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decisivemoment

Listed below are comments made by decisivemoment between Wednesday, 18th June 2008 and Tuesday, 3rd November 2009.

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Republican revival in Virginia? 2:46pm on 03 Nov 2009 You need to be aware that this is a very odd set of off-year elections. A by-election in the most Republican seat in the northeastern US, between an independent running with the Democratic party endorsement and two Republicans that hate each other, the weaker of whom has now dropped out. A gubernatorial election in VIrginia in which the Democratic candidate is the one with the weakest organization, the one the party establishment did not want, and who has run an awful campaign that consists of agreeing with the Republican and alienating core Democratic voters. And a gubernatorial election in New Jersey, one of the more affected states by the financial crisis, in which the Democratic incumbent is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, and communicates entirely in impenetrable academic verbiage of five syllables or more.

Under the circumstances, it would be notable if the Democrats were to win any of these three races.

Also, you should have interviewed some people in Virginia who actually voted for Obama . . .
Why 'adolescent America' has to grow up 4:22pm on 26 Oct 2009 I think Mark Mardell is exactly right about buttoned-down and exaggerated deference. Americans are never sure of where they stand socially, and in middle class America they are additionally terrified of offending anybody, and frankly kind of hidebound. These characteristics are on most extreme display in Washington DC where Mardell is of course based, but also in places like California and in almost any middlebrow suburb you care to mention; if he could get into some of the more isolated parts of the heartland, such as parts of the South, or the northern Great Lakes region for example, he might find something a bit more culturally familiar.

Let's face it -- if it weren't for American fear of causing offense, and hidebound behavior and buttoned-down culture, Sacha Baron Cohen wouldn't have had a movie with Borat.
A case for healthcare reform? 3:21pm on 09 Sep 2009 Having lived in both the US and the UK, the only sector of healthcare where I'd say that on balance we're doing better than the UK is, not surprisingly, dental. Even there it's a bit iffy; I had some horrible dentists in the suburbs of Washington DC before I came to the Midwest, where they have spent the last dozen years or so putting right all the harm that was done to me in England and the Washington area.

Other than that, it's a nightmare. Mounds of paperwork. Squabbling with insurance companies. Doctors who are hung up on testing as a substitute for observation. Big premiums. Big co-pays. Big exclusions in coverage. And an increasing sense that your salary is suffering because of the enormous cost of healthcare to employers.

There's actually an interesting parallel between Britain and the US on healthcare coverage. US healthcare coverage is always expensive and often bad on what the British would call "consultants" (i.e. specialists), highly variable on hospitals (ranging from the excellent to the horrible), and plain difficult-to-get on primary care (general practice). If you think British hospital MRSA stats are bad, just look at the US. Across the Atlantic, British dentistry is much the same way, with the severe shortage of dentists in the UK mirroring the shortages in the US of competent hospitals, surgeons and primary care specialists. In both cases, the number of practitioners and other forms of competition are seriously restricted by so-called "professional" associations or business cartels who want to block new entrants from their field. While I believe we strongly need a government-led reform effort in the US in order to do something about the moral disgrace of denying health coverage to people on account of cost or pre-existing condition, I'll be the first to point out that it won't work without a serious effort to open healthcare up into something actually resembling a market.
Was Daschle irreplaceable? 05:22am on 06 Feb 2009 Of course the Republicans aren't being cowed. They are professional obstructionists of the worst kind. They will pull scorched earth tactics to the bitter end. That's why Obama's speech tonight was so sharp elbowed; he's taking it right back at them and he has to. Bipartisanship does not work with these people; they have to be defeated.

One day we'll have an actual conservative party in the United States, but until then we have this bunch of thugs calling themselves "conservative." What really boggles my mind is the way the Republicans applauded the initial draft of the stimulus, sat by and watch as the Dems put it to a vote unaltered, and then they unanimously voted against it, then ADDED spending provisions to it in the Senate, and are now beating up on it again on the grounds that it's "loaded with pork", most of which THEY THEMSELVES PUT IN IT. The sheer brazenness of the Republican hypocrisy is breathtaking.
An Atlantic League would sink SPL 02:39am on 30 Dec 2008 A disastrous idea. I can think of almost any alternative that would be better, ranging from something truly revolutionary like equal revenue sharing within leagues, or Champions League TV payouts equal by club rather than by the size of the domestic league; and/or at least a reform like a salary cap; or simply a kludge such as merging the Scottish and English leagues.

With a proper revenue sharing system and a salary cap, you can preserve every bit of tradition and you'd ultimately have a much more competitive product to offer fans that would bring in more overall revenue. It's just that the big boys would have to share a few toys in the short run.

And guess what. It has already been done. In the United States, no less. The National Football League already does exactly this, with the reforms fully coming into effect in the mid 1990s. And in the last 14 seasons, 11 different teams have won the Super Bowl. And the direct result is that the NFL has left every football league, even the EPL, in the dust when it comes to fan interest, revenue and attendances -- in part because teams with great traditions in the past who were becoming unable to compete (e.g. Green Bay, Pittsburgh) are no longer doomed to lose just because they're not from a major city.
Connections and patronage 8:46pm on 10 Dec 2008 British-ish (20), you ask "Anyway, why is it so many American haircuts look like wigs?"

In this case, the general assumption around Chicago is that it IS a wig, or a "rug" as we disparagingly call it.

Old South (64), I don't think Harold Ford is being viewed any more as a rising star in the Democratic Party. He's been wrong on so many issues that I don't think he carries much weight any more, and besides the matter of all his family's sleaze baggage, he sides with the Republicans on more issues than he sides with Democrats.
The enigma of Barack Obama 4:16pm on 19 Oct 2008 dpolwarth, if you do not by now know who Barack Obama is, go and look it up. As you do not trust the BBC, try other sources. As a Chicagoan I encourage you to search through the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and Daily Southtown, and various other Chicago and Illinois TV stations, newspapers and blogs (e.g. Capitol Fax, Illinoize). And of course don't forget THOMAS, the US Congress's bill-search website, and also don't forget the Illinois General Assembly website. You'll need those two to look through the legislation Obama has written or sponsored.

What you'll find is a very active, very successful legislator who in British policy terms stands somewhere in between Old Labour and New Labour but who also has quite a conservative and very anti-revolutionary temperament. He's a Midwestern reform politician in the tradition of people like Robert LaFollette and Eugene McCarthy. And he has a suitable personality for the job; assuming he gets elected, he will be a very rare combination -- very, very intelligent, AND very good at getting on with others, AND focused on the job. Clinton was missing the last feature, Reagan was missing the first feature, Carter and Bush I were missing the second feature, the current president is missing the entire deck of cards, but Obama has it all.

Also, allow me to summarize a few things.

1. Obama has held elected office for almost 12 years now -- eight in the Illinois General Assembly representing a district about the same size as a British parliamentary constituency (in this case, the 13th Senate District, which is the Chicago lakefront from downtown south to the Indiana border) that includes a huge mix of different social groups and classes; and now four in the US Senate.

2. He's done a fair bit in that time; death penalty reform in the state, overcoming huge opposition to require videotaping testimony in capital cases; universal children's health coverage in the state; and in the Senate, the first serious American initiative to stop weapons proliferation from the Soviet Union.

3. You've had ridiculously biased coverage of the people he associates with. You probably don't know that Jeremiah Wright is a highly decorated military veteran whose infamous YouTube sermon was an allegory quoted ridiculously out of context; you probably don't know that Obama's "association" with Bill Ayers was a local bipartisan school reform effort that also included two university presidents (one of them a big Republican) and Ronald Reagan's close friend and Richard Nixon's former ambassador to London Walter Annenberg, and that Ayers was included for his very considerable expertise on primary and secondary education.

Lastly the comparison with Blair is simply wrong. Blair never did any of the grassroots organizing that Obama has done; Blair never worked professionally or otherwise with poor people as Obama has done; everything I've heard, including from people who've met Blair, suggests that Blair is, as we'd say in the Midwest, "not the sharpest knife in the drawer"; Obama is also far less inclined to moralize at people than Blair. There's a very great deal of difference between the two.

Blair has more in common with Bill Clinton than with Barack Obama, but Clinton is still smarter and less out of touch than Blair. Blair, like Clinton, is an incredible narcissist; Obama is probably one of the least narcissistic politicians I've met. Of course, there is no such thing as a non-narcissistic politician, but I'll gladly take minimally narcissistic.
Southern comfort 2:53pm on 26 Sep 2008 As a multi-generational northern American on both sides of the family, let me just make a confession.

Almost all our best food comes from the South. Tex-Mex, gumbo, jambalaya, and almost anything you care to name as long as it's fried.

And almost all our worst food is Northern. "Salad" that consists largely of Jell-O. McDonald's, which trained much of the country to eat intolerably bland mush.

We do make some good sausage up North, though, thanks to all the German and Polish immigration a century ago, and I'll hold American-made cake up against anybody else's.
A mighty wind 03:59am on 23 Sep 2008 What the article neglects to mention is that northern and northwestern Texas is one of the best places in the world for wind power -- ground zero for a broad region of the American and Canadian plains with strong potential for huge amounts of wind power. The wind blows almost constantly at a moderate speed -- by contrast, much of the British Isles are either gale force or stop, either too fast or too slow for effective wind generation. The real NIMBY test in the UK, especially in England and Wales, will be tidal power -- England and Wales have arguably the world's greatest resource in that department.

And it is also sloppy to compare wind power NIMBYism in the more scenic parts of Britain to much of what has happened in New England, where the best situations are mostly coastal rather than inland, and where the biggest controversies have involved sites that may block shipping channels.
The gas-price election 5:31pm on 18 Jun 2008 And the mainstream corporate media love affair with McCain goes on. When he opposes offshore drilling, he's a "lovable maverick". When he flips and supports it, he's "in the election to win". Stop acting like a stenographer and start upholding the BBC's remit as a public service broadcaster, and actually ask some serious questions and do some serious analysis. You can save yourself some trouble and get some background by talking to the journos in Arizona. They'll be only too happy to tell you about the real McCain.

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