Moving at a stately 30 miles an hour, the woman drove her tank-like vehicle right through the stop sign and almost through me as I crossed the street. Like the psychiatrist assigning mental illness at the mere sound of crazy shouting, I didn't have to look at the motorist. I just knew from her behavior that she was yakking on a cellphone. Sure enough, she was.
Almost all political commentators agree on one thing. The Republican presidential campaign is unlike any we have experienced. It is not a campaign of steady trends and continuities, but rather of emotional reversals and discontinuities. Perhaps this is so because the last 3 to 4 years have been a shocking time of discontinuities and reversals for America.
Following the GOP debate that nearly the whole world watched on Saturday night, the president on Sunday made it very clear that he will not back off his class-warfare vision in the coming year. Obama told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes that middle-class inequality will be his big theme, and that somehow successful earners, investors, and small-business owners are to blame.
Yes, there are those charming reasons "French Women Don't Get Fat," as outlined in the popular book of that name by Mireille Guiliano. Portion control is key. Frenchwomen may eat their famously rich sauces and fatty pates with gusto, but only in dainty amounts. They go for quality over quantity and avoid "diet" foods -- said to drain off the hearty flavors that sate appetites. And, of course, they walk more.
It was a week of risk-taking in the 2012 presidential race.
Barack Obama, his job approval languishing in the low 40s, delivered a much heralded speech in Osawatomie, Kan., framing the choice between the parties in class-warfare terms.
Held aloft by the highest approval ratings of any governor in America, Andrew Cuomo scarcely seemed to worry about angering his state's progressives, who were disappointed by his refusal to extend a state surtax on New York's millionaires.
Liberals and conservatives both seem obsessed with the behavior of "the 1 percent," but there the similarity ends. Liberals seek to change the ways of the richest 1 percent, while many conservatives focus on the bottom 1 percent. The latter was on display as Republican Newt Gingrich proposed having poor young people clean their schools. He described them as "children in housing projects." You know who that is.
Conventional wisdom is that the Republican presidential field is set, and that it is much too late for a new candidate to enter the race.
In years past, that would be absolutely correct. Over the last few decades, dozens of primaries and caucuses have been shoe-horned into the opening weeks of the election year, with the tendency on the Republican side for the front-running candidate to score a quick knockout.
One of the nice things about human history is that no matter how much people or their leaders misjudge events and make a hash of things, within a few centuries, the debris is cleared away, and we can have another go at getting things right.
How many of you want your holiday greetings to arrive in the form of thick paper cards delivered by the United States Postal Service? Now, how many prefer your cheery wishes to arrive in your e-mail inbox, always available via a click or two, assuming you remember where they’re stored? Let’s have a vote on that loaded question.
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind about Newt Gingrich, as he leads in polls for the Republican presidential nomination nationally and in Iowa and South Carolina, and may be threatening Mitt Romney's lead in New Hampshire.
Marketing genius is perhaps the most appropriate way to describe Donald J. Trump's newest incarnation as the announced host -- he can hardly be called a "moderator" -- of a post-Christmas Republican debate sponsored by Newsmax, the conservative magazine. Why did several candidates, including potential victim Jon Huntsman, instantly agree to join this spectacle?
The Senate’s curious and byzantine rules and traditions are well explained in Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate, part of his sprawling, multi-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson (the fourth volume is scheduled to be released next year). Johnson, through his own cunning and ruthlessness, was arguably the most powerful Senate leader ever, as he bent the supposedly uncontrollable upper chamber to his will.
Dwell magazine is the Architectural Digest for hipsters. It promotes minimalist living stripped of color and frou-frou.
One question I sometimes have been asked in this presidential campaign goes something like this: Why does Mitt Romney sound so corny?
Sunday on "Meet the Press" Colin Powell blamed divisive, poisonous Washington politics on the media and the Tea Party. The essence of Powell's argument was: "Republicans and Democrats are focusing more and more on their extreme left and extreme right. And we have to come back toward the center in order to compromise. ... The media has to help us.
A real conservative would say: "Government should stay out of health care. Let Americans meet their medical needs in the free market." I respectfully disagree, but thanks for being clear.
What should be done about income inequality? That basic question underlies the arguments hashed out in the supercommittee and promises to be a central issue in the presidential campaign.
Tasteless and questionable as it was for CNN to "co-sponsor" a Republican presidential debate with a pair of right-wing Washington think-tanks, at least the branding was accurate.
As we approach the festive season -- the elongated, enchanting month from Thanksgiving through Christmas to New Years -- my mind has been drifting through various memorable past holidays. Some have been personal -- the last one with my father before he died. But one that stands out for historic reasons was Christmas 1991.
