[ Posted Wednesday, April 24th, 2019 – 16:51 UTC ]
Monday night, Bernie Sanders appeared on a CNN town hall, and was asked a rather unusual question. An audience member asked whether Bernie supported enfranchising prisoners such as the Boston Marathon bomber or people convicted of sexual assault. Bernie's answer was surprising to many, because he spoke not only in favor of incarcerated prisoners voting, but cut to the heart of the matter: to Bernie, it's a question of basic rights.
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[ Posted Tuesday, April 23rd, 2019 – 17:04 UTC ]
The use of the word "begins" in that headline might be a bit puzzling, since President Donald Trump has pushed back on any number of things during the course of his presidency, most often on Twitter. But today we're not talking about exchanging schoolyard insults with his political opponents, but actual legal pushback from the executive department. Which is somewhat new, and can be expected to grow over the coming months.
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[ Posted Monday, April 22nd, 2019 – 17:30 UTC ]
Another day goes by, another Democrat jumps in the presidential race. You'll forgive me if that sounds somewhat cynical (or even a bit loopy), but that's what the first few months of 2019 have seemed like, at times. But hopefully we're getting to the end of this opening phase in the 2020 presidential race, and hopefully within the next few weeks or so we'll have a full Democratic field and nobody else will jump into the race. That's our fervent hope, at any rate. It's hard enough keeping up with the names of everyone running already!
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[ Posted Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 17:41 UTC ]
Yesterday, Robert Mueller's investigative report on Donald Trump was made (mostly) public. Today, Trump and his cheerleaders are insisting that he has been totally vindicated and exonerated, while some Democratic candidates for president are demanding that impeachment proceedings be launched in the House of Representatives. That's a pretty wide gulf in perception, but at this point it was to be expected.
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[ Posted Thursday, April 18th, 2019 – 16:56 UTC ]
The Mueller Report is finally out. Portions of it have been redacted, and congressional Democrats will doubtlessly continue their push to get an unredacted version to read, but even if that happens the public may never get to see the full text. So for now, we've only got what was released today to examine. And the emerging consensus seems to be that there was no one glaring thing to point to which will lead to Donald Trump's downfall. As usual, there is plenty of fishy and questionable and possibly illegal conduct by both Trump and his minions, but none of it is likely to spur immediate impeachment hearings.
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[ Posted Tuesday, April 16th, 2019 – 17:05 UTC ]
Bernie Sanders bearded the Fox in his den last night. He outFoxed them, plain and simple. Rather than shunning Fox News, Bernie accepted an invitation from them to hold a town hall meeting on air. And he not only held his own, at some points he even appeared to have the Fox audience solidly behind him. This defies a whole lot of media storylines, and punditary heads are still exploding in Washington as the impact of Bernie's town hall reverberates.
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[ Posted Monday, April 15th, 2019 – 18:11 UTC ]
Today is not just the day when millions of Americans have to file their income taxes, if is also the day when the millions of Democratic presidential candidates also have to file their first quarter fundraising numbers. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but it certainly seems like millions at times, doesn't it?
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[ Posted Friday, April 12th, 2019 – 17:20 UTC ]
President Donald Trump embarrassed himself today by claiming [TOTAL LIE], and then following up on Twitter with [INSANE CONSPIRACY THEORY]. Both were immediately disproven by [WIDELY AVAILABLE AND INDISPUTABLE FACTS]. When asked for comment, the White House merely stated that "the president's words speak for themselves." Presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway was quoted blaming [ANYONE BUT TRUMP] for the whole fracas.
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[ Posted Thursday, April 11th, 2019 – 17:25 UTC ]
When pizza magnate Herman Cain ran for president, he came up with a snappy slogan for his inane tax plan: "Nine, nine, nine." Donald Trump apparently thought the man was a financial genius, because he recently nominated Cain for a seat on the board of the Federal Reserve. But today, the Senate sent both Cain and Trump a very clear (Germanic) message: "Nein, nein, nein."
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[ Posted Wednesday, April 10th, 2019 – 16:50 UTC ]
Bernie Sanders made some news today as he unveiled his most recent version of a "Medicare For All" bill in the Senate. Notably, four of his competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination in the Senate signed on to his bill (this is notable because normally this wouldn't happen -- normally each candidate would put out their own version and argue that theirs was superior to all the other candidates' efforts). Sanders has long been a champion of single-payer health care, of course, and his is the strongest voice on the issue mostly because he almost singlehandedly pushed it to the fore in the Democratic Party. Four years ago, it was considered (sneeringly, by most "serious" Democrats) to be "too radical" an idea to ever happen. Now, it is so mainstream within the Democratic Party that each presidential candidate is measured by whether they support Medicare For All, or merely some weaker or more incremental version. That is a sea-change, and one that Bernie should rightfully be proud of.
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