[ Posted Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 – 18:04 UTC ]
The House Republicans' "Pledge To America" document, released last week with much ballyhoo, appears to not be quite the rallying cry they had hoped for. It seems that very few Republican candidates for office are embracing the Pledge as a ready-made campaign platform, or as some sort of blunt instrument to wield against Democrats. But none of this may matter, depending on how the media eventually decides to tell this story. Because the myth is always stronger than the reality, and the media simply loves simplistic storylines. Meaning the Pledge may indeed eventually be seen as the second coming of the "Contract With America." Which is, ultimately, even more ironic.
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[ Posted Monday, October 4th, 2010 – 13:34 UTC ]
President Obama got a bit of a bounce in his monthly poll average in September, but the news is of a decidedly mixed variety. There is good news and bad in the numbers from last month for Obama, and it's looking like there won't be much of a pre-election change in his numbers which could help congressional Democrats out on the midterm campaign trail.
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[ Posted Friday, October 1st, 2010 – 14:46 UTC ]
I will begin today's column by drying a tear as we all wish Rahm Emanuel a fond farewell. Actually, I am lying. I am drying no tears for Rahm because I am crying no tears at his leaving. Chicago's loss is the White House's gain, as far as I'm concerned.
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[ Posted Thursday, September 30th, 2010 – 15:40 UTC ]
But all of that is neither here nor there. The style of journalism known as "three-dot" was pioneered and perfected by the late great Herb Caen of San Francisco newspaper fame, and consists of stringing together many disparate items conjoined with a liberal usage of ellipses, or those three little dots which indicate "sentence trails off here" or, in journalism, sometimes "there's a bunch of stuff I cut out from this excerpt here." Three-dot journalism relies on the first, and more common, usage... to trail off... into vagueness... or even innuendo....
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 29th, 2010 – 17:00 UTC ]
It is time once again to take a look at the state of the midterm election races in the Senate. It has been over a month since we last examined the state of these races, and there has been some movement in both directions. Of course, the most dramatic of these has been in Delaware, but other states have been moving around as well (although admittedly, not as drastically).
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 – 17:28 UTC ]
Democrats in the House of Representatives, most pundits agree, are going to pay a price for the public's perception that Democrats in Congress can't get much of anything done. People are frustrated by the lack of action from Congress on all sorts of issues, this line of thinking goes, and will vent their frustration on Election Day by voting a significant number of Democrats out of the House.
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[ Posted Friday, September 24th, 2010 – 17:29 UTC ]
The White House has been in the news this past week, mostly for who will be leaving it soon. One is tempted to insert the old "will the last to leave please turn out the lights" joke here; but one will not, because one holds oneself to a higher standard than that. Ahem.
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[ Posted Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 – 18:02 UTC ]
American schoolchildren are not the best in the world when it comes to doing math. This is a fact which is proven over and over again by comparing test scores here with those achieved in other countries. The long-term problem with this, though, is one few people ever think about -- those kids grow up to be American adults, who still apparently can't do basic math. And, not to put too fine a point on it, this includes politicians. Either politicians can't do math themselves, or they cynically know that their constituents can't do math and exploit this when making promises to the public.
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 – 17:03 UTC ]
The reason a few senators will be sworn in early is that the races are "special" elections, held to replace vacancies which are now being filled by temporary, appointed senators. In other words, while most Senate elections are happening on their usual six-year cycle, these races are not in synch with this cycle, due to unexpected vacancies.
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 – 17:27 UTC ]
But, as Howard Dean points out, healthcare reform can succeed without it. Which means there shouldn't be anything standing in the way of throwing the whole idea of the mandate under the political bus, so to speak. Or, since the Tea Partiers hate it too, perhaps "throw it overboard" would be a better metaphor.
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