(Article first published as “Obama Roasted by Nuclear Option Fallout?” on Blogcritics.) With his poll numbers falling at least as fast as our economic outlook, a desperate Barack Obama exercised the nuclear option in his re-election bid. On September 19, Dan Pfeiffer, the President’s communications director, told the New York Times that the period of political compromise is “behind us”. This week, nine months into the current Congress and fourteen before the election, Obama went on a scorched earth…
(First published as “Why Obama’s Jobs Speech Will Be a Nonstarter” on Blogcritics.) President Obama will give yet another major speech this Thursday night. He’ll speak in broad platitudes and intone about the seriousness of our predicament. He will emphasize the necessity of working together. He will, of course, offer way too little in the way of specifics, but whatever it is will have a huge price tag. And his speech will come a cropper, die aborning, stumble out of…
(Article first published as “The Fatal Conceit of Perpetual Prosperity: Will It Sell?” on Blogcritics.) Winston Churchill once said, “The biggest argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Today, the truth of that observation is being determined in democracies around the globe. In the U.S., with politicians sharply divided along partisan lines on how to solve our fiscal crisis, voters will decide on the path forward. Are they up to the task? Will they buy the perpetual prosperity…
At different times in American history, the Do Nothing label has been stuck to Republican politicians and even the entire party. Like the time, way back in the day, when Woodrow Wilson glued it on President Taft and his administration. The most famous use of the term was by Harry Truman in his successful campaign against Thomas Dewey in the 1948 presidential race. The phrase helped to keep “Give ‘Em Hell Harry” in the White House confounding all…
WASHINGTON DC (AP) ¬– The Chinese government this week sold the assets of the former U.S. government to American business interests for .00001 cents on the dollar. The fire sale brought the curtain down on an investment drama that ended poorly for both China and the U.S. After Uncle Sam defaulted on payments, the Chinese were forced to foreclose on significantly overvalued collateral securing their investment. Their own government in limbo since the foreclosure, Americans can breath a little…
(Article first published as The Sum of Our Parts on Blogcritics.) Most everyone has heard the saying, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s been around for quite a while and generally means that together pieces produce a result not independently obtainable. It has several applications. First uttered by Aristotle as a philosophical precept, it is also a tenet of Gestalt psychology and an expression of the concept of synergy. And, it’s a notion most…
