[ Posted Monday, August 13th, 2012 – 16:46 UTC ]
The announcement of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate late last Friday sent a shockwave through the political and media world. The snap judgment of what passes for conventional wisdom among the chattering class is that the Ryan pick was bold (as opposed to safe), and that the election will henceforth be all about wonky details from the Ryan budget plan. "A campaign of Big Ideas!" the pundits excitedly gasped. "Just what we've always wanted!"
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[ Posted Friday, August 10th, 2012 – 16:56 UTC ]
With that "fair warning" out of the way, there are two highly amusing talking points coming from the Republican camp this week. If your irony-detector is as acute as mine, you'll appreciate the GOP completely and utterly destroying two of their bedrock positions just to score a few cheap political points. I don't know about you, but I find this sort of thing to be one of the more enjoyable forms of political entertainment around.
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[ Posted Thursday, August 9th, 2012 – 16:52 UTC ]
Day One of Mitt Romney's foreign trip did not go particularly well. He learned first-hand that no country likes an arrogant American coming in to tell them how bad a job they're doing, regardless of how special the "special relationship" is.
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[ Posted Monday, August 6th, 2012 – 16:38 UTC ]
This is the story of two political movements. As with any such movement, both eventually got to the point where they asked themselves the fundamental question of what they were attempting to achieve, and (more importantly) what methods they were going to use to accomplish their goals. This fork in the road can be summed up as: do we work within the existing system, or is the system itself so broken we should work outside the system in order to reform the workings of the system itself. One group chose one path, the other chose to head the other direction.
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[ Posted Friday, August 3rd, 2012 – 17:25 UTC ]
Getting back to Silly Season 2012 here in America, though -- this is, of course, the official time of year when all the politicians in Washington take (according to them) a well-deserved break from doing the job they're paid to do, to enjoy a luxurious five-week vacation. Because, as we all know, the nation's business has been so fully accomplished that there's really nothing more for Congress to do in August, so they might as well take the month off, right?
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[ Posted Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 – 17:24 UTC ]
Another madman, another massacre, this time in Aurora, Colorado. When will it end? The Supreme Court has guaranteed an individual's right to bear arms -- how does that end? Do we wind up with private armies, owned by rich individuals and corporations? Is that where it ends?
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[ Posted Monday, July 30th, 2012 – 14:40 UTC ]
This is Mitt's position on issue after issue which comes up in the news. "I've got a secret plan, which will be implemented on Day One, but I'm not going to tell you about it because it might cause somebody somewhere to vote against me." How will Mitt magically cut taxes and end the deficit? We don't know. How will Romney reform the tax code to get rid of all those loopholes? Got me. Will this involve lower mortgage deductions, or reducing the charitable giving write-off? Mitt'll tell you later, after he's elected. Has Mitt used tax-dodging schemes himself? "You people" have all the information you're ever going to get out of him, sorry. What will Romney replace Obamacare with? Dunno. What would he do differently in Afghanistan? Your guess is as good as mine. Mitt's list of such weaseling is a long one.
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[ Posted Friday, July 27th, 2012 – 16:27 UTC ]
In a surprise announcement today, the International Olympic Committee has filed a lawsuit against Mitt Romney and his entire family. Not, as some might have expected, for his recent comments about the London Olympics, but rather because Mitt has been using the term "Romney Olympics" to describe a summer festival held at his palatial vacation home, up to and including this year. The I.O.C. is famously protective of the term "Olympics" and who is allowed to use it, and according to their press release, they are merely protecting their brand. No word on what financial penalty the I.O.C. will be seeking, as an I.O.C. spokesperson told us, "We're going to have to subpoena Mitt's tax returns before we can answer that." He also added, "Mitt's dancing horse will be disqualified from the dressage event, as well."
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[ Posted Wednesday, July 25th, 2012 – 16:43 UTC ]
Welcome to that magic time of year when political junkies in the media get so frantic for stories they just start rampantly speculating on everything under the sun. This is a yearly contest to see who can come up with this year's "Silly Season" story that everyone else will obsess about for the entire month of August. What will it be this year? Mitt's "dancing horse" at the Olympics (as David Letterman has taken to calling it)? President Obama secretly plotting to (fill in the blank)?
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[ Posted Monday, July 23rd, 2012 – 17:27 UTC ]
No matter where you stand on gun control, this is where the country stands politically -- like it or not. Democrats learned, back in the 1990s, that they could get thrown out of office when they voted for new gun control laws. You can quibble over whether the assault weapons ban was the sole motivating factor for any individual lawmaker's defeat, but in this case perception has become reality, at least in Democrats' thinking. "Once burned, twice shy" is the party's mantra now on gun control.
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