To be fair, I haven't seen another home state poll for a GOP candidate other than Florida where Rubio and Bush are nearly tied at 31% and 30% each.

I just love this quote:

"There is no basis for a lawsuit to block the transaction," said Sena Fitzmaurice, a Comcast spokeswoman. The merger "will result in significant consumer benefits - faster broadband speeds, access to a superior video experience, and more competition in business services resulting in billions of dollars of cost savings."

The bill funds Children's Health (CHIP) for two years and provides $7.2 billion for community health for the same period.  

About $140 billion of the cost over 10 years will be added to the deficits. (The bill is estimated to cost $210 billion over 10 years; $70 billion will be offset primarily by Medicare beneficiaries.) Premiums for both Part A and D will be increased from 50% to 65% for incomes (MAGI), single of $133, 501 to $160,000, and double that for couples, and to 80% for MAGI of $160,000 to  $320,000 and double that for couples. After the year 2020, the income levels will be indexed for inflation with the base calculated as if there were no freeze until 2020.  

After 2020, "first dollar" supplemental Medicare insurance (Medigap) policies would not be able to cover the Part B deductible for new policies, supposedly, to discourage beneficiaries from seeking care.

While not suggesting the need for a "tag day," for upper income beneficiaries, the continuing income-related costs tend to undermine the paid benefits system, increasing the program's political vulnerability. The AMA is delighted with the "doc fix," which is permanent, but children and community health are temporary.    The budgetary shortfall of $140 billion is likely to fall more and more on Medicare beneficiaries necessitating a lowering of the income thresholds over time.  But, hey, the bill does prohibit social security numbers on Medicare cards--a "thoroughly modern millie," contribution.  And, the bill garnered that treasured "bipartisanship."

Link.

After reading this Guardian article about David Axelrod, who's inexplicably advising Labour Party leader Ed Miliband from afar during the current British election campaign, I'm convinced that he must've cut class with fellow Democratic consultant Joe Trippi on the day that particular lesson was to be imparted to them.

Suffice to say that I'm hardly a fan of Axelrod, and in this particular instance, there is an unseemly quality to his overtly partisan criticism of Prime Minister David Cameron's government, coming as it is from someone who's not a British citizen and is thus ineligible to vote in the United Kingdom:

"British voters are catching on that these blandishments that David Cameron is offering have an expiration date on them and the expiration date is 8 May. As soon as he is returned to office, he will return to the very same policies that have conspired against working families for the past five years."

Surely, given that the UK's electoral history long pre-dates our own, there are British subjects who know how to run political campaigns. Next time, Mr. Miliband really ought to consider hiring one of his own Labour members, and not waste $450,000 of his party's money on procuring four visits from a blathering and self-absorbed American political consultant, who talks in glittering generalities and quite obviously never wastes an opportunity to toot his own professional horns -- even if it's at his own client's potential expense.

In each case, they described Rubio as, "handsome".

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory's microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country's largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

Was told Clinton is starting low key, but starting early.  Looking for funds to hire staff and canvassers.  My phone caller was full of info, answered all my questions and openly discussed the challenge of squaring off against Koch money and Rove Super PAC moula.  Best campaign fund raising call I have ever received.

Van The Man w/ Taj Mahal?  Santana?  The Who (minus two) w/ Joan Jett?  In the heart of Queens?  Oh baby let the good times roll.  Gonna miss The Who as I am booked for CrawfishFest that weekend, that but I simply can not miss Van and Santana, even if it puts me in the poorhouse.

Prologue
I am telling this in a familiar format.  Episodes 4-6 first, then some time later when I feel some confidence I will not have legal problems I will post episodes 1-3.   And if you think that sounds paranoid it's only because you don't know these people like I do.
I do it in honor of the new trailer and because, like Luke, my story is about an apparent chance encounter that precipitates what first appears to be a senseless tragedy that ultimately sets me on the path to finding my true destiny.
And, heh, because the director of the new movie is also involved in my story.
So this part of the story begins just after the "tragedy".  The machinations and politics of which will be explained later in parts 1-3.

 A New Hope

As I drive home at about 9:30 am having been stopped on my way in the building and brought to the chambers of the Emperor for discipline my primary concerns are basic.  Namely food.  I am famously inept at managing money and in spite of the fact that I have been making a 6 figure salary for  3.5 years I am penniless.  In my wallet I have 5 charge cards.  All over the limit.  The previous day, yes the previous DAY, I found a fabulous deal on a used John Deer riding mower and in spite of the fact that I couldn't really afford it I decided in my wisdom that I could not afford not to.  So I spent literally my last 500 bucks and bought it so I was the owner of a steal of a bargain that I now had absolutely no use for as far as I knew.  This decision is much on my mind now.  
I could do this, be penniless, because my former place of work had three incredibly well stocked kitchens and pathetically I had done this before.  That is, survived by eating at work and that was my plan for living until my next paycheck which had been a week or so away.  Obviously that was no longer an option.  As I drive the 8 miles home my mind is buzzing with lists of those I might hit up for living money until I get my first unemployment check which is a couple of weeks away and with painless affordable ways to kill myself.  It was a low place.  Made marginally less low by the afore mentioned unemployment benefits that I knew were coming.  I knew because they told me.  Now, if you know how these things work you know that if they fired me for their stated reasons of substandard work and if their goal was clearly to screw me, which will be made evident in episodes 1-3, then why, you might fairly ask would they allow me to collect unemployment.  The reason is simple.  Their stated reason was bull and they knew if they stopped me I would appeal which would ultimately reveal not only that fact but the details of how they obtained the information on which they acted.  They could not allow this to happen because if the rest of the employees knew these things they would have a big PR problem.  Easier to give me unemployment.

So as I drive and sink deeper into depression, my phone rings.  It's a delightful little old man with high pitched voice and a slight Irish accent.   He explains that he got my number from the lady I bought the lawn mower from.  It seems he arrived minutes after me with his heart set on the John Deer and was calling just in case, for whatever reason, I should decide I did not want the thing.  I said, as a matter of fact, he was in luck.  He was thrilled. "I will come over and give you a check RIGHT NOW." He said.  "Before you change your mind." I said that worked for me.

He was prompt.  He arrived at my house minutes after i did and gave me a personal check for 500 dollars which I took directly to his bank, cashed, and then went to the store.  He did not however have the ability to take the mower with him in his Buick and said he would return with a truck.   I explain my situation and say that's fine but he has to make sure he comes soon since I will have to be out of the house by the end of the month.  The date was the 11th of April.   He says he understands.  We shake hands and he leaves.  

I never see him again.

I don't remember his name.  I'm sure he told me but I had other things on my mind at the time.  All I have is his phone number.  Which I call hundreds of times and get no answer and no reply to my many messages.  I try going to his bank to at least find out his name.  You can probably imagine how eager the bank was to give out the names of their customers.  I go to the local police.  I explain.  They look at me and each other and one says.  "Let me get this straight,  you want us to find this guy because YOU owe HIM money?"
"Well, actually I own him a lawnmower, but yes."
"Look, I'm not trying to tell you your business but if you ask me its on him.  If you want to file a report we will take it but honestly it's not going to be high on the to do list."
I even stayed to the 14th of the following month, May, to give him time to respond.

He never did.  I got the money I needed and I kept the lawnmower.  I used it today.  But that was when the worm began to turn.

"Jane the Virgin," "The Americans," "Inside Amy Schumer" and "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" were among the entertainment programs that won Peabody Awards this year. The honorees were set to be announced Thursday morning on "Good Morning America."

The Peabody Awards are one of the oldest media awards in the United States, and recognize scripted entertainment, documentaries, radio programs, podcasts, individuals, websites, institutions and all kinds of news programming. On Tuesday, the Peabody Awards announced that David Attenborough, the creator of countless acclaimed nature documentaries, received an individual award for his extensive body of work, and the long-running radio program Afropop Worldwide got an institutional Peabody. Awards in news, documentaries, educational programming and children's shows will be announced next week.

The 74th annual Peabody Awards ceremony will be held in New York on May 31, and Fred Armisen of "Portlandia" will be the evening's emcee.

Last Friday night, he attended a GOP-sponsored townhall forum in Exeter, NH, where he wondered aloud whether President Obama actually cares about his country:

"I feel like we really have had a President for the last six and a half years that we still don't even know. We don't know what he really believes in. We don't know what he really is willing to fight for. We don't know whether he's really willing to fight for anything. We don't know who he really likes or dislikes. We don't know whether he really cares about his own party, or the other party, or about the country."

Meanwhile, given Christie's tanking approval ratings back home, New Jersey residents have obviously concluded that their governor no longer cares about them.

National Journal | April 18, 2015
Why Can't America Have Great Trains? - "Thirty-nine minutes into his southbound ride from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, D.C., Joseph H. Boardman, president and CEO of Amtrak, begins to cry. We're in the dining car of a train called the Silver Star, surrounded by people eating hamburgers. The Silver Star runs from New York City to Miami in 31 hours, or five more hours than the route took in 1958, which is when our dining car was built. Boardman and I have been discussing the unfortunate fact that 45 years since its inception, the company he oversees remains a poorly funded, largely neglected ward of the state, unable to fully control its own finances or make its own decisions."

When I pointed out the deficit was down, you went on a snit fit because you used the word debt, and so on.