Health Care vs. Republicans

It was pretty easy evaluating who the intended audience is in this editorial. The attitude E.J. Dionne Jr shows to the Republicans is very one sided, and he is definately leaning more to the Democratic side of things. The reason why I know this is because everything Dionne says about the Republicans has a negative tone, and you can almost hear the dissatisfaction in his statements. On the other hand, comments made about Obama and the Democrats are different, they are more understanding and open-minded. Dionne's credibility is very impressive- he has written three books, one of which won the Los Angeles Book Prize and was nominated for the National Book Awards. Dionne also is a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio, ABC's "This Week", and NBC's "Meet The Press". I believe that Dionne's opinion should be respected because he does have tons of knowledge of politics and has proved that by winning a prize for his journalism and political understanding. Dionne's argument is this; he wants to see what the Republicans can come with concerning the health-care summit. Obama put Republicans on the spot to see what they could come up with for the health-care reform because the Republicans have appearantley denied almost all ideas coming from Obama and the Democrats. The Republicans, or specifically Boehner, want the Democrats to fail with health-care because that will show that the Republicans can govern more effectively, even though all the Republicans have done is reject any incoming ideas of health care. The argument still stands, what can the Republicans bring to the table?

Chinese Threats to Obama

This article is about President Obama having the Dalai Lama visit the White House on February 18th. Although everyone may be excited for the visit of this spiritual leader, the Chinese seem to have a different perspective. Ma Zhaoxu, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman stated that the US should "honor its commitment to recognizing Tibet as part of China and oppose 'Tibet Independence.'" Zhaoxu tried to urge the Obama administration to cancel the visit so that it could not cause "further damage to the Sino-US relations," but failed. In 2009, President Obama planned to meet with the Dalai Lama, then fly to China, but the flight was cancelled due to deference of the Chinese Government.