[ Posted Friday, February 6th, 2015 – 18:04 UTC ]
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams (or, as we affectionately refer to him, "BriWi") was ruthlessly mocked online this week, after a war story he told turned out to be a complete fabrication. Our headline today refers to the funniest mockery we've yet seen on the subject, titled "That one live shot I did from the moon," for no other reason than it makes a funny headline. We really have no news to report from the moon, although (as usual) there are quite a few bits of lunacy to report from the political world. As for BriWi, well, we'll see what happens next. Perhaps it's time to give Lester Holt a shot at the big chair? It's a little hard to feel too sorry for BriWi, since he reportedly rakes in $10 million a year to read the news to America every night. Nice work if you can get it, eh? Or hold onto it, for that matter.
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[ Posted Monday, February 2nd, 2015 – 18:16 UTC ]
President Obama just finished a very good month in public opinion polling. Obama showed such notable improvement in January that it's tough to choose which metric he did best in. In improvement over the previous month, Obama just had the best month of his second term (so far). His January improvement was the fourth-best of his entire presidency. He hit numbers he hasn't seen since the summer of 2013 -- gaining back all the ground lost (and more) since the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website. NBC's Chuck Todd, during coverage of Obama's State Of The Union speech, came up with the best metaphor for what has been happening since the midterm elections last year: Obama stole the GOP's "honeymoon." After a big Republican political victory, Obama has been increasingly bold. As a result, Obama got the bump in polling, instead of the Republicans. January was indeed a very good month for President Obama.
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[ Posted Friday, January 30th, 2015 – 17:54 UTC ]
That headline certainly does promise a large amount of schadenfreude over the misfortunes of a certain former vice presidential nominee (and half-term governor of Alaska), doesn't it? Well, that'll all have to wait for the end of this column, where we will be supplanting our normal talking points section with a few choice conservative reviews of Sarah Palin's recent speech in Iowa. But before we dive into this snarktastic dessert of vicious quips, we've first got to get through the meat and potatoes of the politics of the week.
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[ Posted Friday, January 23rd, 2015 – 18:21 UTC ]
I have to apologize right here at the start, because that headline is not original. Credit should go to Chuck Todd of NBC, who stated during the State Of The Union coverage this week that President Obama had stolen the traditional post-election "honeymoon" period with the public right out from under the Republican Party's feet. We found this such an apt metaphor that we decided to run with it, so: "Thanks, Chuck!"
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 20th, 2015 – 22:22 UTC ]
Listening to President Barack Obama's State Of The Union speech tonight, I couldn't help but think that he's been waiting a long time to give such a speech, and he was happy to finally be giving it. Finally he could speak of the economy without having to hedge his language. Finally, he could unleash his inner optimism once again.
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[ Posted Monday, January 19th, 2015 – 18:14 UTC ]
Trying to predict what the next presidential election will "be all about" is usually a fool's game, especially when it's still so far in the future. The main theme of a national election can turn on a dime, due to a major world event or even due to the public's fascination with one unforeseen minor topic. But, at least for the time being, the 2016 election seems to be shaping up as a race centered on economic populism. This may change at any point, as I said, but I couldn't have been the only one who was utterly astonished to hear that Mitt Romney recently told a group of conservatives he might just run on a platform of helping the middle class and attempting to eradicate poverty in America. If even Mitt Romney (of all people) is now expressing Republican concern for the poor, then something has indeed radically shifted in our political debate. Up is now down, topsy is getting downright turvy, and Mitt Romney is now a populist!
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[ Posted Friday, January 16th, 2015 – 17:58 UTC ]
This was a busy week in politics, as the Republicans in the new Congress began a bout of legislating and President Obama ramped up his agenda in preparation for next Tuesday's big speech to Congress and the country. So let's just dive in to the week that was, shall we?
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[ Posted Friday, January 9th, 2015 – 18:13 UTC ]
Je suis Charlie. In fact, let's go even further: Nous sommes Charlie Hebdo. Because we are all Charlie, this week.
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[ Posted Monday, January 5th, 2015 – 16:59 UTC ]
President Obama is doing the preparatory work for his upcoming State Of The Union speech this week, by visiting three states to tout his successes and also to build support for the proposals he's likely to make in the big speech. This is all standard politics, really. But Democrats should really join in a loud chorus right now to help Obama achieve the first of those goals -- claiming credit for turning the American economy around. This is important for two reasons. The first is that Democrats (and Obama), up until now, have been too timid to claim much of any credit for the economy, out of fears that it could take a turn for the worse and they'd end up looking like Pollyannas (Obama already got his fingers burnt on this previously, with the supposed summer of "green shoots," quite a while back). The second reason it behooves Democrats to claim some credit right now is that if they don't, Republicans are already chomping at the bit to claim all that credit for themselves.
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[ Posted Wednesday, December 31st, 2014 – 14:39 UTC ]
This is the second part of Monday's article, which consists of a "link dump" of all the stories I really meant to write about last year, but never got around to. Before I get to the second part of the list, though, I have to address a comment from Monday. Here's a second link on a subject mentioned earlier (to an extensive New Yorker article) about "asset forfeiture," also known as "highway robbery by the police." Got too much cash in your car? Well, why don't you just sign it over to our local police force, and you can be on your way (and we won't call Child Protective Services to take your kids away).... This is beyond outrageous, and has been happening in some places in America for a very long time now.
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