Donald Trump, a person who will never be president, has nevertheless been the nexus of the American media’s coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign season, an event which is nominally about determining who will be president in 2016. This dynamic will not change in tonight’s Republican debate. As long as it’s going to continue, don’t you wonder what he’d do if he were actually elected?
At 8 p.m. Eastern, the top eleven candidates for the Republican nomination for the presidency will take the stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, to embarrass themselves, their loved ones, and the country they hope to lead as they vie for a chance to run this great nation into the ground. Again.
Who can put a price on human life? According to a grand jury report: the brothers of Baruch College’s Pi Delta Psi fraternity, who googled the cost of an ambulance as a pledge lay dying before determining such medical assistance would be too expensive.
When Terry Jones burned a copy of the Quran outside of his Gainesville, Florida, church in 2011, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed didn’t riot, like some outraged Muslims did in the Arab world, or protest peacefully, like many fellow followers of Islam did elsewhere. He didn’t even stay home, turn off the TV, and try to ignore Jones’ provocations. Mohamed was there, standing with Jones at the pastor’s Dove World Outreach Center, just before Jones burned the book.
There are sprawling industries and self-proclaimed career “terrorism experts” in the U.S. that profit greatly by deliberately exaggerating the threat of Terrorism and keeping Americans in a state of abject fear of “radical Islam.” There are all sorts of polemicists who build their public platforms by demonizing Muslims and scoffing at concerns over “Islamaphobia,” with the most toxic ones insisting that such a thing does not even exist, even as the mere presence of mosques is opposed across the country, or even as they are physically attacked.
Hoping to impress the teachers at his new school, an Irving, Texas, high school freshman named Ahmed Mohamed brought a homemade clock with him to MacArthur High Monday morning, which he’d assembled before bed the night before. When he showed it to those teachers, though, they were something other than impressed, and by Monday afternoon, Mohamed was being led out of school in handcuffs. Ahmed’s English teacher believed the device was a bomb.
Jeb Bush’s Super PAC, Right to Rise, premiered a new campaign ad this week denouncing Donald Trump and touting America’s bright new future. What a commercial, what a country—if there were a voting booth on my desk, I’d pull the lever right now. Only one problem: Jeb Bush’s “America” is really comprised of about $100 worth of B-roll, shot in Asia and the UK.
Ted Cruz, the Texas Hair Gel Depository, wants to train the full power of the world’s mightiest military on a lil bug.
Sometimes we’re confronted with difficult truths about our heroes, America. And sometimes we’re blessed with incredible stories. On days like today—both. The New York Times reports that one of the stars of FXX comedy The League has been lying for years about juuust barely escaping the World Trade Center after the attacks on September 11. He was in Midtown, as it turns out.
Now that school is back in session, the morning subways are overcrowded with a bunch of kids. What’s being done about this?
A Muslim teenager who built a clock for a class project won a prize he really didn’t want: a nontransferable invitation to experience a Texas juvenile detention center, handcuffs and all.
Wish there were a “dislike” button? Well, damn—you should have wished for something much better. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that a “dislike” button is imminent for Facebook, the terrible social network that you hate.
