Archive for the ‘American current affairs’ Category
How many executive orders has Barack Obama issued?
November 20th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
On my flight from London to Washington DC to spend Thanksgiving with American friends, I met an intelligent and articulate Anerican who voted for Donald Trump, who hated Hillary Clinton, and who told me that Barack Obama had issued more executive orders than the previous seven presidents combined. I told him that he was absolutely […]
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Thanksgiving in the USA (2)
November 20th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
On Saturday, I flew to the United States in a British Airways Airbus A380. The aircraft was absolutely packed and I had to content myself with a window seat instead of my usual preferred aisle seat, but the two passengers to my side were fascinating. One was an American cyber security expert who voted for […]
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Thanksgiving in the USA (1)
November 19th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
For some time, it has been on my bucket list that I should enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner in the USA. I’ve seen this event in so many American television shows and movies and it looks such a lot of fun, so I persuaded my good American friends Mike and Laura Grace to invite me over […]
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Will we ever see a moron in the White House?
November 18th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
After every recent presidential election, this quote does the rounds on the Net: “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House […]
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Who are Reince Priebus and Stephen Bannon?
November 15th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Now that the world is having to come to terms with the election of Donald Trump as the President-elect of the United States, there is intense interest in whom he is going to appoint to advise him and serve in his cabinet. We have the first two names: Reince Priebus, 44 year old Chairman of […]
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U.S. presidential election (37): why the Electoral College should be scrapped and why it won’t be
November 11th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
The counting is not quite over in the US presidential election but it looks as if Donald Trump won a comfortable majority in the Electoral College but Hillary Clinton won 200,000 or so more votes nationwide. How can this be? It’s because of how the Electoral College works. The President is not elected directly by […]
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U.S. presidential election (36): stop the world, I wanna get off
November 9th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
I spent the whole of last night at the Marylebone Sports Bar and Grill in central London with a few hundred Americans resident in Britain – all Democrats wanting a victory by Hillary Clinton. I arrived about 10.15 pm and stayed until the place closed at 5.30 am, so it was 6.20 am before I […]
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U.S. presidential election (35): the world holds its breath
November 7th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Tomorrow is polling day in a US presidential election which is widely judged to have been the most bitter and divisive in modern times. In fact, about a third of the ballots likely to be cast have already been made in early voting. That is at least 41 million votes across 48 states. The latest […]
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U.S. presidential election (34): how does the electoral college work?
November 6th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
On Tuesday, at long last, American voters go to the polls in the Presidential election – as well as the election of the whole of the House of Representatives and a third of the Congress. What non-Americans following the election need to understand is that constitutionally the President is not elected by the voters but […]
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Ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?
October 29th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
The Dunning-Kruger effect is defined as “a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is”. The phenomenon was first observed in a series of experiments by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of the department of psychology at Cornell University in 1999. Policial commentators […]
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