Category Archives: Politics
Canadian Dynasty
Stephen Harper led Canada safely though the 2008-2009 financial crisis. He cut taxes, the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. dollar, and the economy boomed with high commodity prices.
Now the price of oil is in the tank and there’s no Keystone pipeline to ship it anyway. On Monday Canadian voters decided they’ve had enough of Harper after nine years as prime minister. They dumped him for Justin Trudeau.
The charmed Trudeau was toasted by Richard Nixon as a future PM at the age of four months. He’s also the son of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, two time Canadian prime minister from 1968-1979 and 1980-1984.
The ruling dynasty lives.
Socialism for Democrats
Obama’s 60 Minutes interview wasn’t the only thing I missed last week. The Democrats had a debate.
Thanks to Bernie Sanders, socialism is chic in the party these days.
Socialism
Sanders wants to offer free college to the middle class and he’s going to make the “greedy rich” pay for it. Problem is, even if he took all the income of the top 1%, which pays 40%, of all federal income tax it wouldn’t be enough.
Meanwhile, capitalist war hero candidate Jim Webb got treated like a returning vet 40 years ago. His son, a current war hero, sticks up for him here.
Obama 60 Minutes Interview
I was in Kuwait and Iraq last week – more on that later.
While I was gone I noticed president Obama made another 60 Minutes appearance with his go-to guy, Steve Kroft.
60 Minutes
In the past Kroft has served up fat softballs to the president. Here’s a link to a joint interview he did with Obama and Hillary Clinton after the 2012 presidential election. (Click on Connor Friedersdorf.)
This time, instead of softballs, Kroft offered a few change of pace questions that annoyed both the president and the far left media. During one of the president’s rambling responses Kroft told him he felt like he was being filibustered.
Obama’s comment on “local Sunnis” is one Kroft didn’t follow up on, so I did it for him.
House Republicans
A group of House Republicans conspired in the demise of Speaker John Boehner. They thought he was ineffective. Unfortunately their replacement Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was even more ineffective. He committed a gaffe that fit the Democrat’s narrative that the Benghazi hearings were all about destroying Hillary.
House Republicans
So they had to whack him too.
Putin’s Quagmire
Vladimir Putin is in Syria killing people and breaking things. He told the US to get out of the way. Putin’s the new cop in the Middle East. He says Russia is part of an alliance to stop ISIS, like the alliance to stop Hitler. But he seems more interested in stopping the revolt against his guy, Bashar Assad.
Quagmire
Barack Obama is flexible. He showed no sign of humiliation. He even welcomed Putin but warned him about be getting into a quagmire. Then he got out of the way.
