Cruz just sent out a cold chill that dwarfs the booger-swallowing moment from the last debate.

After carefully studying the GOP fruit salad, Ben Carson has decided to sell his soul for The Donald

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ben-carson-to-endorse-donald-trump-in-florida-on-friday/

Ben Carson to endorse Donald Trump in Florida on Friday



Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is set to endorse Donald Trump in Florida on Friday, a person familiar with the situation confirmed to CBS News, giving the GOP front-runner a boost ahead of key primaries in Florida and Ohio next Tuesday.

The endorsement from Carson is arguably the biggest Trump has received since New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie backed him in February, and could help Trump with the evangelical and Republican base voters that helped fuel Carson's candidacy.

Carson suspended his campaign in an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference just last Friday, two days after he announced he didn't see a "path forward" in the race.

In an interview on Fox News Radio Thursday, Carson hinted at his support for the GOP real estate mogul. Asked whether he was planning to back Trump, he replied: "Let's put it this way, I'm certainly leaning."

"Wrap it. Wrap it. Are you going to answer the question, or should we scoot? Wrap it."

EXACTLY how MUCH do you have to SUCK for Walker, Texas Ranger to withdraw his endorsement?

Mother Jones: "Is Ted Cruz Really an Awful, Terrible Jerk?"

Is Ted Cruz Really an Awful, Terrible Jerk?

Well, terms like "pompous asshole" and "backpfeifengesicht" tend to come up.

—By Tim Murphy and David Corn | Mon Jan. 25, 2016 6:00 AM EST



With the bromance between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump over, the mogul turned GOP front-runner has begun trash talking the senator from Texas. "He's a nasty guy," Trump recently huffed. "Nobody likes him. Nobody in Congress likes him. Nobody likes him anywhere once they get to know him." For members of the politerati, this was no revelation. As Cruz has quickly climbed the political ladder, he has left a long line of associates who complain, without much prompting, that he is an insufferable schmuck.

A prominent aide to George W. Bush's 2000 campaign could barely contain himself when we asked him to discuss Cruz, who worked in the campaign's policy shop. This person described Cruz as hyper-arrogant and widely despised, and he emphasized—over and over—that the pervasive dislike of Cruz within the Bush ranks had nothing to do with ideology. (Cruz, he noted, never objected to Bush's call for compassionate conservatism, immigration reform, and national education standards, and no one on the campaign regarded him as an ideologue.) The problem was simple: his personality.

"Ted thought he was an expert on everything," says this campaign veteran, who asked not to be named. "He was a smart and talented guy, but completely taken with himself and his own ideas. He would offer up opinions on everything, even matters outside his portfolio. He was a policy guy, but he would push his ideas on campaign strategy. He would send memos on everything to everyone. He would come to meetings where he wasn't invited—and wasn't wanted." In fact, this Bush alum recalls, "the quickest way for a meeting to end would be for Ted to come in. People would want out of that meeting. People wouldn't go to a meeting if they knew he would be there. It was his inability to be part of the team. That's exactly what he was: a big asshole."

The Bush vet goes on: "I don't know anyone who had a decent relationship with Cruz." And when Bush became president, his top campaign aides agreed Cruz should not be offered a job in the White House. "No one wanted to work with him," this source remembers. "George W. Bush couldn't stand the guy." This person adds, "It's a real quandary for Bush campaign people: Trump versus Cruz, who to vote for? And it would be a big quandary even if it's Cruz versus Hillary Clinton. That's how much they cannot stand him."

"OH, for GOODNESS, that is NOT going to happen. I'm not even answering that question."

Salon: The Marco Rubio post-mortem: How a supposedly ready-made GOP nominee crashed and burned

The Marco Rubio post-mortem: How a supposedly ready-made GOP nominee crashed and burned

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/10/the_marco_rubio_post_mortem_how_a_supposedly_ready_made_gop_nominee_crashed_and_burned/

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come not to praise Marco Rubio – dear God, never, ever that – but to bury him. And then to salt the earth in the hope that he will never come back.

The Rubio campaign is on its last legs, stumbling dehydrated and desperate through the Florida Everglades like the heroine in the second act of a Carl Hiaasen novel, trying to stay one step ahead of the bloodhounds who want nothing more than to drag the Florida senator into the swamp and tear his throat out, or at least convince him to join with Ted Cruz on some sort of unity ticket to stop Donald Trump, which might be an even worse fate.

The establishment is telling Rubio his dropping out would be for the good of the Republican Party. Which is why he’ll probably at least consider it. He is a party man through and through, and since he gave up his Senate seat to run for president, he’s going to want to come out of this cluster-screw of a campaign with something to show for it besides the humiliation of a crushing defeat in his home state’s primary on Tuesday. Run for vice-president on a ticket with Cruz, the party will whisper in his ear, and when he gets destroyed in the general election in the fall and the country suffers through four years of socialism under a Democrat, you’ll be perfectly positioned to be the 2020 nominee. What’s not to like about that scenario? And why wouldn’t you trust a GOP establishment that has displayed such a sharp political acumen this cycle that it just about handed its nomination over to a jar of orange marmalade in a bad wig before it knew what hit it?

Rubio might not be smart, but he’s a politician who can read poll numbers. It must have sunk in by now that his “Baghdad Bob” primary strategy (claim victory even when you came in a distant third/the American military is a block away and roaring towards you unopposed) has been a galactic failure. With even his financial backers and editorial page cheerleaders telling him it’s time, he must feel like Butch Coolidge getting the order to take his ass down in the fifth.

Hillary offers an alternative to Obama's deportation policy by offering Obama's deportation policy.

Oh, for f's sake, the Kim Kardashian nude photo imbroglio is NOT about nudity.

It's about an American public that has gone way past the saturation point with All Things Kardashian. Kanye hasn't helped with that, either. He's learned their ways and practices them daily.

Singer Demi Lovato recently posted a series of well-photographed nude photos...nothing "strategically placed," she was fully nude...because she said it made her feel "empowered" and that she was proud of her body. So what happened? The photos were met with almost universal acceptance, and a lot of the reactions were "these are great photos, very tasteful, it's great that you feel empowered and proud of your body, Demi." No scandal, no fuss, no muss, she did it, and it went away peacefully.

Bette Midler had a reaction to Kardashian's photos. You may agree with it or not, but it was "Kim, if you want to show us a part of your body we haven't already seen, you're going to have to swallow the camera."

For me, it's the way Kim found her "fame," the sex tape with Ray-J. I'm not a prude. But this wasn't a beautiful film of two beautiful people engaged in beautiful lovemaking, nor was it in any way "erotic" on a straight porn level. It was two creepy people rutting around under the sheets, climaxing with mutual golden showers, If that's your cup of tea, more power to you. But make no mistake about the fact that it's how she established her "brand," not by her dad being on OJ's defense team.

She got what she wanted, though...people are talking about Kim, again...and this morning one of the trending topics on Facebook is Sharon Osbourne releasing a nude selfie "in support of" Kim.

She's a repellent human being, and I agree with Bette. If that makes me sexist, it makes Bette sexist too, because she's the one who said it.

That's all. A creepy nude human being is still a creep.

Clinton Campaign Does Damage Control After Sanders' Huge Upset

Clinton Campaign Does Damage Control After Sanders' Huge Upset

When the polls opened in Michigan Tuesday morning, Bernie Sanders did not have a lot to be optimistic about. His campaign was at a clear disadvantage: The Real Clear Politics average of polls had Hillary Clinton leading in the state by 20 points — and none of the surveys taken this year had him losing by anything less than 10 percentage points.

So when Sanders won Michigan by a point and a half, he had much to celebrate; one prominent number-cruncher called it "one of the greatest upsets in modern political history." The Sanders campaign sent out a triumphant email repeating that claim, and promising Michigan was not an outlier. "[W]e're seeing the same kind of come-from-behind momentum all across America," it said.

Michigan was both a big win for Sanders, and a huge loss for pollsters. FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver could find just one other contest in which the polls were so wrong: New Hampshire, in 1984, when averages had Walter Mondale up by 17 points, and Gary Hart pulled out a nine-point win instead.

It was the kind of magical victory that Sanders has been promising supporters really can happen — but it was also a narrow victory, and the pragmatic Clinton campaign was quick to point out that it doesn't put much of a dent in the massive pledged-delegate deficit Sanders still has to make up.