[ Posted Monday, February 7th, 2011 – 16:31 UTC ]
Corporate America is on our minds today, because President Obama just gave a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. With the future decidedly uncertain, Obama made overtures to the corporate community, and also called on them to be responsible and help build the middle class of this country, by insuring that all boats are lifted by the tide, and not get (as he put it) "left behind, stuck in the mud." This wasn't the only time in the speech he got Kennedyesque, also calling on the corporate titans to: "Ask yourselves what you can do to hire more American workers, what you can do to support the American economy and invest in this nation."
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 – 22:48 UTC ]
Obama poll-watchers have been waiting to see a "bump" upward in public opinion job approval ratings pretty much ever since he took office. In two years, there really hasn't been one. Until now.
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[ Posted Friday, January 28th, 2011 – 12:38 UTC ]
But for now, let's take a quick look back at the week that was, and then spend the rest of the column examining the "narrative" of Obama's speech.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 – 16:57 UTC ]
The day after President Obama's big yearly speech to Congress and the American people, most pundits and talking-head types in the media are vying to outdo each other on stating "what it all means" or similar high-flown overanalysis. What many of them seem to have missed, however, is the fact that Obama used his speech to introduce a few topics into the political debate. Some of these topics have been around for a while, championed by various people and groups, but what seems newsworthy to me is the fact that Obama included them in his list of proposals for the future.
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[ Posted Monday, January 24th, 2011 – 18:01 UTC ]
Well, it's that time of year again. The time of year when pundits across the land helpfully (oh, so helpfully) offer the president advice on what he should say in his "State Of The Union" speech tomorrow. While I've engaged in this sort of thing before, this year I'd like to make predictions of what President Obama will say tomorrow night (as opposed to what I would like him to say). Which means I'm not endorsing any of this personally, merely attempting to predict what will be in tomorrow night's speech in advance.
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[ Posted Friday, January 21st, 2011 – 17:48 UTC ]
With some regularity, this column excoriates the mainstream news media for all sorts of continued idiocy in the way it conducts its business. But every once in a while, we have to applaud them when they get something right. This week, Dana Milbank of The Washington Post deserves mentioning, for pledging to stay Palin-free for the month of February. Details on this in a moment.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 19th, 2011 – 18:04 UTC ]
The House of Representatives, as expected, just voted to repeal the landmark healthcare law which President Obama signed less than a year ago. This vote was a symbolic victory for Republicans, but not any sort of substantial change. To truly repeal the law, the Senate would have to also pass the bill the House just passed, and then both houses would have to muster a two-thirds majority vote to overcome Obama's veto. None of which is going to happen. Democrats still control the Senate, and Harry Reid has all but pronounced the bill "dead on arrival" in his chamber, meaning that today's House vote is the only victory (and a symbolic one, at that) Republicans should expect in their mad dash to repeal healthcare reform.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 13th, 2011 – 18:15 UTC ]
Obama's mojo has apparently returned, to some extent or another.
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[ Posted Friday, January 7th, 2011 – 18:18 UTC ]
Sometimes it is hard to come up with a metaphor to describe the week that was. This was not one of those weeks.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 6th, 2011 – 16:36 UTC ]
In taking in the news of the 112th Congress' first new steps (especially those taken by the Republican House of Representatives), I had to wonder -- how will the Tea Party and the Tea Partiers be treated by the mainstream media, going forward? Will they still have a voice in the media's political coverage of the next two years, and what will that voice say? To put the point I'm trying to make more succinctly: will the Tea Partiers become "old news" to the media?
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