Who cooks the blintzes at the Carnegie Deli?

Yakov, supporting immigration for ethnic cooks, writes in a comment:

Can a Mexican make a blintz right?

I decided to poll my readers to see what they think.

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And in case you want the actual correct answer, here is a Daily News article about a white Jewish reporter who works a day in the kitchen at the Carnegie Deli (which is owned by Sandy Levine) so he can write a story about it. Take note of the names of the other people who work in the kitchen.

New Quinnipiac New York poll good for Trump

Link to Quinnipiac New York poll.

Trump at 56%.

New York delegate rules highly favor a candidate who wins more than 50% of the vote, and my delegate predictions have assumed that Trump will get more than 50% in New York.

Also, Trump’s big win in New York will make him the first Republican candidate this season to win the majority of the vote in a state primary. (That excludes caucuses and territories.)

Japan, South Korea, and nuclear weapons

Both Japan and South Korea possess sophisticated nuclear weapons capability, they’ve just chosen not to assemble any nuclear bombs.

This is especially true for Japan which has a huge stockpile of plutonium and could build a massive arsenal of nuclear bombs in less than a year. South Korea is a lot more limited in how quickly they could produce a large number of bombs.

Remember that nuclear weapons are 1950s technology (or 1940s technology if you are talking about simple enriched uranium bombs), and we are talking about countries producing the most sophisticated 21st century electronics like computer chips, LCDs, etc. The reason why countries like Iran find it so difficult to build a nuclear bomb is because their technology is still in the 19th century. Stuff that Iran has to sneak into the country, the government of South Korea can just order from Samsung or Hyundai.

Yes, it’s likely that Cruz will pick Kasich for VP

Just read this article advising Cruz to select Kasich for VP. Yes, it makes a lot of sense for Cruz to do that. Cruz, like Trump, needs to assuage the establishment, and then you add in the fact that Kasich has hand-picked the 66 delegates from Ohio which gives him a pretty decent-sized powerbase at the convention. Assuming Kasich wants the job.

Also, it’s a smart pick for the general election. Grumpy old men make great vice presidential candidates, plus by now he has been thoroughly vetted. Cruz is definitely smart, he knows what he’s doing. Cruz is not going to pick a Dan Quayle or a Sarah Palin.

What Trump really thinks about abortion

Trump is not religious and has never hung around with any pro-life people until he started running for President. There is no way he’s a True Believer in the pro-life cause. He strategically determined that he has to be pro-life in order to win the Republican nomination.

As I’ve written before, Trump has fifties values. He probably thinks that, since abortion was illegal in the 1950s, it’s no big deal if we make it illegal again.

However, he also probably thinks it’s no big deal that it’s legal, so I expect him to pivot on this issue if he manages to secure the Republican nomination.

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Hepp writes:

It’s worrying though that he didn’t know how to deal with this issue. Pro-lifers are never supposed to want to punish the woman.

It’s common sense that if something is illegal, and someone does it anyway, then there is some sort of punishment. I can’t fault The Donald for not being a career politician who knows what issues require you to throw away common sense.

Trump is going to apply this same common sense to illegal immigrants. You came here illegally, what did you expect would happen?

Lose with Cruz

From an article a few days ago at Politico:

“People think we lose with Cruz, but we don’t lose everything,” said the operative, who opposes Trump and asked to speak anonymously. “He’s still a real Republican. We don’t lose the House and Senate with Cruz. We don’t lose our soul as a party and we can recover in four years and I’m not sure people think we can recover from Donald Trump.”

Said one high-level operative inside the Koch network: “He’s the devil you know.”

Indeed, many establishment Republicans would rather lose with Cruz and play a long 2020 game than risk having their party and conservative principles hijacked by Trump—a candidate they do not trust even as they recognize his political dexterity and the possibility that he could be just cagey enough to win on Election Day.

It’s too bad that my #TrumpOrDemocrat hashtag didn’t catch on. If the GOPe could be convinced that large numbers of Republican Trump supporters would vote DOWN THE LINE for Democrats if the nomination is stolen from Trump, and consequently Republicans would lose the Senate and possibly even the House, that would scare the GOPe into supporting Trump. It’s the only way to fight #LoseWithCruz.

New Marquette Wisconsin poll is REALLY bad news for Trump

Link to poll results (PDF).

Cruz: 39.6
Trump: 30.5
Kasich: 21.4
Other answer: 8.5

If Trump wins only 3 CDs he picks up 9 delegates from Wisconsin. My previous analysis was that Trump would win 36 delegates, so this leaves him 27 delegates short.

AND IT GETS WORSE

The CNN Election Center currently gives Trump 739 delegates. That’s 19 more delegates than I used in my previous calculations because apparently Missouri delegates weren’t properly counted.

I previously predicted that Trump would win with 13 delegates to spare. So we are at +19 for previously uncounted delegates, and at -27 for the downgrade of Trump’s chances in Wisconsin, so that only leaves Trump with 5 delegates to spare.

However, the previous prediction assumed Trump would win 40 of California’s 53 CDs, and that looks in doubt given the latest California poll showing Cruz only one point behind Trump.

Based upon the latest polls from Wisconsin and California, I predict that Trump will NOT win a majority of the delegates before the convention.

Whether Trump becomes the nominee is going to depend on how many delegates short he comes in and how many votes he will get from unpledged delegates. I think he could pick up an extra 20 votes.

I am pretty sure now that Cruz will win a contested convention that goes beyond the first ballot. Although I would really like to see Susana Martinez get nominated so that I can make a killing on my PredictIt investment, I don’t think the GOPe is going to be able to stop Cruz.

Patty Duke Show theme song and intro

In honor of Patty Duke, plus it makes you think about how television theme songs have changed since the 1960s.

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I think the concept would have made more sense if they were identical twins separated at birth rather than “identical cousins.”

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And in case you want to watch a full episode, here’s the first third of one below. I just finished viewing it, but I didn’t find it especially funny or interesting. You can find the rest of it on YouTube.

Our liberal left-wing corporations

There’s an article in the Washington Post which explains what I’ve been telling my readers for years, that corporations are now full left-wing liberal. The only “conservative” position they support are tax loopholes that benefit themselves, and Republicans are stupid enough to view any tax loophole as a fast one that they pulled on the Democrats.

The Republican “any loophole for big-business” attitude is just a case of working against their own voters to support the enemy.

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In response to comments…

The corporation I used to work for was NOT run by Ivy Leaguers (except for our legal department*), and that helps to explain why the senior executives were so clueless. But the company was definitely committed to “diversity,” it wasn’t just lip service to avoid lawsuits.

The previous CEO was a smart Jewish guy from New York who grew up at a time when smart Jewish people went to local schools. However, he wasn’t interested in day-to-day operations and left that to people who were a lot less smart than him. And he also didn’t get new technology at all, which caused him to make some huge strategic mistakes which are obvious now and were evident eleven years ago to some younger people at the company with much lower-level jobs. His talents were with schmoozing people from outside the company.

The current CEO is a graduate of a third-rate school and not as bright as the previous CEO, but I guess he’s very good at playing corporate politics. I am sure he would happily espouse any liberal beliefs if he senses that’s the way the winds are blowing. And the winds are indeed blowing liberal.

I used to enjoy the annual address to employees of the previous CEO, he was quite entertaining, but any talk by the current CEO is a big snoozer.

Please don’t try to impress me by guessing in the comments what company I am writing about.

*Note that the only way to get a job as a corporate lawyer is to have previous work experience at Big Law, and pretty much only graduates of Top 14 schools get hired by Big Law. Don’t feel sorry for the Big Law associates who don’t make partner, those corporate law jobs are cushy 9-to-5 jobs which pay well-enough and you get your own private office which makes you feel superior to the vast majority of the corporate drones who work in cubicles or shared offices. Despite the difficulty of obtaining a resume qualifying you for a corporate legal job, I saw no evidence that the job required any sort of exceptional legal talents.

The #TrumpOrDemocrat movement

We need to let the GOPe know that their unprecedented attack on the front-runner is not acceptable to us, the voters. In all previous primary seasons during my lifetime, the GOPe would be urging everyone to come together to support the front-runner.

The only way to let the GOPe know that their behavior is not acceptable is if a lot of Trump followers let the world know that if the GOPe steals the nomination from Trump, we will vote Democractic down-the-line to punish them. The GOPe needs to know, ASAP, that they will have a huge disaster at the polls in November unless they get behind Trump now!

I can only hope that this movement catches on. Please share this movement on blogs and social media like Twitter and Facebook. Use the #TrumpOrDemocrat hashtag.