John Kasich is no moderate

Now that the Republican race is down to just five people and Jeb! has gone, John Kasich seems to have cemented his position in the media as the ‘moderate’ and ‘reasonable’ candidate. It’s about time that someone exposed his aw shucks, midwestern moderate shtick for its phoniness and Samantha Bee does an excellent job in her latest episode of Full Frontal.
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The Trump juggernaut moves on

So Donald Trump has handily won the Nevada caucuses, surpassing all expectations with 45.9% of the vote, exceeding even the combined total of Marco Rubio (23.9%) and Ted Cruz (21.4%). Trump currently has 81 delegates out of the 1,237 required to win on the first ballot at the convention, while Cruz and Rubio have just 17 each. Note that he handily won both South Carolina and Nevada after saying that George W. Bush did not ‘keep us safe’ because 9/11 happened on his watch, and that the war in Iraq was a mistake and that GWB lied the nation into that disaster, all unspeakable heresies that pundits felt might finally, finally, doom his candidacy.
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Don’t be fooled by the patrician gentility of the Bushes

One can be tempted to feel sorry for Jeb Bush, especially given his ignominious exit from the Republican race. During the campaign he seemed affable and even reasonable. He seemed to be personally a nice guy who, through an unfortunate series of events, failed in his pursuit of the presidency. Using a high school metaphor, he gave the impression of being an earnest type whose run for class president was upended by the relentless taunting he received from the uncouth school bully Donald Trump.
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John Oliver on the abortion debate

I have written before about how anti-choice people have been making it harder and harder for women to obtain safe, legal abortions, something they are perfectly entitled to, by shutting down clinics that provide such services using the spurious argument that they are trying to protect women’s health. In his latest episode of Last Week Tonight John Oliver explains what is going on.
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Some political clips from The Daily Show

I was traveling all days yesterday and so missed the Democratic debate and haven’t caught up on the news. But here are some segments of The Daily Show that deal with politics. In the first one, Republicans compete for the torture vote. As Alex Emmons writes, Ted Cruz’s definition of what he said is “generally recognized” as the definition of torture is anything but. It is an extreme definition that comes from a self-serving memo of the Bush-Cheney regime that has since been withdrawn. His claims that his own father was tortured in Cuba would be false under that definition.
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