A new poll finds that almost half the people who plan to vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the next election based their decision on their dislike of the opposing candidate, not because they are enthusiastically supporting their own.
[Read more…]
Just after I wrote that Donald Trump, now that he has sewn up the Republican nomination, may think it prudent to quietly forget his earlier promise to provide a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, he has once again promised to release such a list.
[Read more…]
There are a total of 49 terrible wildfires currently blazing away in Alberta, Canada. While fortunately there have been no deaths and injuries, the damage has been extensive. This news report begins by describing the extent of the fire.
[Read more…]
The website Talking Points Memo (TPM) is doing a public service by keeping a scorecard of where elected Republicans stand vis a vis Donald Trump. They have split them up into five categories 1) Endorse, 2) “Supporting the Nominee”, 3) Mum’s the Word, 4) Fuzzball and 5) NeverTrump and are tracking their movements across categories. You can see the definitions of those terms here.
[Read more…]
Conan O’Brien takes a moment to pay tribute to all 16 Republican candidates who fell under the Trump juggernaut. He gives us the date when they decided to call it quits as well as the reason for doing so. It is interesting that five of them (Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki) dropped out even before the first actual contest, the Iowa caucuses, took place on February 1. Carl Bialik gives the full chronology of when each entered and left the race.
[Read more…]
Donald Trump has announced that Ben Carson will be part of the team entrusted with the task of vetting his potential running mates. Carson has himself said that he is open to being Trump’s vice-presidential choice so this brings up an interesting historical episode.
[Read more…]
Yesterday, just one day after Ted Cruz announced that he was quitting the race, John Kasich announced that he too was giving up on his campaign for Republican nomination, with a farewell speech containing the usual references to god’s will for him.
[Read more…]
Barack Obama came into office promising to end the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and close the Guantanamo torture camp and none of those things have happened. In fact we are now involved in new wars in Syria and Libya, not to mention Yemen. But there is at least the theoretical possibility that after a president is voted out of office after four or eight years, any bad policies they instituted can be reversed by their successor, though in practice such reversals are not so easy since Congress is also involved.
[Read more…]
Jimmy Kimmel takes to task all those who ignore the scientific consensus and deny that global warming is occurring and that it is largely caused by human activity. The compilation of scientists at the end speaking about the issue is great.
[Read more…]