A collection of opinionated commentaries on culture, politics and religion compiled predominantly from an American viewpoint but tempered by a global vision. My Armwood Opinion Youtube Channel @ YouTube I have a Jazz Blog @ Jazz
and a Technology Blog @ Technology. I have a Human Rights Blog @ Law
"It is sometimes said that Trump’s support is confined to the poorly educated, but in the Granite State he also came out ahead among people who attended some college and among college graduates. The only educational demographic with which he didn’t finish first was voters with a postgraduate degree."... "When Trump makes offensive comments or insults his opponents and media critics, it seems only to confirm in the minds of many Republican and independent voters that he is an authentic anti-politician. Last weekend, Adam Gabbatt, a reporter for theGuardian, visited a biker barin Seabrook, New Hampshire, where he found quite a few Trump supporters. “He’s bringing a point of view that isn’t common in politics,” one of the bikers said. “He’s self-funding so nobody can buy him,” said another."
"On Sunday, at the Corinthian Baptist Church in Des Moines, former President Bill Clinton, looking frail and sounding faint, stumped for his wife, working through her qualifications with a husband’s devotion and a Svengali’s facility.
But one thing he said stood out to me for its clear rhetorical framing.
He attributed much of the anger that’s present in the electorate to anxiety over a changing demographic profile of the country, but then said: We are going to share the future. The only question is: What will be the terms of the sharing?"
Mr. Christie accomplished something that the rest of the Republican field has repeatedly tried but failed to do so far: diminish and even embarrass Mr. Rubio, whose rapid rise in the polls, broad appeal and seeming imperviousness to attack have made impeding him his rivals’ most urgent mission.
Mr. Christie, who as a presidential candidate has frequently suppressed his most pugilistic instincts, cast off any restraint and did what he does best: slice and slash.
He derisively called Mr. Rubio nothing more than a programmed deliverer of polished-sounding lines.
Seconds later, Mr. Rubio seemed to prove Mr. Christie right.
Mr. Rubio was already on the defensive. Pressed to prove that, despite his short time and lack of major accomplishment in the Senate, he had the experience and skills to be president, Mr. Rubio instead pivoted quickly to a well-rehearsed argument about President Obama’s liberal agenda.
"In the end, both Roberts and Alito are solidly conservative justices—willing to use a range of interpretative tools to push the law to the right in a number of critical areas. But there is one significant difference between the two justices, and that difference helps explain why their records have been materially different in their first decade on the Court. As we concluded after taking a year-long look at Roberts’s first decade as chief justice, Roberts is deeply concerned about the institutional legitimacy of the Court—since joining the Court, he’s repeatedly expressed the concern that the Court not be seen as an extension of the political process—and there are areas in which that concern trumps his ideology. In contrast, Alito’s record is almost always consistent with his conservative ideology."
AEDLE / GETTY
Donald Trump’s campaign said that Fox News’s C.E.O., Roger Ailes, can’t “toy” with him, and so he’s not going to the network’s debate in Des Moines on Thursday night. The Republican debates had already become strange playthings, with giant planes on the stage, and grown men having tantrums about how much attention they were getting. They argued about how they would scare people in other countries and beat them up, and the less popular candidates attacked one another and hoped that no one would notice that they weren’t going after the bully. There was a debate in which they were asked about putting a woman’s picture on American currency, and they started talking about their moms and cool foreign ladies. It was getting pathetic. The sitcom—or tragicom—needed a bright new character. Fox News seems to have thought that Megyn Kelly, its intelligent host, might do the trick. But Donald Trump doesn’t want to play with her anymore.
He had done so, plenty, after she asked him a pointed question in an earlier debate about his attitudes toward women. That led to Trumpian Twitter attacks and his description of blood from “her wherever.” It also encouraged the idea that Kelly might be the voice of a more sensible wing of the right, but it’s not clear that there is any such thing, or not in any coherent form. And, anyway, that’s not how Fox News was using her. Instead, it was playing up the gladiatorial aspect: Can Trump take on the smart blonde? Their interaction would indeed have been a side show in the debate—an illuminating one, perhaps, or maybe just a very special episode in this series of Republican dysfunction. After Trump’s complaints about whether Kelly could be fair to him.
