Most Ordinary Americans in 2016 Are Richer Than John D. Rockefeller in 1916.

A great English-language article on the anniversary of Boris Nemtsov ‘ s assassination. It’s so rare that one sees anything intelligent written about the post-Soviet space in English.

Ursula Le Guin keeps embarrassing herself. This time, she makes a fool of herself by lecturing somebody who actually is a serious writer. This lack of self-awareness is very sad.

The Putinoid Ian Welsh is a Trump admirer. Color me unsurprised.

A historian attempts to follow Tudor hygiene with a daily regime of linen underwear.

How Evangelicals explain their support for Trump. Very enlightening.

Teju Cole on one of my favorite novels ever.

No, Bernie Sanders is not electable.

The MSNBC coverage of the SC primary is egregious. They are doing their damndest to present Hillary’s impending win as not a real win, saying that people are only voting for her because they think there’s no other choice and that voters have no enthusiasm or interest in the primary.

None of this is helping Bernie, so I don’t think this show is being put on for his sake. This helps Trump, especially given that the same newscasters portray his campaign as provoking great enthusiasm among voters.

We are turning into such a peach of a state, folks. Our lawmakers can’t get a state budget passed two years in a row but they do have the time to come up with a bill that will deprive children of single mothers of birth certificates. This was an important practice back in the tsarist Russia, a barbaric joke of a state that refused to accept the full humanity of children who lacked official fathers. The state of Illinois decided that now was a good time to bring back to life this ridiculous, uncivilized practice.

What an absolute disgrace is this state becoming.

Chris Christie just endorsed Trump for president.

I guess this answers the question of why Christie never attacked Trump during the debates.

I didn’t expect this. Is anybody else as stunned as I am?

Different names for the exact same thing evoke intensely differing reactions.

Matt Taibbi’s article on Trump is the worst piece of writing the fellow has ever produced. The genre of “I went to a Trump rally and felt smug and superior” has been done to death in the past few months. And as for the analysis, Taibbi’s ideas in the article are so fussy and superficial that one wonders why he feels so entitled to condescend to Trump followers if that’s the extent of his insight into the matter.

Yesterday’s debate made it absolutely clear that Trump is a very strong debater and a talented entertainer. However, it also demonstrated that he has weaknesses that can be exploited to make him crash in a debate. These weaknesses are as follows:

1. Trump is a sprinter and not a marathoner. He shines in the first 20 minutes of a debate, fades away in the middle, and becomes tired and distracted in the end. He can be outplayed by somebody who can stick with it for longer than a half hour.

2. Trump reacts very poorly to being ridiculed. Taibbi’s “what does he have to be insecure about” is simply dumb. These things are not rational. Trump can’t take hits to his ego gracefully. Even the inexperienced and clumsy Rubio managed to figure that out and get in a few punches yesterday.

All that Hillary needs to do in a debate is make Trump lose face and come off as weak and pathetic. It’s eminently doable. Yes, it sucks that this has to be done and that the electorate got roped into the Trump scam in the first place. But it’s really not the end of the world. This is the price that we all get to pay for allowing a big portion of the population fall behind and wallow in ignorance and confusion amidst a changing world.

I’m back to the world of presidential debating, people. Yay! Let’s see if our opinions on the debate coincide.

19:43 – Carson can afford to be conciliatory since he lost the race.

19:48 – “We either do or don’t have a country,” Trump said. And he’s right, this is the central question of this election cycle. What does a nation-state mean any longer?

19:53 – Trump said that Romney ran a horrible campaign. Which is true.

19:54 – wow, Trump is on a roll. He wiped the floor with Rubio with his “I’m the only person here who hired anybody.” The fellow is deadly in a debate.

19:58 – Cruz is promising to stand up for the working men and women. What a fool. This is the perfect entry for Trump to hit him with Goldman Sachs.

20:02 – now they are actually discussing Vicente Fox’s “fucking wall” comment. Classy as always.

20:06 – everybody is yelling over everybody else. I so hope somebody gets socked in the face.

20:09 – Rubio is such a sleaze ball. He doesn’t even have the courage of his opinions and can’t say honestly that he will get the children of immigrants deported.

20:15 – Rubio uses himself and Cruz as proof that GOP is diverse. And then he’ll wonder why Hispanics hate his pasty mug.

20:17 – Kasich: “I think Hispanics like me!” That’s simply pathetic. Do they know who you are, boring fellow with zero recognition value?

20:26 – Trump ridicules Cruz’s pathetic filibuster. Good for him. “We should get an apology from Ted.” Hear, hear!

20:28 – Trump called Cruz “a crazy zealot.” That’s exactly why I detest Cruz. He looks like a crazy zealot.

20:38 – Rubio is actually right when he makes fun of Trump’s obsession with “lines around the states.”

20:40 – Finally, Rubio manages to get in a few punches against Trump.

20:44 – Carson sounds like a sociopath. “Healthcare is not a right”? Who the hell says this kind of thing?

20:50 – will these people ever wake up and notice that nobody is dying on the sidewalks because of the already existing Medicaid and Medicare?

20:59 – is it true what Rubio is saying about 83% of the budget going to Social Security, Medicaid and debt servicing?

21:04 – so I hate Trump, right? But I see him battle these slick, smug idiots Cruz and Rubio, and I want him to beat them badly. I’m not surprised he’s winning the nomination.

21:11 – oh, enough with Israel already. It’s becoming creepy.

21:16 – if Rubio can’t win a state even after all the effort he put into this debate, he’s hopeless.

21:24 – Of course, the Syria ceasefire is a joke. Putin is laughing his head off.

21:27 – Rubio is absolutely right: the people of Libya removed Gaddafi. They hated him so much that they dragged him out of his palace and raped him with the handle of a shovel. Only America-centrist degenerates pretend that the removal of Gaddafi was up to Americans. Good job, Rubio!

That speech” was a 1996 address at New Hampshire’s Keene State College in support of the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act, otherwise known as the crime bill. In her remarks, then-first lady Clinton said, “They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘superpredators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”

Ah, the terrible comments we’ve been hearing about all day long!  Somebody bring me my fainting couch and smelling salts. Twenty years of outrage are nothing. Let’s fret over this for at least 5 more decades.

Some “activists” are making such a mockery of activism that it’s painful to watch.

Asher Potts was a high school senior in Harrisburg, PA. He stood out from the rest of the students by virtue of his stellar academic record, his extensive extracurricular activities, and his great maturity.

Of course, this is not surprising if you take into consideration that Potts was actually a 23 – year-old Ukrainian man Artur Samarin who had started posing as a 9th grader when his US visa expired 4 years ago.

One must be truly desperate to stay in a country to be willing to repeat high school.

In the XV-XVII-century Ukraine, it was quite acceptable for women to propose marriage to men. If a woman wanted to propose, she would come to the house of the man she liked with a loaf of bread. She’d place the loaf in the middle of the table without saying anything and wait for the man’s parents to give an answer.