Quote of the Post

"But alas! I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises, that the organ which enables me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity."

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

Unintended (Frightening) Consequences

  Donald Fucking Trump has a big mouth. No news there, but now that he is running for president, his utterances have begun to scare off his business partners. Today, New York City has announced that they are reviewing Trump's contracts with the city.
  All of this could, and should, be filed under, say; poetic justice, or beautiful irony, or even karma kickback; but for one thing.
  If Donald Fucking Trump loses all his business, he will have to make a serious effort to make a living in politics.
  I don't believe that a scarier sentence has ever been written.

13 Little (literally), 14 Little (figuratively)

  Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie have both announced for president.
  Although they both share the intense hatred of their respective constituencies, these are very different men.
  Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, is known for saying that Republicans shouldn't be "the stupid party." Although that horse left the barn years ago, Jindal had good reasons for saying it: he didn't want the competition. Jindal has been embracing every extreme position he can. He doubled down on the fictitious 'No-go Zones' popularized and then withdrawn by Fox News, and his positions on evolution, climate change and education put him solidly among the Cro- Magnon wing of the party. I like to think of him as 'the thinking man's idiot'.
  Chris Christie, who was called a liar by the New Jersey Star-Ledger, has presided over a record number of credit downgrades and is surrounded by investigations, does bring an important quality that has otherwise been lacking in this race. Christie is the only candidate with an ego as big as Donald Fucking Trump.
  I am looking forward to the debates with such excitment, that I may very well piss myself.
  I promise to keep you fully informed.

The Dirty Dozen

  There are now twelve people running for the Republican nomination for president.
  Donald Trump is running. Let me repeat: Donald Fucking Trump is running for the presidency of the United States of America.
  To that, I can only add: thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!

  Most people say that Trump says whatever is on his mind. His comments on Mexican immigrants got Univision to drop the Donald's beauty pageants from their schedule, although Trump has claimed that there is an "ironclad contract" and that Univision has already called him to apologize. We will have to see. We will also have to wait and see about Trump's "secret plan" to instantly defeat ISIS and bring them to the negotiating table. I am less interested in the plan than in understanding why they would negotiate after being defeated. (Golden Parachutes, perhaps?)
  While the evidence seems to suggest that Trump says whatever he is thinking, I disagree absolutely. Thinking has nothing to do with it.
 

Hoyle and Boyle*

  Tom (Soft Balls) Brady has, of course already appealed the decision on his part in "Deflate-gate" and "Ballghazi" and, as I like to call it: Permanent Asteriskville. For some strange reason, ol' Soft Balls failed to cooperate with the original investigation. Perhaps he thought that the weird, and
more-than-a-little-bit-creepy bubble New England fans surrounded him with would protect him. Well, that's what he gets for thinking. During the initial news conference, Brady said: "I don't know anything about anything." Now, it may just be some old prejudice against jocks talking here; but I believed that he was right.
  In any event, I'm sure that Brady will do some wheeling and dealing to get the penalty knocked down to the level of a wife beater or child abuser. Soft Balls and his team are a big deal in the
NFL, and big moneymakers. The good old NFL knows that what's important is profitability. Why else play the game?








*look 'em up

If This be Madness...

  Ted Cruz will never be President. He is not even making the half-hearted, feeble, and insincere pretense of reaching out to moderate voters, as his competitors are all doing.
  Cruz's strategy is puzzling, even to the most astute of political observers, but I may have the answer.
  It might very well be that Cruz isn't running for President, after all. Oh, he wants a promotion, no doubt about it. But, perhaps Ted Cruz is running for control of the extreme right of the Republican Party. By positioning himself on the fringe and then losing the election, Cruz can face his followers and say: 'Look at what those meanies and poopy-heads did to me. Waaaah!'* He can then wrap the forces of Darkness around him like a Dalmatian puppy-skin coat, and lead his people to hell-in-a-handbasket, or wherever it is they deserve to end up.
  Those who underestimate the Cruzer do so at their peril. I truly believe that, politically speaking, Ted Cruz is an evil genius** who bears watching.

* Imaginative paraphrase
** I will stake my well-deserved reputation on that phrase being, at the very least, half-true.

The Car Slowly Fills

  Rand Paul has become the second Reepub to enter the race to the White House.
  Paul's rollout has not gone particularly well. He has shown some difficulty in answering questions about the many contradictory things he has said over the years. The Senator is using some very clumsy methods of evasion to simply not answer. I thought he'd be better at this. The man is, after all, a thoroughly experienced plagiarist. He should be better at lying.