Author Archives: floegel

The Real McCain

10/9/2008 – 9:48 am

I hate to keep doing this, because I think it’s unfair to Barack Obama, but I can’t help it. I keep seeing, in this campaign, shades of the 1992 Bush/Quayle-Clinton/Gore matchup. In the last month of the ’92 campaign, with a sluggish economy controlling the debate, the Republican candidate was falling behind in the polls. […]

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Three Days on Wall Street

10/2/2008 – 8:56 am

Twenty-one years ago this month, Wall Street plummeted, losing 508 points in one day. We beat that record Monday, when the market lost 777 points. The difference is that in 1987, the market was trading between 2,000 and 3,000 points, whereas Monday – or before Monday – the market was hovering around 11,000 points. I […]

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“My Hot Little Hand”

9/25/2008 – 8:29 am

It was an evening in the mid-1970s and I was riding with my dad in his pickup. The AM radio was tuned to 1180 WHAM and Ed Hasbrouck’s talk show was on. The topic was the American economy, which at that moment wasn’t doing very well. Ed was recalling the bank failures of the Great […]

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The Watershed

9/18/2008 – 11:28 am

Come gather ‘round people wherever you roam As we prepare to bury the life we have known And accept that from now there’ll be no going home Your money’s no longer worth saving The meat is all gone, we’re left nothing but bones For the times, they are a changin’ Apologies to Bob Dylan, but […]

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State of the Race

9/11/2008 – 12:06 pm

The front page of today’s New York Times says George W. Bush in July gave orders for American forces in Pakistan to carry out operations without notifying the Pakistani government. Nearly a year ago, in a Democratic debate, Sen. Barack Obama said that if he is elected president and has a chance to capture or […]

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Off Limits

9/4/2008 – 6:46 am

One of the classiest moments of Bill Clinton’s political career occurred in the middle of the 1992 general election. After weeks of battling “bimbo eruptions,” the press was starting to pick up on rumors about George H. W. Bush’s mistress. In response, Mr. Clinton said, “I didn’t like it when people said it about me […]

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Run for the Border

8/28/2008 – 9:11 am

I live 40 miles from the Canadian border. If I’m given the right incentive, I can walk from my house to Canada. But what’s sufficient incentive? What if a hike to the border could save my life and the lives of my friends and family? That would be sufficient incentive. Let’s raise the stakes. Let’s […]

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