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America knows his father, has met his five sons and has learned the story of his wife Ann – a proud stay-at-home-mom -- but there is one breed of Romney that's been out to pasture during the sizzling scrutiny of the Republicans' likely presidential nominee: the Romney sheep. From Oregon to Iowa, hundreds of Romney-breed sheep are roaming America's plains. And while the candidate himself may not own any Romneys, he coincidentally has more than a few things in common with his wooly name twin. Both the Romney the man and Romney the mutton can trace their ancestors to England. The Romney breed of sheep takes its name from the Romney marshes just south of London, where it was first found in the 19th century. ... Continue reading →
Are conservatives stupider than liberals? That's one way to read the lively parlor-game data released this week by The Sunlight Foundation, a six-year-old educational concern that attempts to make government more transparent. Sunlight's report—which assigned grade levels to how members of Congress talk—revealed that the most right-wing of our representatives express themselves, on average, at the lowest grade level in Congress. "No abortion," you can imagine these simple-minded conservatives saying. "It is bad." According to the report, Democrats have a more sophisticated way of expressing themselves. Democrats evidently use multi-syllabic words — like "moreover" — and more complex sentence structure than their colleagues on the right. Replete with internal clauses — the ones that can throw off listeners and muddy a point — the rococo ... Continue reading →
Pop quiz: Who said this? "Education achievement is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. It is an issue of national priority." How about this? "We come together not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans — to lift up all of our schools." Or this? "Education is one issue where it should be easy to find common purpose and common solutions." If you said Barack Obama, you're right. We also would have accepted Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush as correct answers. The president and his Republican opponent have starkly different views on a host of "issues" — health care, gay marriage, energy, baseball — but if they were forced to pick one area on which they could work together, it would probably be ... Continue reading →
Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images Are “job destroyers” sitting on President Obama’s jobs council? There could be, if you believe the argument from Democrats and the Obama campaign that private equity executives are profit seekers who often run roughshod over workers, companies and communities. Two Obama-appointed members of the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, an advisory committee, are leading figures in the private equity industry. Richard Parsons, chairman of Citigroup, is a senior advisor at Providence Equity Partners, “a leading private equity investment firm, specializing in media, communications and information companies,” according to his bio on the White House website. He joined the firm in 2009 shortly after it completed what news reports describe as the “biggest leveraged buyout in history,” ... Continue reading →
The director of the Secret Service today apologized for the distraction caused by last month's sex scandal in Colombia, testifying to Congress that the agency is taking steps to prevent future embarrassing encounters from happening. Director Mark Sullivan tried to assure a Senate committee that Secret Service agents make appropriate decisions the "overwhelming majority" of the time, but "we had some individuals who made very bad decisions" on the trip to Cartagena before President Obama's arrival. Sullivan said he is reviewing the Secret Service's ethics policy and training as a result of the investigation into the agents who brought prostitutes back to their hotel after a night of partying. "Any type of misconduct we take extremely seriously," Sullivan said. Sullivan had not spoken publicly about ... Continue reading →
Americans are nearly twice as likely to say they’ve gotten worse off as better off under Barack Obama’s presidency, a prosperity shortfall resembling the one that cost the first President Bush his job in 1992. But Mitt Romney has yet to seize the opportunity fully, with weaknesses on personal as well as professional qualities that are keeping the 2012 race a close one. Only 16 percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say their financial situation has improved since Obama took office, while 30 percent say they’re worse off. It’s one reason the public disapproves of the president’s handling of the economy by 55-42 percent. See PDF with full results, charts and tables here. With the economy by far the top election ... Continue reading →
Americans are nearly twice as likely to say they’ve gotten worse off as better off under Barack Obama’s presidency, a prosperity shortfall resembling the one that cost the first President Bush his job in 1992. But Mitt Romney has yet to seize the opportunity fully, with weaknesses on personal as well as professional qualities that are keeping the 2012 race a close one. Only 16 percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say their financial situation has improved since Obama took office, while 30 percent say they’re worse off. It’s one reason the public disapproves of the president’s handling of the economy by 55-42 percent. See PDF with full results, charts and tables here. With the economy by far the top election ... Continue reading →
