Year-End Slide Continues

After a fairly consistent (if not great) run in the polls for the first ten months of 2015, President Barack Obama finished the year on a decidedly downward slope. While the gains he made at the start of the year haven't completely eroded back to where he spent most of 2014, if Obama doesn't reverse the trend soon he could be looking at similar numbers within the next few months. This trend is clearly visible in the new chart for December.

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

December, 2015

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Federal land is currently being occupied by protestors. Or, according to some, by domestic terrorists. But pigeonholing these guys with either label isn't quite as easy as it might first seem. There's some history here that needs pondering before anyone decides exactly what to call the group and, more importantly, what to do about them. Because it is a little more complicated than it first might seem, at least for those who care about the concepts of fairness and consistency.

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From the wires today comes a short story about Senator Marco Rubio being asked about his missed votes in the Senate. His answer? Congress can't change much anyway. "We're not going to fix America with senators and congressmen -- presidents set the public policy agenda." This begs another question: Why are taxpayers still paying Rubio to not do his job? If Rubio had the strength of his own convictions, he would quit his Senate seat and concentrate on his bid for the Oval Office. That way he could be replaced by someone who has more interest in actually performing the duties of the office.

This isn't all that outrageous a suggestion to make, because Rubio only has one year left in the Senate no matter what happens. Whether he is successful in his run for the Republican nomination or not, he's not going to be in the Senate one year from now. The AP article incorrectly states that Rubio "chose not to run for re-election as a senator from Florida as he pursues the presidency." The truth is, Florida law prohibits him from running for two offices at the same time. Rand Paul faced a similar dilemma in Kentucky, but Paul convinced his state's legislature to change the election law to permit him to simultaneously run for president and senator. Rubio did not, so he's not running for the Senate -- but he didn't choose this path, it was in fact dictated by state law.

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Once again, it's been a month since I last took a look at the Republican presidential field as a whole, and in the intervening time two further candidates have dropped out, bringing the total to an almost-manageable 12 candidates (11 if you don't count Jim Gilmore... and at this point, many don't). Even an even dozen, though, is better than trying to keep track of 17 of these folks.

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So it's the end of the year, meaning it is time once again to check into the news from Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, in order to see the venerable Lake Superior State University's annual "banished words list." For those new to the concept, this is a list of words and phrases which have become so downright annoying that they deserve banishment from casual conversation (whoops, I've now used two of them in this opening paragraph).

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That's a fairly depressing headline to wind up 2015, I fully realize. However, I've been noticing that Democrats -- all the way up to and including Hillary Clinton herself -- seem to be awfully complacent about the possible outcomes of next year's presidential race. This could be dangerous, because nothing in politics is ever written in stone, and this election cycle has been more unpredictable than most already. While most people inside the Beltway are slowly wrapping their minds around the concept that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination, the conventional wisdom is that if the race boils down to Trump versus Clinton, the foregone conclusion will be Hillary handily defeating The Donald in the general election.

Me? I'm not so sure about that. Maybe it's because not much surprises me anymore in the political arena, or maybe it's because Washington conventional wisdom has been so spectacularly wrong about the GOP race so far. Which leads me to end 2015 on a very cautionary note -- because it is not impossible that Donald Trump becomes America's next president.

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America is at war, but it is sometimes hard to tell. Granted, we're in a very limited sort of engagement, but even so the media has largely fallen down on the job of keeping Americans up to date with the war's progress. It's a very slow war, and the media much prefers "shock and awe" style war, to be sure. Even so, the fall of Ramadi should be a lot bigger news than it currently seems to be.

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Sometimes, figuratively speaking, all the money in the world can't change a political outcome. This very idea runs counter to all the dire warnings about money's corruptive influence on American politics, of course, but it makes it no less true -- at least in certain situations. For all those that decry politicians who "buy" elections, sometimes outright attempts to do so are met with nothing more than sheer indifference from the voters. I have no idea what this means in the grand scheme of things, but when it happens it's certainly worth noting.

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[ Updated To Fix Major Brain Fart: Somehow, while writing this column, I started thinking this year was 2016. Maybe it's because I've been so focused on the 2016 election cycle, maybe it is because this column was 27 pages long (in Word format) and took two days to write, and maybe it was just due to lack of sleep due to a very exuberant kitten joining our houshold right before I sat down to write it. For whatever reason, I've gone back and taken out all the "2016" instances I could find and corrected them to read "2015." I'll do a better pass later, with a search-and-replace, but for now it should be at least mostly correct. I apologize for the errors, and will be getting some sleep soon, hopefully. Mea culpa maxima.]

Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!

[Part 1 of this column ran last week, just in case you missed it.]

Before we begin with this week's awards, we have a few odds and ends to get out of the way first. Last week's list had the "Best Photo Op" category, and we missed a few that deserve mentioning. There was the image of South Carolina's official flag being flown at half-staff after the Charleston shooting, with the Confederate flag in the foreground, flying at the top of its pole.

In a more positive light was the photo of the White House lit up in the colors of the rainbow flag, after the Supreme Court decision was announced which guaranteed marriage equality. That was a pretty good photo op, and deserves mention.

On purely amusing grounds, Ted Cruz pretending to audition for The Simpsons deserves some sort of mention, especially him quoting (while twirling, of course) Kang and Kodos: "Forwards, not backwards! Upwards not downwards! And always twirling, twirling for freedom!"

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[Program Note: Due to the foreshortening caused by the calendar, I wasn't able to write a new column today. Instead, I've been working all day to get tomorrow's column ready, which will be the "Part 2" of our year-end awards columns. That will be it for this week, I might add, so here's wishing everyone a happy holiday weekend. In any case, check back tomorrow for the final 2015 awards, and for now, here's a fun Christmas column I wrote in my second year of blogging.]

Originally Published December 24, 2007

When is Christmas? And why?

These are questions guaranteed to get you funny looks when you pop them, especially in a gathering of wassail-soaked relatives. But if you're tired of hearing the seemingly-eternal "this is what Uncle Fred did when he was twelve" stories, and you're leery of bringing up politics with your kin from Outer Podunk, then it's at least a conversation-starter that's somewhat neutral. Plus, you can reaffirm your nearest-and-dearests' image of you as a latte-sipping fruitcake who moved away from the glory of the heartland and now lives on (say it with an embarrassed whisper) the coast.

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