Looking for a Voice

With the Irish Prime Minister sitting beside him, Obama said Republicans are against education. Infrastructure. Research. The things needed to create jobs. National defense. And the middle class.   Then having thrown down the gauntlet, and concisely summed up how he felt about the Republican budget, the President rolled out the welcome mat for the…

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Deceiving Ourselves?

Back when Navy Seals evened the score with Osama bin Laden, the Secretary of Defense proclaimed “defeating al-Qaeda” was within our grasp. Victory was at hand.   Then the wheel came off the cart.   And now up in Washington the Director of National Intelligence is telling Congress the threat of ‘terrorism is worse than…

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The Same Old Mistake

Over a decade ago some genius up in Washington – I think it may have been Donald Rumsfeld – figured we could conquer Iraq with 150,000 soldiers; that we could fight a little war with a little pain and have the troops home by Christmas – so we rolled straight into Baghdad then found out…

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Save Your Breath

Before any 2016 death match, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush face a death march through the media and their own parties’ chattering crowds.   Last week’s crisis was Clinton’s email while Secretary of State. The DC media pounced and some Democrats went into a frenzy of fretting: The Clintons are their own worst enemies! They…

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A Strange Cure

President Obama held a summit up in Washington about terrorism but decided not to say the words ‘Muslim terrorist.’   Instead, he announced, he was leading a crusade to stop ‘Violent Extremism’ and, then he put his finger on the root cause of the villainy: Violent Extremism, he said, is caused by political disenfranchisement and…

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Second Fiddle to South Carolina

This is about as good a tale of conniving as I’ve heard: I can’t remember why but forty years ago back in 1976 the state legislature moved our Presidential primary up from May to March – then the unexpected struck and Ronald Reagan whipped Gerald Ford.   It was the first time Reagan won a…

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A Darker Power?

The Reverend William Barber got up to pray at a memorial service for three Muslim students killed in Chapel Hill and, right in the middle of his prayer, pointed his finger straight at Reverend Franklin Graham and said Graham lit the fuse to the powder keg that led to the murders.   Barber’s thinking went…

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Shameful

A loyal TAPster outraged by Thom (No Clean Hands) Tillis contributes today’s blog:   Just when we thought it couldn’t get any colder last week, Senator Thom Tillis embarrassed North Carolina again, voting against Loretta Lynch’s nomination as US attorney general.   Lynch is the daughter of a Baptist minister from Greensboro who opened his church to protesters…

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Politics Gone Wild

A snow-day deep-dive into current political commentary finds three things. One, Republicans are becoming more and more deranged. Two, Democrats are falling deeper and deeper into despair. And, three, it’s all about President Obama.   Politics has come unhinged since Election Day 2008 and the election of a black President. It just gets worse as…

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Blindness

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt looked the American people in the eye and said, December 7th is a day that will live in infamy forever.   After ISIS burned a hostage alive, President Obama told the American people, We’ve done some pretty bad things ourselves.   Which is the proper response to…

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