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The biggest political event of the week (for Democrats, at any rate) was Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats rolling out a new campaign agenda -- the "Middle Class Jumpstart" -- in the tradition of Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America." But we'll have much more on this later, as we're turning over the whole talking points portion of the program to this rollout.
Speaker of the House John Boehner seems to be in need of a refresher course in how legislation is supposed to happen in the American system of government. Over the course of the past year, Boehner has gone from confidently touting his and his fellow House Republicans' upcoming leadership on the issue of immigration (and border security, in specific), to now doing nothing more than groveling for President Obama to solve the problem using his executive authority -- which is an ironic enough stance for a Republican to take, these days. The House is obviously incapable of action, Boehner is now all but admitting. That's a pretty stunning turnaround, politically.
Plenty of stuff happened in the past two weeks in the political world, but we'll get to all of that in a minute, because first we'd like to highlight (pun intended, of course) what is being billed as "the first marijuana television commercial." It's not on the air yet, but Canadian company Crop King Seeds has released this first look at their ad (they do admit that they'll likely have to edit out one bit of profanity before the ad airs). Without further ado, here is their ad (used with full permission, as they would really like the ad to go viral):
What separates humans from animals can be summed up as one simple thing -- the mastery of fire. Even "using tools" doesn't cut it anymore, as apes have been shown to use their own tools to achieve their own modest goals. When you get right down to it, the sole dividing line between us and the other creatures which crawl this planet can be drawn at the mastery of fire. Animals are still scared of fire. Humans, now, are not.
President Barack Obama's poll numbers took a serious downturn in June, which essentially wiped out the progress he's made in the public's opinion since the beginning of the year. There's no real way to sugarcoat it: Obama had a bad month last month. About the only positive thing that can be said is that it wasn't his worst month ever -- but that's not really saying much, is it?
'Tis the season when the political press all goes a-courtin'. So to speak.
In all the pontificating on what now should be done (and what should have been done previously) in Iraq, one subject oddly never seems to be on the table. I find this a bit strange, because it really should be a subject worthy of debate -- if only to add to the finger-pointing about what could have been done to avoid the current situation. From hawks to isolationists, though, nobody seems to ever bring up the possibility of Iraqis performing their own airstrikes. To put this another way: where is the Iraqi Air Force?
Today, we're going to have a special edition of the talking points, where we get to know a Montana politician who seems to be seriously considering taking on Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. But before we do so, it was a busy week otherwise, so let's just dive right into it. First, a look at what's going with Republicans.
Vice President Joe Biden was right. Let's begin with that.