Here are the topics for this week's blog: The Donald vs. The House (of Commons); the real Mr. Conservative; she's baaaaaack!; the media; America's future.

Mr. Speaker.... The Washington Post's Dana Milbank recently wrote about the uproar in the British House of Commons as the MPs, even though lacking legal authority, considered the questions: "Is Donald Trump dangerous? Or is he merely a buffoon?" Milbank notes that Commons was moved to consider banning Mr. Trump from Great Britain after, Half a million Britons, reacting to Trump’s pledge to ban Muslims from entering the United States, had signed a petition calling for Trump to be banned from Britain. A travel ban is up to the Home Office, not Parliament, but legislators decided to have a debate because, as Labour MP Paul Flynn said in introducing the topic, “it is very difficult to ignore the vox pop.”
     One of the joys of the internet is being able to stream events from abroad and so you could listen to this very, very British debate in the Grand Committee Room in Westminster Hall. The discussion was, for the most part, so civilized, so understated that an American audience might not have realized they were watching British parliamentarians in action.

William [F. Buckley] where are you now? In his Saturday column, Milbank noted that the National Review, stalwart bastion of the Republican conservative establishment, had printed an editorial very critical of Trump. The difference between the urbane, thoughtful Buckley and the "unmoored" Trump calls to mind the Grand Canyon. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones....a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself. In swift order, the national Republican National Committee withdrew its invitation for National Review to host yet another Republican candidate debate next month. One can only wonder who will be "eating crow" in a few week's time.
     Milbank concluded, That soft flapping sound you hear is the Grand Old Party waving the flag of surrender to Trump. Party elites — what’s left of the now-derided “establishment” — are acquiescing to the once inconceivable: that a xenophobic and bigoted showman is now the face of the Republican Party and of American conservatism.

A reprise for The Sarah. The late famed sports commentator, Howard Cosell, was often referred to as "the mouth." This past week "the mouth" of American politics, Sarah Palin, re-emerged on the 2016 presidential scene to endorse The Donald. Now the talking heads of politics, English grammarians, and late night talk show hosts all have a new -- and constant -- source for their latest comments, prognostications, and humor. Columnist Fareed Zakaria quotes an unidentified European chief executive whose comment on the world's economic situation seem apropos to our presidential contest: "We’re moving into a very difficult world. We need grown-ups in charge.”
     Columnist Kathleen Parker notes, "The challenge for those of us in the observation business is to illuminate what’s plainly obvious without offending those who prefer not to see. But there’s no winning once passions are engaged, and hating the messenger is a time-honored tradition."

The knight in shinning armor? Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the nonpartisan American Enterprise Institute, writes that a strong independent candidate in November  2016 might well be a nightmare.  "[A]t least theoretically, a strong independent candidate might attract some partisans on both sides who believe he or she has a better chance than their own party’s candidate to thwart the evil candidate from the hated other party"
     But, because our presidents are chosen by the electoral college, not popular vote, the election might well be thrown into the House of Representatives where states vote as 50 delegations, not individual representatives.  The current line up of state delegations: 33 Republican, 3 evenly split, 14 Democrat. Most likely result: a politically weakened president lacking a meaningful mantle of legitimacy.

And in closing, Jennifer Rubin lists "6 things the media needs to stop doing this election cycle." Not that it is likely to happen, but take a look at her column if you're interested.

What lies ahead? The NY Times headline for Edurado Porter's story is meant to get your attention: "America's best days may be behind it." Porter posits that,  "[this very idea] lies at the heart of the current political unrest. And it is about to elbow its way forcefully into the national conversation."           Further food for thought come in The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert J. Gordon, professor of economics at Northwestern University, who writes in the introduction, that in the end he “[doubts] that the standard of living of today’s youths will double that of their parents, unlike the standard of living of each previous generation of Americans back to the late 19th century.”
     Gordon notes with apprehension these coming problems: less technological innovation; an aging work force, including women; fewer gains in education; growing concentration of income; declining total productivity. On the bright side, economics has few reliable long-term models and the future of scientific progress is equally hard to predict.

The really, really big snow. On several CLOSE UP government studies trips to D.C. with my students, we experienced just how little it takes to shut down the nation's capital. This last storm would have been "fun" for CO students; having come from Denver, they would have had the necessary outer wear to enjoy the snow, though for many this might have been their first wet, eastern, "non-powder" blizzard. Great for snow forts, snow ball fights, etc. On one past snowy trip, the CLOSE UP staff, stuck in the hotel with 400+ students, wisely called a mid-afternoon break to lose the cabin fever with fort-building and then snow ball maneuvers. Great fun!

Thank you for reading. If you were snowed in, go slowly when shoveling out.