[ Posted Friday, August 22nd, 2014 – 17:06 UTC ]
A lot happened in the world of politics this week. People are still dumping buckets of ice water over their heads, for instance. There are actually multiple scandals happening to various governors right now, but since none of them involve sex, the media is mostly ignoring them (with the exception of Rick Perry, perhaps, since the media has been swooning over him ever since he put on a pair of glasses). But we're going to ignore most of it all this week, to focus instead on the aftermath and ramifications of what has been happening in Ferguson, Missouri for the past few weeks.
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[ Posted Monday, August 11th, 2014 – 17:28 UTC ]
American aircraft are once again waging war over the skies of Iraq. President Obama, as many have pointed out, is now the fourth United States president in a row to order some form of military offensive in Iraq. As always, plenty of critics immediately popped up to loudly explain what the president was doing wrong. The usual characters on the right demanded a much more intensive military action, the ones on the left warned darkly about slippery slopes and possible blowback, and the American people seemed to heave a sigh of resignation, in a "here we go again" moment.
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[ Posted Tuesday, July 1st, 2014 – 16:06 UTC ]
President Barack Obama's poll numbers took a serious downturn in June, which essentially wiped out the progress he's made in the public's opinion since the beginning of the year. There's no real way to sugarcoat it: Obama had a bad month last month. About the only positive thing that can be said is that it wasn't his worst month ever -- but that's not really saying much, is it?
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[ Posted Monday, June 23rd, 2014 – 16:07 UTC ]
In all the pontificating on what now should be done (and what should have been done previously) in Iraq, one subject oddly never seems to be on the table. I find this a bit strange, because it really should be a subject worthy of debate -- if only to add to the finger-pointing about what could have been done to avoid the current situation. From hawks to isolationists, though, nobody seems to ever bring up the possibility of Iraqis performing their own airstrikes. To put this another way: where is the Iraqi Air Force?
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[ Posted Friday, June 20th, 2014 – 17:07 UTC ]
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.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 18th, 2014 – 17:56 UTC ]
Vice President Joe Biden was right. Let's begin with that.
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[ Posted Friday, December 27th, 2013 – 17:50 UTC ]
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
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[ Posted Monday, October 28th, 2013 – 15:58 UTC ]
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).
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 1st, 2013 – 16:10 UTC ]
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.
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[ Posted Friday, September 27th, 2013 – 18:10 UTC ]
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.
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