Last Call For Weiner Dog

Well it wouldn't be the 2016 election season without former Dem Congressman (and husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin) Anthony Weiner showing up with poor impulse control once again and embarrassing himself nationally with his sexting addiction.

Weiner, whose career ended after a sexting scandal, was reportedly exchanging messages with a woman on July 31, 2015, when he changed the subject of the explicit conversation, saying, "Someone just climbed into my bed," the New York Post reported. 

He then attached a picture of his crotch, with his son curled up nearby. 

“You do realize you can see you[r] Weiner in that pic??” the woman responded, according to the Post. 

Earlier this month, Weiner gave his phone number and offered to share his location with a college student during a private online chat, according to the Post.

So yeah, last summer he was still at it, and probably since then, once again cheating on his wife and making an asshole out of himself.  Oh hey, and his kid was in the picture too, because he's a family guy.

Yes, I know the Democrats aren't perfect and the Republicans are far worse, but it sure would be nice for Weiner to stop behaving like a horny frat boy jackass, you know? This is wrong, this is stupid, and frankly I'd like to never hear about this little carbuncle again.

Go away, man.

In A World Of Pure Imagination

Legendary comedian, actor, producer, director and movie legend Gene Wilder has passed away today at the age of 83.

Gene Wilder, who regularly stole the show in such comedic gems as “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein,” “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and “Stir Crazy,” died Monday at his home in Stamford, Conn. His nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman said he died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 83. 

His nephew said in a statement, “We understand for all the emotional and physical challenges this situation presented we have been among the lucky ones — this illness-pirate, unlike in so many cases, never stole his ability to recognize those that were closest to him, nor took command of his central-gentle-life affirming core personality. The decision to wait until this time to disclose his condition wasn’t vanity, but more so that the countless young children that would smile or call out to him “there’s Willy Wonka,” would not have to be then exposed to an adult referencing illness or trouble and causing delight to travel to worry, disappointment or confusion. He simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less smile in the world.

He continued to enjoy art, music, and kissing with his leading lady of the last twenty-five years, Karen. He danced down a church aisle at a wedding as parent of the groom and ring bearer, held countless afternoon movie western marathons and delighted in the the company of beloved ones.”

He had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1989. 

The comic actor, who was twice Oscar nominated, for his role in “The Producers” and for co-penning “Young Frankenstein” with Mel Brooks, usually portrayed a neurotic who veered between total hysteria and dewy-eyed tenderness. “My quiet exterior used to be a mask for hysteria,” he told Time magazine in 1970. “After seven years of analysis, it just became a habit.” 

Habit or not, he got a great deal of mileage out of his persona in the 1970s for directors like Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, leading to a few less successful stints behind the camera, the best of which was “The Woman in Red,” co-starring then-wife Gilda Radner. Wilder was devastated by Radner’s death from ovarian cancer in 1989 and worked only intermittently after that. He tried his hand briefly at a sitcom in 1994, “Something Wilder,” and won an Emmy in 2003 for a guest role on “Will & Grace.”

Needless to say, with all the Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor and Willy Wonka references I make around here, Gene Wilder was one of my favorite actors.

Here's hoping you're in a place of pure imagination, sir.

The Counties That Count In November

If there's one thing the rise of targeted voter informatics has given us, it's that inside swing states that will determine the White House is the theory that those states are controlled by swing counties.  I've mentioned before that as goes Hamilton County and Cincinnati goes Ohio when it comes to presidential elections, but Hamilton is not the only swing county out there, and the 2016 election may be determined by who votes in these largely suburban counties.

Americans have heard that the election of the next president will be determined by a few battleground states, with Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania as 2016’s leading examples. But what if it’s not simply a handful of swing states but swing counties, with less than 500,000 swing voters, that truly matters?

That’s the provocative assessment from David Schultz, a professor of political science at Hamline University in Minnesota and editor of the Journal of Public Affairs Education. Schultz co-edited a book on swing states and now predicts fewer than 20 counties will tip the balance to pick the next president.

Where are 2016’s deciders? In Ohio, it’s Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati. In Pennsylvania, it’s Bucks and Chester Counties, to the north and south of Philadelphia, and also Lackawanna and Luzerne counties. In Florida, it’s Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, surrounding Tampa and St. Petersburg. In Wisconsin, it’s Brown County, where Green Bay is; nearby Winnebago County, further inland; and Racine County to the south near Chicago suburbs. In Iowa, it’s rural tiny Bremer County, and in New Hampshire, it’s Hillsborough township, inland on the Massachusetts border.

There are a few more: population epicenters such as Nevada’s Clark County, home of Las Vegas; Virginia’s Prince William County, outside Washington D.C., North Carolina’s Wake County, with Raleigh and Durham; New Mexico’s Bernalillo County, containing Albuquerque; and surprisingly, Dona Ana County near Las Cruces, which has a big state university.

“These seem to be the counties within the swing states where the candidates go,” said Schultz. “They view them as battlegrounds. They seem to be pretty good bellwethers, in the sense of predictors of how that state is going to vote… Even if they appear blue or red, there’s a question of how great the turnout will be.”

These counties, which cast 2,485,793 votes for Barack Obama in 2012, compared to 2,106,985 votes for Mitt Romney, seem to be their state’s 2016 tipping points or bellwethers for a variety of reasons. They sit in between red and blue belts. They’re often suburban, experiencing major demographic shifts, including young and better-educated people moving in, and some are more racially diverse.

“What we are seeing in these counties, at least right now, is relatively balanced, in terms of Republicans and Democrats,” Schultz said. “We have a small portion of the population of these counties that are going to be the swing voter. When I say swing voter, I don’t necessarily mean swinging from Democrat to Republican. They might be swinging in to vote, or swinging out from voting.”

So turnout is just as important to these counties as the voting tallies, and they are large enough to decide an entire state.  It makes sense to me, there's four and a half to five million votes in these swing state counties alone, which can certainly affect the outcome of an election.

We'll see if the theory holds true again in 2016.  Knowing how important Hamilton County is to deciding Ohio's elections, I'm not surprised at all to find other counties in other swing states also being key areas.

By the way, Trump still doesn't have an office in Hamilton County.

StupidiNews!

• Los Angeles police say reports of gunfire overnight at an LAX airport terminal were unfounded as no evidence of a shooting has been found, police are looking into what happened.
• Two are dead and 41 injured in a bus crash involving firefighters and flood relief volunteers in Louisiana, the bus driver is in custody on multiple violations.
• Turkish army forces have crossed into northern Syrian areas controlled by US-supported Kurdish rebels, killing 35 and further complicating the situation along the border.
• Iceland's largest volcano may be rumbling to life after a series of tremors rocked the Katla caldera over the weekend, the dormant volcano last erupted in 1999.
• A Russian hacker found guilty last week in a Seattle federal courtroom of 38 counts involving nearly 3 million stolen credit card numbers is the son of a Russian Parliament member.