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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / Cruz-ifiction / Open Thread: Repubs Turn Their Lonely Eyes to… ‘Satan’?

Open Thread: Repubs Turn Their Lonely Eyes to… ‘Satan’?

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And yet — Politico, this afternoon:

Ted Cruz on Tuesday nabbed an unlikely endorsement: the backing of a Bush.

Neil Bush, a brother of George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, was listed (along with his wife) as one of 13 new additions to Cruz’s national finance team. The campaign said the new additions are all former supporters of other candidates, including Bush, Rand Paul, Rick Perry and Marco Rubio.

This follows the release last week of a list of several other previous Jeb Bush backers now supporting Cruz, whose hardline conservative approach is generally at odds with the one Jeb Bush took…

That would be Neil ‘Silverado-Ignite!’ Bush, runt of his litter. The GOP “Establishment” — such as it remains — lunges for what it perceives as the least worse choice. Another ‘risky’ tactic in a season of increasingly wild swings. Per Bloomberg View:

… The bad news [for the RNC] is that the vehicle of Trump’s defeat is turning out to be Senator Ted Cruz. With his faux-folksy recitations of Dr. Seuss and “The Princess Bride,” his singular insistence that Obamacare could be repealed, and non-stop obstruction fueled by his self-regard as the only principled man in Washington, he helped grind governing to a halt in recent years. One of the few points of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill is antipathy to Cruz. Vice President Joe Biden captured the feeling at the annual Gridiron Club dinner on March 5, joking that if President Barack Obama really wanted to put his mark on the Supreme Court, he should name Cruz to the open seat. “Before you know it, you’ll have eight vacancies.”

The emergence of Cruz as the savior of his party offers the painful choice between a fast death by gunfire (Trump romping to an unbeatable plurality of delegates within days) or a slow one by poison, as Cruz chips away at Trump’s lead with his latest wins in Kansas and Maine. But there’s no time to waste. The most super of Tuesdays is coming up on March 15 with the winner-take-all contests in Ohio and Florida. If Trump were to win both, the fat lady has sung.

That makes the strategy Cruz announced Friday perilous. Rather than stop Trump from pocketing 99 delegates in Florida by leaving Senator Marco Rubio to consolidate the anti-Trump vote on his own, Cruz has chosen to try to kill off Rubio in the Sunshine State. He announced Friday that he would be moving big time into Florida, opening 10 offices, buying ads, and spending much of his time there…

Vox has a long, painstakingly comprehensive explainer on “Why Ted Cruz might torpedo the strategy to stop Trump”:

Donald Trump is poised to win the Florida primary on March 15, giving him all 99 of the state’s delegates in its winner-take-all primary… But there’s one candidate who might be able to stop Trump and save the strategy: Marco Rubio.

Rubio is still behind Trump in the polls in his home state. But he’s been closing the gap. A Monmouth poll released Monday found Rubio only 8 percentage points behind Trump. And thanks to early voting, which started in Florida on Saturday, Rubio probably has a serious head start on John Kasich and Ted Cruz…

But Ted Cruz doesn’t want to stop Trump; he wants to win. And to keep his chances alive, Cruz is willing to kneecap Rubio in Florida and hand the state to Trump…

…[T]he Cruz campaign’s goal: not necessarily to beat Rubio in Florida, but to convince him to drop out and narrow the field for the rest of the primaries.

The problem is that if Rubio doesn’t win Florida’s 99 delegates, someone else will. And that someone is likely to be Donald Trump. Then, he’ll be on pace to win an outright majority of delegates by the end of the primary.

That’s the “stop Trump” crowd’s worst nightmare. As long as Trump doesn’t have a majority of delegates, they can force a brokered convention in July, and presumably emerge with a non-Trump nominee..

Ted Cruz doesn’t care about the RNC’s “non-Trump nominee”; he cares about Ted Cruz. He was perfectly happy to (literally) embrace Donald Trump as long as it seemed Trump might attract new primary voters who might stick around after Trump got bored/was forced out; he’s never quite stopped angling for the chance to be Trump’s VP candidate (no doubt looking to Cheney as a role model). Going into Cleveland with a yet-to-be-determined winner and a solid bloc of devoted evangelical/libertarian behind him is far from the worst scenario for Ted Cruz…

Reader Interactions

219Comments

  1. 1.

    The Dangerman

    I’ll copy from downstairs as I never had the rights to edit it.

    So, how big of an asshole do you have to be to agree to be Trump’s VP running mate, setting yourself up for being the number two in a historic beat down?

    I suppose Christie would want the Gig, but are the Republicans really going to go with New York (Trump) and New Jersey (you know who); then again, I’m staggered that Trump looks like he’s going to get the nomination. Truly Twilight Zone stuff.

    ETA: I still think Cruz is more electable than Trump; I still don’t think Trump wants the gig, he just wants the media hummers through November, and is destined to implode in spectacular fashion.

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    A Cruz nomination would be, if nothing else, hilarious just for the facial expressions as his fellow GOP Senators manage to choke out their endorsements of him.

  3. 3.

    ? Martin

    Bernie is doing a good job making it competitive in Michigan, but states like Mississippi are why Clinton is going to win. I suspect Clinton is going to barely win Michigan, though. My recollection is that Michigan cities tend to come in late.

  4. 4.

    ? Martin

    @The Dangerman:

    but are the Republicans really going to go with New York (Trump) and New Jersey (you know who)

    What makes you think the GOP will have any say in this?

  5. 5.

    LAO

    The emergence of Cruz led to David Brooks emotional breakdown, the morning. It was amusing. I am amused.

  6. 6.

    ? Martin

    Man, Rubio FAR in last in Michigan, and losing to Kasich also in Mississippi. Way below viability in both states so no delegates. No way to spin that in a positive manner.

  7. 7.

    pseudonymous in nc

    I think Bernie may well shave Michigan in a reverse of what happened in Massachusetts, and that’s something Team Hillary needs to pay attention to.

  9. 9.

    ? Martin

    Interesting observation – Dearborn (largely Muslim) going for Sanders (largely Jewish).

  10. 10.

    Mary G

    Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Marco? The GOP establishment still don’t get how much their base hates them. The recent fluffing and spurt of endorsements took his share of the vote from 15-20% to less than 10%.

  12. 12.

    TheBuhJaysus

    Cruz is an anti-government fundamentalist. I find him close to evil.

    Trump is just clownish. If by some act of nature Trump were to win the election in November, he wouldn’t be looking to shut down government or start The Apocalypse. He might just do some good old small hand, inferiority complex killing to prove how tough America is.

  14. 14.

    The Dangerman

    Seems to me Cruz will be looking at 2020 and I don’t think getting your ass kicked in 2016 (even if only VP) would help him there. I can’t see Trump/Cruz.

    I could see a Trump/Palin ticket, however.

    ETA: Palin would be perfect; Trump’s a Carnival Barker and Palin would turn it into a 3 ring circus.

  15. 15.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Mary G: Dick Nixon said on Twitter that Kasich was gunning for Rubio in Mississippi to keep him below 15% so that Marco would get 0 delegates.

    The kneecapping of each other has been amusing to watch.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    It eats up column inches but the chances of a hung convention are exactly zero. (Usual caveats of absent a bombshell revelation/announcement, etc.)

    By this time next month such speculative fiction will have duly vanished.

  17. 17.

    ? Martin

    @The Dangerman:

    I could see a Trump/Palin ticket, however.

    Jesus doesn’t love us that much. But no, Trump thinks she’s an idiot. You could read that off of him when she did her wingnut performance art bit.

  19. 19.

    BBA

    I’m getting worried that there’s nothing that can stop Trump. Is it too early to think about forming a resistance movement?

  21. 21.

    Joel

    The Republican nomination is pretty much sewn up by now. It’s all over but the crying.

  22. 22.

    James E Powell

    @The Dangerman:

    I used to think Trump was in it for the ride, but if he was, he isn’t anymore. Anyone who runs for president has a huge ego – couldn’t do the campaign without it – but Trump’s is something else.

    He can now see a clear path to the nomination. And once he’s there, he believes he can beat either Hillary or Bernie. He may be right.

    I don’t see him walking away from this historical moment.

  23. 23.

    Steve in the ATL

    What is the typical number of threads that will open at a given moment? Need to know how much RAM to add so my box can handle all the tabs. It get confusing!

  25. 25.

    TheBuhJaysus

    @? Martin:
    “Trump thinks she’s an idiot. You could read that off of him when she did her wingnut performance art bit.”

    Too funny. “Thanks you addled dum-dumb, now run along.”

  27. 27.

    Disgruntled former Baud supporter

    Good ol’ Neil Bush. I remember him from this Mother Jones cover story from 1991 called “My three sons” – and he seemed the most overtly crooked of the three.

  29. 29.

    The Dangerman

    @? Martin:

    But no, Trump thinks she’s an idiot.

    So much the better … Trump’s not in it to win, he just wants eyeballs.

  30. 30.

    Nate Dawg

    Idaho is called “Too Early to Call” with Donald Trump v. Cruz.

    So they know the winner but will wait to see the vote totals match the entrance polls.

    Trump is gonna win there, my guess.

  31. 31.

    GregB

    Maybe now Marco Rubio can finally fulfill his calling as a middle manager at a Florida Ponderosa.

  33. 33.

    The Dangerman

    @James E Powell:

    I don’t see him walking away from this historical moment.

    I just wonder how he’s going to handle a Presidential Debate – you know, the kind where there are real questions that require real preparation.

  34. 34.

    TheBuhJaysus

    @efgoldman:

    All right, I’ll revise my statement to “Ted Cruz is Time Bandit’s Pure Evil”

    [last lines]
    Kevin: Mom! Dad! It’s evil! Don’t touch it!
    [Kevin’s parents explode]
    Kevin: Mom? Dad?

  36. 36.

    FlyingToaster

    @The Dangerman: I don’t imagine there will be any actual debates for the general. Trump won’t be willing to share the stage with one of those people.

  40. 40.

    guachi

    Much closer in Michigan than I expected on the Democratic side. Currently Sanders is up by 35,000 votes. In Mississippi Clinton is up by 125,000.

    So the story will be Sanders beats Clinton in Michigan and no one will really pay attention to Mississippi. But Clinton will still net more delegates than Sanders.

  41. 41.

    Nate Dawg

    @Groucho48: And this is where the true damage of legitimizing Trump reveals itself.

    Never fear. Trump will do for comb overs what Hitler did for toothbrush mustaches.

  42. 42.

    Mnemosyne

    That would be Neil ‘Silverado-Ignite!’ Bush, runt of his litter.

    After Jeb?’s dismal primary performance, it’s looking like W really was the smartest of the three all along. Good luck sleeping tonight.

  45. 45.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Nate Dawg:

    Trump will do for comb overs what Hitler did for toothbrush mustaches

    I would laugh but I’m in my forties….

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    What none of the major media seem to cover is that there are 85 Dem delegates allocated to the winner of each MI congressional district.

    As of this moment in time, Clinton is ahead in only 3 of the 14 CDs.

  48. 48.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Mnemosyne:

    That would be Neil ‘Silverado-Ignite!’ Bush, runt of his litter.

    And the Japanese hookers? Or was that DougJ?

  50. 50.

    Jeffro

    @The Dangerman:

    I just wonder how he’s going to handle a Presidential Debate – you know, the kind where there are real questions that require real preparation.

    Great point. A related thought for our eventual Dem nominee: when you get to the debates with Trump, in your opening statement, point out Trump is a failed businessman, a blowhard, a bigot, a racist, and someone who his own party tried desperately to take down for fear of destroying that party and America with it.

    Flat-out slap him with all of it, then smile and talk about policy for two hours and point out how he has none (as far as can be determined) other than ‘build a wall yarrrgh’.

  51. 51.

    NotMax

    Jeb currently in 7th place in the vote totals.

    So he’s coming in just about the same spending $0 as he did pissing away millions.

  52. 52.

    Jeffro

    @Groucho48: yeah and it’s a little weird, too – not a traditional comb-over. More like something you’d expect to see on a made-for-TV sci-fi series, along with a primary-colored tunic and black slacks?

    Chuck, just part that sucker and maybe cut it even closer. Trust me on this.

  55. 55.

    guachi

    @NotMax – Delegates are the only thing that ultimately matter but the person who gets the most votes will be declared the winner of Michigan.

    Although given what you’ve said, if Sanders wins even by a vote he’ll probably get 60% of the delegates and will probably get a majority even if Clinton gets the most votes.

  57. 57.

    mark

    Plenty of brand new Ted Cruz billboards here in Pensacola. Haven’t seen other candidates billboards at all. He is so ugly you can’t even do a glam shot.

  58. 58.

    SFAW

    @chopper:

    ted cruz is just a corn pone dick nixon.

    Different kind of evil: Nixon was all about sticking to the people he thought looked down on him when he was younger; Cruz has a Messiah complex (thanks, dad!) as well as believing himself infallible.

    Nixon was sort-of paranoid (and insecure); Cruz is a sociopath (I don’t know if he’s also a psychopath, but I ain’t ruling it out).

  60. 60.

    Jeffro

    @dmsilev:

    There’s going to be a lot of crying.

    As well there should be. If the GOP powers-that-be had any principles whatsoever, they would have denounced Trump from Day One as a fake, as a fraud, as nothing remotely resembling conservative values. But they didn’t want to alienate those low-info racist voters and now they’ve got ’em. Boy do they ever.

    They ought to round up everyone in the GOP still willing to stand for something, anything, and announce Trump can have the Republican Party, they’re going to form the Freedom Party – same pro-business, pro-fundie, pro-neocon agendas, just without the racism. They could take their fundraisers with them and see how long Trump likes paying for his GOP’s bills on his own.

  61. 61.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    You’re right, Neil was the Japanese hookers guy.

    So in Godfather terms, I’m now seeing W as Michael, Neil as Sonny, and Jeb? as Fredo. I mean, assuming Satan was the casting director of that particular reboot.

  62. 62.

    BBA

    All the Dem primaries are proportional. If it’s 50.5-49.5 it almost doesn’t matter who “won” the state. Hillary’s blowout in MS counts for more than the near-tie in MI.

  63. 63.

    ChrisH

    Something else is going on tonight that makes the election seem trivial in the grand scheme of things

    Google’s DeepMind is playing go against a 9-dan pro champion, currently streaming live. Computers defeating top level go players is a huge jump in capability compared to defeating chess champions. This go program defeated a 2-dan pro champion last year.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFr3K2DORc8

  65. 65.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: Satan is smarter than that.

    ETA: Unless you meant it as a way to torment the damned for eternity. In that case, never mind.

  67. 67.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Mnemosyne:

    So in Godfather terms, I’m now seeing W as Michael, Neil as Sonny, and Jeb? as Fredo. I mean, assuming Satan was the casting director of that particular reboot.

    No, there is no Michael. Neil is Sonny, while both W and Jeb… are Fredo.

  71. 71.

    SFAW

    @Mnemosyne:

    So in Godfather terms, I’m now seeing W as Michael, Neil as Sonny, and Jeb? as Fredo. I mean, assuming Satan was the casting director of that particular reboot.

    More like Larry, his brother Darryl, and his other brother Darryl, I would think

  74. 74.

    Mandalay

    @Jeffro:

    If the GOP powers-that-be had any principles whatsoever, they would have denounced Trump from Day One as a fake, as a fraud, as nothing remotely resembling conservative values.

    And doubly astounding since after their 2012 defeat the GOP researched why they had lost, and published their findings.

    It’s almost as though Trump used their 2012 failings as the blueprint for his campaign, and still nobody said anything against Trump until the last few weeks. It’s not just historians who will be analyzing this; sociologists will be in seventh heaven.

  76. 76.

    WarMunchkin

    I’m a Sanders-dominated party. People were so happy just now, they’re crying. But they worked their hearts out for it. Tonight, Sanders is the 1%.

  79. 79.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Preliminary numbers seem to show it was African-American voters who put Bernie over the top in Michigan — about 33 percent of them went for Bernie over Hillary.

    One hopes this may lead some of the more obnoxious online Berniebros to rethink their stance regarding the relative importance of those particular voters, but I don’t have high hopes.

  81. 81.

    guachi

    Congratulations to Sanders on winning Michigan. Although he still falls farther behind in delegates as Clinton won with about 85% of the vote in Mississippi.

  82. 82.

    ? Martin

    @Mandalay:

    and still nobody said anything against Trump until the last few weeks.

    The GOP themselves gave up the plot on their 2012 analysis as soon as they turned on immigration reform a matter of days after the analysis was published. I figured they decided that owning Alabama was more important than occupying the White House.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    541 diehard votes in Michigan for

    (wait for it)

    George Pataki.

    Like going out to get something for dinner and coming home with gas station mini-mart sushi.

  84. 84.

    Anya

    Tomorrow’s Majority Report should be fun. Sam Seder and his crowd will be bragging like a Trump.

    Congrats to Sanders and his supporters.

  86. 86.

    ? Martin

    @scav: Holy shit, I missed that he actually had a pile of raw meat on a table there.

    My prediction is that Donald tries to choose his daughter as his running mate. She turns 35 a few days before the election.

  87. 87.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Omnes Omnibus: Well done indeed. I thought he was done after the Flint debate, but either people had already made up their minds or they didn’t think the vote against TARP (which also had the auto rescue money in it) mattered as much as other things. I was surprised.

    The NYTimes says that HRC added 17 delegates to her margin today, but she should be worried about OH, PA and similar states going forward. She needs to up her game if she wants this to end sooner rather than later.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  88. 88.

    p.a.

    @Mnemosyne: I don’t know, probably don’t care to know, the Twitter demographics, and only see tweets as they’re posted in other platforms, but I find it hard to believe any more than a small minority of Sanders backers would sit out the general because there’s ‘no difference’ between the parties. A stupid 0.1% is no big thing.

    There are 34 seats up in 2016, of which 24 are held by Republicans. Democrats will need to gain 4 or 5 seats to take control.

    #Organized #Energized

  90. 90.

    NotMax

    @? Martin

    No way is he going to run with a Jewish woman.

    Someone who will be an ineffectual figurehead who also encapsulates the worst of the R brand is more like it.

    Say, Trent Lott.

  92. 92.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Noam Schreiber
    ‏ @ noamscheiber
    Have heard from plugged-in labor source that UAW worked v. hard for Bernie in MI. Thought Hillary totally misrep’d his auto bailout vote.

  93. 93.

    Mnemosyne

    @p.a.:

    As I was saying in one of the threads below, a fair number of online Sanders supporters (of whom Berniebros are a subset) don’t seem to get that even if Sanders ultimately doesn’t get all of the delegates he needs to win the nomination, results like this mean that he will have negotiating power for things like the party’s 2016 platform and appointments in the Clinton administration in exchange for urging his primary voters to support Clinton. It’s what Clinton did in 2008, and I see no reason to think Sanders won’t do the same this year.

  94. 94.

    Matt McIrvin

    “Doctor Science” of Obsidian Wings, commenting on Sam Wang’s site, pointed out that Sanders was killing Clinton among independents, and suggested that the open primary may have been a contributor.

  95. 95.

    eemom

    Cue a deafening cacophony of “Hillary is in deeeeep shit” from the emmessemm tomorrow.

  97. 97.

    Redshift

    Evenings at the Redshift household:

    Ms. Redshift flipped over to MSNBC. After being stuck listening to Chuck Todd for a few minutes, she felt compelled to explain, “I just wanted to hear what Rachel had to say.”

    “Well of course,” I said. “I didn’t think you were fascinated by Chuck Todd. Because you don’t have severe brain damage.”

    (Then she said I ought to post this.)

  99. 99.

    Calouste

    So it looks like Ru-ru-rubio will be gaining no-no-no delegates from the first three states tonight.

  100. 100.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NotMax: but isn’t that same-day declaration? more a matter of requesting a ballot than any kind of registration?

  101. 101.

    Redshift

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I hope that’s true, because the one thing I really want to come out of this contested primary is that the candidates get a chance to find out that their really stupid attacks (that some advisor thought were clever) are actually really stupid, so they can do better in the general.

  105. 105.

    p.a.

    @Mnemosyne: I hope so, but as people here have pointed out, as an I-S he hasn’t been involved in ‘party building/infrastructure’* work to this point, and could conceivably go back to being the I-S Senator from Vermont who just happens to caucus with the Dems.

    *from the look of the party below the national level, state & local organizations have been living under a ‘root hog or die’ system for a while.

  108. 108.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Nate Dawg: I want at least one episode where it’s just Diana Rigg telling every other character things they’d rather not hear.

  109. 109.

    NotMax

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist

    It still becomes publicly released information as to what any voter’s party choice is, which differs from a true open primary when people face no requirement to declare and are handed a ballot and instructed to choose either the D or the R slate inside the voting booth.

  110. 110.

    ? Martin

    @Redshift:

    “Well of course,” I said. “I didn’t think you were fascinated by Chuck Todd. Because you don’t have severe brain damage.”

    Chuck Todd is really pretty good when talking about the mechanics of projecting election results. Everything past that is Peter Principle.

  113. 113.

    Cacti

    FiveThirtyEight’s delegate target for each Dem candidate tonight was: Clinton 85, Sanders 80

    Clinton has 86 so far, Sanders has 69.

    Still 3 to be awarded in MS and 8 in Michigan.

  117. 117.

    scav

    @Cacti: Nah, he’s only interested in the New Klan vote. Clawing desperately to a youth demographic to cling to.

  118. 118.

    magurakurin

    @Cacti: but David Wasserman’s March 3 update on the scorecard had the needed totals at Sanders 93 Clinton 73. But, no matter, she should have won. They need to buckle down and get this done.

  120. 120.

    ? Martin

    @ChrisH: It’s gotten better for me.

    AlphaGo is pretty impressive. I’m not sure people really get how far along even narrow AI is progressing. Autonomous cars are coming sooner than people seem to understand.

  121. 121.

    ? Martin

    @Cacti:

    The Klan admits black people now?

    Dems invented the Klan, and blacks are the real racists, and blacks vote for Dems, therefore black are the Klan.

  125. 125.

    Oldgold

    10 signs for spotting a sociopath
    #1) Sociopaths are charming
    #2) Sociopaths are more spontaneous and intense than other people
    #3) Sociopaths are incapable of feeling shame, guilt or remorse
    #4) Sociopaths invent outrageous lies about their
    #5) Sociopaths seek to dominate others and “win” at all costs
    #6) Sociopaths tend to be highly intelligent
    #7) Sociopaths are incapable of love
    #8) Sociopaths speak poetically
    #9) Sociopaths never apologize
    #10) Sociopaths literally believe that what they say becomes truth merely because they said it

    Remind you of anybody?

  126. 126.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Mnemosyne:

    One hopes this may lead some of the more obnoxious online Berniebros to rethink their stance regarding the relative importance of those particular voters, but I don’t have high hopes.

    Are you able to exist around others without starting arguments? “One hopes” you are getting the therapy you desperately need. Christ, you are a jerk.

  127. 127.

    Nate Dawg

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: can we please keep her around long enough to dress down Daenarys?

    I can see it–Dany needs the Tyrell’s to defeat the Lannister holdouts, but the Queen of Thorns needs her pound of flesh–she openly mocks her self-obsessed idealism and stubborn fatalistic triumphalism, and calls her too skinny to bear an heir anyway.

    Could be amazing. So yea. Let’s get some of that please.

  128. 128.

    ? Martin

    @ChrisH: I’m not fit to analyze the match, but I’ve got thousands of chess matches under my belt and my read of Lee is that he’s working reasonably hard here. That can happen when an opponent is making unpredictable moves, but the commentary suggest that AlphaGo is playing pretty sensibly.

  130. 130.

    scav

    To fill a space that will otherwise be devoted to a deep reading of tea leaves: RIP Michael White, Rocky Horror movie producer also somehow involved with Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Hound of the Baskervilles.

  134. 134.

    Anne Laurie

    @GregB:

    Maybe now Marco Rubio can finally fulfill his calling as a middle manager at a Florida Ponderosa.

    Head manager for Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort (in return for his endorsement in Cleveland). Marco’s proven his talents for providing the very best quality service to old rich snobs — like the headwaiter at a four-star restaurant, he’ll wear a nice suit to work and make as much in tips as he does in salary.

    @Steve in the ATL:

    And the Japanese hookers? Or was that DougJ?

    It was Thai hookers ‘surprising’ Neil on his business travels. He figured it was just their version of pillow mints!

  136. 136.

    Nate Dawg

    What is up with all the “cuck” nonsense on Trump forums? In what cesspool of the Internet did that whole thing start ?

  138. 138.

    Eolirin

    @? Martin: You know, AI has advanced so much that I’m not impressed by a deep learning approach to Go being wildly effective. It honestly feels like a trivial application of what you can accomplish with that sort of technique, and the outcome is almost mundane.

    I realize this is because I’m jaded by the progress that’s been going on and not because it isn’t actually impressive, but so it goes.

  139. 139.

    Raven Onthill

    @Mnemosyne: “Results like this mean that he will have negotiating power for things like the party’s 2016 platform and appointments in the Clinton administration in exchange for urging his primary voters to support Clinton.”

    I hope you’re right. Maybe the Amendment King (a Senator Sanders nickname) gets something after all.

  141. 141.

    Goblue72

    @srv: Seriously? I’m a Sanders supporter and think Clinton is evidence of how much work that activist Democrats need to do to take back the Party from neoliberal elites. And even with that, I’ve hit to say: Go DIAF.

  143. 143.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Nate Dawg: “cuck” seems to be something white supremacists say; you probably figured out it’s short for “cuckold” but it seems to specifically have to do with white guys who let black guys screw their wives, and porn that depicts this.

    Or something like that.

    Now, aren’t you sorry you learned that? I know I am.

  146. 146.

    Raven Onthill

    @srv: I bet when the dust settles, it’ll be the African-American vote in Mississippi. But, no data that I’ve found yet. Maybe tomorrow. One interesting thing is that he seems to have gotten a fair bit of the A-A vote in Mich. I suspected that northern A-As might vote differently than Southern but, we’ll see. Analysis tomorrow, I hope.

  147. 147.

    Goblue72

    @Mnemosyne: Actually, no.

    In 2012, younger to middle range of Gen X were Obama +10. Only cohort more were Millennia’s at +22. Only the oldest of Gen X (those borne just after tail end of Baby Boom) were Romney – at plus 5.

    Everyone older (Boomers, Silents) voted Romney save for a small slice out of Generation Jones.

    This is per Pew. As opposed to “but Jonah Goldberg, derp”

  148. 148.

    Eolirin

    @Nate Dawg: Honestly, it’s just a more bizarre way of implying weakness or someone being a pushover. It’s meant to be emasculating, but it’s one of those things that requires membership in the subculture to not seem deranged, incomprehensible, or insane.

  149. 149.

    Anne Laurie

    @ChrisH: And you’ve given me a chance to promote a great anime series…

    … It is largely responsible for popularizing Go among the youth of Japan since its debut,[1] and considered by Go players everywhere to have sparked worldwide interest in the game, noticeably increasing the Go-playing population around the globe….

    … and every episode closes with a brief tutorial on the basics of Go, to go with the drama of a modern middle-schooler’s introduction to “the cut-throat world of professional players”.

    One of my all-time-favorite series, even though I’m constitutionally incapable of enjoying logic-based games like go or chess.

  150. 150.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Goblue72: She’s being clever with song lyrics. True story: years ago I frequented another blog where someone with her nym and indefatigable zeal for picking fights and making everyone miserable caused many of the regulars to move on. I wound up here. Sometime later she showed up here. I guess there was no one left there to make miserable.

    It’s why I have no patience with her. She’s broken in some fundamental way and fuck everybody else.

  152. 152.

    joel hanes

    @NotMax:

    Someone who will be an ineffectual figurehead who also encapsulates the worst of the R brand

    Marsha Blackburn, then.

    Or Virginia Foxx

    Or Jeff Sessions

    Or Jim Bunning

  154. 154.

    ? Martin

    @Eolirin:

    I realize this is because I’m jaded by the progress that’s been going on and not because it isn’t actually impressive, but so it goes.

    The pace of progress is impressive, if predictable to anyone paying attention. I think about all of the applications if only we could allocate the manpower to build these systems.

  156. 156.

    Cacti

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Just put old people out on the ice floes It will fix everything.

    Did you know that his will be the last election that Boomers matter?

    I guess they’re going to suffer some kind of extinction event during the next 4-years that will miss everyone else.

  158. 158.

    Raven Onthill

    @Omnes Omnibus: I love the way the people who tell me I don’t have a clue never bother to explain why. Could it be, just perhaps, that you can’t? My predictive record is pretty good. I more-or-less called the Sanders and Clinton movements six years ago. I didn’t get it all, didn’t forsee Black Lives Matter, but I’m the only person I recall who even got close. (Didn’t know it would be Sanders, though. “The hope I saw is a Prince of Hed?!” I don’t think anyone could have called that.)

    I think you’re objecting that I don’t understand the sort of intra-party politics where there is common ground and space for compromise. But Sanders is taking positions that the Clintons and their financial backers have long opposed. Not a lot of common ground there and compromise will be difficult. So we’ll see.

  160. 160.

    Cacti

    @srv:

    So Mnem’s non-obnoxious black Berniebros carry Michigan… I look forward to y’alls newsletters.

    You could say there was an economical disparity between these states, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

    And sheesh, why isn’t cuckservative in the lexicon. Are we going to have to be explaining PUMA to the new nicks once the Berns mom’s start shrieking about delegate counts?

    Is there a Wingnutese to English translator you could run that through so that it makes sense to someone who doesn’t read WorldNetDaily?

  161. 161.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Raven Onthill:

    But Sanders is taking positions that the Clintons and their financial backers have long opposed.

    Name them and prove that HRC is opposed.

  162. 162.

    Eolirin

    @? Martin: Eh? Manpower isn’t really the issue. Some of it’s available compute power, and we need newer and faster processors or alternate hardware approaches for that, but a lot of it is fundamental computer science problems, like figuring out how to remove the bottle neck of needing humans to manually handle things like labeling data or how to deal with multiple domains, that remain unsolved. Go is pretty simple to formalize so it’s (relatively) easy to solve. Lots of other things are much harder to formalize, and thus much much harder to deal with.

    There are many people working on those kinds of issues, though. We wouldn’t appreciably speed things up by adding a whole lot more of them.

  163. 163.

    Goblue72

    @Omnes Omnibus: Why? For pointing out the bleeding obvious? For using actual data to note that there is an evident generational divide electorally and has been for some time?

    As I have noted in many comments that that a lot if Boomers here seem to want to pout over, is that there is a generational cleave point and its roughly in the early to mid-40s. That is, those roughly 45 or so and younger – as a whole – and those older – as a whole. Those under that cleave point trend Democrat, those older Republican. Again generally and as a whole.

    It is clear in the voting patterns between Clinton and Sanders even and its breaking roughly along that same age break point. It’s the clave point between those who been most negatively impacted generationally be the screw job of neoliberal, big business and economic elites. Vs those who may have suffered some generationally but not nearly as much.

    And arrogant Me Generation Boomers in the Democratic Party would be well served to start listening. Because the under 45 crowd is itching for a fight against the elites and is getting pretty fed up with business – and politics – as usual.

  164. 164.

    Anne Laurie

    @Nate Dawg:

    What is up with all the “cuck” nonsense on Trump forums? In what cesspool of the Internet did that whole thing start ?

    It started back last summer, as far as I could tell. Out of the lower depths of Reddit, but Erick Erickson seems to have been the one introducing it to ‘normal’ political discourse. (He’s just an ongoing fountain of such ‘fun’, our Erick.)

    There isn’t an entry in the Lexicon because, frankly, I’m still hoping it’ll disappear — along with every single nut job who ever slung it — back into its natural habitat among the MRAs and ‘identarians,’ once this election cycle is over…

  165. 165.

    Mnemosyne

    Well, anyway, I have to go to work in the morning, so it’s bedtime for me. I’ll have to find out later which website(s) I killed by my very presence.

    This one seems pretty sturdy since it’s survived my assholishness since 2007.

  167. 167.

    Raven Onthill

    @Omnes Omnibus: Single Payer. Break up the banks. Dump the Kissingerist realpolitik. All the major issues that Sanders talks about that differentiate him from Clinton. Now Sanders, with 30 years of legislative experience, is good at compromise-building, but it’s going to be hard to get Clinton to budge on these issues and, frankly, she doesn’t strike me as the compromising sort. She’s tough — how could she not be? — and oriented to medium-term goals and, except perhaps in feminist issues, doesn’t seem to care much about the long term. Sanders, of course, is all about the long term. So I see it as likely to be difficult.

    How do you see it?

  168. 168.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Anne Laurie:

    Out of the lower depths of Reddit, but Erick Erickson seems to have been the one introducing it to ‘normal’ political discourse. (He’s just an ongoing fountain of such ‘fun’, our Erick.)

    I’m always amazed by how Erick’s deep evangelical Christian faith informs his behavior, praise the Lord.

  169. 169.

    Cacti

    Since it’s an open thread, from the VerySmartBrothas blog:

    “Maria Sharapova must’ve had some shitty drugs if they made her lose to Serena 18 straight times”

    Now, I’m not sure what meldonium is or what it does, but I do know that performance enhancing drugs are called performance enhancing drugs because they are drugs that presumably enhance performance. I also know that Maria Sharapova, the world’s highest paid tennis player, has lost 18 consecutive times to Serena Williams. The most recent being Jan 26th, the day she was drug tested. Which makes me wonder which performance these drugs were enhancing. Did her hair get more blonde? Did she get better at typing? Did her guacamole improve? Is she doing a better job responding to emails and text messages in a timely manner? Can she drink a whole Hennessy fifth? (Some call that a problem, but I consider it a gift.)

  170. 170.

    Soylent Green

    @Goblue72: Hey Junior.

    One day you will turn 60, and the kids will be asking you why you aren’t dead yet.

    Every time you prattle on about the generations, you put your immaturity on display. Grow the fuck up.

  171. 171.

    Mnemosyne

    @Goblue72:

    The Harvard Center says that Gen-X runs from 1965 to 1984. I’m not sure whose math is problematic here, yours or Pew’s, but there are a whole lot of Gen-Xers who are older than 45, including myself.

    ETA: Also, too, President Obama is a Baby Boomer. Tail end, not Vietnam generation like Hillary and Bernie, but well within the Baby Boom.

    ETA2: I think your beef is with the Vietnam-era Boomers. I’m not always fond of them myself.

  173. 173.

    Cacti

    @Raven Onthill:

    Single Payer. Break up the banks. Dump the Kissingerist realpolitik. All the major issues that Sanders talks about that differentiate him from Clinton. Now Sanders, with 30 years of legislative experience, is good at compromise-building

    Really?

    So which of the above has he comprised into existence during the last 30-years?

  174. 174.

    Eolirin

    @Goblue72</@Goblue72: Are you really unaware of the masssssiiivvve amount of white privilege that you have to have to be able to say that with a straight face, or are you trolling?

    That dynamic only exists as a significant force amongst whites, and predominantly amongst white males specifically.

  175. 175.

    ? Martin

    @Eolirin: No, I think it is manpower. There’s a lot of domains that currently would benefit but either don’t have the recognition by the domain gatekeepers or that are financed in ways that make it difficult to make the transition.

    I’m not referring to pushing the ML envelope further out, but taking activities that should obviously fit in what is already proven and getting that application done.

  177. 177.

    Eolirin

    @Raven Onthill: Single payer and breaking up the banks are not policy objectives, they’re tactics to achieve policy objectives; universal affordable health care and a stable heavily regulated financial sector. Hillary is very much proposing the same objectives, using different means, and has the backing of legitimate liberal and progressive health care experts and economists on her proposals over Sanders’.

    I can’t comment on geopolitics as much. She’s a bit more hawkish than I’d like, but it’s out of my wheelhouse.

  178. 178.

    Raven Onthill

    @Cacti: C’mon, compromise can’t do that. What it can do is make a difference in final legislation. (This is something that I do get about political process.) The Violence Against Women Act, part of the omnibus crime bill that both he and Clinton supported, is an example. Even when he hasn’t been successful, he has taken some hard stands. He was one of the few, perhaps the only, white Representatives to stand with the Congressional Black Caucus against cutting off Pell Grants to students with drug convictions. (And I wish I had more examples, but most of this stuff is inside baseball, and hard to research. I had no idea, back in the 1990s, that I was going to be writing extensively about politics in the 2010s.)

  179. 179.

    Kropadope

    @Cacti: Well, he contributed to the ACA, a reasonable compromise away from single payer. He passed major Veterans’ Administration reform which, though helpful, will not be sufficient to fix all ills at the VA in its compromised form. Aside from that, his status of “king of the amendments.”

    Just because you don’t know what Bernie did, doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. It’s like the Glen Beck model of “no one is talking about this.”

  182. 182.

    Raven Onthill

    @Eolirin: Mmmm. But, see, Clinton’s strategies are based in neo-liberal economic thinking; Sanders are based in socialism. So there’s a fundamental philosophical difference.

    As to foreign policy, I suggest you study the practical results of Kissinger’s policy recommendations; he is regarded on the left (including, it seems, by Sanders) as a war criminal with many thousands of deaths to his name. Clinton regards Kissinger as her mentor and friend and that concerns me more than any single other thing I know about her.

  183. 183.

    Anoniminous

    @Cacti:

    As someone who works in AI (call it) and a Bernie supporter I am building a fleet of armed drones, Swarm Intelligence capable, who will hunt down and kill all my fellow Boomers who do not support Bernie.

    I’m giving you Fair Warning because you are a fellow BJ’er: Change your allegiance or my minions will be forced to act.

    (Standard but Necessary Mad Scientist Clip.

  184. 184.

    Eolirin

    @? Martin: You are seriously underestimating the difficulty of some of the intermediate steps using current techniques, for many, many domains. There are bottlenecks that need to be solved before rapid ubiquitous adoption can happen.

  185. 185.

    ? Martin

    Looks like Lee has the advantage against AlphaGo, but it’s pretty close. I’m curious about the clock management in AlphaGo. My sense is that the computer knows that its behind and is struggling to figure out how to catch up.

  186. 186.

    joel hanes

    @Mnemosyne:

    the Vietnam-era Boomers. I’m not always fond of them myself.

    It was astonishing watching many of my soi-disant hippie freak classmates turn into Reaganauts after they got real jobs, and some of them into wingnuts once Rush and Fox got hold of them.

    So while I’m one of the cohort being disparaged, I certainly agree about _some_ of the Boomers.
    (It’s apparently not widely known that Boomers are not, in fact, all alike in our attitudes and opinions)

    Be that as it may, I shall simply have to try my best to bear up under the lash of goblue’s disapproval.
    I think I’m up to it.

  187. 187.

    Eolirin

    @Raven Onthill: Neoliberal economic thinking vs socialism is, in this context at least, a distinction without meaning. The end outcome is all that matters on this stuff. Ideas are better when they work better in the real world, not when they come from Tribe A instead of Tribe B.
    ETA: And really what does neo-liberal economic thinking even mean in the context of recognizing that breaking up the banks doesn’t solve the shadow banking problem or that single payer is too disruptive to the existing system and isn’t even necessary to the universal affordable healtcare objective?

    And please, citation on mentor and friend on Kissinger.

  188. 188.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Cacti:

    I guess they’re going to suffer some kind of extinction event during the next 4-years that will miss everyone else.

    Goblue72 sold me a ticket for an ice floe cruise, it goes by Tahiti; I’m really jazzed.

  189. 189.

    Anoniminous

    @Eolirin:

    A great step forward would be people to stop doing the same old things, in the same old ways, and expecting different results. Example, there’s no linguist on the planet who thinks word choice is controlled by probability, yet the Bayesian people keep trying to make it work.

  192. 192.

    ? Martin

    Looks like Lee resigns to AlphaGo. Score one for our new table game robot overlord.

  196. 196.

    moderateindy

    Does anyone else worry that the states that Hillary does best in are the ones she has exactly zero chance of carrying in a general election? I still worry that in a GE Trump’s combination of outsider status, and economic populism is going to appeal to the non- partisan voter in large swing states like Ohio, FL, PA, WI and MI.
    I think the base of each party will have a strong turnout, because the other party’s candidates are so repugnant to them. So what might swing the election won’t be base turnout, instead; it will be turnout of new, and non-partisan voters. The fact that Trump has done so well among independent voters, and has seemingly motivated quite a few people that don’t usually vote in Republican primaries to get out and vote worries me, as it seems pretty inevitable that Clinton is the D nominee.

  198. 198.

    Calouste

    @Radio One: Hey now. Little Marco will win one (1) delegate tonight. Out of 150.

    I think he will be politely asked to get out of the race this week. If the GOP PTB want to stop Trump from winning on the first ballot at the convention, it would be really helpful if he lost Ohio or Florida. And Kasich looks at the moment more likely to deliver Ohio than Rubio Florida.

  201. 201.

    ? Martin

    @moderateindy:

    Does anyone else worry that the states that Hillary does best in are the ones she has exactly zero chance of carrying in a general election?

    No.

  202. 202.

    cbear

    @moderateindy:

    Does anyone else worry that the states that Hillary does best in are the ones she has exactly zero chance of carrying in a general election?

    Shush. We don’t ask questions like that around here. You need to get with the program and come on in for the big win.

  203. 203.

    PurpleGirl

    @joel hanes:

    (It’s apparently not widely known that Boomers are not, in fact, all alike in our attitudes and opinions)

    Thank you. I’m a Boomer from 1951. I’ve always voted for Democrats and I voted for President Obama twice. This time I’ll voted for whomever the Democratic candidate is.

  204. 204.

    Nate Dawg

    @PurpleGirl: I’ve noticed the Boomers here translate “The Boomer Generation did THIS” into “Every single boomer did THIS as a private individual”.

    (See what I did there?)

    But seriously, folks, we can’t talk about trends and generalities if you are going to constantly counter it with your n=1 counterexample.

  205. 205.

    opiejeanne

    @Nate Dawg: Thank you.

    1950 boomer, today’s my birthday so I’m 66 today. I did not in fact vote for Romney, nor did my 69yo Boomer spouse. Although I was a Republican at first (parents were, so not so surprising) I haven’t voted for a Republican since 1976 (?) because I prefer sane politicians.

    This week I have had the pleasure of watching my very Republican niece register as a Democrat. It was very gratifying to not just see that but her interest in involvement in the process. We caucus in Washington and she will be doing so for Bernie. My husband and I will be doing so for Hillary. It’s all good.

  210. 210.

    Applejinx

    @Just Some Fuckhead: On the contrary, I agree.

    The idea that black voters won’t vote for Bernie because they’re pragmatic and won’t throw their vote away on a purity pony is not a dis on black voters. It’s setting a high bar for effectiveness, and that’s reasonable to ask given the consequences of screwing this up.

    It’s wrong to dismiss the idea of trying for a black Bernie demographic, because what Bernie’s proposing is NOT impractical. It’s practical… if he wins.

    In that light, seeing the black vote lean toward Bernie rather than totally repudiating him is a sign that the pragmatic vote isn’t automatically going to Hillary. Maybe black voters aren’t sure Hillary will make good on her promises, or maybe they are concerned with hawkishness/corporate-friendliness/NAFTA etc etc.

    If you’re pretty sure you can elect somebody but you’re also pretty sure it won’t help you, it’s not necessarily pragmatic to do so. I know I’ve learned on Balloon Juice to watch the black vote as a bellwether of practicality, and that helps explain what happened in MI.

  212. 212.

    opiejeanne

    @raven: Class of 68 it is, and my HS boyfriend just got in touch with me in November, after 47 years of silence. It was like being slapped in the face with a dead fish it was such a shock.

    I think he only wanted to see if anyone he knew was going to the 50th, since he called one of the guys from band before he called me; I laughed and told him I was a bit put out by that, and he laughed. He is amazingly the opposite politically from what I thought he’d be, and I’m sure that our agreement on everything is a shock to him too.
    He looks the same except bald. I look like my mother, which is to say I do not look the same. I look like a farmwife from the 40s in the midwest, bosoms racing to my waist (dammt) and 40 extra pounds I do not need. He was president of the March of Dimes Future Parents in HS, and he got me to join even though I said I was never having kids. I have three, he has none. We are a surprise to each other as well as ourselves.

  214. 214.

    opiejeanne

    @Anne Laurie: Thanks to you and everyone else. I should have been asleep hours ago. It’s 3:06 on the west coast. An explosion in Seattle was felt here, about 8 miles away as the crow flies. Rattled the house, followed by a low roaring rumble. It was 5 very short blocks from my older daughter’s house, on the same street. Gas explosion, they think. Leveled a quick mart and Mr Gyros, and I don’t think the bike shop or the coffee shop, or other small businesses will survive the fire.

  216. 216.

    opiejeanne

    @BillinGlendaleCA: The block at the corner of 85th and Greenwood. The picture she posted is from the alley, just behind the shops I think.

    She doesn’t know about injuries yet. It will be on the news in the morning.

    I’m still having trouble believing that was what we felt, but I checked and there are no earthquakes reported for that time today.

  219. 219.

    Raven Onthill

    @Eolirin: Here’s the cites on Clinton’s views of Kissinger. The WaPo ran an overview of this about a month ago and this is from a 2014 Clinton review of Kissinger’s book World Order:

    Kissinger is a friend, and I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state. He checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels. Though we have often seen the world and some of our challenges quite differently, and advocated different responses now and in the past, what comes through clearly in this new book is a conviction that we, and President Obama, share: a belief in the indispensability of continued American leadership in service of a just and liberal order.

    Considering Kissinger’s body count, those last words chill me to the bone.

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