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Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama's Secretary of State?
Tweet Share on Facebook November 14, 2008 Comment (20)Could the Obama administration-elect finally be making a good move? Say it ain't so, O!
The Washington rumor mill is rife with reports there are serious talks ongoing between the Obama transition team and Sen. Hillary Clinton.
I have mixed feelings about Clinton taking the job, but I have nothing but praise for the Obama transition team for considering her seriously. She's a highly credible figure in international relations and could do much to repair the damage the Bush administration has done to America's reputation abroad.
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For Mom-in-Chief Michelle Obama and Women Everywhere, It’s About Choice
Tweet Share on Facebook November 14, 2008 Comment (21)If there is one thing that most unfairly haunts women it is their career choices. Women around the world struggle with what career path to take after graduating from college. And once they've chosen that path they face any number of other obstacles. When I marry should I leave my job? When I decide to have children, should I be a working mom or stay home? If I choose to stay home, when is an appropriate time to re-enter the workforce?
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The Retail Spending Drop Is Not the Biggest Ever
Tweet Share on Facebook November 14, 2008 Comment (1)The 2.8 percent fall in retail sales is the biggest single-month drop ever! Right? Not so much.
Here's the caveat most reports (but not all) aren't noting: "Ever" in this case dates back to ... 1992.
As a Commerce spokesperson told my colleague Terry Atlas, they rejiggered how they measure these things 16 years ago. So it's certainly a steep drop. CNNMoney says it could be the worst since a 6.5 percent drop in January 1987.
But "ever" is along time—certainly longer than 16 or 21 years.
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Michelle Obama Is Making Herself a Stay-at-Home Mom, Not the Media
Tweet Share on Facebook November 13, 2008 Comment (42)When in doubt, blame the media. That used to be an overused conservative tactic. Now it's being adopted, apparently, by the Kool-Aid imbibing Obama fans who are so blind to the Obamas' flaws they scramble mightily to find someone other than the Obamas to blame for these flaws.
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Will the Financial Crisis Get Worse?
Tweet Share on Facebook November 13, 2008 Comment (2)Let's hope he's wrong this time: Nouriel Roubini, the famous forecaster of the economic pit we're in now, says the worst is ahead of, not behind us.
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Allow Gay Marriage
Tweet Share on Facebook November 13, 2008 Comment (30)Keith Olbermann had a fine commentary the other night, on the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which denied gay couples to right to marry.
I had hoped to link today to a piece I wrote in 2004, as a columnist for the Denver Post, sharing my own thoughts on gay marriage. I wrote it after President Bush announced his support for a constitutional amendment, advanced by members of the Colorado delegation in Congress, limiting marriage to a man and a woman.
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Can Democrats Get to 60 by Winning Senate Races in Alaska, Minnesota, and Georgia?
Tweet Share on Facebook November 13, 2008 Comment (11)In my column written the day after the election, I wrote that the Democrats had fallen short of the 60 seats they need to stop a filibuster in the Senate. I may have spoken too soon. In Alaska, Democrat Mark Begich has taken the lead over Republican incumbent Ted Stevens in the early counting of absentee, early, and challenged votes. At last count, Begich was 814 votes ahead. Begich had a big lead in those tallies—evidence of the effectiveness of the Obama campaign, which was targeting Alaska until John McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate. But the counting may not entirely favor Democrats. Not until next week will ballots from Anchorage be counted, and Anchorage typically is more Republican than the rest of the state.
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Democrats Owe Howard Dean a Big Thank You
Tweet Share on Facebook November 13, 2008 Comment (25)Howard Dean is stepping down as Democratic National chairman. He has been criticized as a poor fundraiser and was not entrusted with many major tasks by the Obama campaign this fall. But Dean's 50 state campaign plan—building a Democratic Party in every state—turned out to have been a real winner for the party. It helped to expand the field for the Obama campaign and helped make many Democrats competitive—and successful—in states that George W. Bush carried by considerable margins in 2000 and 2004. Dean also kept in close touch with the mostly left-wing "netroots" that supplied so much of the energy for Democrats in 2006 and this year. Dean apparently feels that the DNC position will be less important with a Democratic president in office, and that is surely the case. But I think Democrats owe a big round of thanks to Howard Dean for a job well done.
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Barack Obama a 1-Term President? Not So Fast
Tweet Share on Facebook November 12, 2008 Comment (28)My colleague James Pethokoukis makes the case for why Barack Obama will be a one-term president.
I beg to differ. First and foremost, it's waaaaayyyyyy too early to even consider the question. Two years into the Obama administration, different story.
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My Response on the Mainstream Media vs. Sarah Palin Controversy
Tweet Share on Facebook November 12, 2008 Comment (44)There has been some controversy over comments I made in a question-and-answer session after a speech I delivered to a meeting of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. In my speeches, as in my writing, I try to avoid making comments that will be needlessly offensive to people, out of courtesy. I was trying to make the point (indisputable, I think) that many in the mainstream media were hostile to Sarah Palin because of her positions on cultural issues, which I feel include her (and her husband's) decision to give birth to rather than abort their Down syndrome child. I had in mind also the point, made not just by me but by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, that many news organizations seemed to be devoting much more effort to uncovering politically damaging information about Palin than they were in the case of Barack Obama. In making my point, I used hyperbolic language that crossed the line between courteous and discourteous, and for that I'm sorry.
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