Hillary Clinton is like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games

When I watched the third democratic debate, I was amused and horrified with the way Hillary Clinton defended the decision to intervene in Libya:

…we have to continue to do what is necessary when someone like Gadhafi, a despot with American blood on his hands, is overturned.

This is precisely the same way that George W. Bush continues to defend the Iraq War:

One thing is certain: The Iraqi people, the United States and the world are better off without Saddam Hussein in power

On these accounts, overthrowing dictators is the right decision because dictators are bad, and we should get rid of bad people. This reminds me way too much of the plot of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2. Spoilers for that movie follow, if you care about such things.

Continue reading “Hillary Clinton is like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games” →

Why Donald Trump is Still Leading

Over the last week, Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign has taken a dark, foreboding tone. First, he discussed with a reporter the possibility that he might watch mosques and consider shutting some of them down:

Well, I would hate to do it [shut down mosques] but it’s something you’re going to have to strongly consider.

I want surveillance of certain mosques if that’s OK. We’ve had it before.

You’re going to have to watch and study the mosques. Because a lot of talk is going on at the mosques…Under the old regime [Bush administration] we had tremendous surveillance going around and in the mosques in New York City.

And then later in the week, Trump suggested that a black lives matter activist who disrupted one of his rallies deserved to be “roughed up”. Perhaps in the coming days we’ll see Trump’s numbers fall, but so far he continues to maintain his lead:

In 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000, or 1996, this stuff would not fly and Trump would be done. What’s going on? Why is he still here?

Continue reading “Why Donald Trump is Still Leading” →

The Third Republican Debate and the Tale of the Terrible Tax Plans

In the third republican presidential debate, the moderators gave the candidates a hard time over their tax plans, and the candidates responded by accusing the moderators of being biased. Said Ted Cruz:

The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions — “Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?” “Ben Carson, can you do math?” “John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?” “Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?” “Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?” How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about? And Carl — Carl, I’m not finished yet. The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every fawning question from the media was, “Which of you is more handsome and wise?”

This was a clever move by Cruz–republican voters have been trained to believe that the media is out to get them, to suspect that whenever the republicans get asked tough questions that the journalists’ claims are exaggerated or even fabricated. He succeeded in distracting the viewing audience from the real story of the third debate–the deeply flawed tax plans laid out by the GOP candidates.

Continue reading “The Third Republican Debate and the Tale of the Terrible Tax Plans” →

The 2016 Candidate Evaluation Series Finale

Now that Joe Biden has finally made up his mind and decided not to run for president, I can conclude my candidate evaluation series. This series finale post will provide you with a number of election-related resources:

My thoughts on Biden’s decision
Links to all the extant candidate evaluation posts along with all the additional election-related content I have written so far.
A full league table of the presidential candidates in which they score points for supporting policies that would benefit the country and lose points for supporting policies that would harm the country.
Mini-Evaluations of some of the third party candidates and marginal figures (e.g. Jill Stein, Lawrence Lessig, etc.)
Statistics on how popular the different candidates’ evaluations have been with blog readers

Continue reading “The 2016 Candidate Evaluation Series Finale” →

Misconceptions: The United States is Not “Too Big” to be More Like Denmark

Since the Democratic Party debate, folks have been talking about Bernie Sanders‘ desire to make the United States more like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. One of the most common responses to Sanders I’ve heard is the idea that the United States is too big to successfully imitate the Nordic countries. During the debate, Anderson Cooper himself said:

Denmark is a country that has a population — Denmark is a country that has a population of 5.6 million people.

I’ve seen the same thought echoed by many people, even people who are otherwise quite sympathetic to Sanders. This is very odd, because if we subject this thought to even the tiniest amount of scrutiny, it collapses.

Continue reading “Misconceptions: The United States is Not “Too Big” to be More Like Denmark” →