Category: Politics 2010
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Dancing the Furlough Kabuki
Much to my surprise, the government shutdown I anticipated last week never happened. The snarling, obfuscation and “my way or the highway” statements on Friday suggested (at best) a weekend with the federal government shutdown. Much of the noise was apparently posturing. A deal was struck late on Friday. Another continuing resolution was passed by…
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Let’s throw those bums a bone
Merry Christmas to you, particularly if you happen to be Christian. Presumably, the birth of Jesus means more to you than it does to me. Because I do not believe in Jesus’s divinity, I cannot claim to be a Christian, except perhaps in spirit. Like most Americans, I participate in many aspects of Christmas anyhow.…
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How Republicans politically manipulate you
Republicans may be wrong on most things, but that certainly does not mean they are stupid. How many poor Republicans do you know? I cannot think of any offhand. Unless you inherit a boatload of money, you don’t get to be rich by being stupid. You get rich by figuring out ways to manipulate people,…
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The Great Regression
The Great Recession sure isn’t/wasn’t much fun. According to economists, we have been out of the recession for a while, but for most Americans, with 9.6% unemployment we feel still deeply mired in it. We probably won’t feel like we are out of it until unemployment is around six percent or so, and we have…
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A battle lost, but a war far from over
News analysts and politicians are in a tizzy because House Democrats have done what seems to be a very strange thing. How, they ask, can House Democrats elect current Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as their new minority leader, when they lost sixty house seats on November 2nd? Isn’t this counterproductive? Isn’t it rewarding…
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My plan to reduce our deficits
Over at Daily Kos, many are calling President Obama’s bipartisan commission to recommend was to achieve fiscal stability, “The Cat Food Commission”. If enacted, a proposal released yesterday by the commission’s co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson would certainly require a lot of austerity and painful choices. This is why it doomed to go nowhere.…
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Election 2010 postmortem
As best I can parse it, the message from voters last night was, “the beatings will continue until the morale improves.” Republicans gained at least sixty house seats. Looking at the House electoral map it looks largely red from sea to shining sea. Unfortunately for Republicans, we have a bicameral legislature. While Republicans made important…
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Laughing our way to understanding
How many people yesterday attended Comedy Central’s Rally for Sanity and/or Fear on the mall yesterday? The U.S. Park Service no longer estimates crowd sizes. Newspapers reported tens of thousands but I think it is more likely the crowd exceeded 100,000. CBS News estimated 215,000. I can say as someone who tried to attend the…
Occam's Razor 