Archive for 2013
Beyond Quick Healing
The politicians, when you get down to the short rows, are the varmints who decided to hang a ‘Not Open for Business’ sign on the federal government – but, in an odd way, it wasn’t the politicians who were pouring gas on the fire. In the age of the twenty-four hour news cycle and…
Read MoreA Second Miscalculation?
After Democrats ran an ad in State House Districts, something akin to a shockwave rippled down the hallways of the General Assembly, unsettling the less stouthearted Republican legislators. Last fall, after the last election House Republicans, riding high, assumed, We won. People love us. We can do what we want. They did. Then their…
Read MoreAt the Zoo
Sometimes writing this blog is easy. Like today. Below is a reprint – in full, with no cuts or comments – of yesterday’s news release from the Governor’s Communications Office: Press Release: Governor McCrory visits North Carolina Zoo Raleigh, NC – Governor Pat McCrory visited the North Carolina Zoo this morning, stopping by Asheboro…
Read MoreShutdown Politics
The shutdown showdown shows how much worse politics is today than in the 1990s. And it was bad then. Back then, Newt Gingrich shut down the government because…well, nobody can remember why. Except he was mad that President Clinton made him sit in the back of Air Force One. And Newt wanted to show…
Read MoreA History Lesson
It’s an old American saga: The President has a program he’s in love with but can’t muster the votes in Congress to fund it. So he doesn’t get his program. That’s the way it’s been for over two centuries. So why, now, isn’t the story coming out of Washington simply, “The President fails…
Read MoreThe Answer…
Yesterday I asked why the three camps in Washington – the House Republican Bigwigs in Washington, the House Republican Conservatives in Washington, and President Obama –couldn’t sit down and make a list of the government departments they can agree to keep open and then fund them this week to avoid an absolute government shutdown. …
Read MoreMillennial Politics
Today I suspend Republican-bashing to recommend a provocative political analysis. Titled “Will Disillusioned Millennials Bring an End to the Reagan-Clinton Era?,” it’s from a professor and Daily Beast contributor named Peter Beinart. It’s long, and it’s worth reading. Here’s my best shot at a short recap: For decades now, politics has been…
Read MoreFriends Falling Out
The Governor, it appears, looking at his ailing poll numbers, figured the legislature had landed him in the soup, so it was only prudent to put some distance between himself and the Republican skunks in the General Assembly. Of course, it’s also sometimes difficult to trace the origin of a smell and to legislators it appears…
Read MoreTransparency
A TAPster writes: “At least the Republicans were right when they said they would lead a transparent government. It’s pretty easy to see through their BS.”
Read MoreA Three-Tribe War
With thick smoke clouds billowing out of the Capitol it’s hard to see who’s winning the latest war in Washington – plus, it isn’t a simple us versus them war: It’s a three tribe melee (with two camps of Republicans fighting Obama and each other at the same time). At first, a couple of…
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