General
A Formidable Opponent
President Obama showed anew Wednesday night why he got elected – and why he remains the dominant political talent in America today. His speech was masterful. His tone was perfect. And he smilingly skewered a range of targets – Republicans, Democrats, Supreme Court, big banks, you name it. But his positioning was even…
Read MoreThe Artful Dodger
I don’t recall hardly ever seeing eye to eye with State Representative Mickey Michaux but the other day he hit the nail on the head. Governor Perdue’s favorite Cabinet Secretary Lanier ‘The Artful Dodger’ Cansler traipsed over to the legislature for a meeting and after a fair amount of hemming and hawing admitted he…
Read MorePrime Time Player?
Once you get past the dishing about Sarah Palin, John Edwards, et al in the book Game Change, you learn a few things. Like about President Obama. That he’s like a basketball player who wants the ball when the game is on line. That he has supreme confidence he can rise to…
Read MoreThat’s His Story…
Coming out of a meeting over in the state legislature Senate Kingpin Marc Basnight ran head on into a gaggle of reporters and right off someone asked if it wasn’t a bit underhanded for Basnight to appropriate $25 million for a new fishing pier at Nags Head and then have his own construction company build…
Read MoreBrad, Bernie and the Banks
Congressman Brad Miller is never the happiest of warriors. But this year could raise his angst to new levels. Miller worries in the Greensboro News & Record that – thanks to the Supreme Court’s corporate-campaign ruling – he might be the target of bank-sponsored attacks. “I’ve made a real nuisance of myself to…
Read MoreNapoleon’s Mother
Sometimes it seems like one of a President’s less enviable jobs is to be a kind of national whipping boy, an outlet for our pent up frustrations and afflictions. And even if pummeling, say, Barack Obama or George Bush won’t put people back to work it sure is satisfying to have someone to blame. …
Read MoreObama Resets
Team Obama has a 1-1 record. They won the 2008 campaign, and they lost the 2009 campaign. Now they’re resetting for the 2010 tie-breaker. One step is organizational, and another is rhetorical. Organization: They brought back 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe to oversee the 2010 elections. The lesson Team Obama took from Massachusetts…
Read MoreCongressional Malpractice
President Obama made exactly the opposite mistake from Bill and Hillary Clinton on health-care reform. The Clintons drew up a sweeping reform plan in secret, then sent it to Congress, where it died. Obama let congressional Democrats come up with a reform plan. The first time it went to the voters, they voted…
Read MoreLet’s Bribe the Taliban
Here’s a sure sign we’re in deeper trouble in Afghanistan than anybody’s letting on: The Afghan government (no doubt with U.S. taxpayers’ money) is offering the Taliban soldiers cold hard cash to surrender or, better yet, switch sides; of course being blossoming Afghanistan politicians are wrapping all this up in Washington style rhetoric calling their plan…
Read MoreBefore We Vanish…
For those inclined to believe in the infallibility of modern science here’s a cautionary tale. A few years ago our scientists announced the Y chromosome – “the thing that makes a man male” – was a pretty poor creature; the Y chromosome, they said with conviction, was shrinking and in exactly 50,000 years would…
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