September 1st, 2011 by John Feehery
There is a difference between these two statements.
“I am coming over to your house to watch the football game.” AND
“Hey, can I come over to your house and watch the football game?”
President Obama opted for the first statement when he invited himself over to John Boehner’s house to give a “big speech” on jobs and the economy.”
Usually, a President asks for an invitation from the Speaker before he announces he is giving an address to Congress.
Why is that? Because Congress is co-equal to the executive branch. The President doesn’t run the Congress, although many tend to wish that the Congress would just go away after giving them a blank check.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner eventually agreed to a better date for the President to use the Congress as a prop for another urgent speech meant to jump start his flagging campaign for re-election.
Sadly for NBC, that date coincides with opening night of the national football league, an event that will garner far higher ratings than the Presidential address, should the President choose to compete with Aaron Rodgers. Read more...
Tags: Aaron Rodgers, America, Barack Obama, Democrats, election, GOP, Government, House Republicans, John Boehner, NBC, NFL, Politics, President Obama, Presidential election, Social Security, spending, The American people
Posted in Bad Decisions, GOP, Government, Politics, Theory, election, speeches, sports | No Comments »
August 22nd, 2011 by John Feehery
Are you ready for some college football?
After a summer of revelations about how corrupt the college football system has become, you could be excused for not being quite ready for a new season.
Apparently, a University of Miami booster spent millions of dollars providing prostitutes, payola, and other perks to star athletes at the program in order to restore the Hurricanes to former greatness. Isn’t that special?
This followed a scandal at Ohio State University that forced its esteemed football coach, Jim Tressell, from his job. Tressell didn’t think it was particularly useful to follow the rules as set forth by the NCAA, and while that helped him short-term to a NCAA championship, it hurt his long-term job prospects.
Last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Cam Newton, was so tainted with scandal that it became a open question as to whether he would be forced to quit before he was to receive the award. He wasn’t and he got it anyway. The chief allegation was that Newton’s father had put his son on the open market. You pay the father a lot of money and you get the son to play for the program, a clear violation of NCAA rules. Read more...
Tags: Cam Newton, college football, Education, Heisman Trophy winner, Jim Tressell, NCAA, NCAA championship, No Child Left Behind, Ohio State University football scandal
Posted in Bad Decisions, Education, Government, History, Politics, Promises, Scandals, Theory, bad news, sports | No Comments »
August 5th, 2011 by John Feehery
The world is going to hell in a hand basket. The stock market just crashed as if Congress allowed the President to default on our debt payments. Europe is in the same shape financially as it was in 1946.
So why am I focused on the Infield Fly Rule?
I don’t know. I thought it would be a pleasant diversion from the negative news we see every day.
So, for those of you who don’t follow baseball, the Infield Fly Rule, according to Wikipedia, is: “The infield fly rule is a baseball rule that is intended to prevent infielders from intentionally dropping pop-ups in order to turn double plays (or triple plays). Without this rule, a defense could easily turn a pop-up into a double play when there are runners at first and second base. If the runners stay near their bases to tag up, the defense could let the ball drop, throw to third base and then to second, for a force-out at each base. If any of the runners stray too far from his base, the defense could catch the pop-up, and double-off any runner that failed to tag up. When the rule is invoked, the batter will be out (and all force plays removed) regardless of whether the ball is caught, thus negating the possibility for multiple outs.” Read more...
Tags: America, American League, Baltimore Orioles, Barack Obama, baseball, Bourbon Democrat, Congress, Conservatives, Cy Young, Democratic Party, Democrats, dollar, Gilded Age, Government, Grover Cleveland, Infield Fly Rule, National League championship, progressives, spending, stock market, The Depression, World Series
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Fun, Gambling, Government, History, Laws, Politics, Theory, baseball, sports | 2 Comments »
June 16th, 2011 by John Feehery
First, there was the beer summit. Now there is the golf summit.
Where other Presidents had summits to negotiate nuclear arms deals or budget compromises, Barack Obama has chosen to meet his opponents in a more relaxed setting.
The beer summit, for those who don’t recall, was an effort to bring a white cop and a black professor together, after they had a major misunderstanding that led to racial indigestion. Obama made the situation worse by calling the cop stupid, and then he had to calm the waters over a few choice beverages.
The President likes to include Joe Biden in all of his summits, so he has invited the Vice President over to play golf with him and with Speaker of the House John Boehner at an undisclosed location (probably Andrews Air Force base).
Boehner has decided to bring John Kasich, the Ohio Governor, to play with him. My guess is that Kasich and Biden will do all the talking, while Boehner and Obama will do all the smoking. Read more...
Tags: America, Andrews Air Force base, Barack Obama, beer summit, Bill Clinton, Bob Michel, Bull Moose Party, Democrats, Don Van Natta, election, golf summit, Joe Biden, John Boehner, John Kasich, Lyndon Johnson, Republicans, Richard Nixon, Tip O’Neill, William Howard Taft
Posted in Fun, Government, History, Politics, Presidential election, Theory, election, sports | 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 »
March 31st, 2011 by John Feehery
The Washington Nationals open their baseball season today against the Atlanta Braves, which got me thinking about the connections between baseball and Congress.
Baseball is usually associated with the White House, because of the history of President’s throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. That started with William Howard Taft, who threw out the first pitch in 1910.
Taft was an enormous presence, physically, not so much politically. Despite his efforts to cultivate a more populist persona, he could never overcome the political presence of his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt ended up running against him in 1912, splitting the Republican base, and giving the keys to the White House to Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson continued the tradition of throwing out the first pitch the first couple years he was President, but when World War I broke out, he stopped out of deference to the troops.
Throwing out the first pitch has also been used as a rallying cry for the country. George Bush threw out the first pitch of Game 3 of the 2001 World Series, in New York City in the aftermath of the September 11th attack as a way to tell the terrorists that they couldn’t stop America from being American. Read more...
Tags: baseball, baseball opening day, Boston Red Sox, Congress, MLB, MLB Opening Day, President, Theodore Roosevelt, Tip O’Neill, Washington Nationals, White House, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilso
Posted in Government, History, Politics, Theory, baseball, sports | No Comments »
June 14th, 2010 by John Feehery
Like Big Wheels, I missed the soccer generation.
Let me explain. My younger brother was the first in my family to get a Big Wheel, because they came out just at the right time for his height and weight. I was too big to ever ride a Big Wheel.
And by the time soccer came to my high school, I was already set on football, baseball and especially basketball. I didn’t have time on my hands to get into soccer because I was too busy doing the other stuff.
So, when it comes to soccer (or football as they call it in other parts of the world), I am a fair weather fan. I don’t particularly love the game, unless it is the World Cup, and even then, I only root for two teams, the United States and Ireland.
I remember several years ago when the Irish beat the Italians in the World Cup in New York. That gave me an excuse to go to the Dubliner and hoist of few pints in honor of my ancestral home (as if I needed an excuse). Read more...
Tags: Ireland, soccer, sports, USA, world economy
Posted in Foreign Relations, sports | No Comments »
June 11th, 2010 by John Feehery
World Cup Fans / Photo credit: Audrey & Patrick Scales
It is an overdone cliché to thank the good Lord for Friday, but this has been a particularly long week, so stringing a coherent column together might be beyond my capability today. But that won’t stop me from some Friday musings. Read more...
- Talk about Chutzpah. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is seriously considering ditching the outside ethics panel that she trumpeted as one of the most important achievements of her tenure. She did it because she wanted to convince the voters that Democrats were the most ethical people in the whole, entire world. It didn’t work. Most voters still think the Democrats are incurably corrupt. According to news reports, Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are leading the charge to neuter the Office of Congressional Ethics, because that office has the temerity to look at what the members of the CBC are actually doing and ignoring what they are saying.
Tags: Blackhawks, California, Congressional Black Caucus, Ireland, Nancy Pelosi, Office of Congressional Ethics, Proposition 14, South Africa, Stanley Cup, World Cup
Posted in Government, Politics, Theory, sports | 1 Comment »
June 11th, 2010 by John Feehery
Tags: Barack Obama, Blanche Lincoln, Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, Nikki Haley, Republicans, Stephen Strasburg
Posted in Government, Media, Politics, Theory, sports | No Comments »
There is a difference between these two statements.
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