[ Posted Tuesday, July 18th, 2017 – 16:56 UTC ]
Well, that was quick. In less than 24 hours, Mitch McConnell's "repeal and replace Obamacare" bill went down in flames, and then his hastily-constructed Plan C -- the "repeal and delay" idea -- also went down in flames, in spectacular fashion. Without an obvious Plan D on the horizon, this most likely means that the GOP push to repeal Obama's signature legislation is now completely dead in the water, hopefully from now all the way until after the 2018 midterm elections. The finger-pointing among Republicans has already begun, and will likely continue throughout the August congressional break. The real culprit here, though, is nothing short of Republican incompetence. They can spin it all they want, but they're still going to look like the gang who couldn't shoot straight to a significant portion of their own base.
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[ Posted Monday, July 17th, 2017 – 16:36 UTC ]
In the most recent Washington Post public opinion poll, only a little over a third of the respondents (36 percent) approve of the job President Donald Trump is doing. This is the lowest rating for any president, roughly six months into the job, since polling began. It's historically dismal, in other words. But while this is good news for the Democratic Party looking towards the midterm 2018 elections, there was one other poll question that should have them at least a little worried. When asked if Democrats "stand for something" or "just stand against Trump," only 37 percent responded that the Democratic Party stood for something. A whopping 52 percent said the party is now solely defined by their opposition to Trump.
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[ Posted Friday, July 14th, 2017 – 17:13 UTC ]
In normal political crises, everyone waits for "the other shoe to drop." The Russia/Trump scandal was upgraded earlier this year (by Senator John McCain) to "a centipede, because there are so many shoes left to drop." We thought that was rather clever, at the time. But we've now entered a whole new realm of scandal -- one where it is simply raining shoes down from the sky. Americans can barely go outside before they are clobbered by a falling workboot. Somebody needs to design a much stronger umbrella to protect public safety, and quick!
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[ Posted Friday, July 7th, 2017 – 16:52 UTC ]
Sometimes, even when reading professional journalism, you have to connect the dots on your own. This week both the president and the vice-president interacted with NASA, and the results were... well... kind of spacey.
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[ Posted Friday, June 30th, 2017 – 17:04 UTC ]
That's a doozy of a subheading, but we felt it was completely appropriate this week. It is a direct quote, from conservative (and "Never Trump") commentator Ana Navarro. During an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Navarro responded to Trump's recent tweetstorm attacking Mika Brzezinski by calling on Republicans to say to Trump (either on television or personally) the following: "Listen, you crazy, lunatic, 70-year-old man-baby, stop it. You are now the president of United States, the commander-in-chief and you need to stop acting like a mean girl because we just won't take it." We've saved her entire rant for the talking points, because it is indeed worth reading in full; but because it was the most forceful pushback on Trump we heard all week, we thought it deserved headline status. Tell us what you really think, Ana!
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[ Posted Thursday, June 29th, 2017 – 16:12 UTC ]
When will they ever learn? Once again, Donald Trump has almost completely hijacked the American news media for the day, by viciously attacking two media personalities on Twitter. The rest of the media then obligingly chased after this shiny, shiny object almost to the exclusion of all else. Again. We're all caught in this neverending cycle, it seems.
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[ Posted Monday, June 26th, 2017 – 16:05 UTC ]
The next few days are going to be pretty frantic in the Senate. The Congressional Budget Office just released its scoring of the Republican "repeal and replace" healthcare bill, and the numbers are almost as dismal as the House version's. But will it matter? At this point, it's impossible to really predict, as the entire political world waits to see what senators like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have to say about it.
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[ Posted Friday, June 23rd, 2017 – 17:26 UTC ]
Every so often, we have a certain reaction to a bit of political news. We then fully expect at least a few other political commentators to have the same reaction, only to be surprised when it seems that nobody else read things the way we did. This is precisely where we find ourselves over President Donald Trump's recent tweets, where he supposedly put the issue to rest of whether secret audio recordings were ever made in his White House. Everybody seems to be buying his spin, and nobody questioned the obvious loophole he left himself. Because if you read what he wrote and take it at face value (not reading more into it than he actually says), Trump still has not answered the question of whether such tapes exist or not. Not even close.
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[ Posted Thursday, June 22nd, 2017 – 17:48 UTC ]
In the aftermath of this week's special House election in Georgia, the question has arisen whether Nancy Pelosi should continue to hold the House Minority Leader position, heading into the 2018 midterm elections. It's a valid question, since Republican Karen Handel seemed almost to be running against Pelosi herself, if you saw any of her campaign ads or literature. Her entire strategy seemed to be to link neophyte politician Jon Ossoff with Pelosi -- and not in a good way. It's impossible to tell how much this contributed to Ossoff's loss, but if the answer to that question turns out to be "four percent of the vote or more," then demonizing Pelosi would have been the difference between his winning and losing. So is it time for Nancy to go?
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 21st, 2017 – 15:26 UTC ]
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is about to make a big legislative throw of the dice tomorrow, when he (finally) unveils the super-secret Senate Republican healthcare bill not only to the public, but also to the rest of his own caucus. It's a pretty big gamble for McConnell, since he has no way of knowing if he's got the votes to pass it or not. Either way -- whether successful or not -- McConnell says the effort will be over by the Independence Day holiday. Either they pass the bill, or the Senate will just move on to other agenda items.
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