The week in review by comedians

Last Thursday’s over-the-top (or should I say below-the-waist) Republican debate happened too late in the week for many comedians to take shots at it but now they have weighed in.

On the latest episode of her show Full Frontal, Samantha Bee looks at what happened over the last week and how the last Republican debate went down. She gives a eulogy for the party and wonders if we can really trust the nation’s future in the hands of men who seem to be far too emotional.
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Gaming the Republican primaries

The Republican primaries would seem to be a fertile ground for game theorists. For example, you have the current situation where Donald Trump is leading in the polls and in winning states and delegates. He does not have an overall majority in each category but is heading for a plurality. Ignoring John Kasich for the moment, the question is what is the best strategy for the two challengers Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to adopt in order to try and win.
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On to the next round of primary contests

Last night featured a Democratic debate that took place in Flint, Michigan, the town that is currently at the center of the crisis about lead in the water and for long has been emblematic of the decay of America’s cities and its manufacturing base. I could not watch it but this report from The Guardian summarizes what happened and describes it as a ‘fierce debate’, with sharp exchanges between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton over actual issues but with no personal attacks or mudslinging. In short, the opposite of what happens in Republican debates. Tessa Stuart provides some of the choice quotes.
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Hillary Clinton, Wall Street, and the neoconservatives

In my post from two days ago expressing my puzzlement about the Washington and Republican establishment’s strategy against Donald Trump, I concluded with the following prediction.

Trump will be the Republican nominee and be selected on the first ballot. Most of the anti-Trump forces who are now screaming loudly will eventually give in and support him because they do not want a Democrat to win. You can seen the equivocation already taking place, with some in the party suggesting that maybe Trump is not so bad after all and laying the groundwork for eventual total capitulation. At the last debate, after calling Trump a conman and fraud and clown and suggesting he has a small penis, Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich all said that they would support Trump if he were the nominee. That shows that all this anti-Trump rhetoric is mostly sound and fury, signifying nothing.

While I said that ‘most’ of the anti-Trump forces will eventually come around to supporting him, I did not specify those who would not and this post will elaborate.
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The Trump voters

The big puzzle is whether Donald Trump’s supporters will be swayed by the relentless attacks on him by the party and Washington establishment. Will Trump succeed even without the full support of right-wing power brokers like Rush Limbaugh (who prefers Ted Cruz) and the active opposition of Glenn Beck and the motley crowd of conservative extremists that attended the annual CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) that met this weekend and which Trump canceled on at the last minute?
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End of the Alabama’s stand against same-sex marriage

The state of Alabama has been one of the holdouts against same-sex marriage despite the US Supreme Court ruling in June 2015 nullifying all state bans against it. The state’s chief justice Roy Moore has been adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage and on March 3, 2015, before the US Supreme Court’s ruling, the state’s supreme court (with only one justice in dissent) had barred all the state probate court judges from issuing such licenses.
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The puzzling strategy being adopted against Trump

The Republican party and the Washington establishment have clearly decided that they are deeply worried by the idea of Donald Trump being the party nominee and have finally declared all out war on him. The last debate saw Fox News tag team with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz to attack him with all they had. The Washington Post has editorialized against him. Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell has said that the party will not support him. And the party’s 2012 nominee Mitt Romney gave a blistering speech against him. All kinds of SuperPACS funded by wealthy donors are now running ads against him in the upcoming primary states.
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