Etalkinghead

Overall, Obama’s State of the Union address impressed. I was glad to have him tackle education more honestly than I’ve been used to with politicians, to the point of proposing the dismantling of the troublesome No Child Left Behind Act. Likewise, I am glad he stuck to his guns on the health care bill, while […]

I once had a single bumper stick that emblazoned my first car, a beat-up smurf-blue Chevy, that simply stated, “Little Red Riding Hood LIED.” I grew up in an inner-city area. The only wild animals I ever saw were squirrels, pigeons and the occasional rat, and their wildness was in question. I never saw a […]

Here is what I wrote in April: The Republican Party will experience it at the local and state levels first, as Tea Party candidates defeat conventional Republicans and win GOP nominations. Some of those Tea Partiers will be kooky, others will be single-issue ideologues. A few will be anti-immigrant, a smattering will be paranoid. Others […]

“I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.” – Katherine Whitehorn The making of a political deal is messy and crude. The debt ceiling deal was especially so. Tea party supporters took a lot of the abuse during the standoff. They were called just about everything by Democrats in Congress, a few […]

Is Barack Obama’s calmness a mask hiding layers of uncertainty about his role as president? Is the President’s seemingly unflappable persona a cover for his frequent failure to use the full range of powers of his office? As others have pointed out, in utter frustration, the President too often offers the Republicans what they want […]

Even though I consider myself fairly low impact in most of my everyday practices, giving up the plastic straw was an oversight I didn’t finally address until fairly recently. I had been on the way to weaning myself slowly off of excess waste: bringing my own tupperware to restaurants to pack leftovers (and simply not […]

Those of us who believe the state of Arizona has a right to protect its borders should do our part to blunt the effects of liberal-organized boycotts against that state. We are in the majority here. Most polls show that Americans favor Arizona’s new immigration law by nearly two to one. There is power in […]

The political commentator, Matthew Dowd, recently suggested that the Republicans have become a ‘Mad Men’ party in a ‘Modern Family’ America. In light of the drubbing Gov. Romney and many Republicans took in the recent election, I think Dowd was mostly right. But the debacle for the Republicans, in my view, goes beyond being stuck […]

During the contentious negotiations leading to the final deal, a re-orientation of the starting point for developing future federal budgets seems to have occurred. Instead of an emphasis on appropriations and earmarks, with ever-growing federal programs, Congressional budgets may now begin with program cuts. President Obama did not break the tea parties by forcing the […]

In a September 15th, 2010 Wall Street Journal article, “Rove Fires Up Talk on O’Donnell”, Rove Fires Up, Republican strategist Karl Rove’s off-the-cuff comments about Christine O’Donnell’s victory as the Republican nominee for Delaware’s Senate seat were examined. Rove’s reaction to a move in the “right” direction by the defeat of Rep. Mike Castle, labeled […]

Since we just celebrated our nation’s victory for independence, it’s healthy to step back from the canvas of the current admininstration to better understand the genesis and current context of its policies. In the area of national security and military intervention, it’s been a fascinating exercise in political forensics to witness the response to President […]

We have met the enemy, and he is us. – Pogo, the comic strip philosopher created by Walt Kelly Under the best of circumstances, the strong have trouble lifting the weak. More often, the weak pull down the strong. When the forerunner of the European Union was created with the 1957 Treaty of Rome, Europe’s […]