By Glynn Wilson – Public opinion survey results in the wake of the national political party conventions over the past two weeks back up what knowledgeable commentators said at the time. The convention shows still matter in swaying public opinion at the margins, and the Democratic Party’s convention show and Hillary Clinton’s speech won over…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – The Democratic National Convention was a HUGE success, to borrow a term from Bernie Sanders. Compared to Trump’s D-list convention, the show in Philedelphia was a star studded Hollywood affair complete with fireworks, red, white and blue balloons with stars on them, and with Sanders himself placing…
By John L. Micek – PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – After four days of doom and gloom in Donald Trump’s America, Democrats have a deceptively simple task to accomplish with their convention this week: Namely, convincing broad swaths of voters that Hillary Clinton and her new running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, possess the right mix…
It was a doozy of a speech, full of iffy facts and false promises. But they loved it… By Glynn Wilson – While many of my liberal and progressive Democrat friends say on Facebook they could not watch Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention Thursday night, or if they did, they called it…
By John L. Micek – CLEVELAND, Oh. – U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican, wanted to talk about a bunch of stuff during his primetime address at the Republican National Convention. But Donald Trump wasn’t high on that list. He barely mentioned him at all. Instead, the ever-wonkish Ryan focused on the House…
By Tom Purcell – This presidential campaign is the nuttiest in my lifetime but at least America is maintaining its sense of humor. Late-night comics have found a treasure trove of material in Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. He’s been mocked three times as often as any other candidate throughout the campaign. Many of the…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – The first night of the Republican convention in Cleveland was hard to watch. I flipped around some on broadcast TeeVee to see what was going on, and the poor news casters were having a hard time keeping a straight face and reporting the news with fairness and…
Media Incest On Display: Will Anyone Notice? The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – On the eve of the Republican convention in Cleveland Ohio, a remarkable thing happened. No, not another police shooting. Not just a tell all article about Donald Trump. It is an event that should send shock waves through the capitalist…
By Dick Polman – With apologies to the climactic song in “Les Miserables,” here are the self-destructive Brits who voted yesterday to exit the European Union. Cue the music! Do you hear the people sing Singing the song of angry men We will crash the British pound Against the dollar and the yen, When the…
By Todd Gitlin – To readers who follow taxes and finance — subjects often introduced with the adjective “arcane†— David Cay Johnston is one of America’s best-known reporters. Johnston has worked on the staffs of Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and from 1995 to 2008, The New York Times, where his…
Nuclear weapons, climate change, and the prospects for survival. – By Noam Chomsky – In January 2015, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced its famous Doomsday Clock to three minutes before midnight, a threat level that had not been reached for 30 years. The Bulletin’s statement explaining this advance toward catastrophe invoked the two…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – I had to turn off NPR news again this morning. I can’t listen to the same old, same old pretense of two-sidedness that helped get us into this mess in the first place. I had to turn off the TV news on Sunday. Same thing. Less facts.…
By Robert Reich – When I was a boy and lost just about every sporting event I tried, my father told me, “What counts isn’t whether you win or lose but how you play the game.” Most parents told their kids this. It was part of the American creed. But I doubt Fred Trump passed…
Raging Moderate – By Will Durst – Every four years our nation’s electoral eccentricities escalate exponentially and people throw up their hands and shout, “you know, every election cycle is wacky, but especially this one.” But especially this one! With this one, the narrative changes faster than the score of a Wiffle Ball game played…
By Robert Reich – This morning I heard from an old friend here in California who said “I’m for Bernie, but he doesn’t really have a chance anymore. So isn’t my vote for him in the California primary just prolonging the agony, and indirectly helping Trump?” I told him: 1. True, the electoral numbers are…
Get ready to bow and kiss his ring. He may very well be the next president of the United States. – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Let’s say for the sake of fun and argument that Donald Trump is more like King Henry VIII than Adolph Hitler. Google Trump and Hitler, Nazi,…
Making Sense – By Michael Reagan – Donald Trump is still no conservative and never will be. He still hasn’t figured out that the mix of insults, bluster and off-the-cuff political statements that won him the Republican Party primary won’t work in the general election. But a lot of us conservatives enjoyed watching him attack…
By Dick Polman – Predictably, America’s Troll is still attacking the federal judge who’s handling the lawsuit against Trump University. On Memorial Day, Donald Trump twice tweeted that the judge he derided last week as “Mexican” (Gonzalo Curiel was born, raised, and educated in Indiana) is “totally biased” against the inherent greatness of Der Leader.…
Raging Moderate – By Will Durst – A hearty congratulations to conservatives for a seamless transition from party-wide disgust to near unanimous endorsement of a gorilla as their presidential nominee. Considering the tortuous undulations required, this metamorphosis seems to have occurred with shockingly few chiropractic adjustments. Having indulged in the kind of convoluted contortions that…
Making Sense – By Michael Reagan – Look which party is blowing itself up now and struggling to unify behind a single candidate. Hint: It’s not the Republicans. After all those months of worrying and complaining about having too many candidates, the GOP finally found its 2016 presidential candidate, for good and bad. A couple…
