The press, including especially the Canadian Press reproduced in this venerable newspaper, have disgraced themselves. They have gone well past their accustomed bias and entered the giddy teeny-bopper genre of Tiger Beat magazine, cooing over the world's biggest celebrity and snarking about how beastly those few people who don't care for him are. Repeating malicious false rumours about Sarah Palin passes for front page newswire copy these days.
If the press are going to cover Barack Obama like the Vatican Information Service covers the pope, then the news of his fallibility will have to be found in the opinion pages.
Maybe the biggest surprise to come out of November 4 is that voter turnout was barely any better for Barack Obama's election than for George W. Bush's re-election. For the best part of a year the talk has been of a near-holy movement of the masses to "vote for change and hope." And yet, an American University study finds that voter turnout was "at most, one percentage point higher" in '08 than in '04: between 60.7 and 61.7 percent. Not far off of Canada's allegedly abysmal turnout in October of 59.1 percent.
With everything in the world going for him, and the gold-standard Gallup Poll on election eve showing him winning by 11 points, Barack Obama topped out at 52.7 percent, with over 66.5 million votes. Not earth-shakingly better than President Bush's '04 numbers of 50.7 percent and over 62 million votes.
Even as they elected the very most leftist major-party candidate for president at least since McGovern in 1972 and arguably in all American history, only 22 percent of voters admitted to being "liberal." 34 percent identified themselves as "conservative." A practically identical ideological break-down to 21-34 in '04, when it was Republicans who ran the tables.
Though you'd never know it from the Canadian Press "election coverage" that "Americans are becoming more socially progressive and aren't concerned with issues like same-sex marriage," gay marriage bans were actually on the ballot in three states on election day, and passed everywhere: libertarian Arizona, Obama-swinging Florida, and libertine California. Which brings the total of states outlawing gay marriage to 30, in case anyone at the CP has their note pad out.
And as most voters were electing Barack Obama, they were also rejecting four of five environmentalist ballot initiatives.
Obama's ascendance was greeted by votes of non-confidence from the markets, and a throwing down of the gauntlet by a hostile power. The Dow Jones Industrials set a new record for post-election day crashes, down 486 points, as compared with 101 points up the day after Bush's re-election in '04. The panic continued on Thursday with another 443 point decline, until $1.2 trillion in American wealth had disappeared, and only let up on Friday when Obama hinted at reconsidering his tax hikes. And within hours of the vote, Russia announced its intention to deploy ballistic missiles to its NATO borders, answering Obama's willingness to capitulate on missile defense with an "or else."
If all these admittedly secondary points can be sloughed off by Obama's many partisans as nothing to be bothered about, then they might at least give a thought to the tiny possibility that the election of Barack Obama has been the sale of a bill of goods.
Obama blitzed America's televisions with promises of "tax cuts for 95 percent" and "jumpstarting our economy." But he promises to raise the maximum capital gains rate by 5 percent at a time when investors have already fled the markets. He denounced John McCain for his plan to cut corporate tax rates by 10 percent, even as combined corporate rates in the United States rank second-highest among the 30 OECD nations. He promises to cut the taxes of the 40 percent of earners who pay nothing in income tax, and to raise taxes on the top earners, when America's top 10 percent presently pay 71 percent of federal income taxes, and the top 1 percent alone bear 40 percent of the burden. And he threatens to build walls against international trade as the global economy totters on the brink.
Obama swore to lead America to energy independence within a decade. But he threatened to bankrupt America's coal industry and to make electrical rates "necessarily skyrocket," for the cause of "healing the planet." And he shares his party's doctrinaire hostility to oil drilling and nuclear power.
Obama presumed to be the one to get Osama bin Laden, win Afghanistan once and for all, and maybe wade into Pakistan to boot. But he fought the policy that won the war in Iraq. He built his very candidacy on retreating from a winnable war in the heart of enemy territory and abandoning the people to their civil war and genocide. He has no military experience, no executive experience, and until a matter of months ago he hardly pronounced on military affairs except to condemn American efforts. He pledged to limit new weapons systems and missile defense while America's chief enemy in the world builds its first nuclear warhead. And he leads a majority party which threatens to cut military spending by a quarter in the midst of a global war.
Obama decided he was a moderate the day after he clinched the Democrat nomination in June. But he wanted driver's licenses for illegal aliens. He couldn't bring himself to support a measure compelling doctors to save viable babies born alive despite an attempted abortion. He backed a gun ban struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. And he pledges to abolish the secret ballot in union votes.
President-elect Obama got himself over the top, with every variable breaking in his favour and presenting himself as a Barack Obama who did not exist just months ago. It may be a tough act to keep up.
Andrew W. Smith, Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
If the press are going to cover Barack Obama like the Vatican Information Service covers the pope, then the news of his fallibility will have to be found in the opinion pages.
Maybe the biggest surprise to come out of November 4 is that voter turnout was barely any better for Barack Obama's election than for George W. Bush's re-election. For the best part of a year the talk has been of a near-holy movement of the masses to "vote for change and hope." And yet, an American University study finds that voter turnout was "at most, one percentage point higher" in '08 than in '04: between 60.7 and 61.7 percent. Not far off of Canada's allegedly abysmal turnout in October of 59.1 percent.
With everything in the world going for him, and the gold-standard Gallup Poll on election eve showing him winning by 11 points, Barack Obama topped out at 52.7 percent, with over 66.5 million votes. Not earth-shakingly better than President Bush's '04 numbers of 50.7 percent and over 62 million votes.
Even as they elected the very most leftist major-party candidate for president at least since McGovern in 1972 and arguably in all American history, only 22 percent of voters admitted to being "liberal." 34 percent identified themselves as "conservative." A practically identical ideological break-down to 21-34 in '04, when it was Republicans who ran the tables.
Though you'd never know it from the Canadian Press "election coverage" that "Americans are becoming more socially progressive and aren't concerned with issues like same-sex marriage," gay marriage bans were actually on the ballot in three states on election day, and passed everywhere: libertarian Arizona, Obama-swinging Florida, and libertine California. Which brings the total of states outlawing gay marriage to 30, in case anyone at the CP has their note pad out.
And as most voters were electing Barack Obama, they were also rejecting four of five environmentalist ballot initiatives.
Obama's ascendance was greeted by votes of non-confidence from the markets, and a throwing down of the gauntlet by a hostile power. The Dow Jones Industrials set a new record for post-election day crashes, down 486 points, as compared with 101 points up the day after Bush's re-election in '04. The panic continued on Thursday with another 443 point decline, until $1.2 trillion in American wealth had disappeared, and only let up on Friday when Obama hinted at reconsidering his tax hikes. And within hours of the vote, Russia announced its intention to deploy ballistic missiles to its NATO borders, answering Obama's willingness to capitulate on missile defense with an "or else."
If all these admittedly secondary points can be sloughed off by Obama's many partisans as nothing to be bothered about, then they might at least give a thought to the tiny possibility that the election of Barack Obama has been the sale of a bill of goods.
Obama blitzed America's televisions with promises of "tax cuts for 95 percent" and "jumpstarting our economy." But he promises to raise the maximum capital gains rate by 5 percent at a time when investors have already fled the markets. He denounced John McCain for his plan to cut corporate tax rates by 10 percent, even as combined corporate rates in the United States rank second-highest among the 30 OECD nations. He promises to cut the taxes of the 40 percent of earners who pay nothing in income tax, and to raise taxes on the top earners, when America's top 10 percent presently pay 71 percent of federal income taxes, and the top 1 percent alone bear 40 percent of the burden. And he threatens to build walls against international trade as the global economy totters on the brink.
Obama swore to lead America to energy independence within a decade. But he threatened to bankrupt America's coal industry and to make electrical rates "necessarily skyrocket," for the cause of "healing the planet." And he shares his party's doctrinaire hostility to oil drilling and nuclear power.
Obama presumed to be the one to get Osama bin Laden, win Afghanistan once and for all, and maybe wade into Pakistan to boot. But he fought the policy that won the war in Iraq. He built his very candidacy on retreating from a winnable war in the heart of enemy territory and abandoning the people to their civil war and genocide. He has no military experience, no executive experience, and until a matter of months ago he hardly pronounced on military affairs except to condemn American efforts. He pledged to limit new weapons systems and missile defense while America's chief enemy in the world builds its first nuclear warhead. And he leads a majority party which threatens to cut military spending by a quarter in the midst of a global war.
Obama decided he was a moderate the day after he clinched the Democrat nomination in June. But he wanted driver's licenses for illegal aliens. He couldn't bring himself to support a measure compelling doctors to save viable babies born alive despite an attempted abortion. He backed a gun ban struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. And he pledges to abolish the secret ballot in union votes.
President-elect Obama got himself over the top, with every variable breaking in his favour and presenting himself as a Barack Obama who did not exist just months ago. It may be a tough act to keep up.
Andrew W. Smith, Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
