Stating the obvious – at last!

President Obama moved yet another step further away from the “end of days” fervour of his predecessor’s administration and today, in a (secular) country with a majority of Muslims (ie Turkey) confirmed finally  that America was not at war with the Islamic World. It’s a simple statement, but one that is long overdue.

Bush’s “War on Terror” could have been similarly framed from the start to avoid the excesses of Islamophobia. But it seems demonising 100+ million people was all part of the black and white rhetoric of Bush’s febrile brand of religious infused war-mongering.

Hopefully, the polarity Bush created between the US and Islamic countries can be undone and, instead of disdain, the US will find real help in the Middle East to stop those who mean it harm.  Meanwhile, the US can re-focus away from trying to live out the Armageddon and focus on much overdue domestic, environmental and economic issues.

Personally, I look forward to the World’s most powerful nation doing something positive in the World rather than acting like a global playground bully.

It’s the little things…

As the G20 economic conference drew to an end this morning, there has been a large amount of analysis and commentary from the media. But for me, it’s the little things that jangle my nerves (for good and ill).

I switched on the news channels and they were all carrying President Obama’s post-conference press conference.  While many focused on the substance of the meeting and the scope and nature of the agreements reached, I was struck by another slightly less important but nonetheless interesting aspect of this meeting: The President of the United States’ willingness and ability to take unprepared questions from the floor and respond in an intelligent and thoughtful way.

It may be only a little thing, but it’s a sign the Whitehouse now has a brain in residence and a President confident enough to invite questions from the floor and to respond to them coherently. This contrasts with the past eight years. President Bush rarely made such appearances and, when he did, they were usually carefully staged affairs.

President Obama is articulate and clearly intelligent.  His style at these conferences might be a little too slow and deliberate for fact-paced television “news” channels.  But what he lacks in sound-bites, he more than makes up with substance.  It’s refreshing to see a smart and confident leader respond in his own time and proffer direct and substantial answers rather than meaningless slop for the masses.

I’ve always been a bit ambivalent about the President.  I want to like him and there’s certainly lots to like.  But I worry that he’s “all mouth and no trousers”; as they say. But watching the guy handle himself this morning left me wondering whether there should be room for optimism about this guy.

The US Budget

The US government has released its 2009 Budget and it’s not pretty reading. Manufacturing employment down to WWII levels, consumer confidence reaches a 40-year low, health care costs are bleeding the nation dry and predicted to be 20 percent of GDP by 2017 and government spending exceeding income by more than a trillion dollar.  Optimistically, Obama is only looking to halve the deficit by the end of his first four-year term. This is no “back to black” Budget.

On the plus side, Obama’s administration is massively investing in critical areas of the US economy and society including a staggering (and real) spend up on infrastructure across the board from bridges to IT systems.  Obama’s going to green the economy and energy base.  He’s also investing heavily in education and throttling back the cost of healthcare.  It’s all ambitious stuff.

The spend up is a liberal wet dream. But the cost of this ambitious programme, coupled with the astounding legacy of fiscal incompetence left by the Bush administration is worrying.  Hopefully this massive gambit will pay off.  We like to rib our American cousins a bit.  But where America goes so does the rest of the World.  If Obama’s ambitious plan fails, we’re all in peril. Remind me why and how George W Bush escaped impeachment?

Was the 2004 US Presidential Election stolen?

I am reading a great book rather plainly and obviously titled, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?.

The book starts with a simple idea: exit polling should accurately reflect voter intentions – given exit polls are taken almost immediately after an elector has voted.  Moreover, if there is a hidden variable (eg being ashamed to admit to voting for Bush) then this would generally manifest itself uniformly or in a predictable way.  What the authors look at are the massive anomalies that emerged in “battleground” states where Republicans ran the election processes.

The authors use an array of interesting data analyses to provide an answer to this simple question. And it’s fascinating journey. The sheer brazenness,  breadth and scale of the rorts are spectacular. Ranging from the usual kind of inter-party hijinks through to massive and cynical efforts to deny voters-particularly black voters-an opportunity to vote and to do this with horrifyingly efficient precision.  It’s an outstanding little book for those interested in democracy.