Issues
Political Steel? Or a Boomerang?
An email flies out saying, ‘Demonstration at the airport,’ and a thousand Democratic activists head for the airport – or to a Women’s March, Gay Pride Demonstration, Moral Monday Protest, Earth Day March or Immigration Protest. So are these protests political steel? Or, like Keg Parties and Beer Blasts, simply an occasion for activists to…
Read MoreThe Curse
He’s been a TV star, a Master Dealmaker, and a mega-tycoon but success failed to make him popular. But, a year ago, after Donald Trump announced he was running for President his unpopularity didn’t matter: Because a curse settled on his opponents. Trump was elected due to his opponents’ vices not his virtues. Now, post-election,…
Read MoreThose Days Are Gone
It’s the lynchpin of his plan: Paul Ryan wants to tax imports a trillion dollars over ten years so he can cut corporate taxes and income taxes an equal amount. It sounds straightforward. But there is an odd missing piece. A trillion dollars over ten years is $100 billion a year – and, in years…
Read MoreHard News and the Search for Clicks
I read down the list of headlines on the newspaper’s website until I came to one that read: Trump’s inaugural address echoes anti-Semitic isolationists and a Batman villain. Fact, I wondered. Or opinion? According to the newspaper it was fact. Hard news. When Donald Trump said his inauguration was about taking power away from Washington…
Read MoreTrump’s Speech
Donald Trump didn’t mince words: “We are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another,” he said, “we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to the people.” “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost……
Read MoreFour Tribes
A year and a half ago – when the election began – the Democrat Washington Politicians battled the Democratic Outsiders and the Republican Washington Politicians fought the Republican Outsiders. So where are the four tribes now? Hillary’s gone. But both the Democratic Washington Politicians and the Democratic Outsiders are carefully watching Trump waiting for him…
Read MoreLimited Power
When the election began Millennials trapped in dead-end jobs faced a choice between a Democrat Washington Politician and a Socialist (who could only come from Vermont) and the Millennials chose the Socialist. On the other side of the aisle working class families sitting at kitchen tables in small towns staring at stacks of bills faced…
Read MoreA New Wrinkle
‘Sallie told David who told Harry who told Joe that Sergie said’… It sounds like gossip flying around a sewing circle of old women but it wasn’t – it was a story about Donald Trump and the Russians told by a former MI6 agent in a ‘report’ that caught fire (on one website) then rolled…
Read MoreThe Professor
Looking back the first warning sign was his crowing: For years, the professor wrote, he’d traveled the world. He’d set up elections in strange places like Sudan. Along with his Danish colleague he’d designed the first model – measuring over 50 moving parts of the political process – to determine whether elections were fair. He’d…
Read MoreThe Times and Trump
When North Korea said it was going to test an intercontinental ballistic missile that would reach the U.S. Donald Trump grabbed his Twitter machine and roared, ‘North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!’ Reading Trump’s tweet…
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