It’s already clear that the very strange political year of 2016 is bleeding over into the New Year. How could it be otherwise? President-elect Donald Trump, loved and hated by about equal numbers of Americans, continues to ignore or break with convention in a wide variety of areas. Just as the normal rules didn’t apply to him in the campaign, they may not apply to him in office either.
Have you heard of "touch DNA?"
What a guy!
And just in case anybody has failed to grasp how extraordinarily lucky we have been these past eight delightful years, Mr. Obama also announced that he has begun “penning a farewell address to the American people.”
In retaliation for the hacking of John Podesta and the DNC, Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and ordered closure of their country houses on Long Island and Maryland's Eastern shore.
Americans see themselves as people on the move. When the going gets tough or when opportunity beckons, we get up and go. We move around a lot.
Donald Trump has a new best friend.
I first read Thomas Sowell in college -- no thanks to my college.
America's socialists -- I mean, progressives, are enraged that President-elect Trump chose Betsy DeVos to be his secretary of education.
Just imagine it is one of the holiest days of the Muslim calendar and The New York Times decides to “celebrate” the occasion by asking incredulous questions aimed at obliterating the very foundation of the entire religion of Islam.
Any honest man, looking back on a very long life, must admit -- even if only to himself -- being a relic of a bygone era. Having lived long enough to have seen both "the greatest generation" that fought World War II and the gratingest generation that we see all around us today, makes being a relic of the past more of a boast than an admission.
It's been a tough year for political elites, here and around the world, what with the passage of Brexit in June in Britain, the repudiation of Colombia's Nobel Peace Prize recipient in the October FARC referendum and the defeat of America's Nobel Peace Prize recipient's preferred candidate in the November presidential election.
Did the community organizer from Harvard Law just deliver some personal payback to the IDF commando? So it would seem.
At the smallest, worst newspaper in the world -- even at a high school paper -- no sane editor would publish a story that wasn't backed by solid evidence. As the 20th century print journalism cliche goes, if your mother says she loves you, check it out. So why are the nation's most prestigious multi-Pulitzer-winning newsgathering organizations repeatedly claiming that hackers working for the Russian government stole emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, and gave them to WikiLeaks?
The terrorist who hijacked a truck in Berlin and ran over and killed 12 people, maiming and wounding 48 more, in that massacre in the Christmas market, has done more damage than he could imagine.
Now that the 538 electors have voted -- and, with only the most minor of exceptions, for the expected candidates -- we can marvel at how such a huge difference in public policies can be made by just a few votes, the 77,744 votes by which Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton for the 46 electoral votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Just what we all need to ring in the Christmas season: Un-merry millionaire Michelle Obama belly-aching about the burdens and sacrifices of public life with billionaire Oprah Winfrey.
Donald Trump is appointing good people -- Andy Puzder, for example, Trump's nominee for labor secretary.
Bill Clinton is a lot of things, but out-of-touch elitist snob has never been one of them. Until now.
President-elect Donald Trump has so thoroughly turned the political world upside down and inside out that he has now entirely defanged the most potent and effective operative dominating the American political scene for nearly 30 years.
Over the 40-some years that I have been working or closely observing the political campaign business, the rules of the game haven't changed much. Technology has changed the business somewhat, but the people who ran campaigns in the 1970s could have (and in some cases actually have) run them four decades later.
