Month: February 2020

Candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination made their final pitches to voters this weekend ahead of tomorrow’s first-in-the-nation caucus in Iowa, crossing the state for events and television appearances.

Recent polls show an incredibly tight race in the state on the eve of Monday’s caucuses, making these final events incredibly important opportunities not just to energize their bases, but for candidates to try to win over new supporters in the eleventh hour.

RealClearPolitics’s Iowa polling average currently places Sen. Bernie Sanders at the top of the polls, with a 3.7 percentage point lead over former Vice President Joe Biden. …

Friday, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) became one of a number of GOP lawmakers to say President Donald Trump had committed misdeeds with respect to his actions with Ukraine, but that he should not be removed for it.

On Meet the Press Sunday, Alexander refined that argument, arguing that Trump’s misconduct may have stemmed from a desire to do the right thing that was marred by his inexperience. And he suggested that the fact Trump has been successful in accomplishing Republican priorities may outweigh any wrongs he’s committed.

Alexander was widely watched as lawmakers debated the question of calling new witnesses …

The world is full of assholes. Wherever you live, whatever you do, odds are you’re surrounded by assholes. The question is, what to do about it?

Robert Sutton, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has stepped up to answer this eternal question. He’s the author of a new book, The Asshole Survival Guide, which is basically what it sounds like: a guide for surviving the assholes in your life.

In 2010, Sutton published The No Asshole Rule, which focused on dealing with assholes at an organizational level. In the new book, he offers a blueprint for managing assholes …

With President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial hurtling towards its conclusion, a new poll finds the first week of the proceedings — which contained arguments from the House impeachment managers as well as from Trump’s legal counsel — did little to change public opinion about whether the president should be removed from office.

According to a Politico/Morning Consult national poll that was conducted from January 29-30, 50 percent of registered voters approve of removing President Trump from office while 43 percent disapprove. Those numbers were only slightly different from last week’s version of the same poll, which found 47 …

Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib has apologized for booing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Friday night over comments Clinton has made in recent weeks about Sen. Bernie Sanders, who Tlaib is a prominent campaign surrogate for.

“In this instance, I allowed my disappointment with Secretary Clinton’s latest comments about Senator Sanders and his supporters get the best of me,” Tlaib said Saturday on Twitter. “You all, my sisters-in-service on stage, and our movement deserve better.”

The comments, the booing, and the apology are merely the latest flare-up in a conflict that has been going on since the 2016 primary, …

After resisting calls to amend its rules to give more candidates the opportunity to appear on its debate stages, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has announced it will relax its debate criteria after all.

Previously, the DNC required candidates reach a certain threshold in polling and receive contributions from a certain number of individual campaign donors to receive a debate invitation.

Friday, it was announced candidates will no longer need to meet any donor requirements. Instead, to qualify for February 19’s debate in Las Vegas, Nevada, candidates must either: hit 10 percent in four qualifying national polls, 12 percent in …

Billionaires have enormous influence in American society, whether we like it or not. Do they really need another bullhorn for talking to the non-billionaire public?

That’s one of the core questions surrounding Column, a work-in-progress social network that seems to be centered on leveraging the aphorisms of Silicon Valley billionaires (think Peter Thiel, Marc Benioff) to win attention from fans of the megarich.

Column is a proposal for a “democratized” version of a social media platform like Facebook, where influential people like Thiel — who Column has claimed as a backer — can spread their thoughts to the masses who …

The coronavirus outbreak, centered in China, is evolving at a dizzying speed. And so is the global response. In the past 48 hours alone, Russia and Singapore have sealed their borders to China and the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global public health emergency. Meanwhile, the US government dramatically escalated its response — issuing its highest-level travel advisory, quarantining 195 citizens evacuated from China, and temporarily banning foreign nationals who have recently been to China from coming in.

With the case toll rising steeply, reaching over 11,000 on February 1, with 259 deaths, and face masks…