5.7 Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, was elected Mayor of London, beating the son of Sir Jimmy Goldsmith
5.7 A passenger on a flight between Philadelphia and Syracuse reported her seat mate seemed suspicious and was writing in a foreign language. The man in question turned out to be Guido Menzio, a 40 year-old Ivy League economist from Italy who was working on a problem in differential calculus.
5.7 Wedding reception for Ben and Lynne in Westerly RI
5.6 Barack Obama in The New York Times: I was having a conversation with a couple of actors who were insisting that what they do is different from what I do. No doubt, it’s different. But never underrate the power of stories. Lyndon Johnson got the Civil Rights Act done because of the stories he told and the ones [Martin Luther] King told. When L.B.J. says, “We shall overcome” in the chamber of the House of Representatives, he is telling the nation who we are. Culture is vital in shaping our politics. Part of what I’ve always been interested in as president, and what I will continue to be interested in as an ex-president, is telling better stories about how we can work together.’’
@grynbaum Cuomo's speechwriter was the managing editor of Playboy
— Jimmy Vielkind (@JimmyVielkind) May 3, 2016
Jimmy Vielkind (@JimmyVielkind)
5/3/16, 3:07 PM
@grynbaum Cuomo’s speechwriter was the managing editor of Playboy
5.4 Jeffrey Blehar in the New York Post: “The seeds of this were sown long ago, when Cruz first arrived in the Senate. He rather infamously set about building his national profile among the conservative base by positioning himself as a scourge of the dreaded “Establishment.” Many, if not most, of his moves were acts of cynicism rather than principle: Cruz’s most famous gambit, the knowingly futile government shutdown he pushed in 2013 to “repeal ObamaCare,” was transparently designed to convince low-information Republican voters that he was Washington’s only “real conservative,” not like those lily-livered sellouts and compromisers he shared a party with. A presidential run was clearly part of the plan. Before Trump entered the race, Cruz expected to leverage his “outsider” credibility to pose as the Truest Conservative in the race and win enough of the GOP base to beat out an establishment figure like Jeb Bush. Once Trump got in and began dominating, however, Cruz fell back upon a simple assumption: The Establishment may not have loved him, but surely they would eventually fall in line behind him rather than back a vulgar know-nothing like Trump who promised down-ballot disaster in November. It was a grave miscalculation. Former Speaker John Boehner has happily labeled Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh.” Former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) recently vowed he’d back Trump, but could never support Cruz, “a person of little character.” I’m pretty sure Long Island Congressman Pete King has said things about Cruz that aren’t printable on these pages. Other grandees of the Republican Party, from Bob Dole to Newt Gingrich, have said the same. Why? First, because Cruz forgot that the people he’d been savaging in his own party for attempting to keep the federal government running with a Democratic president and Senate were humans, not cardboard cutouts. Cruz assumed the establishment types he’d spent the last three years labeling liars, frauds and crypto-Democrats would turn around when faced with the choice between him and Trump and say “Ah, yes, strictly business, no hard feelings.” That’s not how people actually work. But there’s a second, more calculating reason they’d risk their congressional majority with Trump rather than patch things up with Cruz: They’re looking farther down the road than 2016. These people look at Trump — his cult of personality, his incredible ability to generate free media, his demagogic vulgarity — as an ephemeral, once-in-a-generation phenomenon, a “black swan” event. They suspect that, while Trump will lose and it will go hard for the Republican Party in the short run with his downfall, this is as survivable as the losses of 2006 and 2008 were. What is not survivable (for them, at least) is a Cruz victory in the primary. Because Cruz is not ephemeral — he will be in the Senate for as long as he wishes to be — and there are many out there who might seek to follow in his footsteps. If a man like Cruz can elevate himself to the Republican nomination (and maybe even the presidency) by sweeping into Washington and playing on the resentments of the base by cynically tearing his party and his colleagues down to raise his own profile, then it will happen again. It need hardly be said that this sort of behavior is the act of a feeble, corrupt party apparatus. Nobody would begrudge a senator or representative their disdain for Cruz’s behavior while in Congress, but sometimes principle requires people to make unpalatable choices. All those in Washington who feel insulted by Cruz and so have chosen to back Trump demonstrated that they value their pride even more than they value their power. Cruz badly misplayed his hand, and now party leaders are courting their destruction by embracing Trump. All to ensure the “Cruz strategy” serves as a warning to those upstarts who would consider following in his path
5.3 Forgive the self-congratulations, but since my predictions seldom come true, I want to repeat one that did. From Facebook on June 18, 2015:
Jamie Malanowski
June 18, 2015 ·
I believe Donald Trump is going to do very well in the campaign, and might even win the nomination. He is blunt and often entertaining; he says things that people are thinking; he passes for glamorous in flyover country; he has money. He has a larger personality than half of them; he is not going to sound so outrageous in their company. And he will wear the media’s scorn like a medal. Are the Vegas casinos still offering 40:1 and 75:1 odds? I’d take those odds.
5.3 Cruz and Kasich suspend their campaigns after Trump wins the Indiana primary, leaving Trump a clear avenue to the GOP nomination.
5.2 Cruz: “I’m going to do something I haven’t done for the entire campaign,” he said. “I’m going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump.” He proceeded to called Trump “a pathological liar,” “utterly amoral,” and “a narcissist.”
5.2 Hunter Osborn, a 19 year-old Mesa AZ nigh school student, faces at least 69 counts of indecent exposure and at least one count of furnishing harmful material to a minor, a class 4 felong, because he exposed the top of his penis above the waistband of his pants in the team photo of his yearbook.
5.2 Chris Cilliza in the Washington Post: here’s the underlying math. If Clinton wins the 19 states (and D.C.) that every Democratic nominee has won from 1992 to 2012, she has 242 electoral votes. Add Florida’s 29 and you get 271. Game over. The Republican map — whether with Trump, Cruz or the ideal Republican nominee (Paul Ryan?) as the standard-bearer — is decidedly less friendly. There are 13 states that have gone for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. But they only total 102 electorate votes. That means the eventual nominee has to find, at least, 168 more electoral votes to get to 270. Which is a hell of a lot harder than finding 28 electoral votes.