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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.
Vice President Joe Biden was right. Let's begin with that.
This week was notable in many respects in the political world, but one subject overwhelmed almost everything else. We're going to address the prisoner swap and Bowe Bergdahl in an unusual way this week, in lieu of our regular talking points at the end of the column. But first, we're going to take a very quick look at what else happened this week, and then hand out the weekly awards.
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
Last Sunday, Senator Bob Menendez suggested a fairly good idea for further economic sanctions on Iran. Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has come up with an answer which could possibly satisfy both sides -- those who support the diplomatic track and those who are pushing for harsher sanctions for Iran. The idea is to let the Senate go ahead and pass further sanctions, but to trigger them to the timeline of the ongoing negotiations, so that new sanctions wouldn't kick in until after the six month period of talks. If a permanent deal is struck before that time, then new sanctions (obviously) wouldn't take effect, but if no deal is reached by the deadline, then the sanctions begin automatically.
Even though it took a long time to get to this point, it was an effort worth making. Which is why the nations of the world should now start a new conversation in some internationally-neutral city, with the expressed purpose of defining what is and what is not allowable for the future of warfare (and spying). Three major topics of such an agreement should be: passive cyberwar (spying on communications), active cyberwar (virus and other attacks), and robot warfare (drones and other automated weaponry).
Obviously, there are other things happening today in the world of politics, but instead of commenting upon them, we're going to stick to the schedule and instead offer up an abbreviated Obama Poll Watch column. It'll be somewhat shorter this month, due to the results having been accurately predicted in last month's column, and due to the fact that the situation on the ground in Washington is changing fast -- not weekly or daily, but hourly. Until we see how this week plays out, it's really anyone's guess how it'll affect the polling.
No, the big point missed in the midst of Senator Ted Cruz's talkfest was the moral of the story he read. By now, most people have heard that Cruz read, in its entirety, the classic Dr. Seuss children's book Green Eggs And Ham -- tucking his own kids into bed, long-distance, via C-SPAN. Cruz then doubled down on his point-missing by comparing Obamacare to the story's green eggs and ham. Cruz really has no excuse for this monumentally idiotic mistake, since (as mentioned) he read the whole story from the Senate floor.
Due to the fact that Congress is still on vacation and also due to the fact that it has largely been a one-subject week in the political world, we are going to pre-empt our regular talking points for a discussion of where the country seems to be on the question of attacking Syria. But first, let's wrap up the week and hand out our awards, as usual.
[T]he military coup that overthrew Mosadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government. It was not an aggressively simplistic solution, clandestinely arrived at, but was instead an official admission [...redacted...] that normal, rational methods of international communication and commerce had failed.