In an earlier post, I wondered why it was that people seemed to take an instinctive and visceral dislike to Ted Cruz and various theories were proposed. But now there is another possible explanation.
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At the last Republican debate, when he got booed for shushing Jeb Bush, Donald Trump turned on the audience and accused them of being special interests to whom the party had given most of the tickets and that that group did not like him because he did not need or want their money and thus they could not influence him. This made me curious as to how these audiences are picked. It clearly matters since the applause or boos that a candidate gets in response to answers can subtly influence the way that they are viewed by the TV audience and the media. In the last debate, for example, Marco Rubio got booed quite lustily, something that I had not seen before.
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In the story about the high levels of lead in the Flint, MI water supply, the scientists who first produced the measurements that indicated that there was a serious problem were from Virginia Tech University. I was intrigued by the fact that people so far away had to be called in to reveal this problem but did not follow up on why this was so.
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On Bill Maher’s show, the feminist icon Gloria Steinem was speculating about why young people, and young women in particular, were so solidly behind Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton and she said something that surprised me.
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Following the unintentional Republican comedy show that was the eighth debate, a real comedy show Saturday Night Live had on Bernie Sanders and his doppelganger comedian Larry David to take part in a Titanic-inspired sketch.
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As could have been predicted, Twitter exploded with reactions to Marco Rubio’s bizarre performance during last night’s debate and he took a major beating. The reviews focused heavily on his penchant for robotic answers that went amuck last night. Here is one set of Tweets and here is another .
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I decided to tune in at least to part of the eighth Republican primary debate and see what fun there was to be had and I was glad that I did so. It was a rollicking affair. Almost completely substance free, of course, but great fun nonetheless.
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So there you are in front of the Taj Mahal or some other tourist site and you want to take a photograph of it. Unfortunately other people also like these sites and wander across the frame of the photo as you are setting up. Some will notice you and be considerate enough to wait for you to finish or walk behind you but most will be oblivious that they are ruining your shot.
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Because it saves time, according to one former Bush administration official. But joking aside, it is quite extraordinary how so many people, including colleagues and acquaintances going all the way back to his college days, describe him as a totally unlikable person. Not only do they feel that way, they are all coming out of the woodwork to say so openly.
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It was interesting to read reports of the recent back-and-forth between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton as to who is a real progressive, with both claiming the label. It was not long ago that Republicans had managed to so damage the label of even the perfectly honorable political tradition of liberalism that leaders of the Democratic party shied away from it, and veered into the so-called ‘third way’ neoliberalism policies that they would describe as centrism or moderate or some such euphemism.
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