[ Posted Monday, April 13th, 2015 – 16:54 UTC ]
And so it begins. Hillary Clinton is now officially in the race for the White House. Her announcement, like pretty much everything else about her upcoming campaign, will be microscopically analyzed within an inch of its life. Was she too generic? Was she appealing enough? Where were the specifics? What about Bill? And what was up with that laughably 1970s campaign logo? Most of these deep-dive analyses won't make a tiny bit of difference, in the long run (well, OK, that logo is pretty bad, hopefully that's the first thing Team Hillary decides to change...). But it'll certainly give all the pundits something to do in the meantime.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Thursday, April 9th, 2015 – 17:03 UTC ]
On this day, 150 years ago, the Civil War began its end. The fighting didn't stop immediately, but today was the significant turning point in the conflict. Exactly one and a half centuries ago, Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Ulysses S. Grant in a tiny Virginia hamlet called Appomattox Court House. This was the beginning of the end for the Confederate forces, and for the Confederacy itself.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 – 16:58 UTC ]
Senator Rand Paul announced today (to absolutely nobody's surprise) that he is running for the Republican presidential nomination for 2016. He joins only one other official candidate, Senator Ted Cruz, who made his own announcement a few weeks ago. On the Democratic side, nobody has officially thrown their hat in the ring. Such announcements are happening much later this presidential cycle, due to quirky financial advantages of our crazy campaign finance legal system (if it can even be called that, anymore, after the Supreme Court's evisceration). But I'm getting distracted, and veering off the topic at hand, which is paying proper attention to those candidates who actually are declared candidates. Since nobody else has officially stepped up to the podium yet, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul deserve at least a moment in the spotlight.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, April 3rd, 2015 – 16:49 UTC ]
President Barack Obama is finally earning his Nobel Peace Prize, it seems. A few months back, he announced a major shift in U.S. policy towards Cuba, ending a half-century of frostiness, and this week the outlines of a deal to avoid a war with Iran were unveiled, thawing a relationship that froze over back in 1979. Both of these foreign policy accomplishments go a long way towards deserving the Nobel Peace Prize Obama was prematurely awarded in 2009. At the time, many (this column included) joked that the Nobel committee was really awarding the prize to Obama for the sole achievement of "not being George W. Bush." But it seems now that by the time he ends his term in office, Barack Obama will indeed have earned the world's foremost peacemaker's prize. Since this is Good Friday, perhaps a Bible quotation is in order: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Thursday, April 2nd, 2015 – 15:44 UTC ]
Barack Obama's job approval poll numbers slipped a bit in March, ending a streak of good news in polling for the president which reaches back to last September. But while the numbers turned slightly negative, the overall outlook for Obama was looking up by the end of the month. This means Obama has a better than even chance of gaining ground again in April. But before we get to predicting the future, let's first take a look at the chart of the recent past.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, March 13th, 2015 – 16:56 UTC ]
For the uninformed, Pi Day is a yearly celebration of a date on the calendar, for its numerical significance. It ranks up there among geeky holidays with the fourth of May ("Star Wars Day," since you can go around wishing everyone "May the Fourth be with you!"). The significance is it will be "3/14" (at least in the United States, as Europeans write their dates differently). These are the first three digits in the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, or "pi."
But this year's Pi Day will be the best one for the next 100 years, because a whole bunch of digits will come into play. Pi's value is, to 10 digits: 3.141592653. This year's Pi Day will be 3/14/15. Taking it a step further, just before 9:30 AM tomorrow morning, the date and time will read: 3/14/15 -- 9:26:53. Woo hoo! Best Pi Day of the century!
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Thursday, March 12th, 2015 – 18:18 UTC ]
Forty-seven Republicans in the United States Senate caused an uproar this week when they sent an "open letter" to the people running Iran's government. This action was roundly condemned, both here and abroad, for being (at the very least) undiplomatic in the extreme. The Iranian foreign minister dismissed it as a cheap attempt at propaganda, which is to date possibly the most poignant description of the letter. After a few days, even some Republican senators who signed the letter were beginning to admit that it probably hadn't been a good idea.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Thursday, March 5th, 2015 – 19:26 UTC ]
Benjamin Netanyahu just gave a controversial speech to Congress this week. Now, America is unquestionably friends with Israel, that's pretty much a given. But what I find interesting is that even though most of the American people are currently unaware of it, we are also de facto allied with Iran right now, in the fight against the Islamic State.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Tuesday, February 24th, 2015 – 16:57 UTC ]
Mitch McConnell has just defused the ticking Department of Homeland Security shutdown bomb, and signaled that the department will not have to shut down this weekend. No word yet on how John Boehner and the House Republicans are going to react (to say nothing of the right-wing media). But by acting this early, [...]
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Monday, February 23rd, 2015 – 18:08 UTC ]
The Senate just voted for a fourth time to open debate on a budget bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, coupled together by the House with poison-pill language to block President Obama's new policies on immigration. For the fourth time, the bill failed to gain the 60 votes necessary to move forward. This time around, Republicans could only muster 47 votes in favor of the legislation -- fewer than any of the previous three times the Senate has voted on it (the bill has never even gotten 55 votes, much less 60, and the only bipartisanship has come from one Republican voting with the Democrats, for those of you keeping score at home).
Read Complete Article »
