February 2, 2016--A Win Is A Win

After last night's results, I should drop out of the prognostication business.

Though I got Hillary right--she squeaked by by about a half a percent--I totally missed what was happening among Republicans.

Ted Cruz came in first?

Marco Rubio a very close third, almost leaving Trump in his dust?

What does this say about Iowa voters who had half-a-year to think about what to do?

How did Cruz sell himself as an alternative to the "system" when he and his wife are embedded parts of it? Princeton, Harvard, Goldman Sachs, the U.S. Senate? Bankrolled by billionaires?

Was it all about religion in a state that is made up of 60 percent evangelicals?

Maybe Iowa, as it has been in the past, is a niche electorate and that things will become more predictable and understandable in New Hampshire and beyond.

I have to do a lot of recalibrating.

It's hard to think that Cruz will win in NH or many places beyond.

And I am consoling myself by remembering that the last two GOP Iowa caucuses were won by Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.

A couple of things may be clear--

Trump will not win the nomination. Half of what he's about is his self-proclaimed winning. These results undermine that.

Cruz also will not win the nomination. I am certain the phones were ringing all last night from the Koch Brothers and Sheldon from Las Vegas, coalescing at last around a so-called "establishment candidate. One they can support and own--

Marco Rubio will be offered that deal as he has shown in the past that he is comfortable being supported by billionaires (car-dealer Norman Braham in his case) and has no problem answering his phone when they call and doing their bidding.

For Hillary, though messy, a win is a win and she should go on fairly easily to secure the nomination after losing to Sanders in NH.

By next week at this time, in addition to Huckabee and Santorum, it will be the end of the road for Carson and Carly and Christie and poor Jeb! And . . .

Here I go again, still prognosticating. I have to get over this addiction.

January 25, 2016--Governor Who?

Governor Chris Christie has virtually moved to New Hampshire.

It's all-in for him up there. Unless he comes in third in the February 9th primary, he'll be forced to return to New Jersey, tail between his legs, where, it is alleged, he is still the governor.

Actually, he got a preview of life in NJ this past weekend when winter storm Jonas was set to pummel the Jersey Shore. In a deja-vu hallucination that Jonas might pack the wallop of Hurricane Sandy, though he didn't want to leave the cozy town-hallers he was getting nachas from in the Granite State, he had no choice but to return kicking and screaming to Jersey and pretend he cared about his anxious constituents.

His one caveat--no replays of his former post-Sandy bromance with Barack Obama. That was the beginning of the end for him. Closing the GW Bridge also didn't help. But some New Hampshireites were actually beginning to like him--though he is still showing up in NH polls in low single-digits--and for Christie, whose approval rating in the Garden State is almost as low as his standing in the presidential race, he had no choice. Put in an appearance in Jersey--no matter how reluctantly--and live with it.

Though maybe, just maybe, he was hoping, he would get politically lucky and the storm would reach Sandy proportions (fortunately it didn't) and he could get a lot of snow-swept, flooded-out face-time on TV, stomping around as a pretend commander in chief.

And show up in NJ he did. For just 24 hours before racing back to the comforts of New Hampshire, leaving thousands still stranded along the flooded Jersey coast.

On Saturday, the New York Times ran a story about how frequently he's been out of the state the past year--during 2015, Crispy spent 191 days in anyplace but New Jersey, most of it downing free snacks and campaigning.

But, the Times decided not to ask why, if he's at best a part-time governor, he still pulls down a full-time $175,000-a-year salary.

Actually, they could have raised the same question about many of the other candidates.

Just as the Florida Sun Sentinel called for no-show Marco Rubio to resign from the Senate. In addition to being personally underwritten by a fanatical Israel-supporter, South Florida car-dealer billionaire Norman Braham, Rubio, who has the worst attendance record in Congress, shamelessly continues to pocket the $174,000-a-year salary.

Only politicians can get away with this kind of stuff. Though maybe soon they'll be inhibited from doing so as the public continues to sour on their performance and are turning to Bernie Sanders and Donald TRUMP types in the hope that they will be able to do something to fix our festering problems, very much changing the way parasitical public "servants" behave.

I know, dream on.

Christie and Rubio among the contenders are not the only ones feeding at the government trough.

Ted Cruz, who is making quite a living as a federal employee though also not showing up for work, spends his days trashing the very system of which he and his Goldman-Sachs-employed wife are comfortable fixtures.

Then there is Rand Paul who not only ignores his day job but also finagled the Kentucky legislature to pass a special bill to allow him to double-dip--to run in November for both the Senate and the presidency. Though he won't need to worry about the latter since by March he'll no longer be at even the children's debate table but will have to slink back to KY to try to convince folks there that they should send him back to the Senate. He'll need to get on this case post haste as his reelection bid is currently imperiled.

Not to worry--one way or the other, I expect to see son-of-Ron with his own show on Fox News or back to operating on cataracts.

And while I'm at it, among the candidates who are running while on the federal payroll, the candidate who has been chowing down at public expense for the most years, for 34 to be precise, is Bernie the socialist.

I suppose his form of taxpayer-financed socialism doesn't take his decades-long ineffectiveness as a senator into consideration when the Treasury Department sends along to him each year a cool $174K.

And talk about part-time jobs, Rona wondered out loud that Hillary Clinton must be an amazing public speaker to justify her $225,000-a-pop speeches at Goldman Sachs. Too bad they were never broadcast on C-SPAN.

But here's my question--where do I sign up for one of these jobs?

October 27, 2015--Poor Marco

Poor Marco Rubio.

Like so many Americans, he hates his job.

He literally told that to a friend.

That he hates his day job as senator.

On Sunday he said that he's seen enough and thus won't run for reelection. He failed to note he would not be able to run concurrently for the Senate and the White House--it's against Florida law.

But he apparently doesn't hate it enough to quit. He must like pulling down that $174K a year Senate salary.

And it's unlikely he'll get fired even though for at least the past two years he pretty much stopped showing up for work. Apparently senators get paid by the taxpayers even if the are AWOL. No one clocks them in or out. No one supervises them as they would be if they had a real job.

It not that he hates being in DC. Quite the contrary.

He hasn't been seen in the Senate because the job he wants, also in Washington, is the presidency and he has spent all his waking and dreaming hours campaigning for it. Not at his own expense, mind you, but supported by campaign contributions and as a result of the largesse of his principal backer, Norman Braman, a south Florida car dealer and billionaire.

Norman's been slipping cash to Marco and his wife for years and in return, as he had said publicly, when he telephones his protégée, he gets his calls returned pronto.

You bet.

When pressed last week by Matt Lauer about his no-show job on Capital Hill, Rubio, with moral indignation and a straight face, said, "I'm not missing votes because I'm on vacation. I'm running for president so that the votes they take in the Senate are actually meaningful again."

Clever boy.

Still with a straight face, he went on to say, "My ambitions are for the country and Florida. [If I'm elected] we can begin to fix some of these issues that I've been so frustrated we've been unable to address during my time in the Senate."

He isn't frustrated enough about life in the Senate to motivate him to say--

"Enough. I've been in Washington now for four and a half years years and from the inside I know how things work. I am so disgusted [are you listening Tea Partiers?], and so I quit.  You might wonder," he could add, "why I am running for the presidency, the most Washington-establishment job there is. Good question. I am doing it to shake up and change everything. To scale back the government we all hate."

And, he might add, he's not doing it just for the money. Though the president gets paid $400K a year, pockets another $175 more for expenses, and has that wonderful big jet to fly around in.

This is a lot more than Rubio's been getting from Godfather Braman.

But that would require more integrity than he has thus far displayed.

In the meantime, he's planning to keep depositing his Senate salary checks and not showing up very often.

Norman Braman and His "Boy" Marco Rubio