Frank Rich writes: “And so leadership on financial reform, as with health care, has been delegated to bipartisan Congressional negotiators poised to neuter it.”
He writes this like he wishes President Obama would take control of the legislative process, and he seems to be faulting him for not doing so.
Maybe Cheney had a point about executive power, eh?
Sarah Palin spoke at an Ohio Right to Life Society meeting yesterday. It’s not known how much she was paid. However, according to The Columbus Dispatch: “Showing her commitment to the cause, Palin said she would return her ‘generous’ speaking fee to Ohio Right to Life after taxes are withdrawn.”
This seems odd to me. This means Palin is effectively taking money from the group and handing it over to the Federal Government, at no benefit to herself. But, according to Palin, this is essentially funding wasteful growth of the government. Can someone explain what’s going on here?
I’ve been reading the book Nixonland by Rick Perlstein lately, and it’s very good. It’s fascinating to see just how hard Nixon worked to achieve what he did. Nixon, as we all know, had anti-charisma. JFK, on the other hand, had charisma. Given that, it really is a testament to what a marvelous politician Nixon was that the 1960 election was even close.
It’s not good news, but it’s less bad news than we thought.
As I have said, if the economy starts to improve from now till November, things might go better for the Democrats in the midterm elections than people are predicting. And, just based on gut-instinct, I feel like the business cycle is starting to swing away from the “bust” and more towards… well, not a “boom” exactly, but something less like a bust.
It’s not the weirdest ad I’ve ever seen, but still, this is up there.
Shouldn’t McCain be one of the worst Conservative actors?
Chances are that if the economy gets much better, they will probably do okay in November.
If it gets worse or remains the same, they will be swept out in a tidal wave of voter anger.
Whether or not they pass the health care bill is irrelevant.
I’m pretty sure he’s just taking a fall to distract attention from the whole health-care thing.
Republicans like to say that President Obama was too liberal in his first year. This was a mistake, they say, because America is a “center-right nation”, and the people will not tolerate a shift “leftward”.
I’ve always hated this “right-center-left” terminology. And yes, I’ve used it myself many times on here because it does make for a convenient shorthand, but it can also pervert political discourse. For example, liberals like to say that the Nazis were a “right-wing” party. Well, technically yes, but that means nothing, because “right-wing” didn’t mean the same thing in 1930s Germany that it does today in the USA. “Right” and “Left” are such broad concepts, and change with the shifting fashions so much, that they are not useful when describing the basic character of a country.
The “right-center-left” trichotomy is virtually meaningless on a national scale. Countries have a basic character and philosophy that is part of their culture. What is the “center” in Europe is “left” in the U.S.A. as a result of the country’s culture.
To say America is a center-right nation is ridiculous. If we must use this terminology, all democratic countries are by definition “center”. The “center” is the prevailing ideology in the country, whatever it happens to be, and each country has its own individual concepts of what is to the “right” and “left” of that center.
Every news site has it on their front page. It was the only thing about Obama on NBC’s Nightly News.
Seriously, do you care?
