Tag Archives: Johnson

Speaker Ryan Slaying Windmills or Dragons

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  MAY 3

It is mindboggling, isn’t it, this election year? It’s like an untethered hot air balloon caught up in a windstorm.

The atmosphere is a toxic mixture of ignorance and arrogance, fueled by anger, disillusionment, distrust, some big egos and a lot of cash.

Intelligent, civil, informative, unifying, discourse? Forgetaboutit.

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Giving Thanks

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  NOV 27

“Thank you for your service.”

It is an expression that rolls off the tongue. Thanking someone in uniform as they trek through an airport or walk down a sidewalk has become commonplace.

The expression can take many different forms, from a simple ‘thanks’ and maybe a handshake to a fireworks popping flyover, flag-waving spectacle at a professional football game.

It is certainly most often a gesture made in hopes of lifting the spirit of a service member, a tiny step forward to express appreciation for what a soldier has done for the country, whatever that might be, from suffering the horrors of warfare to shuffling papers at the Pentagon.

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The Fox/Google Debate

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com

Debate night – UH-gain. This time co-sponsored by Fox News and Google – unlikely partners who make the case about strange bedfellows UH-gain.

The stock market is in free fall: The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 675 points or almost nine percent of its value in the past two days alone, so it is likely the economy will be a big part of the debate. The execution of Troy Davis in Georgia Wednesday night will doubtless be a subject of discussion as well. On foreign policy, the Israel/Palestine issue is at the top of the stack; and funding FEMA – UH-gain – will probably be dealt with.

Here’s the pre-game analysis. Continue reading

No Need to Respond

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Originally written on September 7th, 2011

Ev and Gerry started the whole response thing.

Everett Dirksen and Gerry Ford, the former Senate Republican leader from Illinois and the former House Minority Leader (and later President) from Michigan used to have a radio show broadcast from the Capitol.

They turned that radio show into a televised rebuttal to President Johnson’s 1966 State of the Union Address.

Dirksen, with his mop of white hair, and Ford, with his bald pate, must have been quite a sight in the years leading up to the Age of Aquarius. Dirksen was the one who famously said, “a billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking real money.” Continue reading