All posts tagged: Eisenhower administration

Why Don’t Biden’s Political Wins Register With Voters?

Why Don’t Biden’s Political Wins Register With Voters?

Published by skeptic

Objectively speaking, President Joe Biden has presided over some significant, even historic, accomplishments: a massive vaccine rollout, the biggest infrastructure investment since the Eisenhower administration, the lowest unemployment rate in over 50 years. Yet, when voters are asked about these things, their responses are perplexing. Poll after poll show that voters have never heard of these programs, are annoyed the media isn’t reporting about them more, or they just don’t care. Why don’t Biden’s political and legislative victories penetrate the public consciousness? Political insiders point the finger at Biden. He isn’t a great communicator, they say. He tends to defer and give other people credit. He doesn’t have enough energy. But part of it is also how voters consume political news. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk to Franklin Foer, author of The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future, and Elaina Plott Calabro, a politics writer at the Atlantic, about what political news is—or isn’t—breaking through, and the gap between what voters say they want and …

The Origins of the AR-15

The Origins of the AR-15

Published by skeptic

Eugene Stoner was an unassuming family man in postwar America. He wore glasses and had a fondness for bow ties. His figure was slightly round; his colleagues called him a teddy bear. He refused to swear or spank his children. “Boy, that frosts me,” he’d say when he was upset. He liked to tweak self-important people with a dry sense of humor. He hated attention. A lifelong tinkerer and a Marine veteran, he was also fascinated by the question of how to make guns shoot better. When an idea came to him, he scribbled it down on anything he could find—a pad of paper, a napkin, the tablecloth at a restaurant. He had no formal training in engineering or in firearms design. Yet it was inside Stoner’s detached garage in Los Angeles, during the 1950s, that the amateur gunsmith, surrounded by piles of sketches and prototypes, came up with the idea for a rifle that would change American history. Today, this weapon is the most popular rifle in America—and the most hated. The AR-15 is …