[ Posted Friday, June 17th, 2016 – 18:16 UTC ]
Before we begin, we should mention that this week's talking points section consists of a few extended excerpts from President Obama's recent speech on fighting the Islamic State. What he had to say was important, and it counters several insidious talking points that have been used against him in the past, so we felt it was worth taking over this week's talking points. Just to warn everyone up front.
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[ Posted Monday, May 30th, 2016 – 15:44 UTC ]
Being in the midst of history sometimes mean events are not seen in the "big picture" view that historians often later take, when looking back at the period. Case in point: what will America's ongoing war eventually be known as? To date, we've been at war since October 2001, or a mind-boggling period of 15 years. This war was initially called "The Global War On Terror" by the Bush administration, which lumped in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq with all the skirmishes in various other North African and Middle East countries. The Obama administration has dropped the term, but they've never really replaced it with anything else. But what I wonder this Memorial Day is what it will be called in the future. Right now, it'd be the "Fifteen Years' War" -- but few expect all conflicts will end by the time the next president is sworn in, so eventually that number will likely be higher.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 24th, 2016 – 17:19 UTC ]
I should mention right up front that I'm essentially punting on today's article. I had planned on doing this anyway, but then an appointment I had got cancelled at the last minute, so I at least now have the time to jot down a few things -- a news update and then some great news for the site. The first is just me patting myself on the back (again, I'm admitting this up front, in case there are cat videos or something else on the web which would be a better use of your time than reading this), but the second is a bit of personal news that I think regular readers will be almost as excited about as I am. But before we get to dessert, we've got to eat our vegetables.
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[ Posted Tuesday, April 12th, 2016 – 17:20 UTC ]
I thought the subject of how the war against the Islamic State is going in Iraq was worth an update today, because the Iraqi forces are on the brink of reclaiming a pretty impressive swath of the map. I should mention up front that for the purposes of this article, I'm going to largely ignore how the war is progressing in Syria, for no other reason than to keep things focused.
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[ Posted Friday, April 8th, 2016 – 17:26 UTC ]
There was some good news and some bad news on marijuana this week, which got us thinking about how the subject of federal marijuana policy relates to the presidential nomination race. So while we'll take care of the news (good and bad) in the awards section, we're going to also devote the talking points section to a list of questions we would love to hear answered by all the candidates. Obviously, the answers from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are the most important, since they'd be the only ones who might actually try to improve the current situation, but it really shouldn't excuse the Republicans from having to answer them as well. Rather than just a quick "Do you support medical marijuana?" question, we really think the issue needs to be addressed in a little more depth.
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[ Posted Friday, January 29th, 2016 – 17:59 UTC ]
That headline is a joke only bridge players will get, so our apologies to everyone else. It refers, of course, to last night's Republican presidential debate, which Donald Trump refused to participate in. But even with no Trump on the stage last night, he seems to have (once again) proved that political gravity simply doesn't apply to him. In fact, we have serious doubts that we'll see Trump at any future debates -- after all, if he can blow them off with impunity, why would he subject himself to them in the first place?
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[ Posted Friday, January 15th, 2016 – 17:47 UTC ]
In every 1950s "gang rumble" genre film, there comes a point where the fighting gets more serious. This is, literally, where the knives come out. I begin with this image because, metaphorically, that's exactly where we are in the 2016 presidential campaign. The fight's getting a lot more serious, and there is bound to be some blood on the floor afterwards.
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[ Posted Friday, January 8th, 2016 – 19:15 UTC ]
That sub-headline may take the prize for the most bizarre we've ever offered up, although it'd have to beat the current champion -- which is, of course: "The Corpse-Like Stench Of Washington's Giant Misshapen Penis." That's pretty tough to beat, if truth be told.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 7th, 2016 – 18:19 UTC ]
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.
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[ Posted Tuesday, December 29th, 2015 – 17:55 UTC ]
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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