Tag Archives: fear

Republicans Victims of Mass Hypnosis?

BY WILLIAM F. GAVIN

Recently, after days of fasting and contemplation (well, to be truthful, just as I was finishing  my second glass of chardonnay last evening), I had a revelation: contrary to firmly-held beliefs among Republicans, President Obama is not a socialist or a Kenyan or a Chicago pol with a bogus college degree, or even much of a doctrinaire left-winger.

He is, instead, a skilled hypnotist.

We all know what effect he has  had on his many cultists in the news media: glazed eyes, instant obedience to his suggestions, loss of inhibitions leading to a total abandonment of professional standards and ethics, and a kind of goofy grin like the one we find on the face of Alfred E. Neuman of Mad magazine fame.

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Plenty of Blame to Go Around

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

There is nothing good about the Newtown, Connecticut shootings. President Obama said what I thought my President should have said and the way I wanted my president to have said it in his remarks there last night.

I am no longer worried about my son. But my son is worried about his two little girls. They are not yet old enough for school, but sending a seven-year-old to school should not be a cause to worry all day that he or she will come home safely. Continue reading →

What Would Founders Think?

BY STEVE BELL

All you really need to know about the state of Washington, D.C., are three facts:

A–a majority of Republicans in the Senate defeated a bill to extend the payroll tax holiday that was introduced by their own Senate Minority Leader last week;
B–President Obama has decided that the only real legislative item he wants passed is that very payroll tax holiday–not deficit reduction, not extension of unemployment benefits, not ending the expansion of the Alternative Minimum Tax into the middle class, not preventing a 27 per cent overnight reduction in payments to Medicare providers;
C–Congressional Democrats and Republicans, as well as the White House, still have not approved the basic appropriations bills necessary to keep the government operating.

To extend what should be extended will cost about $200 billion plus. The President doesn’t want to run the risk as a big taxer, so he is watching as Congress wrangles, something that has been thematic about this President–talk and watch.

Congress fears both extending the items that a weak economy needs and not extending them. This confusion puts the rotten cherry on top of the melted ice cream sundae that has been this session of Congress.

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Flirting with China Trade War

BY TONY BLANKLEY
Reprinted from Townhall.com

For the past few years, fear of China’s predatory mercantilism has been steadily growing in America, both amongst the public and in elite business and political circles. But last week, for the first time, one could discern the genuine possibility that America might actually do something about it — even if it means a trade war.

It’s not that anything new has been revealed about China’s practices, but rather that something new has emerged about the nature of Washington’s opposition to it. Last week, the Senate passed a bill that would force U.S. retaliation against China’s currency manipulations. The bill passed with 63 votes — including 16 Republican votes.

There is nothing new about most Democrats supporting what some might consider “protectionist” legislation. But 16 Republican Senate votes are new and revealing. There was no ideological or regional pattern to them. They included Ohio’s Rob Portman, a solid senior member of the Republican free-trade establishment who served as President George W. Bush’s trade representative and director of the Office of Management and Budget; Maine’s liberals Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins; conservative southerners such as Jeff Sessions and Lindsey Graham; and the Rocky Mountain’s conservative Mike Crapo. Continue reading →