The Weekly Sift

I’m back after a week on the west coast.

I expected to do a State of the Union post. But oddly, what struck me was a stretch of Nikki Haley’s SOTU response — and not the one that got all the attention. The part of her speech that everyone covered was the anti-Trump part, where she said the GOP shouldn’t “follow the angriest voices”. More interesting to me, though, was that she went on to give a positive message about what the country could expect from a Republican president. I’m not hearing that kind of thing anywhere else, so I thought I’d call it to your attention.

Naturally, though, my reaction to that litany of future accomplishments wasn’t a simple “Gee, that’ll be great.” Instead, I went through it line-by-line and asked whether the policies Republicans are proposing could actually lead to these results. The result is “The Positive Republican Message, Annotated”. It should be out shortly.

I’ve also been paying attention to the militia that has taken over that wildlife refuge in Oregon. At first I thought I’d write an in-depth article about it, but then I decided I’d never get all the background reading done in time. So instead I started summarizing all the good articles other people have been writing. Then that got out of hand and turned into its own article after all. It still needs an introduction and a title, so that probably won’t be out until 10 or 11.

The weekly summary will cover the Iran negotiations, Obama’s SOTU and gun townhall, the Episcopal/Anglican kerfuffle, the Cruz birther thing, and a few other topics before closing with the War and Peace trailer — I’m not entirely sure what it has to do with War and Peace, but wow.