Monthly Archives: April 2013

The Thin Veneer of Civilization

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Originally published on October 16, 2002, 13 months after the 9/11 attacks.

The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary defines the word “civilization” thus: An ideal state of human culture characterized by complete absence of barbarism and non-rational behavior.

In the United States, we pretend to live our entire lives in a constant “State of Positive Assumptions.” The central assumption is we DO live in a country “characterized by complete absence of barbarism and non-rational behavior.” Continue reading

False Sense of Insecurity

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Here we go again.

On my morning walk with my dog I saw the Capitol Police friend of mine. We both shook our heads at the events that happened in Boston. Here we go again, we both said.

More overtime is in the future for him. More insecurity for me and my family.

We don’t know who set off the bombs in Boston. It could have been a Saudi National. That was the early speculation. It could have been a home-grown Continue reading

Lead, Follow, Or….

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

In the ’60s a battle cry of anti-war (and anti-Lyndon Johnson) college students was “Lead, follow or get out of the way;” a concept that morphed into lyrics for Bob Dylan’s anthem, “The Times They are a’Changin.”

President Obama has tried his version of leading – which has been mostly attempting to bully Congressional Republicans into submission. It hasn’t worked.

For about five minutes after his reelection we were told he was going to spend Continue reading

Seeing the Big Picture

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) were the highest-profile stars of the Tea Party Class of 2010. They successfully scared two centrists out of the Republican Party before a primary vote was even cast, and were held out as examples of conservative leadership, dedicated to stopping President Obama at all costs.

Less than three years later, they no longer seem to be so extreme. Instead of being content to vote “no” and go home, they are in the middle of the various Senate gangs. Toomey is working with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to enact Continue reading

‘Smoke-and-Mirrors’ Budget

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

Know who ‘Mr. Irrelevant’ is? He is the last player drafted in every NFL Draft each year. He is considered the least important player with the lowest possible chance of making an impact on an NFL roster come regular season.

How can President Barack Obama be considered ‘Mr. Irrelevant’ when it comes to managing the most important problem facing us today in America, the federal budget and its attendant deficit and debt complications?

Let us count the ways: Continue reading

Greg Walden

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Greg Walden condemns an unpopular proposal in the President’s budget and gets attacked by the right-wing.

What is up with that?

Walden is the popular, smart, hard-working head of the National Congressional Campaign Committee. His job is to elect Republicans, or more precisely make certain that Republicans stay in control of the House.

He attacked the Obama budget for its inclusion of a proposal to recalibrate Social Security’s cost of living adjustments to be more in line with actual Continue reading

The End

BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change (TCBMag.com)

The End is a 1978 flick in Burt Reynold’s prime (for whatever that’s worth) starring Dom DeLuise, Robby Benson, Carl Reiner, Joanne Woodward, Sally Field, Myrna Loy, Norman Fell, Strother Martin, Pat O’Brien, etc. It’s about a young-ish rich guy who has been given six months to live. His end will be horrible, he’s told, so he decides to put himself out of his misery early. After a few failed attempts, he ends up spending a few days in a mental hospital where he enlists the help of a fellow patient (Dom DeLuise). Continue reading

Throwing In the Towel on Obama

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Barack Obama’s second term is off to a very bad start. Even liberal commentators – at least those with any credibility – are suggesting it may be time for him to lead more and campaign less.

Obama brought a plane load (Air Force One) of relatives of victims of the horror in Newtown to lobby Senators on the eve of a procedural vote, now scheduled for tomorrow, on a gun control bill.

Politico.com reporter Reid Epstein wrote: President Barack Obama’s gone from ambitious arguments for sweeping gun control to trying to stop a filibuster. Continue reading

Immigration Is Just a Start

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

On Dec. 5, 1933, right after dinner bells rang across the country, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a proclamation that ended Prohibition and solidified the vast majority of Catholic votes for the Democratic Party for 40 years.

The first time Catholics voted overwhelmingly Democratic was in 1884, when a spokesman for a group of New York preachers, a guy named Samuel Burchard, condemned Grover Cleveland for being from a party that represented “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” That little statement energized German and Irish Catholics to swing the vote against James Blaine, giving a close election to Cleveland. Continue reading

Equality: Background Checks for Everyone

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

The recent call from President Obama and advocates of stricter gun control laws for ‘universal background checks’ brought to mind this one unifying thought: Why not do this for everyone?

Think about it. Much of what separates us as a nation has to do with what any certain faction wants to do to another group of people in our society. ‘We’ think ‘they’ should be better regulated; restricted, prevented from having the same freedoms as we do, primarily because we think something is ‘wrong’ with them. Continue reading

A Missed Opportunity

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I actually don’t blame some Members of the Senate for threatening to filibuster the still-mysterious gun bill.

Who knows what they have come up with in the back halls of the Congress and who know what they will end up with once this bill gets to the floor.

Mitch McConnell had it exactly right when he held out the right to support a filibuster until he actually got a glimpse of the bill.

I think the whole process has pretty much stunk. Continue reading

Murder For Hire

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I am a fan of the Central Intelligence Agency. More precisely, I am a fan of the officers and analysts who, along with uniformed service members and Foreign Service Officers are at the dangerous, too often deadly, pointy end of the sword in promoting American foreign policy as enunciated by the President.

Whomever the President happens to be.

A book about the CIA’s drone program will be published tomorrow and an harrowing excerpt was published over the weekend in the New York Times. Continue reading

Doesn’t Matter Which Way You Go

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

We were talking to a friend yesterday about the stock market recovering to exceed its peak of 2007, right before it fell to its valley when the banking system nearly evaporated in 2008.

Remember? That was not that long ago, you know.

‘There’s something that just seems ‘odd’ about it all’, he said.

The current state of affairs in America reminds us of that great Socratic philosopher in ‘Alice in Wonderland’, the Cheshire Cat when he counsels Alice Continue reading

Senate Madness Tournament

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Chuck Todd and his crack team of political smart guys have put together a very useful Final Four tournament of the greatest Senators in history.

I love the concept. I think is a great way to look at the history of the Upper Chamber and to review for people how great men (and they were all men but one in the First Read tournament) impact history.

Todd’s team organized it chronologically and came up with a final eight of Lyndon Johnson, former longtime Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, Continue reading

The Self-Service World

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

More than 2 million clerical jobs have been wiped out since 2007.

That’s according to the Financial Times, and it helps to explain why the median U.S. income has declined 5.6 percent despite the fact that the economy has largely recovered from the crash.

The top ten percent of American earners, according to FT, are doing quite nicely, because their jobs have not gone away. Continue reading

Work for What You Need

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Regular readers know that I have the same understanding of global economics as a three-year-old has of quantum physics.

I watch CNBC’s Squawk Box every morning because I know a lot about politics and don’t need to watch (a) people I know talking about what I know or, (b) people I don’t know making stuff up about things they don’t know.

I have never made a dime in any investment so, hope springing eternal, I like to listen to people who have made multiple dimes. Continue reading