Thursday, July 30, 2015

Forbes Magazine Rates Pomona College as #1

This Is the link to the magazine's article:   http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/#tab:rank



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Sent from Gmail Mobile

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Fwd: Offend everyone



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: A friend of Juan's


This is a hoot! 
Subject: Fw: Offend everyone

   Let's offend everyone all at once and get over it!



Patti                                                            Neill Henry's                                                            photo.




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Sent from Gmail Mobile

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Something to Know - July 22, 2015


Keeping it classy.
1) Another day of Donald Trump still supposedly running for the Republican party nomination. We learned a lot more about his wealth today. His daughter Ivanka claims that there are residents in their towers who have called to inquire about obtaining promotional material for her dad's campaign, and that nobody has expressed any negativity to her. Personally, I'm torn about even mentioning Mr. Trump, lest this little corner of the universe serve to inflate his ego any further. Frank Bruni of the NYTimes shares my concern. Oy vey. There are now sixteen people supposedly running for the GOP nomination, and since Mr. Trump is polling well, he'll make it into the first televised debates.

2) Bill Cosby's Legal Team is now back on the defense. They are trying to normalize his use of quaaludes. I'm supposed to believe that they were used in tandem with consensual sex? Apparently this was a thing in the 1970s? Yeah. I am not falling for any of this. His newest attorney has stated that it is insignificant and not newsworthy that word has come of Mr. Cosby having extramarital affairs: "it's not newsworthy; it's history."

3) Time to be worried about social security again. If Congress doesn't replenish its trust fund, benefits to those eligible for disability benefits from Social Security will face cuts in 2016.
Link: http://nyti.ms/1HKiQRk

In more uplifting news:
1) The University of California is looking at raising its campuswide minimum wage to $15 an hour, in alignment with the movement to hike the minimum wage to $15 in the City and County of Los Angeles respectively. The hike would benefit workers who are employed at least 20 hours a week; and these workers would include people who work for outside contractors. It is reported that the pay increase would come from auxiliary services, such as bookstores and parking revenue (and that would come about in the form of land rent paid for by the parking dept). I find that a bit unsettling, particularly with respect to parking. I do come from a school of thought where parking pricing should be set in order to manage supply and influence travel behavior.

Link: http://nyti.ms/1LvlVJ0

2) Every Wednesday this summer, Sutter Brown issues a water saving tip through his social media presence. Today's tip is to use mulch, since it has water retention qualities!


Monday, July 20, 2015

Something to Know - July 20th

Thanks to Tropical Storm Dolores, the weather over the past couple of days here in Southern California has been downright strange, but the LA Times tells us that this is a preview of what an El Nino year could look like (link to LA Times story). Over one-third of an inch fell in downtown LA, which broke a 120 year record. It has been hot and humid, but it's still kind of a novelty - it's not as though we are in Florida or Washington, where today's 94% humidity would have represented the 120th day of 80+ humidity ratings.

What stunned me were photographs of buckled highway infrastructure due to rain. A bridge on I-10 near the Arizona border buckled. One motorist did not brake in time and had to be rescued.

Via the LA Times 

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Something to Know - 19 July

Jeff Danziger

I would not normally leave you with this National Inquirer type of story, but it is from the NY TImes, and I need to pass on that we will be going on a driving trip (no boat this time), up through Northern California, Oregon and beyond for about two and a half weeks.  I will advise my daughter-in-law, Sirinya, that she can fill in and post whatever she finds interesting on to the 1% Blog at    http://www.thejuanpercent.com/   


SundayReview | OP-ED COLUMNIST

La Dolce Donald Trump

JULY 18, 2015

Photo
CreditOliver Munday

IN Rome about a dozen years ago, I had a long dinner with Donald Trump.

Only his name was Silvio Berlusconi.

Aren't they essentially the same man? The same myth?

They have the same obsession with their wealth. Same need to crow about it. Same belief that it's the irrefutable measure of their genius. Same come-on to countrymen: If I enriched myself, I can enrich you.

They're priapic twins, identical in their insistence on being seen as paragons of irresistible lust. If hideously sexist utterances ensue, so be it. Loins before decency. Pheromones over good sense.

And the vanity. Oh, the vanity. During my meal with Berlusconi, who was then the prime minister of Italy, he grew most animated when complaining about Italian journalists' put-downs of him as a dwarf.

A dwarf! He stressed to me that he was taller than José María Aznar, Spain's leader at the time. A few years later, on a television talk show, he informed Italians that he was "definitely taller" than Napoleon. And a few years after that, at a political rally, he proclaimed: "I am taller than Putin and Sarkozy," referring to his Russian and French counterparts. "I don't understand why all the caricaturists portray me as a dwarf, whereas the others are allowed a normal height."

We give in, Silvio. You're a mountain among midgets.

And we admit it, Donald. No one's hair sweeps the heavens like yours.

You two are the biggest, the best, shaming all the rest.

Now will you please just let us be?

Trump shows no signs of doing that. Last week he made a new bid to be envied, once again unzipping his accounts and flashing the world his finances. This time he claimed to be worth about $10 billion, which is almost certainly a gross exaggeration. His assets expand with his ego.

His popularity with voters does, too, according to recent polls, which showed him at or near the head of the pack for the Republican presidential nomination. I don't expect this to last, but it probably means that we're stuck with him through at least a few debates.

So it's time to search for solace, and perhaps there's some in knowing that he's not a peculiarly American creation, nor is he a particular indictment of our political culture and electorate.


Trump is Berlusconi in waiting, with less cosmetic surgery. Berlusconi is Trump in senescence, with even higher alimony payments.
Those Italians whose art we bow down before and whose food we fetishize have a Trump of their very own, a saucy, salty dish of Donald alla parmigiana. They repeatedly elected him, so that he could actually do what Trump is still merely auditioning to do: use his country as a gaudy throne and an adoring mirror as he ran it into the ground.

Trumpusconi is a study in the peril and pitfalls of unchecked testosterone and tumescent avarice. It's a commentary on wealth in the Western world: how ardently certain blowhards pursue it, how much the rest of us forgive in those who attain it, how thoroughly we equate money and accomplishment.

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It's a comedy. It's a tragedy.

It's even a porn flick — or close to one. Trumpusconi stars overlapping cads who cultivate dovetailing images as epic playboys.

"Best Sex I Ever Had" blared a front-page headline in the New York Post in 1990. It ostensibly quoted Marla Maples, the second of Trump's three wives, but a skeptical reader wondered who really planted that story, especially as the years went by and Trump's boasts flowered:

"All of the women on 'The Apprentice' flirted with me, consciously or unconsciously. That's to be expected."

"Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, 'Can you believe what I'm getting?' "


But those are puny bleats next to Berlusconi's trumpeting. A few years ago he assessed his erotic impact, musing: "When asked if they would like to have sex with me, 30 percent of women said, 'Yes,' while the other 70 percent replied, 'What, again?' "
"I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."

The two billionaires' tasteless words are so interchangeable that it's sometimes hard to tell who said what, but you can test your skill with a quiz, Name That Narcissist, that accompanies this column online.

Continue reading the main story

Quiz: Name That Narcissist

Who said it: the brash American billionaire or the brash Italian one?

I'M not the first to notice the uncanny Trump-Berlusconi resemblance. Four years ago my Times colleague Timothy Egan mulled it, and in a Vanity Fair story, "La Dolce Viagra," Evgenia Peretz wrote: "Imagine a President Donald Trump with the media holdings of Rupert Murdoch and the sexual tastes of an aging Charlie Sheen, and you're approaching the idea of Berlusconi."

But Trump is now an even bolder presence (and threat) on the political landscape than he was then. As I gape at him afresh, I'm transported back to my two years as The Times's correspondent in Rome and my twomeetings with Berlusconi.

Like Trump, Berlusconi built his fortune with real estate. He then bought media outlet after media outlet, infiltrating people's hourly lives, imprinting himself on their very consciousness. A similar impulse animates Trump, who has emblazoned his name not just on skyscrapers and casinos but on mattresses, clothes, cologne.

They're both after omnipresence, and they both understood early on how crucial television was to that. Berlusconi took ownership of Italy's airwaves, which he used to broadcast game shows and news programs with women in various states of undress. Trump took partial control of the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, and played the lord of all capitalism on "The Apprentice."

To their profound chauvinism they add racial insensitivity, though, in fairness, Berlusconi's doesn't have Trump's calculated, meanspirited edge. Berlusconi's infamous crack about the Obamas — that the couple must have gone to the beach, because they looked tanned — pales next to Trump's anti-immigrant tantrums and xenophobic rants. In a clip from a radio interview released on Friday, Trump called for a boycott of Mexico, saying that "it's a corrupt place" that treats America "very, very badly." He pledged not to set foot there. A howl of grief rose from Guadalajara, and Ciudad Juárez wept.

Both men have learned that they can turn such cloddishness to their advantage, by casting it as unvarnished candor. Sloppy talk becomes straight talk. Insult becomes authenticity, even if it's pure theater and so long as it's a hell of a show.

And self-regard goes a long, long way. It can be mistaken for wisdom. It can masquerade as vision. With enough of it, the clown transforms himself into a ringleader. The dwarf looks like a giant.


--

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Something to Know - 18 July

Matt Wuerker

The manufacture and sale of guns and the resulting violence and killings keep on going.   Every massacre provokes the thought of gun control - and NOTHING happens.   The latest killing of 5 Marines in Tennessee, is but one more, and the nation is so numb to the crime that it seems to regarded as just one more massacre without any blowback of sanity.   In response, perhaps, this article in today's NY Times is a gem.  Rather than appeal to the sensibility to having sane and rational controls which the NRA and bought-and-paid-for politicians are too meek to support, this novel idea comes about.  Let us try the Capitalist's method of "marketing forces".  The U.S. government and state and local agencies are the largest buyers of weapons from the bulk of companies that make weapons and ammunition.   As the largest customer (see below), use the demands of the customer to rule what is being made, how it is being made, how it is being sold, and then let's see what happens.  This is good for starters:



The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

Here's a Way to Control Guns

By DAVID K. BRAWLEYOTIS MOSS IIIDAVID BENKE and JOEL MOSBACHERJULY 17, 2015

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NEARLY three years ago, in the days after the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Obama went to Newtown, Conn., to speak at a vigil for the victims. He spoke movingly, and seemed to embody the nation's outrage and its determination to reduce the number of people killed with guns in America. "Do not lose heart," he told the families of the victims. He said he would use "whatever power this office holds."

He has not done that. He tried one lever of presidential power — proposing legislation. When that didn't work, the president failed to move the other levers in a meaningful way.

For more than a year, we and fellow religious leaders across the nation have worked to persuade President Obama to use what we believe is the most powerful tool government has in this area: its purchasing power. The federal government is the nation's top gun buyer. It purchases more than a quarter of the guns and ammunition sold legally in the United States. State and local law enforcement agencies also purchase a large share. Major gun manufacturers depend on these taxpayer-funded purchases. For the government to keep buying guns from these companies — purchases meant to ensure public safety — without making demands for change is to squander its leverage.

Some of the leading brands of handguns purchased by the government — Glock, Smith & Wesson, Sig Sauer, Beretta, Colt, Sturm, Ruger & Company — are also leading brands used in crimes. Among the brands of handguns recovered by the Chicago Police Department at crime scenes between January 2012 and October 2013, all six of these companies ranked in the top 11. When police officers carrying Glocks are recovering Glocks at crime scenes on a regular basis, shouldn't this prompt questions about whether the police department could use its influence to reduce the number of guns that end up in the hands of criminals? When Smith & Wessons turn up frequently in the hands of criminals, shouldn't questions be asked when Smith & Wesson seeks a contract with the federal government?

What could gun manufacturers do to protect the public?

They could distribute their guns exclusively through dealers that sell guns responsibly, and end their relationships with the small percentage of bad-apple dealers that sell a disproportionate number of the guns used in crimes. They could produce "smart guns" that can be fired only by authorized users, and that therefore are far less likely to be used in accidental or intentional shootings. These measures, over time, would prevent many thousands of deaths.

But companies will innovate in these areas only if their major customers ask them to.

The president can push companies to compete in the area of safer guns and more responsible distribution. Here's how to start.

First, use federal purchasing power to begin a substantive conversation with gun manufacturers. The Pentagon is in the process of selecting the provider of handguns for the United States Army. It should require all bidders to provide detailed information about their gun safety technologies and distribution practices in the civilian market. No response, no contract.


Second, work with companies to develop new models of distribution, such as through dealers certified by the industry as reputable.
The F.B.I. should do likewise. In his forthright statement on how Dylann Roof obtained the gun used to murder churchgoers in Charleston without having a completed background check, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, explained that gun dealers have the discretion to execute a sale — or not — if a background check isn't completed within three days. The next logical step, in our view, is for Mr. Comey to ask the F.B.I.'s firearms suppliers to stop doing business with dealers who won't agree to use that discretion to protect the public.

Third, rescue the federal government's smart-gun research efforts from oblivion. Tens of millions of research dollars are needed to help get promising safety technologies to market.

Fourth, develop a set of metrics for measuring manufacturers' performance. We might measure, for instance, the number of a manufacturer's guns found at crime scenes, as a percentage of their overall sales.

Let's give gun manufacturers an incentive to make more smart guns and to allow fewer guns into the hands of criminals.

The Rev. David K. Brawley, the Rev. Otis Moss III, the Rev. David Benke and Rabbi Joel Mosbacher are members of the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, aimed at building power for social change.


--

Andy Borowitz


TODAY 4:25 PM

Trump Says He Heroically Avoided Capture in Vietnam by Staying in U.S.

BY 


CREDITPHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT OLSON / GETTY

AMES, IOWA (The Borowitz Report)—Presidential candidate Donald Trump revealed a little-known episode of personal heroism from his youth on Saturday, telling an Iowa audience that he narrowly avoided capture in Vietnam by remaining in the United States for the duration of the war.

"The Cong were after me," Trump said, visibly stirred by the memory. "And then, just in the nick of time, I got my deferment."

The former reality-show star said he had never shared his record as a war hero before because "I don't like to boast."

He said that he only disclosed the episode now because "the way this nation treats our deferment veterans is a disgrace."

Trump complained that he received no official commendation or medal for his heroism, calling the lack of recognition "shameful."

"Those brave Americans who, like me, avoided being captured by not serving at all—we are the true heroes," he said.

Trump's tale of valor appeared to move many members of his audience, some of whom waited in line after his speech to thank him for his lack of service.

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Thursday, July 16, 2015

Leaving the South

After reading this interesting perspective a few days ago, I thought about sending it out to "Y'all"....but didn't.   Maybe it is too complicated or inappropriate for those who I left behind when I moved from Georgia back to California.   However, leaving my own (our own), feelings out of it, it does present a situation where one real Southerner struggles with the sense of self-identity and the movement to find something other than the current situation.  This is not a "song of the South" or any other hidden agenda, but it does reveal one person's struggle:

I've come to the painful decision that in order to preserve my life, I must leave the land that I love. I was born in Mississippi, grew up in Virginia, and lived most of my adult life in South Carolina; all beautiful places with amazing people, all governed by the forces of banal evil. I don't want to live in a place where the state's attitude toward the poor is "Let them die." I am a poor person; I fell through the cracks. I don't want to work at a low-wage job while struggling to survive until my early death from some easily preventable ailment. I love the South, but I give up. I'm leaving. The red states are death states for so many people. I won't be the last refugee. Nearly half the American poor live in the South. But I won't live to work towards solving these problems unless I can get health care. So I'm setting out with a suitcase towards the hope of a better future in a blue state.

I have a master's degree in counseling, and I'm particularly good with teenagers. For ten years I had a decent career, although counselors aren't paid much. Then the economy tanked and social services were cut. I lost my job. Then another job. Nobody was hiring counselors; I got an hourly wage job. Lost my health insurance, lost my car, lost everything. I went into default on my student loans.

Things began to pick up for counselors, but there was a new question on applications: are you in default on your student loans? South Carolina and a few other red states passed a law saying that such persons cannot be hired by any agency receiving state funding, which for me and my degree, is nearly all the jobs here. Getting out of default would be feasible if I had a professional job, but on $8 an hour? No way. As a single person with no family, meager survival is nearly possible on that low of a wage.

I realized I was trapped. I read a book called Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much(Mullainathan and Shafir) in which the authors explain the effects of scarcity on the brain. I understood my thought process has been impaired by my struggle to survive in poverty for so many years. There are 45 million Americans struggling to survive just like me. Being stuck in poverty isn't about morals or character. It isn't about family structure or some "culture" of poverty. And it certainly isn't about being lazy or stupid. Most poor people are smart, hard-working, decent, kind, compassionate people. They are creative and innovative in solving their problems and creating beauty and ritual in their lives. They care for their children, disabled, and seniors with tenderness and love; they play music and write poetry and make art. They put up with a lot of bullshit from the public on a daily basis at their crappy low-wage jobs, but keep on smiling and telling you to have a great day. They take a lot of Advil and supplements in order to make up for the fact that they have little to no health care. They die sooner because of their struggle; even sooner if they live under Republican rule.

I began to think that in order to preserve my health and sanity, to use my degree in community counseling and be productive, to have a better life, I might have to leave the South.Unthinkable. I don't know anyone outside the South. I lived in California and Oregon in 1997-99. I had to come home. But I loved it there.

I turned to my online community for help, writing a diary called "Advice from my elders?" and I got excellent feedback. There was definitely consensus that I should leave. There was great practical advice that got me researching and making lists, and links to resources about student loan default, which is not as bad as I had thought, and ideas about housing such as intentional communities. As I became active with a goal and a direction, my mental fog began to lift.

I especially appreciated the Kossacks who shared their personal stories of picking up and leaving with the hope of a better future. They let me know that the problem isn't in me; I'm not defective. It's not that I lack ability or intelligence or drive, it's the system here that is broken, shutting me out at every turn, keeping me down. Nobody sells all of their belongings and says good-bye to their friends and sets out for the unknown without being in a desperate situation. I am in a desperate situation, and I will not wait for it to get worse, because I know it will. Others are trapped here, but I can't help them from inside. I have to get out.

With fresh hope and determination I began to develop a plan. After many lists and searches, I settled on Eugene, Oregon. I could write for pages about how awesome Eugene is, but the relevant points are that Oregon is a deep blue state, they are nice to their poor people, it's about the right size, and the fifth-best bicycling city in the US. It looks like a good fit for me personally and I've been there before. I wanted to stay closer, but you have to go so far to get out of the South that I might as well go back to where I felt at home, where I didn't want to leave and have always wanted to go back. For sixteen years I have been dreaming about Oregon. I'm going back, and I feel so free.

I think I can fly for about $300, and I'll ship a few boxes, but I'm going to be starting over completely fresh. I'm selling my few belongings of small value to raise a little more. I will arrive in Oregon with nothing. From what I'm seeing on Craigslist, I should be able to find a cheap room and low-wage job fairly quickly. I'm sending out resumes for professional jobs, but that kind of job search takes a while, and even if I am a cashier in Oregon, I'm still better off because I can have Medicaid. It is a risk, and I am scared. Very, very scared. But I am more scared of not changing my life. I must live. The South is killing me.

If you live in Eugene, send me a message! I could use some contacts on the ground and advice on practical details. I promise I'm going to be an asset to your community in every way that I can think of.

If you'd like to help but aren't lucky enough to live in Eugene, I have a GoFundMe here: hereand I have a PayPal account, email ariadne73@live.com and select "Send to Family & Friends." Even if you only have five dollars, well, to me that is a lot of money. To many Americans, $5 is a lot of money. Every little bit really does help and will be very much appreciated!

I'm going to keep writing about my journey and my challenges and triumphs, if any, along the way. I value your advice and feedback so very much, and I am deeply grateful to be a part of the community here. There aren't enough words to say thank you, but, as always, thanks for reading!

 

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Something to Know - 15 July

Jeff Danziger

Joining the pack of diverse clowns in the GeeOpie amusement vehicle, we now have the guvner of the state of Wisconsin.  So what does he bring to the table.  So far, it looks like he is trying to cut and paste the same destruction to his state as has the guvner of Kansas (Brownback).  Ripping through unions and ripping apart the state university, we will see how his CV develops during his campaign.  From the looks of this op-ed in the NY Times, the guy is nothing but a super-grade political hack, which blends well with some of his competition on the stage.  What really is tacky about him, is that he needs a cram course on world affairs.  You think a guy running for president would already have some expertise on this before he would consider himself a viable candidate.  This is the American Hustle:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/opinion/frank-bruni-haste-hustle-and-scott-walker.html?emc=eta1&_r=0



The Opinion Pages | OP-ED COLUMNIST

Haste, Hustle and Scott Walker

JULY 15, 2015

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In the formal announcement of his presidential campaign on Monday, Scott Walker mentioned God right away, introduced himself as a preacher's son and invoked religion repeatedly, as he has throughout a perpetual candidacy that stretches back to his college days, when he told the Marquette University yearbook: "I really think there's a reason why God put all these political thoughts in my head."

But what I see in him is the kind of soullessness too common in American politicians and the kind of careerism that makes American politics such a dreary spectacle.

I see an ambition even more pronounced than any ideology. I see an interest in personal advancement that eclipses any investment in personal growth.

These are hardly unusual traits in our halls of government. But they're distilled in Walker, the governor of Wisconsin.


He's been on one Wisconsin ballot or another almost every two years over the last quarter-century, and he's only 47. Before the governorship, he was a state assemblyman and then a county executive.
He's styling himself as a political outsider, but that's a fluke of geography, not professional history. While it's true that he hasn't worked in Washington, he's a political lifer, with a résumé and worldview that are almost nothing but politics.

We know from the biographies of him so far that he has been absorbed in those "political thoughts" since at least the start of college, before he could have possibly developed any fully considered, deeply informed set of beliefs or plan for what to do with power.

I suspect that we'll learn, with just a bit more digging, that he was mulling campaign slogans in the womb and ran his first race in the neighborhood wading pool, pledging to ease restrictions on squirt guns and usher in a ban on two-piece bathing suits.

He has drawn barbs for the fact that he left Marquette before graduating and was many credits shy of a degree. But I know plenty of people whose intellectual agility and erudition aren't rooted in the classroom, and his lack of a diploma isn't what's troubling.

The priorities that conspired in it are. He was apparently consumed during his sophomore year by a (failed) bid for student body president. According to a story by David Fahrenthold in The Washington Post, he was disengaged from, and cavalier about, the acquisition of knowledge. And he dropped out right around the time he commenced a (failed) candidacy for the Wisconsin State Senate — in his early 20s.

Walker's cart has a way of getting ahead of Walker's horse. Only after several flubbed interviews earlier this year were there reports that he was taking extra time to bone up on world affairs. This was supposed to be a comfort to us, but what would really be reassuring is a candidate who had pursued that mastery already, out of honest curiosity rather than last-minute need.

When allies and opponents talk about his strengths, they seem to focus not on his passion for governing but on his cunning at getting elected. "He's a sneaky-smart campaigner, they say, a polished and levelheaded tactician, a master at reading crowds," wrote Kyle Cheney and Daniel Strauss in Politico. "He learned the value of ignoring uncomfortable questions, rather than answering them."

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What an inspiring lesson, and what a window into political success today.


But with his
 current focus on the Iowa caucuses, he no longer supports a path to citizenship, flaunts his anti-abortion credentials and has called for a constitutional amendment permitting states to outlaw same-sex marriage. He even has a newfound affection for ethanol.He tailors his persona to the race at hand. To win his second term as governor of Wisconsin and thus be able to crow, as he's doing now, about the triumph of a conservative politician "in a blue state," he played down his opposition to abortion, signaled resignation to same-sex marriage and explicitly supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

His advisers, meanwhile, trumpet his authenticityAuthenticity? That's in tragically short supply in the presidential race, a quality that candidates assert less through coherent records, steadfast positions or self-effacing commitments than through what they wear (look, Ma, no jacket or necktie!) and even how they motor around. Walker is scheduled to trundle through Iowa later this week in a Winnebago, and of course Hillary Clinton traveled there from New York in that Scooby van.

"I love America," Walker said in Monday's big speech. That was his opening line and an echo of what so many contenders say.

I trust that they all do love this country. But from the way they pander, shift shapes and scheme, I wonder if they love themselves just a little more.



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Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Andy Borowitz

TODAY 9:26 AM

Poll: Palin Would Bring Much-Needed Dignity to Republican Field

BY 

CREDITPHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT OLSON/GETTY

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would bring much-needed dignity to the 2016 Republican field, a new poll shows.

According to the poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota's Opinion Research Institute, Palin's ability to articulate her positions on issues with precision and restraint is sorely lacking among other entrants in the G.O.P. race.

Additionally, voters said that the former governor's breadth of knowledge in the fields of economics, foreign affairs, and American history would place her head and shoulders above the current crop of Republican hopefuls.

In the words of one voter who was surveyed, "When I hear some of these candidates talk, I sure do miss Sarah Palin."

Despite the overwhelming sense that she would contribute gravitas and intellectual rigor that have been woefully missing from the G.O.P. contest, a Palin candidacy appears unlikely, a spokesman said.

"Governor Palin is very flattered by this poll, but she is concerned that being associated with this field of candidates could harm her stature," he said


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****
Juan
 

When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.

~ Prince Philip