[ Posted Monday, July 2nd, 2018 – 16:31 UTC ]
In the midst of the opening salvos in Trump's worldwide trade war, Axios just uncovered a very interesting story. Apparently, President Trump is now considering backing out of the World Trade Organization, one way or another. He feels constrained by its restrictions, he (of course) feels it is unfair to America, and he would much prefer realigning all of America's trade into bilateral agreements that he will personally negotiate with each country on the planet. But what was most amusing was one of the ways the White House is considering achieving this. They've drafted a piece of legislation that would give Trump full control over tariffs (removing Congress completely from the equation) and also allow Trump to essentially ignore the W.T.O. and all their pesky rules. Pretty much par for the "I alone can fix this country" course, really. But whichever Trump policy flunky put this legislation together needs a quick refresher course on creative acronyms, because the proposed bill is currently named the "United States Fair and Reciprocal Trade Act." Yep, that's right, the "U.S. FART Act" (or, if you want to be pedantic, the "U.S. FaRT Act"). Either way, it's a ripe and fetid stinker of a proposal.
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[ Posted Friday, June 29th, 2018 – 17:04 UTC ]
Liberals had a very bad week at the Supreme Court last week. There's no denying it. Almost all of the final decisions of the year went against them, and that was before the news of Justice Anthony Kennedy's impending retirement hit Washington like a bombshell. Fears that President Donald Trump will pick an ultra-conservative to replace him mean that bedrock decisions such as Roe v. Wade are now hanging in the balance. Democrats are vowing to fight hard against the next justice's confirmation, but this is quite likely a fight they are going to lose.
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[ Posted Friday, June 15th, 2018 – 18:20 UTC ]
Fox News unwittingly (how else?) spoke a deep truth this week. Or perhaps a deep fantasy -- it's tough to tell, coming from Fox anchors. As President Trump descended the stairs from Air Force One in Singapore, Fox And Friends gushed: "This is history. Regardless of what happens in that meeting between the two dictators, what we are seeing right now -- this is history." Um... how many dictators was that, again? The host later tried to walk back her unintentional gaffe, but is it really all that far off the mark?
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[ Posted Monday, June 11th, 2018 – 16:29 UTC ]
Donald Trump has apparently decided to take the advice of that impressive fount of political wisdom, South Park. It's hard to come to any other conclusion, really, when you recall that one of the songs from their first big movie (a song nominated for an Academy Award, no less) was titled: "Blame Canada." President Trump was obviously inspired by the lyrics: "With all their beady little eyes / And flapping heads so full of lies," when he began his tweetstorm against Justin Trudeau after Trump left the G-7 meeting early.
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[ Posted Thursday, May 17th, 2018 – 17:20 UTC ]
Mainstream media political pundits are often accused of focusing too much on "the horserace" aspect of elections, to the detriment of the actual issues being fought over in the race. It's so much easier to just watch the polls go up and down (and bang out an article about it) than it is to do a deep dive into what candidates are actually running on. At the most, the pundits will critique candidate television ads, always with an eye on how they are affecting the polls.
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[ Posted Friday, May 11th, 2018 – 18:03 UTC ]
Before we get to all the Trumpy news of the week, we had to headline what is going on in Paul Ryan's House, since it hasn't been getting enough attention yet. Because the House Republicans are revolting!
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[ Posted Monday, May 7th, 2018 – 16:23 UTC ]
President Donald Trump announced today that he'll be revealing tomorrow afternoon whether he will be pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal or not. Predictions about what he's going to do have been ramping up, but nobody really knows what Trump will actually announce. But if he does decide to pull out of the deal, it could have major political implications in the midterm elections in one important respect: the price of a gallon of gasoline in America.
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[ Posted Friday, May 4th, 2018 – 17:18 UTC ]
Before we get to the fresh lies emanating from the Oval Office this week, we have to begin with a look back. Because not only has President Donald Trump now hit the milestone of lying over 3,000 times while in office, but apparently it's getting too much for even Fox News personalities to take.
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[ Posted Monday, April 30th, 2018 – 16:55 UTC ]
Senator Marco Rubio just let the cat out of the bag. In traditional "Kinsley gaffe" fashion (defined as a politician accidentally telling the truth), Rubio admitted what Democrats have known all along -- that the Republican tax cuts were primarily designed to help Wall Street, not Main Street. Here is the relevant quote, from a recent interview Rubio gave to The Economist: "There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they're going to take the money they're saving and reinvest it in American workers. In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there's no evidence whatsoever that the money's been massively poured back into the American worker." That's a pretty sweeping indictment not only of the sole item on the Republican agenda that the GOP Congress has managed to pass, but also on the sole plank in the Republican platform for the 2018 midterm elections (which will take place almost exactly six months from now).
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[ Posted Friday, April 27th, 2018 – 17:52 UTC ]
Last week, we were admonished for celebrating 4/20 in a manner that was too subtle by half. We subtitled last Friday's article: "Dazed And Confused," and began with: "We don't know why that headline sounded like such a good idea on today, of all days. [Ahem.]" But the rest of the article didn't really have much to say about the issue of marijuana. So today we are going to correct that lack, as you can tell by this week's subtitle.
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