Monthly Archives: August 2011

Obama Economic Policy Last Chance

 

BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from the Washington Times

 

President Obama’s post-Labor Day “jobs” speech will be his last chance to launch an economic policy with any chance of manifesting its effect – both economic and political – before the November 2012 elections. He has three options. In order of descending likelihood, they are: a timid hodgepodge of previous proposals, a bold left-of-center initiative or a turn to a free-market “nuclear option.” Continue reading

Perry Leads on All Fronts

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com

National polls measuring support during the primary season are suspect because we don’t have national primaries. We have state-by-state primaries and caucuses. A national poll measuring support five months ahead of the first caucus is beyond suspect. It is meaningless.

Having started out with that warning let me make another assertion: No matter how suspect, meaningless, pointless, or futile a poll might be it is still better to be in first place than it is to be way back in the pack. Continue reading

Krauthammer Wrong, Politics Dysfunctional

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

My daughter was in Canada recently and went into a gift shop to buy a souvenir.  She handed the clerk U.S. dollars and the clerk called the manager over to get the most recent exchange rate. “We don’t take American money anymore,” the manager said. “Things are so unpredictable down there, we never know what the dollar is worth.”

Early in August, 5,000 Federal Aviation workers were thrown out of work without pay, along with thousands of construction workers because Congress couldn’t get its act together and reauthorize the agency. Workers were left without income to pay mortgages, car payments and buy groceries. Continue reading

Goodnight Irene

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com

Just went through a 5.9 earthquake. We who live along the Potomac River are on flood watch. The Libyans can’t find Moammar Gaddhafi and, more importantly, don’t have any idea how to run the country even if they do. And, Hurricane Irene is taking dead aim at the Eastern coast of the United States.

I tweeted yesterday: Alexandria VA: Earthquake, Potomac flooding, now a hurricane? Not going to the Safeway for milk & bread. I’m looking for Mezuzahs.

Continue reading

An Unpredictable Region

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com

No one in the Obama Administration was hanging a “Mission Accomplished” sign in front of the White House yesterday as it became obvious that the Libyan rebels had all but taken complete control of the country.

But, this isn’t a game of “capture the flag.” The rebels now have control of nearly all the land area of Libya, but it is not at all clear they control the sewer systems, the electricity production facilities, or a police force.

Continue reading

Broken System Authoritarian Temptation

 BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from Townhall.com

In the weeks during and since the debt-ceiling debate, the media, pushed by the Democratic Party, has peddled the propaganda that our government is broken — because the Republicans in the House of Representatives negotiated a better deal than the liberals wanted.

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Perry Gallops Out of the Gate

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

Rick Perry has been in this race for about 12 minutes and has been deemed the frontrunner; the man who has the best chance of knocking Mitt Romney out of his frontrunner status; the guy who will knock / has knocked Michelle Bachmann out of second place; the man who will force (pick one) Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, or Hopalong Cassidy to reconsider their previous decisions not to get into this race.

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Random Thoughts

By MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

 Item One:  Unsavory Nature of Political Campaigns

 What I saw of the Iowa Republican Presidential primary debate, and it wasn’t much, brought to mind two unsavory aspects of American political campaigns that politicians, the press and the public ought to try to temper before we go full throttle into the 2012 races.

The first was incivility. The media carnival barkers and fire-breathing partisans were anxious for the candidates to brutalize one another, particularly fellow Minnesotans Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.  From news reports of the debate—again, I missed some of the exchanges, they got some of what they wanted, but not much.  I am told the two Minnesotans went at it, dropping the Minnesota nice persona—isn’t that special—but they really did not beat the bejesus out of each other.

  Continue reading

Pawlenty is Prologue

 BY RICH GALEN

Rerprinted from mullings.com

NOTE: This is the second MULLINGS coming out of the Iowa Straw Poll yesterday. It was written partially in Ames, Iowa; in Detroit, Michigan;and, finally finished at home in Alexandria, Virginia.

How can this happen? How can a successful Governor hire a group of really smart people, spend more than a year, and who-knows-how-many millions of dollars, meeting with potential and actual supporters, and elite members of the media in places like New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC only to come to a grinding halt in a place called Ames, Iowa?

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Budget By the Numbers: Facts Help

BY FRANK HILL

Reprinted from telemachus.com

You are going to be hearing an awful lot about ‘spending this’ and ‘not spending that’ over the next several months from President Obama, Congress and the ‘Super Commission’ charged with the responsibility to do what Congress should have done for the past decade, truth be told.

Achieving ‘World Peace’ might be an easier objective.
Continue reading

Debt Ceiling Debacle: Message There

 

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

My neighbor looked across the dining room table. “I would vote for anyone on either side…if they had solutions,” he said. “I feel helpless.  What can we do?”

His wife had a suggestion: “If we voted them all out would that help?” 

“You just did that a year ago,” I said.  “You can’t just keep voting them out and voting them back in again.” 

  Continue reading

End of World Is Not Nigh

BY TONY BLANKLEY-

REPRINTED FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Except according to the Lord’s plans – which are not known to man – the “end of the world” is not nigh, although to listen to politicians and pundits, we should be packed and ready to go by next Thursday.

The headlines recently have read like Woody Allen’s 1979 “My Speech to the Graduates”: “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. I speak, by the way, not with any sense of futility, but with a panicky conviction.”

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AAA Arcane August Story

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

I woke up early yesterday morning to follow the story of the continuing drop in the markets following the S&P downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt from AAA to AA+. It occurred to me that, as we enter the second week of August, this may be the most arcane “August Story” in my experience.

Anthony Weiner is the typical August story: Public official, sex, denials, resignation. That it happened in June was just one more reason to not have any sympathy for Weiner.

Last year, every visit to that new office Keurig coffee machine included a discussion about the state of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, brought to you by BP. “Junk Shots” and “Top Kills” sustained us throughout the summer before a relief well was finally completed in September.

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FAA: Another Public Embarrassment

 

 

BY MICHAEL  S. JOHNSON

 Do you ever get into a discussion and get so bogged down in specifics, you forget what the central argument was about in the first place?

 It happens around the dinner table, but unfortunately it is occurring more often in our public dialogue on critical policy issues, making debate less civil and solutions more difficult to reach.

  Continue reading

Dow Jones Doldrums

BY RICH GALEN

reprinted from mullings.com

The day after President Obama was reveling with rich donors in faux celebration of his 50th birthday, the Down Jones Industrial Average dropped 512.76 points on Thursday to close at 11,383.

During the week of July 17, 2011 the market closed at 12,143.24. In the past 14 trading days the Down Jones Industrial Average has lost six percent of its value. Worse yet, since the week of April 25, 2011 the market has lost more than 11 percent of its value.
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Battle of Bacon Booming

BY JOHN FEEHERY
reprinted from thefeeherytheory.com

An interesting story caught my eye in the New York Times today, about the rise of a radical right-wing group in, of all places, Sweden.

Swedes are concerned that they are losing their national character
because of the high influx of immigrants from Muslim countries.
Continue reading

Repeal the Infield Fly Rule

BY JOHN FEEHERY
reprinted from thefeeherytheory.com

The world is going to hell in a hand basket. The stock market just crashed as if Congress allowed the President to default on our debt
payments. Europe is in the same shape financially as it was in 1946.

So why am I focused on the Infield Fly Rule?

I don’t know. I thought it would be a pleasant diversion from the
negative news we see every day.
Continue reading

Scaring Seniors Backfires

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from thefeeherytheory.com

The President turns 50 tomorrow, which is a big deal, especially to
the President’s fundraisers, who are doing their best to milk it for
all it is worth. Apparently, they are throwing a big bash for him in
my hometown of Chicago. My invitation must have got caught up in my spam filter.

50 isn’t nearly as old as it used to be (especially if you are 47,
like a blogger I know pretty well), and to many old-timers who depend on Social Security and Medicare to survive, 50 is pretty darn young.
Continue reading