July 29th, 2011 by John Feehery
I like to call myself a Libertarian, but I am really not.
I don’t really want government to disappear. While I read The Fountainhead in college, and I admit I have found it to be influential in my life, I think Ayn Rand was a little kooky and her objectivism philosophy is unworkable in the real world.
My brother, the Tea Partier is a Libertarian. He wants government to shrink dramatically. He wants police forces to be shrunk, he wants teacher’s pensions cut, he wants most regulatory bodies eliminated. He finds government to be oppressive and he wants it to be gone.
He also believes that for the last forty-five years, America has been living a lie. He hates the military industrial complex, he hates the Federal Reserve, he wants to go back to a Gold Standard. He thinks we should never
have gone into Iraq and believes that the Soviet Union would have fallen without the Reagan buildup, and he believes that the banking system in this country is essentially corrupt.
He also finds Michele Bachmann to be appealing and he appreciates what Joe Walsh is doing in stopping the debt limit extension. Read more...
Tags: Ayn Rand, Federal Reserve, Gold Standard, Government, Internet poker, Iraq, Joe Walsh, John Boehner, Libertarian, medicare, Michele Bachmann, national defenses, Social Security, Soviet Union, taxes, Tea Party, Tea Party libertarians, The Fountainhead
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Food, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, History, Laws, Media, Politics, Promises, Theory, corruption, election, health care, medicare, national security, spending, taxes, war | 1 Comment »
July 25th, 2011 by John Feehery
It is awfully hard to comprehend what happened in Norway over the weekend.
How could one man do so much damage in the name of Christianity?
How could that one man be so completely delusional to think that by killing so many innocent lives that he was fulfilling some greater mission?
Anders Behring Breivik shot dead 68 young people on Utoya Island right after he set off explosives that killed eight in downtown Oslo. According to news reports, Breivik, a blond hair blue-eyed native Norwegian, wanted to save Europe from cultural Marxism and from Muslim immigration. He apparently went on the shooting spree because he wanted to send a signal to the ruling Labor Party as a way to punish it for its lax policies on immigration.
Breivik, with more than a hint of irony, quoted the father of utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill, saying, “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.” Of course, it was Mill who helped to design the principle of no harm, which, according to Wikpedia, “holds that each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others. If the action is self-regarding, that is, if it only directly affects the person undertaking the action, then society has no right to intervene, even if it feels the actor is harming himself.” Read more...
Tags: America, Anders Behring Breivik, Eric Cantor, Government, gun control laws, John Stuart Mill, Norway, Norwegian, RUSH LIMBAUGH, United States, Utoya Island
Posted in Bad Decisions, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Media, Politics, Radicalism, Religion, Theory, bad news, national security, terrorism | 2 Comments »
July 5th, 2011 by John Feehery
Otto Habsburg, the last heir to the throne of the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire and oldest member of the Habsburg family, died yesterday at the age of 98.
The Habsburg family used to be kind of a big deal in Europe, but the Habsburg empire collapsed during the First World War, and Otto and his family found out that being a former Emperor is not nearly as influential as being an actual Emperor.
The Austrian-Hungarian Empire was founded after the Holy Roman Empire collapsed after Napoleon ran around Europe at the conclusion of the French Revolution.
Prince Metternich was the man who picked up the pieces and constructed the Concert of Europe during the Congress of Vienna. Metternich was all about stability and the balance of power. He didn’t care much for nationalism or liberalism or democracy. He cared mostly about preserving the peace and keeping monarchies in place.
Metternich was a master of negotiation. He was able to craft a workable peace that lasted from 1815 to 1914 (not including a nasty little war between Prussia and France that ended with the creation of the German state). It wasn’t perfect, but the Metternich model was the inspiration for today’s United Nation and the European Union. Read more...
Tags: Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Concert of Europe, Congress, Europe, Habsburg, Napoleon, NBA, NFL, Otto Habsburg, President, Prince Metternich
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, History, Politics, Promises, Theory, spending, taxes | No Comments »
June 28th, 2011 by John Feehery
We live in a nation of control-freaks.
Everybody wants to be able to control his or her own lives in a world where America increasingly is not in control. We don’t control the Chinese or the Indians or the Europeans or anybody else for that matter. We barely can control our own budget.
We are used to controlling our environments. We don’t get hot any more, except for those rare moments where we go from our house to our car. We live in climate-controlled bliss.
Environmentalists believe that we control the weather with our actions. Put me down as a skeptic. I doubt the car that I drive has any control over the kinds of solar flares the Sun shoots off.
We have more control over what we watch on television than we ever did. And what are we watching? The intelligent shows? The well-acted, well-rehearsed, well-written shows? Nope. We are watching TMZ and the Real Housewives of Orange County.
We want to control our government too, and our government wants to control us. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Chinese, climate-controlled, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, election, Europeans, Government, health care, Obama, Politics, Presidential election, spending, taxes, White House
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Hollywood, Politics, Presidential election, Theory, bad news, election, health care, housing crisis, national security, spending | No Comments »
June 24th, 2011 by John Feehery
Eric Cantor pulled out of the Vice President’s debt talks the other day, convinced that the Democrats were leading him down a politically unsustainable path.
Republicans don’t think revenues are a problem (a debatable proposition), and the House Majority Leader certainly doesn’t want to be tagged as a tax increaser. That is bad politics for the GOP and dangerous politics for him.
It has been openly acknowledged that Mr. Biden and Mr. Cantor were only going to be able to run this race to a certain point, and at some point, they were going to pass the baton to the President and the Speaker.
I still believe that it makes far more sense to have the Senate go first. But I look at this only from the position of trying to get it done, not trying to accomplish some ideological victory.
Debt limit votes are to be endured. They are not venues to declare victory or defeat.
The Argentinians have an interesting story to tell when it comes to debt limits. About a decade ago, they defaulted on their debt, causing turmoil in the financial markets and misery within their borders. Read more...
Tags: America, American policy makers, Argentina, Argentinians, Barack Obama, Chinese, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, Don’t Cry for Me, Economy, Eric Cantor, Evita Peron, Government, International Bond Markets, Joe Biden, Politics, President Obama, Presidential election, Republican, Republicans, US foriegn relations
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, History, Politics, Theory, election, national security, spending | 1 Comment »
June 22nd, 2011 by John Feehery
Candidly, I don’t know what to make of the Jon Huntsman announcement yesterday.
It wasn’t the smoothest of starts. Apparently, his announcement press release misspelled his first name (he doesn’t use an H in Jon, an omission that I have always found profoundly troubling).
He made his announcement in New Jersey, of all places. Why New Jersey? I don’t know.
His campaign team tried to make a run at winning some straw poll in New Orleans, which apparently is why he didn’t participate in the first debate in New Hampshire.
It is safe to guess that he won’t be playing in Iowa, perhaps because it doesn’t have the word “new” in it. He promises to run a new campaign, one that doesn’t resort to negative tactics.
I hate to be the skunk at the garden party, but campaigns that refuse to stoop to negative tactics tend to share one common trait: they lose.
Huntsman, refreshingly, didn’t spend the majority of his campaign speech showing primary voters how much he hates Barack Obama. Of course, that would be pretty hard for him to do, since he worked for the man less than 6 months ago. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, Ed Rollins, election, GOP, GOP primary, Government, Huntsman Corporation, John Anderson, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Politics, Presidential election, Republicans, Rockefeller Republicans, Sarah Palin/Bachmann/Santorum, spending, White House
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, History, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Religion, Theory, election, spending, taxes | 1 Comment »
June 20th, 2011 by John Feehery
It used to be said that domestic differences stop at the water’s edge.
That was never less true than it is today.
The fact of the matter is that foreign policy and domestic policy are the same thing.
It is trite to say that we live in a global economy. Now more than ever, we live in a global society. The country that is best able to handle globalism will be the country that is best able to prosper.
That is but one reason to be bullish on America. We embrace globalism, even when we don’t want to.
Immigration built America and it continues to do so. That is why America always changes, always adapts, rarely become stagnant and constantly improves. Sometimes the pace of change is hard for the nativists, but eventually they come around to the notion that these new arrivals can be useful in their own way.
What do I mean when I say that domestic and foreign policy are inexorably linked? Let me give you an example.
Health care is a first-class domestic issue, right? Read more...
Tags: America, Americans, china, Columbia, domestic and foreign policy, foriegn policy, German government, global economy, global society, Government, health care, Immigration, international crime, Japanese government, John McCain, Nigeria, Panama, russia, South Korea, spending
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, History, Politics, Theory, Unemployment, health care, spending | No Comments »
June 15th, 2011 by John Feehery
It took awhile, but the Cold War consensus is finally shattering.
The Cold War consensus centered around a basic proposition: America was going to both pay and provide the military might to insure the national security of the free world.
America founded NATO as the alliance to promote that security and Congress paid for a national security establishment that guaranteed the dominance of American troops.
That Cold War consensus obviously started at the conclusion of the Second World War, survived both Korea and Vietnam, teetered a bit during the Carter years, and then came back strong during the Reagan years. After the Soviet Union fell apart, it took a while for the Cold War consensus to gain its bearings and its true raison d’etre.
The collapse of Yugoslavia gave the Cold War consensus a shot in the arm, as NATO rushed to the rescue of the Serbian Muslims. George Bush browbeat the alliance in helping with the War on Terror, as the Cold War consensus stretched beyond its natural life.
The war on terror is winding down. We will be out of Iraq before the next election and we may be out of Afghanistan if Congress has anything to say about it. Read more...
Tags: afghanistan, America, American troops, Cold War, Congress, Conservatives, Dick Cheney, Economy, election, foriegn wars, George Bush, Korea, NATO, Politics, Reagan, Republican, Ron Paul, Second World War, Secretary Gates, Soviet Union, spending, United States Congress, Vietnam, war, Yugoslavia
Posted in Education, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Politics, Promises, Theory, election, middle-east, spending, taxes, terrorism, tragedy, war | 2 Comments »
June 8th, 2011 by John Feehery
In the short term, the economy might dip back into a recession, which means that our debt picture in the long term gets only worse.
In the short term, it sure is fun to make fun of Anthony Weiner. In the long term, do we really want to kick out members of Congress because of affairs that they didn’t have?
In the short term, the media swarmed over an Internet rumor that there were 30 dead bodies outside Houston. In the long term, if the media keeps jumping on these stories and causing local police departments to deploy resources, they all go broke within five years.
In the short term, Republicans may lose their House majority over Medicare, in the long term, if that happens, we will never fix Medicare and it will go broke.
In the short term, politicians seem to only care about the next election. In the long-term, short-sighted thinking will spell the doom of this nation.
In the short term, everybody is talking about jobs. In the long term, we have more serious issues when it comes to the basics — water, food, roads, electricity – which nobody is talking about. Read more...
Tags: Anthony Weiner, Congress, Democrats, Economy, Government, House Republicans, Iraq, Long Term, medicare, Michelle Bachmann, national security, Politics, recession, Republicans, Sarah Palin, scandal, Short Term
Posted in Bad Decisions, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Religion, Scandals, Theory, Unemployment, bad news, health care, middle-east, national security, poverty, spending, war | No Comments »
June 6th, 2011 by John Feehery
I play tennis like I play chess.
When I face an opponent who is worse than me, I am very good. When I face an opponent who is better than me, I am very, very bad.
Actually, I am not very good at either tennis or chess, but when I play my 5 year old, I can beat him in both pretty handily.
Tennis was in my mind over the weekend because NBC persisted in broadcasting the French Open, even though an American has not threatened to win there in about a hundred years or so.
Ok, it hasn’t been that long, but it has been a long time.
America is a big country, and it has more eligible males playing the game of tennis than just about any country in the world.
Currently, though, it has no top ten players and only a half dozen or so players in the top hundred in the world.
When I was growing up, America dominated men’s tennis. Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, those guys kicked butt and showed the world what America was all about. Read more...
Tags: America, Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, French Open, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, middle class male, NBA, NBC, NFL, Pete Sampras, tennis, tiger woods
Posted in Economy, Foreign Relations, History, Theory, bad news, sports | 4 Comments »
I like to call myself a Libertarian, but I am really not.
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