Things that make you say huh?

[neverbend]

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz claimed Monday that his pact with Ohio Gov. John Kasich is in fact “entirely about the will of the people.”


Dear Sen. Cruz, it’s about 2 sore losers acting like 5 year old brats.


And people will see it for what it is and vote accordingly.


No one wants a adolescent child in the WH. The past 7 years proved it.

The best case study for strategic voting this year was in Ohio, where Marco Rubio openly told his
supporters to vote for Kasich, not him. This pushed Rubio down to just 3% of the Ohio primary
vote. But there are many reasons to think that the Ohio story won't repeat — and Kasich voters
in Indiana will not actually shift en masse to Cruz.



1. Unlike Rubio, Kasich won't actually tell his supporters to vote strategically.
I can't overstate the importance of this. Kasich can't even bring himself to tell his Indiana
supporters to vote for Cruz. You can't have a strategic voting pact without telling your
voters to vote strategically!

2. If you were a Rubio supporter in Ohio, the thought of voting for Kasich probably didn't
make you want to puke. But a lot of Kasich supporters are nauseous at the thought of Cruz.


Kasich campaign has been mostly conducted in the national media, and where Kasich has shown
strength has been by getting his message out through national media. The message there remains
that Kasich fans should vote for Kasich.

So that's why the pact doesn't work and why Trump is still likely to win Indiana, where recent
polls show him leading by about six points.

 

[The Guesser]

Here's the complete article, and it makes several good points. Whether it will work or not remains to be seen, but both Kasich and Cruz have to be smart about it, and so far, neither one is.

The Cruz-Kasich alliance against Donald Trump won't work because it's not an alliance

• Josh Barro

AP​

Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is right to be mocking the Ted Cruz-John Kasich deal to cooperate against his candidacy.The agreement between the Cruz and Kasich campaigns is that Kasich won't spend time or money in Indiana, while Cruz will back off in New Mexico and Oregon. The idea is to consolidate anti-Trump support behind one candidate in each state in an effort to beat him.
But the deal is doomed because it apparently doesn't include the most important part of a strategic voting pact: actually telling your voters to vote strategically.

The best case study for strategic voting this year was in Ohio, where Marco Rubio openly told his supporters to vote for Kasich, not him. This pushed Rubio down to just 3% of the Ohio primary vote. But there are four reasons to think that the Ohio story won't repeat — and Kasich voters in Indiana will not actually shift en masse to Cruz.
1. Unlike Rubio, Kasich won't actually tell his supporters to vote strategically. I can't overstate the importance of this. Kasich can't even bring himself to tell his Indiana supporters to vote for Cruz. You can't have a strategic voting pact without telling your voters to vote strategically!
"I've never told them not to vote for me," Kasich said on Monday, when asked what his supporters in Indiana should do. "They ought to vote for me. But I'm not over there campaigning and spending resources."
Off message!
2. If you were a Rubio supporter in Ohio, the thought of voting for Kasich probably didn't make you want to puke. But a lot of Kasich supporters are nauseous at the thought of Cruz. Kasich's supporters know that he is far behind and stands little chance of winning the nomination, and they're voting for him anyway. Why? Because they can't bear to vote for Trump or Cruz.
In comparison, Rubio and Kasich appealed to demographically and ideologically similar voters. Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, is very popular with Ohio Republicans, especially the establishment type of Republicans who might have backed Rubio.
Strategic voting is harder to pull off if lots of your voters strongly dislike the guy they'd have to vote for strategically.
3. Rubio's support had already collapsed, but Kasich's is building. Maybe Rubio's 3% haul in Ohio didn't actually reflect that impressive a shift in his voters to Kasich. On the same day, he took just 6% of the vote in Missouri and 8% in North Carolina, despite not having surrendered there.
If Rubio's supporters were abandoning him organically, driven away by the stench of the death of his campaign, then that isn't likely to similarly happen with Kasich's voters. After all, Kasich has been improving in national polls.
4. Shifts of campaign resources aren't that important. Without an explicit call from the candidate to vote strategically, what does the "deal" mean to voters? Well, in Indiana, it means they'll see fewer Kasich television ads, no local Kasich campaign rallies, and less spending from Kasich on get-out-the-vote efforts.
But those sorts of traditional campaign elements have been less important than usual in this race.
Consider New York. Kasich won my home precinct with 56% of the vote, and placed second in the state overall despite the apparent nonexistence of the Kasich campaign in my neighborhood.
I received no mail from Kasich, saw none of his ads on television, and received no knock at my door from any of his supporters. The closest my neighbors got to direct Kasich campaigning was his sandwich-fest in the Bronx. Yet he still managed to win Manhattan.
This campaign has been mostly conducted in the national media, and where Kasich has shown strength has been by getting his message out through national media. The message there remains that Kasich fans should vote for Kasich.
So that's why the pact doesn't work and why Trump is still likely to win Indiana, where recent polls show him leading by about six points.

 

[ScottL]

The tricky triangle of Iran, Russia and Israel




On the complex regional chess board, Iran wants better relations with Moscow even as the Russians have extended their intelligence co-operation with Israel in Syria

Russia, in cooperation with Obama, will likely turn against Israel in the next few months.

 

[superbeets]

Europe 'to have more Muslims than Christians': Belgian minister warns Brussels attacks hearing that the continent should not 'make an enemy of Islam'

• Koen Geens said the continent ‘does not realise this, but this is the reality’
• Remarks follow Jan Jambon's claims in the wake of Brussels bombings ‘a section of the Muslim community danced when attack took place'
• Mr Jambon was accused of stoking tensions with Belgium’s Muslims

By JOHN STEVENS IN BRUSSELS and STEVE DOUGHTY IN LONDON FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 02:00, 26 April 2016 | UPDATED: 02:48, 26 April 2016


Muslims will ‘very soon’ outnumber practising Christians in Europe, a Belgian minister claimed yesterday.
Koen Geens, the justice minister, told the European Parliament the continent ‘does not realise this, but this is the reality’.
At a hearing by MEPs into the Brussels attacks, the Belgian deputy prime minister Jan Jambon added that ‘the worst thing we can do is to make an enemy of Islam’.
The remarks follow claims by Mr Jambon in the wake of the suicide bombings that ‘a significant section of the Muslim community danced when attacks took place’.

+3


Muslims will ‘very soon’ outnumber practising Christians in Europe, a Belgian minister claimed yesterday

Speaking before the Parliament’s justice and home affairs committee yesterday, Mr Koens said the EU needed to realise a shift in population was taking place.
‘In Europe, very shortly we’re soon going to have more practising Muslims than practising Christians,’ he said.
‘That is not because there are too many Muslims, it is because Christian are generally less practising.
‘Europe does not realise this, but this is the reality.’


.
Mr Jambon, who also serves as the country’s interior minister, added: ‘I’ve said a thousand times, the worst thing we can do is to make an enemy of Islam. That is the very worst thing we could do.
‘We have 600,000 to 700,000 Muslims in Belgium and the overwhelming majority of those people share our values.
‘To make an enemy of all of those people, we really will be creating problems. We need to see who the terrorists are, who supports the terrorists, what networks are there to support them.
‘That is who we need to tackle and we need to get all of the rest of the Muslims on our side not working against us.’
Mr Jambon was accused of stoking tensions with Belgium’s Muslim community after he claimed there was ‘dancing’ after the attacks that killed 32 at Brussels airport and an underground station in the city.
In the interview with a Belgian newspaper on 16 April, he also accused Muslim residents of the Molenbeek district of attacking police officers during an operation last month to arrest Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam.

+3


Mr Jambon, who also serves as the country’s interior minister, added: ‘I’ve said a thousand times, the worst thing we can do is to make an enemy of Islam. That is the very worst thing we could do'

Several of the terrorists involved in both the Paris and Brussels killings lived in the neighbourhood that has a large Muslim population.
‘They threw stones and bottles at police and press during the arrest of Salah Abdeslam. This is the real problem,’ he said.
‘Terrorists we can pick up, remove from society. But they are just a boil. Underneath is a cancer that is much more difficult to treat. We can do it, but it won’t be overnight.’
Last night a spokesman for Mr Geens refused to provide evidence to back up his claims on the number of practising Muslims. She said: ‘His comments were very clear, I will not say anything more.’
The EU’s official statistical body Eurostat said it did not compile figures on religion.
But European Commission figures from 2012 show that, across Europe as a whole, 72 per cent of people identified themselves as Christian compared to two per cent who said they were Muslim.
In Belgium the figures were 65 per cent and five per cent respectively.
Although the numbers actually practising their religion may vary wildly, it is not known if such figures exist.
The Belgian ministers’ claims do not tally with the assessments of most respected analysts of religions and their numbers of followers.
The country’s national census has never counted religious groups – unlike Britain’s – so independent surveys are the only source of information.
A number of studies have suggested that Muslims make up around five per cent of the country’s population.



A key study is the religious population project carried out by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre.
Last year it projected that the number of Muslims in Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, would increase by 63 per cent between 2010 and 2050.
This increase would mean the Muslim population of Europe would rise from 43.5 million to nearly 71 million.
Christian numbers in Europe, Pew said, would drop over the same period by 18 per cent from 553 million to 454 million.
In Belgium, the study said that of the 10.7 million population 6.9 million are Christian and 630,000 Muslim. In 2050, it projected, this would changed to an overall population of 11.1 million, with 5.9 million Christians and 1.3 million Muslims.

+3


In 2050, it projected, this would changed to an overall population of 11.1 million, with 5.9 million Christians and 1.3 million Muslims

The study is based on people who identify themselves as Christians or Muslims, rather than the much less precise category of who is ‘practising’ either faith.
Researchers said the rapid projected growth in the number of Muslims was due to a higher fertility, younger populations and migration.
Mr Jambon and Mr Koens both offered to resign following the 22 March attacks on Brussels, but they were refused.
Mr Koens yesterday complained about how Belgium had been ‘violently attacked’ for its ‘weak and inadequate’ handling of the attacks. He insisited the criticism was ‘an insult’ to his country.












.

 

[superbeets]

+3


The President of The United States of America addresses young persons at a Q&A at Lindley Hall in Pimlico


.

+3


Maria Munir, right, urged Barack Obama to do more for the LGBT trans-sexual community after coming out to him as a non-binary person

.


It seems Saint George is no longer the acceptable face of England – too nationalistic, too traditional, speaking to a pride it is no longer acceptable to feel.


My grandfather, who fought in the war, is still soldiering on at 98, but I am supposed to be more proud of a sexually 'non-binary' student who decided not to tell her parents about her choice not to identify as having male OR female sexuality but to announce it to the visiting President Obama instead.


Maria says s/he (depending on the day) has been overwhelmed by the support s/he has received.


The Guardian says Maria is a true hero. I think of my grandfather and our forefathers and sigh.

By KATIE HOPKINS FOR MAILONLINE


.

 

[superbeets]

[h=1]Tories vote against accepting 3,000 child refugees[/h]


The amendment to the immigration bill would have allowed thousands of unaccompanied Syrian minors to enter the UK



A high-profile campaign for the UK to accept 3,000 child refugees stranded in Europe has failed after the government narrowly won a vote in the House of Commons rejecting the plan.
MPs voted against the proposals by 294 to 276 on Monday after the Home Office persuaded most potential Tory rebels that it was doing enough to help child refugees in Syria and neighbouring countries.
The amendment to the immigration bill would have forced the government to accept 3,000 unaccompanied refugee minors, mostly from Syria, who have made their way to mainland Europe.




Conservatives Triumph

 

[neverbend]

Here's the complete article, and it makes several good points. Whether it will work or not remains to be seen, but both Kasich and Cruz have to be smart about it, and so far, neither one is.

The Cruz-Kasich alliance against Donald Trump won't work because it's not an alliance

• Josh Barro

AP​

Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is right to be mocking the Ted Cruz-John Kasich deal to cooperate against his candidacy.The agreement between the Cruz and Kasich campaigns is that Kasich won't spend time or money in Indiana, while Cruz will back off in New Mexico and Oregon. The idea is to consolidate anti-Trump support behind one candidate in each state in an effort to beat him.
But the deal is doomed because it apparently doesn't include the most important part of a strategic voting pact: actually telling your voters to vote strategically.

The best case study for strategic voting this year was in Ohio, where Marco Rubio openly told his supporters to vote for Kasich, not him. This pushed Rubio down to just 3% of the Ohio primary vote. But there are four reasons to think that the Ohio story won't repeat — and Kasich voters in Indiana will not actually shift en masse to Cruz.
1. Unlike Rubio, Kasich won't actually tell his supporters to vote strategically. I can't overstate the importance of this. Kasich can't even bring himself to tell his Indiana supporters to vote for Cruz. You can't have a strategic voting pact without telling your voters to vote strategically!
"I've never told them not to vote for me," Kasich said on Monday, when asked what his supporters in Indiana should do. "They ought to vote for me. But I'm not over there campaigning and spending resources."
Off message!
2. If you were a Rubio supporter in Ohio, the thought of voting for Kasich probably didn't make you want to puke. But a lot of Kasich supporters are nauseous at the thought of Cruz. Kasich's supporters know that he is far behind and stands little chance of winning the nomination, and they're voting for him anyway. Why? Because they can't bear to vote for Trump or Cruz.
In comparison, Rubio and Kasich appealed to demographically and ideologically similar voters. Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, is very popular with Ohio Republicans, especially the establishment type of Republicans who might have backed Rubio.
Strategic voting is harder to pull off if lots of your voters strongly dislike the guy they'd have to vote for strategically.
3. Rubio's support had already collapsed, but Kasich's is building. Maybe Rubio's 3% haul in Ohio didn't actually reflect that impressive a shift in his voters to Kasich. On the same day, he took just 6% of the vote in Missouri and 8% in North Carolina, despite not having surrendered there.
If Rubio's supporters were abandoning him organically, driven away by the stench of the death of his campaign, then that isn't likely to similarly happen with Kasich's voters. After all, Kasich has been improving in national polls.
4. Shifts of campaign resources aren't that important. Without an explicit call from the candidate to vote strategically, what does the "deal" mean to voters? Well, in Indiana, it means they'll see fewer Kasich television ads, no local Kasich campaign rallies, and less spending from Kasich on get-out-the-vote efforts.
But those sorts of traditional campaign elements have been less important than usual in this race.
Consider New York. Kasich won my home precinct with 56% of the vote, and placed second in the state overall despite the apparent nonexistence of the Kasich campaign in my neighborhood.
I received no mail from Kasich, saw none of his ads on television, and received no knock at my door from any of his supporters. The closest my neighbors got to direct Kasich campaigning was his sandwich-fest in the Bronx. Yet he still managed to win Manhattan.
This campaign has been mostly conducted in the national media, and where Kasich has shown strength has been by getting his message out through national media. The message there remains that Kasich fans should vote for Kasich.
So that's why the pact doesn't work and why Trump is still likely to win Indiana, where recent polls show him leading by about six points.

Pretty funny situation may emerge, What if in spite of Kasich semi-bowing out in Indiana Trump
still wins Indiana, Does anyone really think that down the road when Oregon & New Mexico come
along that Lyin' Ted Cruz will live up to his end of the bargain? Absolutely not IMO.

 

[superbeets]

Trump fumed over the alliance between John Kasich and Ted Cruz to cede upcoming states to each other in the hope that they can stop the frontrunner winning enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination outright.
Trump attacked Kasich and Cruz as “truly weak” over the strategy whereby Cruz, a Texas senator, will concentrate his resources in Indiana while Kasich, the Ohio governor, will focus on Oregon and New Mexico instead.


“Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive,” he said. “They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are.”

 

[superbeets]

[h=1]Federal judge upholds North Carolina voter ID law said to be discriminatory[/h]


The lawsuits challenged changes to the state’s election law to require photo ID, claiming it hampered poor and minority voters from exercise political power


Lawsuits challenging changes to North Carolina’s election law failed to show it hampered the ability of minority voters to exercise political power, a federal judge ruled Monday in dismissing the cases.
US district judge Thomas Schroeder ruled against the US Justice Department, the North Carolina NAACP chapter and named voters, who claimed the law was passed to discriminate against poor and minority voters in violation of the Constitution and Voting Rights Act.
While North Carolina had a sordid history of freezing black voters out of the political process, Schroeder said, the plaintiffs did not show that the law hampered the ability of minority voters to exercise electoral politics.
The plaintiffs “failed to show that such disparities will have materially adverse effects on the ability of minority voters to cast a ballot and effectively exercise the electoral franchise” as a result of the 2013 state law, the judge wrote. That argument was made more difficult after black voter turnout increased in 2014, he added.
“There is significant, shameful past discrimination. In North Carolina’s recent history, however, certainly for the last quarter century, there is little official discrimination to consider,” Schroeder wrote.



The law’s most public feature is that it requires that voters who appear in person to vote show an accepted form of photo identification like a driver’s license, a passport or a military ID. The law also eliminated same-day voter registration and ended out-of-precinct voting. The number of early-voting days was cut while the early-voting hours available stayed stable.
Same-day registration and out-of-precinct provisional voting will end after the 7 June primary elections for North Carolina’s congressional seats.
Much of the discussion during the trial focused on whether voter fraud exists in North Carolina. That was one of the arguments lawmakers used in including the photo ID requirement, which took effect during last month’s primary elections.
Advocates who filed the lawsuits condemned the decision.
“This is just one step in a legal battle that is going to continue in the courts,” said Penda Hair, an attorney representing the NAACP. The law “targets the provisions that once made North Carolina among the states with the highest turnout in the nation. This progress was especially clear among African American and Latino voters, who came to rely on measures like early voting, same-day registration and out-of-precinct provisional ballots to ensure their voices were heard.
Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican seeking re-election this year, focused on the voter ID provision of the law in praising the ruling. McCrory was a defendant in one of the lawsuits.
“Common practices like boarding an airplane and purchasing Sudafed require photo ID and thankfully a federal court has ensured our citizens will have the same protection for their basic right to vote,” McCrory said in a prepared statement.

 

[superbeets]

[h=2]Suspended officer claims her racist Instagram post of a 'chillaxing' black man using broken chain link fence as a 'hood hammock' was just 'taken out of context'[/h] Claims of racism are being levelled against a Jacksonville Sheriff's Office lieutenant, centered on her Instagram posts. The posts were made over the course of several weeks by Sheriff's Lt. Trudy Callahan at the start of this year. The Sheriff made a number of postings that were perceived as racists. In one, seen here on the left, she referred to a man resting on what she termed a 'hood hammock'. As a result the Sherriff has been suspended for ten days. Close to 50 complaints have been filed against Callahan since she joined the Sheriff's Office in 1996.

 

[superbeets]

Had Jon Snow cheated death? Did Sansa escape? And which character would be killed off first? 10 questions answered in the return of Game Of Thrones, by JIM SHELLEY

By JIM SHELLEY FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 16:14, 25 April 2016 | UPDATED: 20:32, 25 April 2016
As if to show it was keeping its powder dry, Game Of Thrones was quietly spectacular but not that sensational.
In fact by its own stunning standards, compared to its more controversial moments the premiere of its sixth season was positively tame. No brutal bloodbaths on the battlefield, no rape scenes, incest, or any sex at all - debauched or otherwise.
Not that this was a bad thing, necessarily.
Sky Atlantic’s continuity announcer warned us to ‘expect strong language and very strong language’, as expected.



.

Sure enough there were a few ‘F’ words, the traditional shot of an actress baring more than her soul, and a young prince having his nose smashed open by a sword driven through the back of his skull.
The first episode may have represented the beginning of the end for a series whose motto is ‘all men must die’ (not to mention most women) but ‘The Red Woman’ was more of an appetite-whetting aperitivo for what is no doubt to come than a headline-making statement of intent; a stylish, stately, affair bringing us up-to-date with as many of its myriad storylines as possible with dazzling but considered pace.
It had a bit of everything that its fervent followers would have wanted, apart perhaps from appearances by Bran Stark, the White Walkers and Khaleesi’s dragons. The progress of Arya and Sansa, the plight of Jon Snow, and the first character to be killed off were all covered before it concluded with characteristically cryptic scene: mysterious to the end.
The first, most basic, issue we had needed to know about was: how much time had passed since we last saw Game Of Thrones 10 months ago. The answer? None. It picked up exactly where the finale of Series Five left off.
Here are the ten big questions that were also answered in the new episode.

1.Was Jon Snow really dead?
Answer: Yes, so far.
Rumours of heartthrob Kit Harington’s continued presence on the set had sparked speculation that GoT’s hirsute hero was somehow still alive despite being slaughtered at the end of Season Five when Alliser Thorne and other members of the Night’s Watch (even young Olly) formed an orderly queue to stab him. The first scene of the new series showed Jon Snow lying where the last had left him – on the ground at Castle Black, framed by a crimson cloak of blood. Fans hoping that Snow would be resurrected thanks to some supernatural occurrence/spell were thus disappointed, despite both ‘the Red Woman’ herself (Melisandre) and Jon Snow’s devoted direwolf Ghost being there. Still, give it time.

+8


On the run: Sansa Stark was even paler than usual

2. Had Theon Greyjoy and Sansa Stark escaped?
Answer: Yes, and No, and Yes again.
Having last seen Theon and Sansa pushing Myranda the kennel master’s daughter off a turret at Winterfell and then holding hands and jumping off the top of a tower, it was a relief to find they were now on foot trudging across an amazing, icy, landscape and through a snowy fairytale wood. Things didn’t look too promising though when Sansa (who was even paler than usual) told Theon she couldn’t cross the river because it was ‘too cold.’ Sure enough not before long they were captured.
‘I can’t wait to see what punishment he cuts off you this time !’ sneered one of Ramsay Bolton’s hunters to Theon. Happily, Brienne of Tarth came to Sansa’s rescue, chopping off her first head of the series with Theon saving her trusty squire Podrick. This allowed Brienne to bow before Sansa and pledge to serve and protect her. Well she was due a bit of good luck.
3. Was Ramsay Bolton actually human enough to be upset about Myranda’s death?
Answer: Not as such.
‘She was 11 the first time I saw her,’ the Bolton family’s psychotic bastard son recalled standing over his admirer’s body. ‘She smelt of dog. I wasn’t much older but everyone was already afraid of me. Myranda was fearless. There was nothing she wouldn’t do.’ It seemed unusually touching when Ramsay put his hand on her forehead and swore vengeance whispering: ‘your pain will be paid for a thousand times over. I wish you could be here to watch.’
When he was asked whether he wanted a grave dug for her or preferred a funeral pyre his response was less romantic though.
‘She’s good meat,’ Ramsay muttered making his exit. ‘Feed her to the hounds.’
Much more like it...

+8


Short stuff: Cersei Lannister's hair is still short following her humiliating walk of atonement

4. Had Cersei’s hair grown back?
Answer: No.
No time had passed since Cersei had returned home having been shorn by the Sparrows for her humiliating walk of atonement. The announcement that her brother Jaime was returning from Dorne was exactly the fillip she needed – until she saw from his face that not only had he not come back with their daughter Myrcella but she had been murdered.
‘Do you remember the first time you saw a dead body?’ Cersei asked Jaime, referring to their mother. ‘Every day and every night, I would think what does Mama look like now. Has she started to bloat? Has her skin turned black?’ Now she was thinking the same about her daughter. Selfish and ruthless she may be but she had certainly had her fair share of suffering – two of her children already dead, as the witch she encountered as a child had prophesised.
‘There was nothing you could do,’ she told Jaime.
‘F**k prophecy ! F**k fate ! F**k everyone who isn’t us !’ Jaime insisted. ‘Everything they’ve taken from us, we’re going to take back and more !’
It was an impressive rallying cry in the circumstances but perhaps understandably failed to cheer Cersei up.

+8


Suffering: Margaery Tyrell was still being tortured by the Sparrows

5. Were the Sparrows still torturing Margaery?
Answer: oh yes.
Arguably the scariest, most sinister, character of a great many scary, sinister, characters and creatures in Game Of Thrones is Septa Unella who had rung the bell crying 'shame!' during Cersei’s walk of atonement. Having tortured her, she had now moved on to beating Margaery in the same way.
‘Septa can be a little over zealous at time,’ the High Sparrow remarked with knowing understatement.
6. Who would be first major character this season to die?
Answer: Prince Doran Martell of Dorne.
Having polished off the Lannisters’ daughter Myrcella, the Sand Sisters and their mother Ellaria Sand were as crazed with lethal bloodlust as ever, stabbing Prince Doran, his bodyguard, and Doran’s youngest son Trystane (Myrcella’s bethrothed).
‘We’re here to kill you,’ one of the beautiful sisters told Trystane. ‘Do you want her to do it or me?’
Trystane’s first mistake was thinking he could defeat one of them. His second – and last – was thinking they would fight fair, as the sword that plunged through the back of his skull out through the front of his face made clear.

+8


'Wherever you are, wherever you go, someone in this city wants to kill you': Tyrion Lannister remained realistic

7. Had Tyrion survived the bloodbath of Meereen and the coup by the Sons of the Harpy?
Answer: Yes.
With Daenerys departed on her dragon, Tyrion was left to oversee the aftermath of the bloody battle at the end of the last series – with Varys the Spider’s help.
‘You walk like a rich person,’ Varys advised, mocking him gently. When Tyrion offered a coin to a beggar and she recoiled it fell to Varys to explain: ‘She thinks you want to eat her baby.’
No wonder Tyrion lamented: 'Wherever you are, wherever you go, someone in this city wants to kill you.’
It didn’t bode well for his chances.

+8


It’s safe to say Daenerys Targaryen’s hopes of fulfilling her destiny and invading Westeros were not going to plan...


8. Had Daenerys’ status gained her a reprieve or was she the Dothraki’s prisoner?Answer: the latter.
It’s safe to say Daenerys Targaryen’s hopes of fulfilling her destiny and invading Westeros were not going to plan. The people of Meereen had turned on her. She had lost her dragons and her Unsullied army. She wasn’t even aware that her fleet of ships had gone up in flames. This was because she was back where she started - on Essos - as a prisoner of the Dothraki horsemen, who at first looked set to rape her or – if their women had their way – ‘cut off her head’ because her blue eyes meant she was ‘a witch.’ When eventually she defiantly announced who she was - or had been (Khal Drago’s wife) – she was cut free but not given the respect or the reprieve she exactly expected. It was against Dothraki law to sleep with another Khal’s wife but her freedom would not be forthcoming. She would not be harmed but learnt to her dismay that she would be taken to a temple to live – and theoretically die – with other widows of dead warlords. Another step backwards for the Iron Throne’s putative queen...
8b. Was Khaleesi’s wounded dragon alive?
Answer: We don’t know.
There were no sightings of Khaleesi’s wounded dragon or any indications from Khaleesi of his fate, just evidence that it had enjoyed at least one meal.
‘I don’t know anything else that can melt a ram’s horns,’ Ser Jorah observed kneeling over a charred corpse as he tracked her progress/demise. No one could fault his perseverance - or accuracy. The way he unerringly, eerily, found the ring she had hastily dropped in the vast, verdant, fields where the Dothraki had snatched her was worthy of a human metal detector. Perhaps it was a side effect of the greyscale disease spreading over his hand.

+8


Punished: Arya Stark is now blind after the Faceless Man took her sight away

9. Was Arya really blind?
Answer: Yes.
Arya Stark’s decision to stab Ser Meryn Trant in the eyes before slitting his throat had proved to be a mistake as we discovered the Faceless Man really had punished her by taking away her own sight, leaving her on the streets as a blind beggar. Just when she/we thought things couldn’t get much worse, her nemesis The Waif turned up to fight her.
‘I can’t see!’ Arya complained.
‘That’s your problem not mine,’ the girl shrugged before knocking Arya about for a while with a large stick then walking off with the disheartening, ironic, promise: ‘see you tomorrow.’ Not good.
10. Would one of the actresses take her kit off?
Answer: obviously.
‘The Red Woman’ ended with Melisandre, not for the first time, undressing to a state of full-frontal nudity and staring at her reflection with an unsettling, uncharacteristic, expression of shame, pain, and fear. When she then took off her necklace, she quickly became ancient - a hunched, drooping, ghostly crone. Whether she had secretly been this age all alone or was now giving up years of her life to trade as part of a spell that would save Jon Snow though was another question.

+8


Stripping off: Game Of Thrones wouldn't be the same without someone getting their kit off



.

 

[superbeets]

Such a nasty piece of Pork

 

[superbeets]

No One Works in 1 in 5 U.S. Families

There were one in five families in the United States in 2015, or 19.7 percent,
in which no one in the family worked, according to data released by the Bureau
of Labor Statistics.

“Families are classified either as married-couple families or as families
maintained by women or men without spouses present,” explains the bureau.
“Families include those without children as well as those with children under
age 18.”

There were 81,410,000 families in the United States in 2015. Of those, there
were 16,060,000 families in which no member was employed, or 19.7 percent of the
total.

 

[superbeets]

In Virginia, Terry McAuliffe Breaks the Constitution to Plump the Democratic Vote

In what is likely an unconstitutional state action seemingly calculated to ensure that the purple state of Virginia goes blue in the November election, Governor Terry McAuliffe (D.) signed an order on Friday restoring the voting rights of 206,000 ex-felons in Virginia, including those convicted of murder, armed robbery, rape, sexual assault, and other violent crimes.



The order also restores their right to sit on a jury, become a notary, and even serve in elected office. McAuliffe believes that ex-felons can be trusted to make decisions in the ballot booth and the jury box but apparently not to own a gun.

He draws the line at restoring their Second Amendment rights; that would be a bridge too far. His order specifically does not restore their “right to ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms.” And while his order requires that felons complete probation and parole before enjoying restoration of their rights, it applies regardless of whether they have paid any court fines or restitution to victims.

What McAuliffe entirely dismisses is the principle that if you won’t follow the law yourself, you can’t demand a role in making the law for everyone else, which is what you do when you vote. Restoring a felon’s right to vote should be done not automatically, as soon as he has completed his sentence, but carefully, on a case-by-case basis, after he has shown that he has really turned over a new leaf.


The unfortunate truth is that many people who walk out of prison will be walking back in; recidivism rates are high. We have both testified before Congress and written about this problem. Governor McAuliffe may be happy as long as the ex-felons who can now vote just don’t walk back into prison before November.





Why do crooks vote Democrat.

 

[superbeets]

McAuliffe is following the example set by President Obama: If you don’t like a law or a constitutional limit on your authority, just ignore it. Rewrite, change, or bend it.

 

[superbeets]

[h=2]REVEALED: How nameplate on painting which featured word 'negro' was frantically hidden by royal aides in Kensington Palace just moments before William and Kate entertained the Obamas[/h] The word 'negro' had to be removed from a painting (ringed and bottom) inside Kensington Palace at the last minute before the Obamas arrived for their informal dinner with the royals. The U.S. President and First Lady were just moments away from being entertained by Prince William, Duchess Kate and Prince Harry on Friday night, when an eagle-eyed assistant spotted a plaque, which named the piece of art 'The Negro Page'. A frantic removal reportedly took place inside the drawing room to avoid causing offense to the couple. A pot plant was also put in place to cover where the plaque would have been.

 

[superbeets]

The madness of Hillary Clinton

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said Monday night that she would make sure half her Cabinet members were women.
During an MSNBC town hall, she repeated a formulation her husband had made about Cabinets and specifically applied it to sex and a number.

“Well, I am going to have a Cabinet that looks like America, and 50 percent of America is women,” Mrs. Clinton said.




This is Clinton sickness.

Posts must be awarded based on talent not sex. The best person for the post must get it, irrespective of sex.

 

[neverbend]

Cruz has began to vet possible Vice Presidential candidates. That's like the Atlanta Braves
manager, currently 4-15, announcing today his starting pitcher for the World Series.

Better yet he's mentioning Fiorina, of all people, as at the top of his list. Fiorina, a career
loser who was thrust unceremoniously out of every segment of society she tried to intrude into.

 

[MantisToboggan]

Cruz has began to vet possible Vice Presidential candidates. That's like the Atlanta Braves
manager, currently 4-15, announcing today his starting pitcher for the World Series.

Better yet he's mentioning Fiorina, of all people, as at the top of his list. Fiorina, a career
loser who was thrust unceremoniously out of every segment of society she tried to intrude into.

I'm not a big Fiorina fan, but "career loser"? She may not have had the greatest run at HP, but you don't end up where she did as a "career loser". I'm going to go out on a limb and guess your resume doesn't exactly stack up to hers. Unless you consider former "friend" of Trump to be the pinnacle of achievement.

 

[vitterd]

I'm not a big Fiorina fan, but "career loser"? She may not have had the greatest run at HP, but you don't end up where she did as a "career loser". I'm going to go out on a limb and guess your resume doesn't exactly stack up to hers. Unless you consider former "friend" of Trump to be the pinnacle of achievement.

Lol. I do get a kick out of some people who do that. I know most here are not a Hillary Clinton fan but they bash her like that also. I understand not liking her politics and even saying she's a liar but you can't call her a loser with no real accomplishments.

Im sure if these guys had a daughter who was former First Lady, Senator, Pres front runner......They might be proud and bragging to the neighbors.