Mitt Romney gave a speech at Ford Field in Michigan today. Apparently, the only venue his advance team could find was an indoor football stadium that reportedly seats 65,000, so they set up a stage on the 20 yard line and brought in seats for the crowd, reported to be 1,200. At the end of the event, Romney extemporized with this riff:
As a longtime Californian, I was more than a little surprised to learn that my adopted state had been rated dead last in a poll on the popularity of the 50 states conducted by Public Policy Polling, a highly respected, Democratic-leaning pollster based in Raleigh. (See PP’s chart below.)
My reflex was to go on defense. We are, after all, the world’s seventh largest economy. We are home to the nation’s second-largest and most beautiful cities — Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively — as well as economic engines like Hollywood, the Silicon Valley, the Wine Country and our own self-contained agricultural breadbasket in the San Joaquin Valley. Our population is larger than Canada’s or Australia’s. There are few states with more scenic beauty, pound for pound, and few places in the world with better weather.
But my next impulse was, nah — really, haters, go ahead and hate. Enjoy yourselves in the top five most popular states, Hawaii, Colorado, Tennessee, South Dakota and Virginia.
Still, last? It prompts the question, what is the beef? According to PPP’s analysis, one reason California fared so poorly reflects one of the same reasons I love living here.
Republicans hate California:
Not since Justin Bieber’s biopic, “Never Say Never” has an autobiography been so premature. But first-term Sen. Marco Rubio isn’t letting lack of material keep him from writing a full-length, in-depth look back at his life: all 41 short years of it.
Rubio’s main accomplishment so far has been being born at the right time with genes for attractiveness steeped in his parents’ ideology as Cuban emigrant, right-wing anti-Communists.
The book, reportedly titled, “An American Son,” will acknowledge Rubio’s personal story line deficit of triumph over adversity by drawing heavily on his parents’ lives. That includes their decision to leave Cuba after the Vegas-style excesses of the Batista regime began to fade, and before Castro came to power.
It also reveals his father’s role in a plot to overthrow the Dominican Republic’s dictator, Rafael Trujillo, when the elder Rubio was 18.
But perhaps one of the most interesting tidbits to surface will be Rubio’s admission that when he was 8-years-old, his parents began practicing Mormonism.
In the diplomatic ranks, trained professionals toil,
To keep the peace and tamp down foreign turmoil.
But for Greek ambassador,
Trump picked an artful dodger —
The grifting, drunken blackmailer Kimberly Guilfoyle.
