If Republicans are on the campaign trail, Van Halen is back in vogue. For years, Republican candidates and politicians have been using Van Halen’s song, Right Now, as the walk-in jingle at rallies and events. The first time I recorded its use was November 5, 2006, when then-President George W. Bush used the tune to [...]
Thompson flags that Democrats may have recruited retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander who left Iraq in wake of the prison abuse scandal, to run in Texas. They might be hoping he can be a Jim Webb-style candidate for Texas, and recent demographic changes there help their cause. But the Lone Star State [...]
The ringmaster of professional wrestling, Vince McMahon, is unlikely to be supporting Donald Trump’s 2012 presidential campaign. But will the fans? More Trump professional wrestling here, with cross dressing.
Can we all agree that the Tea Party brand is effectively kaput for the 2012 Republican primary? That’s not to say that you won’t hear it repeated over and over again, in polls, newspaper headlines and in advertisements for rallies and debates. “Tea Party” is to Republican politics what “diet” is to snack food. Don’t [...]
Obama kicks off the reelection tour with a trip out west to sell his deficit plan. Paul Krugman puts on his warpaint. Tim Geithner sounds like he’s in for the long haul, which is pretty amazing considering where he started out in the Obama administration. Tim Pawlenty, for all his real conservative governing credentials, sounds like [...]
Been posting here on Swampland on matters military for several months now. But it’s time now to march on over to Battleland, a military-related blog we’re setting up here in the Time web empire. So this is goodbye, at least in the sense that the Swamp will no longer be my normal base of operations. [...]
The scene at the Barley House was tense. It was Friday afternoon in Concord, New Hampshire, and a Tea Party rally was winding down in front of the state house. Earlier, a small group of liberal activists had staged a counter-protest on the margins of the Tea Party event, and now three of them, wearing [...]
Budget issues are complex and confusing, which makes them infinitely spinnable. Officially, the deal House Speaker John Boehner cut with President Obama over the FY11 continuing resolution—which is distinct from the FY12 budget debate, which is distinct from the debt limit issue, which, oh, never mind—included $38 billion in spending cuts. Boehner bragged that it [...]
–Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, on ABC’s “This Week,” recounts what congressional Republicans told him about a looming vote on the debt ceiling.
Late last week, TIME spoke to John Ellis, who has blogged, worked in the election units of NBC and Fox News, written columns for the Boston Globe, and now runs a new website at Business Insider called Politix. Ellis is one of the hardest-headed political observers we know and he was kind enough to take [...]
