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Barack Hussein Obama is not exactly the first name that springs to mind when the average person thinks of American politicians with Irish roots, to say the least. But Obama does indeed have Irish ancestry, and he certainly played this up in his recent visit to the Emerald Isle. Today, we are going to print the full text of Obama's address to an ecstatic Dublin crowd.
Less than two weeks ago, I first wrote about the Republican field of candidates for the upcoming 2012 presidential primary season. Somehow, it seems a lot longer ago than that, because of all the activity since -- which has included many surprises as to who will and who will not be running.
With all this frantic jumping in and out of the race, I thought it was time to take another look at the Republican field to see how it is shaping up. At this point, there are only a few holdouts left on the sidelines, as most of the bigwigs (and some decidedly "smallwigs") have made their intentions known.
Americans turn to their government for all sorts of advice, at times. Most especially during a crisis or natural disaster of epic proportions, citizens want solid information from experts in the government as to what they should and shouldn't do to keep their families safe. Forward-looking folks will even check out disaster-preparedness information before disaster actually strikes, in order to get their families through such an event, should worse come to worst. And now all Americans can breathe a huge sigh of relief because the Centers for Disease Control (C.D.C.) just posted instructions so we can all adequately prepare for "Zombie Armageddon."
You just can't make this stuff up, people.
On a C.D.C. official blog, Ali S. Khan (Trekkies, you may insert your own "Wrath of Khan" joke here, if you must) wrote a tongue-in-cheek post about how to prepare for a zombie attack. Or, as he refers to it in the helpful "A Brief History of Zombies" section, the result of your neighbors all contracting "Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome."
A word here about timing is necessary, I think. While the blog post is quite obviously meant as a semi-joke, wouldn't this have been more fun in, say, mid-October -- a few weeks before Hallowe'en? Instead of this week, with the "End of Days" prophesied for midafternoon this Saturday? I'm just saying....
In this year's version of the "Balloon Boy" fake news story, it was revealed today that the "Botox Mommy" story was a complete fabrication. In other words, those stalwart "journalists" -- busily gatekeeping their little hearts out to keep the mainstream media so very, very far above the blogosphere when it comes to fact-checking -- once again got punked. Not only did they get punked, but it actually cost them at least ten grand in the process.
Poor Newt.
It's rare for me to have a moment of pity for someone like Newt Gingrich, but I have to admit I'm feeling a little sorry for the guy this week. But before we delve into Newt's campaign problems in greater detail, it seems to me that most pundits are missing a big underlying new reality in the Republican Party. The focus has all been on Newt himself, what he said, and the subsequent ire directed at him by prominent Righties. But after the dust settles on the incident itself, people are going to notice the bigger fact this fracas has illuminated: Republicans are doubling down on Paul Ryan's budget rather than backing away from it, to the point where it has now become the acid test for Republicans in 2012. Which should be good news for Democrats.
Associated Press headline today: "Coburn drops out of group seeking to cut deficit."
So we're now down to a "Gang of Five," I guess.
For those who don't slavishly follow every power alignment in Washington (which is to say, most people), this is supposed to be momentous news of some sort or another because the "Gang of Six" was supposed to be the sober, realist politicians (three from each party) who were going to hammer out a budget agreement which both sides could live with. A daunting task, to be sure, now made even harder by the fact that Republican Senator Tom Coburn has apparently dropped out of the effort.
Before we delve into what it all means, I have to say one thing. The whole imagery of "gangs" in Congress has always seemed to me to be grossly wrongheaded. I mean, seriously, "gangs"?
Well, that was a fun couple of weeks, wasn't it? For the past month or so, Donald Trump pretended to run for president and the media pretended he was serious (funniest headline I've seen today, from the Washington Post, "Donald Trump: I'm Fired!"). This entertaining period has now drawn to a close, much to the dismay of late-night comedians everywhere, as The Donald all but admits that the whole thing was a ratings and contract negotiations ploy to boost his "Apprentice" show on NBC. What it all means is that we can now take a look at who is yet to decide to jump into the Republican nomination race in earnest, and without such clownish distraction.
The much bigger nomination news coming out of this weekend was that Mike Huckabee had also decided against another run at the big prize. Unlike Trump, Huckabee would have been a serious candidate with a chance of actually winning the nomination. Like Trump, Huckabee found he enjoyed television more than the rigors of campaigning. Huckabee announced Saturday night that he really didn't have the "fire in the belly" required for a national campaign effort, and that he'd be much more comfortable continuing his commentary from the safe (for Republicans) perch of a Fox News show.
Ron Paul, apparently, is not a superstitious kind of guy.
Tempting fate, as it were, he announced today that he's running for president once again -- on Friday the thirteenth.
Ron's not the only one making news on this front this particular week, though. I wrote an article on Wednesday looking over the entire Republican field (which is bigger than you might think), and already it's out of date. Newt Gingrich announced his run two days ago, Ron Paul's now officially in, and Mike Huckabee is set to announce his decision tomorrow night (on Fox News, naturally).
In other words, the 2012 race is finally shaping up on the Republican side. There will likely be no nomination race on the Democratic side, since Obama will assumably crush any upstart Democrats who take him on.
One thing worth considering at this point, though, is that we're still a long way off from the 2012 election. And a lot can happen in a year and a half. Pundits who are predicting "the 2012 race will be all about X" (no matter what "X" is) stand a good chance of being wrong. Events have a way of overshadowing carefully crafted campaign plans.
The longest-running news anchor on American television is stepping down. He will be missed, simply because he is a cut so far above all the blow-dried nincompoops on network and cable television. From the Washington Post story today:
Jim Lehrer, who has anchored PBS's NewsHour program for 36 years, said Thursday morning that he is stepping down from the daily broadcast, ending the longest run of a national anchorman.
Lehrer, 76, said he would leave as anchor on June 6 but would continue to appear on Fridays to moderate the show's weekly news analysis segment featuring a panel of journalists.
. . .
In addition to his familiar role on PBS, the widely respected Lehrer may be best known to American audiences as the moderator of presidential debates. He has handled that job 11 times, including one of the debates between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008.
Lehrer's career spans several eras of television, from a time when most people had black and white sets to the digital age. When he was honored last month with a career achievement award by the National Press Club, the club's president, Mark Hamrick, announced his selection by saying, "Amid the cacophony of a sometimes shrill media landscape, he has remained the true voice of reason, balance and fairness."
This has been an unusual year, in terms of presidential campaign politics, because (so far) it has run counter to the conventional wisdom. A standard column for any pundit to write every four years is the "Campaign Starting Even Sooner!" article, in which you decry the fact that the presidential race is beginning earlier and earlier each cycle. Not many of those articles have been written this time around.
Consider that, four years ago, every single Democrat and every single Republican candidate were already in the race by February. A total of 19 serious candidates (both parties combined -- both parties had "open" races, I should point out) were already out on the hustings by March, 2007. The last time around, Republican candidates had raised around $50 million by this point.
This time, the story so far has been the lack of such a story. But all such good times must eventually come to an end, and I now find myself sitting down for the first time to assess the Republican field of candidates for 2012. It has become impossible to ignore any further, in other words. The first Republican televised debate happened last week, and today none other than Newt Gingrich officially jumped into the running.
But, because this is a first look at the race, I feel it is necessary to examine the entire field of candidates -- which is enormous, when everyone whose name has ever been mentioned as a possibility is added in. Even weeding out the obvious vanity candidates with no hope leaves over a dozen names, at this point -- and that's not even counting a few names some Republicans are all but begging to get into the race.
Because I'm trying to include simply everybody, this will necessarily have to be a very wide (and not very deep) look at all the possible candidates. It's going to be a lengthy article, folks, just to warn everyone up front. As the race heats up, I promise we'll get more detailed and more focused on the true possibilities. I've divided the candidates up into several categories, on mostly arbitrary criteria (in other words, some of these names could easily move around among the categories as time goes on).
