.
Alas, all but the swiftest political cartoonists are too late to the ball — Sunday’s non-agression pact doesn’t seem to have survived even till Tuesday’s primaries. As Mr. Pierce predicted, this was a two-car funeral for the principals to bollix up…
… That Cruz—as unprincipled an opportunist as anyone not named Willard Romney—would do something he’d previously said he never would do was completely predictable. However, it seems more than passing odd that Kasich is surrendering Indiana to Cruz. He’s the governor of neighboring Ohio. In exchange, he’s accepting the job in places like New Mexico and Oregon. And, in general, the assumption that Cruz or Kasich voters will go along for the ride here is a real longshot. Strategic voting always is a nice theory, but it depends on an extraordinarily engaged electorate, a largely notional concept that has been pretty effectively refuted by the hard mathematical reality of He, Trump, Frontrunner. A voter attracted by Kasich’s alleged “moderation” is unlikely to be attracted by an extremist theocrat like Tailgunner Ted Cruz. The odds that a great number of them will do so are even longer…
Josh Barro explained, in Business Insider, that “The Cruz-Kasich alliance against Donald Trump won’t work because it’s not an alliance”. And before midnight Monday, Claire Landsbaum at NYMag could write that “The Cruz-Kasich Deal Is Already Falling Apart”:
…“I never told them not to vote for me — they should vote for me,” Kasich said of his Indiana supporters during a press meeting in Philadelphia on Monday. He clarified that, just because he’s not “spending resources” in Indiana doesn’t mean he’s given up there. “We have limited resources,” he said. “Mine is like the people’s campaign; we’ve been outspent basically 50 to 1.” Kasich also reportedly plans to keep raising money in Indiana and to meet with the state’s governor on Tuesday…
Cruz also seems to believe Kasich is giving up his bid for Indiana; at a rally in Borden, Cruz said it was “big news that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump” and that the deal to split up resources in the three states “made sense from both campaigns.” But the Trusted Leadership super PAC, which supports the Texas senator, will reportedly continue to air an anti-Kasich ad there, hinting that Cruz might not be as confident in Kasich’s deference as he claims…
Wonder if Cruz has previously had to deal with a politician as faithless as he is himself? Well, he’s found a new highly-volatile almost-certainly-temporary ally with whom to bait the media…
A Cruz-Fiorina ticket would be the second-most disastrous merger of Carly's career.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) April 26, 2016
Fiorina being vetted by Cruz campaign as potential vice-presidential pick https://t.co/56eABPClzL pic.twitter.com/gm52R3Th3K
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 25, 2016
The idea is that Fiorina will make Cruz seem likable by comparison. https://t.co/H3KdxhNpPI
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) April 26, 2016
Voter at Kasich asks if he’d make Carly Fiorina his vice president. There are more groans than cheers in the room.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) April 25, 2016
rikyrah
Good Morning ?, Everyone ?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@rikyrah:
good morning ? ⏰
Baud
☺???????
Schlemazel Khan
@rikyrah:
Good morning to you to, though since I am not on my phone I don’t know how to add those spiffy emojis.
I am in rural MD again this week at the training purgatory. I did have a very nice 2 mile hike in the woods just before sunrise & saw Jupiter, Mars and Venus very clearly. Watched the sun come up & now back in my cell enjoying the first cup of coffee.
I have entered the first worry phase of the fall campaign. For the first time I imagine any one of the the GOP clowns winning. It is possible even with this years crop turds. This will pass once I get working on some campaigns.
amk
obama, the corporatist dem.
Schlemazel Khan
@Baud:
3 AMERICAN FLAGS!?!! What, are you going to join the GOP and want everyone to think you are more patriotic than us?
OzarkHillbilly
##!!!!@&%^*$%^@$#*&%)@**!!!!!
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
Guten Morgen to you, too.
The only “credibility” Carly Fiorina ever had as a candidate for president was a line item from her CV: she was once CEO of Hewlett-Packard. She was spectacularly bad in that job and got fired. As a politician, she has maintained a safe distance between herself and reality. So in its way, it does sort of make sense that this is whom Ted Cruz would consider for a running mate.
Chris
The Gang That Couldn’t Plot Straight. Those fucking amateurs, Dude.
Schlemazel Khan
@OzarkHillbilly:
What?
“##!!!!@&%^*$%^@$#*&%)@**!!!!!.”
What is that?
He must have stubbed his toe while carving it.
-Come on!
-That’s what it says.
Look, if he stubbed his toe,
he wouldn’t bother to carve “##!!!!@&%^*$%^@$#*&%)@**!!!!!.”
-He’d just say it.
-That’s what’s carved in the rock.
-Perhaps he was dictating it.
-Shut up!
Baud
@Schlemazel Khan:
Baud! 2016! represents Morning in America. Or is it Mourning in America?
Note to self: Create spelling czar on Day 1.
Schlemazel Khan
@OzarkHillbilly:
You OK? What that just a general expression of disgust at the human condition or is there something particular vexing you this morning?
BR
@Schlemazel Khan:
So have I. I want to be hearing about everyone here working on campaigns in a month or so, and want us to hold each other to it. (I know I can use some motivating given that I’m in CA where there won’t be much that’s competitive.)
satby
Good morning to all of you! After reading the overnight threads, I’m always a little happy I’m an early to bed, early riser type.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel Khan: The Legendary Black Beast of “##!!!!@&%^*$%^@$#*&%)@**!!!!!.” RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!
Derelict
Carly for VP?!?! The VP debates should be hysterical.
If Cruz wins with her on the ticket, I can see her going to attend some state funeral and then trying to shake the hand of the corpse. Then maybe launching into a speech about herself and how the death of her pet dog affected her decades ago.
Schlemazel Khan
@OzarkHillbilly:
Glad you caught that! Hope all is well with you and particularly your bad pin
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel Khan: I don’t do emojis, so after the first 3 comments I replied in the only way I know how.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
???
Baud
@Schlemazel Khan:
I’m always there. 2008 was the exception.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel Khan: An Arkie buddy of mine with whom I shared many many many many hours** of misery underground was also a Monty Python fan. To keep things on the lighter side whilst squeezing/crawling/climbing thru the dismal damp dark, we would recite scenes from the ‘Holy Grail’ and ‘Life of Brian’ verbatim for hours on end. I probably know them both by heart.
Schlemazel Khan
@Baud:
I was pretty sure in 2008 that America would not elect a black man as President. I pinned my hope in how badly W had fucked up everything he touched. I do this every election cycle though, it is, sadly, may nature. I look for all the negatives, the reasons this election will end badly. Life has taught me to think this way and the good that I take from it is I always fight in politics even when I assume we will lose and in my life I always have a plan C, D and E because even plan B rarely works.
Kay
I love how this is going completely under the radar. I mean it- it will go better if people outside the 9 million possible beneficiaries don’t notice. “is K-14 FREE now?” “Yes- too late to object! Sorry! The time for comment has passed!”
Schlemazel Khan
BTW – apparently AL did not see JCs tweet a couple night ago saying that every time someone spells it “kewl” a Kardashian gets another TV show!
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: _()*&%$$_$+@#+_)&*#_@(_!!!! to you too buddy.
MomSense
@satby:
I just found out Vanderhei has adopted Lincoln, Maine as his hometown. Now I want to drive over there this summer and give him the finger.
The summer people love Maine because it’s so quaint and real but they always miss how desperate we all are.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Morning! ?❄️☃☕️☕️☕️?
Kay
Conservatives are still debating the issues of the day:
Kasich’s vanity run just cost the State of Ohio 2.5 million dollars in additional state police protection- so he can spend this week responding to Trump’s pancake allegation.
amk
so this effing blog can show emojis but not tweets as they should be shown.
Baud
@Kay: Pancakegate!
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: He should challenge Trump to a Pancake eating contest.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Baud: my lefty friends say I’m a jingo, but I love a good ole fashioned USA! USA! USA! (Photo #Rio)
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
I often intone, “I’m not dead yet! I feel perfectly fine!” in my best Cockney accent. Very few people get the reference.
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Is it just me or is anyone else terrified about the Rio Olympics?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Baud: you mean because of the mosquitoes?
debbie
@Kay:
That’s the first number I’ve seen on what he’s costing us. Wonder how many lost jobs that translates into?
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Zika and Brazil’s general readiness.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I hope he does. I like the idea that Trump is finicky. I read an interview with him from a decade ago where he says he didn’t do any of the work involved in caring for his children when they were small.
My overall sense is he thinks that work is… icky and dirty. It’s amusing in such a “tough guy”, how soft and pampered he is. Ted Cruz has the same look-puffy and protected.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Baud: there’s been a lot of talk on the women’s soccer team about zika. Hope Solo says she may not go. They certainly have legitimate concerns.
BR
@Kay:
Makes sense. And I know it sounds strange to say, but I can imagine Obama changing diapers like it’s no big thing, even today (if he had to).
Baud
@BR: That’s a little unfair. I’m sure Trump changes his own diapers.
Kay
@BR:
I can too. I think Obama genuinely likes children- he’s comfortable with their unique chaos.
My youngest son came with me to Detroit for a Dem event and he wandered over to a group of people and they were Chuck Schumer and his staff. This kid is friendly- he’ll talk to anyone. I got close enough to listen and it was really funny- a complete and utter lack of connection. Chuck Schumer treats children like they’re visitors from another planet :)
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
Once he returns to Ohio, what disasters are in store for your state?
rikyrah
@Baud:
I was already concerned, and that was before the government fell apart. There is genuine and legitimate anger in those Brazilian streets, and I am concerned for the foreign visitors.
Iowa Old Lady
@Baud: Did the elevated cycling track collapse yesterday? I thought I heard that.
Baud
@rikyrah: Yes. It seems like a perfect storm is developing over there.
@Iowa Old Lady: Better now than later, I suppose.
rikyrah
Cruz vetting Fiorina-Bwa ha ha ha ??
Could there be a more unattractive ticket?
The insincerity, the sociopathicness just reeks from them.??
eclare
@Iowa Old Lady: About a week ago, two dead. Google for the image, it is terrifying.
Highway Rob
@Baud:
“Tsar,” ##!!!!@&%^*$%^@$#*&%)@**!!!!!er.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: It would perfectly illustrate the childish playground antics Trump partakes of.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Why do they always respond to him? They could just pass. It’s ego- “I have been challenged on pancake eating!”
Just let it go. They know how this works- he plays them like a violin.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Also, The whole “we built this” nonsense really got under my skin. Trump for instance has never built so much as a dog house. He paid people like me to build it for him.
Kay
@rikyrah:
They’re picking the state head of K-12 ed. 3 of the 5 finalists are Kasich hacks.
This will be the 4th in 6 years. The Dispatch had an editorial where they were begging “no more disruption!”
Just our school district had 5 new mandates this year. It’s ridiculous. Enough. No more “innovators”. Try plain old competence. That would be new and different. Find someone who does one thing well.
Ohio has dropped 4 slots in national public school rankings since this “creative disruption” started. There’s no net gain, but no one notices because they all start fresh when they get the job.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
My son has a foreman who says (seriously, no irony) “let’s go build America!”
I love that he dares to say to them :) I would hire him just for entertainment value.
OzarkHillbilly
Voter ID almost working as planned:
Unfortunately, as a resident of DC she doesn’t need a photo ID to vote. House Republicans are working to change this oversight. (snark)
Patricia Kayden
@Kay: That is a wonderful development. Need to look to see if any of these free colleges are in Maryland.
@Kay: Is it supposed to be cute that Trump mocks his opponents on a personal level? How the hell is that presidential or even mature behavior? Sigh.
Van Buren
Didn’t these people watch Hunger Games?
The whole premise of an alliance in a battle to the death is stoopit.
No wonder they’re trying it.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Baud: … and the sewage in the water off the coast and …
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
yellowdog
@Baud: I don’t see how they can go on. Things aren’t finished and those that are finished are collapsing. And the sh!t in the water for the kayak races.
ETA: and zika.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I had a vet say to me once (defending whatever RW nonsense he had just spouted) “I defended our country for 24(?) years!”
I replied, “Yeah? Well I’ve been building it for 35 years.”
Shut him up.
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: Unfortunately, North Carolina’s draconian voter ID law has been upheld. As the Supreme Court is currently configured, the law won’t be overturned if there is a tie. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/us/politics/federal-judge-upholds-north-carolina-voter-id-law.html?_r=0
MomSense
@Baud:
At some of the qualifying events, swimmers had to be hospitalized. Swimming in raw sewage will do that.
It’s a major clusterfuck.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@yellowdog: Maybe the IOC will finally jump the shark this year.
The Olympics is a grand idea, but it’s run by an organization that seems to value enriching itself over common sense. Poor countries shouldn’t be spending billions to create sports facilities that will be used a handful of times before they’re abandoned. Athletes shouldn’t spend a decade or more getting ready for competition to end up in some dangerous place where their choice is to risk their health and safety or have all their work be for nothing.
Even the US couldn’t break even on them since, what, 1976 or so?
They should make a couple of permanent parks in neutral countries. (Greece has a sentimental claim on the games, but not the wherewithal to keep them going.) Have them there every 4 years (Winter and Summer off by 2 years) and be done with it. But, no, there’s too much money at stake for the IOC…
Cheers,
Scott.
eclare
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Same with World Cup and FIFA, but FIFA isn’t going anywhere…
Gelfling545
@OzarkHillbilly: This happened to my daughter. When her license was lost she took her expired licence to the DMV where they said she needed her bc. When she went to City Hall they said she needed photo id to get it. Fortunately they accepted her expired license so the new license was still issued on the basis of her expired license, just at one remove.
raven
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
MomSense
@eclare:
Yeah who thought that structure was a good idea? It looks really precarious and apparently not outside the tidal range???
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I can be annoyingly chirpy at work, although I try not to talk like an ad for a truck. We all have our roles at work. Mine is “chirpy, bordering on delusional”.
eclare
@MomSense: Can’t imagine, half mile up.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gelfling545: When I had to get my BirtCert from Texas some years back, I was dreading the hoops I would be forced to jump thru. After 1 phone call and one letter of pertinent document (do not even remember what it was), I had my birtcert. Same thing when I went to STL city hall for my youngest’s BC when he got his passport. Easy peasy.
I think those days are long gone.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: In most states, you can pretty easily request a birth certificate online, but you have to pay a significant fee to a commercial service owned by Elsevier, the greedheads who ruined scientific publishing.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Mine is grumpy bordering on homicidal.
Had a new guy show up on the job. The foreman says, “Tom? Show him what to do.” So I did. And he talked. And talked. And talked. And talked. And talked. And talked. Finally after about 2 hours he stopped to take a breath and asked, “So Tom, what do you like?”
“Peace and quiet.” I replied.
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: Same for me in getting my bc from NYC. It was all online, and they had outsourced identity verification to a company that extracted information from public records. I expected something vastly worse. I know someone fairly high up in the NYC administration and she told me that there had been an immense fight over this– the old guard wanted to keep it obscure and hard, and the new wave wanted it to be easy and online. Fortunately for everyone, the new guys won.
Chris
@Baud:
I was even more certain in 2012. I was certain all the way back in 2011, actually: the economy was starting to inch upwards, the teabaggers’ time in Congress was beginning to show them in a bad light, and it was obvious that the candidate would be Romney, who was not only an objectively awful candidate but wasn’t even liked by his own party.
But it didn’t matter: come election night I was still in freak mode and “oh God oh God what if he wins what if he wins WHAT IF HE WINS?” I’m sure it’ll happen this year too.
rikyrah
This is a BIG F(*&ING DEAL.
………………
End forced arbitration: Big business has been exploiting consumers for too long. It’s time for regulators to crack down.
By Sonia Gill and Amanda Werner
04/26/16 05:28 AM EDT
For more than a quarter century, Big Business has engaged in a stealth campaign to block consumers, employees and small businesses harmed by corporate lawbreakers from finding justice in a court of law. Buried in the fine print of countless contracts for everyday goods and services is language that bars people from holding corporations accountable in court for illegal, and sometimes dangerous, conduct. Instead, individuals are forced to take on companies in an unfair, privatized system of arbitration — a process that tilts heavily in favor of the arbitrator’s corporate benefactors.
Within the next few weeks, regulators are set to strike back. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Department of Education are expected to propose rules to rein in the abuses of forced arbitration, making for a growing number of federal agencies taking action against this unfettered exploitation of American consumers. The long-awaited moves are critical to protecting consumers from the worst practices by Big Business.
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
Good God, I hate this meme.
rikyrah
LOL
Samantha Bee ridicules Fox host’s ignorance about ‘genocidal pr*ck’ Andrew Jackson
Arturo Garcia
26 APR 2016 AT 00:50 ET
Full Frontal host Samantha Bee teed off on Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade on Monday for his clumsy attempt to defend Andrew Jackson’s historical record, the Daily Beast reported.
Kilmeade was one of several conservatives who was angered by the fact that Jackson was being moved off of the front of the $20 bill in favor of Harriet Tubman, complaining that he was “a key member of America.”
“Hate to break it to you, Sparky,” Bee responded. “Jackson wasn’t involved in the founding of our country, because the Revolutionary War happened before Old Hickory’s pubes came in. He was not a Founding Father, he was a genocidal pr*ck who forced the relocation of nonwhites and fomented populist rebellion — kind of like a Trump with better hair.”
Kilmeade wasn’t alone in panning the switch, Bee noted; he was joined by Republicans calling it “political correctness,” as well as racists already planning to boycott the redesigned bill and conservatives arguing that Tubman should instead get her own currency — like, for example, a $12 bill allowing Jackson to remain the face of the $20.
“That would be something,” Bee said. “Make the black person worth exactly 3/5 of the white person’s value. Gee, why hasn’t anybody ever thought of that before? ”
MomSense
@eclare:
I look down at the steeply sloping shoreline and think it can’t be the most stable place to put that rickety contraption.
In happy news, the first Pastafarian wedding took place in New Zealand recently.
aimai
@Patricia Kayden: I kind of wonder if there will continue to be that kind of tie–Scalia gave everyone a lot of cover to be awful because he was always out there being the crazy/rude/awful one. Kind of like those restaurants where they routinely put one item that is absurdly expensive, like a 150 dollar hamburger, to make everything else the “reasonable” dish for the cost conscious.
I also wonder, long term, whether Roberts will be affected by the right wing attacks on him and his (supposed) probity and integrity. Hard to figure why he would continue to align himself, at the risk of his legacy for fairness and honesty, with people as shitty as the republicans have proven to be. Every day he gets more proof that everything he denied as the cause of their actions is, in fact, the cause of their actions.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chris: Same here, hence the snappy reply, but I give credit where it is due. He served his country, he should be eligible for VA care and all the Veterans discounts that come his way. No skin off my nose.
But back in ’02-03 during the drum up to Iraq, I was arguing with a Navy vet who was saying that nonvets should just shut up about the impending war because we didn’t know what we were talking about. Really pissed me off. I told him he could take that load of BS and shove it where the sun never shined because I payed taxes, I voted, and I had 2 sons that were just the right age to end up in that clusterfwck.
He admitted that I was right.
aimai
@MattF: This is especially the case because the old hard copies of birth certificates are not always considered accurate or acceptable. My oldest daughter (19) was born in Evanston Ill. We left there with multiple copies from the registrar of her birth certificate. Years later, getting her first passport, we were told that since 9/11 the rules for what constituted a “certified copy” had changed and that her original birth certificates, issued and purchased within days of her actual birth directly from the registrar, were not considered legal. We had to use the online system and order new ones which were, indeed, different. They had somehow transferred the information from Evanston to the State of Illinois and the form was actually different. And that is only between 1996 and say, 2004 or something. Can’t imagine the absurdity of making it harder for seniors to access online birth certificates when their originals have been lost or crumbled into dust. Maybe the right thing to do is to force congress to pass a law authorizing seniors over the age of 60 or some arbitrary number to vote without picture ID or to receive amended birth certificates (like adoptees do) that they can use to get picture ID.
NotMax
A different kind of Disney adventure.
rikyrah
@aimai:
And, many older Black people, because of Jim Crow – NOT BEING ALLOWED TO BE BORN IN A HOSPITAL THAT WAS WHITES ONLY – the birth certificate is hard to get.
HOW, once again, is this NOT A POLL TAX?
Eric S.
@Highway Rob: I prefer “czar”. It’s worth more points.
NotMax
@rikyrah
Yes, he was in no sense a Founder. However, having been born in 1767, he conceivably might have entered puberty before the surrender at Yorktown 14 years later.
eclare
@rikyrah: And that will be the next lawsuit before SCOTUS, unfortunately.
RaflW
The inimitable Pierce said
Not if your campaign is telling you that you’ll be coming in a shitty third place there. Expectations are such that a midwestern governor should do well in a neighboring state. But I’d wager a premium Dunkin Donut (since it’s morning now) that his internal polling is showing a rout.
The Cruz deal ‘explains’ the loss. And justifies immediately stopping spending $$ in the Hoosier state that he doesn’t have.
NotMax
@aimai
Who knows what tsurris I’ll encounter if ever again need to use my copy of birth certificate, as both the original and the copy have a blank space for first name; there’s a rubber stamped message on the back of each with the name inked in from when it was chosen later on.
Copy is the old-time white on black reverse photocopy, to boot.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Just before the 2012 election, I remember talking about it in the lunchroom at work: my boss, who had been reading media horserace reports, said something like “Gee, it really could go either way this time, couldn’t it? Close contest.”
I and one of my coworkers, who had been reading Sam Wang and 538 and a bunch of other such sites, immediately chimed in: “No, Obama’s gonna win.” Because it really was not up in the air at that point.
Data is good.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
QFT
This makes me boiling mad. The Republicans know damn well what these laws are designed to do.
Kay
@RaflW:
I feel like this is unfair to Kasich. Indiana is really different than Ohio. There’s a northern strip that is like Ohio but there’s also a real winger strain in the bottom 3/4’s. Kasich’s “base” is comfortable suburban conservatives. They’re uncomfortable with extremes. Cruz is too much for them.
raven
@Chris: Ya’ll motherfuckers would be speakin Vietnamese and eatin Pho if it. . . oh wait.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
The people in Brazil were already plenty pissed about the World Cup in 2014 — and this is in a country that worships football and footballers.
D58826
And Mr. Pierce’s description of tail gunner TED
NotMax
@rikyrah
In no way applicable to Jackson, but reminded of John Clem, who at age 12 became the youngest non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Army.
Kay
@RaflW:
Kasich would do well in South Bend and that area- the Lake parts. He would struggle in the parts of the state that are more “like” Missouri. He benefits from the suburban areas that border the three big cities in Ohio. That is actually his “base”. It’s what made him hard to beat.
aimai
@rikyrah: This is an ENORMOUS deal. I think, given how crappy the press is, that we won’t really understand the enormity of the things Obama did in this last term until some time after he has left office, and even then with the memory power of our lousy citizenry they won’t remember him for it. But I will. I was very, very, very, glad to hear Hillary lay down the marker that she would continue Obama’s executive orders and the other things that are passing now, and his initiative on prisons etc… This is what I’m voting for: continuity of vision and of governance. Even if its two steps forward and one step back we are still going to get where we need to be if we keep pushing forward.
Gin & Tonic
@MomSense: To clarify, that bike path in Brazil was just that, a bike path. It isn’t actually connected with any Olympic cycling events, it was added more as a tourist attraction. When I saw the first comment saying “cycling track” I thought of the velodrome – that has its own construction problems and delays, but has not collapsed.
aimai
@rikyrah: Right–not only were people born at home but where there were records often those records were lost or destroyed. Small towns themselves have been destroyed. And the records keepign function of some of these places was either not turned over to the state or turned over in a partial fashion. People can have had birth certificates but had them lost or destroyed at the county or state level. (This is true for school records as well. I have a cousin who is a high up principal in the NY city system of high schools. When a highschool closes money has to be appropriated, and seldom is, to maintain the school’s records. For some people there will be no record of grades or graduation if the school has downsized or been closed or renamed. )
Being born at home doesn’t mean you don’t get a birth certificate (these days). My daughter was a homebirth but we had to go down to city hall and register her, with a note from the midwife, within five days.
Germy
Wait… so two different cartoonists got the idea to do almost identical comics of batcruz and robkasich?
Germy
@aimai: I tried to get a passport last year. Showed my original birth certificate. I was told it wasn’t good enough because it didn’t have my parents’ names on it. I had to call the records office of the state I was born in, and order an updated birth certificate (for a fee) with the names of my parents included. It took several months…
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Cruz would want her to do the Hillary attacking (I assume).
Paul in KY
@debbie: My 90 year old mother went & saw the play & absolutely loved that song. She was singing it for days.
hovercraft
I know I’m just a dirty hippie, but Jesus H. Christ could you conceive of a more unlikable ticket if you tried. Both of them drip with contempt when they are challenged. They are both pathological liars.
So “please proceed” this will be ugly.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: Ha, ha!!
Paul in KY
@NotMax: His story about fighting the redcoats when he was 9 was probably a lie. It is now thought that he was in transit to US at birth & probably was in-eligible to be president.
MattF
@hovercraft: One has to assume that Cruz knows that Fiorina got beaten up pretty badly over her claims about the bogus Planned Parenthood videos. But that doesn’t matter, I guess.
Miss Bianca
@BR: I’m there. Gail Schwartz, CO CD 3. Flip to Dem, bitchez…
D58826
@aimai: This is one of the things that really really really gets me about our fellow progressives and Bernie supporters. They make it sound like Obama has done absolutely nothing in his two terms. In fact one writer on Salon referred to him as Bush-lite. Part of Bernie’s stump speech is that access to health care is a right (as if Obama/Clinton ever said it wasn’t) and he will achieve universal health care with single payer. Well maybe he will and maybe he won’t but Obamacare has taken a big bite out of the uninsured and would have covered even more if it wasn’t for the Roberts court and red state governors. Yet somehow that all seems to be lost in the mist of Barniemania.
Now it’s true that Obama hasn’t made water run uphill or the sun stand still at noon on the Christmas day but he has another 8 months to figure that out also.
D58826
@MattF: For Cruz supporters that’s a feature not a bug
aimai
@MattF: Showing that you can lie, unblushingly, in public is probably the first part of the test.
aimai
@Germy: How on earth did you get a birth certificate without your parents name on it? Or do you mean that your father hadn’t signed the original? That can happen if he isn’t at the hospital when you are released, or for other reasons. My in laws adopted a 14 year old from DHS and his birth certificate was amended to show that they were his biological parents. Its totally nuts–she said to me “his birth certificate shows that I was giving birth to him while in reality I was on vacation in Florida, 14 years ago.” If he had his “original” birth certificate it would now be invalid because at the state level his “real” birth certificate shows him being born somewhere else with different parents. (The adoption later went bad and I’m really not sure what happened about his birth certificate, he was taken back by his original foster parents and I think they adopted him).
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Germy: I did a double-take too. I thought Ann Telnaes comic had somehow been repeated.
GMTA, I guess. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Grumpy Code Monkey
RoonieRoo and I had a couple of random thoughts while driving home from a dog training class last night .
Random thought #1 (mine): Rep. Peter King told the world that he would take cyanide if Cruz is the nominee. The man is loathed by his fellow Congressweasels, to the point where I think they’d rather maintain the status quo (oppose the Democrat-in-Chief) than have to work with him. If he winds up the nominee, I expect to see a quiet yet vicious ratfucking campaign on the part of Congressional Republicans. Priebus can scream “UNITE, DAMMIT” all he wants, but I can see Cruz actively being opposed by members of his own party in the general.
Random thought #2 (RoonieRoo’s): The Republican Convention is going to be a shitshow from gavel to gavel; we know this. The scenario with the highest potential for mayhem is for Trump to fall just short of the number of delegates to clinch the nomination. It is going to be nasty. It is going to be vicious. My ultimate fantasy is still for Sarah Palin to get blackout drunk and find a live mic.
The GOP will be desperate to change the tone of the convention from a circus to something a little less chaotic. How would you do that?
There would have to be a newsworthy event that would affect all Republicans. It would have to something somber, something tragic, something that would cause even the most batshit Republicans to reflexively behave themselves. Something like the death of a prominent Republican figure. Someone like …
Poppy Bush.
Hey, he’s old, in failing health, and has had some close calls this year already. It wouldn’t take much more than a little extra digitalis in his tea to finish the job. You would expect that everyone would behave themselves for a few days afterward, out of respect.
Yes, this sounds like a bad Ludlum novel, and RoonieRoo acknowledges that it’s a sick and awful thing to contemplate, but…
Picture – it’s 3 a.m. in a bar in DC, GOP operatives have been drowning their sorrows in single malts for hours, bemoaning what’s going to happen in Cleveland, and then somebody has an idea. It’s just a joke, right, something nobody would ever seriously contemplate, but in the cold light of day starts to look like the only way out of the chaos.
For those of you who pray, pray that Poppy stays alive until after the convention.
Paul in KY
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Probably would be best for him to die now, given your conjectures.
Chris
@raven:
Yep. And that’s the root of my problem, right there.
J R in WV
@OzarkHillbilly:
Where were you underground for so many hours? Mining? or in the Nam as a tunnel rat?
My brother worked underground and was in the UMWA, mostly to P.O. mom and dad, who hated unions and mining. He worked in the same (now gone and reclaimed) deep mine our maternal grandfather worked in as a hoist engineer. We never met him, he died of multiple mining-related lung diseases when I was just born.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: Does “creative destruction” ever accomplish its ends? I always thought it a neoliberal (quick! drink!) term for “burn shit down, take our money and run”.