Tag Archives: John Feehery

Thune: A Presidential Prospect to Watch

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the Feeherytheory.com

I ran into Congressman Jimmy Duncan in the hall of the Capitol and we had a little chat.

Duncan is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, a savvy politician who is completely honest and to the untrained eye, just an awe-shucks, country lawyer type of person.

Duncan has taken some tough votes in his career.  He votes against pretty much all spending bills and he voted against the Iraq War, votes that in hindsight look pretty smart.  He is an old-time conservative, but he isn’t one to beat his own chest or pontificate too much.

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Dems Score Meaningless Points

BY JOHN FEEHERY

 Reprinted from the Feeherytheory.com

  My father, a rabid White Sox fan if there ever was one, would always talk derisively about Cubs third baseman Ron Santo as Mr. Clutch. 

 “If you ever needed a guy that would hit a completely meaningless home run when it didn’t matter and strike out when it did matter, Ron Santo is your guy,” he would say with a laugh.  I was thinking about Ron Santo when I heard that the conference committee on the Wall Street reform package had just concluded.  

 The Democrats were very proud of themselves, with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd exchanging hi-fives and getting standing ovations from their colleagues.

 Some commentators have said that with the health care package that passed earlier this year and with this financial services package that will pass next week, theoretically, the President is really putting “points on the board.”

 But in my mind, those points are kind of like the points that the reserves get in garbage time, when the game is already over.  They aren’t going to help the Democrats win any elections, and more importantly, these legislative victories aren’t going to create any new jobs.

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We Don’t Need No Stinking Budget

BY JOHN FEEHERY

 Reprinted from the Feehery Theory

 The president’s top budget guy announced today that he’s leaving.

That should come as no surprise. After all, congressional Democrats announced that they weren’t going to do a budget this year anyway.

Who needs a budget?

Our country is doing fine financially.

Sure, we’ve got historically high debt to deal with. Sure, we have tax policy that is about to get a lot more interesting at the end of the year, when a bunch of tax provisions expire. Sure, we have Social Security starting to go broke quicker than anybody anticipated. Sure, we have a huge problem with chronic unemployment in the private sector and bursting employment in the public sector. Sure, almost every state seems like it is ready to belly-up financially.

Sure, we have all of those problems, problems that are all budget-related. But that doesn’t mean we should do a budget.

We don’t need no stinking budget. 
Budgets require tough choices. Budgets require (at least notionally) that the numbers all add up. Budgets require leadership. 

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Toy Soldiers and Stupid Teachers

BY JOHN FEEHERY

When I was growing up, I was obsessed with toy soldiers.

I had armies of little Army guys and little German soldiers, who I would array in various little battles.  Unlike a howitzer, a well-shot rubber band would often serve as the artillery, and proved the temporary death of a many a little German dude.

One of my earliest memories was getting a Fort Apache set for Christmas.  It had little U.S. cavalry soldiers and little Indians, and it provided me with hours of fun.

I once used my revolutionary war toy soldiers to build a model of the Battle of Lexington and Concord for my seventh grade class.

These toy soldiers help me imagine history in ways that books just couldn’t match.

Toy soldiers are making a comeback, chiefly because of the great kids’ movies in the Toy Story movie series.  My son is going to catch the opening of Toy Story 3 this weekend with a few of his classmates.

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THE ETHERIDGE FLIP-CAM SCAM

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the Feehery Theory

This may sound counter-intuitive, but I kind of feel sorry for Bobby Etheridge.

He is the North Carolina Congressman who is the new YouTube hero.  He is the guy who attacked some college kids who had the nerve to ask him if he supported the Obama agenda on camera.
The flip-cam is becoming the bane of every elected official.

Flip-cams are small little cameras that often have high-definition quality, don’t require lights, and pick up every utterance on tape.

Both Republicans and Democrats and their campaign committees use college age kids to harass vulnerable politicians into saying something stupid or doing something stupid on a flip camera, and then having those clips from the flip cam uploaded virally on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc.

The first politician to be YouTubed was George Allen, the former Virginia Senator who was expected to run for President.  Legend has it that Allen lost his reelection campaign in 2006 because, in small part, he was caught calling a college kid a Macaaca, which apparently is some sort of racial slur on camera.  That video was uploaded on YouTube, it made its way onto to CNN and the rest is history.

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Job Opportunities for Joe Sestak

BY JOHN FEEHERY

On ABC’s weekly gab-fast “This Week” yesterday, America’s last remaining Whig, the bow-tied George Will, blithely dismissed the kerfluffle surrounding the latest accusations surrounding illegality in the White House.  “Business as usual,” he huffed.

But moments later, on a separate network, the one who was offered the bribe, Joe Sestak, acknowledged that he was offered such a deal – a high-ranking government appointment in exchange for a discontinued Senate.  “I was offered a job, but I am not going to tell you what it was.”

Most people assumed that it was Secretary of the Navy.  For those keeping notes, an appointment to become Secretary of the Navy is not worth a chance to knock off Arlen Specter, at least not at the current market rates.

This morning, a writer for the left-wing opinion site Slate, Joe Conason, opined that what the White House offered was probably illegal.

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Republican Majority Bubbling Up in Burbs

BY GARY ANDRES

Reprinted from Weekly Standard

The American suburbs fueled the emergence of the Democratic congressional majority in 2006 and then helped expand it 2008.  During those two election cycles, Republicans lost 24 incumbent or open seat races in these cul-de-sac filled districts.

But now suburbanites are shifting again. As a result, many of these districts could swing back to the GOP, providing more than half of the forty seats Republicans need to capture the majority in the House.

The battle for the suburbs will determine if President Barack Obama continues to work with his own party as the congressional majority or if Washington reverts to divided government.

Many swing voters live in the suburbs. As these regions grew following World War II, they became an increasingly large and pivotal piece of political real estate.
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Suburban Revolutionaries

BY JOHN FEEHERY

In Ancient Rome, it was the poor people who lived in the suburbs.  The rich lived in the city center, close to work, close to entertainment, close to all the finest restaurants (or the Roman version of restaurant).

But in post-World War II America, that all started to change.  Public transportation became more readily available, and bedroom communities rose up, first outside of New York City, and then swept the nation.

The riots of the 1960’s convinced many ethnics and the few remaining Protestants who lived in the big cities, that the American dream was better found in the suburbs, and a great wealth transfer from the cities to the suburbs began in earnest.

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If The Glove Fits…

BY JOHN FEEHERY

So, according to various news reports, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is going to “investigate” corporate America for reacting to the president’s new healthcare law by promising to take huge tax write-downs because of the expected negative impact of the law on their bottom lines. This kind of reminds me of when O.J. Simpson decided to launch an “investigation” into who killed his wife.

Who killed the jobs, Mr. Waxman?

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What Pelosi Will Do To Win

BY JOHN FEEHERY
for The Hill

WASHINGTON — JMU News Service reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is considering a variety of different procedural and intimidation tactics in order to win passage of the president’s healthcare bill later this week. The tactics, according to well-informed sources, include hiring a voodoo specialist, jerry-rigging the voting machines on the Democratic side to give off an electric shock when the “nay” button is pushed and employing never-used parliamentary maneuvers, including one called the “olde three-card monte” and another being dubbed the “close enough for government work” rule.

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House and Senate, Venus and Mars

BY JOHN FEEHERY
From CNN
 
When the Founding Fathers decided to create a bicameral legislative branch, they were trying to make things difficult for the federal government to grab power from the people.
What the Founding Fathers may not have foreseen was how much the House and the Senate would grow to dislike and distrust each other. Why is this important now? Democrats in the House may have to take the political risk of voting to pass the health care bill based on assurances from the Senate that the upper chamber will eventually modify the law to change some things House Democrats don’t want.

America’s Mid-Life Crisis

BY JOHN FEEHERY

I have a theory.

America is going through its version of a mid-life crisis.

According to Wikipedia, the term midlife crisis was first coined “in 1965 by Elliott Jaques and used in Western societies to describe a period of dramatic self-doubt that is felt by some individuals in the “middle years” or middle age of life…The result may be a desire to make significant changes in core aspects of day-to-day life or situation.”

How do people who are going through a mid-life crisis show it?  The “acquisition of unusual or expensive items such as motorbikes, boats, clothing, sports cars, jewelry, gadgets, tattoos, piercings, etc.;  depression; blaming themselves or their partner for their failures;  paying special attention to physical appearance such as covering baldness, wearing “younger” designer clothes etc.;  entering relationships with younger people (either/or sexual, professional, parental, etc.)”

Here are some signs that the nation is going through the political equivalent of a mid-life crisis:

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March Deadline Bad and Bogus

 

BY JOHN PATRICK FEEHERY

Most people looked at the president’s March 18 healthcare deadline and saw a totally unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky, Hail Mary pass from a guy who has set down several totally unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky, Hail Mary pass deadlines in the past. 

Remember when he wanted a healthcare law on his desk last August? Or when he wanted it done before Thanksgiving? Or Christmas?

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Winning the Millennials

 

By John Feehery 

Andrew Kohut of the Pew Charitable Trust released an interesting snapshot of America’s youngest voters. 

 Calling it “A Portrait of the Millennial as a Young Adult”, Kohut says that voters from ages 18 to 29 are “confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and open to change. They are more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults. They’re less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history.  Their entry into careers and first jobs has been badly set back by the Great Recession, but they are more upbeat than their elders about their own economic futures as well as about the overall state of the nation.”

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