New York Primary Today!

The wait is over. The New York Primary is today and, hopefully, the endless Bernie Sanders/Hillary Clinton television ads will end for awhile. New York's primary is a proportional, closed primary which means the delegates will be divided...well, proportionatly. However, those of us who are not registered in any established party will not be able to vote.

The closed primary issue has become a real problem in the last few weeks for me. New York has some of the most stringent voter registration laws in the country. In order to vote in this primary, new voters only had to register by March 25. However to change party affiliation or, in my case to declare a party, currently registered voters would have to have made that change or declare by October 6, 2015. All I can say is that if this were Mississippi or Alabama, the DOJ would have looked into this years ago.

Ironically, two of Trump's children have found themselves in the same predicament as me - unable to vote in the most important primary in my lifetime. I expect the closed primary issue and other voter registration laws in New York to become a big issue after this primary. Fortunately, the outcome will be proportional, so no one will take all of the delegates.

Here is where we are according to the latest polls:

New York Republican Primary
New York - 95 (P) delegates
Prediction:
Trump: 54%
Cruz: 25%
Kasich: 20% (Really??)

Delegate Count as of April 18:
Trump: 755
Cruz: 545
Rubio: 171
Kasich: 143
Uncom: 9
Carson: 8
Bush: 4

*1237 to clinch nomination

New York Democratic Primary
New York - 291 (P)
Prediction:
Clinton: 56%
Sanders: 41%

Delegate Count as of April 18:
Clinton: 1776 (Del/Super Del combined)
Sanders: 1118 (Del/Super Del combined)

*2383 to clinch nomination

On a related topic, issues within the Republican party are brewing with the primaries. Of course, Trump's camp seem to be caught completely unaware that there are some states who for decades have elected their delegates through the caucus process. And amazingly, Cruz has taken these delegates in the last five caucuses. Trump has stated openly that if he has the most votes regardless of the 1237 minimum, he should get the nomination or else there may just be riots at the Columbus convention.

Question: Do you think the party is obligated to nominate the candidate that comes the closest to 1237 or must the candidate have to have won the minimum of 1237 delegates to claim the nomination?

I will keep you posted on our results in New York. But while we wait breathlessly for the results, please feel free to vent.

Oh, by the way, I watched a very interesting movie this weekend - "Look Who's Back". It's German satire that came out in 2015 and really worth the watch especially in this election cycle. It is available on Netflix and really worth it. However it will scare the bejeezus out of you. LINK to Trailer

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Friday's Thoughts: Debates Round-up, Christmas Songs, and Star Wars

By Kit

My last post before Christmas. What a year its been, trying to consistently write a weekly post for this site. It's been difficult, especially with schoolwork but I'm glad for the positive responses I've gotten from you folks.

Now, let's get on with the show.

Tuesday's Debate We had a debate this week. The expected (and possibly hoped for) Trump/Cruz clash did not occur. Cruz deflected from attacking Trump and Trump, interestingly, did likewise. Instead the big clashes were Bush/Trump and, the highlights for me, Cruz/Rubio.

So let's score the Top 8 Candidates.

Trump: Trump was Trump. Though slightly less than usual but still Trump with outlandish calls to kill the families of terrorists (WTF?!) and issuing proposals that, as Jon Gabriel of Ricochet once pointed out, nearly always seem to involve bigger government. He is a populist strongman with a nationalist streak in the vein of Huey Long.

He is also a clueless clown, flubbing a question on the nuclear triad. True, I didn’t know what it was but… I am not running for President of the United States.

However, he did gain a few points with me by promising not to run as an independent. For now, at least. He made He was at zero before (if not in the negatives) so it was not a huge bump. He is still at the bottom for me.

Cruz: Did ok but he made a flap, possibly fatal one (but fatal missteps are declared far more often than they occur) when he said he never supported legalization of illegals when in fact in 2013 he proposed a bill to do just that. He claims it was a poison pill but he advocated on several networks, including for some time after it failed. National Review is giving him hell on this, and, to a certain extent, Fox News as well, while his supporters are trying to craft him as some kind of Machiavellian genius —who lies to stop bills he doesn’t like.

Carson: Still not ready for primetime. Should be running for Congress. Next!

Rubio: My pick as “winner”, even though there really was not a standout winner. But I found myself leaning back to him. He took on an attack on immigration and handled it well. And, no, he did not “dodge” the immigration question, unless dodging means giving a clear and well-crafted answer that clearly outlines a position you don't like in a possibly appealing way. You can say you don't trust him, you can say you don't like his answer, but it was not evasive.

I have some problems with him, true, but he never seems off his game. He has handled himself incredibly well in the debates. He always knows his stuff. That requires some homework. In this primary system, that is sadly a huge plus. He also looked a bit older than in previous debates, where he unfortunately had a Chairman of the College Republicans look to him.

Christie: Rubbed me the wrong way. His butting in during the Rubio/Cruz debate on NSA and attacking them for “just discussing” instead of making decisions shad, to me at least, a stench of pro-executive, anti-legislature strongman Mussoliniism to it. Though it appears to have played well with most people.

Carly: Ok. Her campaign for VP continues apace. Her failed attempt to pull a Christie during one of the Rubio/Cruz clashes was rather sad.

Jeb: Had his best night but that is not saying much considering how poor his nights have been so far.

Kasich: Who? Oh, right, him. He was… there.

He kind of seemed like the Larry Gillmore of the night. He was there.

Any thoughts?


Bad Christmas Songs

First, my least favorite: “Last Christmas”, “Christmas Shoes”, “Grandma Got Run over by a Reinder”, and “Do They Know It’s Christmas” are at the top of my hate list. “Christmas Shoes” is probably my least loathed of them because I rarely heard it but, yeah, its awful. “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is annoying and “Do They Know Its Christmas” is “LOOK AT HOW CARING WE ARE” twaddle. At least “Last Christmas” has a cheesy, 80s so-bad-its-good vibe to it, even if it is annoying.

Good songs? Pretty much any of the classics and the hymns. There are some mediocrities such as “Rock a-Round the Clock” and “All I Want For Christmas” but for the most part this season is full of good songs; “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, “Jingle Bells”, “Silver Bells”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”,

Your favorites? Least favorites?

Star Wars

Well Star Wars premieres tonight, I plan to see it tomorrow. Anyone who dares spoil it for me will be force-choked. But not to death. No, for death they will be tossed bound and gagged into a Sarlacc pit to be digested over the course of a thousand years.

Merry Christmas.

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Open Thread - Secretaries of State Edition

Two Secretaries of State and two topics for today:

Number One: Below is a transcript of current Secretary of State John Kerry form his Sunday appearance on "Meet the Press" with Chuck Todd defending his current negotiations and recent non-agreement agreement pending with Iran:

QUESTION: Let me move to Iran because Iran is on the state sponsor of terror list. Why – how is it that you can do a nuclear agreement and trust a country to abide by that agreement that you also believe, that our government believes, is a state sponsor of terror?

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, the bottom line is the word you used, “trust.” We don’t trust. There is no element of trust in what we’re doing. You have to build trust, and that takes place over a long period of time.

This is an agreement that is based on transparency, accountability, verification. You have to be able to know what is happening. And we believe the President’s responsibility and my responsibility in support of him is to guarantee and protect the security of our country and of our friends and allies. And we believe that this agreement does that. We know that the American people overwhelmingly would like to see if we could resolve this question of Iran’s nuclear program peacefully. And that’s what we’re trying to do, but it requires a protocol of visibility, of accountability, of insight, of transparency --

QUESTION: Yeah.

SECRETARY KERRY: -- so that we know what Iran is doing. And over a long period of time we believe that we can indeed do what’s necessary to make the guarantees that are important to everyone. Now --

QUESTION: Well --

SECRETARY KERRY: -- what’s key here is that what we have done shuts off the four principal pathways to a bomb for Iran in the Natanz facility, in the Arak plutonium facility, in the Fordow underground facility, and also the covert program. We think that – we don’t think – the science tells us that we have an ability to know what Iran is doing and to be able to shut off those pathways to a bomb. That makes the world safer.

QUESTION: And there are plenty of people that say if your – what you say the agreement is is the agreement, there are plenty of people, even some Republicans, who say it’s a good agreement. However, the leader of Iran, the ayatollah – and everybody knows this is the guy that calls the shots – he tweets this out in English: “I trust our negotiators but I’m really worried as the other side is into lying and breaching promises. An example was the White House fact sheet.”

And when you look at the differences, whether it’s President Rouhani and what he has said or what the ayatollah has said: The United States has said there’s going to be a gradual relief of sanctions based on progress, the Iranians say there’s immediate sanction relief; the U.S. says there’s limits on uranium enrichment, the Iranians say there’s no mention of enrichment limits; the U.S. says there’s restrictions on Iranian research, the Iranians say there is no restrictions on research and development.

Why are they publicly lying, if that’s what they’re doing?

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, I’m not going to get into accusations back and forth. That doesn’t help our process. It’s not going to solve any problems --

QUESTION: Are they being truthful? Are the Iranians truthful here?

SECRETARY KERRY: Let me just say this to you, Chuck. They’re going to say the things that they feel they need to say with respect to their deal at home. And all I can tell you is this: When we did the interim agreement, there were these same kinds of discrepancies, or spin if you want to call it that, with respect to what the deal was or wasn’t. But in the end, the deal was signed and the deal has been agreed to and lived up to. No one contests that Iran has lived up to every component of that agreement, and the deal is what we said it was.

Now, with respect to the fact sheet that we put out, just yesterday the Russians released a statement saying that the statement released by the United States is both reliable and factual. So I will stand by every word that I have uttered publicly, and I will be briefing the United States Congress in full – the House tomorrow, the Senate the next day – and we will lay out all of the details to them, some of which are obviously classified, but we will have a long discussion about what the facts are.

QUESTION: All right. But if the Iranians insist that immediate sanction relief has to take place, immediate, that all sanctions have to be gone, will you walk away from that deal?

SECRETARY KERRY: Again, I’m not going to get into one side’s or another side’s characterization of what the deal is or isn’t. We’ve made clear what our needs are, what our expectations are. We’ve made it very clear that if we can’t achieve our goals we will not sign a deal, and we’ve said that again and again to Congress, to the world. We want a good deal. We believe that the outlines, the parameters that we have laid out thus far, are the outlines of that good deal. Now, is it perfect yet? No. Are there things that need to be done? Yes. That’s why we have another two and a half months of negotiation.

And what we’re looking for --

QUESTION: Right.

SECRETARY KERRY: -- is not to have Congress interfere with our ability inappropriately by stepping on the prerogatives of the executive department of the president and putting in place conditions and terms that are going to get in the way of the implementation of a plan.

QUESTION: I understand.

There are two quotes in this interview that bother me. The first is Kerry's public declaration that "[t]here is no element of trust in what we’re doing." I find that odd for the Secretary to pronounce that he has no trust of the people with whom he is negotiating. Not odd that he does not trust them, but odd that he would make such a public declaration. I cannot put my finger on why I think this is odd, but just that it is odd.

The other statement that bothered me is that he is looking for Congress not to "interfere...by stepping on the prerogatives of the executive department of the president and putting in place conditions and terms that are going to get in the way of the implementation of a plan." Hummm, isn't that why we have Congress. Isn't it the function of Congress to check and balance the "prerogatives of the executive department"?

Number Two: The second Secretary of State issue is actually of the recent declaration of Hillary Clinton that she is officially running for President (Yay!). You may or may not know that her main office has opened in hip and cool (and very expensive) Brooklyn, New York. Well, at least there are few New Yorkers who are not necessarily pleased that Hillary is running -

Over one hundred posters have been popping up all over NYC since her announcement on Sunday. No one knows who is putting them up, but it is clearly a pointed response to Clinton's "Super Volunteers'" warning to the press that there are certain words that they dare not use when describing Candidate Clinton as they would be considered code words for micro-aggressive misogyny. Yeah, that's a thing now and you have been warned...

Discuss...

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