Hysteria Is Off The Richter Scale

Image via WikipediaAdd this to your list of things you never thought you'd see:  A 5.8 magnitude earthquake, centered in Virginia, shook up much of the East Coast from Georgia to Canada.  There were millions of dollars in damages.  Monuments and buildings in New York and Washington had to be evacuated.  No one was injured.

Californians, who see this all the time while waiting for "The Big One", have been having a good laugh at the expense at the Easterners' expense.  What's not so hilarious is that this comes on the heels of the Japanese earthquake in March, which caused a tsunami and a nuclear emergency with thousands dead.  And we are approaching the tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, so who can blame Easterners for being jittery?

The last time an earthquake of this magnitude hit the East Coast, it was 1944.  Do you suppose that, once the rumbling started back then, some people thought Hitler's Luftwaffe was bombing the mainland?

Fortunately for the country, President Barack Obama and Congress were both away from Washington on vacation.  Criticize them all you like for taking time off when most Americans can't even afford to take one day off.  Can you imagine what would have happened if they had stayed in D.C. when the quake hit?

The news media, based in New York and Washington, were all over this story like a cheap suit, crowding out such needless trivia as the Libyan civil war, the famine in Somalia and Kim Kardashian's wedding.  Heck, Fox News reported that a tsunami was NOT imminent.  At least they didn't blame the quake on the President or Al Qaeda.

But now East Coast residents and the TV networks must turn their attention to a potential disaster they're more familiar with.  Hurricane Irene is about to pay a visit.

Rick Perry: All Hat, No Cattle?

Image via WikipediaGovernor Rick Perry of Texas has leapfrogged into the lead among Republican hopefuls in the race for President Barack Obama's job in 2012.  Texans are all too familiar with Perry and his right-of-center positions, but north of the panhandle he might have trouble convincing voters that he's anything more than just another extremist in a GOP that's full of them.

• Perry's accused Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke of being "treasonous" for wanting to print more money in an economic crisis for political purposes, then threatened him Texas-style.
• The Governor was caught on tape explaining to an 11-year old why he thinks global warming/climate change is a hoax.  Oh, and he also doesn't think much of evolution either.  It's no accident Perry comes from a state where its social morals determine what goes into the school textbooks your kids read, no matter where you live.
• Yahoo News reports that Perry wrote a book detailing how he'd make over the Constitution if he were President.  Besides the usual Republican talking points (banning abortions and gay marriage, etc.), Perry would have Congress overriding Supreme Court decisions with a two-thirds vote, as well as taking away the right of voters to elect U.S. Senators, leaving that job to state legislatures.
• Perry's rhetoric is so anti-Washington that, if he could, he'd move the nation's capitol to Austin, Texas.

Both Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota are competing for the same conservative Christian-Tea Party voter, but the Governor has a decided advantage in corporate donations and experience.  However, if Sarah Palin finally decides to run, that could complicate things.  And former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts could slide on through to the GOP nomination.

Whether or not you think Governor Rick Perry is serious about what he believes in, or if he's just spinning Texas tall tales, there's no question he's a force to be reckoned with.  But do we really want another chief executive from the Lone Star State in the White House, after having just endured eight years of the previous occupant?

Politics 2012: Nice Guys Finish Third

Image via WikipediaFormer Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty had his presidential dreams crushed Saturday, finishing third in Iowa's Republican straw poll behind another Minnesotan, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.  The next day Pawlenty announced on TV that he's leaving the race.

In his final years as Governor, nearly everything that Pawlenty did--"unallotted" spending bills, cutting social programs, leaving behind a state budget deficit of billions--was geared toward raising his profile in the Republican ranks while lowering his popularity among Minnesotans.

So where did that get Pawlenty?  He ran as a moderate in an increasingly conservative and Tea Party-dominated GOP.  He criticized former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's health care plan as "Obamneycare" for being too similar to the President's, only to clam up when the two met in a televised debate in New Hampshire.  At a more recent debate in Iowa, Pawlenty and Bachmann stole the show, tossing brickbats at each other's records while besmirching their "Minnesota Nice" image.

It didn't help that Pawlenty was pretty much unknown outside his home state, and that he's bland as vanilla.  You could say his candidacy was doomed the moment Bachmann entered the race, but that's too easy.  It began much earlier, when Pawlenty announced he was running.

Don't think for a moment that this is the last we've heard from Tim Pawlenty.  GOP bigwigs want him to run for the U.S. Senate in either 2012 or '14.  In 2012, his opponent would be Democratic incumbent Amy Klobuchar.  Having lost the 2008 vice-presidential slot to Sarah Palin, and being outshone by Bachmann, does Pawlenty even want to take his chances against another woman?

A better bet for Pawlenty would be taking on Democrat Al Franken in the 2014 Senate race.  Conservatives have had Franken targeted since Day One, and with the right candidate could defeat him.  Pawlenty could be that person.

Well, that's one embarassing Minnesota politician off the campaign trail and one to go.  As long as Bachmann says and does stupid things like confusing the date of Elvis Presley's death with his birthday, her fellow Minnesotans (and some Iowans) will continue to cover their eyes and ears.

Politics 2012: Grasping For Straws In Iowa

Image via WikipediaMinnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann won the (admittedly meaningless) Iowa straw poll Saturday, eking out a 200-vote victory over Texas congressman Ron Paul in a race to see which Republican presidential candidate could buy the most votes to make their campaigns more viable when the Iowa Caucus is held in a few months.

Tim Pawlenty, former Minnesota governor, finished a distant third in the poll.  Now he's also a former presidential candidate, having announced on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that he's dropping out of the race.  Pawlenty never could get past a mediagenic candidate from his own state, and the fact that he was just plain vanilla.

But the straw poll was upstaged by two men who didn't participate in the first place.  Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the presumed front-runner, stopped by long enough to appear in a Fox News-televised debate in which he said basically nothing, then turned up at the Iowa State Fair and told his audience that corporations are people, too.  (Yes they are, Governor.  People with more money than God.)

Speaking of which, Texas Governor Rick Perry chose this moment to throw his hat into the ring.  He's the latest GOP candidate who thinks God is on his side, and wants everyone to know it.  As a selling point, Perry likes to brag about the favorable business climate (read:  low to no taxes) that enables his state to have a lower unemployment rate than the rest of the country, usually at the expense of other states.  One thing Perry doesn't brag about, however, is how much debt Texas has taken on.  Isn't he also the guy who threatened to pull Texas out of the United States?

As for Bachmann, she's had an interesting week.  First, there was the Newsweek cover of her looking like a wide-eyed lunatic (which, to some people, is not far from the truth).  The uproar over that picture was such that even the National Organization for Women--no fans of Bachmann--objected.  Then at the debate, she held her own in a war of words against a desperate Pawlenty, and successfully deflected a question concerning a comment she made in a video years ago about being submissive to her husband.

Both Perry and Bachmann will be competing for the same evangelical Christian voters in the upcoming primaries.  But Bachmann may have created concerns among those voters and others that, once she gets into the White House, her husband Marcus will really be calling the shots.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has work to do to get back in the good graces of his supporters and the electorate.  Obama's recent poll numbers are the lowest of his presidency, because he failed to rein in the Tea Party-backed Republicans in Congress who threatened to take the country's economy down with them.  The economy tanked anyway, with the stock market on a roller coaster, and the country's credit rating taken down a notch.  So this week, the President is traveling on a bus through southern Minnesota and Iowa to promote his economic policies.  For Obama, it's time for him to start proving to the voters he wants to be more than (as Bachmann would put it) a ONE . . . TERM . . . PRESIDENT.

Failing Grade For The U.S. Economy

Image via WikipediaDays after the United States government (just barely) avoided default on its loans, the stock market drops 1100 points over a three day period, and the bond rating service Standard & Poor's downgrades the country from AAA status to AA+, leading to fears of a new recession.

Who said the debt crisis was over?

In response to the downgrade, President Barack Obama said that this country would always have a AAA rating.  (Well, what did you expect him to say?  He's the President.)

It isn't just the U.S. that's having these problems.  Europe is having a financial crisis of its own, partly caused by looking the other way for too long when it came to balancing the books.  Greece has already had to be bailed out.  Italy could be next.

All the finger pointing and stall tactics Congress did while the American economy was on the brink before coming up with a last-second agreement that nobody liked, but did allow the U.S. to avoid default, tended to obscure the fact that (A) there's still high unemployment, (B) sales are down because people can't or won't buy stuff unless they have to, and (C) corporations respond to all this by sitting on its record profits instead of adding new jobs so people can buy their products.

President Obama, whose re-election chances have been called into question because of how the debt deal went down, isn't just trying to atone for the fiscal extravagances of previous Presidents, but his own too.  Two wars and a new cabinet department, natural and man-made disasters, the cost of health care reform, and the continuation of the Bush tax cuts have made it almost impossible to balance the budget without major surgery.

Complain all you want about Standard & Poor's rating and how flawed some people thought it was, but it's really nothing to take lightly.  There are two other major bond rating agencies besides S&P, and they both say that they aren't changing the U.S.' AAA rating.  Nonetheless, this episode should remind Washington that they shouldn't be playing politics with people's lives and a nation's economy.

A Midsummer Nightmare Is Over

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe needless melodrama that had the nation and much of the world on edge came to an unsatisfying end Tuesday, with President Barack Obama signing legislation that would keep the United States solvent until 2013.  That's just a few hours before the nation would have gone into default.

Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats were happy with what finally went into the bill that passed through Congress, which was hammered out in a deal between the President, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada).  But that's why they call it a compromise, something that hasn't been seen much in Washington lately.  Here are the highlights:

• The debt ceiling would be raised to at least $2 trillion.
• No new taxes or revenue streams.
• A so-called Congressional "super committee" of six Democrats and six Republicans would have until Thanksgiving to come up with a bill that would cut another $1.5 trillion over the next decade.  If the committee doesn't come up with a bill, or if Congress rejects it before the end of the year, then spending cuts would automatically go into effect.  Everything from the military to Medicare and Social Security would go under the knife.

Stop us if you've heard this before, but . . . Both the Republicans and Democrats in Congress have earned the nation's scorn for the way they have acted during this drawn-out debate.  But the GOP and their Tea Party pals deserve special mention for mastering the art of being spoiled brats--name calling, pouting, and threatening to turn blue in the face--because it gets them what they want.  They succeeded in making Obama and the Democrats look like clueless parents from a 1950s TV sitcom.

The Democrats aren't off the hook, however.  As the House was voting on the debt bill Monday, who should show up but Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, interrupting her rehabilitation long enough to cast her vote to approve the ceiling.  Giffords may be on the mend after being shot outside a Tucson shopping mall last January.  But this was a cheap political stunt that detracted attention and made Giffords the story, not the vote itself.

Even with the debt ceiling raised, there's no guarantee that the United States won't lose its AAA bond rating, or that the economy will improve any time soon.  It won't bring people jobs or increase their purchasing power.  And the cost of education and infrastructure won't get any lower.

It would be nice to say that civility has returned to Washington, but that would be naive and old-fashioned.  Before you know it, it'll be election time once again, with the two parties resuming their childish ways--safe in the knowledge that by November 2012 voters will forget what happened in the Summer of '11 and reward the incumbents with another term.  Oh yes, and that pesky debt ceiling will need to be raised again.