It’s fun to play games, and much of that fun can come from winning. If it’s a simple game, like checkers, it’s easy to keep score. For every checker you capture, your opponent loses one. Simple! This straight-forward approach is called a zero-sum game: “an advantage that is won by one of two sides is
You may remember John Boehner as the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. His political resume also includes being the Representative for Ohio’s 8th congressional district from 1991 to 2015, the House Minority Leader from 2007 until 2011, and House Majority Leader from 2006 until 2007. During his time in government service, Boehner was more
If you think the current political period is divisive, consider the era following the Civil War. It was a time when some thought our very democracy was broken. The trauma of war was followed by economic and technological disruption, and many turned to extreme partisanship. The result was an increased voter turnout in the closest,
You may recall reading about the U.S. Women’s National Team in soccer protesting about not being treated equally with the men’s team. You may remember their 2019 gender-discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation over pay and workplace issues (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/u-s-soccer-reaches-settlement-world-cup-women-s-team-n1249603). Well, it’s come up again, this time in softball. The Women’s College World Series
Are we a racist country? No matter your politics, the inescapable conclusion is if we aren’t today (a big if), we certainly have been for most of our history. I do a lot of reading, especially about our past, and I keep running across these little reminders of how divisive our race relations used to
The events of this election cycle have caused a renewed examination of our democracy. Our system of government survived a president who either didn’t believe or was unwilling to accept the election results that denied him a second term. This proved the U.S. Constitution is a strong document, capable of surviving the most difficult challenge.
Now that the presidential election has been 99 percent settled, the next contest on the political sports schedule is the lineup of President-Elect Biden’s Cabinet. So far, he is keeping his promise to emphasize diversity, which is good because there are a lot of constituencies that expect to be represented. Of course, it wasn’t always
Since there has been so much focus on polling during this year’s election cycle, I thought it appropriate to commemorate the birthday of George Gallup, born November 18, 1901 in Jefferson, Iowa. Gallup was a pioneer of survey sampling methods and founded the Gallup public-opinion poll. This is from The Writer’s Almanac of November 18, 2020
There has been so much written about this year’s election. All indications are it really is a pivotal event in this country’s future. How pivotal? I don’t believe any president should be judged until twenty years have passed, but where we go from here will be fascinating to watch. Since we have been putting together
Normally I don’t discuss politics here, and I didn’t watch last night’s Presidential Debate. I usually don’t watch speeches, either. I monitor a half-dozen news feeds, and I figure if anything important happens, I’ll learn about it that way. But what these news sources have told me today has caused an assessment of our current