US Presidential Contenders

[Buster's Uncle]

Seen on Facebook:

[Sleezebag] wants to ban Muslims.

But if we learned anything from Prohibition, it's that people will just make Muslims in their bathtubs.

[Buster's Uncle]

How Kasich became National Republican Grownup
Yahoo News
By Matt Bai  6 hours ago



Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich speaks at Villanova University in Villanova, Pa., on Wednesday. (Photo: Dominick Reuter/Reuters)



Normally, it wouldn’t be a very big deal for a popular two-term governor to win a presidential primary in his own state, especially if it’s the first of 29 states (and a couple of territories) he’s actually won. But normalcy isn’t even on speaking terms with politics this year, and so it was that John Kasich — after laboring as an afterthought through weeks of primaries and a dozen debates — woke up yesterday to a changed reality.

On the Villanova campus, where I caught up with him, something like 1,000 students jammed into an auditorium and an adjoining overflow room to see Kasich, who often sounded more like a dad than a presidential candidate. (“Here at Villanova, there’s a lot of lonely kids,” he said at one point. “Invite them to go out for pizza. Invite them to the basketball game.”)

Afterward, Kasich wandered into an impenetrable swarm of TV reporters, whose aggressive and overlapping questions — almost entirely about Donald [Sleezebag] and delegate math — he politely deflected.

Then I followed him out the back door, where his Ohio State Police detail was holding off another sizable throng of onlookers and photographers. We jumped into his black Suburban.

“Do you believe this, Matt?” Kasich said, turning around from the front seat to face me as the car surged forward. “Can you even believe what you saw there today? It’s incredible. Holy cow.”

I had to admit: It was something.

I’d interviewed Kasich on the eve of his announcement last July, and what we’d talked about then was temperament. As a young and ambitious congressman, and even in his early years as governor, Kasich had been known as impulsive and impolitic, quick to offend and quicker to retaliate. He chafed endlessly against the established order of his own party.

The knock on Kasich then was that he could never be disciplined or measured enough to project a presidential stature. Seriously.

Now here he was, the last man standing against [Sleezebag] and Ted Cruz, the only candidate left with governing gravitas. And more improbably, it seemed the campaign had transformed Kasich himself, or at least the public perception of him.

Somehow, the brash, prickly boy wonder of the Gingrich revolution — a guy still reviled by a lot of his liberal adversaries in Ohio for his evident moral certainty — had been elevated to the position of his party’s designated grownup.

Not only had Kasich managed to contain his famous temper over the last several months, but he had emerged as the most relentlessly upbeat candidate in either party, the favorite Republican of editorial boards and just about every voter who wasn’t planning to vote in Republican primaries.

I asked him if he thought he’d grown into this role during the campaign.

“There has been a big change in me, and that’s that I realized that people need encouragement,” he said. “More than I thought they did. They need to believe in themselves and their ability to change the world. I know that.

“I guess there’s an evolution as I’ve aged, and there’s my family and all that,” Kasich went on. “I’m not a kid anymore, you know? I’m 63 years old. Everybody grows up, I hope.”

But if it’s true that Kasich has mellowed (and I think it is), then it’s also true that his metamorphosis has a lot to do with the contrast he’s drawn. If this year’s Republican field were led by, say, John McCain or Mitt Romney, Kasich would probably seem like a slightly less irascible, less impulsive version of the guy who took the stage on the night of his first gubernatorial election and shouted: “I’m going to be the governor of Ohio!”

But as we and most alien civilizations surely know by now, this year’s field has been dominated by a crass showman who plays with extremist language as if the entire campaign were a Mad Lib. And every overshadowed governing candidate has had to make a decision, at one point or another, about how to remain relevant without losing all dignity.

Jeb Bush vacillated between punchless attacks and plaintive whines. Marco Rubio descended for a pivotal week into Triumph-the-Insult-Dog territory, then regretted it just as quickly. Chris Christie befriended the bully and now seems to occupy the organizational rung just below [Sleezebag]’s butler.

Alone among his peers, Kasich decided that if this was the last campaign of a long career, he was going to go out his way, with seriousness of purpose. And if espousing pragmatism while ignoring [Sleezebag] has made him seem, for much of the campaign, like a man oblivious to the moment, it has also earned him broader admiration than all the balanced budgets in the world.

Kasich said this week that he would  weigh in soon  on [Sleezebag]’s attitude toward women. I asked him if this signaled that a new, combative phase in his campaign was about to begin.

“I’m going to say things when I feel compelled to say them,” he replied, shaking his head. “More combative? I don’t like the sound of that. I’m not interested in being combative, but every once in a while, when you see something that makes your blood boil, I think you should say something about it.”

[Sleezebag]’s rhetoric isn’t new, so why had he waited this long to get incensed?

“I had a lot of stuff I didn’t know,” Kasich told me. “You might say, ‘Well, how could you not have known about what was happening at those rallies? How could you not have known about his rhetoric?’ Because I didn’t know. I’m running my own thing.

“And when I’ve seen it,” Kasich continued, “frankly I’ve been stunned by the coarseness. It’s beyond coarse, the insulting and incendiary nature of some of what he has done.”

I couldn’t be sure whether Kasich was really the last American with a television to find out about [Sleezebag]’s verbal recklessness, or whether he simply couldn’t afford to ignore it anymore. As much as he’s burnished his image by remaining at an Olympian remove, the mathematical fact is that Kasich can’t win without somehow taking [Sleezebag] down.

Even if Kasich were to consolidate his vote with most of Rubio’s (which is unlikely), it wouldn’t be enough to beat [Sleezebag] and Cruz in most states, as long as they continue to pile up the kinds of pluralities they did this week. Kasich would have to peel off some sizable segment of voters from both candidates, and even then all he can do is keep [Sleezebag] from clearing the threshold needed to clinch the nomination.

“I have a unique opportunity, because we’re now gaining momentum,” Kasich told me, shrugging off the obstacles. “What would you rather have, momentum in the first quarter or momentum in the fourth? Cruz didn’t win anything last night. I did.

“And you know what? People across the country are celebrating that victory in Ohio. Because they believe it sends a message that somebody who has a record, somebody who can bring us together — that there’s hope for that yet.

“I don’t see that anybody is going to have enough delegates,” Kasich told me. “And then you have a convention. I mean, why are people hyperventilating about that?”

Kasich’s plan, in other words, is to keep [Sleezebag] from amassing the 1,237 delegates he needs, and then to effectively declare a reset at the convention. His campaign added a team of serious party insiders this week — among them the superlobbyist Vin Weber and the longtime strategist Charlie Black — to begin preparing for a delegate war.

But as Kasich well knows, the “hyperventilation” in some circles comes from imagining what will happen if Republican operatives try to overturn the will of their own voters. And this is why Kasich needs to do more than simply keep [Sleezebag] under the magic number; he also needs to win a bunch of states that aren’t his own between now and early June.

In the end, an establishment-led challenge will be viable — or at least something less than suicidal — only if the leaders of various delegations can plausibly make the case that Kasich was the party’s strongest candidate by the time the primaries ended.

If nothing else, there’s little question that he’s now the most electable of the bunch. I asked him if it felt odd, despite his sharply conservative record and evangelical fervor, to have become the Republican Democrats like best.

“I have always been able to attract the independent and conservative Democrats,” Kasich told me as the car came to a stop. “When their party’s turned hard left and they feel left behind, we’ve always had an ability to get those votes.”

We were sitting in the driveway of a country club in Merion, Pa., where Kasich was about to attend a fundraiser. I thanked him for spending a little more time with me on what I knew was a rough day.

Kasich laughed, as if deeply amused.

“It’s not a rough day,” he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/how-kasich-became-republican-grown-up-105740374.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Filling Scalia’s seat: Democrats think it’s a win-win for them
Yahoo Politics
Olivier Knox  Chief Washington Correspondent  March 16, 2016



Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., Circuit will most likely not become Justice Merrick Garland of the Supreme Court, at least not while President Obama remains in office. He seems unlikely to get even a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, or a vote either by that panel or the whole Senate.

And it may be partly because it’s hard to imagine an Obama nominee more likely to win confirmation, if the Republicans allowed a vote.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell repeated on Wednesday what he said just hours after the late justice Antonin Scalia died in mid-February: There will be no Judiciary Committee hearings, and no votes on confirmation while Obama resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

“The Senate will appropriately revisit the matter when it considers the qualifications of the person the next president nominates,” McConnell said, apparently extinguishing even the dim prospects of a vote in the lame-duck session after the November elections.

Still, the pitched political battle over Garland’s fate could turn in unexpected ways, and will shape — and be shaped by — the 2016 race: not just Donald [Sleezebag]’s unprecedented presidential race but the fight to control the Senate, in which a platoon of Senate Republicans are facing stiff challenges.



President Obama introduces federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland, his nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, at the White House on Wednesday, March 16, 2016. (Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)


Garland, 63, is a judicial moderate who earned the support of a majority of Republicans for his 76-23 confirmation to the appeals court. Seven of the Senate’s current 54 Republicans supported him, while five opposed him, including McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley. Garland is a well regarded former federal prosecutor who walked in the ruins of the 1995 terrorist attack in Oklahoma City while emergency workers were still pulling out bodies, and he supervised the case that led to the death penalty for convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh. Conservatives say he is unsympathetic to their views on gun rights, but no one has seriously suggested he lacks the credentials to sit on the republic’s highest court. In fact, the GOP argument so far is not that he’s unqualified, but that someone who is not Obama should pick the next justice.

Garland’s nomination would need 14 Republicans to disrupt an inevitable filibuster, and five to be confirmed. Even if McConnell had not drawn that early line in the sand, that would not have been easy, but it would not have been impossible, and surely would have carried shorter odds than if Obama had chosen a nominee closer to the base of the Democratic Party. Put differently, there would be comparatively little political danger to the GOP in considering, and rejecting, a liberal firebrand, even one plucked from the ranks of women or minorities.

Republicans know that the main prize in play is the ideological shape of the Supreme Court. The late justice Antonin Scalia wasn’t just “a” conservative jurist. He was arguably the most influential conservative jurist of his era. Republicans know they’re highly unlikely to get another Scalia, but would settle for putting another conservative in the seat that the acerbic Italian-American held for decades, continuing their run of 5-4 rulings on many contentious issues. The problem for Republicans is not that Garland may turn out to be liberal — it’s that he’s sure to be a lot more liberal than Scalia, tipping the overall balance of the court to the left. To avoid that, the GOP has to gamble that they will recapture the White House come November.

For the Republican base, the issue is even more stark: It’s not just a question of how Garland would vote; it’s their refusal to countenance handing Obama any sort of victory. Polls conducted before Garland’s nomination found nearly seven in 10 Republicans saying Obama shouldn’t even try to fill the seat.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus captured the two notions — the court’s potential shift, anger at Obama — on Twitter. “We won’t stand by while Obama attempts to install a liberal majority on #SCOTUS to undermine our Constitution & protect his lawless actions,” he said.

White House aides have long said that having an actual nominee will force Republican intransigence to crumble, and that vulnerable Senate Republicans will ultimately press their leaders to hold hearings and votes. They point to conservatives like former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who have called for the Senate to take up the nomination. McConnell will cave, they predict confidently.



Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., leaves the Senate chamber after vowing that the body will not hold hearings on whether to confirm Garland. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)


McConnell will not cave, those close to him counter. Vulnerable Republicans don’t need to hold the line the way he does — they can meet with Garland, something their leader refuses to do — but they need the GOP base in November more than they need Democrats or up-for-grabs independents. If core Republicans stay home, the candidates lose. Swing voters are less likely to be won or lost on whether McConnell lifts the roadblock than on the parties’ standard-bearers, economic conditions or other factors.

One big variable, officials of both parties agree, is the [Sleezebag] factor. Back in March, an aide to a vulnerable Republican senator told Yahoo News, “I’m not sure we want to be in the business of telling voters that we’d rather risk having Donald [Sleezebag] nominate the next Supreme Court justice.” The brash marketing whiz has said he supports McConnell’s position. But the big unknown is how [Sleezebag] the GOP Nominee affects Garland’s fate. Fairly large numbers of Republican primary voters have told pollsters that they will not back the tinsel-haired entrepreneur in the general election. If they stay home, Republican candidates in down-ballot races may need to rely more heavily on independents.

Some Democrats think that this is a fight they can’t lose.

“We have forced them into a telescoping series of untenable positions, where even agreeing to meet with the guy is a cave in the view of their base,” said a senior Democratic congressional aide.

“It’s a win-win situation. Either we get the confirmation and change the balance of the court for a generation, or they have to fight to November defending the most extreme, untenable position of no-votes, and we’ll annihilate them on that,” the aide said. “And then President Clinton nominates” Scalia’s successor.

So, the aide said, “I don’t care if McConnell caves or not.”

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/filling-scalias-seat-democrats-think-its-a-020011431.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ted Cruz’s biggest challenge yet is making nice with his Senate colleagues
Yahoo News
Dan Friedman  March 17, 2016



Photo: Molly Riley/AP



Republican senators’ least favorite Washington politician is not Hillary Clinton. It’s not Chuck Schumer or President Obama. It is Sen. Ted Cruz.

Senate Republicans revile Cruz with special fervor because of their sense that he has used his short time in the Senate primarily to engage in political stunts and mock them as corrupt imbeciles in order to promote himself.

The insults sting all the more because they have worked. With Florida Sen. Marco Rubio now out of the presidential race and Ohio Gov. John Kasich unable to capture the GOP nomination outright, Senate Republicans face what South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham has described as a choice between being shot or poisoned in a two-way fight between Cruz and Donald [Sleezebag].

Eager to consolidate support, Cruz is offering his version of an olive branch, asking select Senate colleagues to unite behind him through the rest of the GOP primary fight.

At the same time, Senate Republicans’ dislike of Cruz runs so deep that many plan to sit on their hands in the coming months and await a nominee. In more than 20 interviews and conversations over the past week, Republican senators and staffers described deep antipathy toward Cruz.

“Now is the time for Republicans to unite for all of us who want a brighter future for our nation to come together and stand as one,” Cruz said Tuesday night, urging Rubio supporters and others to join him against [Sleezebag].

Cruz recently began calling Senate Republican colleagues “with a pitch for party unity against Donald [Sleezebag],” said Josh Holmes, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

McConnell is not among those Cruz has called, said Holmes, who is president and a founder of Cavalry LLC, which provides political consulting to Senate campaigns and others.

Graham did receive a call from Cruz after musing publicly about backing him over [Sleezebag]. The Texas senator emphasized areas of agreement, according to Graham, including the suggestion that “he will be a more reliable supporter of Israel than Donald will.”

Cruz’s fellow Texan, Sen. John Cornyn, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said last week that his suggestion that Cruz “engage with members of the Republican conference” drew interest from Cruz.

“The relationship could use some improvement,” Cornyn added.

Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, who endorsed Rubio, said that he doubts Cruz can convince senators who haven’t backed him yet to change course before the convention.

“I’m not sure what he could do that he couldn’t have been doing all along,” Inhofe said. “There are a lot of negative feelings.”

In a possible signal to establishment Republicans that he wants their help, Cruz said on Monday that he “could absolutely see a place for” Rubio and Kasich in his Cabinet if elected to the White House.

Cruz’s campaign is currently working to line up support from pledged delegates in anticipation of a potential convention fight in which many delegates could switch to support him after the first ballot. The odds of pulling off such an upset are already low, and Cruz could surely use help from Republican senators who might influence delegates from their states.

But Cruz’s outreach has so far borne little fruit. A Cruz endorsement last Thursday by Utah Republican Mike Lee, probably the Texan’s staunchest Senate ally, was notable primarily for how late it came.

“He’s a uniquely flawed messenger for a unity pitch given his proclivity to throw Republicans under the bus every time he’s had an opportunity to improve his own standing,” Holmes said. “Almost any other candidate in the field would be able to bring the party together behind their candidacy at this point. But everyone else might need to be eliminated before that happens [for Cruz].”

Cruz’s role in forcing the 2013 government shutdown is only the most prominent on a long list of grievances Senate Republicans have compiled against the Texas senator since his 2012 election. His support for the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee that often endorses conservative challengers bidding to oust Senate Republican incumbents, has left lasting anger.

And so the idea that Cruz would be a preferable nominee to [Sleezebag] is not a given for many Republicans. Alabama’s Jeff Sessions, the only senator to have endorsed [Sleezebag], is hardly the only GOP senator unsold on Cruz.

“It’s a real open question whether people ultimately conclude Ted Cruz is any more palatable than Donald [Sleezebag],” said Holmes. “Conservatives certainly think Ted Cruz is ideologically more predictable than Donald [Sleezebag]. But he has less experience than anyone in the field and is more personally disliked than any candidate in modern history.”



Sen. Lindsey Graham, seen laughing with Cruz at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in July 2015, is among the GOP colleagues Cruz has reached out to. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)


Senators say Cruz should get to work if he hopes to improve his Senate relations.

“Show some interest,” said Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the longest serving Senate Republican, when asked how Cruz could win colleagues’ support. “Quit running down the Congress as though we’re a bunch of imbeciles.”

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts cited Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” as instructive. “How’s it go?” Roberts said. “Hands, touching hands. Reaching out…”

“I am sure there will be people who will start moving in his direction,” said South Dakota’s John Thune, who heads the Senate Republican Conference. “But in terms of the relationship up here, he certainly can improve his outreach.”

But while Cruz can try to reduce animosity among colleagues, he is unlikely to seek or receive many endorsements as he takes on [Sleezebag], senators and aides said.

Cruz, who has worked in federal and state politics for most of the past 16 years, still hopes to cast himself as a more legitimate Washington outsider than [Sleezebag], who has never held any office. “Donald [Sleezebag] is the system,” Cruz said Sunday. “He is Washington.”

Cruz often cites his lack of support from GOP senators as evidence of his refusal to trade conservative values for Beltway popularity, and he has suggested that lawmakers who dislike him are part of the “Washington cartel” he is fighting.

That rhetoric gives Cruz a pitch he can hardly swap now for the blessing of the alleged “cartel” bosses.

“I am not sure that so-called establishment help is what he wants,” Thune said.

That view was borne out Wednesday when Cruz seemed to reject a suggestion, first reported by CNN, that he apologize to McConnell for calling the senior Republican a liar in remarks on the Senate floor last year.

Cruz told Fox News he will not “come on bended knee, with my hat in hand and suddenly say, ‘Oh, all the Washington politicians were right.’

“I’m gonna continue standing up to Washington, to the bipartisan corruption that got us in this mess,” Cruz said.

Ultimately, lawmakers planning to help or simply not oppose Cruz suggested their approach results mostly from a dispassionate decision to try to stop [Sleezebag] and the electoral catastrophe they fear will result from his nomination. Cruz, rarely seen in the Senate these days as he campaigns, just needs to stay out of the way.

Even so, Republican lawmakers and aides believe Cruz will experience no big wave of support from fellow senators unless he first captures the Republican nomination.

North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, who in January denied an Associated Press report that he told campaign donors he would vote for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders before Cruz, said there is only one way for Cruz to win Senate GOP support.

“Win the nomination,” Burr said. “At the end of the day, we’re going to be supportive of our nominee.”

Many GOP senators said they welcome Cruz’s seeking their support. But the likely result may be subtle.

“It affects the enthusiasm with which you’ll back him, certainly, or statements you’ll make,” said Arizona Republican Jeff Flake. “It never hurts.”

Hatch said he hopes to hear from Cruz soon.

“We all make mistakes. We all have to change some things, You’ve got to allow room for the younger people who are new to the process to make mistakes,” Hatch said. “Ted’s learning a lot from this. It’s been good for him.”

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/ted-cruzs-biggest-challenge-yet-is-making-nice-162432067.html


I will make this observation:  the House is crawling with teaparty chimps, and Cruz is far from the only one to slime his way into the Senate.  What you hear for reasons nobody likes Ted Cruz, least the people who've had to work with him, is mostly the usual teaparty playbook bullcrap - but the intensity and universality of antipathy to the man in the Senate indicates that there's something significant beyond the usual teaparty playbook bullcrap; the other teaparty chimps aren't supporting him.

[Rusty Edge]

So dumb question from someone who's never done the whole preliminary thing before (it's normally decided by the time we get to Utah):

What happens to delegates after a candidate drops out?  (determine whether I would vote for the one I like most or the one best suited to beat [Sleezebag])
What is the purpose/consequence of registering as a party?  (I'm presently registered independent, but the reps don't let anyone but reps vote) 


Bernie is first out the gate with commercials.  I'm actually a bit surprised, I don't think any democratic presidential candidate has ever spent money in Utah.

I'll answer this and then get back to work in my basement.

Short answer is that there are 50 different state rule books, and the rules are subject to change over time. So it doesn't hurt to look the stuff up. Wisconsin has an open primary. Everybody who's eligible to vote can vote on whichever ballot they prefer. I once voted for Obama in the primary in hopes that Hillary would get off of my television.

In a lot of states, your political registration mostly affects which calling and mailing lists you are on. In Ohio, you're stuck with your registration for 4 years.

Sometimes delegates are bound until the first ballot is cast regardless.   Sometimes a candidate who drops out frees his delegates at some point. Not so likely with prospects of a brokered convention, at least, not without some political horsetrading.

[Buster's Uncle]

Momma saw something on TV yesterday about teaparty types trying to organize to do the third party thing to worship Paul Ryan.

-As a said a couple weeks ago, any substantial traction on doing a third party thing automatically makes HRC President - and if the stupid wing of the party does it, it automatically fails in chaos and infighting.  Teaparty's big on eating its young, and does little else.

The small-government wing doing it, on the other hand, would still be giving up on blocking HRC this time, but might do some real good in the long run, especially if they got some of the less disgusting Atwater acolytes on the bus and listened to them (which carries its own horrific dangers -Atwater was teaparty before teaparty, ideologically, and done wrong his type of strategy just spreads the bullcrap and statism- but still)...

[Rusty Edge]

I think they were floating the idea of Ryan as a compromise in a brokered convention. He quickly declined. Of course, he did much the same with the Speaker job, but when the party couldn't agree on anybody else, and said they really needed him to hold them together, he reached an understanding with it's  membership.

Under similar circumstances, he might agree, but we're not in a brokered convention scenario as yet.

There have been a number of infusions in the GOP, the Dixiecrat segregationists, the Televangelicals, the TEA party ( who have been sort of highjacked by TheoCon/CultureCons ). These groups have a gift for making outrageous statements that alienate swing voters, and then blame the business people in the party for not being Pro Life/anti -gay/ anti-immigrant enough to win.  It's time the CultureCons went their own way and settled things once and for all, even if that means they inherit the title GOP. We'll see which one withers.

[Buster's Uncle]

There's nothing sacred about the Republican Party, which began as the radical liberal party, very opposite to what 80 years pretty firmly dominant turned it into.  It was founded to OPPOSE theocons and ceocons, and lived to become what it hated most - the people who would own slaves if they could now.

I still say the pragmatic libertarian wing should just go take  over the Libertarian Party, and make it less hardcore/extreme/pitiful - the stench of nerds and Randism and desperate failed masculinity ought to wash right off.

[Buster's Uncle]

Obama poised to lead (economic) invasion of Cuba
Yahoo News
Olivier Knox  Chief Washington Correspondent  March 19, 2016



A recent view of downtown Havana. (Photo: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)



For nearly 50 years, the United States tried various ways to end the Castro regime that rules Cuba. The disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion led to the convoluted scenarios laid out in “Operation Mongoose,” including plots to poison Fidel with a cigar, or a wet suit, or hiring organized crime figures to kill him. Later, the crippling U.S. economic embargo aimed to convince the island’s population to rise up and overthrow the Soviet ally just 90 miles off Florida’s shores.

Both the use of force and economic pressure failed to bring about the desired result — while Castro boasted of surviving CIA hit jobs and blamed poor living conditions in socialist Cuba on the U.S. The bearded revolutionary outlasted U.S. president after U.S. president, and his government even survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, which deprived Havana of aid from Moscow. The end of the Cold War also set the stage for American allies, like Mexico, Canada and France, to carve out lucrative niches in Cuba’s tourism industry, leaving the United States isolated.

When Pres. Barack Obama arrives in Havana on Sunday, it will be at the head of what amounts to a different kind of U.S. invasion. There will be air power:  Airlines clamoring to be able to run direct flights  to Cuba. There will be naval power: Cruise lines launching routes to Cuba. Marriott, looking to become the largest hotel chain in the world through a merger with Starwood, wants to establish a beachhead. And the president has potentially enlisted tens of thousands of infantry by recently  loosening restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba  to such an extent that, while a ban on simple tourism remains on the books, it’s easy, in practice, to travel there to take in the sights.

“Our central premise,” Obama told Yahoo News in an interview in December, is that if “they are suddenly exposed to the world, opened to America and our information and our culture and our visitors and our businesses, invariably they’re going to change.”

The president will arrive in Cuba on Sunday evening with first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters, Malia and Sasha, for a whirlwind visit — a little less than 48 hours in Havana.

“I look forward to being the first U.S. president to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years — without a battleship accompanying me,” Obama said recently, referring to Calvin Coolidge’s 1928 trip aboard the USS Texas.

The historic trip will highlight his efforts to make his policy changes irreversible, even if a Republican retakes the White House in November’s elections.



Workers repair the street in front of the Capitolio in Havana, March 14, 2016. (Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP)


The president will meet with his Cuban counterpart, Raúl Castro, but not with Fidel, who used to delight in delivering roaring seven-hour speeches, but has been seen in public less and less since handing his brother the reins in 2008. He’ll take in some of the sights in Havana, and attend an exhibition baseball game pitting the Tampa Bay Rays against Cuba’s national team. There will be a state dinner. He will also deliver a speech about steps that must still be taken to further improve relations, a message that White House aides say will be broadcast on Cuban television. He will meet with Raúl Castro at the Palacio de la Revolución, the seat of government, and criticize his regime’s human rights record both there and in a meeting with hand-picked dissidents.

“We’re trying a new approach,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Friday. “Our approach now is that the president of the United States is going to get on Air Force One, he is going to fly to Havana, Cuba, and he is going to sit down with the leader of Cuba and say, ‘You need to do a better job of protecting the human rights of your people.’”

White House officials have taken pains not to predict a speedy democratic revolution in Cuba. Instead, they say, American investment, tourism and trade will raise Cuba’s standard of living, while even modestly expanded communications, including Internet access, will help Cubans engage with the wider world.

“We know that change won’t come to Cuba overnight,” White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Thursday. “We believe that engagement — including greater trade, travel and ties between Americans and Cubans — is the best way to help create opportunity and spur progress for the Cuban people. “

Obama is not expected to nominate an ambassador to Cuba on the trip. The current top U.S. diplomat there, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, is a widely respected career State Department staffer. Naming an ambassador, Obama aides say privately, would pack too many risks and too few rewards. It would not alter the day-to-day diplomatic work, while embroiling the White House in yet another battle with Republicans in Congress. And failure to win confirmation would deal a sharp symbolic blow to Obama’s policy.

Obama still seeks ambitious changes on both sides of the Florida Straits. In the United States, he wants Congress to lift the embargo. In Cuba, he wants the government to take its own big steps, like allowing American businesses to hire directly, bypassing the patronage system that helps Castro hold on to power.

“A real game changer would be a situation in which you have a direct employer-employee relationship,” Obama told Yahoo News in December.

Cuba’s government, though hungry for foreign investment, has not eagerly embraced the idea of political change. The official Communist Party newspaper, Granma, recently editorialized that the country would retain its “unconditional commitment to its revolutionary and anti-imperialist ideals,” and emphasized there remains “a long, difficult road” to a full restoration of relations.



A man fishes as commuters take a ferry to Havana, March 2016. (Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP)


Obama himself told Yahoo News last year that Raúl Castro is looking to harness the benefits of American investments without embracing democratic reforms.

“What he probably wants to pull off is a transformation of the economic system to make it more productive and more efficient and raise standards of living — without letting go of the political reins,” the president said.

That’s what happened in Vietnam, the country Obama aides often mention in conversations about Cuba.

It’s a cautionary tale. When Bill Clinton announced plans to normalize relations in July 1995, he drew a straight line connecting American investment and tourism to improved human rights.

“I believe normalization and increased contact between Americans and Vietnamese will advance the cause of freedom in Vietnam, just as it did in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union,” he said.

Twenty years later, the State Department’s annual human rights report about Vietnam deplored “severe government restrictions of citizens’ political rights, particularly their right to change their government through free and fair elections; limits on citizens’ civil liberties, including freedom of assembly and expression; and inadequate protection of citizens’ due process rights, including protection against arbitrary detention.”

Still, Obama told Yahoo News last year, “Raúl Castro recognizes the need for change,” and wants to “help usher in those changes before he and his brother are gone,” leaving a successor without the clout to transform Cuba either politically or economically.

After all, Obama said, “nobody’s got better street cred when it comes to, you know, Cuban revolutionary zeal than one of the original revolutionaries.”

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/obama-poised-to-lead-economic-1388547385655350.html


Right wrong or indifferent, touching Cuba and Cuba policy is the gutsiest thing I've ever see from Bakrama, and having the political courage to try to break an impossible third-rail of a logjam -older than he is- is my favorite thing he's done as president.

[Buster's Uncle]

Kasich on a brokered convention: ‘Everybody chill!’
Yahoo News
Dylan Stableford  Senior editor  March 20, 2016


John Kasich has a message for members of the Republican Party unnerved over the prospect of a brokered convention: Chill!

“I don’t think anybody is going to get there with the delegates that they need to win,” the Ohio governor said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “So, let’s just everybody chill out.”

Kasich, with 143 delegates, trails GOP frontrunner Donald T rump (678) and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (423) in the race for the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio — who suspended his campaign after losing the primary in his home state — has 169.

If no one reaches the 1,237-delegate figure, the nominee will be determined in July during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

“We will go into Cleveland with momentum, and then the delegates are going to consider two things,” Kasich said. “No. 1, who can win in the fall — and I’m the only one that can, that’s what the polls indicate — and number two, a really crazy consideration, like, who could actually be president of the United States.”

“The delegates will take everything seriously,” Kasich said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “They will take a look at people’s experience and their electability. And that’s fine. What’s everybody so panicked about this? Everybody needs to take a little chill pill, to tell you the truth.”

Gov. John Kasich on State of the Union: Full Interview

“I am not playing a parlor game,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “The convention is an extension of the process of nominating somebody. I was there in ‘76 when [Ronald] Reagan challenged the sitting president [Gerald Ford]. They didn’t like him doing it either. But, you know what? His vision, his message mattered. Listen, nobody’s going to that convention with enough delegates. And at the end, do you know why I’ll get picked? Because I can win in the fall. And secondly, because I have the experience and the record to lead this country.”

Kasich called T rump’s prediction that there would be “riots” if he doesn’t get the nomination in a brokered convention “outrageous.”

“When he says that there could be riots, that’s inappropriate,” Kasich said on “Face the Nation.” “While we have our differences and disagreements, we’re Americans. Americans don’t say, 'Let’s take to the streets and have violence.’”

The Ohio governor said he has no interest in the vice presidential nomination should he not emerge as the GOP nominee.

“Under no circumstances,” Kasich said on “Meet the Press” when asked if he would consider becoming T rump’s running mate.

What about Cruz?

“No. I’m not going to be anybody’s,” Kasich said. “I’m running for president.”

And if Kasich does become president, he won’t be using as much confetti at the victory party as he did after his Ohio primary win.

“Here’s what happened,” Kasich explained on CNN. “[We] blew it the first time with a weak confetti shot. So, it was like porridge. He went from too cold to too hot. And all I can say is, I don’t want that much confetti again.”

Kasich says his confetti guy went too far

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/kasich-brokered-convention-chill-183023670.html

[Unorthodox]

Right wrong or indifferent, touching Cuba and Cuba policy is the gutsiest thing I've ever see from Bakrama, and having the political courage to try to break an impossible third-rail of a logjam -older than he is- is my favorite thing he's done as president.

I see it more as a theme among Obama's presidency, honestly. 

You look at his foreign policy and he tends to be more open to things "Presidents don't do".  The Iran deal comes to mind (no matter how it looks now).  He said from the get go he'd be talking to all these nations that were 'off limits'.  I think you're just seeing the natural results of years of that attitude from the US. 

[Rusty Edge]

I applaud Obama for the new approach to Cuba. The old one didn't work.

The Iran deal is a lot like the Federal budget deals. It kicks the can down the road. It's better than no deal at all. Until the members of Congress can suck it up and do their duty with regards to our budget, they have no room to talk, or for that matter, they should have no time to worry about an Iran Deal.

[Unorthodox]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/03/21/us/politics/ap-us-gop-2016-utah.html?_r=0

SALT LAKE CITY — Donald [Sleezebag] faces an uphill battle in Utah's caucuses Tuesday, but he could still walk away with delegates if sharp divisions within the party prevent anyone from winning a majority.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is likely to do well in Utah, a conservative state that prizes civility and religiosity. Cruz has been helped by the support of Mitt Romney, the GOP's last presidential nominee who holds clout among the state's predominantly Mormon voters. On Monday the Texas senator also picked up the endorsement of Utah Gov. Gary Herbert.

But Ohio Gov. John Kasich is fighting back in Utah, hoping his more pragmatic approach and longtime governing experience will net him delegates there. He has invested heavily in Utah in recent days, airing $215,000 in ads -- the fifth highest amount he's spent in any state so far. That includes one web ad that falsely implies Romney backed him, rather than Cruz in Utah.

According to Utah state regulations, if no candidate wins more than half of the caucus votes, each of the three candidates will be awarded delegates proportionally. The candidate who can win Utah by more than 50 percent will walk away with all 40 delegates.

[Sleezebag] could significantly benefit from those rules if Cruz doesn't win the majority, since it would ultimately bump up his lead. The former reality television star goes into Tuesday's contests as the national front-runner with 680 delegates in hand. Cruz has 424 and Kasich has 143.





Ultimately, both Cruz and Kasich increasingly share a mutual goal — both want to stop [Sleezebag] from gaining the required 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination, ultimately forcing a contested convention to take place in July.

Kasich made a series of campaign stops in the state on Friday and Saturday, drawing rebuke from Cruz.

"Donald [Sleezebag] wants people to vote for Kasich because it divides his opposition," Cruz told reporters during a trip to the Arizona border Friday.

On Monday, Utah Republicans received a pre-recorded call from Romney urging them to back Cruz, not Kasich. "At this point," Romney said on the call, "a vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald [Sleezebag]."

The Kasich campaign says it's logical to compete in Utah. "It would be malpractice to cede delegates to somebody who you don't think is going to be the nominee and who you don't think can win the general election," spokesman Chris Schrimpf said.

The split among Utah voters and its Republican establishment mirrors the widening divide among Republicans nationwide. A total of all the votes cast thus far reveals that a majority have opted for someone other than [Sleezebag]. But with no single standard-bearer in the running, the billionaire real estate developer has managed to amass a majority of delegates.

"I don't know if there are huge disagreements on policy but there are temperamental differences at play," said Paul Mero, former head of a conservative think tank in Utah. "Kasich just taps into a fundamental Utah establishment seriousness."

Kasich has netted the backing of former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and onetime Sen. Bob Bennett -- who was ousted by the tea party movement in 2010 and replaced by Sen. Mike Lee, who is now backing Cruz. The Texas senator, an unapologetic conservative firebrand, often lashes out against Republican establishment figures, many of whom traditionally thrive in Utah. But leaders like Romney and Herbert have consolidated around Cruz because he is seen as the only one who can catch up to [Sleezebag]'s delegate lead.





Asked if he would vote for [Sleezebag] if he gets the nomination, Herbert said, "Let's hope that doesn't have to be my decision."

Dave Hansen, a Republican operative in Utah, is confident that the state's highly-engaged voters will figure out that Cruz has the better chance to get to 50 percent and block [Sleezebag].

"They are the kind of people who record CSPAN for viewing later," Hansen said.

[Rusty Edge]

Fox's debate was cancelled when The Leader dropped out, and Kasich followed. The Leader thinks FOX is biased against him. I would have to agree.

Frankly, I think Kasich made a huge tactical error. According to Kasich, he doesn't think debates are a good way to chooses a candidate, he thinks everybody should be present, and he doesn't really like them. Well, my guess is that he doesn't really like asking for money, but he still does it.

Kasich says his campaign is gaining momentum because more people are hearing his message. Well what better way to reach people than a national TV audience which he doesn't have to pay for? Yeah, I know he prefers town meetings, but how many of those does he have to do to equal total exposure of one TV debate? Is he afraid of peaking too soon? If his strategy is brokered convention, and going with the most likely winner.... the more people that get to know Kasich, the better his general election polls should look.

[Rusty Edge]

GRRR.

So apparently Sean Hannity is backing The Leader, while Mark Levine is backing Cruz.

Hannity is complaining that it isn't right that The Leader could get the most votes and not get the nomination.  Really? So obviously he thinks Gore should have been president instead of Bush the Lesser.
Gore got more of the popular vote, after all. Fair and square.

We have a Constitution and we observe it. It stipulates the electoral college. It keeps the presidential candidates from concentrating on the urbanized coastal states and ignoring the concerns of the states with smaller populations. The Republicans and Democrats have rules for choosing a presidential candidate, and they follow them. They specify delegates. It keeps the parties from fielding a regional or special interest candidate which the majority of the membership opposes.

Them's the rules. When T rump drives most of the existing membership out of the Republican Party, he can easily change them. But then again, he's not much for The Constitution, International Law, etc. either. 

EDIT- He don't need no stinkin' rules. He's a winner.