[ Posted Thursday, November 19th, 2020 – 17:01 UTC ]
I have to apologize in advance, because today's column has nothing whatsoever to do with politics. Regular readers know that on exceedingly rare occasions, I feel the need to comment about something completely separate from the political world. Sometimes I'll toss in my two cents on the subject of sports, or grammar, or anything else I feel so strongly about that I am compelled to share my thoughts. But I certainly never thought I'd ever devote an entire column to a television game show.
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[ Posted Friday, October 23rd, 2020 – 17:45 UTC ]
We are now only one Scaramucci away from Election Day. For those unfamiliar with the reference, a "Scaramucci" is a unit of time measurement equal to the time Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci spent as President Donald Trump's press secretary -- 11 days. And we're now only one Scaramucci away from the election.
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[ Posted Friday, October 9th, 2020 – 17:55 UTC ]
It seems that it is now time to ask a very strange question: Is Donald Trump actually trying to lose the election?
As astounding a question that is, there are really only two answers to it: yes or no. Either Trump is intentionally torpedoing his chances of re-election, or he is just trying to re-run his 2016 playbook in the hopes that it'll produce the same miraculous victory for him. But either way, what is becoming more and move evident is that President Donald Trump is currently losing. Bigly.
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 15th, 2020 – 16:10 UTC ]
[Editor's Note: It helps if you read the following topic sentence in an internal "Cheech And Chong" sort of hippie accent.]
Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Michael Caputo is absolutely freaking out, man. The dude really needs to mellow out.
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[ Posted Tuesday, August 25th, 2020 – 16:50 UTC ]
Republicans promised they'd put on an uplifting convention. To say they failed to reach this goal on their first night is a vast understatement. What we got instead was fear, on steroids.
Granted, their job was a tough one from the get-go. During the Democratic convention, there was a mix of (as Joe Biden framed it) the light and the dark. But the Democrats' message was pretty clear: we're in a dark period right now, and we can move towards the light with the repudiation of Donald Trump and all his enablers. The Republican message was the opposite, which is a pretty hard case to make, considering the current state of affairs. According to the Republicans, everything is just peachy right now, but if Biden wins, things will become apocalyptically bad overnight. There's just one problem with this formulation, however, and that is that we are hardly experiencing Utopia right now, as the COVID-19 deaths climb towards 180,000, unemployment is still in double digits -- higher than at any point during the Great Recession -- and the economy looks like it is now stalling due to the Republicans refusing to pass another pandemic stimulus bill. In other words, the American public is fully capable of looking around at their own lives and seeing that Utopia is far from what they're experiencing right now.
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[ Posted Friday, August 21st, 2020 – 17:57 UTC ]
From the wisecracking Julia Louis-Dreyfus to Joe Biden's resounding speech, the last night of the Democratic National Convention was a solid hit, with only one sour spot (but we'll get to Mike Bloomberg in a moment...). National nominating conventions are traditionally supposed to build in pitch and intensity all week long to the "big finish" on the final day. Democrats certainly succeeded in this regard last night, topped off by perhaps the best speech Joe Biden has ever given. All around, the fourth and final day of the Democratic National Convention was a solid winner.
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[ Posted Wednesday, August 12th, 2020 – 16:34 UTC ]
Today's column is written in snap response to the introductory speeches just given by Joe Biden and his newly-named running mate Kamala Harris. I just finished watching them, and I wanted to share my initial reactions.
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[ Posted Thursday, July 30th, 2020 – 14:20 UTC ]
This is going to be a very short column, because today is a national day of mourning the loss of a civil rights giant, John Lewis -- and I do not wish to detract from this at all.
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[ Posted Monday, May 18th, 2020 – 17:19 UTC ]
Former President Barack Obama got up off the bench this weekend and fully entered the fray of the 2020 presidential election. He did so in prominent fashion, since he was given the rather large megaphone of a commencement address to graduating high school seniors that was simultaneously broadcast on every major television network. So this wasn't some tweet or offhanded comment leaked from a phone call (both of which had actually happened the previous week, with less attention paid). What it signals -- hopefully -- is that Obama is becoming fully vested in being the biggest surrogate possible for Joe Biden during the campaign.
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 – 22:08 UTC ]
Welcome back again to another of our post-debate snap-reactions columns. Tonight was the tenth in the continuing series of Democratic presidential debates, moderated this time by CBS. When they woke up and remembered to, I should say, because at several extended times during the night I thought the moderators had completely left the room for a coffee break. It certainly seemed that way, since the candidates just engaged in a free-for-all shouting match where it was impossible to hear what any one of them had to say. This wasn't an isolated incident, it happened over and over again. And the moderators either were too timid to even try to, you know, moderate the discussion, or they were just flat-out incapable of doing so. Or, as I said, perhaps they had all ducked out for a few moments in the hallway.
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