In all the reportage and commentary on the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, I haven't seen much mention of an interesting parallel between the Iranian mullah regime's attacks on America this past week and its attacks when it first came to power 40 years ago.
— Nationalization has pushed urban and rural areas apart; Maine and Nebraska are no exceptions to this trend, and their unique electoral vote allocation systems are highlighting that division.
— The Omaha-based NE-2 supported Republicans in the past two presidential elections, but by decreasing margins, and could feasibly vote blue in 2020.
— Maine’s two districts, once political mirror images of each other, have drifted steadily apart. The Crystal Ball sees Donald Trump as a favorite to carry ME-2 again, though Democrats should retain the state’s other three electoral votes.
— In a close national election, Maine and Nebraska’s respective second districts could provide potentially decisive electoral votes.
My plan to "Keep America Great" is very simple:
1) Stop exporting American soldiers to countries that hate our guts.
2) Stop importing people from countries that hate our guts.
Congressional hearings were created to educate lawmakers so they have knowledge before they pass bills or impeach a president.
Let's face it: 2019 is going to be a hard year to beat -- stocks and 401(k) plans up more than 25% on average, wage gains of 3% to 5%, 7 million surplus jobs and the lowest unemployment and inflation rates in nearly 50 years. That's a lot to celebrate.
Fifteen years after the U.S. invaded Iraq to turn Saddam Hussein's dictatorship into a beacon of democracy, Iraq's Parliament, amid shouts of "Death to America!" voted to expel all U.S. troops from the country.
People born in the 1960s may be the last human beings who will get to live out their full actuarial life expectancies.
"Climate change now represents a near- to mid-term existential threat" to humanity, warns a recent policy paper by an Australian think tank. Civilization, scientists say, could collapse by 2050. Some people may survive. Not many.
From the first years of the one-fifth of this century already completed, we've been told that a new, ascendant America -- more nonwhite, more culturally liberal, more feminist -- was going to dominate our politics for years to come.
If Western elites were asked to name the greatest crisis facing mankind, climate change would win in a walk.
There hasn't been another recent Senate primary challenge quite like it.
— Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is facing a strong primary challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D, MA-4) in 2020. While challenges to entrenched incumbent senators aren’t an everyday occurrence, the Markey-Kennedy race is especially unusual in recent Senate history
— Most senators who attract primary challenges are weakened in some way — they face questions about their advanced age, their party loyalty, or a brush with scandal — or else face a challenge on ideological grounds. Yet none of these factors fit the Markey-Kennedy contest.
— Over the past three decades, even the top-performing primary challengers had a no better than one-in-nine chance of ending up in the Senate. Yet at this point, Kennedy — bucking history — seems like a modest favorite in the race.
I learned three new things this year that made my life better!
I share them with you here, hoping they make your 2020 easier.
My "life hacks" are about popcorn, iPhones and butter.
I live to write. I write to live.
The close of 2019 marks two full decades since I entered national newspaper syndication. You are reading the 1,571st column I've filed with Creators Syndicate. The years have flown and so have the words: More than one million of them carefully marshaled each week for the past 1,043 weeks to enlighten, entertain and enrage.
These days, when you listen to the gloom of the media and many of the presidential candidates, you have to wonder what country these Debbie Downers are talking about.
"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future," Yogi Berra reminded us.
The best of times, the worst of times. Your instinct on which one we're living through is affected by your basic temperament, but it also depends on how well you're observing -- and quantifying -- things in the world around you.
As of Dec. 26, Kim Jong Un's "Christmas gift" to President Donald Trump had not arrived. Most foreign policy analysts predict it will be a missile test more impressive than any Pyongyang has yet carried off.
The last time I checked, Joe Biden was running for president of the United States. But his wife, Jill Biden, demonstrated where the beltway Democratic couple's allegiance and compassion are rooted this Christmas season: Mexico.
This week, children may learn about that greedy man, Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge is selfish until ghosts scare him into thinking about others' well-being, not just his own.
Good for the ghosts.
If there is any lesson we have learned about the Federal Reserve system in the last few years, it is that the supposed oracles who run our central bank are anything but infallible.
As that rail and subway strike continued to paralyze travel in Paris and across France into the third week, President Emmanuel Macron made a Christmas appeal to his dissatisfied countrymen:
"Strike action is justifiable and protected by the constitution, but I think there are moments in a nation's life when it is good to observe a truce out of respect for families and family life."
