Matt Taibbi writes about a development that illustrates the topsy-turvy nature of current US politics, and that is that Republicans see a future in which they become the champions of the working class, and that this idea is not as outlandish as one might initially think.
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Newspapers are laying off beat reporters because their work does not generate enough revenue. The subscriber base is decreasing while the online ad revenue is not rising fast enough to compensate. But newspaper beat reporters covering actual events are the foundation of the news food chain, providing the essential nourishment that sustains all the other things such as TV, commentary, blogs, and other online services. If they go, the rest collapses.
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From reader Jeff I received this link to another such episode. We see again a situation where the driver at an event in Virginia that attracted car enthusiasts, manages to make a total hash of parking even though the space available is huge. What makes this distinctive is that her car ends up on top of the car behind and that both cars are very expensive. The offending car is a Mercedes Benz while the victim car is a Ferrari costing around $300,000.
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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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As Donald Trump drops in the polls, there have been some truly astonishing development within the GOP, with the party establishment worrying that not only will he lose and lose big, but that he will drag down the party in down ballot races and thus they will lose control of the US Senate and even, in the most extreme scenario, the House of Representatives.
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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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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.
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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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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