[ Posted Monday, March 5th, 2012 – 15:44 UTC ]
President Barack Obama's job approval numbers are back "above water" (where his approval rate is higher than his disapproval number), continuing an impressive rise in the polls which began in November of last year. This is the longest run of improved public job approval Obama has managed since he got elected. Obama posted a gain of almost two full percentage points in his approval rate in February, the third-best month he's ever had in this respect (and one of the two months he posted bigger gains in was the bounce he got from Osama Bin Laden's death). He wound up the month with his approval rating a full percent better than his disapproval rating, the best numbers he's seen since last June. But this trend could be flattening out, as he ended the month of February by slipping back a bit. So in the midst of plenty of good news on the polling front for Obama, there is reason for caution as well. Call it the dark lining to a very silver cloud, if you will.
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[ Posted Friday, February 24th, 2012 – 17:51 UTC ]
"When the going gets weird," Hunter S. Thompson famously said, "the weird turn pro."
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[ Posted Friday, February 17th, 2012 – 17:21 UTC ]
President Barack Obama certainly had an impressive week, getting from Congress exactly what he demanded in the State Of The Union message -- a payroll tax holiday extension for the rest of the year... with "no drama."
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 – 17:33 UTC ]
Is the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party becoming irrelevant?
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[ Posted Monday, February 6th, 2012 – 16:31 UTC ]
Mitt Romney's gaffe last week (reproduced in full, above) is going to wind up the "gaffe that keeps on giving" for Barack Obama and the Democrats in this election cycle. Because the more Romney's comment is examined and dissected, the worse it looks for him. This could, in fact, be the defining moment for Mitt Romney as a national political presence. That phrase is often bandied about in politics, but I use it here in the full literal sense of "defining moment" -- a point in time which absolutely cements an image in the public mind of who you are and what you stand for as a politician. The image, quite obviously, is not a good one for Romney.
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[ Posted Friday, February 3rd, 2012 – 17:10 UTC ]
Mitt Romney, frontrunner for the Republican nomination, announced he wasn't too worried about poor people. Maybe it would be fun to see Romney debate Joe Biden, just because nobody would know what to expect from either of them. Heh.
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 – 15:34 UTC ]
President Barack Obama continued a three-month upward swing in the polls in January, with his average job approval rating for the month ticking up 1.2 points, and his disapproval rate falling by exactly the same amount.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 – 17:01 UTC ]
President Obama last night unveiled a new twist on an old idea in his State Of The Union address to Congress -- limit the loopholes and tax giveaways that very wealthy people use to reduce their taxes far below the rate honest workers pay. Obama called for a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on income over one million dollars. To some, this sounds like a radical idea, but it really isn't. It is merely a refinement of a part of the tax code that has been with us for decades: the Alternative Minimum Tax.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 – 22:43 UTC ]
I haven't written one of these snap-judgment reactions to a speech in a while, so forgive me if this is a bit choppy and disorganized. As always, I am writing this before looking at other opinions of President Obama's just-completed State Of The Union speech. I feel this keeps my opinion unsullied by any sort of "groupthink" effect. Sometimes I read other speech reviews the next day and find I agree with them, sometimes not, but this way at least you know I'm not just regurgitating others' thoughts.
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[ Posted Friday, January 20th, 2012 – 17:31 UTC ]
OK, to be completely honest, we just felt like beating up on some Republicans today.
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