Monthly Archives: January 2011

Every Federal $ Benefits Somebody

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Townhall.com and mullings.com

The chatter around Your Nation’s Capital among the cognoscenti, the intelligentsia, and smarty-pantses over the past 24 hours was: Is there any real meaning to the House vote to repeal Obamacare?

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Washington Week: Health Care and Hu

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

Here’s the essence of the gulf between House Republicans and Democrats on the Obama health care bill: According to Kelly Kennedy writing in USA Today:

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GOP, Don’t Be Timid, Govern

BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from the Washington Times

What should congressional Republicans’ policy objectives be for the next two years regarding federal deficits and prosperity? Two very different strategies are being considered by authentic conservatives: 1) Attempt to govern from their majority in the House and try to start the process of reducing the costs of entitlements – most conspicuously, Social Security and Medicare – as a path back to prosperity and good jobs or 2) recognize that the GOP cannot govern without holding the White House and that therefore they should not touch entitlements but merely tinker with discretionary spending and frame the issues for 2012, when they may win the presidency and Senate as well as hold the majority in the House.

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Letter from Zanzibar, Tanzania

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from mullings.com

Dear Mr. Mullings:

We believe we have had this discussion before. When you go traipsing off to interesting corners of the world, we expect to be along for the traipse. What happened to Friday’s MULLINGS?

Signed,
The Old Town, Virginia Explorer’s Club

Yes, well, we were in Zanzibar, which is a series of islands off the coast of Tanzania and the Internet went out Thursday night. I believe I might have uttered those famous words: “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
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Latest Case for Moderation

BY GARY JOHNSON

rerprinted from Loose Change, Twin Cities Business

What a shame that it takes the attempted assassination of a public servant and the murder of six people, including a federal judge and a lovely little girl aspiring to be a politician, to divert our attentions from the polarizing political climate we’ve created.

My Facebook page receives three or four hundred posts a day, and over the past year it has been populated mostly by political grinding of one sort or another. Because my Facebook friends lean mostly to the left, you can well imagine what the general rant du jours are. The “righties,” however, are no less virulent—and often move the dial well past reason. Both sides—and isn’t that really the problem: “sides”?—are terribly polarized, a condition brought on by the flashpoint issues of the past few elections.
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Obama, Boehner, Context for Tucson

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

In Tucson Wednesday President Obama said what needed to be said and he said it like Lincoln did at Gettysburg: This is an opportunity for us to come together so that those people did not die in vain.

It doesn’t matter what the pundits say or who they claim to be at fault. More than likely, fault lies with the evil demons that dwelled within one man in a whole universe of flying debris and unexplained phenomena.

“But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized—at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do—it is important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds,” the President said.

We can’t use this tragedy as an excuse to turn on one another, he said. “Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”

With words like that and those coming from House Speaker John Boehner, who said “the needs of the institution have always risen above partisanship. And what this institution needs right now is strength–holy, uplifting strength”, we can ignore those playing the blame game. We can rededicate ourselves to the kind of governance and the kind of political and social behavior that drew those who died in Tucson to Congresswoman Giffords.

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Slash Federal Spending? Some Tough Choices

 

BY RICH GALEN

From Nairobi, Kenya

Reprinted from Mullings.com

I have been in Kenya since Saturday night on a trip sponsored by the ONE Campaign. I am with seven other political pros – pollsters, advisors, message masters, and me. Later today we move on to Tanzania for about three days before heading home.

We are not spending much time on photo safaris in Massai Mara National Park. We have been to a research center run by the U.S. Army and followed young Kenyans who went to a rural village to do in-home HIV testing.

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Turning Tragedy to Mischief

 

 

BY JOHN FEEHERY

 Reprinted from the feeherytheory.com

On July 24, 1998, just as the House of Representatives concluded debate on contentious healthcare legislation, Russell Weston stepped into the Capitol building and fired a gun, killing officer Jacob Chestnut. He then proceeded into the office of then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), where he encountered Detective John Gibson. Gibson was able to stop Weston from killing others in the whip’s office (including me), but not without sacrificing his own life in the process.

Weston was a deranged psychotic who held strong anti-government views. Perhaps because his target was a strong conservative leader, there was no deep concern at the time about the political rhetoric of the day. There was only concern about the alarming lack of security that surrounded the Capitol grounds, and about the fact that two brave men had given their lives in defense of their country. 

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Music Influenced Tucson Killings?

 

BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from the Washington Times

In the aftermath of the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others, it is predictable that some self-centered politicians and political commentators quickly assumed the killer must have been provoked by political comments. Following on that conclusion, they naturally argue (notwithstanding their exposure last week in the House to the reading of the Constitution, including the First Amendment) that whatever political words may have provoked him to his irrational violence should be silenced.

But as news organizations have begun to flesh out the interests and activities of the purportedly psychotic killer, I am struck by several nonpolitical factors that may have shaped his mind and provoked his action.

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Public Governing, Individual Virtue

BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from Washington Times

As we begin a new year, it may be useful to look back to one particular piece of advice that George Washington gave us in his Farewell Address:

“It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?”

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Congress Convenes, History Reborn

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

When the House opens for business at noon on Wednesday, Republicans will hold a tag-team reading of the U.S. Constitution which is an excellent idea. Most of the incoming Freshmen will not have read any major part of the Constitution since 11th grade social studies, but it is the rule book and incoming Speaker John Boehner wants to make sure everyone understands that.

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