[ Posted Friday, July 5th, 2013 – 17:47 UTC ]
Maybe it's just envy. I'll fully admit it, up front. After all, who wouldn't want a job where you get one-third of the time you're supposed to be working as free vacation days? Nice work, if you can find it. So maybe there's a tinge of envy which propels me, on a semi-annual basis, to essentially air the same complaint. But the regularity of these rants is also due to the fact that not much changes in Washington, ever, and one of the reasons that Congress just doesn't work these days is that Congress just doesn't work all that much.
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[ Posted Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013 – 15:47 UTC ]
The name "Romney" has historical significance in Massachusetts, but the story goes back a lot further than just a recent ex-governor. In fact, a "Romney" played a significant part in the American Revolution -- on the British side. The name, however, does not refer to a man, but rather to a man-of-war, the H.M.S. Romney, a 50-gun British ship that sailed into Boston harbor in 1768.
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[ Posted Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013 – 16:13 UTC ]
Welcome back to our monthly review of President Obama's job approval polling numbers. This is going to be an abbreviated version of our normal column, because it got squeezed out of the Monday slot by the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, so apologies for this month's brevity in advance. June wasn't a particularly good month for Obama's numbers -- in fact it was a fairly bad month for him, as his numbers went "underwater" for the first time in his second term. Let's take a look at this month's chart:
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[ Posted Friday, June 21st, 2013 – 16:00 UTC ]
Arizona is a truly beautiful state. It has many spectacular sights, of which the Grand Canyon is the most awe-inspiring. But Arizona is also a state of forbidding landscapes -- much of the state is desert or near-desert, where the heat of the midday sun is a force of nature to be heavily respected, if not downright feared. But what has put Arizona into the news recently is its "forbidding" political landscape. Specifically, on immigration.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 19th, 2013 – 16:00 UTC ]
We stand at the beginning of a grand debate on immigration. America goes through these grand debates every generation or so, and what remains constant is that both sides in the fight can be counted upon to accuse the other side of "playing politics" with the immigration issue. This has, indeed already begun.
Republicans are offering up a splendid display of doublethink on the issue, in order to be able to say: "Hah! We were right all along," no matter what happens. Republicans make two accusations, which are completely contradictory (which doesn't seem to bother them at all), that the whole thing is just a cynical political game: (1) Obama and the Democrats want to legalize 11 million people who will then immediately become reliable Democratic voters, and/or (2) Obama and the Democrats will somehow find a way to scuttle the deal because they really don't want to pass any law, they just want to use the issue to beat up Republicans, in election after election. As I mentioned, no matter what happens, they'll be able to fall back on one of these tropes. Democrats, however, are using the second of these (with slight modification) to explain their own wariness: Republicans just want to be able to say: "We tried something" during the next election, and they will find a way to scuttle the deal in the end while blaming Democrats for the legislative failure.
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[ Posted Monday, June 3rd, 2013 – 17:22 UTC ]
Barack Obama had a pretty bad month inside the Beltway, with Republicans on the warpath over multiple scandals. Outside Washington, Obama didn't have too bad a month at all, as his job approval ratings barely budged. While this calm may seem to indicate that the public has a much higher tolerance for what constitutes a "scandal" than congressional Republicans, there were indications at the end of the month that this may just be a calm before much stormier poll numbers for the president. But first, let's look back on last month. Here's the chart:
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[ Posted Friday, May 31st, 2013 – 16:25 UTC ]
"You know, after watching the popularity arc of such Tea Party favorites as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, I can't help but wonder why they don't just skip over what appears to be the hardest part of becoming famous for them -- the part about serving in office. Why not just go straight towards being a media darling on the Right? The Fox network could get in on the action in a big way, and broadcast a reality show once a year to search the nation for the next Tea Party superstar. They could call it 'So You Think You Can Rant?' and hire Palin, Bachmann, and Donald Trump to be judges. I bet it'd be a ratings smash, personally."
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[ Posted Friday, May 24th, 2013 – 17:21 UTC ]
Some weeks, not much happens in political news, and other weeks it seems like almost too much happens. This was one of the latter types of week.
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[ Posted Friday, May 17th, 2013 – 16:31 UTC ]
Things have gotten so bad in Washington that both pundits and Republicans are beginning to use the "N-word" to describe the president. No, no... not that N-word! Instead, Obama is now actively being compared to Nixon. This comparison is patently...
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 14th, 2013 – 17:17 UTC ]
Looks like I spoke too soon. Last Thursday, I posted an article about the expected good news on the federal budget deficit for 2013. Today, the actual numbers were released. They are even better than expected.
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