Your generous
donations help keep
this site running.
Visa/MC/PayPal accepted.
Welcome everyone to our year-end awards columns! Every year, we pre-empt our normal "Friday Talking Points" columns for two weeks, in order to take a look back at the year that was.
Let's take a quick look back at the week that was, which was actually chock full of political news. We'll begin in outer space and end up with amusing holiday news, so buckle your seatbelts, it's going to be a fast ride this week. So fast that we're not even going to explain the column's title until you reach the talking points at the end, just to warn you. Ready? OK, here we go....
A little-noted anniversary happened this week -- because it has been 80 years since Americans came to their senses and passed the Twenty-First Amendment, thus repealing the lunacy of Prohibition. So there's something to raise a glass to, over the weekend. So to speak.
This was a big week in the political world, so we've got a lot to get through before we get to the big, explosive "nuclear option" story. In fact, it was even a big week just for political anniversaries. Fifty years ago this week, an event of no little importance happened. I speak, of course, tomorrow's 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who by the BBC.
Let's see, what happened last week?
Wedgie: When a political party's "wedge" issue turns on them and instead of dividing the other party, begins to divide their own.
Usage: "Boy, the Republicans are really getting a giant wedgie on immigration, aren't they?"
To put this another way, while most focused on one broken promise from President Obama this week, he actually made good on an earlier promise -- which is nothing short of astounding and deserves a lot of attention.
"I will not yield to this monkey court!"
I don't know about anyone else, but the image that popped into my head this week was Ted Cruz drunk in some dive of a karaoke bar, doing his version of "I Fought The Law, And The Law Won."
In this particular instance, the storyline will run with one of either two words to describe the perceived loser: "blink" or "cave." We're going with the cave metaphor, today. Call it media-political spelunking, if you will. Which brings us to the most important question imaginable (to the mainstream media): Who will inhabit the cave? Who will cave, and who will enjoy the bright, bright media sunlight of perceived victory?