Posted on Tuesday, 24th February 2009 by Bruce
Last week, I plugged a book which I read recently and really enjoyed, James Delingpole’s Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn’t Work.
Delingpole is a witty and refreshingly irreverent British novelist and journalist, author of numerous books, including How to Be Right: The Essential Guide to Making Left-Liberals History, and is a frequent contributor to The Spectator UK, The Daily Telegraph and The Times of London.
Delingpole attended the University of Oxford, and lives in south London; is married, the father of three, and enjoys cooking, gardening, and battle re-enactments. (He’d be the first to admit he’s a bit “obsessed” with War - specifically, the importance of choosing sides, and the perpetual clash of good vs. evil.)
I so enjoyed Delingpole’s writing (not surprisingly, he credits P.J. O’Rourke among his influences) that I reached across the Atlantic (courtesy: Facebook) and convinced Delingpole to share his thoughts on the first month of the Obama administration, and what he envisions to be America’s future under our new, Democrat Party-controlled totalitarianism.
BadgerBlogger: While you were so fearful of what Mr. Obama and his Democrat brethren had the capacity to do to America you were so kind as to author a book about it, now that we’re one month into the Obama administration, are you surprised by how quickly they’ve been willing to move?
Delingpole: Yes. The naive (or maybe optimistic) part [of me] thought that Obama would at least have the grace and responsibility initially to mask his left-liberal intentions: i.e. that he’d seriously try to rescue the economy first in a sensible, bi-partisan, economically literate way rather than go straight into the pork-barreling for favored interest groups. Instead, he has shown his true socialist colors straight away, burdening the ailing U.S. economy still further with social legislation it just can’t afford.
BadgerBlogger: Are you surprised by their brazen willingness to steamroll their opposition, openly criticizing anyone from House Republican leadership to talk radio hosts for daring ask any questions about their “stimulus†measures? How does this compare with the early days of Mr. Blair?
Delingpole: As I say in the book, the thing that never ceases to amuse me about liberals is how amazingly illiberal they in fact are. Way more bullying and controlling than most conservatives. Tony Blair - aka Obama’s MK-I prototype - kept a whole crew of bruisers ready to crush any form of opposition. His sidekick, Alastair Campbell, would regularly ring up radio and TV producers to intimidate them if they didn’t toe the correct party line.
It’s to Conservative America’s credit - that the U.S. is responding much more robustly to Obama than most people in Britain, including conservatives, did for Tony Blair. In May 1997, the honeymoon our useful idiot populace gave their new dear leader (Blair) was much longer. Maybe eight years. Imagine!
BadgerBlogger: As I write this question, the American DJIA has fallen 2,000 points for the year; roughly 2,300 points since Mr. Obama’s election. Markets throughout the world have faced a similar fate. Many believe that, as the USA goes, so goes the world. As an observer, what do you believe foreign investors are trying to tell us? What, in your opinion, could Mr. Obama be doing to bring stability to the [world] marketplace and calm their fears?
Delingpole: Yeah, it’s depressing. Very depressing. And of course a lot of it is way beyond Obama’s control. But you can’t argue with the markets: clearly the collective view of the people who know best is that Obama’s stimulus package is ill-considered, wasteful and ineffective.
Tell you one thing he could do straight away though: shave off any expenditures or bureaucratic measures to do with leading the world’s fight against “Climate Change.” Man made climate change is, as South Park would put it, “ManBearPig”: something Al Gore and his pal James Hansen cooked up to make everybody feel guilty in times of plenty. Now that those times of plenty are gone, the need for “ManBearPig” no longer exists. We’re suffering enough already.
BadgerBlogger: In early 2005, I was in London for a little over a week, and the “buzz” on TV and radio was that average Brits had been priced out of the home ownership market, much like what occurred in parts of the States before our bubble burst. You joke in your book about your “devalued house†(or words to the effect) – was there a similar housing bubble burst in Great Britain? How did the British government react to it? Have there been “bailouts†of those unable to afford their house payments as a result of the U.K.’s struggling economy, similar to what Obama has proposed here in the U.S.?
Delingpole: Our housing bubble burst about a year after yours did, and it’s been just as disastrous. My view: It’s cruel, and it’s horrible, but the quickest way to sort this out is to let the market correct itself. Give support where you can, but not in the hopeless cases where people (encouraged by the system, I know) have taken on debts out of all proportion to their ability to pay. [In Great Britain] collapsing interest rates have been a huge boon for some of us.
I would invite you to check out Delingpole’s website, www.welcometoobamaland.com, where you can sample a chapter of the book at no cost to you; or, should impulse strike, just order the darn thing already.
I’m willing to bet you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.
Posted in Home | Comments (10) |
10 Responses to “Only at BadgerBlogger.com: An interview with British conservative author James Delingpole”
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February 24th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
I read Dellingpole’s book. Personally, I warned Badger Blogger for the entire last 2 years, that Obama is what Obama is. Dellingpole’s book is swimming UPSTREAM. We are pfuxed. We’ve crossed the Tipping point and/or Rubicon. We have too many STAR PHUxxxERS vs. PRODUCTIVE FOLK.
Obama is a completely empty vessel.
February 25th, 2009 at 2:15 am
Thank you BB and Bruce. I enjoy the pro-active blogging.
My impression of Great Britain comes from BBC-America, the Sun-UK, and other UK online papers (that always seem to get linked to by Drudge). I gave up on all of them a year ago.
They are way ahead of us on all things liberal/PC and anti-common sense. But it is like looking into our future.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:44 am
Outstanding, I will be adding James Delingpole’s writings to my book list. After last nights speech, we can already see that some of Delingpole’s warnings are coming to fruition.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:20 am
What Patrick said. I always love learning of a new author, and that was a great interview. Thanks Bruce.
February 25th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Yes, Obamas solution to subsidize more loans/free up money is crazy, he even notes that this is what got use into this mess in the first place.
The solution is not to give people money that they can walk away from paying back. Its that simple.
Who cares if your house is worth less, you didn’t give the banks money back when it was worth more. This is senseless. Pay your mortgage.
Working for someone is not about getting paid, its not about a college degree, not about healthcare, not about vacation time, its about being a partner and helping the business be successful. If it is not, you will get none of the above and your degree will be useless.
You do not need a college degree to help a business be successful. A college degree will not make you work if you choose not to.
Stupid is as stupid does.
February 25th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Obama is nothing more than a Harvard educated pimp who will tell his audience whatever he thinks they want to hear for the purpose of accomplishing his agenda of a socialist United States and, in so doing, will weaken this country and expose us to another 9-11 or worse unless the silent majority of this country wakes up and takes action to stop him and the leftys who support him. Delingpole understands that and his book is a warning to us.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
There is something to this, for I think Obama just proposed spending another 646 Billion on healthcare reform.
Solution: Just print more money, the problems will go away.
Do you really think your salaries will be increased to compensate? Middle class will pushed/pulled into to the impoverished, who is going to work then? All in the name of free healthcare for people that mostly can really afford it, but spend frivolously and get the free healthcare anyways causing the problem to begin with?
Start planting gardens and preparing, the governments a coming and their going to take everything good and make it bad. I would suggest holding on to your guns, your probably going to need them. It a coming…
February 25th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Don’t worry John everything will be fine. Just lower your expectations a bit.
The Gin Blossoms said it best.
“if you don’t expect too much from me, you might not be let down”
Obama is effing clueless. He’s like a 6th grader.
The clown still believes socialism works.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:10 am
It is most apparent that people generally believe that he can tax the producers, take their profits/money.
Stupid is as stupid does.
He fails to mention that cost of goods will proportionately increase. Taxing producers over 250,000 will simply increase costs of goods or reduce labor force. Obama is screwing the middle class and poor, by increasing the cost of goods and taking their chances for productive jobs away.
I know of 80,000 workers that are getting their first manditory week off with no pay. This is how Obama is going to help us, by giving us weeks off with no pay in the name of taxing the producers over 250,000? Who gets hurt, the companies stop producing for a week here and there, selling, workers don’t get paid, you are not getting any stimulus, you are creating a welfare state.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I’m writing my new book ECONOMICS FOR DUMMIES ESPECIALLY STUPID LIBERALS.
It’s one page long.
It goes like this.
Every dollar confiscated by government cannot be spent by the consumer. Each $1 taken from you cannot be used to buy your child an Ice cream cone or a box of Band Aids.
Multiply the one dollar times THREE HUNDRED PLUS MILLION PEOPLE, and you have hundreds of people no longer employed in Ice Cream or Band Aid, manufacture, sales, or transport. You also have lost all of the SALES TAX associated with THREE HUNDRED PLUS MILLION DOLLARS IN LOST SALES. Those who no longer have the jobs supported by $300,000,000.00 in the private economy no longer pay income tax and don’t stimulate the economy as they would should they be gainfully employed. The money they now do not spend, does nothing to create more jobs or taxes.
It’s really pretty simple unless you are liberal and stupid.