I always thought that if we got into a war with China, it would be because of a misstep in Taiwan.
Now, I am more inclined to believe it be because of a Chinese effort to invade Australia.
President Obama announced yesterday that he was sending the Marines to Australia. From the vantage point of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, it was a curious decision.
But if you are living in Australia or if you are an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, the decision couldn’t come soon enough.
There isn’t going to be shooting war in Australia any time soon, but the fact of the matter is that the Aussies are more than just our strategic partners. They are our brothers in arms, an outpost of Western civilization in a part of the world that will soon be overrun by a boisterous and rich communist regime.
Australia is important strategically for many reasons. Many of our intelligence gathering operations are there. They have vast natural resources that will become more important as the century unfolds.
They are the largest exporter of coal in the world. Read more...
It used to be said that domestic differences stop at the water’s edge.
That was never less true than it is today.
The fact of the matter is that foreign policy and domestic policy are the same thing.
It is trite to say that we live in a global economy. Now more than ever, we live in a global society. The country that is best able to handle globalism will be the country that is best able to prosper.
That is but one reason to be bullish on America. We embrace globalism, even when we don’t want to.
Immigration built America and it continues to do so. That is why America always changes, always adapts, rarely become stagnant and constantly improves. Sometimes the pace of change is hard for the nativists, but eventually they come around to the notion that these new arrivals can be useful in their own way.
What do I mean when I say that domestic and foreign policy are inexorably linked? Let me give you an example.
Health care is a first-class domestic issue, right? Read more...
The President traveled to Facebook yesterday to make the case to his Facebook friends that he is still the same old Barack Obama, the mythical figure who would deliver us all from the evil of the Bush Administration, that he said he was when he electrified the voting public two short years ago.
The problem for St. Barack is that the voters are getting wise to his schtick.
According to the Real Clear Politics poll of polls, Mr. Obama is pretty much near his all-time high when it comes to his unpopularity. In January of 2009, only 19 percent of the voters disapproved of the job he was doing. Today, over 50% disapprove.
While Congress as a whole is less popular than the President, voters prefer Republicans more than they prefer Democrats to be elected to Congress, according to the latest surveys. Given that Republicans are taking on high-profile challenges, and given that the Democrats have already thrown up millions of dollars worth of ads attacking GOP budget votes, the fact that the Republicans haven’t completely fallen apart in the polls is remarkable. Read more...
In 1733, the newly appointed colonial Governor, William Cosby, charged John Peter Zenger, a publisher based in New York, with scandalous libel.
In one of the most important legal cases in our nation’s history, a defense team, led by Andrew Hamilton and supported by Benjamin Franklin, stopped the prosecution in its tracks and established an important and now sacred legal principle: It is not libel if it is true.
Zenger won the case when the jury overturned the law as established by the British Governor, and from that point in time, America was born.
From that solid foundation, American democracy would eventually flourish. From that foundation, Thomas Paine would pen the incendiary, but truthful “Common Sense.” From that foundation, Thomas Jefferson would write the Declaration of Independence. And from that foundation would spring our first amendment to the Constitution, which established not only the freedom of the press, but also the freedom of religion.
For some reason I thought of John Peter Zenger in the context of the current crisis in Egypt. The Egyptians never had their Zenger moment. And neither did most of the rest of the world. Read more...
How does the United States break down the great (trade) wall of China? What is the right side of the China issue? Offering a theory on how American business and American workers can win…
Last week, the New York Times reported on an interesting phenomenon. Communist China is becoming the hot campaign issue for both Republicans and Democrats.
David Chen reported: From the marquee battle between Senator Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina in California to the House contests in rural New York, Democrats and Republicans are blaming one another for allowing the export of jobs to its economic rival. In the past week or so, at least 29 candidates have unveiled advertisements suggesting that their opponents have been too sympathetic to China and, as a result, “Americans have suffered.”
President Obama’s attack on the Chamber of Commerce was a ham-fisted attempt to link China to American business.
In the old days, we were worried because the Chinese Communists were going to attack us. Now, we are worried that the Chinese Capitalists are going to sell us to death.
It is hard to blame either Republicans or Democrats for the “China” problem. Well, on second thought, each party is equally to blame for the “China” problem. Opening up China to trade was a top international priority for President Clinton, but he wouldn’t have been able to pass legislation normalizing trade relations with the Chinese without Republican support. Read more...
When you enter the Chamber of the House of Representatives, if you look up near the ceiling, ringing around the room, you see bas-relief sculptures of 23 great lawgivers in history.
Hammurabi (fl. c. 1792-1750 B.C.). King of Babylonia; author of the Code of Hammurabi, which is recognized in legal literature as one of the earliest surviving legal codes. (image courtesy www.aoc.gov)
One of them is Hammurabi, the famous Babylonian ruler who put in writing the first law code.
The Code of Hammurabi was famous for its simplicity and directness. If you did this, you were punished this way. Even for most of the Babylonians who couldn’t read, they got the message.
I was thinking of Hammurabi and the need for a complete overhaul of our legal system when I saw that House Republicans were unveiling their pledge to America.
The pledge was fine, as far as it went. Designed to put something positive out into cyber-world without actually creating the kind of waves that could prove to be politically counter-productive, the Republican pledge was conservative in its approach. It certainly doesn’t excite many passions. Read more...
In the middle of a very hot summer, I have hockey on my mind. It’s on my mind, not only because the team of my boyhood dreams – The Chicago Blackhawks – finally won the Stanley Cup after an almost 50 year drought.
It’s on my mind because hockey in many ways is like the world economy.
For much of a hockey game, the two teams play at even strength. Teams of five skate back and forth against each other trying to score goals against the other team’s goal tender. But every once in a while, one player is removed from the ice because he commits a penalty, and he goes to the penalty box for anywhere from one minute to five minutes.
When a player is forced to leave the ice, a new dynamic is created called the power play. A power play gives an advantage to the team that didn’t create the penalty. And that is when the majority of goals are scored. When a team is able to score when they are short-handed — when they are at a disadvantage because of the penalty — that can be a turning point in the game. Read more...
In actuality, there isn’t much in common between the United States and the Greeks.
That was the conclusion of a distinguished panel of economists hosted by the American Action Forum and led by former CBO director Doug Holtz-Eakin.
But if we don’t get our act together soon, things could get steadily worse for the economy and for the American people, and while we probably won’t default on our debt (because we can always print more money), it won’t be very pleasant around here unless we start making some fundamental changes
Senator Judd Gregg, a longtime deficit hawk and current ranking member of the upper chamber’s Budget Committee, keynoted the forum, wryly pointing out in his presentation that western Democracies founded on the Scottish Enlightenment philosophy of free market capitalism and representative government (which, of course, would include the UK, the US, and Japan) are having the hardest time dealing with debt.
Totalitarian regimes, like the Chinese and the Cubans, don’t have our debt problems, because in the case of the Chinese, they work hard and have a government that is immune to public opinion, and in the case of the Cubans, nobody sane would lend the large amounts of money in the first place. Read more...
I was watching television this morning and CNN was alternating between video of the great Gulf leak and a video from the Hubble telescope of a planet getting eaten by a bigger star.
So, the message is if we don’t all kill ourselves, well, then a big star is going to eat us all any way.
On that cheery note, let me add another.
America is doomed. At least, that is the message that we get all too often from both the left and the right.
We are going broke. Our workforce isn’t competitive. People in the rest of the world hate us. We can’t plug the damn hole. We have too many immigrants coming into this country. Crime is too high. Our military is stretched too far. We are too fat. We are too old. We are too young.
And of course, we better all start speaking Chinese soon, because the Chinese are so rich, they work so hard, they are so smart, and there are so many of them, that we really can’t compete. America is doomed.
Really? Put me down as an America-is-doomed skeptic. Read more...
John Feehery is President of Communications and Director of Government Affairs for Quinn Gillespie and Associates, Washington, D.C.'s top public affairs firm.
Thursday, January 13, 2011 Show:The Ed Show Time: 6:30 p.m.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 Show:CNN Time: 6:00 p.m.
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