Extremist Talk and Blithering Outrage
by John Lindstrom
Gongwer News Service
April 2, 2010
What is the etiquette when one is in the dentist’s chair and the dentist is peering down one’s gullet, impervious and intimidating behind the mask, various sharp tools in hand, all the while muttering about “Obamacare taking over everything…won’t have insurance this time next year…socialists [...]

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What a Difference a Year Makes
by Tom Shields
March 19, 2010
Just a year ago, the pundits had the Republican Party on the verge of extinction. Time Magazine said, “Republicans have the desperate aura of an endangered species,” and speculated that they could sink to the level of a third party in a two-party system.
John Cherry looked [...]

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Can the CandidatesDo the Job?
by John Lindstrom
Gongwer News Service
March 5, 2010
Herewith a point of argument that includes a prediction: if the professionals involved in government — that is, the people who work in and around state government, be they bureaucrats, lobbyists, policy analysts, reporters and others — were the only ones who could vote in [...]

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Experience Still Counts
by Tim Skubick
March 5, 2010
Everything you read these days about the political climate out there is bad news for anyone who even remotely resembles a career politician.
The anger is palpable, as citizens are mad at Republicans and Democrats. End of story.
Not so fast.
In the latest TV7-Detroit Free Press survey of the governor’s race, [...]

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Call the Doctor
by Jack Lessenberry
March 5, 2010
As a young doctor working in Laos during the Vietnam war, Joe Schwarz spent a fair amount of time saving people in impossible situations.
“One weekend I took off six legs of tribesmen who had stepped on land mines laid by the Pathet Lao and Vietnamese. And most of [...]

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Tea Party Hijackers
by Tim Skubick
February 19, 2010
America, they say, is a red and blue country divided between Democrats and Republicans. Now there is unfolding a civil war within the Grand Ole Party that threatens to marginalize the GOP.
Even though the re-election bid of U.S. Senator John McCain out in Arizona appears to have little to [...]

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Blood on the Campaign Trail
by John Lindstrom
Gongwer News Service
February 19, 2010
On Saturday, February 13, when they should have been otherwise engaged in buying flowers and candy for Valentine’s Day, friends and associates of former Governor James Blanchard started getting text messages telling them that Bob Bowman had decided not to seek the Democratic nomination for [...]

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Political Establishment Out of Touch with Voters
Guest Column
by Roger Buchholtz

February 16, 2010
Scott Brown’s Massachusetts victory demonstrates the disconnect between voters and the Republican and Democratic Party establishments that has been in evidence for some time now. That view was validated in two December 2009 polls:

Wall Street Journal/NBC – Comparing the favorable/unfavorable ratings of the Republican [...]

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Politics after Cherry
by Gongwer News Service
January 8, 2010
For all his angels on the head of a pin, Thomas Aquinas is not easy to simplify, but he did speak of knowing by faith and knowing by reason.
On Monday, January 4, Michigan Democrats knew both by reason and faith that Lt. Governor John Cherry Jr. would be [...]

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Blown Away
by Tim Skubick
November 20, 2009
Out of the blue, the governor was asked what title she would use if she wrote a book about her tenure in Lansing.
How about Blown Away?
You’ll recall that was the line she used in one of her State of the State speeches as she gushed about how her economic recovery [...]

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