As the 2016 presidential race officially begins, both party contests are in a place that we, and many others, did not expect them to be. On the Democratic side, frontrunner Hillary Clinton faces a stern challenge from a stronger-than-expected foe, Bernie Sanders. And the Republicans could be on the verge of nominating Donald Trump. Still, no votes have been cast. Pulling down the curtain on a contest yet to begin is both premature and foolish.
The crack media buzzed this week with the discovery of a totally front-page, news-breaking, breathtaking videotape.
Beware the latest nasty virus sweeping the East Coast, particularly the most elite citadels of New York City and Washington, D.C.
It is a fast-moving disease, highly contagious and attacks the nervous system. Early stages are inexplicable, fast eye-blinking, light palsy, stammering and overbearing snobbery. Sometimes redness of the face and shortness of breath accompany.
Cars run on fuel. Politicians run on votes, and they'll do almost anything to get them. That includes supporting mandates that force us to use ethanol, a fuel made from corn that Iowa farmers grow.
With the Iowa caucuses a week away, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, who leads in all the polls, is Donald Trump.
The latest tempest in a teapot controversy is over a lack of black nominees for this year's Academy Awards in Hollywood.
How stupid and vicious do they think we are? That's a question that I think explains a lot of things about politics and society today -- and about this year's unpredicted presidential race.
The "us" in that question are ordinary citizens and the "they" are political and media elites who hold them in contempt -- which they do over and over again by trying to obfuscate and cover up the source and motives of terrorist attacks.
The independent senator from Vermont says the economic system is rigged against working-class Americans. He's right.
The electoral political system is a subsidiary of those who rule the economy. Which is why Bernie Sanders never stood a chance. The political system was rigged against him.
The lights are burning late in Davos tonight.
Those of us who like to believe that human beings are rational can sometimes have a hard time trying to explain what is going on in politics. It is still a puzzle to me how millions of patriotic Americans could have voted in 2008 for a man who for 20 years -- TWENTY YEARS -- was a follower of a preacher who poured out his hatred for America in the most gross gutter terms.
The economy has been staggering, with stagnant or no growth, for several years, after a financial crisis. Loud complaints have been raised against Wall Street financiers and the concentration of great wealth in few hands. Rapid technological development is generating massive economic change, with many old-line jobs vanishing. Majorities disapprove of the Democratic president, as they had of his Republican predecessor.
The presidential nomination process has a history of being fuzzy. For much of the nation’s political existence, starting in the 1830s, national party conventions selected nominees for the highest office in the land. At these events, the oft-used term “smoke-filled rooms” described the sometimes behind-the-scenes activity that led to the final selection of a nominee. Sometimes this person was an obvious, well-known national figure; other times, an unexpected, relative unknown captured the nomination.
Because the crime rate is zero, the potholes are all fixed and homelessness has been completely eradicated, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio now has time to focus on what really matters to Big Apple taxpayers:
“Two Corinthians 3:17,” said Donald Trump, misstating the traditional way American Christians most commonly refer to the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.
You would have thought Mr. Trump had slandered a disabled minority, based on the horrified and merciless reaction from the press.
Hillary Clinton: "Of course we want to raise the minimum wage!"
The race for president is accelerating in high gear, or, rather, the races for president -- in the Republican and Democratic parties, in the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary and primaries and caucuses to come. How's it going? Let's look at these separate races.
After months of watching all sorts of political polls, we are finally just a few weeks away from actually beginning to see some voting in primary elections. Polls let people vent their emotions. But elections are held to actually accomplish something.
Is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, a RINO -- a revolutionary in name only?
In his final State of the Union speech Barack Obama made at least a few bows toward the idea that America is an exceptional nation, an idea he once derided by saying, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks" -- this was before their fiscal crisis -- "believe in Greek exceptionalism." We remain exceptional, he said in Tuesday's speech, as the world's strongest nation militarily and because we're doing better economically than most other large nations.
To awaken Thursday to front-page photos of U.S. sailors kneeling on the deck of their patrol boat, hands on their heads in postures of surrender, on Iran's Farsi Island, brought back old and bad memories.
