to bail out Greece. A key theme in recent G20 meetings has been how to reform the IMF – but now European capitals are fighting over whether the IMF should help Greece. The G20’s ability to coordinate the big economies is also in doubt. This week, the NYT reported on China’s attitude to one G20 pledge:
Last September, President Obama, President Hu Jintao of China and other leaders of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing countries agreed in Pittsburgh that all the G-20 countries would begin sharing their economic plans by November. The goal was to coordinate their exits from stimulus programs and prevent the world from lurching from recession straight into inflation.
The G-20 leaders agreed that the I.M.F. would act as intermediary.
But two people familiar with China’s response said that the Chinese government missed the November deadline and then submitted a vague document containing mostly historical data. These people said that China feared giving ammunition to critics of its currency policies at the monetary fund and beyond. Both people asked for anonymity because of China’s attitudes about its economic policies.
If this sort of thing continues, G20 discussions are going to lose the air of panicked collegiality of 2009, and get a whole lot nastier. It’ll help if the EU has a clear, single line on such controversies… That’s a bit of a pipe dream, given the Greek controversy, but kudos to Van Rompuy and Barroso for a small step in the right direction.
Public event, Brookings, Wednesday 24 March: can the UN and NATO be reformed?
As a service to readers in Washington DC – if we have any – I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be speaking at a public event at Brookings on UN and NATO reform on Wednesday 24 March at 2pm. I’m in more exalted company than I deserve:
- Martin Indyk, VP and Director for Foreign Policy at Brookings
- Jean-Marie Guéhenno, former head of UN peace ops
- Bruce Jones, Director of CIC
- Stewart Patrick, CFR’s top man on multilateralism
So, come and see me be entirely overshadowed – you can register here.