Three themes in this presidential campaign

By Tom Quiner The theme of Barack Obama’s campaign is fairness. Taking his cue from the Occupy Wall Street Crowd, he targets capitalism and Big Business as the root cause of our problems. Envy is the foundation of his message: you are downtrodden because the “rich” are making money on your backs. The job of…

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How Obama wins

By Tom Quiner Barack Obama will most likely be re-elected to the presidency. Are his unfavorable ratings in the tank? Yes.  A whopping 49% disapprove of the job the president is doing. Only 44% approve. Is the economy in the tank? Is unemployment abysmal? Have incomes dropped? Yes. Yes. Yes. And yet the electorate prefers…

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A defining Republican debate

By Tom Quiner [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6an4zSj8LhU] I just finished watching tonight’s Republican debate. I had four reactions: REACTION #1: Rick Perry is done. If you didn’t see the debate, Mr. Perry said he would eliminate three government agencies. He began to list them off but couldn’t remember the third. It was painful to watch. A million Republicans…

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Is the Iraq War the cause of our deficits?

By Tom Quiner The “Supercommittee” meets. Their vision on why America’s fiscal house is such a mess varies wildly. The USA Today reports that Democrats on the committee blame the two wars this decade as one of the major reasons for our crisis, along with Bush-era tax cuts. I am re-running a Quiner’s Diner post…

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The debt crisis for dummies

By Tom Quiner Liberals, the media, and even some moderates and conservatives are beginning to pile on the Republicans for the debt limit crisis. They are falling for the liberal mantra that we’ve got a tax problem, not a spending problem. A quick recap is in order. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress from 2006…

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Former CBO Director slams the President’s budget

By Tom Quiner I have a love-hate affair with the Congressional Budget Office. I appreciate their independence.  They beat up on Republicans and Democrats alike. I think they sometime miss the mark in their projections, though, because they utilize static, rather than dynamic, economic projections.  In other words, they don’t acknowledge that tax increases (or…

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Good news and bad news about the Republican’s budget

By Tom Quiner [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMPLd-d8V2w&feature=player_embedded] The House Republicans unveiled their budget for America. The good news: they’re cutting spending by $32 Billion from March 5th through October 31st. The good news: it’s the biggest one time cut in discretionary spending in history. The bad news: in their Pledge to America, they promised to cut spending by…

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Quiner’s Diner interviewed today on My World, My People

By Tom Quiner I had the pleasure of being interviewed today by John Hernandez, host of the podcast TV show called My World, My People. We talked about everything from the Arizona shooting to religion and journalistic bias. We even fit in a discussion about the steroids scandal in baseball.  You can watch the interview…

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The Party of Growth

By Tom Quiner [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt1fYSAChxs] The time has come for the Republican Party to begin acting like Republicans again. This week’s election is not a mandate for Republicans, but rather a mandate for Republican ideas. One of America’s best and brightest pundits is the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger. He talked about what Republicans need to…

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My coffee with Brad Zaun

By Tom Quiner [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBvONiWm9iM&feature=player_embedded] I had the pleasure of sitting down with Brad Zaun at my neighborhood coffee shop earlier this year. We discussed, what else, politics. (For out-of-state readers, Mr. Zaun is running for Congress here in Iowa against incumbent, Leonard Boswell, Democrat.) A few things struck me immediately. Brad is a regular guy.…

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