May 3, 2016 Sanders wins the primary in Indiana. This is seen as a surprise victory in the Indiana primary, as he won by a five-point margin despite trailing in all the state’s polls. Pledged delegate TTD: Clinton 1,706, Sanders 1,408. Clinton leads Sanders by 298 delegates.

May 5: The date of a leaked Democratic National Committee email suggesting that, at least in some regions, Bernie Sanders’ faith might be a vulnerability to exploit.

“It might may [sic] no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”

The email was from Brad Marshall, then CFO of the DNC. Marshall’s Wikipedia article From 1976 to 1980, Marshall held positions at PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte & Touche in Lexington, followed by some time as a CPA. So he may have figured he knew the territory.

Later that day, Marshall responded to the email thread he had started: “It’s these [sic] Jesus thing.”

There was a reply from DNC CEO Amy K. Dacey, who simply replied, “AMEN.”

That was the end of this thread. This was a single brain fart from the DNC’s money guy that went nowhere. A single person threw this idea against the wall one day, and it did not stick. The DNC did not call Bernie Sanders out on his faith.

But you’d better get ready if he’s the nominee because you can bet your Gideon’s Bible that the Republican Party will.

The best thing I’ve done so far in 2020 is to upgrade my Amazon Kindle.

The one I’ve been carrying around I earned with points at work. See my job decided it was more economical for them to offer points that you could spend in their little online store than it was to say, offer bonuses. I marked a big anniversary or something and wound up with a big pile of points, so I got a Kindle.

This thing was old-school, no backlight, big chunky plastic thing. But I still found it useful to be able to carry around a library in one little toy.

The new Kindles looked a bit nicer. Backlight, so you could read anywhere no matter what the environmental lighting. And, here’s the cool part, this thing can offer full integration with Audible. So I can buy a Kindle book, and for a few bucks more, I can slap an audio-book on it, and I can switch back and forth between reading reading and listening reading. This is great if you’re a person who needs some sort of entertainment going on at all times, like I am. So I can pop in my Airpods (it does work with Airpods, though getting them to pair without restarting the device has been a thing), and read while I warsh my dishes and such. Then, if I decide to sit down for a luxurious read, I push a button, and it shows the page exactly where I left off listening.

Amazon even let me trade in the old one for a discount, so I didn’t have to wonder about how re-purpose or recycle it. Saved me $15.

So the first book I’ve been reading this way has been What Happened by Hillary Clinton, as read by the author. I had tried to read the book in hardcover the first time, but I got bored and put it down. She doesn’t spend the entire book analyzing 2016 as the reader might expect. First you have to trench through a bunch of storytelling. I sure do love Chelsea and she’s great and Marc is such a great father to her grandson Aiden, and Bill sure does enjoy being a grandfather! I mean, it’s okay, but I’m sure one could find this sort of content in one of her other 12 books.

Takeaways from the thing so far when she actually does get down to business: She’s really pissed at Comey. She believes Putin believed he had many reasons to target her. She’s not as mad at Bernie as I am. She explains why Podesta’s e-mail leaks were particularly damaging, and no, it’s not because they revealed some bias at the DNC that wasn’t there. Don’t @ me.

I am enjoying the book, especially since I can put it on and listen while I scrub the terlet. I would almost recommend it as important reading considering the campaign season we find ourselves in now.

I mean, for example, you want an example of how you, the voter, can be brain-fucked by our grand institutions? Just look at today’s brouhaha about Liz Warren said Bernie Sanders said a broad can’t be preznit. As Matt Taiibi documents over at Rolling Stone, CNN wrote that story and posted it the night before the debate, then fed it into the news cycle all day long, then had its moderator-robots ask the candidates about it in the most baited of sleazy ways. Liz and Bernie took the bait and gave what I’m sure CNN thought was some jim-dandy television. They got to extend this cycle, too, by producing hot-mic footage of Warren confronting Sanders after the debate, since her ostensible refusal to shake Bernie’s hand was tearing up Twitter. Look, everybody! Turn on CNN! WOOT.

And that’s just what CNN is up to to fuck with your head. Please know that Vlad Putin has much more nefarious things in mind for you this campaign season.

So when you see a story on the Facebook soon about how Amy Klobuchar ate a salad with a comb and then punched an opossum in the tits? Yeah maybe let’s either not believe it or stop making such stupid shit matter. Because that nonsense is why we have Preznit Sharpie Sippycup now.

New cop show starring Edie Falco called “Tommy” starts on CBS Feb. 6. I’m in.

Hillary Clinton: The most exonerated politician ever (Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post)

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