Vic†ims of a victimless crime

 If you know nothing else about the goings-on around here, you probably know that the owner of the New England Patriots has been charged twice for giving his custom to a brothel posing as a massage parlor. The brothel is called Orchids of Asia Day Spa. It's in  a strip mall.
 You probably know this is embarrassing for the 77-year-old football team owner, as well as for the retired Citicorp muckety-muck who also sought and bought the favor of a Spa girl. And if you read the sports pages, you know a burning issue of the day is what the "league" might do to its wayward owner. Who, btw, denies everything, but there are tapes.
 Prostitution is the quintessential "victimless crime." Well, those two guys, and the other johns who have been charged up and down three counties of Florida now consider themselves victims, but of police overreach. My former Palm Beach Post colleague, Frank Cerebino, provided a run-down yesterday of what the sex hobbyists are saying on the Web (yes!) site where they discuss their likes, dislikes and preferences.
 But the johns are not really the story. The real victims are the girls, imported from China in this case, on temporary work permits.

In Chicago mayoral race, the winner is ...

... still TBD.  The election took place on Tuesday, but no candidate received (or came close to) 50% of the vote, so there will be a runoff election on April 2nd between the top two candidates.  And as I write this, both of those candidates are African American women.

A deacon's thoughts on gay priests

The recently-concluded meeting of Pope Francis with the heads of the world's episcopal conferences to consider the sex abuse crisis coincided with a publishing event: the release of a book by Frederic Martel, a French journalist.  The title of the book (in English) is "In the Closet of the Vatican".  According to reviews, it presents a portrait of widespread concealed homosexuality among bishops and priests in the Vatican, which plays out via secret sexual activity, poisonous gossip, malicious outings, blackmail, mistreatment of sex workers, and overall sexual dishonesty.

The cards are on the table. The idiots are in charge.

Just because so many countries agree that Venezuelan dictator Maduro has to go doesn't mean that it's a good idea to start a war.

The weekend's confrontation at the border with Colombia did not break troops loyal to Maduro (WashPost).  There are no signs of diplomats or intermediaries doing anything to negotiate an agreement with the military or with Maduro. How about offering Maduro a villa in Brazil or the south of France?

Our Chief Diplomat! Secy. of State Pompeo has declared that Maduro's days are numbered. But where is he doing the counting? Presumably he will be monitoring Trump's exchanges with Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, hoping that the president doesn't give away the store in exchange for license to build a golf course in No. Korea.

Instead, VP Pence (the man who will be president if Trump goes) is in Colombia to put more cards on the table. The NYTimes account of Pence's speech in Warsaw threatening our European allies if they don't get tough on Iran shows what an idiot Pence is. Apparently even Pompeo thinks so. So why send Pence?

Here's hoping the U.S. military is saying, "no way."

The Culture of Anxiety

From this article by Maria Popova:

"Few people today would dispute that chronic stress is a hallmark of our times or that anxiety has become a kind of cultural condition of modernity."

"...anxiety and its related psychoemotional disorders turn out to be the most common, prevalent, and undertreated form of clinically classified mental illness today, even more common than depression."

Saunders Raises $6 Million from 225,000 Supporters UPDATED! AGAIN!

Sanders Raised Nearly Six Million in first 24 hours

Sanders raised $5,925,771 from 223,047 individual contributors across all 50 states in the campaign's first 24 hours, and more than $6 million from 225,000 individuals in total since the launch. And Sanders' campaign also noted that the average contribution was $27, "mirroring [Sanders'] 2016 campaign's average donation," a symbolic reflection of the Vermont senator's grassroots support that was key to his anti-establishment bid against Hillary Clinton.

UPDATE: E.MAIL THIS MORNING FROM TEAM BERNIEWe are just a little bit away from being able to say more than 1,000,000 people have added their name to say they support Bernie's run for president. This is a big milestone for our campaign, and it looks like it could happen very soon.

But we’re also just short of another milestone — 350,000 individual donations to our campaign. And we wanted to give YOU a chance to be the one who gets us there

ANOTHER UPDATE! BERNIE REACHED THE ONE MILLION MARK OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE SIGNED UP TO SUPPORT HIM.

I think he had about 2 million people signed up the last time around 

 Of course the Media is already find ways to say this means nothing, that Bernie will never win.

Bernie Sanders Will Hit Huge Obstacles in 2020

The Atlantic 

The biggest question for Sanders is whether he can expand the coalition that he mobilized in 2016—or even, in this enormous field, maintain the advantages he displayed last time. Sanders ran extremely well in 2016 with three groups. Young people topped the list: Sanders won most voters age 30 and younger in 25 of the 27 states with exit polls. Looking across the entire contest, he carried fully 71 percent of younger voters, according to a cumulative analysis of all 27 exit polls by CNN polling director Jennifer Agiesta. That was an even higher percentage than Barack Obama carried among younger voters in 2008.

Sanders was also extremely strong with primary voters who identified as independents rather than partisan Democrats. He carried them in 24 of the 27 states with exit polls (losing them only in three southern states), and won nearly two-thirds of them overall in Agiesta’s cumulative analysis. He also ran very well among white men without a college degree—carrying slightly more than three-fifths of them overall—while posting a more modest advantage among their college-educated counterparts. 

Bernie Sanders-Was Helped by the #NeverHillary vote

Nate Silver says:

Roughly one-quarter of Sanders’s support in Democratic primaries and caucuses in 2016 came from #NeverHillary voters: people who didn’t vote for Clinton in the 2016 general election and who had no intention of doing so. (The #NeverHillary label is a little snarky, but it’s also quite literal: These are people who never voted for Clinton despite being given two opportunities to do so, in the primary and the general election.)

The #NeverHillary vote is more than a little snarky, I think it is downright misleading.

The simple explanation for Sanders popularity is that he is a populist. He ran against both the billionaires and the Democratic party establishment. Even after the success of Trump, the Media refuse to take seriously the fact that most people are fed up with all the establishments, and are looking for someone who will be on their side.

That is why the young went for Bernie, and that the independents went for Bernie. It also explains that the white men without a college degree liked both Bernie and Trump. All these people don't believe in establishments whether Democratic, Republican or Media.  Trump had the advantage in his party that the establishment was divided among his opponents until it was too late; Bernie had the disadvantage that the establishment was united behind Hillary. The #NeverHillary voters were against the Democratic establishment. There may even have been some who wanted two anti-establishment candidates, Trump and Sanders.

Again in the coming election it behooves the Democrats to go for the  young, the independents and the non-college educated (e.g. blue collar) voters if they want to overcome  an organized Republican base around Trump. If they settle back into a Democratic establishment candidate they will meet the same result as Hillary.

Stone Cold Annoying - Updated

 I will cheer if Judge Amy Berman Jackson tells Roger Stone to put a sock in it Thursday.  I say, throw the whole sock drawer at him. Roger Stone is blocked on my email now. But it took me too long to find out how to do that.
 Meanwhile, we had a hate-hate relationship for weeks. Robert Mueller has probably chuckled over the email in which I asked Stone if it was going to be necessary to come down and break his knee caps to get him to stop sending me his droolings.
 Sometime between my retirement and the time when Donald John Trump's mouth landed him in the presidential race, Stone got my email address. And he was peskier than the emailer who wants me to check out beautiful Asian women who want to meet me.
 It started when Stone hired a flack. A flack hiring a flack, or the life of Roger Stone. Anyhow the secondary flack signed his emails, so I started up a regular conversation with him. "Unsubscribe me," I would say. "Why?"" he would say. "Because, for one thing, I can't do your boss any good, and if I could I would do him harm instead." Well, that went back and forth for awhile. Finally, I said, "You are driving me crazy. Why do you keep this up?" And the flack's flack replied, "Because it is driving you crazy."
 Then I guess Stone finished the book he was making up and resumed flacking for himself, and that was about the time I threatened his knees.
 By then, I was crazy enough that I was telling people about my pen pal, and that is when someone told me he could be blocked.
 Then, wham! the pudgy guy announced that he is willing to save us, and the fake media began playing attention to Roger Stone, and he was coming through my morning paper and radio, which I can't  block.
 Eventually, he was taken seriously enough to get indicted.  Stone, in typical fashion, wrote an Instagram calling the criminal charges against him a "show trial," and implying the judge was a tool of Hilary Clinton. Then, after it was noted, he "withdrew" it and said he meant no offense. Which is why he will be before the judge on Thursday.
 Judge Amy Berman Jackson, my entire sock drawer is at your disposal.

UPDATE: Judge Jackson made my day.  Full gag! He shall not blabber on TV. He shall not blabber on radio. He shall not blabber in print media. The lives by his mouth. He will die by the sock she put in it.  Amen. (But she should have revoked his bail, too; I wasn't thinking of that.)