[ Posted Tuesday, June 4th, 2019 – 16:37 UTC ]
The 2020 Democratic primary calendar has experience a shift of Biblical proportions since this time around "the last shall be first," at least out here in California. I know that's not entirely accurate, but it's close enough. In 2016, California was one of the last states to hold its primaries, on June 7. This time around, the guaranteed early-voting states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada) will technically be first, but California will now be among those states in the "first among all the others" category, voting on Super Tuesday in early March. Since California is somewhat of an 800-pound gorilla when it comes to the sheer number of delegates, this is going to shake up the campaign strategies of all the Democrats running. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is open to interpretation, though.
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[ Posted Friday, May 31st, 2019 – 18:03 UTC ]
Robert Mueller broke his two-year silence this week, as he strode boldly to the podium and loudly announced: "ITMFA!" and then withdrew. 'This caused the term to spike in Google searches to a level never seen before on any subject, ever.
Well, no. That's not what happened. Many now think that's what should have happened, but unfortunately it did not.
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[ Posted Friday, May 24th, 2019 – 17:29 UTC ]
What do you do with a president who wants to be impeached? That's a surreal question, but then again we live in surreal times. Donald Trump seems more and more like a man begging the House Democrats to impeach him. It's like every political decision he makes is designed to be so outrageous that it'll surely goad Democrats into starting an impeachment committee.
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[ Posted Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 17:30 UTC ]
That headline can, of course, be read two ways. One is very serious, since America has experienced multiple natural disasters over the course of the past year which have not yet been adequately addressed by Congress. And the other is, well, ironic. As we all lurch to the end of another "Infrastructure [...]
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019 – 16:41 UTC ]
You just know it's going to be entertaining when the White House announces an upcoming "Infrastructure Week," because the end result is always a fiery trainwreck of epic proportions. In one of the first instances of this recurring phenomenon, Donald Trump hijacked (there's simply no better word for it) what was supposed to be a press announcement rolling out a plan to reduce regulations to get road projects built faster. With Elaine Chao helplessly looking on from the sidelines, Trump instead let fly his unhinged "very fine people on both sides" rant in response to the racist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia. That was the biggest and most spectacular Trumpian trainwreck during a planned Infrastructure Week, to date. But now we've got President Man-Baby's latest temper tantrum to compare it to. Because Infrastructure Week always means "never a dull moment" in the Trump White House.
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[ Posted Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 17:33 UTC ]
It's always amusing when the inside-the-Beltway pundits realize with astonishment that they've been wrong about something. What happens is that one of them decides they know "what the American voter is thinking" and then all the rest of them stampede to the conclusion that this is really what's going on out in the heartland. They write articles and make television appearances corroborating each others' opinions, and it soon becomes virtually accepted fact among the cognoscenti. Then, reality interjects itself and their house of cards collapses -- leaving them to construct yet another false narrative to run with (which they almost always immediately do).
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[ Posted Friday, May 17th, 2019 – 17:23 UTC ]
It's been yet another week of life so bizarre it'd be hard to even imagine it as satirical art. Who would best be able to capture the lunacy and doublethink emanating from Trump's White House? Joseph Heller? George Orwell? Douglas Adams? Or perhaps Dr. Seuss? In other words, just another glorious week in Trumpland, folks.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 14th, 2019 – 17:02 UTC ]
Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state, just signed into law the first-ever statewide experiment with a "public option" in heath insurance. This is a momentous event, but so far it hasn't been getting that much attention in the media. Inslee is also a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, so it will now be incumbent upon him to become the champion spokesman for instituting a public option nationwide.
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[ Posted Monday, May 13th, 2019 – 16:46 UTC ]
Donald Trump's trade war with China reached a new level of intensity over the past week, as the trade deal talks all but collapsed -- instead of, as had been promised, leading to an imminent signing ceremony of the best trade deal ever struck in all of history. Trump suddenly announced he was more than doubling the tariff on Chinese goods entering the country, and then for good measure threatened to slap the same 25 percent tariff on everything else China sells in America. This morning, China announced its own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products, and the stock market sank 600 points. Trump continues in his role as cheerleader for the tariffs, which means Democrats are left to make the case -- once again -- that the emperor's new clothes don't actually exist. So far, they haven't been doing all that great a job in doing so, however.
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[ Posted Friday, May 10th, 2019 – 17:46 UTC ]
Most Fridays, we tend to focus on President Donald Trump's flailings and failings on domestic issues, but this week his buffoonery on the world stage was really what was front and center. Sure, there's an ongoing constitutional crisis between the White House and the House of Representatives, but this week in particular seemed to be "foreign policy mishap week" for Team Trump.
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