I opened the newspaper yesterday morning and stared at a picture of a lonely fellow standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, putting up a sign that said: Closed. The headline above the picture said: “Government starts shutting down” – and the story explained Social Security checks will be late, parks shuttered, and 800,000…
Read MoreThe story in the Onion summed it up: “Man Who Understands 8% Of Obamacare Vigorously Defends It From Man Who Understands 5%.” How you feel about Obamacare probably correlates about 100 percent with how you voted in the 2012 election. Unless you already found out you pay more or less for insurance. I’m double-sold.…
Read MoreThe 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 MoreAfter 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 MoreSometimes 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 MoreThe 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 MoreIt’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 MoreYesterday 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 MoreToday 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…
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