A US District judge has agreed with the Ohio chapter of the ACLU that the restrictions on demonstrations imposed by the city of Cleveland during the Republican National Convention beginning July 18 (that I wrote about here) are too restrictive.
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The voters in the UK surprised everyone, including the pollsters, by narrowly voting to leave the European Union by a margin of 51.9% to 48.1%. England and Wales voted to leave by fairly comfortable margins while Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain by even larger margin, leading some to predict that this vote may not only lead to a break with the EU but also a breakup of the UK itself. As late as the day before the vote, the Remain group had seemed to be gaining in the polls with the result that stock markets had risen in anticipation, so the victory by the Leave group came as a real shock.
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A curious feature about Donald trump is that he hates to acknowledge that he is not perfect in any way. It is quite extraordinary really. This quality was on clear display during the primary race when Marco Rubio made that jab about Trump having small hands. It was clear that Rubio was crudely implying a correlation between hand and penis size that has no justification whatsoever but rather than dismissing it as a childish jibe, Trump actually defended the size of his hands.
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With the retirement of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert from their comedy shows, many of us feared the loss of sharp political satire. But while The Daily Show itself has struggled to find its footing with its new host, alumni Samantha Bee and John Oliver, and also Seth Meyers, have been terrific in picking up the mantle. Of the three, Bee is the most consistently funny but all are analytical and informative.
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To no one’s surprise, Marco Rubio has reversed himself and decided to run for re-election to his Florida senate seat. He had been strongly criticized for being an absentee senator and having the worst attendance record in that do-nothing body and in the past he had repeatedly expressed his disdain for the body. He had said that he would move to the private sector after his quest for the Republican nomination became just another road kill under the Donald Trump bus.
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Political observers had expected Donald Trump, after sewing up the Republican party nomination, to ‘pivot’ towards the center in an attempt to attract voters who might be feeling doubtful abut voting for the Democratic candidate. Trump indeed pivoted but in the opposite direction, away from the center.
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She looks at how the NRA has managed to get so much power that they strangled even the minor attempts at some form of gun control. Unfortunately, you have to see once again the repulsive Ted Cruz, who had seemed to mercifully have disappeared from view after getting humiliated by Donald Trump.
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I have not commented on the recent atrocity committed at the night club in Orlando by Omar Mateen that resulted in 50 deaths and an approximately equal number of injured. This is partly because of the sense of despair that these kinds of mass killings have become so common and nothing ever seems to get done about the easy availability of semi-assault weapons and high capacity magazines that enable even a single person to kill so many people in so short a time.
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On Thursday, the United Kingdom votes to see if it continues to be part of the European Union or leaves, the latter position being known as ‘Brexit’, a neologism that is a combination of ‘Britain’ and ‘exit’. I don’t really know much about the pros and cons of the issue except that the worst elements of British politics like the political party UKIP want a vote in favor of Brexit.
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Wall Street is in a bind. Normally, the presidential election features two candidates who are both beholden to its interests and thus enables them to watch the process with complacency but this time the picture is a little confused.
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