Category Archives: 2016 Presidential Election

Does Putin Back Hillary?

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Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin and Demo­c­rat stan­dard-bear­er Hillary Clin­ton in hap­pi­er times. [Cred­it: thepoliticalcarnival.net]

Per­haps because I’m in Italy, I’ve not been infect­ed by the con­ta­gion that has spread more rapid­ly than the Zika virus: the febrile notion that Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin is sub­vert­ing our elec­toral process in an effort to elect Don­ald J. Trump as president.

Nev­er has such con­spir­a­to­r­i­al spec­u­la­tion mutat­ed so quick­ly into received wis­dom. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Trump and Friends

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Donald Trump's recent foreign policy speech reflects our love/hate relationship with our allies. Credit: businessinsider.com

Don­ald Trump’s recent for­eign pol­i­cy speech reflects our love/hate rela­tion­ship with our allies. Cred­it: businessinsider.com

“Who the f*** does he think he is?Who’s the f***ing super­pow­er here?”  — Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton after meet­ing with Israeli PM Netanyahu in 1996

Don­ald Trump, the GOP’s pre­sump­tive stan­dard-bear­er, shares for­mer Pres­i­dent Clinton’s frus­tra­tion with America’s allies.  And like Clin­ton, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and oth­ers who have occu­pied the Oval Office, Trump isn’t sure what to do about it. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Antonin Scalia, R.I.P.

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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday, practiced a constitutional conservatism that is out-of-step with today's Right. [Credit: lifenews.com]

Supreme Court Jus­tice Antonin Scalia, who died on Sat­ur­day, prac­ticed a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ser­vatism that is out-of-step with today’s Right. [Cred­it: lifenews.com]

The arc of con­ser­vatism’s decline was traced in the course of a few hours last Sat­ur­day. That after­noon we learned of the pass­ing of a gen­uine con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tive, Antonin Scalia. Hours lat­er, we endured anoth­er GOP debate dur­ing which pro­fessed con­ser­v­a­tives trad­ed barbs and insults, now con­sid­ered a suit­able sub­sti­tute for char­ac­ter and sub­stance by a large swath of Repub­li­can vot­ers. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

SOTU: With Malice Toward Some

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President Obama used his last State of the Union address to decry divisiveness he helped instigate. [Credit: CNN]

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma used his last State of the Union address to decry divi­sive­ness he helped insti­gate. [Cred­it: CNN]

Com­plet­ing his sev­enth year as the world’s most pow­er­ful politi­cian, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma used his final State of the Union address to tell us what is wrong with pol­i­tics: his polit­i­cal oppo­nents. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Cruz Missiles

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Ted Cruz, like every other presidential hopeful, vows to destroy the Islamic State. Should we believe him? [Credit: ABC News]

Ted Cruz, like every oth­er pres­i­den­tial hope­ful, vows to destroy the Islam­ic State. Should we believe him? [Cred­it: ABC News]

Ted Cruz says we don’t have a dog in the Syr­i­an civ­il war.  He nev­er­the­less wants to car­pet bomb the civ­il war’s lead­ing bel­liger­ent, the Islam­ic State (IS).  Which just might kill some dogs. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

There Is No Plan To Destroy The Islamic State

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Hillary Clinton presented her plan for defeating the Islamic State recently. It won't work. Nor will those advanced by her Republican opponents. [Credit: NY Daily News]

Hillary Clin­ton pre­sent­ed her plan for defeat­ing the Islam­ic State recent­ly. It won’t work. Nor will those advanced by her Repub­li­can oppo­nents. [Cred­it: NY Dai­ly News]

When pressed by a nor­mal­ly docile gag­gle of White House reporters recent­ly over whether he would con­sid­er chang­ing his failed Syr­ia strat­e­gy, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma revert­ed to form: he accused Repub­li­cans of reli­gious big­otry and cru­el­ty to children.

His polit­i­cal oppo­nents, he said, believe that “only Chris­tians, proven Chris­tians, should be admit­ted” as refugees and that we “shouldn’t admit 3‑year old-orphans.”

The President’s efforts to divert atten­tion from his for­eign pol­i­cy deba­cles (which helped make orphans and refugees of three-year-olds) have so far fall­en flat.  The vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans has lost con­fi­dence in his cam­paign against the Islam­ic State.  A Wash­ing­ton Post poll found that 57 per­cent dis­ap­prove of the way he’s deal­ing with the ter­ror­ist group – includ­ing 46 per­cent who strong­ly dis­ap­prove – against only 35 per­cent who sup­port him.

That pub­lic sen­ti­ment, of lit­tle inter­est to the Pres­i­dent, is a lead­ing con­cern for those vying to suc­ceed him.  Even Bernie Sanders claims to have a plan to destroy the Islam­ic State. Though they dif­fer in cer­tain respects, most of these plans call for drop­ping more bombs against more tar­gets from planes fly­ing the flags of more coun­tries (with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Rus­sia), pro­vid­ing more arms to fac­tions we don’t real­ly know and can’t real­ly trust, and deploy­ing more mil­i­tary “advis­ers” (not to be con­fused with “boots on the ground”) to the region.

All of them sug­gest that Islam­ic State can be van­quished with rel­a­tive ease and at lit­tle cost.  All of them are blow­ing smoke. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

GOP Debate: Bring Back The CNBC Moderators

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GOP Presidential contenders struggled with substantive questions during last week's debate. [Credit: ibtimes.com

GOP Pres­i­den­tial con­tenders fum­bled sub­stan­tive ques­tions dur­ing last week’s debate. [Cred­it: ibtimes.com]

Don­ald Trump wants a piece of the Key­stone Pipeline.

The issue didn’t come up dur­ing last week’s GOP debate, so Trump didn’t have the chance to elab­o­rate on his dec­la­ra­tion that he would have approved the project only if the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny forked over 25 per­cent of its profits.

“I want a piece of the deal,” Trump told Bret Baier of Fox News.  “When I say I want a piece, I’m now rep­re­sent­ing our coun­try the way I would rep­re­sent myself.” Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Trump Is (Sort Of) Right About Yellen

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Donald Trump this week said that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Janet Yellen won't raise rates because President Obama told her not to. Why he's (sort of) right. [Credit: CNBC]

Don­ald Trump this week said that Fed­er­al Reserve Board Chair­man Janet Yellen won’t raise rates because Pres­i­dent Oba­ma told her not to. Why he’s (sort of) right. [Cred­it: CNBC]

The media just can’t keep up with The Donald.

Cor­po­rate news-gath­er­ing out­lets do their best to repeat and ampli­fy his every off­beat utter­ance.  His accu­sa­tion that Mar­co Rubio is a “dis­as­ter with his cred­it cards” has rip­pled through the press and forced Rubio to respond.  Dit­to for Trump’s mock­ery of Jeb’s ener­gy, Carson’s reli­gion, Carly’s face, Kasich’s poll num­bers, Hillary’s mar­i­tal rela­tions  (“If Hillary Clin­ton can’t sat­is­fy her hus­band what makes her think she can sat­is­fy Amer­i­ca?”), Bernie’s men­tal health and the men­stru­al cycles of debate moderators.

But as they were buzzing about his sched­uled appear­ance on Sat­ur­day Night Live, the media large­ly over­looked what was per­haps Trump’s most hereti­cal accu­sa­tion of all. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

High on Trump

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Donald Trump is leading the GOP pack heading into tonight's debate. Why that's good news for Democrats. [Credit: CBS Pittsburgh]

Don­ald Trump is lead­ing the GOP pack head­ing into tonight’s debate. Why that’s good news for Democ­rats. [Cred­it: CBS Pittsburgh]

The mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­sary on Down­ing Street is in a cozy Den­ver neigh­bor­hood, tucked amid cof­fee shops, bou­tiques and oth­er arti­facts of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion.  Enter­ing the store on a bright Sun­day morn­ing, I’m greet­ed by a glassy-eyed young man slumped in a chair with a large bowl of bud on his lap.  His job, in addi­tion to rolling ju-jus, is to check IDs, turn away minors and iden­ti­fy out-of-staters, whose pur­chas­es are lim­it­ed to one-quar­ter ounce per trans­ac­tion. Col­oradans can legal­ly buy four times that amount, the state’s law­mak­ers evi­dent­ly believ­ing that natives can han­dle their weed bet­ter than non-residents.

His col­leagues behind the counter are in a sim­i­lar­ly ami­ca­ble stu­por, but knowl­edge­able about their prod­uct and full of advice to pre­vent patrons from pulling a Mau­reen Dowd, the New York Times colum­nist who descend­ed into a para­noid delu­sion­al state after lock­ing her­self in a hotel room and wolf­ing down a THC-laced Sky Bar. The del­i­ca­cies at this shop are said to con­tain safe amounts of the active ingre­di­ent, enough to pro­duce a man­age­able eupho­ria that won’t end in an emer­gency room vis­it or inspire anoth­er loopy New York Times col­umn.

There is some­thing vague­ly sur­re­al about get­ting med­ical advice, how­ev­er sound, from peo­ple in a drug-induced haze at ten o’clock in the morn­ing.  The “wake and bake” crew at the mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­sary fits the car­i­ca­tures that oppo­nents of legal­iza­tion have sketched, mak­ing them a bad adver­tise­ment for their polit­i­cal cause.

Which brings me to Don­ald Trump. Con­tin­ue read­ing →