Posts Tagged ‘Obama’
January 5th, 2012 by John Feehery
Hip To Be Square
Will the hippest President we ever had be replaced by the squarest President we ever had?
That is the big question as Mitt Romney readies himself to roll through New Hampshire.
Presidents, by and large, aren’t that hip.
Before BHO, our hippest President was Jack Kennedy.
He had the glamorous wife, the youthful visage, the promise of a new generation of leadership, and all the other accouterments of hipness.
He brought in poets to give poems, he threw great parties, and he had all kinds of pals in Hollywood.
Bill Clinton replicated the hip mystique of Kennedy’s Camelot. He memorably played the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show (remember that one?), he had the wife who wasn’t going to be making any cookies, and he too had hip Hollywood friends.
But no President has been as hip as Barack Obama. Obama is a jazz guy, and jazz guys are very, very hip. Obama fills his iPod with all kinds of hip-hop music, too, and he scatters in the hip-hop language in some of his campaign speeches.
Hipness has its limits. Hipness wears thin after a while. It is not easy to always be the cool guy. Read more...
Tags: hip, Huey Lewis, Kennedy, Nixon, Obama, Romney, square, Washington
Posted in Theory | No Comments »
December 15th, 2011 by John Feehery
Rush Limbaugh said today that any Republican in the field, other than Ron Paul, could beat Barack Obama today.
That is not true, and Rush should know it.
Rush does not have a particularly good track record. Remember, he believed that Christine O’Donnell could be Chris Coons, that Sharron Angle could beat Harry Reid, that Joe Miller could beat whoever the Democrat was in Alaska and that Ken Buch could beat whoever was running for the Senate in Colorado.
He was wrong then and he is wrong now.
Michele Bachmann cannot beat Barack Obama. Rick Santorum cannot beat Barack Obama (no matter how much I like him). Hermann Cain could not beat Barack Obama.
Rick Perry cannot beat Barack Obama. I know it might be tempting for conservatives to believe that Perry could magically come back and beat the President, but there is no evidence that he would do any better in the debates than he has already. Obama would wipe him out.
Newt Gingrich will not be able to beat Barack Obama. As much as we might wish it to be true, it will not happen. Newt will say something controversial, and he will have the same approval ratings that he had when he was Speaker. Those approval ratings were terrible. Read more...
Tags: Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Obama, Rick Perry, Romney, RUSH LIMBAUGH
Posted in Theory | No Comments »
December 13th, 2011 by John Feehery
The New York Times had an interesting exposé over the weekend, delving into Mitt Romney’s deepest, darkest secret: He is a cheapskate.
Despite the fact that Romney has several large mansions scattered throughout the country, he throws nickels around like they were manhole covers, to paraphrase Mike Ditka’s immortal description of George Halas.
That sounds exactly like the kind of guy I want to be president today. Somebody who is really cheap with the taxpayer’s money.
Mitt Romney has run the same kind of campaign that Hillary Clinton ran four years ago. He is running as the front-runner, somebody who already fully expects to be the nominee and is more worried about the general election than the primary fight.
He has laid out a 59-point plan to turn the economy around that I am pretty certain less than 1 percent of the country has read. He wrote a book that he keeps referring to in debates. I haven’t read it. Have you?
He talks about being a turnaround artist, an unfortunate turn of phrase when you consider that he has turned around on almost every issue important to Republican base voters. He says that he hasn’t been a career politician, but as Newt Gingrich pointed out, he would have been a career politician had he won his race against Ted Kennedy. Read more...
Tags: Bain Capital, George Halas, Gingrich, Mike Ditka, Obama, Romney, White House
Posted in Theory | 2 Comments »
December 6th, 2011 by John Feehery
As Republicans continue to fumble all over themselves, President Obama made a bold move to reclaim the white middle class.
Mitt Romney (the only GOP candidate to utter the words middle class in any of his stump speeches) wisely decided that the Trump debate was one too many. Newt, the newly anointed front-runner (I will believe it when I see it), will join Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann in what can only be described as the logical extreme.
Why not Trump? You had David Addington, for Christ’s sake, ask a question at the last CNN debate. And Trump will get ratings. And for Newt, Santorum and Bachmann, it is all about the ratings.
Meanwhile, Obama tried to grab back the voters he is currently losing. As the Hill reported: “This is a make or break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class,” Obama said in Osawatomie, Kans. “I’m here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own.” Read more...
Tags: Gingrich, Obama, Romney, Roosevelt, Square Deal, Teddy
Posted in Theory | No Comments »
November 17th, 2011 by John Feehery
I always thought that if we got into a war with China, it would be because of a misstep in Taiwan.
Now, I am more inclined to believe it be because of a Chinese effort to invade Australia.
President Obama announced yesterday that he was sending the Marines to Australia. From the vantage point of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, it was a curious decision.
But if you are living in Australia or if you are an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, the decision couldn’t come soon enough.
There isn’t going to be shooting war in Australia any time soon, but the fact of the matter is that the Aussies are more than just our strategic partners. They are our brothers in arms, an outpost of Western civilization in a part of the world that will soon be overrun by a boisterous and rich communist regime.
Australia is important strategically for many reasons. Many of our intelligence gathering operations are there. They have vast natural resources that will become more important as the century unfolds.
They are the largest exporter of coal in the world. Read more...
Tags: Australia, china, marines, Obama
Posted in Theory | No Comments »
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 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 4th, 2011 by John Feehery
The Hermanator - Herman Cain
The Hermanator is now tied with Rick Perry for second place in a new Washington Post poll in the Republican race for the White House.
That doesn’t surprise me much. A very good friend of mine who describes himself as a moderate independent Republican kind of guy pinged me on Facebook about Cain. He said he would vote for him if Mr. Cain survives the primary process down in Texas.
And for many folks out there, Herman Cain is more than just a successful pizza guy. He is the embodiment of the American dream.
Unlike Barack Obama, Cain believes deeply in the concept of American exceptionalism. He worked hard his whole life, and he has been successful at just about everything he has done.
Where Obama preaches collectivism and class envy, Cain preaches self-reliance and individual liberty. Where Obama has nothing but contempt for free-market capitalism, Cain believes strongly in the power of the marketplace.
He turned around Burger King, made Godfather’s Pizza a huge success, and helped to stop Hillarycare in the mid-nineties. Read more...
Tags: America, American exceptionalism, Barack Obama, Burger King, Cain, Coca-Cola, Congress, Democrats, Economy, election, free-market capitalism, Godfather’s Pizza, Herman Cain, Hermann Cain, Hillarycare, individual liberty, Morehouse College, Obama, Politics, President Obama, Presidential election, Republican race for the White House, Rick Perry, Secretary of Commerce, self-reliance, the American dream, The Hermanator, Washington Post poll, White House
Posted in Government, History, Liberal Media, Media, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, election, medicare | No Comments »
September 21st, 2011 by John Feehery
I was working out at the gym this morning (I know, miracles never cease), and I looked over briefly (I know, you don’t believe me), at the television and saw one of the hosts interviewing Rachel Maddow.
I am not the biggest Rachel Maddow fan in the world (ok, I am not really a fan at all) and I immediately assumed that the topic of conversation was on the President’s decision on “don’t ask, don’t tell”, an issue that apparently is important to the MSNBC host.
According to the headline blaring at the bottom of the television screen was “Is Obama losing his base?”
Interesting question, given that the previous day, the President struck a blow for some of his most passionate supporters by going through with change in a long standing military policy.
I will make this observation.
The President is not losing his base (if that is true) because he is moving to the middle. He is losing his base for largely the same reasons that he is losing the middle and losing the rest of the country.
Sheer incompetence. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Conservatives, Democrats, don’t tell”, Economy, election, Gibson Guitar, Government, Msnbc, NRLB, Obama, Obama Justice Department, Obamacare, President Obama, Presidential election, Rachel Maddow, Republicans, Ron Paul, Ron Susskind, Sarah Palin, the Obama Administration, “don’t ask
Posted in Bad Decisions, Bailouts, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Liberal Media, Media, Politics, Promises, Theory, Unemployment, bad news, election, health care, spending, taxes | No Comments »
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