The US has long been considered an outlier when it comes to religious beliefs, with much higher numbers of believers and churchgoers than in other parts of the developed world. But a new study says that that gap seems to be closing, and once again it is the young who are leading the way.
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There is a question on my mind that is something that can perhaps only be answered by Donald Trump when he writes his memoirs many years from now or by his closest confidantes and that is the following: When he decided to enter the race last June, did he really think he would do so well and get this far and throw the Republican party into chaos? Or did he just do it for the laughs, thinking that he would make a big splash initially by making outrageous statements and insulting others, grab some newspaper headlines, and then go back to his regular life when the effort fizzled?
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On her program Full Frontal Samantha Bee reflects on the tragedy of these events and the absurd responses by those who want to avoid the implications of the easy access to guns that enable such shootings to more easily occur.
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When people refer to the ‘old boys network’, they usually think of gatherings in boardrooms, country clubs, and the like. But there is a weird variation of it that is less well known and that is the Bohemian Club that takes place for two weeks annually at a place called the Bohemian Grove. A sociological study of the club suggests that at these gatherings very little plotting and scheming takes place. In fact, such things are actively discouraged. What is encouraged is drinking and playfulness bordering on the downright gross and ridiculous. What that does is build social cohesion among the movers and shakers in society, because when men (and it is open only to men) let their hair down and act silly in a group, it apparently creates bonds among them.
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Last night’s 12th Republican debate was decidedly different in tone from the previous ones, even if the actual content consisted of the same right-wing extremist positions we have heard before. There were no insults and name calling, no interrupting and talking over each other, and no repeated requests to the moderators to be called upon to rebut someone else. The moderators tried a couple of times early on on to get the others to respond to Donald Trump’s statements but they did not take the bait.
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Donald Trump can truthfully call Ted Cruz a liar but there is no question that he is a much bigger liar. The difference is that he gets away with it because he has figured out that when you say something on TV, huge numbers of people hear it and assume it to be true. When fact-checkers later look into your claims and publish the truth, many fewer people (usually just those following politics closely) hear the refutations. So he wins.
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Thanks to reader Reese, I learned that Ray Tomlinson had just died at the age of 74. Who was Tomlinson? He was the person who invented email. In 1971 he was working on ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, and fooling around trying to find more uses for it when he invented it.
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The Republican and Washington and media establishments have failed to stop the rise of Donald Trump and their critics have accused them of not taking him seriously until it was too late.
One evening last June, some of the Republican Party’s wealthiest donors gathered for a cocktail party at an exclusive resort in Deer Valley, Utah, during a three-day retreat hosted by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
They had just heard from six presidential hopefuls. Tom Duncan, the CEO of tool-maker Positec Tool Corp, chatted with a few attendees about a fantasy ticket to secure the White House in November 2016: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as his running mate.
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