[ Posted Friday, September 16th, 2016 – 15:42 UTC ]
The media got played by Donald Trump this morning, once again. Picture Charlie Brown lying flat on his back, wondering why he keeps falling for the old kick-the-football bit. That was cable television, after they had carried -- live -- a full hour of an empty podium (Trump didn't start on time), then a full-on advertisement for Trump's new D.C. hotel, then some surrogates saying how wonderful Trump was. At the very end, Trump uttered the 30 seconds of soundbite the cable channels had been waiting for, and then even though it was billed as a press conference, Trump walked off and refused to answer any questions.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, September 9th, 2016 – 17:29 UTC ]
Before we begin, we promise we'll get to that rather-provocative subtitle later, as we turn this week's talking points section over to an attempt at providing campaign advice for Team Clinton. We've been long wondering why Hillary hasn't made some sort of effort to put these two large issues behind her on the campaign trail, and our frustration has led us to offering up what she should say in order to achieve this goal.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, September 2nd, 2016 – 17:19 UTC ]
Donald Trump going to Mexico could have had a certain "Nixon goes to China" flavor about it, and he actually was getting some good reviews for crossing the very low bar of "not totally embarrassing himself or his country" -- at least for the first few hours. Then he went to Phoenix, and Mr. Hyde came back out.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, August 26th, 2016 – 17:13 UTC ]
It's still only August, but already the predictions that this would be an exceedingly banal presidential election campaign look like they've already come true. This week's campaign news might be summed up as an elementary school playground shouting match: "You're a bigot!" "No, you're a bigot!" Sigh. We've still got over two months of this to get through, folks. And nobody sane expects things are going to get any better any time soon -- quite the opposite, in fact.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, August 19th, 2016 – 17:26 UTC ]
Some weeks, it's tough coming up with a subtitle for these columns. Some weeks, not so much. This is one of the latter, because the juxtaposition of a colorful (to say the least) description of Donald Trump with a soap opera's title just naturally presented itself.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, August 12th, 2016 – 16:56 UTC ]
This column has always loved a good rant. Most of the time, we provide our own rant at the end of the column, on a subject too big to be contained in talking points. This week, we provide a number of rants from Republicans about their very own party's presidential nominee. Yes, it's only August and the Republican Party is coming apart at the seams. Which, of course, makes for great summertime reading for all!
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, August 5th, 2016 – 15:28 UTC ]
We've spent the past two weeks travelling to and from the Democratic National Convention, but due to the three-week period we've got to cover, we're not even going to attempt to adequately revisit everything that's happened in the political world since our last column.
In fact, we're not even going to write our talking points this week, and we're only briefly going to touch on what's going on and quickly hand out the awards, before we get to a rather extraordinary (and extensive) essay at the end, by guest author Eric Varela.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, July 15th, 2016 – 15:31 UTC ]
We begin today with a warning. Our regularly-scheduled Friday Talking Points are going on hiatus for at least three weeks. Next Friday, we'll be heading to the Democratic National Convention, and the Friday after that we'll be heading back home. For both today and next Friday we're taking a look back (through the lens of our talking points) at the entire 2016 presidential campaign season so far. We have no idea what we're going to do the Friday after that (indeed, we can't even promise that there'll be a column at all on July 29th, at this point). Regular FTP columns will resume the first Friday in August, just in time for the traditional "Silly Season" of American politics.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, July 8th, 2016 – 16:42 UTC ]
We're going to open this week's column by quoting a Southern rock band from a while back. We have to admit that we never thought we'd ever quote this band, because Molly Hatchet wasn't generally known for deep and insightful lyrics (indeed, they were mostly known for the bandleader's propensity for whistling during their songs). But after their big blockbuster album, the band put out a followup which had one song on it with both a haunting melody and the saddest of lyrics, written after John Lennon's death. Today, they seemed the most appropriate response to all the carnage we've seen this week. So, from "Fall Of The Peacemakers," here are the thoughts of Molly Hatchet:
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, July 1st, 2016 – 17:59 UTC ]
We have to admit, we don't know where we heard that subtitle, and we certainly can't claim original credit for it. We think we read it in a comment to a Washington Post article, but we're not certain. In any case, as the stream of Republicans fleeing the Donald Trump candidacy becomes a flood, it does seem the appropriate metaphor to use -- the ships are leaving the sinking rat this time, not the other way 'round. We'll get to all of these amusing developments in the talking points this week, because we're devoting the entire section to the "Dump Trump" theme this week.
Read Complete Article »
