[ Posted Thursday, May 17th, 2012 – 17:59 UTC ]
The thought which keeps flitting through my mind is whether the Republicans are going to face their own "PUMA" problem this fall. For those who don't remember the term from 2008, PUMA stood for "Party Unity, My Ass!" and was the rallying cry of the non-existent hordes of pro-Hillary Democrats who were reportedly going to cause major disruption at the Democratic National Convention, and then throw the election to John McCain in the fall.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 – 15:11 UTC ]
Is the Republican Party going to have a PUMA problem on their hands during their national nominating convention? I'm not, of course, referring to the possibility that mountain lions will be stalking folks inside the convention center, but rather that a group of folks under the "Party Unity, My Ass!" banner will disrupt what is supposed to be a well-scripted and well-choreographed coronation.
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[ Posted Monday, April 30th, 2012 – 16:22 UTC ]
Jimmy Kimmel is right... sort of. In this past weekend's schmooze-fest between media organizations and the president (and, for some inexplicable reason, Hollywood), Kimmel performed a comedy routine for the president and the assembled crowd. Towards the end (around 19:40 on the video), Kimmel made a few marijuana jokes. He started by directly asking the president "What is with the marijuana crackdown?" Of course, being a comedian, a few punchlines followed. But the most notable one -- like all good comedic roasting -- had a kernel of truth in it: "You know, pot smokers vote too. Sometimes a week after the election, but they vote."
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[ Posted Friday, April 27th, 2012 – 16:11 UTC ]
We begin by saying we certainly hope we can live up to such an exuberant headline. You will have to judge for yourself whether all those exclamation points were justified or not.
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[ Posted Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 – 16:36 UTC ]
Which brings us back to John Quincy Adams. In 1825, newly-installed in the White House, Adams bought a billiard table for $50 (to liven the place up a bit, one assumes). He used his own money for this purchase, and one would think it wasn't really all that big a deal. One would be wrong.
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[ Posted Monday, April 23rd, 2012 – 16:08 UTC ]
There's an element to American political campaigns which everyone hates and almost everyone loves to denounce: the negative campaign advertisement. From now until November, many will fulminate against the "coarsening" of our political culture these ads supposedly usher in, and many will call for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama (and all the candidates further down the ballot) to renounce negative campaign advertising -- to absolutely no avail. The mudslinging will continue apace right up until Election Day, for one very simple reason: such ads work. They are effective. Which means -- especially for those living in "battleground" states -- that the only way to avoid the onslaught of political negativity will be to stop watching television altogether, until the election is safely over.
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[ Posted Friday, April 20th, 2012 – 16:35 UTC ]
To put it another way: don't expect things to get better any time soon. Campaign season 2012 is off to an insanity-laced start, folks! No wonder so many across this great nation have decided that today would be a good day to celebrate tetrahydrocannabinol instead. You can see their point... through the billowing clouds of smoke.
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[ Posted Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 – 15:55 UTC ]
OK, anyone still left reading? Here we go. Every year, Congress is supposed to pass a federal budget. This budget "pie" is sliced up between all the different federal agencies, for all the things the federal government does. The House of Representatives and the Senate (and the politicians within), haggle and struggle over what dollars should go where.
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[ Posted Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 – 15:59 UTC ]
Last quarter, Google made $2.9 billion in profit (not gross earnings, but actual profit). If they keep this pace up all year, they will earn $11.6 billion for the year. Good for them, and good for their stockholders.
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[ Posted Friday, April 13th, 2012 – 16:28 UTC ]
The big political distraction at the end of the week was a reopening of what used to be called the "Mommy Wars," by Democratic insider Hilary Rosen. This came about largely because the political chattering class was bored, now that their GOP nomination horserace is all-but-officially over, and they needed a new toy to blow up with metaphorical firecrackers. Of course, they leapt at the chance to do so with all the fervor of a nine-year-old with a pocketful of Black Cats and his sister's Barbie doll, heading into the woods for some pyromaniacal fun.
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