And So It Begins

So far, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (Democrats) and Mike Huckabee and Marco Rubio and Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina and (maybe) Ted Cruz (Republicans) and other people who've slipped my mind are running for President of these United States.  Which means they'll poison the entire summer.  I realize that boring everyone to tears so we won't look closely at the issues is a feature of this system, not a bug.  Nevertheless, pay attention to those folks behind the curtain.

• Bernie Sanders (naked capitalism) defends European socialism.

  ...Sanders went on to defend democratic socialism and explain, in detail, why America should be trying to emulate Northern European countries rather than belittle them. The ABC host and former Bill Clinton advisor tried to pin the Vermont senator down, musing aloud, “I can hear the Republican attack ad now: [Sanders] wants America to look like Sweden,” to which Sanders deadpanned in response, “That’s right. And what’s wrong with that?”

• Carly Fiorina (The Republic of T) probably thinks we've forgotten about Hewlett-Packard, among other things.  She's wrong.

  Fiorina is running on her resume. Specifically, she’s touting her business experience as CEO of Hewlett Packard (HP) as the main reason why she should be elected. “I’m very proud of our record. We went from a market laggard to market leader. Unlike Hillary, I have actually accomplished something,” Fiorina likes to say. (See above for comparison of “accomplishments.”
  So what was Fiorina’s track record at HP? Fiorina was CEO of Hewlett Packard from July 1999 to February 2005. The company was lagging when Fiorina was hired. While it’s likely no one could have saved HP from decline, Fiorina’s efforts failed to impress. A top HP executive who joined HP shortly after Fiorina told Yahoo Finance, “She was polarizing [and] disenfranchising.” One top tech CEO said: “She was a value destruction machine with near zero cultural sensitivity. … Carly self excused the barrage of criticism by saying it all came with her necessary role as a change agent. … The [Silicon] Valley opinion was universally and viscerally negative. I literally don’t know a single person who thinks she was great and unfairly treated.”

• Ben Carson (The Republic of T) doesn't get it.

  What Carson doesn’t get about “turmoil in our cities,” is that in cities like Ferguson, Baltimore, and Detroit, people lose hope because their isn’t much of any way to get the things, or the life, they desire. That’s because jobs have disappeared from these cities, in large part due to economic policies and trade deals that made it easier for businesses and corporations to ship jobs overseas, where labor was cheap and unorganized, and environmental protections were few or non-existent.

And the basketball and Stanley Cup playoffs roll on. Thank $DEITY for baseball.

Last week, the anti-same-sex marriage people tried science.  And I mislaid that link.