The man behind the curtain?

Former VP Cheney just can’t seem to stay home and write his memoirs now that he’s been released from his undisclosed location.  That’s what other Former VPs have done.  But Cheney is eager to stay in the public eye.  Is he trying to take some sort of revenge against George W. Bush for not pardoning [...]

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Another GOP canard

The other day we were treated to Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) going all ballistic about how SecDef Robert Gates, and by extension President Obama, were “gutting” the military.  That piece of hyperbole is to be expected from the far right, who rarely let facts get in the way of their sound bytes.
Just in case you’ve [...]

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Principle of obstruction

Congressional Republicans like to think that they are standing on principle when opposing President Obama at every opportunity.  But, if that is the case, they are out of step with the majority of Americans.  It is little wonder that their approval rating continues to sink.
It wasn’t surprising that no House Republicans voted in favor of [...]

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Time for a calendar check?

The hypocrisy of the Republicans in Congress is on full display right along with emptiness of their ideas.  First, they criticized Sec. Geithner (with some justification) when his bank bailout plan wasn’t quite ready for prime time.  But their own much trumpeted budget wasn’t either.  Taking their cue from former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, their [...]

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When do we get the regulations?

Perhaps I’m just impatient.  Perhaps Treasury needs to staff up first.   But rather than trying to figure out “legal” ways to restrict salaries and bonuses for the folks in companies getting public bailout funds, I’d much rather see Congress work on re-regulating the system.  Sure, it doesn’t fuel populist anger like taxing bonuses does, but [...]

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Catalyze. He said catalyze!

More evidence that our new president is an educated adult.  Not only that, but he thinks we’re adults, too.  When President Obama used that word last night, I whooped with joy. Not only that, but he pronounced nuclear proliferation correctly, without even the hint of a stumble.  So nice to have an adult in charge.
Listening [...]

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Ongoing stimulus debate

A commenter suggested that the funds allocated to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the stimulus package) would be better spent by handing out checks to each person.  The final package comes to a bit less than $800billion or just under $2300 per person, not the $25,000 suggested in the comment.   The commenter also [...]

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Stimulus vote post-mortem

Each week my local paper encourages readers to have their say on a particular issue.  While it’s certainly not a scientific survey, it does provide some amusing and maddening reading.  Many of the same people voice their opinions on a weekly basis, and given the frequency with which their comments appear, I figure there aren’t [...]

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No GOP Fingerprints allowed???

Yesterday, as Congress was in the process of approving the stimulus package, I happened upon an interesting report from Arlen Spector, one of the three Republican senators who voted for the package.  Sen. Spector recounted a conversation with an unidentified Republican colleague.  The unnamed Senator congratulated Spector on his vote supporting the package.  The colleague [...]

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How many more job losses will we see?

The numbers are in.  The US economy lost just under 600,000 jobs in January.  Combined with revised job numbers for November and December, our economy has shed nearly 1.8 million jobs in the past three months alone, following on the heels of negative job growth (now isn’t that an interesting term of art!) going back [...]

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