[ Posted Thursday, December 8th, 2016 – 18:27 UTC ]
Donald Trump's impending presidency is cause for a lot of concern among many, including both his political opponents and members of his own party. This can all be boiled down to the basic question of what, exactly, Trump is going to do as president. At this point, it's almost impossible to know whether he'll try to follow through on even the strongest of his campaign promises, or whether he'll decide to chart a completely different course once in office. That's what is worrying so many -- people both against Trump and for Trump alike.
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[ Posted Friday, November 4th, 2016 – 17:06 UTC ]
However, regular readers of this column are going to have to wait yet another week for a standard Friday Talking Points offering. This week we are throwing out our format entirely, and instead providing an explanation of who we're voting for, followed by a call for reform in an effort to inject a possible silver lining to what promises to be a very contentious Election Day (no matter who wins). Yes, there will be optimism at the end of this column, specifically provided for people who are tired of the apocalyptic tone of the final pre-election week. So there's that to look forward to.
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[ Posted Wednesday, October 19th, 2016 – 22:10 UTC ]
Tonight was (finally!) the last presidential debate of the 2016 election season. I thought it was a better debate (if less entertaining) than the first two, personally. A lot of actual policy positions were discussed, the candidates interacted with each other without so much of the "everyone's screaming at once" interludes, and the moderator kept the subjects moving along at a good clip. So my overall impression of the final debate was that it was a lot more like a normal presidential debate than the previous two.
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[ Posted Monday, September 26th, 2016 – 22:27 UTC ]
Well, the first presidential debate is a done deal, and as always I like to quickly type out my own personal reactions before reading everyone else's, to give you an opinion uninfluenced by the herd mentality of the rest of the media.
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[ Posted Friday, September 9th, 2016 – 17:29 UTC ]
Before we begin, we promise we'll get to that rather-provocative subtitle later, as we turn this week's talking points section over to an attempt at providing campaign advice for Team Clinton. We've been long wondering why Hillary hasn't made some sort of effort to put these two large issues behind her on the campaign trail, and our frustration has led us to offering up what she should say in order to achieve this goal.
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[ Posted Thursday, September 8th, 2016 – 16:21 UTC ]
One of the risks I regularly take as a blogger is to write and publish my own reactions to major political events (like debates) before I even look at what anyone else is saying. This assures the reader that my opinions and perceptions will be untainted by groupthink, and solely my own. I cannot follow the pack, as it were, if I have no idea where they're headed. But, as with any risk, occasionally it puts me in a position at odds with the political universe.
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 7th, 2016 – 22:51 UTC ]
Tonight we saw the NBC pre-debate. The non-debate debate. Officially a "candidate forum," both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump appeared on the same stage -- but not at the same time. The stage was an impressive one, or at least the exterior shots were, since it was held on an aircraft carrier in New York City. This was to highlight the subject of the event: foreign policy and the military.
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[ Posted Friday, August 5th, 2016 – 15:28 UTC ]
We've spent the past two weeks travelling to and from the Democratic National Convention, but due to the three-week period we've got to cover, we're not even going to attempt to adequately revisit everything that's happened in the political world since our last column.
In fact, we're not even going to write our talking points this week, and we're only briefly going to touch on what's going on and quickly hand out the awards, before we get to a rather extraordinary (and extensive) essay at the end, by guest author Eric Varela.
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[ Posted Thursday, July 21st, 2016 – 23:05 UTC ]
Donald Trump finally stopped talking, so I can now start writing. His speech went on for almost an hour and a half, which was a bit much for me -- especially after an exhausting week of listening to Republicans talk. But that's the end of the evening, so let's go back to the beginning and see how we got here.
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[ Posted Thursday, July 21st, 2016 – 00:18 UTC ]
Heading into tonight's speechifying, I was convinced that Ted Cruz would emerge afterwards as the heir apparent to the Republican nomination in 2020, should Donald Trump fail to win in November. Now, I'm not so sure.
But before we get to the big story of the night, let's start at the beginning. Today, the realization finally dawned in the Trump camp that they had to do something to stop the bleeding over the plagiarism storyline. A staffer was summarily dragged out who offered to fall on her own sword, and magnanimous Donald pardoned her, saying "everyone makes mistakes." So they likely successfully prevented the story from continuing for another day. But it would have been overshadowed anyway (obviously) by the end of the night.
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