Month: March 2016

The Arizona raw numbers tonight will be misleading, and subject to misinterpretation, because as many as half the votes have already been cast, and a majority of those were made before Rubio dropped out.  Early voting is an incredibly stupid idea.  It’s probably something those airheads at the League of Women Voters came up with, and a bunch of Arizona legislators were so witless as to agree to it  These guys aren’t rocket scientists, believe me.

What would really be significant would be truly scientific exit poling.  Compare that result with the raw total, and you’d begin to see where Arizona was heading.  And if I’m right, Cruz would have won it without early voting.

This is something John Kasich needs to understand.  The party is coalescing around Cruz.  Does the name Lindsey Graham mean anything to you?   He needs to get out before Wisconsin, or he will hold a special place in the history of the Republican Party  — sore loser, and idiot.

The problem with Wisconsin is that it’s an open primary.  No surprise here, but a lot of the moron vote that is Trump’s base of support is Democrat.  So he’s in better shape here than he was in Arizona.  With Kasich out, one on one, Cruz beats Trump in Wisconsin, and beyond.  Do the math.

Utah is an outlier, which explains Trump’s lack of support there.  But it signals what’s ahead in Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico, Nebraska, and the eastern parts of Washington, Oregon and California.

I’ve urged everyone to cut Kasich some slack, but if he goes on to Wisconsin he’s as dumb as a Trump.

I’m a Roman Catholic, and a proud one, and I dislike it when people run down the Church, based on nothing but ignorance and prejudice.  I was at a party with Babbie and some of her girl friends were talking about some book by some guy named Dan Brown, and how it really told you about how the Catholic Church really was.

Babbie is a Christian, but religion has never been anything she’s really interested in.  When we were dating I asked her what religion she was, and she said Protestant.  I asked what kind, and she got upset.  She went to Piedmont Community Church, and it was basically non-denominational.  As long as you weren’t a Catholic or a Mormon, you were welcome.  When I said I wanted to be married in the Catholic Church, she really didn’t care.  She’s a Christian, Catholics are Christian, so no problem.

But when she started joining in with her girl friends, and parroting this anti-Catholic propaganda crap, I blew up.  The problem was, I’d had a few beers, and I was tired of listening to these women.  Babbie, I said, You’re dumber than a stump.

She often reminds me of that incident.

 

Only one state told the federal government to take DST and shove it.

Which state is that?

Is that significant?

When John Kasich beat the Moron in Ohio he performed the most valuable service of his political career. If Trump had won Ohio, after edging Cruz out in Missouri, he would have looked unstoppable.

Kasich couldn’t win Ohio unless he told the voters there that he was in it to win the whole thing, and Ohio would be the beginning of his path to the nomination.  He may have even believed it.  And once he did win, he was committed to keep going.  He’d given his word.  So he’s still in it.

Tellingly, he’s been in Utah exclusively, a state where Cruz is guaranteed an overwhelming win.  Just south is Arizona, where a few votes one way or the other could make a difference.  Every vote Kasich would get by campaigning in Arizona would be a vote from Cruz, the last guy with a chance of taking down the Moron.  He hasn’t set foot in the state, where I know he has plenty of contacts.   Phoenix is where I saw Kasich at a legislative strategy session for the Article V BBA.  Biddulph sent me down to check the guy out. Kasich went out to dinner with some money people the night before I saw him.

He’s down to $1.5 million, and money has got to be hard to raise.  I think Kasich knows what’s happening, and it’s going to be Cruz.  He’s going to man up and do the right thing, as he may have intended all along.  I’ll give him that.

The funny thing is, Kasich didn’t like me.  At this strategy session at the Capitol in Phoenix they’re all trying to figure out how to get around the Senate President, Andy Biggs.  So they all talk about it for a while, and finally I say, Do you people have something called a discharge petition?  Well, it turns out they did, but nobody ever used it.  I said, well, in this case, since we’re dealing with the impending bankruptcy of the United States, maybe they should consider it.  They seemed reluctant to pursue the subject, and I knew what I was dealing with.  These people had no balls.  Most legislators don’t.  Most politicians don’t.

I was never cut out to be a lobbyist.  I tried it for the BBA Task Force, because they had no one else to do it, except Bill Fruth, and he couldn’t be everywhere.  Anyway, those days are behind me, and the guys at the Task Force sent me a little award they had printed, naming me a Defender of the Constitution.  Thank you, gentlemen.  You’re an amazing group of people.  And I think you get to 35 next year, and quickly.

I never did get to Pierre, in South Dakota.  A lot of people live a pretty hard life in South Dakota.  I met a lot of them in the summer of 1971, right before I started law school

Back in May, Babbie and I were going hot and heavy, but then she said she had to go to South America for six weeks on a ski trip with one of her girl friends.  She’d just graduated from Cal, and they had been planning this thing for a year.  It was too late to cancel, she had to go.  But she promised me she’d be back, and we could take up again, but I had my doubts.

So I went back to work on the Pettyjohn family ranch, on the White River, about ten miles south of Kadoka, South Dakota.  The Frying Pan Ranch, where my father and most of his eight siblings were born. I was there about three weeks when Babbie called.  They’d only gotten as far south as the airport in Quito, Ecuador, where they both had a raging case of Montezuma’s Revenge.  They kissed the ground when they got back to SFO.

She wanted me to come back to the Bay Area, but I said I couldn’t, I’d just gotten to work, and I told these people, my relatives, that I was going to work for them for a while. Well, she thought about it for a while, and she said what if I flew back there?  And I told her all about my wonderful relatives, who would love to meet her, and she said she’d do it.  And she did.

When she got off that plane I knew I was going to make it in this world.

 

Cruz lost Missouri by .2%, about 1700 votes.  Rubio got 57,000 votes in Missouri, and the large majority of these would have gone to Cruz, had Marco not been in the race.  Cruz had top notch people running his Missouri operation, but came up just short.

In Arizona he’s got Constantin Querard running the show, and this guy knows the Republican politics of that state like the back of his hand.  If anybody can do this, this is the guy.   And Rubio’s people are organizing for Cruz.  Add the Far West culture of old Arizona, and a good dose of Mormons, and things should be O.K.

And then there’s Roger Ailes and Fox News.  They shipped Hannity out to Phoenix for an hour long  Cruz campaign special edition last night.  It was like a donation of an hour of Fox News on prime time Sunday night.  Expect more of the same today, with Rush, Hannity and Levin all beating the same drum.  People listen to these guys.

This is all on paper.  On the ground, you’d have to be there.

I’ve got to believe that Trump comes out a loser in the AIPAC appearances today.  These are smart people.  They recruited me, through Anchorage Rep. Max Gruenberg, when I was House Minority Leader.  I met them with Max in a hotel dining room in Anchorage.  Very savvy guys.  And they can’t see through Trump?

Get outta here.

By my 71st birthday, the day before the autumnal equinox, we’ll have enjoyed six months of more sun than dark.  This is the beginning of the active part of the year in the northern climes.  In Alaska, at the Far North, everything’s extreme.  Three months from now the sun barely sets, if at all.  And six months after that it comes up briefly, if at all.  It depends on how Far North you are.

Alaska, like most of the Far West, is man’s country.   Alaska’s just an extreme form of it.  If a guy can make it in Wyoming, he can make it in Alaska.  Everybody’s seen the TV shows.  That’s all real.  Even some of the people are real, like John Schaible of Haines, I believe.  He was featured on one of the Gold Rush shows.  He just died at 94.  A real Alaskan.  My friend Robin Taylor knew him.

The attractions of Alaska are all outdoors, and in many cases remote.  To actually go see them is kind of an adventure.  The kind of thing guys like to do.

So how do you get women to move up there?  It’s an age old problem, and has been for the entire history of the Far West.  Why do you think Wyoming was the first state to adopt female suffrage?  Women are generally treated well in this part of the country.  We want them to stay. And we don’t like men who disrespect them.

Does that bring anyone to mind?