Key Republican electoral strategy is collapsing

After the 2012 loss in the presidential election that seemed to take by surprise candidate Mitt Romney and the Republican leadership, though the writing on the wall had been visible for weeks before, the party conducted a serious post-mortem that concluded that in the future they had to find ways to reach out to minority groups, since the party’s share of those votes had been steadily declining since George W. Bush ran, while the proportion of minority groups was steadily rising.
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The surprising return of the ‘chinaman’

I wrote yesterday about the Australian betters currently touring Sri Lanka finding the spin bowling almost unplayable. But what surprised me was that one of the spin bowlers Lakshan Sandakan was described in articles as a ‘chinaman bowler’.

It is not that I was unfamiliar with the term’s past use in cricket. But at least in the US, the word ‘chinaman’ is seen as pejorative and its use highly frowned upon, except perhaps maybe by Donald Trump supporters, and so I thought it had been retired and was startled to see it again.
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Quiz on the US constitution

Given the umbrage that Donald Trump took when asked by Khizr Khan as to whether he had even read the US constitution, people have taken to turning up at his rallies with pocket copies of it, prompting the question as to how familiar people are with this much cited document. The Guardian has come up with a pop quiz on facts connected to it. I got 8/10 correct.

Cricket shocker

It has been a while since I wrote about cricket and the fans of the game among this blog’s readership (yes, both of them) may have felt that a post was long overdue. What prompts this one is a shocking result in which Sri Lanka has thoroughly defeated Australia in two consecutive Test matches played in Sri Lanka.
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Trump’s half-hearted pivot

One of the distinguishing features of the Donald Trump campaign has been his breezy assurance that he will defeat all his opponents and win. Almost all candidates try to portray confidence in their own eventual success. That is how they get people to join their campaigns and contribute money. But they also try to temper that with some caveats so that their supporters don’t get complacent.
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Birds and windmills

If you attend talks about alternative forms of energy, you can often find people in the audience challenging the use of wind power by saying that windmill blades kill a lot of birds. This gives many people pause because those who support alternative energy sources also tend to be those who support humane treatment of animals and the idea of birds being sliced by the blades is worrisome.
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