There They Go Again…

Speaking about the new financial services legislation that they were up all night to complete, Sen. Chris Dodd saw fit to paraphrase Nancy Pelosi in one of her finer moments: “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a [...]

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Five Questions For Our Times

1.  Am I the only one who looks at President Obama’s nuclear nirvana-seeking and sees a guy who, somewhere in his past, got an A+ on a term paper arguing that a nuclear-free world is achievable, and has believed ever since that he’s the guy to do it? 2.  If I had a hypothesis-proving time [...]

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On the Marque, Return to Blogging Edition

Chuck of Head Muscle has kindly hustled me back to the ol’ blog, so you can thank him for the pearls of wisdom herein imparted: When last I wrote, Republicans had 40 votes in the Senate, health care reform was still inevitable, and the President was planning to preempt Lost with his State of the [...]

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Will Facts Drive Policy, or the Other Way Around?

One of the Democrats’ chief criticisms of the Bush Administration, one that sometimes had merit, was that it refused to alter its strategy or message in the face of new facts.  In foreign affairs, that meant it took us three years to react to the Iraqi insurgency in a manner beyond “staying the course.”  On [...]

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An Alternate Analogy for Health Care Reform

Much has been written comparing the present health care reform effort to prior struggles for the same thing.  But this week’s passage of the Senate’s version of Obamacare brought to mind another recent political circumstance that, for me, says more about the political risks in play than does the failure of Hillarycare in 1993. I [...]

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Best Medicine Available to Obama: Put the Scalpel Down

One of the only fair defenses of the stimulus bill is its immediate psychological effect.  At the time it was passed, the nation was very, very scared. The general sense was that the government needed to “do something.”  Everyone knew that the new Democratic administration wasn’t about to cut taxes as a means of stimulating [...]

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On the Marque, 10/13/09

The word of the day is “decline”: If you read nothing else for the rest of the year about the Obama presidency and the direction it is taking the country, read Krauthammer in this week’s Weekly Standard.  No, really – go read it.  I’ll wait. Riffing on Krauthammer’s theme, Mark Steyn dishes up lugubrious drollery [...]

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Republicans Need to Convert the Negative to a Positive

Republicans on Capitol Hill have been remarkably successful at demonstrating that the current spendulous bill doesn’t stimulate anything.  The popularity of the bill has dropped from 45-34% to 37-43% in two weeks’ time.  Perhaps most troubling for Democrats is that, among independents, the bill is now supported by 27% and opposed by 50%.  Did it [...]

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The Politics of DOOM!11!1!!

What was that our new president said about ending the politics of fear? And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to [...]

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Sometimes It’s Best to Just Stand and Applaud

I was going to write a post or posts today about Obama’s missed political opportunities with the stimulus bill, and the growing gap between his words and his deeds, and the fact that our current predicament needs solutions beyond the same old, same old. But Peggy Noonan said it all already, and better than I [...]

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