Tweet of the Day

Fist-bump, @Walmart , the term you're looking for is fist-bump. pic.twitter.com/JLqjyr2Apo

— Khalil Sehnaoui (@sehnaoui) April 12, 2016

H/t Mock Paper Scissors.

Yeah, I Guess Kasich Is the Best They Have

Today, Donald Trump (but you already guessed that) wondered in a speech how former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno was doing.

It appears that Trump forgot that:

• Paterno was fired a because he covered up the activities of a serial child rapist.
• Jo Paterno is dead.

Oops:

Speaking at a rally in Pittsburgh, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump mentioned late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who died in 2012. Paterno was fired from the school and his statue removed after Jerry Sandusky's sexual abuse of children came to light. (Reuters)

Pandering to local crowds is a staple of political campaigns everywhere, and Donald Trump’s is no different. But the key to successful pandering is knowing to whom you’re speaking and, of course, what you’re saying.

Trump was way off base on both those counts Wednesday, when he spoke before a crowd of supporters at a rally in Pittsburgh.

“I know a lot about Pennsylvania, and it’s great,” Trump said. Which is standard-issue stuff, but then things got awkward.

“How’s Joe Paterno?” Trump asked. “We’re gonna bring that back? Right? How about that whole deal?”

Paterno, for those who may have forgotten (including, possibly, a certain presidential candidate) died in 2012. (Wait, is bringing him back from the grave an essential part of making America great again?)

His campaign is now claiming that he was asking if the coach's statue was returning to the State College campus.

No.  Trump had a brain fart that makes John Kasich look like Stephen f%$#ing Hawking, only, of course, Stephen Hawking is a far more inspiring speaker.

This Is the Best That They Have?

I am referring, of course, to John Kasich, who gave a speech at a Yeshiva (Jewish religious school), and decided to tell them about an obscure bible story, the story of Joseph:

John Kasich's travels in New York brought him yesterday to a Jewish bookstore, where he met students of the Talmud. Having thus met people who spend their entire day scrutinizing religious texts, Kasich's reaction was to ask them if they were aware of facts about those texts that they probably knew as very small children. "They sold [Joseph] into slavery, and that's how the Jews got to Egypt. Right? Did you know that?" For those who never attended Sunday school, this is a bit like visiting MIT, wandering into a physics lab, and asking people if they ever heard of this guy named Isaac Newton.

But it gets even better: He then went to a Jewish bakery, and drew an analogy between the blood of the Pascal lamb, and the blood of Jesus:

If Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s visit to Hasidic Brooklyn this week had yielded only one amusing moment, Dayenu – it would have been enough.

But, thank God, there were many in the Republican presidential candidate’s visit to a Jewish bookstore, shmura matzah bakery and Hasidic school in Borough Park on Tuesday.

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful holiday for our friends in the Jewish community – the Passover,” Kasich told reporters after emerging from the matzah bakery, a box of the fresh-baked stuff in hand.

Yes, Jews are known to love The Passover, almost as much they love The Pre-Election Drop-By from vote-seeking politicians.

Flanked by Hasidic publicist Ezra Friedlander, Kasich then launched into a brief appraisal of the links between Passover and, um, the blood of Jesus Christ.

“The great link between the blood that was put above the lampposts” – er, you mean doorposts, governor — “the blood of the lamb, because Jesus Christ is known as the lamb of God. It’s his blood, we believe …”

Kasich’s only saving grace was that his remarks kept getting interrupted by the subway rumbling on the elevated tracks overhead.

Talking about Christ’s blood during a visit to Borough Park? Oy vey. Please, somebody, prep this guy. Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn want to hear about food stamps, affordable housing, Medicaid. Ix-nay on the Esus-jay.

This is definitely the silly season in politics.

Remember though, that according to all the "very serious people" Kasich is the only adult in the proverbial room.

I would say, "The stupid, it burns!" but this wasn't even the stupidest thing that a Republican said today.

Take a guess who it was who was even stupider. No peeking.

Thanks Hillary

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton aggressively supported the coup in Honduras.

Now that government has brought back death squads:

Three weeks ago, Honduran activist Gaspar Sanchez spoke at a briefing on Capitol Hill, urging lawmakers to support an impartial investigation into the murder of environmental activist Berta Cáceres.

Cáceres had mobilized native communities to speak out against the Agua Zarca Dam, a hydroelectric project backed by European and Chinese corporations, before being killed by two unknown gunmen last month.

Last week, back in Honduras at a protest outside the Honduran Public Ministry in Tegulcigalpa, Sanchez unfurled a banner demanding justice for Cáceres’s murder.

When nearby soldiers saw him, they dragged him away from the crowd and brutally beat him, stopping only after the crowd of protestors came to his defense.

………

Victor Fernandez, a prominent human rights attorney and lawyer representing the Cáceres family, insisted that her assassination was carried out by either the Honduran government or by “the paramilitary structure of companies.”

“Honduras is the victim of international theft due to its national resources,” said Fernandez, speaking through a translator. “What we have now is our natural resources — minerals, rivers, forest. Cáceres was killed because she was confronting the extractive model.”

Bertha Oliva compared the current situation to the early 1980s, when the CIA funded, armed, and trained Honduran government death squads that murdered hundreds of opposition activists.

………

In 2009, a coup toppled Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who had long been seen as a leftist threat to the interests of international corporations. In 2008, Zelaya blocked a series of hydroelectric dam projects, citing concerns raised by native Hondurans. Less than a year after he was deposed, the new government had already approved 40 dam contracts. When the current President Juan Orlando Hernández came to power in 2013, his slogan was “Honduras is open for business.”

The coup was accompanied by a huge rise in political violence. By 2012, state security forces had assassinated more than 300 people, and 34 members of the opposition and 13 journalists had disappeared, according to data compiled by Honduran human rights organizations. The political assassinations added to the emboldened violence from gangs and drug traffickers, making Honduras one of the most dangerous countries in the world. In 2012, Reuters reported that it had the highest murder rate of any country.

I know that Clinton claims that she has the experience to be President, to paraphrase the wisest thing that I've read this century:

Give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

1. It is a policy initiative of the current Hillary Clinton.
2. It was significant enough in scale that I'd have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn't in some important way completely f%$#ed up during the execution.

Yes, I am comparing her to the Bush administration.

I Could Care Less about the Stanley Cup Playoffs

Earlier today, my wife mentioned that the Stanley Cup playoffs were starting tonight.

She is a hockey fan, specifically the New York Rangers.

I am most assuredly not a follower of the sport.

Upon observing my lack of enthusiasm, she said, "You could care less about the Stanley Cup Playoffs."

I corrected her, and said, "No, I couldn't care less about the Stanley Cup Playoffs," because this is the proper linguistic formulation to describe supreme apathy.

It turns, as is often the case, she was right, and I was wrong.

There are things that I care about a LOT less than specifically.

The I saw a report about the tweets of Craig Mazin, who was Ted Cruz's roommate in their freshman year at Princeton.

He has made a bit of a hobby tweeting about how Cruz was back in the day, and it is clear that he has never been a fan of his.

Well, in response to accounts of Cruz' running the defense of the Texas' ban on "Sexual Appliances", Mr. Mazin tweeted the following:

Ted Cruz thinks people don't have a right to "stimulate their genitals." I was his college roommate. This would be a new belief of his.

— Craig Mazin (@clmazin) April 13, 2016

Sharon was right, I was wrong, I care about this a LOT less than the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

I really did not need that image in my head.

Snark of the Day

I feel this may well be a turning point. It's one thing to lose a 12-minute version of "Sherry Darling," or the first-round of the 2072 NCAA Men's Division I basketball tournament. But when the state legislature finds itself besieged by hundreds of angry, blue-balled, hairy-palmed, half-blind preachers, that's when you'll really see things move. Venceremos, my comrades!

—Charlier Pierce on XHamster blocking porn viewers from North Carolina from viewing their pr0n in response to the state's anti-gay laws.

Heh.

The Image You Should Have in Your Head When You Think Uber

Just witnessed @Uber driver literally peeing in a cup and flinging it out window in city streets. Ridiculous

— Maria Bartiromo (@MariaBartiromo) April 11, 2016

Pee in a cup flying out a window = Uber.

Works for me.