A nightmare ticket?

Ah spring, when during presidential election years political pundits’ fancy lightly turn to thoughts of possible running mates. Usually these speculations try to construct so-called ‘dream tickets’, combinations that its advocates think would either increase chances of victory due to providing balance or satisfy a felt need for ideological consistency if the presidential nominee’s credentials are suspect. Campaigns at this time float many names as trial balloons in order to gauge reactions as well as placate the various factions in their parties that they are being respected and included, and so these rumors should not be taken too seriously.
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Stephen Colbert apologizes to Australia

Recently actors and married couple Johnny Depp and Amber Heard created a controversy by trying to smuggle their two dogs into Australia on a visit while trying to evade that country’s strict quarantine laws. He got caught but was allowed to leave without suffering the serious punishment (that could go up to ten years in prison) that a non-celebrity might have received. He later provided a video of a grudging apology.
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Why do I feel revulsion when I see Ted Cruz’s face?

What puzzles (and bothers) me is why I have such an intense visceral dislike for Ted Cruz, even to just seeing his face. Judging people by their looks is a terrible thing, and although it is true that we do judge people almost instantaneously upon meeting them, it is not usually based on whether they are good looking or not, but by more subtle cues as to their likability, trustworthiness, and so on, that are hard to pin down.
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Why can’t we all get along?

As one music group and business after another announce that they will be avoiding North Carolina after that state adopted its new law, ostensibly aimed at restricting the bathrooms transsexuals can use to only the ones that correspond to the gender assigned to them on their birth certificates but in fact allows wider discrimination against the LGBT community and others, Stephen Colbert wonders why we can’t get along the way that Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee did after the bitter civil War.
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