[ Posted Thursday, July 21st, 2016 – 00:18 UTC ]
Heading into tonight's speechifying, I was convinced that Ted Cruz would emerge afterwards as the heir apparent to the Republican nomination in 2020, should Donald Trump fail to win in November. Now, I'm not so sure.
But before we get to the big story of the night, let's start at the beginning. Today, the realization finally dawned in the Trump camp that they had to do something to stop the bleeding over the plagiarism storyline. A staffer was summarily dragged out who offered to fall on her own sword, and magnanimous Donald pardoned her, saying "everyone makes mistakes." So they likely successfully prevented the story from continuing for another day. But it would have been overshadowed anyway (obviously) by the end of the night.
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[ Posted Tuesday, July 19th, 2016 – 21:47 UTC ]
We are now halfway through the Republican National Convention, and I still have yet to hear a single policy proposal or thing that the Republicans or Donald Trump are for. Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but not by much.
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[ Posted Friday, July 15th, 2016 – 15:31 UTC ]
We begin today with a warning. Our regularly-scheduled Friday Talking Points are going on hiatus for at least three weeks. Next Friday, we'll be heading to the Democratic National Convention, and the Friday after that we'll be heading back home. For both today and next Friday we're taking a look back (through the lens of our talking points) at the entire 2016 presidential campaign season so far. We have no idea what we're going to do the Friday after that (indeed, we can't even promise that there'll be a column at all on July 29th, at this point). Regular FTP columns will resume the first Friday in August, just in time for the traditional "Silly Season" of American politics.
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[ Posted Wednesday, July 13th, 2016 – 17:06 UTC ]
In 1781, Benjamin Franklin wrote a satirical letter, purporting to be a proposal for a subject for European scientists to study. Franklin, an amateur scientist himself, was making a snide point about what he considered to be rather frivolous research by the Europeans. The equivalent today would be those American politicians who routinely point out some of the more far-fetched research the federal government now funds. This tongue-in-cheek document is now known by the title "Fart Proudly," although Franklin didn't actually use that phrase in his satirical essay.
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[ Posted Monday, July 11th, 2016 – 17:51 UTC ]
The end of the federal government's War On Weed is approaching fast. No matter how the details work out, that much seems pretty clear at this point. What began roughly 100 years ago as a racist legislative overreaction to Latino workers' preferred method of relaxing -- and was then ramped up (under Richard Nixon) to punish hippies and minorities and college students -- could once again become sane governmental policy, ending almost a century's institutional demonization of a fairly harmless natural substance. When it happens, it will be the most significant governmental shift on a pointless and endless social "war" since the end of Prohibition. The only remaining questions are how the mechanics of the war's end will work out, and how fast it'll happen. But whether it ends with a bang or a whimper, that end is definitely now in sight.
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[ Posted Tuesday, July 5th, 2016 – 17:04 UTC ]
President Obama's job approval among the public hit a big milestone last month, as he wound up with a monthly average of exactly 50 percent. Half the public approves of the job he's doing, to put this another way. This was a rather dramatic improvement over Obama's rather flat May numbers. Let's take a look at the new chart, where his improvement is pretty easy to see.
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[ Posted Friday, July 1st, 2016 – 17:59 UTC ]
We have to admit, we don't know where we heard that subtitle, and we certainly can't claim original credit for it. We think we read it in a comment to a Washington Post article, but we're not certain. In any case, as the stream of Republicans fleeing the Donald Trump candidacy becomes a flood, it does seem the appropriate metaphor to use -- the ships are leaving the sinking rat this time, not the other way 'round. We'll get to all of these amusing developments in the talking points this week, because we're devoting the entire section to the "Dump Trump" theme this week.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 29th, 2016 – 17:29 UTC ]
To begin with, Great Britain is part of Europe. This is a cartological fact which anyone with a grade-school grasp of geography knows. One is a subset of the other. Three countries (England, Wales, and Scotland) make up the island of Great Britain, and when you add in Northern Ireland (more on them in a moment), you get the United Kingdom. All are located on islands, but those islands are undoubtedly part of the continent of Europe. While Britain may leave the European Union political federation, they will always remain European.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 28th, 2016 – 17:14 UTC ]
George Orwell would be proud of Senate Republicans. Or maybe he wouldn't be "proud," but he certainly wouldn't be surprised. This is because he coined the word "doublethink," which is precisely what these Republicans are now revealing to the world. In fact, the Republican position is fast becoming "triplethink," an even more jaw-dropping feat of mental contortion.
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[ Posted Friday, June 24th, 2016 – 16:56 UTC ]
Donald Trump's name lends itself to all sorts of mashed-up words, but we find it doesn't really work with the big story of the week. British voters decided to take the so-called "Brexit" (or "British exit") from the European Union. But what should we call the increasing stream of Republicans flowing away from Trump's campaign? Truxit? Trexit? See, it just doesn't work all that well.
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