[ Posted Monday, April 6th, 2009 – 16:09 UTC ]
Following conventional wisdom, especially in Washington, is often a fool's errand. Groupthink can be wildly wrong, even if "everyone knows..." or "everyone believes..." something to be true. But every now and then, the conventional wisdom turns out to be right. Which may be the case for the punditocracy's predicted doom for cap-and-trade legislation intended to reform America's energy policy. If this proves to be the case, it will be the first major Obama priority to fail in Congress.
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[ Posted Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 – 16:35 UTC ]
All of this squabbling amongst the Republicans is dangerous for them, because the media shows signs of waking up and noticing. This is dangerous for the Republicans indeed, because the media has been content to attempt pushing the theme "Democrats are divided!" no matter how many times the party shows unity by all voting together for bills -- and (even worse) the media is starting to think the Republicans are playing them for fools. This could cause them to turn and savage the GOP in one of their trademarked feeding frenzies. Which could shift the whole theme to "Republicans are divided!" which would at least have the benefit of actually being true (meaning the stories could get quite ugly).
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[ Posted Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 – 05:39 UTC ]
What a morning!
I awoke to the sounds of my clock radio, and of President Obama giving an extraordinary speech across the airwaves. I'll just transcribe what I heard for all of you here, without comment:
I, President Obama, have taken this opportunity to speak to all of America. Because I'd like to make a [...]
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[ Posted Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 – 19:29 UTC ]
I waited to write this until after President Obama held his second prime-time press conference, so I could give my reactions. President Obama did his usual job of unflappably answering questions in an intelligent and adult manner. This will come as less and less of a shock to the media and the public as time goes on (as the memory of what preceded him fades).
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[ Posted Friday, February 27th, 2009 – 18:47 UTC ]
Barack Obama is moving Congress so fast, we're approaching warp speed. Consider the fact that neither presidents Reagan nor Clinton got their (much smaller) stimulus packages passed for over six months -- and Obama got his passed in mere weeks. And with Clinton and Reagan, that was a major party of their presidential legacy, whereas with Obama it is just the first item on a very long list of enormous changes to be made. Soon.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 29th, 2009 – 16:57 UTC ]
News from Iraq has seemingly slowed to a trickle, due to most of America wanting to turn the page and move on. But an item which appeared today in the Washington Post shows that the Iraqi government is not wasting any time in asserting the prerogatives of true sovereignty which they gained on the first of this year. Even in the midst of an Iraqi election (or perhaps because of the impending vote), Iraq announced that the security company Blackwater Worldwide will not be getting a renewal of their license to operate in Iraq this year.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 – 17:10 UTC ]
Our new president has had a pretty good first week in office. In his "first 168 hours" (for those of you who love arbitrary timelines for the "honeymoon" period), he has made good on quite a few campaign promises, sent an envoy to the Middle East on a "listening tour," and pushed his stimulus package in Congress. All around, an impressive first week by any standard.
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[ Posted Friday, January 23rd, 2009 – 18:13 UTC ]
Because Obama's Inaugural speech was indeed masterful. When he started speaking, I was thinking "which line will be the one everyone focuses on?" In other words, which line will be the "nothing to fear but fear itself" or "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" moment? Both of those lines are from previous inaugurations, so what would be remembered from Obama's speech?
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[ Posted Friday, January 16th, 2009 – 16:49 UTC ]
Taking that last one first, the status in Washington is fast approaching Officially Freaking Out (in the tradition of acronym-crazy D.C., I will refer to this from now on as "OFO") as they contemplate the city being overrun by Inauguration visitors. To put this in perspective, Washington's population is around 600,000 people. Estimates of the crowd which has even now begun descending on the city range from one million up to three million. Three million people is five times the population of the city. For comparison, take the population of the town or city you live in and multiply it by five. Now picture that many out-of-towners arriving for an event. It's like Woodstock descending on a small town, in other words. Or, if you prefer, a Medieval siege. No word yet on where to park the catapults and trebuchets.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 15th, 2009 – 19:02 UTC ]
Mr. Bush, history doesn't record just seven years of your presidency. It records what happened before 9/11 as well. You were determined to do everything in your presidency differently than Bill Clinton. And because the Clinton people were so alarmed about Al Qaeda, that meant that you could safely ignore it, since getting alarmed about it was doubtlessly the wrong thing to do.
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