[ Posted Monday, May 16th, 2011 – 16:56 UTC ]
Well, that was a fun couple of weeks, wasn't it? For the past month or so, Donald Trump pretended to run for president and the media pretended he was serious (funniest headline I've seen today, from the Washington Post, "Donald Trump: I'm Fired!"). This entertaining period has now drawn to a close, much to the dismay of late-night comedians everywhere, as The Donald all but admits that the whole thing was a ratings and contract negotiations ploy to boost his "Apprentice" show on NBC. What it all means is that we can now take a look at who is yet to decide to jump into the Republican nomination race in earnest, and without such clownish distraction.
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[ Posted Friday, May 13th, 2011 – 17:10 UTC ]
Ron Paul, apparently, is not a superstitious kind of guy.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 11th, 2011 – 17:50 UTC ]
This has been an unusual year, in terms of presidential campaign politics, because (so far) it has run counter to the conventional wisdom. A standard column for any pundit to write every four years is the "Campaign Starting Even Sooner!" article, in which you decry the fact that the presidential race is beginning earlier and earlier each cycle. Not many of those articles have been written this time around.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 – 15:29 UTC ]
The death of Osama Bin Laden on the second day of this month has overshadowed Obama's poll numbers from last month already. Obama's poll numbers in May are going to be a lot more interesting (to put it mildly) than his poll numbers from April are going to be. I realize all of this, but I still (for completeness' sake) feel obligated to put out this monthly report of where Obama stood last month with the public.
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[ Posted Monday, April 25th, 2011 – 16:57 UTC ]
Most intelligent political analysts' reaction (right, left, and center) to the news that Donald Trump may be considering a run for the presidency could be summed up as some version of: "You have got to be kidding me." Followed quickly by: "This is going to be so much fun!" But the real punchline to this joke of a candidacy was actually on the punditocracy, when Trump's poll numbers took off and soon put him either in the lead or very close to it for the Republican nomination. Republican voters, it seems, aren't following the punditocracy's lead on "The Donald."
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[ Posted Friday, April 22nd, 2011 – 16:34 UTC ]
Again, this is not science fiction. It's a reality that already exists in the skies over at least two countries right now (and possibly more). Robots are killing humans. These robots are not acting on their own, they are fully controlled by human operators -- but the next generation of drone aircraft will not need a human to operate them (again, this is fact, not supposition). Robot artillery, robot tanks, and robot infantry cannot be all that far behind. War as the ultimate video game, in other words.
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[ Posted Wednesday, April 20th, 2011 – 17:19 UTC ]
Since the mainstream media has, quite obviously, abdicated all responsibility for reporting the news in any sort of journalistic fashion, I thought today would be a good day to review the current status of America's wars. Depending on how you count, there are now three (or four) of these wars which have been all but forgotten by the media these days.
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[ Posted Friday, April 15th, 2011 – 17:33 UTC ]
Something the media largely missed in the midst of multiple budgetary battles this week was the fact that this is what bipartisanship looks like. The media, at least the "serious" ones, residing either inside the Beltway or in lower Manhattan, have long made much sport out of decrying "partisanship" -- at least, when Democrats act like Democrats, at any rate. Politicians are supposed to "work together" in some Utopian dreamland, to "get serious things done." It sounds great in an editorial, and all of that.
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[ Posted Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 – 16:59 UTC ]
One person who (assumably) won't be celebrating the fifth anniversary of Romneycare is Mitt Romney himself. This is because the entire issue has become the biggest albatross around his neck, politically, as he tosses his hat in the 2012 presidential ring. So don't look for him to be cutting a "Romneycare fifth birthday cake" today. In fact, as far as Romney is concerned, it would be just fine if everyone conveniently forgot about the issue altogether.
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[ Posted Friday, April 8th, 2011 – 16:51 UTC ]
Sigh. What's depressing about the whole thing, to me at least, is how the entire knock-down-drag-out fight is merely the preliminary round. This whole government shutdown walk-to-the-brink-and-stare-into-the-abyss thing is nothing more than the warmup for the next budgetary battles -- which will be much bigger. The entire initial fight is about staking out ground for the next two fights -- raising the debt ceiling, and the 2012 budget. Nobody involved -- not the Tea Party Republicans, not President Obama, not John Boehner, not Harry Reid -- really cares all that much about how this particular round ends up. They're all stuck thinking: "If I give in now, they'll want more later" -- and they're all entirely correct.
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