In fiscal year 2020, which ended on Sept. 30, the U.S. government set some impressive new records.
The deficit came in at $3.1 trillion, twice the previous record of $1.4 trillion in 2009, which was set during the Great Recession, and three times the 2019 deficit of about $1 trillion.
Joe Biden enjoys a double-digit lead over incumbent President Donald Trump because he promises a return to normalcy -- not the platonic ideal of objective normalcy in a country that doesn't torture or spy on its citizens or let them starve because their coding chops are a few years out of date. Americans desperately want to resume "normal" political life as Americans knew it before the last four years of manic presidential tweetstorms, authoritarian strongman antics and pandemic pandemonium. As Michigan voter Katybeth Davis told the Guardian, "I just want it to be over with. I really do."
As the 2020 presidential election nears, polls portend a landslide victory for the Biden/Harris ticket.
Biden had a 16-point lead over Trump in an early October CNN poll. The Opinium and Guardian poll from days ago gave Biden a 17-point lead. Even Rasmussen Reports, one of the most accurate pollsters in 2016, showed Biden still leading Trump by five points this week, admittedly a drop from 12 points the week before.
On Monday, Joe Biden finally broke his monthslong silence on court packing. Previously, he refused to take a stand -- "whatever position I take in that, that'll become the issue," he said in the Sept. 29 debate, said voters didn't "deserve to know" his position or would know it "when the election is over,"
"Apres moi, la deluge," predicted Louis XV after his army's stunning defeat by Prussia's Frederick the Great at the Battle of Rossbach in 1757.
"La deluge," the Revolution, came, three decades later, to wash the Bourbon monarchy away in blood and to send Louis XV's grandson, Louis XVI, and his queen, Marie Antoinette, to the guillotine.
— With 19 days to go before the election, Joe Biden’s lead in the presidential race remains steady, although his national lead is bigger than his leads in the most crucial swing states.
— In the Senate, Republicans appear to be getting some traction against Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), although Peters remains favored in our ratings. Overall, the Senate battlefield continues to expand, with Republicans having to play more defense in places like Alaska and Kansas.
— Eight House rating changes largely benefit Democrats.
Do Colorado patriots' lives matter?
When COVID-19 hit, I quarantined in Eastern Massachusetts.
Biking around the woods, I noticed something strange.
The great Jackie Gleason once said, "The past remembers better than it lived." And so it is, apparently, with the Obama years.
"The Indians are seeing 60,000 Chinese soldiers on their northern border," Secretary of State Michael Pompeo ominously warned on Friday.
Before the first Trump-Biden debate, moderator Chris Wallace listed the six subjects that would be covered:
Now that Donald Trump exited from Walter Reed Hospital and the vice presidential debate aired, let's turn to an apolitical analyst to understand what's happening. Vaclav Smil, 76, native of communist Czechoslovakia and former University of Manitoba professor for four decades, has written 39 books on energy, technology and demography. "Nobody," says Bill Gates, who has read every book, "sees the big picture with as wide an aperture as Vaclav Smil."
With the 2020 presidential election only weeks away, increasing attention is focused on opinion polls to pick the winner. In 2016, most pollsters were wildly wrong, predicting a Hillary Clinton landslide victory over Donald Trump.
Rating changes in Electoral College, Senate, Governor, and House.
— Recent rosy polling for Joe Biden in the presidential race may represent an artificial sugar high for the challenger.
— But at this point, Donald Trump needs to be making up ground — not treading water or falling further behind.
— 11 rating changes across four categories of races (president, Senate, House, and governor) almost exclusively benefit Democrats.
Dear skeptical Americans: You have every right and reason to be hesitant about rolling up your sleeves and submitting to flu vaccine jabs this year.
Recently, I released a video that called California's fires "government fueled."
One thing we learned from the debate in Cleveland last Tuesday, when Trump wasn't interrupting, is that Joe Biden makes up numbers on the fly. There was a lot of fibbing going on. Consider this exchange between the two candidates:
What a difference a week can make.
Saturday, Sept. 26, was among the best days of the Trump presidency, or so some of us thought watching the president introduce in the Rose Garden his sterling candidate for Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat on the Supreme Court.
Past performance is no guarantee of future returns, but there are few more reliable ways to predict what comes next than to examine the historical record, because, most of the time, history really does repeat itself.
What kind of president would Joe Biden be? His centrist supporters assure progressives that he will be one of them, pushing an aggressive legislative agenda reminiscent of FDR's New Deal. His Republican opponents portray him as a socialist. But Biden hasn't actually promised anything ambitious.
"Chaos." "Painful." "Dispiriting." "The worst presidential debate in American history." "The lowest point in American political culture in my lifetime."
