What's not to like?

     SC Senator Jim DeMint all but adopted Florida Senator Marco Rubio when the lad from the Sunshine State was a candidate. DeMint lugged him about South Carolina showing him off. They even had a joint fundraising operation. Before that DeMint dropped $340,000 of his contributors' money into Rubio's coffers.
     DeMint went around saying: "I'd rather 30 Marco Rubios than 60 Arlen Specters," referring to the Republican-turned-Democrat from Pennsylvania, and told a Florida crowd, "[i]t was clear after talking to Marco … that he was passionate about the principles of freedom and he was ready to take on Goliath." DeMint was touched by "the conservative Cuban-American candidate who 'grew up with parents who lost their country.'"



     But it turns out that, as hard as his head was turned by his passionate young amigo, DeMint really didn't vet him very thoroughly.
     From Politico:

          Sen. Marco Rubio is furiously trying to regain control over a personal narrative and political image that have taken some hits lately.
          With his name still simmering in the GOP veepstakes, the Florida Republican and his staff are spending an extraordinary amount of time, money and effort to define himself on the national stage before his political enemies — and a probing press corps — do it first.
          He’s racing to publish his memoirs, though they won’t be out until this fall, months after a more critical Rubio biography by a Washington Post reporter hits bookshelves.
          When Rubio got word last month a reporter had learned he attended the Mormon Church as a child, the senator’s publisher quickly leaked that fact to Rubio’s hometown newspaper.
          Rubio has even hired investigators to look into his own background, since he knows Democrats are doing the same. His political action committee paid a firm more than $40,000 to conduct opposition research on Rubio, and it’s preparing to spend thousands more to dig into family stories, financial documents and real estate records — anything that could pop up in a political “oppo” file.
          The effort to hard wire Rubio’s version of his life story into the public psyche is remarkable for a freshman senator, more on the scale of a presidential candidate. Some in his operation say the staffing and money spent are comparable to Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s efforts when they arrived in the Senate with big names and even bigger ambition.
Several Rubio aides and advisers declined to speak on the record for this story, but given the unusual level of scrutiny facing their boss, they say he’s been left with little choice.
          “We spent a day and a half explaining what church he went to when he was 8,” lamented one top adviser. “We are getting a proctological exam on a daily basis.”

Crossing the Rubio: having Jim DeMint as your mack daddy's no slam dunk

Still, it's clear that Rubio's foil in this campaign was Crist and, without the governor to kick around anymore, the fast-rising Republican doesn't appear to be so fast rising anymore.

The disappearance of a "foil" candidate spoiling what looks like a sure thing victory isn't new. In 2002, businessman Doug Forrester was cruising to a victory over embattled Sen. Bob Torricelli (D); Torricelli dropped out of the race in October and was replaced on the ballot by former Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Forrester lost.

The comparison is inexact in that Rubio will still be able to run against Crist since both men will be on the November ballot. But, Crist's party switch robbed Rubio of what almost certainly would have been a decisive primary victory in late August -- a win that would have amped up the "Rubio as Republican star" narrative heading into the stretch run of the race.

With the absence of Crist to run against, Rubio must find ways to not only draw press coverage -- Crist remains considerably better known than Rubio, Meek and Greene -- but to appeal to the moderate Republicans and independents that he will need to get over the top in the three-way contest this fall.

What Rubio still has going for him: he is a charismatic candidate who has proven his ability to effectively articulate the Republican message. But, Rubio has to find a second act this fall in order to achieve the stardom that many Republicans at the national level envision for him

The best thing was that nobody flung their poo-

What to say about tonight’s Republican debate?

The audience was utterly promiscuous with applause and booing. Whom they cheered and whom they booed, bore no relation to what the candidates said. They booed Trump in one breath, they cheered him in the next.

They were also the whitest audience this side of a Franklin Graham State Capitol Rally. Will it matter that Trump kept insulting them as the donor/special interest class? Not likely. They are. They know it. It’s how they got seats. It’s why the candidates suck up to them.

Let’s review the candidates next:

Marco Rubio did better; his canned speeches seemed less canned. He was the only one to cross himself at the moment of silence for Justice Scalia. Scalia is the Mount McKinley of this week in the campaign- the greatest man in history. Still, Rubio’s gesture confused me. He changes religion the way Ben Carson changes clothes. He’s been a Catholic, a Mormon and a Southern Baptist. Jeb's a Catholic, too, but he didn't. Kasich's a Seccesh Anglican who left the Worldwide Communion over The Gays.

Rubio and Ted Cruz both picked up an odd meme about how the Senate should not fill Scalia’s seat because it’s the first time in eighty years that a lame duck president has a had a nomination. No one explained why 1936 is such a dividing line. All told, seventeen justices have resigned or died in election years, big whoop. The last time it happened- 48 years ago, Ted Cruz said- was when President Johnson nominated Justice Fortas to be Chief Justice to succeed Earl Warren, and the nomination got held up because Fortas had what were, for that time, some glaring financial conflicts of interest. Standards have fallen since then.

The moderator noted that Ronald Reagan got the apostate Anthony Kennedy confirmed in 1988 and the crowd booed. Whether this was because they thought Dickerson was rude, or that reality just so sucks, I cannot say.

So, anyway, 80 years. Some kind of Karl Rove political trivia game question about FDR and the court-packing plan of 1937? Avoiding having to talk about Justice Charles Evans Hughes resigning from the court to accept the 1916 Republican nomination for president? Who knows?

Rubio said his test of mettle in a crisis was voting against a presidential request for authorization to use force against Syria in a Senate committee in 2014. It came on short notice, and it was really hard. Rubio defended President Bush 2 for keeping America safe- as Donald Trump brayed, after he didn’t on 9/11. Rubio shrieked back that 9/11 happened because Bill Clinton didn’t kill bin Laden when he had the chance, and he thanks God every day W was president and not Al Gore. That's dog whistle talk for old white donors. Rubio wants a big child tax credit “for private school tuition, or a new backpack.” About halfway through, Rubio started developing his Nixonian flop sweat. Marco Rubio says if the next president is half the president Ronald Reagan was America will be even greater than Reagan made it, a statement which was a remarkable combination of false modesty and casting God as an underachiever.

Rubio said Cruz couldn't have heard him say what Cruz said Rubio said on Univision because Cruz can't speak Spanish. I can, too, Cruz replied, can you tell me the way to the train station? I need a toothbrush and a library card.

Ben Carson began his answer to every question with an answer to some previous question, then asked people to go read his website. It has what he thinks on it, which is easier than explaining it himself. Supreme Court justices didn’t used to live so long so maybe we need to rethink lifetime appointments, and that is what to do about replacing Scalia. Somewhere, Sarah Palin’s antennae must have started quivering, hearing a doctor talk about the trouble with people living too long.

Carson said his claim he has gotten more 2 a.m. phone calls than the other critters shows he had judgment. Plus he often responded by doing things no one had ever done before. He said his tax plan is fairer because even the widow will have to cough up her mite to have some skin in the game. A guy making $10,000 will have to pay $1,000 of that. A guy making a billion will have to pay $100 million. Having $900 million left over seems the better part of that fairness deal, but that’s just me. Speaking of finance, there are too many regulators wandering around looking to penalize Wall Street executives for making money, and so the answer to the crash of ‘08 is that we should have had less regulation. A few bad bank people should have something done to them, but not yet. Free college is a bad idea, and the national debt keeps interest rates too low for poor people to raise themselves up with passbook interest on savings. He has studied the Middle East and if we do things that kill even more civilians- trying not to, as the president does, is “asinine thinking”- it’s just collateral damage. He closed by quoting Josef Stalin, whom Carson said divined the secret of bringing America low- undermining our morals, our patriotism and our spiritual life. It’s the sort of bromide that reeks of “meme”, and Ben is nothing if not a sucker for easy to remember junk from Facebook. Stalin died sixty-three years ago. His empire collapsed in 1989, six years after the quote first appeared in a letter to the editor of the newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas. For 27 years scholars have searched in vain to find it in Stalin's archives. And he had yooooge archives.

Ted Cruz said two branches of government are in danger of not being owned by Republicans, and this endangers his daughters’ futures. We can win in Syria the way we did the first time in Iraq, only without the 700,000 ground troops. Cruz has picked up Carly Fiorina’s fallen standard and says if you go to his website you can see what a tax form the size of a postcard will look like. He wants a tax like Washington State’s Business and Occupations tax, a money grab so unfair you’d actually sympathize with companies having to pay it. But it means no income tax, and for the time being, voters still have to be pandered to. He wouldn’t say if he will use the government list of 800,000 people applying for temporary amnesty to jumpstart his deportations. When he kept calling out the “Rubio-Schumer Amnesty Law” (Bazinga! More New York Values!) and some audience members booed, he said, "I see the donor class doesn’t like that.” (See Donors, How Many F**ks They Give Based On How Fast They Left Christie To Buy Piece of Other Candidates, above).

John Kasich gets better and better with his reboot of Reagan’s 1984 Pacific Coast Highway vision for America debate close, and makes no more sense than Reagan did. Everything else he said was 400,000 new jobs, $8 billion hole to $2 billion surplus, solid credit rating, I balanced the federal budget in the last century and was on the defense committee for 18 years. In one flash of high-functioning cultural competence he called for a coalition of the civilized people of the world to go give the Muslims what for. “Civilized people respect women’s rights” except when it comes to abortion and equal pay. Ronald Reagan expanded Medicare coverage five times, and that was good. Obamacare expanded it once, and that was bad. He thought the other candidates acted like jackasses, which suggests my Uncle Fred was right always insisting even a blind hog can find an acorn once in a while.

Jeb! has not the Joyful Tortoise tonight, but he had his big boy pants on. He and The Donald continued their weird “I wish I knew how to quit you” thing. Jeb says Bushes know how to appoint Supreme Court justices, so wait til he is president. Because Clarence Thomas and Harriet Myers. Hedge fund managers should pay regular income tax rates, not capital gains rates, but to ease their pain we should cut income tax rates. He once said his dad and Ronald Reagan wouldn't be accepted by today’s GOP but what he really meant was that Washington doesn’t work.

The Donald offered his full complement of Mussolini expressions. He called nearly everyone a liar. He insulted the audience and Senator Lindsey Graham in it. He will deal with not cutting any entitlements by Eliminating Waste, Fraud and Abuse, the magic elixir of all budgets. If companies leave America he will slap them with punitive import tariffs because he will cajole Congress to do that for him one corporation at a time. Jeb Bush is so weak, Ted Cruz is a bigger liar than even Jeb Bush. Cruz is a nasty guy, a really nasty guy. Jeb, call your mommy. I didn’t actually say “pussy,” but I will stop with the profanity because it is easy to stop. Teacher, Jeb said he was going to pull down his pants and moon America- you did so! I was a very good student at a very good school. He shouted other speakers down a lot. Why is the area around his eyes so pink when the rest of his face is so orange?

Drinking game phrases:

Trump: I’m going to build a huge wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it. People are flowing across.
Jeb!: Servant’s heart, hardass policies.
Cruz: Day 1, tear Iran deal to shreds.
Kasich: The Lord wants us to double down and solve our own damn problems, but he will send power and money down to the states, where it will vanish.
Carson: Jazz hands. Always with the jazz hands.
Rubio: the New American Century.

What I did last night when I could have been watching "How To Get Away With Murder"

I used to think Sammy Davis Jr groping President Nixon at the 1972 GOP Convention was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen out of Miami. Well, that and the Brooks Brothers Riot for W in 2000. But all that was before last night's debate:

The Washington Post has an annotated transcript, and God bless the stenos who tried to keep up with the word salad Donald Trump spewed. I’ve been listening to presidential debates forty years, man and boy, and this was the first to give me a headache.

John Kasich only has a plan for the first hundred days as president because after that- perhaps well before- he will have run through all his Nineties nostrums. He believes in repetition like a car dealer believes in Eyewitness News at 4, 5 6, and 11. He grew up in a blue collar family. If it wasn't for immigration he’d be running for president of Croatia, he claimed, and probably telling voters there how he fixed everything in the 1990s, after the Berlin Wall fell, which he helped make happen, I claim.

If other nations act badly in international trade, John Kasich has a whistle, and he will blow it.

“America needs to be able to lock its doors at night. Rising tide lifts all boats. First 100 days. Lower taxes. I’ve fixed it all before. 400,000 jobs.” Education? “All I’m in favor of is high standards, and that’s what I did in Cleveland with the Democrat mayor” (last time it was “the African-American Democrat mayor and the unions”, and buying out the experienced teachers to hire more with no experience who were keen to work cheaper). He wants to start tracking kids into vocational courses early: “real world jobs.” He wants to pour 125 federal programs into four buckets and send them to the states and local governments. A week ago it was 104.

John Kasich had a plan for Social Security reform in 1999 and he wants to give younger people personal accounts they can manage themselves, which means giving it to Wall Street (did John Kasich mention he was an executive at Lehman Bros after he fixed all of America’s problems the first time?). “I’ve done all this before; $8 billion hole, $2 billion surplus; credit rating; 400,000 jobs.”

Foreign policy? We need to not diss Muslims. We need them to go fight ISIS for us and not be offended when President Kasich welcomes them to “the civilized world we represent.” What’s more, we need a “reapproach-mont” with Turkey. The Palestinians are digging tunnels into Israel. We gave the Israelis technology to block missiles. Now we need to give them our best mole-defeating lawn care secrets. “18 years defense committee. 9/11, in the Pentagon helping SecDef with his problems.”

John Kasich wants to cut off investment to Cuba until they promise to do whatever we tell them, like before 1958. We need to build a statue to the guy who faced down the tank in China in 1989, and that will tell China to straighten up double quick.

John Kasich wants universal free health care, guaranteed employment, and housing for every American, except all the ones who aren't veterans. We can drive wages up, which is good, but not by raising the minimum wage, which is bad, and that is what he thinks about violence at political rallies.

John Kasich had some new ideas about energy. Climate change is something that is happening some way but not such that we need to stop burning coal and piling up vast lakes of radioactive waste with nowhere to put it, but we should also have renewable energy.

Last thoughts: John Kasich says he will end to find some “responsible Democrats” to pass Social Security reform.

“Dead man walking,” the pundits say about Marco Rubio in his home state. Hugh Hewitt, the right-wing radio host (who ripped on Obama in 2008 for having a band called The New Decemberists” play at his Portland, Oregon rally, because of the Leninist associations the name conjured up) looked as much like an animatronic waxwork borrowed from Disney World’s Hall of Broadcasters as in his previous debate outings. I was impressed for about 64 minutes. Rubio slowed his speaking pace. He said some things that were sensible and not just memorized.

Well, of course, that all went to hell, but don’t let me get ahead of myself.

Marco Rubio is for free trade but only good free trade for us and screw the other nations because if they charge as much as he will to keep their goods out of here then we can't get our goods into there.  Good free trade is like the deal that made it possible for the Colombian flower industry to deliver lots of tasteful and cheap arrangements in Miami, creating “millions- hundreds of jobs.”

Marco Rubio had a good patch when he took on Donald Trump’s jabber about how every Muslim but the really great ones he knows hates America and wants to murder us all. Rubio pointed out that when one is president, words have consequences, even though, for his example, he pantingly pandered to evangelicals with a tale of American religious missionaries in Bangladesh who feel less safe these days. He pointed out one sees plenty of crescent moons on headstones in American military cemeteries, and anyone willing to wear the uniform, fight the wars, and die for this country, loves it. Period. He rebutted Trump’s claim that he was being honest, not politically correct, answering that he, Rubio, wasn’t concerned about being politically correct. He was concerned about being correct.

Damn, I thought. Where has he been? We got a glimpse of a real Rubio, not just a rube.

But it passed, and in a sec he was claiming we have the best military in the world but it’s no good because Obama has deliberately gutted it. We have the smallest military since World War II, he fretted. Well, duh! We haven't really needed twelve million men under arms since then, have we? And the air force the smallest since 1916- shortly after the Signal Corps bought one airplane?

There was a long desiderata over Israel and the Middle East, and I am skipping it because that is nothing but a pig wallow for demagogues. Marco Rubio indulged a little local dog whistle talk in a play for orthodox and conservative Jewish votes, talking about “Judea and Samaria.” Ted Cruz- busy making sure there was no breath mint in the corner of his mouth- missed a bet not reminding people how he will move the US embassy to Jerusalem just after he rescinds all the Obama executive orders and before he tears the Iran deal to shreds. Or maybe he did. I had to go pee. I can say things like that during a Republican debate. Everything was just fine down there, I promise you.

Marco Rubio says everything bad in Cuba is still bad after fifty years of a policy that didn't make it a bit un-badder, so we should stop talking to the Cubans and come home and go back to the policy that doesn’t work but is beloved by many elderly voters of Dade County.

Well, friends, then Marcomentum turned into Marcomeltdown at 10.18 pm. Asked if the Republican mayor of Miami- who has endorsed him- is wrong asking what the GOPsters plan to do about climate change as his city slowly sinks (new slogan- “the Venice of the Caribbean”?) Rubio snarked that of course the climate is changing. The climate is always changing. He stopped for the applause but got a growing wave of laughter from the audience. And we do something to weather by living in it but we can’t stop it except to send billions to places that flood for mitigation (unless it's the northeast and there’s a hurricane). In two consecutive sentences he complained of bureaucrats in Washington “forcing down our throat” their malign plans to kill the economy to bid the weather change, and then that they have already “rammed down our throat” said plans.

Anyway, he said, it won’t work because “America isn’t a planet. It’s a country.” And China will just go on polluting. And so will India.” You could tell the chips were overheating because he started talking really fast again. And he attacked Disney, throwing in a bit o’ mansplainin’, Loooocy: “What I’m 'splaining to you is…”

Marco Rubio let his cooling fans run for a couple of rounds of questions and then, asked if he was concerned about the violence at Trump rallies and the things Trump says to encourage it, said he is concerned about violence everywhere, but mostly when it happens to police officers, and it’s the fault of every major institution in America. They have been failing us for twenty-thirty years, he said.

He never really got back on track. Marco Rubio ran on backup power the rest of the debate, announcing that he embodies everything that is great about America to an elderly man who defies doctor’s orders to rest after surgery and sits outside an early polling station waving a Marco Rubio sign and this is what keeps him running his zombie race to nowhere. Oh, and you can be flexible about ideas but not principles. I’m not going to try to parse that.

Ted Cruz...my God, the nightmare won't end, and we aren’t even to The Donald yet.

Ted Cruz climbed into a pair of big boy pants Jeb! left behind in Greenville at the Warmongers at the Peace Center Debate, and tried to play Ward Cleaver. His shorthand for every issue is a detailed, sometimes very detailed, plan on his website. Just go and see. But to see his plans you have to fling open your computer like a Shanghai whore giving a group rate to the entire Chinese Army’s internet hacking regiment, so he can feed his giant database digesting machine.  He cheesepared how he was against the TPA- one trade agreement, before he was for the TPP- its companion agreement. He’s worried that service industries like Goldman Sachs will be hurt by free trade, and that might hamper his revolving line of campaign loans through his wife’s job. Not to mention her health care coverage. He explained his protectionist trade policies as being just the opposite, and Ferris Bueller fans were doubtless thrilled to hear the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act explained. “The question is, what is the solution?” Cruz intoned, and it would have been sweet if he had just left us to ponder that.

But no. He is going to cut off federal funds to cities that give sanctuary to sanctuary movements, and deny illegals welfare (him, not the cities). In between the illegal unconstitutional regs repeal, and the tearing up of the Iran deal into tiny little shreds, he is going to tell the Department of Education to eliminate Common Core, and then he is going to eliminate the Department of Education so they can’t change their minds. Ted Cruz is for every form of education except public schools. It's a fast, easy way to resegregate.

He wants to bribe old people to vote for him by promising not to do anything about Social Security until Florida gives him a second term. Young people, well, you’ll find out what happens to your retirement later, and it 'll be good for you because you will have more freedom and less job-killing bureaucrats killing your jobs when you're ready to retire and find out you can’t, and so need a new job. Ted Cruz, who channels Joe McCarthy in so many ways, has a list of the job-killing bureaucrats, and he is going to find them and fire them.

Ted Cruz, who longs to make the sand glow in the Middle East (hands tied behind their backs, Bush 1 major air strikes, Obama’s pussy drones dropping M-80s three times a week), oddly, considers Trump’s language about how all the Muslims hate us, every one, “incendiary.” In a Whitmanesque moment of displaying his contradictory internal multitudes, he embraced US support of liberal democracy in Israel and totalitarian military rulers in Egypt. He hearts both. He finessed calling for Bush War III himself by saying he will do whatever the generals tell him is necessary to defeat ISIS. More glowing sand. Billions given to Iran, and all their own money, unfrozen? WTF? Cut off Cuba again: listening, Dade County?

At 10.15 everybody started feeling the burn, I guess, and started getting snarky. Ted Cruz started snarking Trump. Marco Rubio’s circuit boards started sizzling. Ted Cruz says the violence at Trump rallies is Obama’s fault. Obama was barely in office when he sent “the Churchill bust back to England” and then went on an apology tour, and so no one trusts us anymore. This is seriously dumbass talk, and shows that Ted Cruz can memorize lines as well as Rubio. Here’s what he said in Iowa January 25: “One of the very first acts President Obama did upon being elected was sending Churchill’s bust back to the UK, and I think that foreshadowed everything that was to come the next six years.” The Washington Post has a debunking of this bilious nonsense. You could look it up. Anyway, the gist of this was to lead into Ted Cruz's Wayback Machine soundbite about how Jimmy Carter was followed by Ronald Reagan and he will follow Damn Obama as the new Ronald Reagan, and that’s why Little Felito did so well on his SAT’s analogies module.

Maths isn’t so good with the Cruz, which is why I will gloss over how he argued Trump has a hundred more delegates and has won 13 primaries to his eight but Cruz is gonna win. He has the shrewish Carly Fiorina dragging her 1.2397% of GOP voters and her cache of imaginary abortion tapes to his side. And Senator Mike Lee, who is the only senator who will eat lunch with Cruz in public. That’s how, he said. Trump reminded everyone he has Mike Tyson and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who will star in the Trump remake of A Touch of Evil.

No right-handed salutes are being demanded by the sententious Ted: he wants to pledge to the people, not like Damn Obama (“for the last seven years, blah blah”). The only right-hand raising he wants to do is on January 20, 2017 with his left hand on the Bible, taking the oath to turn America into a theocracy. He is willing to consider making Donald Trump “president” of the Smithsonian, and where that came from, God knows, but he hasn't revealed it to Ted Cruz's dad yet.

And so to The Kindler, Gentler Donald Trump. He did a good job for about seventy minutes. Measured tones, no sneering, no insults, no interrupting and shouting down.

Otherwise, it was the same old Trump Tourette’s Syndrome in full bark. China and Japan, devaluing currencies. America losing everywhere. Bad deals. Terrible deals. Iran worse deal ever. Israel, peace, hardest deal ever but I can do it, and if I can’t, well we will see what happens.

I can cure the corruption in America because I am the most corrupt candidate here. HB1 visas are terrible for American workers and I use them all the time; I should feel sorry, but it’s the law, and I have to do it. OK, so Common Core was developed by states and local school boards like I said it wasn't, but then Washington took it back and turned it into the biggest bad thing. I know this because I spent an hour with Ben Carson and he’s gonna endorse me tomorrow, and he’s really got a handle on this education thing, and there’s a big role for him and it’s gonna be great. There is “such an outpouring of love for my campaign” and the only thing I am different on from all the Republicans is trade (China, Japan, currency devalues, bad deals, terrible deals). We need to let local school groups decide what they want to teach (I so wanted someone to ask about Woodland, NC, where a retired teacher testified against a solar panel array because it would suck up all the rest of the sunlight and the plants would die and she’d suffocate, but my hopes were in vain).

There is so much waste fraud and abuse in government, when I get through getting rid of it, Donald Trump says, and making America rich again, and bringing home jobs and ending deficits, and doing “things” to raise the GDP, well, we won’t need to change Social Security. Never mind that fixing payment errors in Medicare will only reduce the future funding gap by $3 billion out of $150 billion. 22 years is a long way off, and it’s gonna be great. We need a military even more yuuge than it is already but we need to make deals so that we don’t display it anywhere. The Germans, the South Koreans, I used to think Merkel was strong but now she’s terrible, and we’re gonna make new deals and bring the money home.

In addition to knowing how to play the corrupt immigration system better than anyone, Donald Trump knows who to play the currency manipulation game better, too. He will run America like his companies.

Donald Trump says his 45% tariff on American companies shipping product in from overseas plants will not be real, just a suggestion, but if they don’t take the suggestion it will be real. And if that means no more Carrier AC units, someone will build a factory and, after years of patient misery as the weather gets hot, because weather changes all the time, a grateful and stinking American public will shell out for American air conditioning using only American air. None of this will apply to his clothing lines or campaign hatters.

Oh, that stuff about killing terrorist families? We have all these damn laws, and we have to follow them. After we rewrite them to make them bigger, we can do all the stuff the terrorists do. They don’t have any laws. And Cuba. We need to stop that. We made a bad deal and now the deal is done, they will sue us for $400 billion or a trillion for things we did to them. I read it in a newspaper the other day. We always lose on these deals.

Donald Trump says when he says the things China does to repress democracy movements, and the stuff Putin does because Putin are the marks of “strong leaders” he isn’t using the term in a good way or a bad way, just a fact-y way. He says people who come to his rallies are angry, filled with passion over higher taxes, and lost jobs and love of country and as they flock to him in their millions these passions can be expressed best by beating up black people. “We have problem people, some bad dudes who come to my rallies, you know, we’re talking 25,000, yuuge crowds. It’s not me.” It’s the local cops who do these things, and they deserve more respect. Like a Nazi salute? No, that was just fun. We have more fun at my rallies. That’s why more people come to them than to Ted’s.

Donald Trump was getting tired and started mocking Ted Cruz in a sing-song voice about how he is the only one who can take down The Donald but can’t actually do it.  He said if he has the most votes but not a majority in Cleveland he should win. He hasn't decided whether to self- fund a general election campaign. People press money on him. $275 mil, at least, he’s turned down. And like currency manipulations and visa scams, he can fix campaign finance because he has bought more pols, for more money, over a longer period than anyone. "And everyone loved me."

I skipped the closing speeches. I don’t think a shower will help this time. I need to go through the entire decontamination protocol in The Andromeda Strain. This debate was a cesspit. Big noxious bubbles popping throughout. Methane. Abolish the EPA.

Sometimes, youth and inexperience is just that.

English: Former Speaker of the Florida House at CPAC in . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marco Rubio is learning that when you make something a signature issue, you'll get asked about it, over and over and over.

Notice the neat pivot he tries at the end of this exchange:

During his campaign announcement speech in Miami, Florida on Monday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) referred to Hillary Clinton as “a leader from yesterday” who is “promising to take us back to yesterday.” But during an interview with the Republican candidate on Tuesday afternoon, CNN’s Jake Tapper highlighted one issue on which Rubio is “the candidate of yesterday.” 

“You are casting yourself as a candidate of a new generation, but there is an issue where you are very out of step with younger voters,” Tapper said, citing a Pew poll that showed 61% of young Republicans are in favor of same-sex marriage. 

“On that issue, same-sex marriage, Senator, you’re the candidate of yesterday,” Tapper declared. 

Rubio began by offering up the same defense that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has been known to use, saying that gay marriage is a “state issue” that he would not have to address as president. Also, he added, “I think there’s still a significant number of Americans that believe that the definition of marriage should be that of one man and one woman, as it has been for thousands of years.” 

“But they’re a minority,” Tapper pointed out. 

Shifting the focus, Rubio told the CNN host, “When I talk about the future, what I’m really pointing to is not those issues necessarily but the fact we are living through a massive transition into a post-industrial era where millions are being left behind, because America is no longer globally competitive as it once was and because they do not have the skills required to succeed in the 21st century.” 

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Less talk, Motown-

My Report: What I Saw At The Debate
by Lin T.

Mr Hoover's Civics Class, 4th period

Donald Trump has a large penis. He doesn’t think Marco Rubio is such a lightweight: “He hit on my hands. That’s a first. And you know what else he said. I guarantee there’s no problem with anything being small.” He’s beating Hillary Clinton in the polls, and he hasn’t even started on her yet. She does not have a penis. 

Donald Trump says if he spent a year in space, two inches taller isn't the only way he'd be coming home to Melania.

Donald Trump has no advisors on national security but he “watches the shows.” He likes Col. Jack Jacobs, an MSNBC commentator. He likes Robert Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former aide to the first President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell. He likes a General called Kain. Last August when he was asked who his advisors were, Trump cited Jacobs. Jacobs says he has never talked with Trump. Donald Trump has always been a leader: "I tell people what to do, and they do it. That’s being a leader." The generals will do what he says. He said that twice.

Donald Trump did his Jeb Bush personal insult routine on Senator Rubio because Jeb is home in Florida taking smart-ass calls from George about who’s the smart one now? He called him “little Marco” and said “this little guy has lied so much about my record...he has the #1 absentee record in the Senate. He doesn’t show up for work. He defrauded the people of Florida. They can’t stand him. He couldn’t get elected dogcatcher." He agrees with Ted Cruz that marriage equality and adoption are state issues but without Ted Cruz’s drooling spite towards gays. He said he’ll appoint the same sort of judges Ted will, so there. Ted Cruz, to Donald Trump, is “lying Ted”. That made me wonder why he’d agree with anything Ted Cruz says, but Donald Trump is flexible. Just not much.

Donald Trump changes his positions on immigration and gun control but his are the hardest, strongest positions anyway, and when he changes his mind he doesn’t change it much. He makes deals all the time and gets people in rooms and cajoles them, but he never settles lawsuits even when they have no merit because that’s why he doesn’t get sued so much, and so let’s see how this silly Trump U case goes in two years. No, make that three. He could settle it now, of course. He’s champeen at eliminating waste, see. He will get rid of the Department of Education by eliminating Common Core. He will get rid of “the Department of EPA” except for “little tidbits”. He can save $300 billion a year negotiating better drug prices for Medicare. So what that Medicare only spends $78 billion a year on drugs? He meant we can save $300 billion a year everywhere on waste, fraud and abuse. Larry Kudlow, a TV talk show host, says his economic plan is the best, so there.

So what that Donald Trump wrote checks to pols. Before he was a pol- except he isn’t- he got along with everyone by buying their friendship. He won’t release his off the record tape with The New York Times editorial board because he respects journalists, but The New York Times is, he says, a failed newspaper that gets everything wrong, so no he won’t let the public see what he said even when he doesn’t respect the journos. Speaking of New York, the families of terrorists deserve to be blown up, and something about an airplane one family flew into the World Trade Center. He saw it from New Jersey. He was at a halal cookout with Chris Christie in Patterson and saw everything.

Donald Trump can only hire foreign workers for his Mar-A-Lago Club in Florida because it’s so hot there that only rich Americans can pay the six-figure membership fees to waste away in that heat but real Americans won’t work there. Anyway, no one wants to work part time except foreigners- because other countries don’t send us their best, and he only hires the best, because the really hot time isn’t very long. “It is a very short season. It’s called ‘The Season.’”

Now we know “the reason for the season” and why Donald Trump will make everyone say “Merry Christmas.”

Donald Trump shouts people down when he doesn't like what they say.

Ted Cruz is a very, very angry man. He spits out hard, elongated stop consonants: TRuck DRivers, MECHanics, TEAchers, to show his anger is their anger. Mostly he steered every question back to his version of the Rubio Memory Chip: repeal and replace every word, rip up the regulations, constitutionalists on the court, second amendment repeal, checks to Hillary. After he abolishes the IRS he will have a little office at the Treasury Department where you will send your tax return on a postcard. No one will explain how to attach the check. He can save $500 billion a year ending corporate welfare and replacing it with corporate tax rates so low they won’t need any corporate welfare any more. Donald Trump needs to release The New York Times tape to show how rigid Ted Cruz is- at least in terms of his views.

Ted Cruz, when he is not flaring his nostrils and glaring at the camera, is a condescending old substitute teacher when it comes Donald’s refusals to diagram sentences. “Count to ten Donald, count to ten, you can do it….breathe, Donald, breathe, I know it’s hard…I mean breathing’s hard, Donald...Yelling and cursing doesn’t make you a leader.” Chris Christie, in Hell, was reaching up from the pit, begging someone to let him rise and point out that Ted Cruz was this debate's robot, repeating the same stuff over and over. Ted Cruz says the media’s job is to tell America how sixty years of liberal policies destroyed Detroit, and that is what he think about the water crisis in Flint.

Ted Cruz wants to militarize space.

Marco Rubio has taken Jeb Bush’s place as Donald Trump’s nerd in fifth-period chemistry class. He’s Gilligan, trapped in an abusive relationship with the Skipper. At the star of the debate he piously- and he knows from pious, having been a Catholic, a Mormon, a Baptist and a nondenom bigbox churcher- said he’d rather they have a policy debate, but Donald Trump has been abusing and insulting everyone so he deserves having everyone insult and abuse him back, and he sure was gonna get his licks in on the big guy. Oh, and the media reports what Donald Trump says and that’s not as good as if it reported what Marco Rubio says.

Marco Rubio says two-thirds of primary voters have voted against Donald Trump and then repeats his Party of Reagan and Lincoln/conservative values clip.

Marco Rubio wants Donald Trump’s clothes to be made in America. Donald Trump says he can’t because “they” devalue currencies to make it impossible to make clothes in America. Marco Rubio said there are plenty of companies that make clothes in America. Donald Trump said he has been moving his factories back to America a little at a time. Marco Rubio said Donald Trump makes them overseas because he makes more money that way. Donald Trump started calling him a liar and shouting him down.

Marco Rubio started overheating and got Max Headroomy on a question about why the GOP has no plans for infrastructure replacement nationally, and only has cricket sounds over what to do about Flint’s water. He started looping that no one woke up in the morning and decided to poison the people of Flint. No one woke up in the morning and decided to poison the people of Flint. It was a partial failure at the state level and a complete one at the federal level. It was a partial failure at the federal level and the Governor has taken responsibility for it, and wants somebody to do something.

It being Fox News’ debate, no one asked Ted Cruz why he has been blocking a congressional appropriation to relief to Flint.

John Kasich would have had you drunk on your ass after 90 minutes. His is the drinking game words platform. Balanced the federal budget. Tough decisions. Created all those jobs Bill Clinton claims. Worked with Ronald Reagan. Ohio, big deficit, big surplus. Bond rating. 400,000 jobs. Defense committee, 18 years. 9/11, SecDef called me to Pentagon to help with his problems. Twenty-year-old solutions work great!

When he got off message, Kasch floundered. He’s felt the heat from the religious liberty people. We should all just agree to sell and buy cupcakes, he now says. But if you want the cupcake lady to deliver them to your gay anything, she can say no, but we ought to be nice about it, and not chase two lesbians and their kids out into the parking lot shouting that they are abominations, the way the bakers in Oregon did (he didn’t say that part but it’s an apt example of the incivility he, to his credit, decried). But then he said the mean gays ought not to sue if the photographer insults them, they should just go get someone else. Never mind that nondiscrimination law in their city or state. And if the mean gays won’t give the people whose faith is so gossamer that cupcakes leave them teetering on the edge of the pits of Hell, ready to belly flop right next to Chris Christie, well, then we need laws to let the Christians heave the gays into the pit, and ignore any damn law they want.

He admits he can only win the nomination in a brokered convention but won’t tell his supporters to vote for Rubio in Florida. He will win because Democrats tell him he acts like the only grown-up on the debate stage and emotional women tell him emotional things at his town halls, and hugs are exchanged. He can fix bad school districts by getting the union and the ‘Democrat African-American mayor’ to beg him for power to run cities like corporations and buy out the experienced teachers so they can be replaced by young, keen cheap ones like he did in Cleveland. He will bundle 104 federal programs into four and send them to the states and that will have something to do with education. He says we will defeat ISIS by raising an Army of Sunni Muslims who will do what our special forces tell them, and we will drop bombs.

When it came to terrorism and foreign policy, all four candidates explained they have penises so large they trip over them all the damn time.

Stuff I read today, October 30, 2016

- Little Marco, Florida’s bored Senator, was set to retire this year after one six-year term run for President. Then his talking points got stuck on buffer in the New Hampshire primary debate and that was that.

After a hiatus, Senator Rubio clambered up on the bodies of the Orlando shooting victims- Florida is very flat and Rubio is so short he wears platforms- and announced he had had a vision, and it involved another six-year term running for President. And so the man who dragged public discourse down to the level of Donald trump’s crotch is back in the race.

Substance-wise, however, the short combover is still a walking GIGO-counter, devoid of the first original thought. In response to his opponent's own debate buffer freeze, Rubio came up with this gem:

The audience laughed, faintly, at one of nearly 20 mentions of the Republican presidential nominee during the one-hour debate.When Murphy next mentioned Trump, Rubio was quick with a rejoinder based on a famous Joe Biden rebuke of Rudy Giuliani: “A noun, a verb and Donald Trump: that’s his answer to everything.”

Where is Max Headroom? He’d be the dream candidate for the Post-Factual Age.

- Everyone is banging on about the FBI’s cack-handed handling of the Zombie Emails. Nobody knows what it means, least of all the Bureau’s director. As I learned in childhood from the adults around me, nothing is more satisfying than chewing over actions long past and past changing. Harry Truman’s vice president, Alben Barkley, wrote an entertaining 1950s memoir in which he recalled a 19th century undecided Kentucky voter who said, “I haven’t made up my mind, but when I do, I’ll be mad as hell!”

- Marco Rubio is but one of the actors making 2016 The Year of The Penis. The presidential election comes down to a pissing match over whose penis did the worst things: 70 year-old-ex-president Bill Clinton, or 70-year-old-president-wannabe Donald Trump.

Here is what you need to know about Penises. Republican men have Family Values Penises, which means they screw around, but in mostly discreet and socially acceptable ways. As the early 20th-century actress Mrs Patrick Campbell said, “Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!”

Democrats are the Party of the Pervert Penis. They are the party of the libertines, of penises of call colors and sizes, mostly XXXL to “Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you” , and they do things you wouldn’t believe with theirs, and they do it for fun.

They never get enough, and this is why we have a crying need for Law & Order, and white guys to be able to own ever-bigger, semi-automatic, penis stand-ins (Marginal Revolution predicts the next frontier of bullying will be trolling driverless cars).

It drives men mad that Hillary Clinton is widely imagined not to have a penis. This makes her unpredictable as president: a rara avis, a genetic sport. Many aging penises are springing to Mr Trump’s defense, among them 72-year-old Rudy Giuliani, who would know when he says everybody is an adulterer any more, and 73-year-old Newt Gingrich. They are foursquare in the defense of the traditional privileges of The White Penis (Trump, Rudy and Newt have burned through nine wives so far), but in that realm, a comer to watch is South Carolina Republican write-in candidate Brett Brocato.

So reflexive is the South Carolina voter reach for the straight- literally- GOP voting booth lever, those in the district that surrounds Bob Jones University were shocked to learn they’d recently ousted an absentee Republican woman for a gay Republican man.

There is no room for the Gay American Penis in the GOP (which, regrettably, does not stand for Grizzled Old Penises), so Brett Brocato is running to restore “conservative sexual values”:

Brocato said he decided to run as a write-in candidate after hearing constituents react to news reports about Elliott’s sexual orientation.

“The timing of my run is due to the fact that our Republican nominee claims the voters have accepted his progressive sexual values, yet we’ve seen no evidence that he campaigned as openly homosexual,” Brocato said in a statement.

Asked how Elliott should have campaigned, Brocato told The State: “That burden of figuring out how to campaign that way would probably be on my opponent.”

It is a mark of the depravity of the modern Republican that, after decades of nailing gays into their closets, they now complain when one doesn’t shout it to the rooftops. When I was a boy, and America was great, you could spot them at a distance. My father explained the signs to me.

- The Trump campaign has acknowledged one Official Deplorable: a man who started shouting “Jew-S-A!” at a rally the other day. So far there has been no comment from the black Trump backer The Donald spotted, called a thug, and ordered dragged out of another event- in Kinston, NC, which has worked so hard to rebrand itself as hip and tolerant and arugula-friendly in A Chef's Life.

Nor is there word about whether the campaign will certify the large gathering of Deplorables at the NC State Capitol two weeks ago, where, disguised as a Franklin Graham Republican Jesus rally, they picked out a reporter to scream “Jew-boy” and “fucking sodomite” at.

His “Hillary is a Cunt” short was, apparently, in the laundry bin.

- Fashion icon Tim Gunn explains why Ivanka Trump doesn’t give two slaps about what her father’s supporters wear.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/And sorry I was they diverged so little

The two Republican presidential candidates vying to knock out Donald Trump have taken different tacks on dealing with gay and lesbian issues in the 2016 campaign.

Marco Rubio has issued murky, contradictory statements that either reflect early issues with that malfunctioning memorization chip, or a desire to obfuscate in favor of a broader, religious liberties theme.

Ted Cruz has been virulently and openly antigay from the start of his campaign, running discrimination as a parallel track to his religious freedom pitches.

Rubio took an early lead in endorsements from evangelicals in the upscale and academic ends of the community, and, after a successful closed-door meeting last fall, unveiled a fifteen-member religious liberty advisory board on January 6.

Cruz took until the day after his rather poor Super Tuesday showing to unveil his own 19-member board.

Both are similar. Rubio includes two Hispanics (oddly, one- Sam Rodriguez, serves on both men’s boards); Cruz has one. Cruz has three black members to Rubio’s one. Rubio’s panel includes two Jews and one Orthodox seminary dean. Cruz has gone the straight, hardline evangelical churches route. Four of his 19 members are from the Carolinas.

Rubio’s has considerable more intellectual firepower; Cruz has gone for name recognition. While Rubio has two leaders from the antigay litigation shop Alliance Defending Freedom on his team; Cruz has Tony Perkins as his board chair, with a deputy, Len Blackwell, too. Ryan Anderson, of Jim DeMint’s once-respected Heritage Foundation, is about the all intellectual heft the group can summon. The rest are major-leaguers in the antigay movement, including several so far out as to frequently be called crackpots.

Rubio's lead staffer for religious liberty is Eric Teetsel, who came from a job directing the Manhattan Declaration, an organization founded to promote an anti gay, anti choice manifesto crafted by former National Organization for Marriage cofounder Robert P. George and former Watergate felon Charles Colson. The advisory council’s members are:

-Dr. Carlos Campo, President, Ashland University. Another “moderate” Hispanic on immigration (see Samuel Rodriquez, below), Campo was previously president of Pat Robertson’s Regent University, where he was forced out a few weeks into his third year on the job in 2013.

-Vincent Bacote, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Theology and Director of Center for Applied Christian Ethics, Wheaton College

-Kyle Duncan, former general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead counsel for the Green family in the Hobby Lobby case. The Becket Fund has been called “God’s Rottweilers” in Politico. See also Michael McConnell, below.

-Tom Farr, Ph.D., Director, Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Associate Professor of the Practice of Religion and World Affairs, Georgetown University

-Kellie Fiedorek, Legal Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom. One of two ADF leaders on the board. See Doug Napier, below. Fiedorek argues that the “agenda to expand sexual liberty and redefine marriage” puts religious liberty in “great peril.” She has compared business owners who refuse to provide wedding-related services to same-sex couples to Rosa Parks.

-Wayne Grudem, Ph.D., Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies, Phoenix Seminary. The Washington Blade reports, “Grudem argues that God will hold people accountable for shaping laws to meet biblical standards. Grudem has promoted a chart on how to “defeat the enemy’s plan” in politics. He has said that religious freedom makes it legal in the U.S. to have a Muslim mosque or a Buddhist temple, “but that doesn’t mean it’s morally right for people to seek to come to God that way….”

-The Very Rev. Dr. Chad Hatfield, Chancellor, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary

-Dr. Thomas Kidd, Distinguished Professor of History and Associate Director, Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University. In an article last year, Kidd advocated for the “American Benedict Option” advocated by conservative writer Rod Dreher: “As dismaying as the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage was, there was something especially painful about seeing the White House lit up that evening with the rainbow colors of the gay pride flag. It almost seemed sacrilegious. But “sacrilegious” is not quite right, because Washington, D.C., has nothing to do with our eternal Jerusalem.

“Perhaps the best thing that can come out of the gay marriage decision is for the church to make a final break between our faith and our nation.”

-Dr. Daniel Mark, Villanova University; Commissioner, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Mark is a conservative Jew whose views on religious freedom and the family are widely praised by Mormon leaders. He has stopped shy of the absolutist view that religious liberty trumps all competing rights, but where the line gets drawn is not clear.

-Michael McConnell, Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center, Stanford University Law School. McConnell. Once touted as a Supreme Court prospect, McConnell was a protege of Justice Antonin Scalia and a vigorous advocate of Scalia’s originalist theories of individual and corporate rights. He resigned from the US Court of Appeals in 2009, after seven years, to join the Stanford faculty. He runs a religious liberty law clinic at Stanford that was funded by $1.6 million steered to Stanford by the Becket Fund in 2013. Becket Fund attorneys appear in Rick Santorum’s 2014 movie, “One Generation Away: The Erosion of Religious Liberty.” See also Kyle Duncan, above.

-Doug Napier, Senior Counsel and Executive Vice President, Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF is one of the leading nonprofit antigay litigation firms in America, representing marriage equality martyrs like Barronelle Stutzman and Aaron and Melissa Klein (who recently dumped ADF for a more upscale group headed by former Bush legal counsel Boyden Gray). See also Kellie Fiedorek, above, another ADF executive.

-Rev. Dr. Samuel Rodriguez, President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Rodriguez also sits on Cruz’s board (see below).

-Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik, Rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel; Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, Yeshiva University. In a 2003 article in the conservative Catholic magazine First Things, Soloveitchik argued, hate is an acceptable response to one's enemies as a principle of the religious tradition of which Christianity is an eschatological riff: Judaism. Soloveichik gives the story of Samson as an example, noting,

“A theological chasm remains between the Jewish and Christian viewpoints on the matter. As we can see from Samson's rage, Judaism believes that while forgiveness is often a virtue, hate can be virtuous when one is dealing with the frightfully wicked. Rather than forgive, we can wish ill; rather than hope for repentance, we can instead hope that our enemies experience the wrath of God.”

-Rick Warren, Founding Pastor of Saddleback Church. Warren’s closeness to Republican candidates was strained by his speaking at President Obama’s first inauguration. He has likened supporters of marriage equality to those of Adolf Hitler.

-Thomas White, Ph.D., President and Professor of Theology, Cedarville University.

Cruz had a troika of religious outreach staffers. E.C. Sykes, a technology executive between jobs, headed it until last month, when he became president and CEO of Black Box Technology. A member of the Pilgrim’s Pride corporation’s owners- and former big Huckabee bundler, and a women who came from Phyllis Schlafly's radio show and a series of anti choice groups, do the legwork. Here’s the Crux team:

Chair – Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council. Perkins is a former Louisiana legislator who heads what is perhaps the nation’s most enthusiastically vituperative antigay organization, dubbed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Among his past and present employees is Ken Blackwell (see below), and accused child molester, adulterer and reality TV star Josh Duggar. Peter Sprigg, a vice president of FRC, won fame some years ago, calling on the deportation of gays from America.

-Ryan Anderson, Ph.D., William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow, Heritage Foundation. Anderson, 34, is the hot new face of the antigay movement, hipster beard and all. All he writes about his traditional marriage from his perspective as a single man. Anderson says it is now harder to come out as a Christian than as being gay.

-Dr. Tony Beam, Vice President for Student Services and Christian Worldview, North Greenville University. NGU is the city’s other, less famous right-wing evangelical school, after Bob Jones University. Beam has worried that marriage equality will bar the school from getting federal funds if it insists on sticking with its discriminatory policies. Its president retired suddenly last year after his son outed him as an adulterer on YouTube.

-David Benham and Jason Benham, entrepreneurs. The North Carolina real-estate flippers HGTV show was cancelled in 2014 over their strident antigay campaigning. They have been making the gay marriage victims circuit since. Their father is a street preacher whose Bible only treats Hell and the gays.

-Ambassador Ken Blackwell, Former US Ambassador to the UN for Human Rights. A rare African-American Ohio pol in the 1980s and ‘90s, Blackwell ran for Congress in 1990 and lost, and for governor of Ohio, losing by 24% in 2006. He won national fame presiding over the disputed Bush elections of 2000 and 2004. He ran for chair of the Republican National Committee in 2009 and lost. He is a fellow at the Family Research Institute (see Tony Perkins, above).

-Teresa S. Collett, Professor, University of St. Thomas. A 2010 Republican congressional candidate in Minnesota, she was described by a local paper as “a lawyer with degrees from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma College of Law, and a current law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis [who] has a storied career of legal representation, both as a board member of Alliance for Marriage, a group opposing gay marriage, and as a legal expert on anti-choice legislation (or, as she allegedly refers to it, a “hired gun“).”

-Jim Garlow, Ph.D., Pastor, Skyline Church, San Diego, CA. A participant in the Vatican’s conference on families in 2014, As Right Wing Watch first reported, Skyline Church Pastor Jim Garlow suggested that same-sex marriage supporters should relocate to homes with improper plumbing in a "Point Of View" radio program discussion, in which he also spoke about his participation in a recent Vatican summit.

"All the people who advocate for so-called same-sex marriage ought to have to live in homes in which the plumbers who built them, or the electricians who built them, didn't understand the difference between the male and female end of piping or plumbing or of electrical as well, and see how that works for them," he said.

He then added, "It doesn't work."

The comments are perhaps less surprising given Garlow's history. In 2013, he told the Christian Broadcasting Network that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) couples don't actually have "much interest in marriage."

"There isn’t that much interest in commitment and monogamy," Garlow, who was reportedly instrumental in organizing conservative religious groups to support California's Proposition 8, declared. "It isn’t there ... It’s attempting to force us to affirm a lifestyle."

Previously, he attacked President Barack Obama's policies on healthcare and marriage equality, and predicted that abortion clinics will become "killing center" museums that people will tour in a fashion similar to modern-day tours of Nazi concentration camps, reports Raw Story.

Earlier this year, he suggested that comedian Joan Rivers, who died in September, would go to hell because of her "potty mouth."

-Dr. Mark Harris, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC. Harris is a former North Carolina Baptist Convention president who ran for the 2014 Republican nomination for the US Senate. He was a leading backer of the state’s short-lived anti-marriage-equality constitutional amendment and over the last year has been a prominent bathroom panic opponent of Charlotte’s anti discrimination ordinance.

-Pastor Jack Hibbs, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, CA. Hibbs was a Prop 8 warrior whose views run along these lines: ““The indoctrination of our children regarding gay and lesbian, transgender lifestyles and practices as it relates to state history, as it relates to US history, and as it relates to our own economy…This new teaching, frankly, comes against the very ministry of Jesus Christ, the word of God, and you and I.

“If we don’t stop it, this will be the indoctrination of our children, on our watch…There’s no opting out for your student, they must take this course, there’s no getting away from it.”

-Bishop Harry Jackson, Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church, Bishop, International Communion of Evangelical Church. Jackson is a career antigay activist in the Washington, D.C. area. In 2013 the blogger Joe.My.God summed him up: “Harry Jackson files a SCOTUS brief in support of Prop 8. Harry Jackson says polygamy will automatically become legal if DOMA is struck down. Harry Jackson says gay people are wolves in the dog park. Harry Jackson speaks in tongues against gay perversion.  Harry Jackson puts a gay newspaper out of business by the power of his prayers. Harry Jackson blames the bad economy on lack of love for Jesus.  Harry Jackson says God has been against gay marriage since the creation of the universe…”

-Richard Lee, Ph.D., President, There’s Hope America

Paige Patterson, Ph.D, President, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Last year he responded to the Obergefell decision with comments beginning, “A five-to-four decision of the nation’s highest court to redefine the nature of marriage plays with far more than a definition of terms. Homosexual sin, like my sin and your sin, has a long history. But seldom has anyone had the chutzpah to assume such authority as to deny the authority of the God of all law, trash the Genesis creation order, and plunge a country into a dark abyss. New Testament Christianity has never sought to invade the private domains of individuals with a series of legal mandates. Ours is to love all women and men and faithfully disseminate the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to all who will hear. We grieve when some do not hear, but we grant them the right inherent in their humanity to chart a course far from that revealed by the Lord.

“But today’s anticipated decision is a decision of five people in a country of millions to call something right that God has already called wrong. Isaiah noted “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil; who put darkness for light and light for darkness…” (Isaiah 5:20). A dark day overtakes us when the supreme court of the land empties the meaning from a concept that God has given. The mischief that will emerge from this ruling across the years to come will know little respite and trigger enormous suffering for believers and unbelievers alike.”

-Everett Piper, Ph.D., President, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, was the closing speaker at last November’s World Conference of Families, an antigay group, in Salt Lake City. He gave a stemwinder speech deriding most people and most things; One of Piper’s talking points is that “opinions are dangerous; truth sets us free.” Among the dangerous people who had opinions, he notes, were Pol Pot, Mao, Robespierre, Chavez, Hitler and Mussolini.

-Jay Richards, Ph.D., Assistant Research Professor, School of Business & Economics, The Catholic University of America, is a prominent intelligent design/creationist advocate.

-Steve Riggle, Ph.D., Senior Pastor, Grace Community Church, is a Houston-area minister who led the repeal of the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance.

-Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, Ph.D., President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Rodriguez founded his evangelical group in 2000 and also sits on Marco Rubio’s board, above. He often fronts for rightwing groups as a moderate because of his views on immigration, but has been a hard-right antigay campaigner for years.

-Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO, First Liberty Institute. Founded as the Free Market Institute in 1972, this nonprofit has since shifted focus to providing pro bono legal assistance to people of faith and organizations that they believe are suffering religious persecution in the United States.

-Carol Swain, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University. Professor Swain was the subject of a petition for removal signed by 1500 Vanderbilt students alleging that she regularly slurs minorities in her classes and her many appearances in right-wing media.

You had to be there. Be glad you weren't.

Highlights of the Republican debate last night:
-Ted Cruz said it's CNN's fault that his staff misunderstood a report that Ben Carson was going home for a change of clothes after Iowa, and told everyone he was quitting the race. Ted continues to believe in the magic of incantation, and that if the President said "radical Islamic terrorist" ISIS would go away in a puff of smoke.
- Chris Christie tagged Marco Rubio for making up a one-line answer to questions, followed by a 25 second memorized speechlet. Rubio obligingly did just that, repeating the same speechlet, three times in five minutes.
- Ted Cruz has picked up on Ben Carson's fear of electromagnetic pulses, only in his version, millions will die.
- Drinking game tag lines:
Jeb: voids are filled.
Cruz: military hands tied behind their backs.
Christie: I spent seven years as a US Attorney prosecuting [fill in an issue].
Rubio: Obama wants to make us like other nations.
- Jeb says North Korea picked up a drunk UVa student right after Iran released hostages because we are a weak-looking nation.
- Marco Rubio says it's not leadership to actually lead. If you can't get the people to support something, you should bail on it.
- Ted Cruz and Donald Trump want the least-regulating state in the nation to let insurance companies write health policies from there so everyone can get them cheaply. No one remembered how it worked out when we deregulated air travel in a similar fashion. We got cheap AND crappy.
-Ben Carson wants to make every American a self-insurer for health care. You're born, you get an empty savings account for life. And whatever you put in it, you can spend on health care.
-Ben Carson also has a lot to say about North Korea and if anyone had asked him, he'd have said it all.
-Donald Trump shouted down Jeb Bush and then shushed Bush because he wanted to talk.
-Donald Trump also says we are the highest-taxed nation in the world. Regrettably, no one asked why we can't cut taxes to the point where we get the sort of high wages, universal health care and support for arts and education (not to mention bullet trains) less taxed nations enjoy.
-Chris Christie says American can be blackmailed by its billionaires. If we raise taxes, they will take their money overseas to places it will be treated more kindly. Across America, teenaged boys with dogeared copies of Atlas Shrugged traced dollar signs in the air.
-Ted Cruz says we have the best military in the world but Obama has gutted it into ineffectiveness at the same time.
-Jeb wants to turn over environmental regulation and health care and aid to the poor to states with records like North Carolina's.
-Ted Cruz says the US Air Force is the smallest it has been since 1916. In 1909 the US government bought its 1st military aircraft. Today it owns 5,032. You do the math on that one.
-Jeb says the US cannot get anything done in the world except by military strength. We are not to be respected for our ideas, or the examples we set, only feared, and that will come only if we have bigger piles of weapons than everyone else.
-Jeb also says women should register for the draft as an equality thing, even though we know there will never be a draft. Chris Christie says women should have to register to fully realize their goals in life.
-Jeb says his record shows he occupies "the sweet spot" in abortion politics.
I skipped the closing speeches.