The desperate scramble for Bernie's secret weapon - POLITICO
The air is full of desperate pleas from Democrats for Bernie to drop out of the presidential race before he totally spoils the coronation, yet…
“The vultures are already circling over his email list — perhaps the most coveted and valuable catalog of potential voters and donors in the Democratic Party at the moment."
From Twelfth Night:
"What great ones do, the less will prattle of ."
Forecasting the Age of Twitter.
[And the quote in the subject line. *Actually, it’s the anniversary of his death.]
U.S. Opens Another iPhone, This Time With the Keycode - The New York Times
"'This is a debate that should be had in Congress before asking the courts to weigh in,' [said Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union]. 'That will be better for everyone’s digital security.'"
I have a hard time believing that anything that happens in Congress is good in any way for anybody’s digital security. A really hard time.
Some GOP elites aren’t quite convinced by Trump charm offensive - The Washington Post
"Trump keeps saying that he’s going to be so presidential that he’ll put you to sleep…"
…one day, and everything changes. Trump has a charm offensive? What?
F.B.I. Says Killing Man Was Justified, but Not Shooting His Tire - The New York Times
"The review group’s reasoning was that the bureau’s policy on using lethal force forbids firing a gun to disable a vehicle, and it concluded that this had been the agent’s motive in shooting the tire. But the same policy permits firing a gun to protect people from danger, and the panel decided that the two agents who shot Mr. Harrison were trying to keep him from driving into bystanders."
Foods Loaded With Sugar, Salt and Fat? Bring It - The New York Times
"'Jerky is manly, jerky is kind of rednecky and jerky can even be kind of offensive if people don’t know what it is,' said Troy Link, chief executive of Link Snacks, a family-owned snack food business. 'So we changed things up and began calling it a protein snack…"
[ED NOTE: I don’t know what it is but hey, I’m offended anyway.]
London’s first nude restaurant has a waiting list 16,000 names long - The Washington Post
Sadly, no.
"He maintains that the restaurant is not a bunch of guys trying to create naked dining for attention, but more of a nudist social experiment that aims to give people a space to challenge their assumptions about nudity, modernity and what kind of behavior we consider natural."
Harriet Tubman To Replace Andrew Jackson On $20 Bill
Personally, I wouldn’t mind if they put women on all the bills. Also, let’s make the bills different colors like a lot of other countries do. It’d be easier to sort them out, wouldn’t it?
Meanwhile paper money is fast becoming obsolete. Too little way too late.
Britain Issues Travel Advisory For LGBT Travelers Planning To Visit North Carolina And Mississippi
"The advisory encouraged travelers to avoid potentially risky situations and “excessive physical shows of affection,” and to “exercise discretion” in rural areas."
Voting in the New York City Primary Gets Fumbled - The Atlantic
"According to New York City Board of Elections’ Michael Ryan, roughly 125,000 Democratic voters were stripped from the BOE’s voter lists—because they hadn’t voted in recent cycles or responded to notices, they had moved, or mailings to their homes were returned to sender. "
The system is rigged.
Why We Should Be Really Worried About the Panama Papers - POLITICO Magazine
“[In the 17th Century] French aristocrats and the clergy made up less than 3 percent of the population, yet they controlled one-third of the land (that’s not including royal lands) and 50 percent of the wealth in France"
Turmoil grips conservative Schlafly organization, amid Trump-Cruz tensions | Fox News
"There seems to be a lot of confusion on what is going on in the ranks. …. I’m still in charge."
(Does anybody remember Alexander Haig?)
Official Threatens To Squash 'Boaty McBoatface' Name For Research Ship
“We want a name that lasts longer than a social media news cycle and reflects the serious nature of the science it will be doing."
This Study Shows How Low Corporate America's Taxes Really Are
"In 2012 alone, 42.5 percent of businesses that the GAO defines as large did not pay federal taxes, including 19.5 percent of big corporations that posted a profit.…
Profitable U.S. corporations paid, on average, an effective federal income tax rate of 14 percent over the slightly shorter period from 2008 to 2012, the federal government watchdog found."
Opinion: Burr-Feinstein antiencryption bill a firing offense - CSMonitor.com
The money quote:
"The Burr-Feinstein antiencryption bill isn't just bad, it's evidence of a dangerous incompetence in congressional leadership that is undermining America’s security."
Writing this morning in the Boston Herald, a rightish counter to the New York Times-owned Globe, columnist Hillary Chabot called Bernie Sanders "an increasingly salty underdog.” Ewww.
Right whale's North Shore sojourn likely a fluke | Boston Herald
"That’s how they got the name right whale, because they were the right whale to kill"
And, EXTRA BONUS: This story features a guy named Stormy Mayo, which would also be an excellent name for a blog.
Donald Trump’s campaign jet flying with expired registration - NY Daily News
"One of Donald Trump's campaign jets has been flying with an expired registration for months — because the ultra-wealthy GOP presidential frontrunner failed to pay a $5 renewal fee."
For want of a nail…
Yesterday the New York Times ran a piece about American colleges competing in India and elsewhere to get warm bodies into their into their institutions regardless of qualifications and now, today, this:
Greater Competition for College Places Means Higher Anxiety, Too - The New York Times
"As the frenzied college application season draws to a close, and students across the country mull their choices, many colleges are trumpeting that it was the most selective year ever."
Maybe I’m missing something (hey, the sun just came up).
Also in the Times this morning, columnist Frank Bruni quotes some famous Democrat guy thusly: “We now have a system in which it takes just 10 million votes out of 321 million people to seize one of the two coveted nominations.” (The story in which that quote appears is here, at The Hill.)
And in a story entitled "Obama Shouldn’t Trade Cluster Bombs for Saudi Arabia’s Friendship” William D. Hurting notes, " In the first six years of the Obama administration, the United States entered into agreements to transfer nearly $50 billion in weaponry to Saudi Arabia, with tens of billions of dollars of additional offers in the pipeline."
The Nobel Peace Prize joins the Republican party on the junk heap of history (and the Democrats may not be too far behind).
Strong Showing by Women for Hillary Clinton, and Also for Donald Trump - The New York Times (and 9:00 PM, 4/19.)
"On the Democratic side, more than three-fifths of Mrs. Clinton’s voters on Tuesday have been women, compared to less than half of Senator Bernie Sanders’s supporters, according to the exit polls."
Makes me crazy. Three-fifths is 60 percent. Why not say 60 freaking percent? I would be easier to compare to “less than half,” which means just under 50 percent.
Red Sox Fan Catches Ball With A Beer | The Daily Caller
"A Boston Red Sox fan made the play of the MLB season so far when he made an incredible catch on a foul ball without spilling a drop of his drink."
Recruiting Students Overseas to Fill Seats, Not to Meet Standards - The New York Times
''There are some incentives for not delivering complete clunkers, but the underlying motivation for both the university and the agent is to get warm bodies in the door,' said Philip G. Altbach, the founding director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College."
There’s something deeply disturbing about this story describing how American universities pay finders fees and offer scholarships and remedial classes to foreign students in an attempt to fill seats. They can’t find anybody at home to help?
It may be too late for the GOP to stop Trump - The Washington Post
" It turns out that once you tell people they get to choose their standard-bearer, they don’t take kindly to being patted on the head and told to go sit in the corner."
How GOP Intellectuals’ Feud With the Base Is Remaking U.S. Politics - POLITICO Magazine
"As Donald Trump grips crowds and racks up delegates with a blunt nationalist message of jobs, protectionism and 'winning’…"
CNN, MSNBC Hosts: Bernie Bros ‘Sexist’ for Throwing Dollar Bills at Hillary - The Daily Beast
"Over the weekend, Bernie Sanders supporters staked out Hillary Clinton’s George Clooney-hosted fundraiser in San Francisco and threw actual dollar bills at her motorcade as she drove by. They did so to decry the corrupting force of money in politics, but Clinton’s campaign has actively painted it as a misogynistic attempt to liken her to a ‘whore.'"
UK airport sniffer dogs good at finding sausages, but not drugs | Reuters
“[O]ne dog trained to find smuggled animal products had made 'multiple accurate detections, but most were of small amounts of cheese or sausages, wrongly brought back by returning British holidaymakers and posing minimal risk to UK public health'."
It’s official: Boaty McBoatface wins poll for name of research ship | New York Post
"LONDON — Boaty McBoatface has topped an online poll to name the U.K.’s newest polar research vessel, beating entries that honored scientists and explorers."
A Most Hated Man | New Republic
"Cruz and Trump are in fact appealing to different segments of the Republican Party, and they know it. Trump is the candidate of the disoriented, the confused, the needy; Cruz is the candidate of the dogmatist, the moralist, the convicted. Trump gets the voters who fear and adore; Cruz gets the voters who hate and resent. Trump is all show; Cruz means what he says. Trump wants to be everybody’s boss; Cruz wants to be everybody’s master. Ted Cruz is much, much more dangerous than Donald Trump."
One of my Dad’s absolutely favorite things was standing in line (or sitting, because it was a line of automobiles) at the post office at midnight on tax day, waiting to file his return. And the prize (ah, the prize!) was being so far back in the line that his returns didn’t get dropped into the box until after midnight, but the post office would postmark them on the 15th anyway because, well, after all there was a line. And he was in it.
His granddaughter is a tax accountant. Apparently it skips a generation.
…and read this good old-fashioned fantastically fabulous (and well-written!) piece from the Sunday New York Times.
The Battle Over the Sea-Monkey Fortune - The New York Times
"The real innovation may never have been the secret formula of his brine shrimp but the cognitive ignition of those four perfect words of distilled humbuggery: Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys."
