When I listen to Republicans talk tough about ISIS, I’m reminded of a old Steve Martin joke: “You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes! Yes, you can be a millionaire and never pay taxes! And you say, ‘Steve, how can I become a millionaire and never pay taxes?’ OK, first? You get a million dollars
One particular passage in President Obama’s Sunday night address to the nation caught my attention.
Month after month, execrable bullhorn artist Donald Trump remains perched atop the polls, and there’s growing concern that the guy might actually win the nomination. Various super PACs allied with the party establishment keep threatening to bomb him with ad campaigns, and Republican regulars are freaking out at the prospect of an autumn 2016 debacle that features landslide losses in every voter category except celebrity-besotted angry white people.
Now that congressional Republicans and roughly 50 cowered Democratic colleagues have passed a panicky bill to impede the entry of Syrian refugees, I think it’s time to pause for a reality check.
The revelation this week that Ben Carson knows squat about foreign policy was about as shocking as the news that Charlie Sheen is HIV positive. Still, let’s have some fun with the latest Carson farce, because, if nothing else, it’s a welcome comic break from contemplating ISIS.
If Hillary Clinton hopes to sell herself as a foreign policy whiz and credible commander-in-chief, she’ll need to perform better than she did this weekend in response to the Paris attacks.
Isn’t it nice to know that even in a time of international crisis – ISIS, Syria, Putin – some Americans still make time to freak out over trivia? There’s something endearingly childlike (or pathetic) about our willful refusal to put things in perspective.
The off-off-year elections have yielded some noteworthy results — Chris Christie’s Jersey legislature has gotten bluer, Kentucky has gotten considerably redder — but election night’s most fascinating tally was posted in Ohio, where voters refused to rebrand their state as Ohigho.
Fresh from their triumphant deep dive into Benghazi, House Republicans have announced Friday they’ve created another Special committee, this time to — of course — Planned Parenthood. I kid you not! And since the 2016 election is so clearly on their minds, perhaps they’ll summon their favorite star witness. Just imagine…
Kudos to Donald Trump for performing a valuable public service. I kid you not. Finally, a top-tier presidential candidate is publicly assailing the sainted axiom that George W. Bush kept us safe.
Presidential candidates typically try to sell themselves as superheroes whose powers will magically cure our national ills. Rarely do they remind us that power is widely dispersed in our federal system, and that presidents are compelled to share it with the typically disputatious members of Congress.
It’s well known that Kevin Spacey shadowed Kevin McCarthy before shooting “House of Cards.” But if you’re looking for cheap intrigue and craven dysfunction, skip Netflix and binge-watch the real thing: House of Clowns.
In the midst of President Obama’s denunciation of gun violence – if you’ve lost track, the latest massacre was on Friday – he lamented Washington’s ongoing inertia and said that, in fact, “We have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially prevent gun deaths.”
