[ Posted Friday, September 19th, 2014 – 16:57 UTC ]
Congress followed up their recent five-week vacation with almost two whole weeks of actually doing their jobs, so to reward themselves they're now going to take off on another vacation. Until mid-November. The American people will show their disgust at this pathetic work ethic by returning upwards of ninety percent of them to office, if this year is anything like a typical one. The big question on everyone's mind is whether the Democrats will hold onto control of the Senate, which will mean two years of gridlock with the Republican House, or whether Republicans will gain control of the Senate, which will mean two years of gridlock with both the Tea Party and the president.
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 17th, 2014 – 16:10 UTC ]
It is time to once again take a broad look at the upcoming Senate midterm elections. As always in non-presidential election years, I seldom pay much attention to the House races, for a number of reasons. First, there are a lot of them -- too many for one person to reasonably keep track of. Second, this year seems like a pretty foregone conclusion: the House will remain Republican, and the only two real questions are whether (and by how much) they will increase their lead, and how strong the Tea Party faction will be after the dust settles on election night.
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 9th, 2014 – 16:41 UTC ]
By the time I post this article, the election returns may have already been announced in New York state's Democratic gubernatorial primary. I state this up front to let readers know that I'm writing this before knowing how big a margin of victory the current governor, Andrew Cuomo, manages to gain over his Progressive challenger, Zephyr Teachout. Cuomo's victory is pretty much a foregone conclusion, but the size of his victory may be an important gauge of the growth of the Progressives, or what has previously been called "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." If Teachout does better than expected, it could have reverberations in the next few years, as the 2016 presidential contest gets underway.
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[ Posted Monday, September 8th, 2014 – 16:39 UTC ]
Last week, a political tornado of sorts happened in Kansas (of all places), raising the possibility of this Senate race becoming the tipping point which could decide partisan control of the Senate for the next two years. Democratic candidate Chad Taylor attempted to drop out of the race completely, clearing the field for Independent Greg Orman to take on sitting Senator Pat Roberts. Orman, however, is being coy by refusing to announce which party he'll caucus with on the all-important vote for Senate Majority Leader, should Orman win his race. If he does beat Roberts, Orman will become the third sitting Independent in the Senate.
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[ Posted Friday, July 18th, 2014 – 18:08 UTC ]
The biggest political event of the week (for Democrats, at any rate) was Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats rolling out a new campaign agenda -- the "Middle Class Jumpstart" -- in the tradition of Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America." But we'll have much more on this later, as we're turning over the whole talking points portion of the program to this rollout.
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[ Posted Friday, June 20th, 2014 – 17:07 UTC ]
Today, we're going to have a special edition of the talking points, where we get to know a Montana politician who seems to be seriously considering taking on Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. But before we do so, it was a busy week otherwise, so let's just dive right into it. First, a look at what's going with Republicans.
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[ Posted Thursday, June 19th, 2014 – 17:14 UTC ]
The votes are in, and the Republican House caucus has just elected Kevin McCarthy as their new Majority Leader and Steve Scalise as their new Majority Whip. All of this was precipitated, of course, by the current Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, being handed his hat by the voters in his home district. After a roughly one-week "campaign" (which many have likened to a high school popularity contest such as the election of class president), McCarthy will now move up from the third-ranking Republican leadership position to the second, and Scalise will now take over from McCarthy.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 18th, 2014 – 17:56 UTC ]
Vice President Joe Biden was right. Let's begin with that.
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[ Posted Friday, May 23rd, 2014 – 17:45 UTC ]
Before we begin, our sincere condolences to the George W. Bush family for the loss of former White House pet Miss Beazley, who died this week. As always, we are strictly non-partisan in our love for "First Dogs" and "First Cats," because we feel the president's (any president's) humanity can only be improved by having a pet to play with on occasion (the photo of Bush with Miss Beazley which accompanies that article shows exactly what we're talking about). As Harry Truman famously put it: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." Our thoughts are with the Bush family in their time of loss.
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[ Posted Tuesday, April 8th, 2014 – 16:10 UTC ]
I say all this as a preface to commenting on a television program I watched (well, most of it) last night. Needless to say, commenting on pop culture isn't my strong point, and is in fact a rare occurrence in these pages. But I was so struck by what I saw that I felt it merited mentioning.
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