There is no way Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is dumber than the guy who worried the island of Guam might tip over

GOP delegate race update for Donald Trump, post-Tuesday's 5-state eastern primaries

With 502 delegates remaining in 10 contests beginning in Indiana next week, there are also tonight 70 unallocated delegates remaining in Colorado (3), Oklahoma (3), Wyoming (4), Louisiana (5), US Virgin Islands (9), Guam (8), American Samoa (7), North Dakota (18), New York (2), Pennsylvania (10) and Rhode Island (1).

Trump's total has risen since Tuesday's contests to 994, acquiring a total of 147 in his blowout victories as the final numbers have come in. 906 delegates belong to the eight other contenders.

This means he needs 48.4% of the remaining 502 to clinch the nomination, or 42.5% of the 502 plus 70, or an even smaller percentage if he forges an alliance with another candidate or candidates. Trump already has the endorsement of Carson (9 delegates).

After New York, under Winner-Take-All it would be Trump 1089, Cruz 433, Kasich 66 and Rubio 57

And everyone would be telling Cruz and Kasich "GET OUT!"

Instead it's Trump 845, Cruz 559, Kasich 148 and Rubio 171. The also-rans are being enriched at the expense of the front-runner, mostly by allocations of delegates from congressional district wins which chip away at the overall winner of the states.

They won't divide the vote this way when Trump faces Clinton in November. Think of the electoral college votes from each state as delegates. Representing House and Senate seats held by both Republicans and Democrats, the winner of the popular vote in your state gets them all, regardless of political party affiliation.

It'll be winner take all in November. It should be now.

Congressmen aren't even elected this way.

If you win the popular vote in your district, you win the seat in the House. It's not because you won more delegates in the precincts.

If you win the popular vote in your state, you win the seat in the Senate. Senators don't get seated because they won more delegates in the congressional districts. They get seated because they won more votes.

But Republicans for some reason want to divide their primary votes for president along (already highly gerrymandered) congressional district lines, making the candidates creatures of the districts, not of the states. They do this out of fear that the more populous liberal urban areas will have an unfair advantage over conservative rural ones in choosing their candidate. So they interfere with the process instead of insuring the integrity of their party membership and of its primary elections.

Meanwhile Trump's won the popular vote in 21 states so far, Cruz in 9, Rubio in just 2 and Kasich in only 1, but the Chicken Party won't even take a popular vote in Colorado, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Wyoming, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and North Dakota.

Republicans need to decide if they want to continue to be the Chicken Party, or if they want to take the fight to the enemy.

They already have a leader who is doing just that, if only they had the courage to follow him.

Trump has won the popular vote in 20 of 32 states, should have 924 delegates under winner take all, gets only 743 under Republican rules

To date Donald Trump has won the popular vote in 20 of the 32 primary/caucus contests, entitling him to their 924 delegates on the winner take all principle, but the Republican "rules" made at the state level give Trump just 80% of these overall, while enriching others with undeserved delegate allocations at his expense.

Imagine if that happened in actual presidential elections, where the winner of the popular vote in a state normally wins all the state's electoral college votes representing both political parties. Under the current Republican rules applied to the presidential election, the Republican candidate and the Democrat candidate might so split the electoral college vote between themselves that the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives under the 12th amendment because no one happened to reach the majority of 270. Think of that at the federal level as the equivalent of a party convention at the state level deciding the outcome because, in the case of Trump, he failed to reach 1,237. The more likely outcome would be Republicans losing national elections because of close contests in traditionally Republican states where Democrats still lose but cut into their electoral college allocations if winner take all goes by the roadside. Republicans at the state level are actually paving the way in practice for Democrat reform efforts of electoral college rules.

The unfairness of that is self-evident. Winner take all in a state in presidential elections is designed to smooth the way to national unity. But the Republicans have instituted "proportionality" rules to the extent that they can't, in their mad factionalism, unite along lines which are similarly simple, reasonable and attractive to people who wish to embrace the party, and their country. Donald Trump has brought hordes of new voters to the Republican Party, but all Republican Party elites can do is turn up their noses at them. 

Ted Cruz, who has won the popular vote in just 9 contests so far compared to Trump's 20, is entitled to only 433 delegates using winner take all. But he has 545 at this hour, 26% more than he should have, some of which come from states and territories where the people themselves aren't even allowed by the Republican elites to formalize their opinion by voting.

There is no popular vote taken this year so far in Colorado, North Dakota, Wyoming, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or American Samoa. Republican elites from these places decide who gets their combined 153 delegates. And #NeverTrump factions in these and other states have worked hard to make sure Trump gets as few of them as possible, if any.

To make matters worse, obvious losers like Marco Rubio and John Kasich are playing spoiler roles out of all proportion to their standing because of these rules.

Kasich has a legitimate claim on the delegates of only the one state he has won, Ohio. Instead of the 66 delegates he's entitled to, the Byzantine rules of Republicanism give him 143, 117% more than he should have.

In the case of Little Marco, he's still trying to bind his allotted 171 delegates to himself when they should be free agents because he's dropped out of the race entirely. Entitled to only 57 delegates from winning just two contests in Minnesota and DC, Rubio's unfair influence has been magnified 200% beyond what he's legitimately won because of proportional allocation rules in this year's contests.

The message being sent by Republicanism is obvious to everyone. The Republican Party is an exclusive club which has complicated, intricate rules for membership designed to keep out the riffraff, not win national elections.

Unfortunately, those rules will continue to keep the executive power far out of reach for them.

If they want to win the White House, Republicans should embrace the new voters, and Trump.

To do otherwise is political suicide.

Rep. Maxine Waters Is A Complete Moron, Just Like Rep. Hank Johnson

Rep. Maxine Waters obviously has no idea about the size and scope of the American working population. She states here that 170 million jobs will be lost if tomorrow's spending cuts go through.

If you simply check here, you'll discover that there are fewer than 152 million Americans working at all jobs as far as the Social Security Administration is concerned. Pretty shocking for an elected US representative not to know that, and pretty shocking that she thinks we'll all be without jobs in an instant because of a puny spending cut. By her reckoning, the WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY will become unemployed tomorrow because we cut 2% from federal spending. Even more shocking is it that this gets reported with a straight face. But then you remember that we have a congressman from Atlanta who thinks Guam might tip over if we station too many troops on one side of it, the estimable Rep. Johnson.

Russia Violated 2010 START Agreement In June 2012

The noisiest military aircraft on earth carries long range cruise missiles.

So reports The Washington Free Beacon, here:

[I]n June ... two Bear H’s ran up against the air defense zone near Alaska as part of large-scale strategic exercises that Moscow said involved simulated attacks on U.S. missile defense bases. The Pentagon operates missile defense bases in Alaska and California.

Those flights triggered the scrambling of U.S. and Canadian interceptor jets as well.

The bomber flights near Alaska violated a provision of the 2010 New START arms treaty that requires advance notification of exercises involving strategic nuclear bombers.

The story at the link details a more recent, highly unusual, deployment of two such bombers to spook Guam.

The Time to Get Serious About Coastal Defense is Long Past

In the summer of 2009, after Russian nuclear submarines were detected only 200 miles off our East coast, one commentator on the subsequent news story which bragged about our ability to detect  two  boats thought saying nothing about it would have been smarter in the absence of an official recommendation that the US actually beef up its coastal defenses with conventional defensive submarines. The reason? They're might have been three Russian subs.

The US military's response to the California mystery missile incident 35 miles off the coast of Los Angeles on Monday hardly inspired more confidence. We should have said nothing at all. Instead we said we didn't know what it was. Piling on to the airplane contrail theory a day later only made that worse, giving the impression the military was grasping at straws.

Unfortunately, from the commander in chief on down our government and military give the impression of being run by un-serious people. From the delay measured in days in responding to the Christmas Day underwear bomber to telegraphing our disengagement schedules in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's as if matters of war and peace are at best distractions from the really important matters like Obamacare, repealing DADT and defending the Ground Zero Mosque.

We could learn something about coastal defense from the Chinese, who understand the realities of American forward air, surface and submarine operations off their waters all too well. They have embarked on an ambitious naval modernization to counter our activities, which includes a commitment to robust coastal defense and power projection with submarines of varying designs. One such submarine, a Song, punked the USS Kitty Hawk in October 2006 over there, and it may be that Monday's incident over here was the work of a lately launched submarine of more recent design:

As other nations continue to develop naval capabilities we need to recognize that the operation of submarines off the US coast is going to become more common, not less. Indeed, what is the first thing China will do when tensions at sea rise over Taiwan or some other matter? Most likely, the deployment of submarines off the coast of Guam, Sasebo, Pearl Harbor, and if the PLA Navy has any strategic thinking at all, San Diego. ...

But this is what the US Navy needs to think about... the submarines off Guam, Sasebo, and Pearl Harbor can be Yuan class, because Yuans appear to have much better endurance for submerged operations than Song class submarines do, but for west coast operations it will be nuclear submarines.

Whether or not a missile was fired off the California coast this week to send such a message to America, we'd better get busy and start preparing for defensive submarine operations ourselves. Because sooner or later, Chinese boomers will come calling on the west coast just like the Russians do on the east.

 But we'll have to get serious first.