Inauguration Day

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

For foreigners, the only thing nuttier than watching the way we elect our Presidents is watching the way we inaugurate them.

For a nation that wears its egalitarianism not just as a badge of honor, but (as we saw this past November) almost as a requirement for office, the pomp and circumstance involved in a modern U.S. Presidential inauguration would have moved Louis XIV to modesty.

Both parties face the same issue: Looking for the balance between demonstrating a public outpouring of interest, if not affection, for the person preparing to take the oath of office without giving your political opponents any more ammunition than necessary. Continue reading →

More on the Majority of the Majority

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I have been thinking a bit more about Denny’s Hastert’s famous dictum on the majority of the majority.

It is still a very good guideline for how to keep the job of Speaker of the House. But it requires some more refinement.

For most of his tenure, Hastert ruled as Speaker when George W. Bush was President. When you have a President of your own party, you damn well better deploy the majority of the majority philosophy. There were plenty of things that Bush wanted to do that weren’t exactly popular with the Republican base. He got some of those things done, and other things were put on the shelf. Continue reading →

The Business of Business

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

“The chief business of the American people is business.”

Calvin Coolidge said that to a group of newspaper editors in 1925, smack dab in the middle of the Roaring 20’s, a decade of brisk economic growth. It was also in the middle of a huge stock market bubble (a bubble which would collapse four years later).

Coolidge summarized perfectly both the Republican and the business sector’s approach to government. Get the government out of the way and let business take care of the people through greater prosperity. Continue reading →

When is ‘Compromising’ not ‘Compromising?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

We have a serious problem in America today.

Many Americans on both ends of the political spectrum think ‘compromise’ is a 4-letter word. It is clearly not. There were 10 letters in it last time we counted.

Beyond that mere formality, the whole concept of ‘compromising’ is met with disdain and scorn by activists at both extreme ends of the political spectrum.

The rest of the nation? They think our elected leaders in Washington are flat-out ‘crazy’ for not cutting deals and fixing what ails us as a nation. 32% of them in North Carolina alone are now officially registering as ‘Not Democratic’ and ‘Not Republican’ as they sign up as Unaffiliated/Independent voters and that number is rising by 8% per year. What does that tell ya? Continue reading →

Slow Down on Guns

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The Obama Administration is making a huge mistake if it wants to pass significant gun legislation in this Congress.

I understand the impulse. They want to strike while the iron is hot. They believe that they have to pass something before people start forgetting about Sandy Hook.

The Vice President unveiled his proposals from his task force yesterday prematurely. Continue reading →

Oh, Great

BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change (TCBMag.com)

The release of the much-anticipated movie, Texas Chainsaw 3D, hit theaters last week. I could hardly contain my excitement, imagining myself lounging in one of those cushy theater seats with a bin of buttered popcorn watching a masked serial killer slice and dice (in 3-D yet!) people’s bodies up like he’s carving up a sculpture at the St. Paul Winter Carnival. And, be still my heart, to hear the bones crack and the victims scream in Dolby THX Sensaround! Yes! Apparently a lot of folks saw it the same way, because Texas Chainsaw 3D was last week’s number one box office hit.

Do you suppose those millions of people forgot that just three weeks ago the Sandy Hook elementary school had its own version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Continue reading →

Time to Purge

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheHill.com

If the vote for Speaker on opening day confirmed anything, it confirmed that simple fact. By having a dozen of his Republican colleagues either vote against him or not vote at all, John Boehner just barely squeaked by in his bid for a second term for Speaker.

The vote against Boehner wasn’t a vote against the Speaker’s actual performance. By all accounts, Boehner has done yeoman’s work leading the House under what can only be called difficult circumstances.

The vote against Boehner was really a vote against the Republican Party. It was a protest against Republican policies and against the Republican establishment. Continue reading →

A Trillion-Dollar Coin? Seriously?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama and others on the national scene and in Washington are giving serious consideration to issuing a $1 trillion coin in the event that the debt ceiling becomes a major point of contention in the next several weeks with House Republicans.

Which it will. You can count on that.

Seriously. A group of 4 US Senators in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body sent a letter to President Obama today basically saying they have ‘got your back, Mr. President!’ to do ‘anything possible’ to avoid any discussion on spending cuts in advance of the next debt ceiling debacle. Continue reading →

Boys Acting Badly

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

In one of those stories that, in the end, has all the policy implications of a White Sale at Macy’s, it seems that conservative radio talk show host Alex Jones appeared on the television talk show of British transplant Piers Morgan on Monday night.

The topic was Jones’ leading the petition to have Morgan deported because of Morgan’s heavy hand on the topic of gun control. Continue reading →

Fiscal Cliff Tragedy/Comedy Part II

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“Do you ever get the feeling that the whole world is a tuxedo and you are a pair of brown shoes?”

That was comedian George Gobel’s quip after he was upstaged during a 1969 Johnny Carson Show by the unscheduled appearances of Dean Martin and Bob Hope.

Forty years later the whole country is a tuxedo and Washington is a pair of brown shoes–out of step, out of fashion, out of vogue and out of touch with the realities of governing the country. Continue reading →

Biden His Time

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I used to think that Hillary Clinton was the front-running to take the Democratic nomination once Barack Obama stepped aside.

Now, I think it is Joe Biden.

Clinton’s health problems are only part of her problem. She will be dogged by Benghazi the rest of her career. And I think people are actually pretty tired of the Clintons and their act. Continue reading →

The Fluh

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I am good about getting my shots. At my advanced age I was supposed to get a pneumonia shot and a shingles shot, so I got them.

I also got a flu shot. I didn’t get a flu shot in Tanzania or Kenya. I got it at my Doc’s office on K Street so I can only assume it was full strength.

Next year I’m going to ask for super strength, because if I don’t have the flu, I have a really, really bad cold. Continue reading →

Meritocracy

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

In the deep dark days of 1994, I was out of politics. I was actually running the Middle East for the company then known as EDS out of Dallas.

In the Fall of that year, I got a call from my good friend Joe Gaylord – Newt Gingrich’s political guru – asking me to fly into Atlanta for election night because they were certain they were going to take control of the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years and Newt wanted me to come in and help oversee the press operation.

I was in Abu Dhabi or Qatar or somewhere, but flew in and, indeed, I was there for election night. Continue reading →

Greatest ‘Punt’ in History

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

No, it wasn’t the 79-yard punt by Duke punter Will Monday in the 2012 Belk Bowl in Charlotte, North Carolina, although that was pretty darned great, you gotta admit.

No, the greatest ‘punt’ of the recent college bowl season was performed collectively in a three-legged kick down the road by President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Speaker John Boehner on New Year’s Eve in Washington, D.C. in the Fiscal Cliff Bowl Sponsored by The AARP, Grover Norquist, and The American People. Continue reading →

Cliffhanger

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

New Year’s Day 2013. Football games? No. Parades? No. Hangover cure? No.

I spent the entire day watching the Chasing Classic Cars marathon on USA as background noise while focused on Twitter following the U.S. House Republicans wringing their hands over what to do about the Senate-passed bill to crawl back up the fiscal cliff.

Without getting into the weeds about things like (according to CNN.com) extending the excise tax carry-over on rum produced in Puerto Rico and the Continue reading →

Top 1% Pay Their Fair Share?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

Support the move to replace our corporate and personal income tax code with a national consumption-based tax.

Why?

Because it will be far simpler than the current sclerotic byzantine income-based tax structure that has been in place since 1913. It will return the United States to the preferred tax revenue-generation method favored by our Founders who thought a tax on someone’s income could be capricious and ruinous to a person’s freedom and productivity.

They were right on the ‘capricious’ part. Continue reading →

What’s the Mayan Word for “Cliff”?

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Boy, I’m good. I finished Wednesday’s column with: “Plan B might not pass, but Plan C or D, or Q will find its way to the floors of the two Chambers before December 31 and will pass.”

Plan B is not going to pass as last night the House Republican Conference…

SIDEBAR

You might have noticed over the past 14 years that I refer to the assemblage of the GOP in the House and Senate as the “Republican Conference” and the Democrats as the “Democratic Caucus.” That’s what they call themselves. Continue reading →

Plan B

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

We’re now within 10 legislative days ’til the Fiscal Cliff – assuming the Members won’t be decking the Halls of Congress with boughs of holly on Christmas Eve and Day.

There is movement in the positions coming from either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The President campaigned successfully on the idea of raising taxes on the wealthy – with the wealthy being defined as any family earning $250,000 or more annually. Continue reading →

President Obama on the Fiscal Cliff

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

For a ‘constitutional scholar’, President Obama sure doesn’t act like he knows who holds the cards in any negotiations on budget matters in Washington, DC.

Who does hold the cards?

The House of Representatives. Period. ‘All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House’ from Article 1 of the Constitution. There are multiple Committees on Authorization and Appropriations in the House and the Senate. None in the White House. Continue reading →