[ Posted Tuesday, May 19th, 2015 – 17:17 UTC ]
Ireland may be about to make some history. At the end of this week, citizens of the Republic of Ireland will vote to either give same-sex marriages full and equal rights with opposite-sex marriages, or they will vote the idea down and continue the status quo of not allowing gay people to get married. If the referendum passes, Ireland will become the first country to vote for full marriage equality by means of direct referendum in the entire world. The "Yes" vote is currently polling better than 2-to-1 against the "No" vote, so the chances of passage at this point have to be seen as pretty good.
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[ Posted Friday, May 15th, 2015 – 17:28 UTC ]
Jeb Bush, is that your final answer? Sure you wouldn't like to phone a friend, or maybe just get the audience's reaction first?
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[ Posted Thursday, May 14th, 2015 – 17:02 UTC ]
There's a crass and cynical formula for any given political candidate to follow, when any political issue is being discussed. It goes something like this (yes, I made up all this terminology, so please bear with me):
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 13th, 2015 – 16:11 UTC ]
Are American voters now being given the option of choosing a virtual third term for George W. Bush? Astonishingly enough, that seems to be the direction his brother's campaign has chosen to head towards. I use the word "astonishingly," since conventional wisdom would seem to indicate that this is a dandy way to commit political suicide. But because Jeb Bush is standing so resolutely with the last Bush administration's policies, he now risks his entire campaign turning into a referendum on whether America is truly ready for a third Dubya term.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 12th, 2015 – 16:42 UTC ]
I certainly never thought I'd have this opportunity, but today's title is a quote from one of the funniest episodes of one of the funniest television shows of all time: the Fawlty Towers episode "The Germans." If you haven't ever seen it, you should. The show features John Cleese of Monty Python fame, and while it only lasted one season is still absolutely hilarious. Cleese, as Basil Fawlty, owns a hotel he runs with his wife. During the episode, he repeatedly gets knocked on the head (even once fleeing the hospital instead of recovering from a particularly bad knock), and then in a daze manages to offend his German guests by "mentioning" World War II in practically everything that comes out of his mouth. The goose-stepping scene is one of Cleese's finest comedic performances, in fact.
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[ Posted Monday, May 11th, 2015 – 17:31 UTC ]
There's a big political fight happening in Washington, but for once it does not break down easily along partisan lines. There are free-traders among both the Democrats and the Republicans, and opposition exists on both sides as well. But the main skirmish in this fight is currently happening between President Obama and some of his fellow Democrats. While both sides have valid points to make in this disagreement, I find that both sides are also being a bit disingenuous in their rhetoric and their tactics.
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[ Posted Friday, May 8th, 2015 – 18:01 UTC ]
When it comes to the 2016 field of Republican presidential candidates, the rule of thumb this time around is obviously going to be "the more, the merrier!" The number of officially-announced Republican candidates actually doubled this week (from three to six), as Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, and Mike Huckabee all tossed their hats into the ring.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 5th, 2015 – 16:11 UTC ]
After a somewhat disappointing March in public opinion polling, President Obama has regained ground in April. His monthly average job approval was up, and his job disapproval numbers went down even more. All around, it was a pretty good month, but to put it in perspective he's really just roughly gotten back to where his numbers were in February. Let's take a quick look at the new chart.
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[ Posted Friday, May 1st, 2015 – 16:34 UTC ]
We've got everything from hippies to Satanists to cover this week, so let's just dive right in, shall we?
The Supreme Court heard a monumental case on marriage equality, which could indeed be their last case ever on the subject (if Justice Kennedy votes the way many expect him to, resulting in gay marriage in all [...]
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[ Posted Thursday, April 30th, 2015 – 17:18 UTC ]
Below is an excerpt from a writing project of mine, presented as a historical interlude. It is not presented, however, as any sort of commentary on recent events in Baltimore. For the time being, I leave that to others. I am drawing no parallels here, and not in any way attempting to tie events 200 years ago with what is happening now. I just had this piece of writing available and thought it'd be an interesting detour through the past, that's all.
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