Buried in this rundown of a recent NBC/WSJ poll results is this nugget, from an NBC/WSJ poll: Americans think their government "should do more to solve problems and meet the needs of Americans" by a nearly six to four margin. 57 to 39 is a big spread, but really, given the question's wording -- i.e., "solve problems" -- that spread should be even bigger, since government can, in theory, solve problems by doing something or by doing nothing. For example, it can solve problems both by preventing pollution and by not spying on good Americans without a warrant.
DHS Secretary John Kelly admits on CBS's Face the Nation that he doesn't know how to stop "homegrown terrorists." But that's our Trump Administration -- always boasting about how good they are at the unnecessary or the harmful, while utterly helpless to do their actual jobs. But of course there's also more to domestic terrorism than home-grown ISIS fanatics -- the Planned Parenthood bomber wasn't an ISIS fanatic.
The Buffalo News headline asks a provocative question: "How Did (NY Gov. Andrew) Cuomo Make $783,000 on Memoir That Sold 3,200 Copies?" And Jim Naureckas at FAIR notes that a) the corporation that published his memoirs is Harper-Collins, owned by, you guessed it, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which has made a habit of funneling large royalty payments to politically-connected authors, and b) News Corporation just so happened to be supporting certain tax cut proposals before the legislature at that time. Could this suspicious appearance of "legalized bribery" scuttle a Cuomo Presidential race in 2020, or a third Cuomo term as Governor in 2018? We can only hope!
Donald Trump says he won't fire Press Secretary/Utter Hack Sean Spicer because, get this, he "gets great ratings" and "(e)veryone tunes in" to watch him. I don't think hate-watching is a widespread phenomenon, particularly among mature people, and I also doubt Nielsen actually tracks Mr. Spicer's conferences, but Mr. Trump's statement is more proof that all he cares about is that you're talking about what he's doing, not whether he's doing anything particularly well, or even whether the people approve of what he's doing. In short, it's all about the drama.
Finally, over in France, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen survive the first round of voting in the Presidential election; they'll proceed to a runoff in a little less than two weeks. So, to sum: the actual left-wing populist and the nominal conservative didn't make it to the runoff, so a poll-favored establishment centrist will face off against a far-right anti-immigrant candidate who pretends to be an economic populist. Gosh, doesn't that all sound familiar?
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