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.

Obama’s December: deity or damaged goods?

Obama: We Need Global Emissions to Peak Now

While I still hope Obama’s team will tell him to turn down the Nobel Peace Prize (see my earlier post), that now looks unlikely.His initial reaction doesn’t leave much wriggle room (“humbled to be selected” etc). Given that he was woken in the early hours to be told the news, one wonders whether this was the 3 am call that Hillary tried to warn us all about.

So let’s look forward to Obama’s December, which could progress along two dramatically different paths. Here’s the key dates:

December 7: Copenhagen climate summit opens.

December 10: 300 miles away, Obama arrives in Oslo to give his Peace prize acceptance speech.

December 16: Copenhagen’s high level segment starts (the bit Ban-Ki Moon, Ministers and some heads of state pitch up for – Gordon Brown is confirmed, other are under pressure to turn up).

December 18: Copenhagen concludes – with a deal (triumphant headlines) or no deal (major league acrimony).

So by Christmas, two scenarios – one that will see the President attain mythical status before his first anniversary in office; the other will fuel claims that he is already a busted flush:

Obama’s best case: Health care passed. Nobel prize accepted to great acclaim. Climate change deal sealed (now an outside chance, that is certain to require Obama’s personal intervention).

His worst case: No health care. Copenhagen talks have collapsed. Remorseless mockery for Obama’s Nobel. The IOC’s snub to Chicago’s Olympics dream (also delivered in Copenhagen) now seen as portent for what was to come.

So hold tight Mr President. December is going to be quite a ride.

Nobel Peace Prize – just say no! (update x5)

Early reactions to Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize are almost universally negative. I agree. The decision is absurd.

I’d love to be in the White House now. How does the President react? What can he possibly say that won’t make him look vain and narcissistic? Also – when was he informed? Did his team know this was coming? Was there anything they could do to head it off?

If I was one of his advisers, I’d currently be writing a speech that started something like this:

Today, the Nobel Peace Prize committee made a decision that places an enormous, but welcome, burden on my shoulders. They hope that I can be part of a new global effort to achieve a nuclear free world. This goal is of paramount importance to our future, and that of our descendants, and I would like to thank the committee for recognizing that fact.

There is still a great deal of work to be done, however. We are at the beginning of what will be a long and difficult journey. That is why, after much soul searching, I have decided that I must decline the honour that has been offered to me and ask that it be awarded to a more deserving beneficiary – one whose contribution to peace is in the past, not the future.

Perhaps, in ten, twenty or thirty years’ time, I will be truly worthy of a prize that has such an illustrious history. Today’s news has inspired me to redouble my efforts to make sure that is the case.

Update: Loren Feldman: “In office for 11 days when nominations closed. The fix was in. A sad day for the whole world. Shameful.”

Update II: Just done an interview for ABC News on why Obama should decline. Cashewman is thinking along similar lines.

Update III: This tweet seems to be going viral: “BREAKING NEWS on Obama’s Nobel prize. Turns out it was awarded for making peace with Hillary Clinton.”

Update IV: Looks like he’s going to accept it – big big mistake, I say:

U.S. President Barack Obama felt humbled to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a senior administration official said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called before dawn and woke Obama with the news that he had won the prestigious honor which was announced in Oslo at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT). “The president was humbled to be selected by the committee,” the official said.

When told in an e-mail from Reuters that many people around the world were stunned by the announcement, Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, responded, “As are we.”

Update V: Here’s an interesting wrinkle. Obama will be accepting his Nobel Prize in Oslo on December 10, just as the climate talks get under way a few hundred miles down the road in Copenhagen.

World to America: Grow Up! (updatedx3)

As America digests the news that Chicago won’t be holding the Olympics, the right has reacted with unbridled joy, while other commentators just seem dumbfounded. I especially like Politico’s roundup, which claims that “veteran Olympic watchers” have been left stunned by the decision.

This claim rests on quotes from Olympic historian, Bill Mallon who grumbles about the voting procedure, suggests with a straight face that the IOC should be remodelled on the US Congress, and puts the whole thing down to anti-Americanism.

If the U.S. president, who is universally recognized as the most powerful person on the face of the earth, comes to their meeting and entreats them to give him the games to his own home city, which has by far the best bid, and they turn around and say not only are we not going to give you the games, but you finish last – that reveals that they’re so euro-centric and international-centric, it’s ridiculous.

Leaving aside the ongoing, and bizarre, insecurity about Europe, d0 we really have to apologize for the International Olympic Committee not acting as an extension of American power?

(Especially, when Obama told delegates “We stand at a moment in history when the fate of each nation is inextricably linked to the fate of all nations — a time of common challenges that require common effort.”)

Unfortunately, we have more of this whingeing to look forward to. The United States has had two Olympics since 1984 – with the second, in Atlanta, widely recognised at the worst games in recent times. Now, angered at not having hosted a World Cup (soccer, for American readers – you know, the sport kids play) since 1994, the US is bidding for the 2018 or 2022 championships. Obama, Disney and even Henry Kissinger (!) have been lined up in  support.

The decision is due in December, just as the Copenhagen climate summit will be in full swing. Maybe the United States should throw major sporting events into the climate negotiating pot: “every time you don’t let us have an Olympics or World Cup, then another small island state will be left to drown…”

(more…)

On the web: Lehman’s legacy, the Irish referendum on Lisbon, transatlantic trends and more…

– With the anniversary of Lehman Brother’s demise, the FT recalls the events of that fateful weekend last September. The NYT has reflections of three former Lehman employees, while a Guardian roundtable asks what lessons, if any, we’ve learned from the bank’s fall. Niall Ferguson, meanwhile, rails against those who argue “if only Lehman had been saved”. He suggests:

Like the executed British admiral in Voltaire’s famous phrase, Lehman had to die pour encourager les autres – to convince the other banks that they needed injections of public capital, and to convince the legislature to approve them.

– Sticking with matters financial and economic, Der Spiegel has an interview with the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on the Fund’s actions during the crisis and the potential for a new role for the institution going forward. Former MPC member, David Blanchflower, meanwhile, offers a telling insight into the inner workings of the Bank of England’s decision-making as financial meltdown ensued.

– Elsewhere, the WSJ reports on President Sarkozy’s call to broaden indicators of economic performance and social progress beyond traditional GDP, following the findings of the Stiglitz Commission. Richard Layard, expert on the economics of happiness, offers his take here, arguing that “[w]e desparately need a social norm in which the good of others figures more prominently in our personal goals”.

– Wolfgang Münchau, meanwhile, assesses the implications of an Irish  “No” vote in the upcoming referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.  “There is an intrinsic problem for the Yes campaign in Ireland”, he suggests, “which is that the core of the treaty was negotiated seven years ago. This is a pre-crisis treaty for a post-crisis world… If we had to reinvent the treaty from scratch, we would probably produce a very different text”.

– Finally, last week saw the German Marshall Fund of the US publish its Transatlantic Trends survey for 2009. Unsurprisingly, a majority of Europeans (77%) support Barack Obama’s foreign policy compared to the 2008 finding for George W. Bush (19%); though the “Obama bounce” was less keenly felt in Central and Eastern Europe than Western Europe. A multitude of other interesting stats – on attitudes to Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, the economic crisis, and climate change –  can be found here (pdf).