[ Posted Wednesday, February 27th, 2013 – 17:21 UTC ]
President Obama seems to be playing a long game in the budget negotiations, as evidenced by the press blitz over the past few weeks. So far, the White House has been very effective in setting the direction of the conversation taking place over the budget. By doing so, they have laid the groundwork for a much more realistic conversation on the federal budget which is long overdue -- the specifics of what to cut. This gets into territory the Republicans have been shying away from for a very long time, for very good reason. Because when you get down to the details of what, exactly, to cut from the federal budget, the questions get a lot tougher than easily-tossed-off campaign rhetoric. To put this another way: Obama is opening a conversation with the American people into what our federal priorities should be. That's what has been missing from the political debate for a long time. So far, Obama seems to be dominating this argument.
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[ Posted Monday, February 25th, 2013 – 18:03 UTC ]
Every once in a while I get an idea that is so crazy it just might work. What with all the sequester talk in Washington, it occurred to me that the Obama administration has a better option for pressuring Congress than they may have thus considered. Instead of making life hard for Americans everywhere with the across-the-board cuts (in the hopes that enough citizens will complain to the elected representatives), why not get rid of the middleman, and just make life hard for those in Congress? Announce that the very first budget cuts to be implemented will be sequestering the living heck out of National Airport.
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[ Posted Friday, February 22nd, 2013 – 18:47 UTC ]
We've got a number of oddities to dispense with before we get started this week.
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[ Posted Thursday, February 21st, 2013 – 17:54 UTC ]
Are Americans getting to the point where they've got "crisis fatigue" and just want to shut out the neverending economic hostage-taking in Washington? I have to admit, I don't have the answer to that question, which means that this is likely going to be a very short column.
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 20th, 2013 – 17:46 UTC ]
Republican politicians seem to be making less sense than usual these days, especially when the subject being discussed is President Obama. No matter what Obama does -- or does not do -- it is wrong, according to Republicans. Oh, and everything bad is Obama's fault -- can't forget that one, either.
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[ Posted Friday, February 15th, 2013 – 18:25 UTC ]
Can anyone tell me why, exactly, Dick Cheney is on my television screen? Was there a shortage of cranky old Republican jingoist men this week, or what? Was John McCain too busy, or something?
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 13th, 2013 – 16:55 UTC ]
OK, I fully admit that headline was too tempting for me to pass up. But I have to say, I'm not really all that interested in Senator Marco Rubio's dry mouth or the swig of bottled water he took to quench it. I leave that for others who are better equipped to offer up the proper response. Saturday Night Live and Jon Stewart, in other words.
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 12th, 2013 – 21:58 UTC ]
I write this, as always, to give my honest reactions to President Obama's "State Of The Union" speech, before the inside-the-Beltway set gels on telling the rest of America what to think. This way, I am often "in the wrong" the next day, but at least you get my true feelings, uninfluenced by what others have to say about the speech.
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[ Posted Monday, February 11th, 2013 – 17:29 UTC ]
Tomorrow night President Obama will give the first State Of The Union address of his second term. We'll all react to this speech in different ways, but the reaction of Congress will be the usual: alternating wild and raucous applause with stony glares of disapproval, depending on the particular subject being addressed. After the speech is over, Congress will go back to what it loosely calls "work," and largely ignore the speech's suggestions for legislation. Some things the president asks for will get addressed in typical roundabout fashion, but many other things will be completely dropped for political reasons of one sort or another. It didn't always used to be this way, though, at least not on the surface. Congress used to take the president a lot more seriously, which is a tradition that seems ripe for revival.
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[ Posted Friday, February 8th, 2013 – 18:03 UTC ]
We begin with cats and birds this week. Iron-lovers across the land were dismayed by the news that the Monopoly folks were discontinuing their favorite token, but cat-lovers were enthused by the feline token which will take its place. Being America, this was done via online voting. In avian news, the Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl. The bird is the word!
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