[ Posted Friday, May 30th, 2014 – 17:02 UTC ]
It has been a momentous week, with the resignation (read: "firing") of a cabinet secretary, a presidential speech on America's foreign and military policy, and the announcement of a timetable to bring home the remaining troops in Afghanistan. Plus all the usual Washington squabbling. But one story risks being buried among all this other newsworthy stuff, and that is the vote which happened late last night in the House of Representatives. Because, with a healthy bipartisan majority, they just voted to end the war on medical marijuana forever. If the Senate follows their lead, this could be one of the biggest turning points in ending the federal War On Weed altogether. In other words, it is a momentous event.
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[ Posted Friday, May 23rd, 2014 – 17:45 UTC ]
Before we begin, our sincere condolences to the George W. Bush family for the loss of former White House pet Miss Beazley, who died this week. As always, we are strictly non-partisan in our love for "First Dogs" and "First Cats," because we feel the president's (any president's) humanity can only be improved by having a pet to play with on occasion (the photo of Bush with Miss Beazley which accompanies that article shows exactly what we're talking about). As Harry Truman famously put it: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." Our thoughts are with the Bush family in their time of loss.
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[ Posted Friday, May 2nd, 2014 – 16:55 UTC ]
There was a lot of political news this week, most of it pretty good for Democrats. In the Senate, Democrats forced Republicans to filibuster a minimum wage bill (more on that in a bit), and then the week ended with some very good news in the unemployment numbers.
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[ Posted Wednesday, April 30th, 2014 – 16:53 UTC ]
The head of the National Basketball Association is being praised for swiftly acting to ban an NBA team owner for life, after his private conversations were leaked in which he displayed unquestionable racism. That is indeed laudable, but it ignores the institutional racism which is still allowed within the National Football League and Major League Baseball. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just pointed this out (with regards to the NFL), on the floor of the Senate. But even Reid didn't go far enough. Consider the following outlandish scenario, if you will: the Clippers are forced to be sold to another owner. This new owner decides that the team name has been tainted beyond all repair, and decides to rename the team. He chooses the name "Blackskins," and comes up with a logo that closely resembles the Little Black Sambo caricature. What would the public say? Think everyone would agree that this was a good idea?
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[ Posted Friday, March 28th, 2014 – 17:46 UTC ]
The Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases where corporations are requiring certain women to wear a scarlet "A" on their uniforms... um, no wait... that can't be right... let me check my notes....
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[ Posted Friday, March 21st, 2014 – 17:55 UTC ]
But it's really nothing new to point out the ludicrous nature of what is billed as "breaking news." In fact, I can end precisely where I began this rant. Back in its infancy in the 1970s, "Weekend Update" had a running joke parodying such "breaking news" idiocy. Chevy Chase would be handed a piece of paper (which just goes to show you how long ago this was) at his news desk, and he would glance at it and then report: "This just in... Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!"
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[ Posted Wednesday, March 5th, 2014 – 17:20 UTC ]
For the second month in a row, President Obama had an all-around positive month in the public polls. His job approval average was up, his job disapproval was down, and he has almost completely recovered from the dip his numbers took after the Obamacare website rollout fiasco. This is clear when you take a look at the chart for February:
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[ Posted Friday, February 28th, 2014 – 18:40 UTC ]
Instead, we're mostly going to focus on what appears to be an astonishing amount of Republican self-inflicted political wounds from the past week. It's as if someone somewhere gave Republicans an order: "Stick your foot way out, now... ready... aim... fire!" Even when Republicans weren't shooting at their own feet this week, it appears they were conducting a circular firing squad instead. The 2014 campaign, in other words, is off to a raucous start... and it's only February.
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[ Posted Friday, February 21st, 2014 – 18:29 UTC ]
We've got a lot to get to in our weekly roundup of politics this week, it seems.
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 5th, 2014 – 17:32 UTC ]
Other than the Electoral College shift, another rather strange dynamic seems to be shaping up between the two dominant American political parties. Democrats and Republicans are reversing their traditional scenarios when it comes to nominating presidential candidates. This tradition even comes with its own bumpersticker slogan to define it: "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line." Democrats, in other words, have a large field to pick from and select the one that everybody likes best, in the end, and then enthusiastically gets behind them for the general election. Republicans, however, pretty much know who is "next in line" for the nomination, and while other candidates may put up a limited fight, everyone knows who the nominee is going to be long before the first primary happens -- after which, Republicans all fall into line behind him, like him or not. But this time around the primary field is going to be wild and wooly over on the Republican side, with nobody being able to convincingly claim to be "next in line" (Rick Santorum or Paul Ryan could come closest to making such a claim, but this is going to be challenged by many others). But over on the Democratic side, there is only one woman standing, at least at this point, and her name is Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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