October 17th, 2011 by John Feehery
(Chicago, IL) Today, David Axelrod, the chief of the Re-elect Obama Campaign, today announced that it will formally join the Occupy Wall Street protests and start mobilizing against the policies endorsed by the Obama Administration.
Axelrod brandished a Tim Geithner bobblehead doll, which he stabbed repeatedly with a pen knife while chanting an indecipherable spell, which he later said he hoped would lead to the Treasury Secretary’s immediate departure from his office.
Axelrod, in announcing this unusual campaign, said: “We have decided that we aren’t going to defend the indefensible. Yes, we have terrible unemployment. Yes, Wall Street is getting away with murder. Yes, people have lost faith in the future. As much as I have tried, we can’t blame Bush for this anymore. We have to blame the Obama Administration.”
“I believe in Barack Obama, the campaigner. I have lost faith in Barack Obama, the President. So our campaign will basically run against the President and urge his replacement with the guy on the campaign.” Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Bush tax cuts, David Axelrod, expansion of NAFTA, Obama Administration, Obama Campaign, Occupy Wall Street protests, Politics, Presidential election, Re-elect Obama, Teacher’s Unions, Tim Geithner, Unemployment, White House, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney
Posted in Bad Decisions, Government, Liberal Media, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, taxes | No Comments »
October 14th, 2011 by John Feehery
Never assume.
I usually get in trouble when I make assumptions and then challenge them.
I have been assuming for some time that the Republicans will easily beat Barack Hussein Obama.
I have been assuming that for some very good reasons.
For example, Obama is just not a very good President. He doesn’t have a clue how the private market place works. He is not much of a leader. His neo-Marxist philosophy is all out of step with our free-market system.
Even if you do like the President personally, it is still hard to make the case that he deserves to be re-hired. The economy is in terrible shape. Our country is “this close” to going completely broke. He has failed to take on entitlements in any serious way.
He has had some successes in the war on terror, but unfortunately for him, this election won’t hinge on Mr. Obama’s ability to give the order to kill terrorists.
That is what we all know, and that is why he is cracking 50% in his disapproval ratings.
But the Republicans can still screw this up. Here are a few ways BHO could still win: Read more...
Tags: 9-9-9 plan, afghanistan, American economy, Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Dodd-Frank regulations, economic growth, Freedom Works, Hermann Cain, Hispanic voters, Immigration, Libertarian, Matt Kibbe, Mitt Romney, neo-Marxist philosophy, Obamacare, Republicans, Rick Perry, Super Pacs, Tea Party, Unemployment
Posted in GOP, Government, Politics, Presidential election, Theory, election, spending, taxes | No 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 12th, 2011 by John Feehery
Dana Milbank had a funny story in the Post today about the pathetic protest movement that has gripped (well, gripped might be a strong word), Washington:
Attempting to emulate the Occupy Wall Street protests, Washington activists and some out-of-town guests set themselves the lofty goal of occupying the Hart Senate Office Building. “We are there to shut the place down!” organizer David Swanson told his small band of followers.
But how to do this with only a few dozen demonstrators? Well, Swanson said, they could push all the buttons on the elevators — the way naughty children sometimes do in apartment buildings. “There are people who are wanting to go into the elevators and fill them and not get out and push all the buttons,” he said. “If you like that, do it.”
Forcing Senate staff to take the stairs is a pretty interesting way to spark rebellion in the streets.
E.J. Dionne earlier this month complained that the left needed its own version of the Tea Part Movement.
Hey, E.J., you can have ours. We are done with it.
If ever there was a time for some real good protests, now is the time. Read more...
Tags: Dana Milbank, E.J. Dionne, local and federal governments, state, taxes, Tea Part movement, Unemployment, wall street protests
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Politics, Theory, Unemployment, bad news, spending, taxes, welfare | No Comments »
October 11th, 2011 by John Feehery
President Obama has made taxing the rich the centerpiece of his reelection campaign. He talks incessantly about it. It is a key part of his jobs package. So far, an apt summary of the Obama presidency might very well be: “He killed Osama bin Laden and he really, really wanted to tax the rich.”
The President is no dummy. He reads polls like any other politician, and he knows that the taxing-the-rich meme polls well. Most polls show about 70 percent of all Americans supporting higher taxes on wealthier Americans.
In fact, polls show that even wealthier Americans support higher taxes on wealthier Americans. One commissioned by American Express showed that nearly two-thirds of voters making more than $100,0000 support raising taxes on rich people. A CBS poll shows that 65 percent of voters specifically supported a millionaire’s tax, with only 30 percent opposing it.
You would think that the President would be making up some ground with voters because of his pleas to raise taxes on those rich suckers, but the more Obama attacks the rich, the more his poll numbers go down.
Why is that? Here are a few reasons: Read more...
Tags: American Express, Americans, Franklin D. Roosevelt, higher taxes, new tax increases, Obama, Osama Bin Laden, Politics, presential election, President Obama, reelection campaign, tax hikes, taxes, taxing the rich
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, bad news, election, spending, taxes | 1 Comment »
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 7th, 2011 by John Feehery
The Senate majority leader moved last night to cut off republican amendments to a Chinese currency bill, calling the amendments dilatory. In doing so, he changed Senate rules and caused a firestorm in the halls of the world’s greatest debating society (or so it thinks of itself).
I was in the Senate press gallery as this kerfluffle was unfolding, drinking beer at a going away party for Carl Hulse, the New York Times reporter who is moving off the hill beat and up the management chain at the old gray lady.
Had I been a Senate staffer, I probably would have really cared about this break in precedent, but I am now a civilian, and like most Americans, I now look upon the Senate as a vast wasteland of wasted opportunity, which leads me not to anger, but to ennui.
The upper body, as some call it, has put the fun in dysfunction. Well, not really. There is nothing fun about it. It hasn’t passed a budget in two years, it hasn’t passed an appropriations bill all year, it won’t pass a jobs bill that will actually create jobs, and right now, it doesn’t look good for any progress on the Super Committee, which was created precisely because the Senate is so completely dysfunctional. Read more...
Tags: Carl Hulse, Congress, House of Representatives, jobs bill, Politics, Senate Majority Leader, super committee, The American people, the Senate
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Politics, Theory, spending, taxes | 1 Comment »
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 »
October 6th, 2011 by John Feehery
I had a chance lunch with the founder of Crate and Barrel yesterday at the Washington Ideas Forum. Gordon Segal asked if the empty seat at my small table was open, and me, having no idea who Gordon Segal is, said sure.
He told me if he was from Chicago, and I immediately (in my usually obnoxious straightforward way) asked him if he was a Cub or White Sox fan.
I noticed that his name tag said Crate and Barrel, and asked him about it. Yep, he said, he founded the company with his wife in 1962 with one other employee. They were newlyweds who had travled through Europe in 1961, and they noticed all the neat furniture stores over there that would have looked cool in American living rooms. The Crate and Barrel name comes from the crates and barrels from which all of their products arrived, initially from European countries, and now from all over the world. Read more...
Tags: Aspen Institute, Atlantic Magazine, Bill Daley, Conservatives, Crate and Barrel, David Bradley, Dodd-Frank, Gordon Segal, Government, Marco Rubio, spending, Tom Brokaw, Washington Ideas Forum
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Politics, Theory, bad news, housing crisis, spending | No Comments »
October 5th, 2011 by John Feehery
Apparently, Radiohead couldn’t get its schedule straight with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and they didn’t play for the grungy crowd last week. I am not hip enough to know exactly what kind of music the band plays, but I do know that a couple of years ago, the members of the band came up with a brilliant marketing strategy to sell one of its albums. “Pay what you want or pay nothing at all if that is what you want to do.” The band never released how much money it made by letting its fans name their own price, but they chose to not pursue the same strategy for their next album.
Despite the scheduling snafu, Radiohead still has endorsed the protest movement that seems to be gaining strength every day. For example, all of the government employee unions are now on board with Michael Moore and assorted other left-wing radicals to protest the money that Wall Street financiers make every day.
These Wall Street financiers and their other colleagues, known collectively by the collectivists as “the rich” or the “one-percenters”, pay about 30 to 35% of the taxes collected by the Federal government. Having the government employee unions protest against these prodigious tax-payers is somewhat akin to the protesting against the goose because he is not producing golden eggs fast enough. Read more...
Tags: America, anti-capitalist, Barack Obama, Capitalism, Democrats, Federal government, immigrants, Jobs, Mexicans, Michael Moore, New York Times, Occupy Wall Street protestors, Old Gray Lady, Politics, Radiohead, spending, taxes, Wall Street financiers
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, GOP, Government, Politics, bad news, spending, taxes | No Comments »
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