Recently in Barack Obama Category

Perhaps you've heard. Our CongressNerds are doing the "gavel in/gavel out" thing and holding pro forma sessions trying to prevent the POTUS from making recess appointments for positions which have been vacant for months.From Wiki: "The term pro forma is a term applied to practices or documents that are done as a pure formality, perfunctory, or seek to satisfy the minimum requirements or to conform to a convention or doctrine."The use of the pro forma...

As most of us know, the Buffet plan is a simply plan that calls for millionaires to pay the same percentage in actual income as those in the middle class. It is inspired by billionaire Warren Buffet who actually believes he should pay more. However, considering that the avid Fox viewer has the political acumen and knowledge of a rabies infected dog, here is how I think they should play it. I will borrow from...

I was out playing golf the other day and came inside to beat the heat. My father and I had the silly notion that we could walk 18 holes in 90+ degree temperatures. So, when I entered the 19th hole I was a bit woozy. So, when I saw that the station was on Fox News I sat down and listened for awhile. Who knows how much I heard was reality and how much was...

Here's my TV viewing schedule for this evening. Seinfeld re-runs on TBS from 6 o 7, followed by Saints-Packers pre-game on NBC at 7, followed by the kickoff somewhere around 7:30. No speech. Why bother?By all accounts, President Obama's jobs speech before a joint session of Congress tonight will just be more of the same old, same old, Republican-lite, warmed over policies on unemployment--tax cuts. If I'm going to get yadda yadda yadda, I'd rather...

Above is a picture of Vice President Joe Biden.(Photo copyright 2011 Neil Aquino.)I took this picture on Labor Day at the Cincinnati AFL-CIO picnic.Vice President Biden spoke in the most forceful terms.He said that everyday working people were in a fight for "existence" against our extreme right-wing adversaries.He said that organized labor was one the few things keeping the "barbarians from the gate"  in terms of the rights workers to collectively organize, and in protecting the futures...

I offer this viewpoint as an alternative and not necessarily something I believe in strongly. It's hard to believe in anything strongly when you work seven and eight days at a time and work the graveyard shift. That being said, I know progressives are up in arms over what the president and Congressional Democrats did in facilitating a debt ceiling deal. Funny, but the new job has a way of putting things in perspective.I think...

In 1946, my grandmother welcomed a healthy son into this world - with joy.  In 1950, she welcomed a healthy daughter -  my aunt - into this world.  In 1953, my grandmother fell pregnant with my mother.  She cried.  Pregnancy was hard on her; she did not have the money to feed three children.  In 1955, my grandmother fell pregnant again.  In 1957, once again.  All in all, she had five children.  She celebrated the...

...that if I were president of these here United States and;  I knew for certain, or had been advised by those whose business it is to know such things for certain, that in 6 days the country was facing the probability of a financial and economic crisis; I knew  that there was no plan on the horizon that had much of a chance of being passed by both Houses of Congress in time to keep...

Should Abe Lincoln have given into everything that Jefferson Davis and the South wanted in order to solve a great national problem?President Obama has likely compromised more than he should on the debt ceiling debate. And yet still it is not enough for Republicans.Mr. Obama may not be another Lincoln, but today's Republican Party of States Rights and mindless government bashing would have fit in just fine with the Confederacy.Just how far backwards are we going to go in...

A must-read article by Elizabeth Drew in The New York Review of Books asks and answers a question posed here by yours truly on July 7, "What Were They Thinking?" The answer is just as I suspected:"In early July, when Obama suddenly injected Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid into the deficit and debt negotiations, many, perhaps most, Democrats were dismayed. They believed that the President was offering up the poor and the needy as a...