Recently in Politics Category

Shocking, huh?"The Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said on Sunday that his party will vigorously oppose the spending initiatives President Obama plans to include in his State of the Union address on Tuesday because "it's not a time to be looking at pumping up government spending." ...Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Mr. McConnell countered that "The American public, as one pundit put it, issued a massive restraining order," against government spending and excessive...

While I was waiting for the Jets-Patriots game to come on last Sunday, I ran across a documentary on the History Channel called "The Crumbling of America." It was all about the rapidly deteriorating state of roads, bridges, sewer and water systems, and the electrical grid, all across the country. A short clip:<br />A brief synopsis from a Georgia Tech aerospace engineer:"America's infrastructure is collapsing. Tens of thousands of bridges are structurally deficient or functionally...

My first inclination is to call the Republican vote to repeal health care reform yesterday meaningless, since it's unlikely to even come up for a vote in the Senate and faces a certain presidential veto even if it did,  but it actually wasn't meaningless at all. It told us everything we need to know about today's Republican party. Since they offered no alternative, only a "no" to the current law, the message was loud and...

Texas Governor-for-life Rick Perry in his inauguration speech yesterday..."...insisted...that the state would protect the vulnerable during the 2011 legislative session, which began last week and will last until the end of May. "The frail, the young, the elderly on fixed incomes, those in situations of abuse and neglect, people whose needs are greater than the resources at their disposal -- they can count on the people of Texas to be there for them," he said."Meanwhile,...

Sarah Palin entered the friendly confines of the Fox News studios last night (actually from a studio Fox built for her in Alaska) for a hard-hitting "intervew" with Sean Hannity. (Video here). As the TV critic for the Baltimore Sun put it:"Hannity doesn't really do interviews with her. He plays defense attorney asking about "criticisms" made of her, and then setting her up with graphics and loaded questions so she can attempt to refute the...

As the new Republican majority in the House gets set to waste time this week with a repeal of health care reform that has zero chance of either passing the Senate or being able to withstand a presidential veto, the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol appeared on Fox News Sunday yesterday to detail what the "replace" part of the alleged "repeal and replace" of health care reform might look like. As you would expect from the...

President Obama's speech in Tucson on Tuesday expressed some noble goals in the wake of the tragedy. Such as the call for closing the partisan divide because "the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us," and that we should "remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together."Noble goals. Also, in my opinion, unachievable in our present political climate, which isn't likely to change...

A sad sign of the times:"[S]ales of the extended magazines are doing particularly brisk business in Arizona. At Glockmeister, a specialist Glock dealer with outlets in Mesa and Phoenix, overall sales including those of the Glock 19 as used by Loughner, which sells for $499 in the store, have approximately doubled. But sales of the extended 33-bullet clip are up almost 400% this week."This is just sick. From an NPR interview with Don Davis, the...

Screwy Louie rides again:"Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert says his office is drafting a measure to allow members of Congress to carry guns in the District of Columbia, including in the Capitol and on the House floor.Gohmert says he and his colleagues need to be able to protect themselves, in light of the mass shooting in Arizona."It'd be a good thing for members of Congress who want to carry a weapon in the District," he...

A great speech. President Obama at his best. Compassionate, warm, honoring those who died, those who survived, and those whose heroic actions at a time of crisis kept the tragedy from being worse than it was. A few of my favorite passages:"...[A]t a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -- at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet...