Stick around long enough in Washington, and everything does happen. The party of Abraham Lincoln eventually rallied against the Civil Rights Act. The individual mandate eventually became a left-wing idea. Democrats eventually argued for a cut in payroll taxes, depriving Social Security of its much needed revenue stream. Today we see another headscratcher: The Republican [...]
My colleague Mark Thompson, a devoted reader of FedBizOpps, points out this new job opportunity from the Obama Administration. Call it the boob tube stimulus. The purpose of this Statement of Work (SOW) is to obtain the necessary television clip service for the Executive Office of the President (EOP), Office of Administration (OA). The service [...]
As the old Granite State saying goes, Iowa picks corn and New Hampshire picks Presidents. So what about the most powerful newspaper in New Hampshire, the Union Leader? On Sunday, the editorial board endorsed Newt Gingrich for President, rocking the presidential race. Suddenly, Gingrich has a very real, very current conservative credential that he can [...]
They call it a campaign, but it’s really a reality TV show. Each week or so, the contestants get on a stage, and are prodded to attack each other, equivocate and regurgitate sound bites. Dreadful stuff. At the end, viewers vote for one winner, who gets to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States. Welcome to Episode 11. American democracy as cheesy prime time programming. CNN’s Foreign Policy Debate in Washington, D.C.
“Good riddance!” say the pundits on both left and right. The Super Committee is dead, and with it any short-term hope of a solution to the nation’s long-term deficit woes. For the right, this is a victory, because no tax increases were bartered away. “Good for America,” says Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich. For the [...]
Occupy Wall Street began with a simple idea: occupy Wall Street. By sitting, camping, sleeping at what many Americans still see as the symbolic scene of the crimes–both moral and legal–that led to the 2008 financial collapse, the message was clear. It was an act of civil disobedience that pointed the finger at the rich [...]
A while back, I argued that Rick Perry made good television ads, and his newest spot–”Lazy”–is no exception. But it is also, in the tradition of the best political advertising, inaccurate, fanciful and grammatically adventurous. So let’s break it down.
Another week, another disconcerting e-mail dump to push the Solyndra scandal deeper into the history books as an example of why industrial policy in the United States tends to go badly. According to newly released emails, the former Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison told officials at the Department of Energy that he wanted to announce a [...]
Mayor Michael Bloomberg left no question about his reasons for ordering a surprise overnight raid on Zuccotti Park to clear protesters after weeks of occupation. “The park was becoming a place where people came not to protest, but rather to break laws, and in some cases, to harm others,” Bloomberg said in a statement. In [...]
Barack Obama’s first trip through Asia was about avoiding direct confrontation and modeling his new, un-Bush approach to foreign policy: More committed to international cooperation and deliberation, less aggressive in its expression of American power. Now Obama is again meeting with Asian leaders, as he prepares for a challenging re-election campaign. The stakes have changed, [...]
