[ Posted Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 – 18:38 UTC ]
Kathleen Parker is not my favorite Washington Post columnist. I just wanted to say that up front, to get my own biases out in the open. But I have to give her credit, for stating some truth last Sunday on not one but two Sunday morning news shows. She said almost the same thing on both CBS' Face The Nation and NBC's The Chris Matthews Show. Such honesty from the Washington crowd -- especially from someone many label conservative -- is rare. So I wanted to give her some credit today.
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[ Posted Friday, March 6th, 2009 – 18:08 UTC ]
The Democratic National Committee is running a contest for a slogan (10 words or less) to plaster on a billboard in Rush Limbaugh's hometown. The winner will also receive a T-shirt with their winning slogan on it. Submit your suggestions over at the DNC's site.
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[ Posted Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 – 17:31 UTC ]
A funny thing happened in Washington yesterday, and not many people noticed -- bipartisanship broke out in the Senate. While the chattering classes (and most Republicans) were fixated on whether Rush Limbaugh was the Republican Party's leader, the conservative movement's leader, or just leading them into the wilderness for 40 years (one can but hope); the Senate was taking care of some legislative business. In a bipartisan fashion. Almost one-fourth of Senate Republicans voted to move last year's budget along -- voting with President Obama and with the Democrats, and voting against the man who not so long ago was actually the leader of the Republican Party: John McCain.
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[ Posted Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 – 19:16 UTC ]
President Barack Obama is taking another page from F.D.R. (which should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone) by attempting to "brand" his recovery program for America. Addressing the Department of Transportation today, Obama unveiled two logos which will be prominently displayed to show Americans that their stimulus package money is being well spent. The first of these is a generic logo for all projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA):
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[ Posted Monday, March 2nd, 2009 – 17:32 UTC ]
Today is apparently Dr. Seuss Day. Who knew? In the spirit of this not-so-solemn occasion, I considered writing today's entire column in Seuss-ian language.
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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, February 26th, 2009 – 16:09 UTC ]
The District of Columbia is about to take a big step along the road to political relevance. They appear poised to receive a full vote for their "shadow" member of the United States House of Representatives. In a bargain which harkens back to the Missouri Compromise, Utah will also add a House member at the same time. Much has been said about this story in the past week, but everyone seems to be overlooking one good result which will come from the new arrangement: a tie will never again be possible in the Electoral College, at least not without a third-party candidate picking up at least one elector.
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 – 15:44 UTC ]
The "Great Communicator," for our younger readers who were not exposed to him, was what the media eventually decided to call President Ronald Reagan. The title of this article, for our unhipper readers (excuse me, for "the suave-ically-challenged"), is an homage to Frank Zappa's boxed set of albums entitled Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar. You see, while Frank Zappa was a consummate musician as a guitarist and bandleader, his eclectic (to say the least) lyrical style, not to mention his singing ability, turned a lot of people off. So he released a three-album all-instrumental boxed set just for such semi-fans, with disks titled: "Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar," "Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar Some More," and "Return of the Son Of Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar." If Zappa couldn't have fun with the lyrics, he certainly wasn't going to forego having some fun with the album and song names (best track name: "Variations on the Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression").
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 – 23:07 UTC ]
The Republican Party is at a real fork in the road. It is rare, in politics, to be able to see with absolute clarity such dividing points while they are happening, I should point out. Usually these things are analyzed after the fact, when conclusions can be drawn with certainty. But the GOP is now at such a point, and it faces two choices: absolute purity, or some shade or another of pragmatism ("the road less traveled," as it were, for Republicans these days).
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[ Posted Monday, February 23rd, 2009 – 17:23 UTC ]
Is President Barack Obama going to actually follow through on a vague promise he made on the campaign trail -- to fix the inherent unfairness of Warren Buffett paying a smaller percentage of his income in taxes than his secretary does? Call it the Buffett Conundrum: multimillionaires (and even some multibillionaires) pay less than half the tax rate as the employees who work for them (who make far less in income). But now, Obama has leaked his first budget outline, and it appears he is serious about attempting to fix this tax policy travesty.
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