November 1st, 2011 by John Feehery
According to the United Nations, the 7 billionth person came into the world the other day.
I was wondering why it felt kind of crowded around here.
The 1 billionth person arrived when Thomas Jefferson was president. No. 2 billion came when Calvin Coolidge was president, the 3 billionth when Dwight Eisenhower was president, the 4 billionth when Nixon was getting impeached, the 5 billionth when Reagan was in his second term, the 6 billionth when Clinton was in his second term, and now Obama is president with No. 7 billion.
If it seems like the pace is picking up, well, you are right. At this rate, we will hit 10 billion by 2050.
Most of the growth is occurring in Asia, Africa and South America. The United States and Europe are expected to stay fairly flat in their population growth, but that doesn’t mean that Europeans and Americans won’t be profoundly affected by the population explosion in other parts of the globe.
The CIA and the Defense Department planners are already thinking through the implications of this population boom. Politicians need to follow suit. Read more...
Tags: 7 billionth person, Africa, Asia, CIA, Defense Department, Europe, free-market, market capitalism, nited Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, Obama, population growth, Social Security, South America, Thomas Jefferson, Transportation infrastructure, United Nations, United States, Water security
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Food, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Immigration, Politics, bad news, health care, national security, poverty, spending, taxes | No Comments »
October 25th, 2011 by John Feehery
The president does a pretty good job of declaring victory. He doesn’t do a particularly good job of explaining the cost.
He ended last week declaring that our troops in Iraq will be home for Christmas. What he didn’t explain was that decision was reached because the Iraqis are kicking us out of their country and that the likely result will be a dirty civil war that will make Iraq a puppet of Iran.
But the president has a history of these kinds of victories.
Sure, he signed a health care reform law, which he hailed as a victory for the American people. What he didn’t explain was that health care insurance costs would likely continue to climb for most consumers and that many businesses would be ending their health insurance programs in favor of these exchanges created by the law.
Sure, he signed the Dodd-Frank law, which he hailed as a victory for those who are frustrated by a banking industry that doesn’t work properly. But the law hasn’t even been fully vetted by the regulators and already it has made it harder for the banks to loan out their money to small and medium-sized businesses. Read more...
Tags: Anwar al-Awlaki, Congress, Dodd-Frank law, health care insurance, health care reform law, Libya, Moammar Gadhafi, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, Obama, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, History, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, election, health care, national security, terrorism, tragedy, war | No Comments »
October 21st, 2011 by John Feehery
Marco Rubio
Chris Matthews thought he would get me with his question on Marco Rubio. He asked me, breaking news style, what I thought about the revelations that Rubio’s family fled Cuba two whole years before Castro came to power.
I didn’t scratch my head on camera, but I did so in my mind.
What the hell is the big deal, I thought.
Not knowing a thing about this “breaking story”, I didn’t give much of an answer. I mumbled something about Rubio being a rising star in the party and then the segment ended.
But having read the story this morning, I have a better sense of what is going on here.
The Democrats are desperately afraid that Mitt Romney is going to pick Rubio to be his Vice Presidential candidate, and they are getting the Washington Post to do its bidding.
I don’t know if Romney is going to pick Rubio and I don’t know if Rubio would accept such an offer (he says he won’t), but I do know that the R and R ticket would spell the doom of Mr. Obama and his ill-fated administration. Read more...
Tags: Castro, Chris Matthews, Democrats, Hispanic Vote, illegal immigrants, immigration bill, Marco Rubio, Medicaid, Mitt Romney, Republican, Rubio, the American dream, the Obama Administration, Vice Presidential candidate, Washington Post, welfare
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, Immigration, Laws, Liberal Media, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Unemployment, bad news, election, medicare, national security, poverty, spending, taxes, welfare | 2 Comments »
October 13th, 2011 by John Feehery
Well, that was quick.
Yesterday, as I drove through Washington’s streets, all I saw was a bunch of traffic, made worse by the 30 rabble-rousers who occupied a half-block in downtown D.C.
Today, dozens of South Korean flags were fluttering in the pouring rain.
The President of South Korea is in town, meeting with Barack Obama and addressing a joint session of Congress.
Apparently, this visit constituted an important enough deadline to compel Congress to finally act on a free trade agreement with one of our best Asian allies.
The House and Senate usually only work this quickly together when they pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open.
South Korea wasn’t the only trade pact passed in a New York minute yesterday. So were the Colombia and Panama Free Trade agreements.
If you like NAFTA, you will love this trio of trade pacts.
If you don’t like NAFTA, you will be despondent.
The big business and the agriculture sectors love free trade. Free trade makes it easier for our companies to sell their products at a lower price to more customers and that is something that makes farmers and multi-national CEO’s very happy. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Bush administration, Colombia Free Trade agreements, Congress, Free Trade, House and Senate, Mitt Romney, NAFTA, Occupy Wall Street, Panama Free Trade agreements, President of South Korea, South Korean, Tea Party, White House
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Foreign Relations, Government, Politics, Presidential election, Theory, bad news, spending, taxes | No Comments »
October 10th, 2011 by John Feehery
Christopher Columbus
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
That was a long time ago.
It used to be that Christopher Columbus was a big deal in America. In 1892, the worlds fare in Chicago celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Italian sailor’s “discovery” of the new world.
These days, we don’t even get Columbus day off.
There is still a connection, of course, between the two.
Columbus was born in Italy, petitioned the Spanish monarchs to get money for his trip to the new world, and competed fiercely with Portuguese explorers. He reportedly also spent some time in Ireland.
If I could somehow find a direct connection with the Greeks, we would be all set with the PIGS meme.
Columbus traveled west in hopes of finding a quicker path to to the Indies. What he discovered was that the world was a lot bigger than he initially thought. When he made landfall in the Caribbean, he wasn’t in
India at all. He still had half a world to go.
What we are discovering today is that the world is a helluva lot smaller than we initially thought. When the Greeks, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Irish go bankrupt it greater increases the chances that
we will go bankrupt. Read more...
Tags: 1492, Christopher Columbus, Columbus Day, Irish, Italian, Politics, President, Spanish
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Politics, Theory, taxes | No Comments »
October 6th, 2011 by John Feehery
We are all going to hear a lot of stories about Steve Jobs and his impact on our daily lives. How are kids can figure out the iPad before we can. How Grandma is truly hip with her new iPhone. And all of the other really cool family stories. (By the way, I am writing this on an iMac, which I love).
There are plenty of questions raised by the death of Steve Jobs:
- Why can’t we find a cure for pancreatic cancer?
- What happens now to Apple?
- Who is the next truly great American innovator?
All these questions can and will be answered by somebody else.
I want to talk briefly today about what the political class can learn from Steve Jobs.
Jobs’ central insight was that he believed that the technology had to be transformed to appeal to the mass market. He didn’t dumb down his technology and he didn’t require the public to somehow learn a bunch of new stuff so that they could use his products.
What he did do was connect cool products with average people in such a way as to elevate the lives of average Americans while still making products that were both innovative and earth-shattering. Read more...
Tags: American people, Android, Apple, Facebook, iMac, iPad, iphone, Politics, Steve Jobs, technology, twitter, Xbox
Posted in Foreign Relations, Government, History, Politics, Promises, Theory, bad news | No Comments »
September 22nd, 2011 by John Feehery
It has been a long time since the girl from Ipanema captured the imaginations of the American people. But Brazil these days is more than just a bunch of pretty women and nice beaches. In fact, for American workers (especially those in the aerospace industry and helicopter manufacturing) Brazil has been a jobs life-line.
Among the top ten American trading partners, Brazil stands as the only country that the United States has had a trade surplus with for the last two years. Of the top ten products that have been sent to Latin American countries from the States, three of them have been component parts for either aircraft or helicopters.
To say that Brazil is on a roll would be an understatement. “Rio”, a new animated movie put out by Fox Pictures, is not only a hit; it also puts the iconic Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro in a flattering light. Rio beat my hometown of Chicago for the right to host the Olympics in 2016, a coup for all of South America, and Brazil will also play host to the World Cup in 2014. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Boeing, Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, Economy, Embraer, European Debt Crisis, Forbes Magazine, Honeywell, Ipanema, Politics, President Obama, QGA Public Affairs, Rio de Janeiro, Tim Geithner, U.S. Air Force, United Nations, United States, World Cup
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, Politics, Theory, national security, spending | No Comments »
September 13th, 2011 by John Feehery
Here are some questions that I would like to be asked at the next debate: Read more...
Tags: Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chief of Staff, China and Brazil, CIA, debate, DNI, England, France, House, Israel, Jimmy Carter, management style, Medicaid, Office of Presidential Personnel, President, Ronald Reagan, Senate, Surgeon General, The American people, U.N., United Nations, Vice President, welfare reform, White House
Posted in Economy, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, election, national security, spending, taxes, welfare | No Comments »
September 6th, 2011 by John Feehery
My dad learned how to make his bed in the Army.
His bed-making skills are much more impressive than mine will ever be. He creases his sheets just so. He could easily get a quarter to bounce high off the finished product.
He tried to instill his bed-making skills onto his sons, but somehow, we never were able to follow in his footsteps.
Part of that was because we didn’t really care about making our bed. Part of that was because as teenagers, you are lucky to get to school, let alone worry about making your bed with military precision.
My dad learned a bunch of other things in the Army. He learned how to polish his boots. He learned all about physical fitness. He learned about different cultures in America (and in Korea).
He learned some things that he will probably never tell his grandkids, and some things he never told his mother.
My dad enlisted in the Army before he was drafted. But in all likelihood, he would have been drafted anyway. And many of the skills he first learned at boot camp, he kept with him his entire life. Read more...
Tags: America, Army, military, United States, war
Posted in Foreign Relations, Government, Theory, national security, war | No Comments »
August 23rd, 2011 by John Feehery
Muammar Gaddafi
If and when Muammar Gaddafi is finally deposed in Libya, President Obama probably deserves some credit. He backed Nicholas Sarkozy and NATO’s efforts to aid the rebels (whoever they are). He authorized the Navy and the Air Force to bomb the hell out of the bad guys. And of course, he has been boldly predicting that Gaddafi’s days are numbered, a nice counter-balance to the Libyan dictator’s assurances that he was going nowhere.
Will Obama get that credit? Probably not.
Most Americans don’t care what happens to Mr. Gaddafi. They are worried less about the economic future of Tripoli and more worried about jobs in their own community. Why should we spend our hard-earned tax dollars deposing a far-away dictator when we have a huge budget deficit and a struggling economy back here?
For the conspiracy theorists out there, there is a persistent rumor that we went into Libya to bailout Goldman Sachs.
Goldman lost 98% of Libya’s Sovereign Wealth Fund in 2007 (which amounted to $1.3 billion, a lot of it personal Gaddafi money, undoubtedly), and the Libyans were not very happy about it. Goldman could never come up with a solution to this problem that could make the dictator happy. Read more...
Tags: America, Assad, Barack Obama, Economy, Goldman-Sachs, Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, NATO, Nicholas Sarkozy, Obama, Politics, spending, Syria, Tripoli, Wall Street Journal, war, Zarti
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Media, Politics, Scandals, Theory, bad news, national security, spending, taxes, war | 1 Comment »
According to the United Nations, the 7 billionth person came into the world the other day.
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