Back in the dim and distant past of 1992, it seemed both the Republican and Democratic parties had worked out a backroom deal: "Let's just not mention the deficit in the presidential campaign this year." Neither party saw it as a winning issue, and so they both apparantly agreed to ignore it completely.
Enter a quirky Texan with a lot of money to spend named H. Ross Perot. He forced the issue into the campaign in a big way. He started renting television time in half-hour chunks and giving what were essentially infomercials on the subject of the deficit. He forced Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush to confront the issue. And he also got almost one vote in five on election day.
[ Posted Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 – 04:11 UTC ]
While everyone watching the news from Iraq is focused on whether the "surge" is working or not (in anticipation of General Petraeus' upcoming report to Congress), there are powerful undercurrents at work in the region which may do more to define the future of Iraq than any upcoming "the-glass-is-half-full" report in Washington, D.C.
The biggest, and most disturbing, of these is the fact that Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki seems to be losing whatever tenuous grip he holds on the reins of government. Boycotts of the Iraqi Parliament are threatened from almost every side, it seems -- Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurd. As if this weren't bad enough, Maliki also faces an open revolt from within his own Dawa party. And at the same time he seems to be advocating kicking Petraeus out of his country.
While the story which the mainstream media seemed to pay attention to this week from Iraq was that the Iraqi Parliament was taking a month off for vacation (incidentally and completely ignoring the fact that our own American Congress -- and probably President Bush -- will also be taking the entire month off), the real story may be that the Iraqi Parliament may not even have a post-vacation government to come back to.
"Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo. So little time! So much to know!"
-- Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D. [From the movie Yellow Submarine]
Although this article has an admittedly... um... titillating (OK, I just couldn't resist) headline, it is not, in fact, about Hillary Clinton's breasts. It's not even primarily about news articles about said cleavage, either. It's really about what happens afterwards -- how Democratic candidates are using such attacks to raise buckets and buckets of campaign cash. This tactic has been masterfully used in the past by Republicans, but it seems Democrats have learned the trick as well this year. Good for them!
If [new British Prime Minister Gordon] Brown was deferential, Bush was playful -- from the very beginning of the visit. When Brown arrived at Camp David on Sunday, Bush invited him into a golf cart labeled 'Golf Cart One' on the front. The president started to head off but then threw the cart into a 360-degree turn, smiling mischievously for the cameras, before speeding off.
It's Friday, so it's payday for untold millions of Americans. And for millions of them, their paycheck will come with the first raise they've gotten in a decade. Because this is the week when the Democratically-sponsored minimum wage hike goes into effect.
The first of three yearly raises, the minimum wage goes from $5.15 an hour to $5.85 an hour this week. That is a 70 cent an hour raise, or roughly 14%. Next year, another raise of 70 cents to $6.55, and then the last in two years, to $7.25. Overall, this is almost a 41% raise for those paid the least in our country. While 70 cents doesn't sound like much, when is the last three-year period when you got a 40% raise? It's even more impressive if you look at yearly figures for a full-time worker: from $10,712 to $15,080.
Congressional Democrats are putting even more pressure on the Bush White House this week, on many investigative fronts. Subpoenas are flying, contempt citations are voted out of committee, and the Senate is considering opening a perjury investigation because Attorney General Alberto Gonzales continues make statements to them which are easily proved wrong. Most Republicans, though, are continuing to try to paint the whole process as "a partisan political witch hunt." My guess is that while they may put up a good front now, the closer we get to the 2008 election, the more nervous the party as a whole is going to be about the prospect of defending the Bush White House throughout the campaign.
This is an experiment in multimedia. If the above video player doesn't work, you can access this video at the YouTube site.
While I am admittedly a slave to the written word, I have (twice) in the past suggested scripts for campaign commercials. The first of these was more fun to come up with, and had more vivid imagery in my opinion; but the second one may have proved to be more effectual as a campaign strategy, if it had actually been used.
It seems that events have conspired to make this "new features" week (or perhaps "multimedia" week) on ChrisWeigant.com.
To kick this off, I am featuring our very first original political cartoon. I was emailed a few cartoons by a blog reader, and will be running a few of them over the coming days as an experiment. Please feel free to post your comments to let me and the artist know what you think.
I've included the short bio the artist wrote for himself after the cartoon. He's a guy that draws these for fun, and he sent them to me to see if I could use them. I must admit, having original political cartoons on my site is an intriguing idea to me, so we'll see how it goes for a while.
The first of these could have been drawn right after Bush took office, or it could have been used during the recent White House spin job on the Libby commutation. In other words, it has kind of a timeless quality to it.
Anyway, here's the debut cartoon from Charles W. Cunningham:
