[ Posted Friday, September 13th, 2019 – 17:00 UTC ]
We have to begin today with an apology. Five years ago, without knowing any better, we erroneously reported in this space that there would not be another Friday the 13th which coincided with a full moon until 2049. So it was much to our surprise that we heard that this week we all were going to see another one, only five short years after we feverishly coined the word "selenofriggatriskaidekaphobia" to describe those with the very specific neurotic fear (-phobia) of both full moons (seleno-) and Fridays (-frigga-) the 13th (-triskaideka-).
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[ Posted Friday, August 30th, 2019 – 19:02 UTC ]
You know things are getting bad in Trumpland when Our Dear Leader is openly attacking Fox News for not being servile enough.
In a series of angry tweets, Trump this week called Fox News "HOPELESS & CLUELESS" and ended his rant with:
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[ Posted Thursday, August 29th, 2019 – 17:20 UTC ]
While almost all the election attention from the media so far has been on the presidential race (and, more specifically, the Democratic nomination race), there are other races out there which might be more important in the grand scheme of things, because the fight for the Senate is really the determining factor for what will get done in the two years after the presidency is decided. This holds true no matter who wins the White House, in fact, because if Trump gets a second term, facing a Democratic Senate and House would severely constrain his ability to enact his agenda. If Trump loses to a Democrat, it won't matter how many sweeping campaign promises get him or her elected, because control of the Senate will determine whether any of it will get a chance.
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[ Posted Friday, August 23rd, 2019 – 18:20 UTC ]
The great fear of those who did not support Donald Trump's election in 2016 was that if America hit a crisis point -- a virtual certainty, over a span of four years -- Trump would prove to be dangerously unstable and not know how to deal with it. The consequences could be alarming, as Ted Cruz joked about on the campaign trail at the time:
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[ Posted Thursday, August 22nd, 2019 – 17:49 UTC ]
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears worried. He's concerned that not only may the Democrats take control of the chamber away from him next year, but that they could then move to abolish the legislative filibuster altogether. The idea does seem to be gaining some momentum among Democrats, although not everyone's convinced it would be a good idea as of yet. But should the Democrats, if they get the chance, 'drop the third nuke' and get rid of the filibuster for once and for all, or should they retain this undemocratic Senate tradition, perhaps with some reforms?
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[ Posted Wednesday, August 21st, 2019 – 17:09 UTC ]
In today's episode of "Irony Is Dead," we have a president who not only just committed the same sin he is accusing another of, but who then went on to flirt openly -- twice! -- with the concept that he should be deified.
Sigh. Just another day in Trumpworld....
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[ Posted Monday, August 19th, 2019 – 17:14 UTC ]
The mainstream media does a good job on some things, I'd be the first to admit. But admitting they were wrong is simply not one of them.
Case in point is Elizabeth Warren's DNA test. Back when she revealed the results of the test, the inside-the-Beltway punditocracy jumped to a rather overblown conclusion: Warren's DNA test had been such a monumental and fundamental error that her campaign for the presidency was over before it began. Warren's chances were completely written off by just about every pundit banging on a keyboard. She was toast, they all told each other at their cocktail parties, and they shared this conventional wisdom with their readers and viewers, confident that it was an accurate read of the situation.
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[ Posted Friday, August 16th, 2019 – 17:01 UTC ]
This week, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Donald Trump, for some strange reason, now wants to try to buy Greenland again. The Washington Post later followed up on the story:
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[ Posted Thursday, August 8th, 2019 – 17:15 UTC ]
A real Twitter war has now erupted. This is not a mere "tweetstorm," where people snipe at each other through Twitter messages, this is a dispute between Twitter itself and what looks to be the entire Republican Party election machine. How it all ends nobody knows, but it was almost inevitable that Twitter would eventually get sucked in to the partisan divide in one way or another. In this growing conflict, Twitter fired the first shot, by locking up Mitch McConnell's election site for posting a threatening video (the video was of protesters outside Mitch's house threatening him, so it wasn't like the campaign was threatening anyone else, in all fairness). The Republicans have returned fire by announcing they are pulling all election Twitter ad spending. So far, neither side has blinked.
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[ Posted Tuesday, July 30th, 2019 – 16:08 UTC ]
The way Mitch McConnell sees it, he's taking a bold stance against the federalization of elections in America. The way everyone else sees it, he's refusing to allow any bills dealing with beefing up the security of America's elections from going forward, thus becoming what was called during the Red Scare and the Cold War a "useful idiot" for Moscow -- because by his refusal to act, he is furthering the ability of Vladimir Putin to attack our elections once again. But while this is a fascinating exercise in political theater all around, today's news shows without a shadow of a doubt that the supposed Republican reverence for "states' rights" when it comes to conducting elections evaporates instantly when one of those states does something with which they do not agree. This has always been the case, really, when it comes to right-wing support for the concept of states' rights.
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