Welcome to Shutdown Theater, 2015 Edition
By Thomas Knapp Well, here we go again. Sample annual headline: “Republicans Threaten Government Shutdown.” This year’s excuse: A feud over whether or not to continue writing an annual $500 million corporate welfare check to Planned Parenthood. With bated breath, the mainstream media informs us that the usual suspects on Capitol Hill are […]
Election 2016 Reminder: Who Needs Who?
. By Thomas L. Knapp Memory has a way of playing tricks on the mind, but my recollection is that each of the seven presidential elections since I reached adulthood (I turned 18 the week after Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984) has been advertised — by the parties, by the candidates, by the […]
Pwnd Again: Don’t Trust These Jokers With Your Information
By Thomas L. Knapp There’s an old television trope — I’m not sure where it originated — in which a shady-looking character walks up to a group, flashes open his trenchcoat to reveal a bunch of cheap (and presumably stolen) timepieces, and asks “anyone wanna buy a watch?” That image springs to mind […]
Religion and Politics and Presidential Qualifications
. . By Thomas L. Knapp Religious belief as a qualification or disqualification for the presidency of the United States is an old can of worms. Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon running near the front of the pack for the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nomination, cracked that can open and invited the body politic to […]
They Want to Talk About Israel. OK, Let’s Talk About Israel
. By Thomas L. Knapp In The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam quotes US president Lyndon Baines Johnson on his desired qualities in an assistant: “I want loyalty! I want him to kiss my a– in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses.” Nearly every “major party” presidential […]
In Praise of Polarization
. By Thomas L. Knapp Wikipedia defines political “polarization” as “the divergence of political attitudes to ideological extremes,” asserting that “when polarization occurs in a two-party system, like the United States, moderate voices often lose power and influence.” According to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey, American politics is currently extremely polarized in the […]
And Then There Were 16: Perry Drops Out
. By Thomas L. Knapp I am neither a Republican nor a Rick Perry fan. Nonetheless I find Perry’s decision to drop out of the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination contest disheartening. Here’s why: Like Perry or not, agree with him on the issues or not, he was arguably the single most experienced political executive […]
Election 2016: Can John McAfee Change The Game?
. . By Thomas L. Knapp The 2016 presidential election cycle got a lot more interesting on September 8 when John McAfee announced his candidacy under the banner of a newly formed “Cyber Party.” McAfee, whose eponymous computer security software made him a multi-millionaire, sports a long record of public eccentricity that I need not […]
More Sequestration: The Best Bad Thing, For Now
By Thomas L. Knapp If American politicians lived in the real world, US president Barack Obama would propose and Congress would pass a balanced budget for the federal government. But American politicians don’t live in the real world. Since World War II they’ve inhabited a Utopian fantasy in which the federal government has […]
Just Say No to the FCC’s Router Power Grab
By Thomas L. Knapp The Federal Communications Commission is at it again. After its massive, illegal “net neutrality” power grab in February, you might think Washington’s chief ministry for the suppression of information freedom and restraint of digital trade would take a break to digest its prey. But no. Now they’ve set their […]
