It's been a knee-jerk week in politics, and with the news of another terrorist attack (this one in Mali), the forecast is for more knees to be jerking hard next week, too.

Republicans, of course, do the whole fear thing very well. Democrats cannot hope to ever stoke the public's fear as effectively as Republicans. This is a well-known fact, but this week it was on display more than usual, because there are still 14 Republicans running for their party's presidential nomination. So what we witnessed was a race to the bottom, as each candidate tried to top the lunacy emanating from all the other campaigns.

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Hillary Clinton has just outlined the approach she'd take as president against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. While not completely specific, it has enough details for some rough analysis. Much of what Clinton would do is either a continuation, extension, or expansion of what President Obama is already doing, but that's not surprising, given Clinton's close ties to the Obama administration. Clinton, however, would go beyond what Obama's doing in a few key aspects. These are all problematic in one way or another, but if she could get the other players in the region to agree (or at least accept) what she'd do, it would go a long way towards making them effective (and not counterproductive). Getting that acceptance is going to be the biggest challenge, in fact.

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Republicans are currently in a frenzy over Syria. This frenzy spread quickly across the entire party -- governors, members of Congress, and (of course) presidential candidates. But for all their noise, I notice there is not a single voice crying out to actually change anything in the most concrete way they have at their disposal. Republicans hold both houses of Congress. They are fully able (but, obviously, not fully capable) to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) bill which would direct President Obama on how to wage war with the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere. So the answer to any wild plan any Republican proposes (and, already, there are too many of these to list) on what to do about the Islamic State or Syria has to be: "Well then, why don't you write up an AUMF with that idea and put it on the president's desk?"

Mostly, Republicans just want to whine that Obama's not doing a good enough job. Or he's not talking tough enough. Or he's not using pet Republican phrases when he does talk. Or that three-year-olds are a terror threat. Or whatever (again, the list of complaints is too long to fully document here).

For each of these complaints, however, there's the same easy answer: Put it in an AUMF, and get it passed through Congress. Think you can run the war better? Then lay it out in a document. Write your own war plan. Set out goals and ways to achieve those goals. And put the idea before Congress and before the public. Republicans don't really want to do this, because they know (1) that things could go very wrong with any war plan, and (2) that they really don't have much of any answer that is better than what Obama's already doing.

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Imagine for just a moment that, right now, there were thousands of refugees from a land over the seas who not only wanted to come to America, but were actually now physically on the North American continent, heading north towards our southern border. In this scenario, the country they're fleeing has, in the past, dumped on American shores criminals and mentally disturbed people, in a wave of migrants. Up until the very recent past, this country was also officially listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. It actually sheltered terrorists who had committed acts of terror against Americans on American soil. And now 2,000 people from this country were trying desperately to get north to the United States.

The question is, how would Republicans and Democrats react?

The answer might surprise you, because Republicans would be the ones on the border with welcoming arms and automatic green cards. Yes, you read that right.

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The problem of what to do about the Islamic State is an enormously complicated one. Right now, though, there seems to be an opportunity to propose at least a partial solution that, if successful, would be a major military victory of strategic value. This plan would be to let the French military lead the effort to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State. Not only would this be an enormous blow to the soi-disant "Caliphate," but it would also be a productive way for France to fight back in retaliation for the recent slaughter in Paris.

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Happy Friday the 13th, everyone!

Since it's such an auspicious day, perhaps it's time to have a discussion about the increasingly-real possibility that Donald Trump or Ben Carson could actually become the Republican nominee for president next year. It's a scary, scary thing for most to contemplate, but the punditocracy's inside-the-Beltway strategy of just clapping our hands real hard and hoping that Tinkerbell quietly lies down somewhere to die just doesn't seem to be working. Pretty much every pundit under the sun -- from the hard left to the hard right -- has so far written a column this year predicting Trump's imminent political demise. To date, none of them have proven even slightly true. Trump is now challenged for the lead, but he's still polling at roughly the same level of support that he has pretty much ever since he got in the race. Ben Carson has risen to Trump's level in the polling much more than Trump has fallen back. The "Trump (and now, Carson) is going to fade -- it's inevitable" line of thinking is getting more and more divorced from the polling realities. So perhaps it's time to start thinking the unthinkable: either of these two men could actually become the Grand Old Party's nominee for the highest office in the land.

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America used to be "number one" in just about everything. We had the coolest stuff, to put this another way. We had the tallest buildings in the world, the most impressive highway system, the best cars, the best war-fighting equipment, and the best of everything else. Our infrastructure was the envy of the rest of the world.

This is, sadly, no longer true. In fact, it hasn't been true for many decades now. Oh, sure, we still have a lot of technological innovation -- and some of it is still the envy of the rest of the world. But not all of it, because other countries have leapt so far ahead of us in certain technological realms. To say nothing of them building higher buildings, better airports, and much faster trains.

This all came home to me recently, when I received in the mail a new credit card with -- gasp! -- a computer chip built into it. The accompanying letter from the bank bragged about how advanced this technology was, and how much safer and more secure it would make all our transactions. News stories about the switchover took a similar tone: "What an incredible technological advancement, folks!"

As any random European might put it: "It is to laugh, no?"

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Last night I wrote down my snap reactions to the fourth Republican debate. Today, rather than looking backwards again, I'm going to instead look forward (both literally and figuratively) to the upcoming Democratic debate which will be held this Saturday night.

The Democratic field has certainly tightened, in contrast to the free-for-all happening on the Republican side. Since the race began, the Republican field has shrunk from 17 announced candidates down to only 15. Their debates have needed two separate sessions each, just to fit everyone on the stage. Their main debate has featured anywhere from eight to 11 candidates, with the remainder getting a non-prime-time "kids' table" debate. During the same time period, the Democratic field has shrunk from six candidates down to three.

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Tonight was debate night once again on the Republican side of the presidential contest, and so it's time once again for some snap debate reactions. As usual, I'm writing this before checking out what the rest of the punditocracy thought about things. We'll see, tomorrow, whether my opinions coincide with anyone else's, but for now they're just my honest reactions.

Both debates tonight were wrapped in cotton balls, with questions only from deep within the conservative media bubble. Only one question, during the "kid's table" debate, even came close to straying off the reservation, and it was promptly ignored by everyone on the stage. Perhaps because of this, there were no direct attacks on the moderators and very little interchange between any of the candidates (at least in the main event).

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It's been a few weeks since I surveyed the Republican presidential field, but recent developments seem to indicate it's time to take another look. Mostly this is because the mainstream media all seem to be ignoring an actual story (even a horserace story!), to instead focus on an artificial narrative imposed by Fox Business Network (the host of tomorrow night's GOP debate). While much attention has been paid to Fox's reshuffling of who will appear on which debate stage, virtually nobody's talking about the complete collapse of Carly Fiorina's polling. She can't even now be considered a plausible Republican nominee, when not that long ago she was solidly in third place in the polls. This is a pretty major development, and it has resulted in the field of Republicans with any sort of believable shot at winning the nomination shrinking from six to only five.

Carly's collapse was predicted by few, and now that it's happening it is also being noticed by few. She became a media darling after solid performances in the first two debates, which pushed her Republican voter support up to 11.8 percent (behind Trump and Carson). Since then, however, she failed to make any waves in the third debate and now teeters on the brink of being disinvited to future main stages, standing overall in a three-way tie for sixth place, at only 3.0 percent in the polls. But again, while her quick rise got a lot of coverage, her "what goes up, must come down" fall hasn't attracted much media attention.

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