Tag Archives: hearing

Obamacare Spiraling Downward

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I am not cheering as I write this column. The Presidency of Barack Obama is spiraling downward largely because of Obamacare and it is not clear to me that Mr. Obama can avoid a Presidential face plant.

Earlier this week Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, testified before a House committee about the ongoing disaster that is the Obamacare website.

She didn’t know who was responsible or what went wrong any more than she could have pulled out a stack of code three feet high and walked the Committee Members through it line-by-line. Continue reading →

Say Again?

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

“Hear the birds? Sometimes I try to imagine what it’s like to be deaf and not hear the birds. It’s actually not that bad.”—Larry David

The art of listening, it’s Oprah-esque. Can’t you see her talking to soul man Gary Zukav about it on Sunday morning, i.e., listening as a sacred, overt act of compassion? Psychologists refer to it as making room for another. Be. The. Silence. Did you know that people only internalize 25 to 50 percent of what they hear? We really aren’t very good listeners. But the horse I rode in on today is not about listening.

My name is Gary, and I’m deaf as a wooden post. Continue reading →

Hagel Testimony = Fail

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I subscribe to the general theory that a President, Republican or Democrat, should be able to have the people running his Departments, Commissions, and Agencies that he wants.

Unless there is some overriding disqualifying reason to reject him or her, the Senate should abide by the terms of Article II, Section 2 that says the President, “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Officers of the United States.”

The nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense is an excellent case in point.

I may not agree with Hagel on the 3 I’s – Iran, Iraq, and Israel – but we don’t generally allow Secretaries of Defense to make foreign policy. Nor, for that matter, do Secretaries of State make foreign policy. Continue reading →