[ Posted Friday, January 18th, 2019 – 19:24 UTC ]
The government shutdown hits the one-month milestone this weekend, but there's an even more significant calendar event which will happen as well: Donald Trump hits the halfway point of his term in office. Or, to take into account all the possibilities, we'd have to say "at least the halfway point," since if he doesn't serve his whole term for one reason or another (for, you know, whatever reason...) then he'd have hit his halfway point already, at some point in the past. So please read that headline as a worst-case scenario. We're only halfway through this rollercoaster ride, folks.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 17th, 2019 – 18:18 UTC ]
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took the time this week to pen an opinion piece in the Washington Post warning of the dire consequences that would happen if the Democratic House's first bill (H.R. 1, or the "For The People Act") ever became law. He calls it the "Democrat [sic] Politician Protection Act." However, he really fails to explain why anything in the act (other than changes to the Federal Elections Commission) would specifically help Democrats at the expense of Republicans. Instead, his article reads as nothing short of free-floating angst over the changes Democrats are proposing.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 15th, 2019 – 18:01 UTC ]
Which brings me to a related subject. Because while King's remarks were pretty blatantly racist, he certainly isn't alone in denigrating people who don't happen to look like him. In fact, the leader of his party does so all the time, and President Donald Trump rarely gets any kind of pushback from those in his party for doing so. So why the double standard?
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[ Posted Friday, January 11th, 2019 – 19:27 UTC ]
If our president is going crazy over a non-existent "emergency" at our southern border, could it be called "borderline insanity"? We're just asking....
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 9th, 2019 – 16:51 UTC ]
President Donald Trump held a meeting today with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. It was as pointless as the last few meetings between the three, from all accounts. Reportedly, after Pelosi made her case for opening the government but only extending the budget for the Department of Homeland Security for another month -- to give both sides time to have the border wall fight without penalizing all the federal workers -- Trump asked her point-blank whether she would agree to his wall money in 30 days or not. She said "No," and Trump got up and walked out of the meeting. Which is why the word "pointless" is hard to avoid.
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[ Posted Friday, December 28th, 2018 – 19:12 UTC ]
Welcome back to the second part of our year-end awards column! For those who may have missed it, check out Part 1 from last week to see the awards we've already handed out.
But since these columns are always not only monstrously but downright scroll-bar-defyingly long, let's just dive right back into the 2018 McLaughlin awards, shall we?
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[ Posted Friday, December 21st, 2018 – 19:52 UTC ]
Welcome back once again to our year-end awards column series! Today we'll have part one, and then we'll finish up next Friday with part two. As always, we will be using the (slightly-modified, over time) awards categories first thought up by the incomparable McLaughlin Group television political-chatfest show.
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[ Posted Tuesday, December 18th, 2018 – 18:03 UTC ]
Sometimes in politics it is hard to see the big picture, since we so often are consumed with small-picture details of the moment. So I'd like to take a step back today and admire how the Overton window among Democrats is rapidly shifting in a very positive and progressive direction. Because what was considered radical and even unthinkable not so long ago is now becoming so mainstream that Democratic politicians risk their own political survival if they don't support such ideas. These shifts in perception normally take place over a very long period of time, but that doesn't seem to be the case right now.
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[ Posted Friday, December 7th, 2018 – 17:44 UTC ]
As is now normal, the past week in politics was a pretty wild ride. The stock market went up, then way down, then a bit back up, then way down again -- and that was in a week with only four trading days (Wednesday was a national day of mourning for George H. W. Bush, so the markets were closed). Trump drove much of this confusion, after meeting with the leader of China last weekend to discuss trade. Adding to the confusion was the arrest of the leader of a giant Chinese corporation on Canadian soil at the request of the American Justice Department, and a weaker-than-expected jobs report today.
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[ Posted Thursday, December 6th, 2018 – 18:02 UTC ]
In America, elections are almost never nullified. They are contested, they are recounted, they might even be challenged in court, but it's rare indeed for anyone to even propose that an election's entire result to be tossed out so that a new election can be held in its place. It's just not a common occurrence. In fact, it is so rare that I can't even remember when the last "do over" election of this nature even happened.
However, when the results of any individual election simply cannot be trusted with any degree of integrity, then there is no real recourse other than to void the results entirely and start all over again. It's a radical solution, but sometimes desperate times call for such desperate measures. And the situation in North Carolina's Ninth Congressional District must now be seen as so damaged that there really can only be one acceptable repair, and that is to start all over.
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