Top of the Ticket

In an interview on NBC News, a young millennial woman gave her assessment of the first presidential debate of 2016: Hillary Clinton seemed overly scripted while Donald Trump looked strong and passionate.

So much for the unanimous mainstream media verdict that a well-prepared Clinton crushed a poorly-prepped Trump in their first face-to-face contest.

The first debate of the 2016 presidential campaign is underway. The zingers are flying, the truths are being told, the spin is being spun and the dubious assertions are piling up. I am tracking all of that with my Presidential Debate Zingometer!

Following along as I post the results throughout the debate.

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

With that phrase, used in several comedic sketches during a TV show in September 1970, the brilliant knuckleheads who were the writers and cast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus created a meme that has periodically popped up in popular culture ever since.

Rolling Stone’s politics writer Matt Taibbi is a worthy heir to the late, great Hunter S. Thompson. While Thompson was the counterculture’s avenging angel on acid, Taibbi is far more grounded.

At some point in every election cycle, a TV news anchor — and more likely several of them — will speak in reverential tones about “the wisdom of the American people.” This expression of clichéd, lazy patriotism implies that the collective choice made by voters when they go to the polls is magically infallible. Unfortunately, that is simply not true.

The bromance between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is the key to understanding the kind of leader Trump wants to be for America.

Throughout his run for the presidency, Trump has had nice things to say about the Russian strongman, precisely because he views Putin as a strong man — not only tough, commanding and ruthless, but a guy with very high popularity numbers.