Ted Cruz Magical Mystery Tour - Day 34

In addition to yesterday being the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli Landings yesterday was also Ted Cruz's 34th day on the campaign trail.  

Since we left him a week and half ago he has been to New Hampshire once again, spent some time in Washington introducing legislation that would limit the powers of federal courts to overturn defense of marriage amendments to state constitutions (basically arguing that the courts cannot override the people's right to decide the gay marriage question and making it solely a state issue), and hopefully has been taking some time off the campaign trail to get some beef into his diet. He's looked a little peaked these days and the head physician of the Mystery Tour, Doctor Robert (who else!) is thinking maybe the chicken rich diet of life on the trail has left him slightly anemic.

He's also been on the defensive.  Apparently at the First in The Nation Leadership Summit he said that he has been "pressing" John McCain to allow legislation that would allow soldiers to carry personal weapons on military bases (which I think is a rather horrible idea -- I get it, I get it, those who defend our rights should in theory be able to exercise that right themselves, but I think it would lead to bad things....), and John McCain in his wry John McCain way said he has done no such thing.  So Ted hopped on a Jet to New York for an interview on Fox News to back track his comments.  It seems that has buried it.

In recent days he's started playing long ball, addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas Nevada and then hopping on a plane to speak at the Faith and Freedom Forum in Waukee, Iowa.  Rick Perry joined him in Vegas but most everyone in the GOP mixer was at the Faith and Freedom Forum, including Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee who are probably less running for president and probably more trying to sell a book.  Cruz did say that the Democratic Party was a home for liberal fascism, trying to impose its views on an unwilling populous but I will let other people in the blogosphere chew on that one for a bit.

No word on if he enjoyed any of the night life in Las Vegas, but he could always argue that he just left his hotel to get a sandwich and merely got confused, and ended up somewhere where he shouldn't have been.

He has traveled 13,700 miles, been on the road 23 days, and eaten probably on the order of 17 lbs of catered conference chicken. As of 4/16 46,871 people have donated money to the Ted Cruz campaign by its own reckoning, and he has $3.5 million cash in hand.

It isn't enough.  While Hillary Clinton is making videos like this that have actual music and editing and like direction and people and stuff:

Ted Cruz is left making these 30 second snippets from whatever dreary hotel room he happens to be in.  Here is the one he posted to his twitter page when he left Las Vegas for Waukee:

God bless him, poor little man.

Books - Peter Mayle's "A Good Year"

Let me start this post off by saying that I am in the middle of McCullough's book about building the Brooklyn Bridge, but I was at a good stopping point and I had noticed I was starting to have to slog through it a bit.

Sometimes, when I am reading a larger book, particularly a history of something (which inevitabely will drag somewhere), I often feel it is necessary to lay up half way or 3/4 of the way through and set it aside for a brief time, anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months.  It is customary during this time to choose lighter fare.

And so one day, as I slowly perused the shelves at the York County Library with my 6 year old daughter, whose own bag was full of mostly graphic novels and was imploring me to select a book of my own (but no romance novels, because Eww...) I pulled this book off the shelf.  Aside from the fact that it was made into a movie with Russel Crowe that did rather poorly I knew very little about it.  

The plot is pretty simple.  This dude, Mat Skinner, works at an investment firm in London.  He doesn't like his job much, and when one of the other members of the firm steals a deal out from under him he quits in a huff.  

But hey, guess what?  He's just inhereted a demi-chateau with acres of old vines from a deceased uncle in Southern France.  And guess what else?  He has a good buddy that just made partner at a real-estate firm and has more money than he knows what to do with - he loans Max the money necessary to pay his creditors and get the hell out of London to see if maybe there is a new life in France for him.  

So he goes to France.  And things go....pretty well.  I mean, the wine the chateau makes isn't very good, and the house needs a little work, but life in this little French town is so incredibly pleasant that those seem small cares.  Not even the appearance of the Uncle's illegitimite daughter from California can dampen his mood, even though she may have a claim to the property under the vaugeries of French law.  The fact that his life may all turn to shambles seem to be a minor inconvience in the sunshine of France combined with the delicious food, the good wine, and swaying hips of attractive females.  

And hey, guess what else?  There is one plot of vines on the property that makes excellent wine though in limited numbers, sold on the black market.  If Max can expose the buyers and get them to come to an agreement he might be able to sell it himself and make a tidy sum.  As these plans are worked out the daughter drops her claims to the house, preferring the arms of the real-estate agent (who happens to be visiting) and the promise of London.

The plot to expose the buyers doesn't go well, but it doesn't really matter.  They get off scott free but they are also out of the picture, so Max and company are free to sell their wine.  

So all's well that ends well.  The principal characters all end up in someone's bed, they have money and wine, and they are immensely happy.  

The End.  

It wasn't a bad book, though I am more of a beer man myself.  France fascinates me for some reason, though I know it has some serious problems.  The lack of real concnern, of real conflict, made this book pretty easy to put down even though it was well written, and my previously mentioned fascination with France made up for a slow plot and my incredulity over the incredible good luck of Mr. Skinner.  

That being said, Mr. Mayle may be another author for the one and done list, though perhaps some of his other books (he has written quite a few) are better.  

In which Hillary Clinton Eats a Burrito Bowl

Listen:  

This past Sunday two women walked into a Chipotle while they were on her way to Iowa.  They ordered a chicken burrito bowl, a chicken salad, a soda, and a blackberry Izze.  The bill was $20.  They paid $21.  They pocketed the change.  Maybe they did it because they are stingy bitches.  Maybe they did it because the people behind the counter were not particularly prompt with the construction of their lunches.  Maybe they were angry to find out that the carnitas they had been dreaming about for miles were off the menu due shortages of pigs who, if not necessarily happy to be raised for the slaughter, at least get to see the mountains in the distance while they ride in the truck to the abattoir and,  mon Dieu, isn't it beautiful?  It's the Chipotle way.  They really care.    

Or maybe they needed to pocket the money so they could use it later to run negative attack ads against a yet to emerge opponent.  Because those two ladies were Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager.

And we went nuts!  Days of analysis.  Did we ever imagine that two women ordering food at a Chipotle could cause such a stir?  Is this like a prognostication in Revelations?  Does it say

And lo, I saw the Whore of Babylon riding in from the over-privileged East towards the Land of Milk and Honey in the belly of a Beast that consumed the fruits of the Earth and released thick clouds of fire and brimstone into the air; and she and her trusted Lieutenants did descend upon an eatery, where they feasted on the flesh of happily raised farm animals wrapped in thin strips of unleavened bread, mingled with vegetables and peppers and perhaps a dollop of fat free sour cream; and they gave themselves over to gluttony and laughed as the juices dripped down their chins and onto their breasts for they didst forget to gather napkins at the counter; and they did not leave a small gratuity as was the custom of the Land but rather pocketed their spare talents for the future, and they were swallowed again by the Beast who, with an almighty fart of black smoke, did depart so that She might continue Her journey…

Or something like that?

Look, an old woman was hungry as she drove to Iowa (though the Economist reports that Hillary, by her own admission, hasn't driven a car since 1996).  She decided to stop at Chipotle and get a burrito bowl or chicken salad. She probably ate most of it.  Perhaps later it violently disagreed with her.  These are all normal person things.

But of course, Hillary Clinton is not at all normal.  None of these candidates are.  For the next....gosh, several hundred days?.....

For the next several hundred days all these candidates will do is stomp all over each other trying to show us how normal and down to earth they are, when the truth is they are anything but.  They are exceptional, they are rich, they are powerful.  They live in a completely different world.  Rand Paul especially....such an angry, angry place.

I kind of wish the candidates would honor that.  I'm not interested in where people eat or what they eat.  I don't give a flying fig if they leave some change in a change jar.

So to the candidates:  Don't waste time trying to prove how average you are.  I just want to know the answer to two questions:

How will you Govern?

Next time, would you consider going to Taco Bell?

Live Mas!

The Ted Cruz Magical Mystery Tour - Day 22

Roll up for the Ted Cruz Magical Mystery Tour!

Step Right This Way!

So here is what I have been doing with the Twitter feed from the Ted Cruz campaign:

Everyday I check the feed, and on one of those old fashioned legal pads with paper and pen I write down a quick note about where Mr. Cruz is, how far he's traveled, and any other significant events that happen that day.  The miles are courtesy of the map app on my Kindle Fire, so they are road miles, but later I do measure distances in Google to see how many crow miles are involved in case Mr. Cruz chooses to fly, which he often does.  

For example, today's entry is:

Day 22 - 4/13/15 - Marco Rubio enters the race.  Ted Cruz speaks at 12 at the John Locke Foundation Luncheon at the North Raleigh Hilton, Raleigh NC.  San Antonio to Raleigh is 1395 miles.  

And that's it.  

But, I take it one step further now, yeah?  

I take all that information from the web that I have transferred onto paper and then, when the moment suits me, I put all of that information into a spreadsheet.  I use a bit of judgement to discern if Ted flew or took a bus, and decide if the road miles or plane miles should be tallied.  

Oh yeah.  I'm in it for the long haul.  

So what has Mr. Cruz been up to?  Well, after announcing he was running for president and spending a few days in New York doing the whole media thing he decided not to vote for a budget in congress and then, very conveniently, congress went into recess.  He immediately hit the road.  

First it was New Hampshire, then back to Houston to open the campaign center and play some Risk with his campaign manager (to gain an understanding of the nuances of the electoral college) for a few days, then it was a 5 day swing through Iowa and South Carolina.  Since then he has been in Houston, occasionally sallying forth for events like the NRA annual meeting in Tennessee or a John Locke Foundation Luncheon in Raleigh, North Carolina.  

He's been on campaign for 22 days.  Out of those 22 days he's been on the move (changing location) 15 days.  I estimate by now he has probably eaten a good 8 lbs of catered chicken prepared in three extremely different ways.  He's traveled a whopping 8,914 miles, and visited places like Nashua NH (home of Holly Flax), Charleston SC, Des Moines IA, San Antonio TX.   

Events have been mostly small town hall meetings or Republican club luncheons.  The rooms are usually small but always packed.    

I'm still not voting for him.

But hey, he's working hard, traveling a lot, listening to the people, shooting out tweets.  I can barely wait to see where he goes next.

In Which Nick Watches House of Cards - Episodes 7 to Whatever the Last Episode Was. 13, Maybe?

So I decided to push through to the end of the series and make one large final post on Season Three of House of Cards so that this brief chapter of my blogging and TV watching life might be closed, and we can all move on to other things.

And yeah, spoilers abound.  

So - when we left off, Claire and Frank were desperately trying to get a UN Peacekeeping mission into the Jordan Valley.  Claire lets know the Russians they are serious through a little bathroom diplomacy  with the Russian UN Ambassador (President Johnson was famous for doing the same thing, but I don't think it was a power move, I just think it was kind of his way...but I could be wrong.  Don't know much about the Johnson presidency), and voila!  The UN peacekeeping mission is underway with Russia also supplying troops.  

It doesn't go well.  The Russians come under attack - the Russians make Claire think that the Russians killed their own men to diffuse the mission, and maybe they did, maybe they didn't.  This leads to Frank and the Russian president meeting in the Jordan Valley with all their military gear.  Franks wants the Russians to leave the valley, the mission will end, Frank will cave on missile defense, AND to make it all work Frank has to get Claire out of the UN.  

This he agrees to.  

And that begins the theme of the last 5 or so episodes, the slow dissolution of the marriage of Frank and Claire.  As Frank campaigns for president across the country on his America Works package (which had to be halted to the need to divert FEMA money from America Works back to its intended purpose of preparing for a major hurricane, which of course doesn't hit) Claire begins to resent her position more and more.

Robin Wright is surely the star of this season.  Where before cracks in Claire's facade seemed like an after thought made by the writers to give the series a lick of extra depth, now that she finds herself in conflict with Frank (and herself, her love for him) her character has become the most interesting to watch.  Wright is masterful. At the end of episode 11 (or is it 12?) she is reading a book to school children, campaigning like a good first lady, when President Underwood walks in.  With the camera close in we see Claire see Frank, her smile evaporates, and she gives him a version of "the look" -- not the look of love mind you, I'm talking about "The Look" -- that made my knees buckle.  I felt that she might come out of the television and eviscerate me.  

Anyways, Claire makes the realization that she and Frank are no longer equals, that he has used her to get in power and is using her to stay in power -- as Frank finds himself in a tough race for Iowa against Heather Dunbar, Claire's campaign appearances on his behalf are credited by the pundits as pulling him even against the former attorney general, or whatever it was that she was before she threw her hat into the ring.  

At last?  Well, Claire makes a request of Frank for angry sex, and he can't comply (they have not slept together, it seems, since he was the president).  Frank banishes her back to Washington and after victory in Iowa, as Frank says he needs Claire by her side in New Hampshire, she refuses.  She will leave him.  

So that takes care of Frank and Claire, what of Doug Stamper, angel of death?  

His contacts inform him that Rachel Posner has died.  He goes off the deep end.  Starts drinking again. Picks himself up, gets clean and sober for about 80 days or so, and uses leverage against Frank's campaign to become Frank's new chief of staff.

You see, Heather Dunbar, it turns out, has managed to be corrupted just for trying to obtain absolute power.  With Claire fighting for Frank and cutting down her lead in Iowa, she tries to go Nuclear by contacting Doug to get the journal kept by some doctor in SC that has a record of one of Claire's abortions in it.  Doug comes to Frank with the news, proof of loyalty.  He is hired back by Frank as his chief of staff.  

But is Jedi training is not complete yet.  For Rachel Poser is NOT dead, but she is alive, and he must tie up the one loose end from the cover up.  

Doug finds her, through macinations that I am too tired to explain.  She is living in Arizona, working off the books, and has just purchased a new identity.  She intends to move to the North, where there are trees and quiet, and just simply keep to herself and disappear.  

Ah, but Doug shows up, kidnaps her and throws her into the back of a van.  But she starts to converse with Doug, tell him his her plans, and Doug is very conflicted, his love of her and the trust he has that she probably will vanish and keep to herself, wants nothing more to do with him or Underwood, makes him change his mind.  He lets her go.  Sets her free and tells her to walk down the road, there is a town 20 miles away.  

He drives in the opposite direction.  And we are relieved.  He is not a total scum bag.  

But then, as the dark music wells, he turns the van around. We cut to dirt being tossed ontop of Rachel in her shallow desert grave.  

So, all in all, it was rather unsatisfying.  Doug has shown himself to be the machine we all feared he was, Heather Dunbar has shown that no pure soul can resist the allure of Washington, Frank Underwood is left horribly weak and unlovable in the midst of his campaign, and I don't know where Claire is going.  Maybe she will run against him for President. That would be something.  

Worst of all - there is going to be, surely, a season four.  At this point, honestly, I am not sure I am going to be watching it.  There are surely other things that are better.

One last thought:  Either the make up artists did a really good job of aging Kevin Spacey has the stress on Underwood builds and builds, or he ate some really bad fish after Episode 10.  

And now -- that's done!

Nick Watches House of Cards -- Episodes 4 - 6

If it seemed like I was getting down a little - okay, a lot - on House of Cards in my previous posts, it is because I forgot the number one rule when it comes to House of Cards:

Don't ask why.or how or where or....just don't ask anything.

Don't ask why it is so important that Frank get his peacekeeping mission in the Jordan Valley.  Don't ask why the Russians see that as a threat.  Don't ask where Claire found the time to learn French, or Russian.  Just let the various schemes and plot mechanisms twist and turn and turn and buckle in for the ride.

In the case of Season 4, the ride is a bumpy one.  Frank's presidency can't quite get off the ground, because as mentioned before the world around him seems to no longer bend to his will.  Everything played itself out exactly as Frank wished in the first two seasons to get him to where he is now...now nothing seems to go quite his way.

In Episode 4, when he tries to get attorney general Heather Dunbar out of the democratic primary by making her a supreme court justice, taking the place of the chief justice who has early Alzheimer's, she sees right through him (it helps that she is a friend of the justice).  She tenders her resignation, and announces that she is running for the Presidency.

In Episode 6, as Frank and Claire find themselves in Russia once again matching wits with the cold President Petrov, the jailed dissident at the center of the negotiations commits suicide.  This gives Claire the chance to criticize the Russian president, the deal (which has to do with the release of the dissident, the UN mission in the Jordan Valley, and missile defense) unravels.

And in Episode 5?  Frank seems to get some of his mojo back, deciding to go on the offensive and finding a barely legal way to fund his program.  Frank Underwood is always most watchable when he is on the move, rather than butting his head again and again against unforeseen obstacles.  It's what makes these three episodes better than the first three (that and the suspension of my disbelief).

Meanwhile, the jilted Doug Stamper has found a place on the Heather Dunbar team.  Doug is one of the best characters in the show, limping around like an angel of death, offering the pure Heather Dunbar a man who at least knows everyone in Washington.  For the moment she is well above the dark side of what Doug can do for an employer (i.e. destroy opponents through unscrupulous means and hide the bodies), but I wonder if he will drag Mrs. Dunbar into the mire of Washington.  Or maybe he is positioning himself as a mole for Underwood...

Some deeper thoughts:

The series plays well on the frustrations of the American people with their government.  You have an over powerful legislature butting heads with a congress that seems to stymie his every move.  Nothing seems to get done.  Kind of sounds a lot like another place I've hear of....I even wonder if American Works is a proxy for the Obamacare program.

Second - this series is always going to put the viewer in an odd place.  Frank is fairly odious, you want him to fail.  And yet you want him to fail in a certain way.  It isn't enough to see him fail through procedural means, or see him get voted out.  He has to fail in some kind of spectacular, Scarface "Say Hello to My Little Friend" kind of way.  Not dissimilar from Breaking Bad.  You know that Walt can't get away with it all, he is going to die.  The question is how?

But when will the ultimate denouement finally come?  I'm guessing not in this season.

Stay tuned...