Doesn’t Matter Which Way You Go

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

We were talking to a friend yesterday about the stock market recovering to exceed its peak of 2007, right before it fell to its valley when the banking system nearly evaporated in 2008.

Remember? That was not that long ago, you know.

‘There’s something that just seems ‘odd’ about it all’, he said.

The current state of affairs in America reminds us of that great Socratic philosopher in ‘Alice in Wonderland’, the Cheshire Cat when he counsels Alice Continue reading →

Senate Madness Tournament

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Chuck Todd and his crack team of political smart guys have put together a very useful Final Four tournament of the greatest Senators in history.

I love the concept. I think is a great way to look at the history of the Upper Chamber and to review for people how great men (and they were all men but one in the First Read tournament) impact history.

Todd’s team organized it chronologically and came up with a final eight of Lyndon Johnson, former longtime Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, Continue reading →

The Self-Service World

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

More than 2 million clerical jobs have been wiped out since 2007.

That’s according to the Financial Times, and it helps to explain why the median U.S. income has declined 5.6 percent despite the fact that the economy has largely recovered from the crash.

The top ten percent of American earners, according to FT, are doing quite nicely, because their jobs have not gone away. Continue reading →

Work for What You Need

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Regular readers know that I have the same understanding of global economics as a three-year-old has of quantum physics.

I watch CNBC’s Squawk Box every morning because I know a lot about politics and don’t need to watch (a) people I know talking about what I know or, (b) people I don’t know making stuff up about things they don’t know.

I have never made a dime in any investment so, hope springing eternal, I like to listen to people who have made multiple dimes. Continue reading →

The Soup Is Not Ready Yet

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The soup is not quite simmering, yet some conservatives are too anxious to serve it to the American people.

The soup is Obamacare, and for some activists, House Republicans are not being aggressive enough to serve its repeal.

Patience, my friends, patience. Obamacare will be repealed, slowly, but surely.

Congressional Republicans have voted about a million times to repeal the clunky law, to little effect. But those repeal votes have been premature. Continue reading →

Brave New World

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

In 1931, Aldous Huxley wrote his satirical novel about a world divided into castes, where recreation, not procreation, was the primary purpose of sex, where children were mostly created in test-tubes, where society was managed by a big world government that enforced harmony through drugs, and where the global population was capped at two billion people (which you can do when everybody is born in a test-tube in a central, government-sponsored lab).

We are a long way away from the Huxley’s Brave New World, but then again, he described how things would be 300 years from now. We still have time to get to Huxley’s bleak world. Continue reading →

Politics Ain’t Beanbag

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Newport Beach, California

One reader asked me: “If Fox News Channel is so far ahead of MSNBC and CNN why did the GOP lose the Presidential election last fall?”

The answer is: The number of people who watch cable news is a tiny percentage of the voting population. Continue reading →

Empty Votes, Dangerous Promises

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

It was a good thing that the Senate finally passed a budget last week. I guess.

The Senate budget resolution was unique in that the Upper Body passed a budget resolution before the President actually proposed his own budget, probably for the first time in history.

And the fact that the Senate passed a budget seemed like a novelty because the world’s most deliberative body has been so deliberative that it hadn’t bothered to take this action required by law for almost a half a decade. Continue reading →

What Does ‘True Equality’ Mean Today?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

The debate in the Supreme Court over marriage equality has certainly opened up the core essential debate we have had in America since the Founders founded this nation in Philadelphia in 1787, one of the epochal beginnings to any great civilization the world has ever known: ‘What is equality in 21st Century America today?’

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal…..’ is the rallying cry that the Founders used from the Revolution of 1776 to underpin the US Constitution. Continue reading →

The Long Slog

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Probably the best thing for Republicans would be for the Supreme Court to rule that gay marriage is legal and let us all move on, but I don’t think that is going to happen. The media is completely focused on the goings on at the nation’s highest court, as if there is nothing else in the world that matters. And that means I have to give my two cents worth.

It used to be that the prospect of gay marriage was a sure political winner for the GOP. Karl Rove worked with different groups to get referendums on various state ballots to help drive the Christian right to the polls, the theory being that if Christians went to the polls, they would vote for George Bush. Continue reading →

Our Talking Points Society

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

An essay in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday pointed out that as the oral arguments on same-sex marriage proceeded in the Supreme Court the use of the term “unfollow” jumped to ten times its normal frequency.

Blogger Caleb Garling wrote, the context of the word “unfollow” was generally: “If you do/n’t like gay marriage, unfollow me” or telling someone with a particular stance on gay marriage, that they were now unfollowing them because of that view.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the Twitter-verse “followers” are loosely analogous to “friends” on Facebook. A major difference is: Anyone can “follow” Continue reading →

The Coming Nanny State

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The welfare state begets the nanny state.

I was thinking about this fact in the context of the Mayor of New York, the immigration debate, and our national debt.

Michael Bloomberg may or may not care about the personal health of his constituents. What he definitely cares about is the rising cost of health care in his city, and that is why he is doing his level best to create the world’s largest day-care center in the Big Apple.

Bloomberg is trying to get New Yorkers healthier by banning trans-fat, cutting down on the amount of soda pop consumed, and by keeping cigarettes out of the sight of those who might be tempted to smoke merely by the sight of smokes. Continue reading →

Waiting On Line

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From New York City

Someone decided that it was a good story to write about the people who are paid to wait in line (or, as we say in New York, “wait on line”) so that rich people can get a seat.

The issue at hand is the oral arguments in the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

There are only 50 seats available for the public during the arguments and, for reasons that are alien to me, 50 people want to go and be there.

Line holders are a long-time Washington tradition. Continue reading →

Big Government vs. Small Government

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

When we find things that are better-written, more clear and to the point than anything we can write on a subject, we try to reprint it for your edification. Such is the case with most things Chuck Blahous writes. See for yourself:

Last week House Republicans, under the leadership of Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, unveiled their draft budget for the coming fiscal year. Senate Budget Committee Democrats also released their budget blueprint assembled by Chairman Patty Murray. Continue reading →

Hindsight

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Ten years.

It has been a decade since America invaded Iraq. Historians will have a field day analyzing every aspect of this war, from beginning to end, and at every point in between.

The war was a mistake, a giant mistake. It cost more than 8 trillion dollars and while it deposed an evil and brutal dictator, it did so with an unnecessarily high cost in blood and treasure. Continue reading →

Resetting the Middle East

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

President Barack Obama left last night for Israel in an attempt to “reset” the Israeli-US relationship. There are those who will say that if either side has to reset the relationship, it is the Israelis. I understand that; I don’t agree with it, but I understand it.

A couple of weeks ago shiny new Secretary of State John Kerry effectively presented a check to the Egyptian government – which is now in the throes of an electoral breakdown – for $250 million. Continue reading →

Populism Run Amok

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

First published in The Hill.

Andrew Jackson was our nation’s first populist president.

He ran against the moneyed Eastern Establishment and abolished the Second Bank of the United States.

Jackson also was the only president to pay off our national debt. Soon after erasing the debt and squashing the national bank, an early version of the Federal Reserve, the American economy went into a severe depression.We have never paid off our national debt again. Continue reading →

Great Cyprus Bank Robbery

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

It is well known that there are a number of countries in Europe that are in dire financial straits. So dire that they make our $16.7 trillion national debt look manageable.

We know about Greece and Italy, Portugal and Spain. Not only are they drowning in debt, but they have high unemployment (Spain’s is nearly 25 percent) and negative GDP growth.

But the scariest news over the weekend came from the tiny country of Cyprus. Continue reading →

Stop Using Government as an ATM

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

One of Ronald Reagan’ most famous speeches had to do with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall that separated Free Western Germans from Trapped Communist Eastern Germans under the control of the Soviet Union post World War II.

‘Mr. Gorbachev: Tear Down This Wall!’ President Reagan declared on June 12, 1987 outside of the Brandenburg Gate. 29 months later, it fell by the weight of its terrible history to the side of freedom and injustice.

Who says ‘words can’t make a difference’? Continue reading →

C-SAD

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

This should give a sense of how politically far afield the conservative movement has gone.

The CPAC convention has invited Richard Fisher, the head of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank and big-time Democrat, to address the group while going out of its way to make sure that everybody knew that Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie, the two most popular Republican governors in the country, have not been invited.

Fisher has been invited because he agrees with Bernie Sanders that the U.S. government should somehow break up America’s largest banks.

McDonnell and Christie have been dis-invited because they governed in such a way as to make them the most popular Republican governors in the country. Continue reading →