Credit the comedian and HBO talk show host Bill Maher for being blunt. He has a gift for making text what is otherwise subtext.
Most individuals keep a pretty firm grip on their possessions — the cars, the house and the stuff inside it. They’ve got a fairly accurate grasp of their money, too, by taking a quick scan of their financial assets online. Personal data, though, is another story. The complexion of the information that tech giants glean from surveilling users’ Internet activities is as murky for most Americans as a trek in the woods after dark. Americans urgently need a more effective means of ensuring that their cyber-persona is not being stalked from the digital shadows by buck-raking marketers.
Diplomat-speak is not President Trump's greatest talent, but recognizing threats to U.S. national security is, and the civilized world can be grateful.
President Trump's State of the Union speech was perhaps the best speech of his presidency and one of the best State of the Union speeches of any president of the modern era.
The growth of the Chinese economy has slowed to the lowest in three decades, suggesting peril to world security by the second-largest economy and principal trader. When China spits, as the proverb goes, Asia swims. The rest of the world gets wet feet, too.
The Constitution requires that the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." For Donald Trump, that "time to time" will fall Tuesday evening.
Troubled times are closing in on "the lucky country." Australia hasn't had a recession in almost 30 years, which is one good reason to call it lucky.
It used to be, when you lose an election, you had a trio of options: You could slink off into obscurity. Nothing wrong with that. Many honorable losers leave town with a discreet slink. You could run for a lesser office. Or, you can try again for the office you were booted from. (Richard Nixon, the patron saint of losers, did a version of all three.) There's a fourth option, too, but it's usually regarded as the fate worse than death. You could go home and get a job.
The Democrats have tried to sell the notion that there's no such thing as voter fraud in America — that it's only an urban legend that thousands of people who have no business in a polling place have cast illicit ballots and altered outcomes of elections.
The status quo on the Korean peninsula, which had been frozen in place for decades — binding northeast Asia, including Japan and China, in an icy embrace — has begun to show signs of cracking.
It's not true that the government shutdown, concluded over the weekend after 35 days of shutdown, accomplished "nothing." President Trump did not score a policy victory on the issue that led to the shutdown. The continuing resolution that is to run for three weeks, as signed by the president, does not include a dime of funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. The Mexican standoff over the Mexican border wall did, however, accomplish something important. It revealed just how radical the Democrats have become on the issue of immigration. In the run-up to the 2020 election elections, they have been smoked out. That's not nothing.
Once upon a time and not so long ago Venezuela was the most prosperous nation in South America. When the late Hugo Chavez took over as maximum leader, he put it on the road to socialist hell. Under his successor, Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela got there.
Justine Sacco was a public relations executive about to embark on a trip to South Africa back in the day of 2013. Before boarding her plane, Miss Sacco put up a lame joke to her 170 Twitter followers: "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" The joke was a clumsy attempt to lampoon the racial inequities of post-apartheid South Africa. She apparently confused AIDS, which has afflicted millions of whites, with Ebola epidemics, which have afflicted mostly blacks Africans.
President Trump's extended hand to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, in the form of concessions meant to reopen the government, has come back a bloody stub. If it wasn't clear already, there is little doubt now that the primary concern of "the loyal opposition" is neither ending the government shutdown nor solving the crisis at the nation's border. The Democrats want only to undermine the Trump presidency with an open-borders drive to take up a globalist weapon, a universal right to migrate.
Two years down and two to go. Like him or loathe him, Donald Trump is the force of nature his supporters hoped he would be and his detractors feared he would be. There's no reason to think he will change his ways of getting things done leading up to the 2020 presidential election. If the voters could get his solid results without the nonstop drama, Donald Trump would be a shoo-in for a second term.
Ours is the era of the Twitter celebrity. Gun control activist David Hogg, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and of course President Trump owe their celebrity to Twitter, giving most of them (the president excepted) celebrity and fame just for being famous. None would have ascended to such fame but for the social networking platform. Twitter is said to be losing money — gobs of it, in fact — but it's a kingmaker. Or at least a prince-and princess-maker.
The balance of political power in Washington requires a nimble gait afoot for those who come to town to do good and stay to do well. William Barr, the president's nominee for U.S. attorney general, has navigated skillfully the avenues that lead to the top at the Department of Justice. If confirmed as the nation's 85th attorney general, Mr. Barr must remember where to tiptoe within the endless ranks of Washington lawyers and where to come down hard with both feet.
The House of Representatives has voted, nearly unanimously, to condemn remarks made by Iowa congressman Steve King. The long-time Republican congressman, in an interview with The New York Times, asked a rhetorical question: "White nationalist, white supremacist when did that become offensive?" The correct answer is "a long time ago." Rep. King's remarks set off a firestorm, including calls to resign from powerful members of his own party.
The United States and China are drifting into a trade war, and it's worrying almost everybody. It's a peculiar war, compared to such struggles of previous centuries. Its importance is sometimes minimized in importance because of the blind spots both countries have for one another. Neither country seems to have an adequate appreciation of the other's very different environment.
Most of the government is idle and the nation's capital is shrouded in nearly a foot of snow with more on the way, but politics, the capital's only industry, grinds on at a quickening pace. Over the past few days, two more Democrats have entered the race for president, joining Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. John Delaney of Maryland. These four, gathering press notices while they may, won't be the last.
A congressperson as the arbiter of national morality, the judge of what's right and wrong, the earnest scholar of government theology? Who knew? Yet Nancy Pelosi says building a wall on the border is "immoral." Ours is an age that mocks the values that created America.
It's a Mexican standoff over a Mexican wall. More than a fortnight into the partial government shutdown, neither side was willing to budge. The longest government shutdown in history isn't likely to be surpassed for a long time. One good thing that may come of this game is a recognition by everybody that shutting down the government for partisan advantage is the kind of game that only small children should play.
