The way things are going, they might as well just go ahead and rename the Republican Party the "Party of Trump." It'd certainly be more honest, that's for sure. Not only has Donald Trump successfully co-opted the party from within, he is now also in charge of who is allowed to stay. If you're in Trump's good graces, then you are a true Republican (and a patriot to boot). If you are not, then you are shunned and booed and excluded. There is no "big tent" to the party anymore -- it's a small tent (and getting smaller) and the tent is wholly owned by Trump, Inc.

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Representative Liz Cheney did not come from the planet Krypton, but not unlike Superman (at least, the Superman from the 1950s television version) Cheney is in the midst of a "battle for truth, justice, and the American way." This may sound rather odd to hear, coming from me (as well as both dated and cliché). But while I disagree with Cheney on just about every ideological item on either one of our lists, I have to applaud what she is doing now -- standing up to the idiocy which has taken hold of her own political party, reminding them that they used to stand for things like personal responsibility and the U.S. Constitution, and calling a Big Lie an actual Big Lie. In today's Republican Party, that is both admirable and (sadly) almost extinct.

Liz Cheney knows the emperor is wearing no clothes. And she is loudly telling the rest of her party this fact. So, in response, the party is going to unceremoniously chuck her out of their caucus's third-highest leadership position in the House Of Representatives. For refusing to publicly and knowingly lie to the voters.

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President Joe Biden announced a new goal for his administration today: getting 70 percent of Americans vaccinated at least once before the Fourth of July. That's a pretty high number, even though we've got two whole months to go. But it is an interesting one to pick, since it is the low end of the estimate for what the country will need to achieve "herd immunity" (others put the number higher, as high as 80 or even 85 percent). So it is without doubt a worthy and admirable goal to shoot for.

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Back in 2015 and 2016, the mainstream media gave Donald Trump's presidential campaign a huge boost. Trump was like catnip to them, endlessly entertaining, and as a result, they made his campaign a gift of hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars in free airtime. They'd cover his rallies in full, just to see what outrageous things he said. When the Republican primary season happened, all their questions to the other candidates were basically some form of: "What do you think about what Trump said about X?" Trump was a creature of television and pop culture, and as such understood the value of generating high ratings. And the media gleefully went along for the ride. And as a result, Trump dominated the primary and then dominated the general election.

Much later on, the media went through a bit of soul-searching: "How could we have allowed this to happen? How complicit were we in the con job?" But by then, of course, it was too late.

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President Joe Biden is either a radical, far-left socialist who hates many things about America and lied to everyone in his campaign about "unity" (because deep down he really just wants to divide us to foster his own political ambitions)... or he is not. If he isn't, then he just might be a moderate Democratic centrist who has been thrust into three simultaneous crises and who has reacted by abandoning his former timidity and instead decided that the time is now to prove to the American public that the federal government can indeed be a force for good in their lives, in the biggest way possible. Joe is going big, even though his natural instinct would be to sit down with Republicans and hash out a compromise that fell far short of what the Democratic side of the aisle thought was necessary.

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President Joe Biden has proposed a very ambitious agenda, after he already successfully passed the equally-ambitious American Rescue Plan (to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic). The next two legislative initiatives Biden has now unveiled -- the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan -- are also just as breathtaking in scope. Republicans, at least so far, have been caught rather flatfooted in their response. And it is up to the mainstream media to start pointing this out, by zeroing in on questions of actual policy rather than getting distracted by the GOP's attempts at demonization and misdirection.

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President Joe Biden has achieved one rather monumental task since he took office, at least to me: in his first 99 days as president, Biden has successfully made the presidency boring again. This sounds like a joke, but it isn't. The previous president was the one to make the presidency itself a joke, in fact -- Biden is just returning us all to the normal state of things. And the public -- even a lot of Republicans -- are relieved at this development. Joe Biden is not an egomaniac nor is he a megalomaniac. The difference is striking. Biden does not crave seeing his face on the news each night, so he has no need to deliberately cause a mini-crisis just to get everyone to pay attention to him during that day's news cycle. Biden also does not communicate like a petulant pre-teen on social media. He's downright boring, and that's an enormous relief to us all.

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Democratic strategist James Carville is getting a little attention right now as a result of an interview just published in Vox. As is his wont, he uses some rather indelicate language to identify a number of problems plaguing Democratic efforts at messaging and getting elected. But I have to say, I largely agree with what Carville says. He's essentially right on his three main points. And other Democrats should take heed at what he's saying instead of complaining about it or denouncing it.

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This Sunday, I watched some political malpractice take place. The ABC morning political chatfest had their usual duelling roundtable, although for some reason Rahm Emanuel was missing from the lineup. This allowed Chris Christie to demonize the idea that President Joe Biden will be proposing (officially, on Wednesday) to tax upper-income capital gains at the same rate as wage income. The two liberals on the panel just weren't a match for him, and got drawn into the weeds of the debate rather than framing it correctly for the American public. Because not once did they use the phrase: "millionaires' tax."

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President Joe Biden just had a pretty good week. And next week's going to be even better for him. Especially considering how far we've come since this time exactly one year ago.

In the past week alone, Biden and his administration chalked up the following achievements or milestones:

Biden has already reached his (doubled!) goal of 200 million vaccine shots into people's arms in his first 100 days in office -- a week early.

Over 41 percent of the American population has been vaccinated at least once, including over 51 percent of all those currently eligible (age 16 and up).

The average number of new infections has actually started to come down once again, and is once again lower than the peak of the second wave. It is still too high, but at least it is heading in the right direction once again. The average deaths per day seems to have plateaued at just below 750 -- again, too high, but a lot better than the peak of almost 3,500 deaths per day.

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