Ben Carson is the Sarah Palin of this election

People may recall the famous interview that Katie Couric had with Sarah Palin when the latter had just burst on the national stage as John McCain’s pick as his running mate in 2008, a choice that will doom him forever as one of the worst judges of running mates in modern politics. In response to an innocuous question as to what seemed like a softball question about what publications she reads to keep up with world affairs, Palin flailed around defensively. But when pressed for specific newspapers, she memorably said “All of them”. That answer sealed the impression that she just does not read much at all.
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Sanders in Cleveland tells Republicans not to be “tough but stupid”

Bernie Sanders had a huge rally in Cleveland that attracted tens of thousand of enthusiastic supporters which I unfortunately could not attend and he again hit out at the Bush-Cheney regime for their appalling decision to invade Iraq that is the cause for the present instability and chaos in the region. Watch a short bit of his speech where he dealt with the attacks.
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Fetal tissue research

Carly Fiorina’s lies during a debate about a video she had seen that she claimed showed officials of Planned Parenthood callously discussing harvesting aborted infants for fetal tissue research has given that topic a lot of adverse publicity. But this article by Carina Storrs explains what fetal tissue research actually involves and the enormous benefits that it has provided in finding treatment for polio, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases.
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The funniest film screenplays of all time

I enjoy comedies so I was interested in this list of the 101 funniest screenplays of all time. The list ranks them in order but while such rank ordering is good for getting people to click and argue about which films are better than others, I tend to ignore the rankings and use such lists merely as general guides to identify good films that I might have missed.
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The danger of negative strategizing

In elections, in addition to hoping that your party ends up with the candidate whom you think has the best ideas and also the best chance of winning, you also hope that the other side ends up with the candidate with the best chance of losing. Hence each side has an incentive to boost the other side’s weaker candidate and cheer on the decline of the candidate that may be the strongest. Some people go beyond that and actually try to bring about the worst result for the opponents. But is such negative strategizing wise?
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