You won't believe this one stupid trick the Washington Post used to get clicks

You can't use a simple algorithm to decide which way is left; you have to apply some real-world conteztualized knowledge.

Seeing some chatter originating in the Wapo this morning about the startling new Trump strategy of "running to Hillary's left", wooing the Sanders voters:

“Now, I’m no fan of Bernie Sanders, but he is 100 percent right,” Trump told a crowd [in Eugene, OR] this weekend. “He is 100 percent right: Hillary Clinton is totally controlled by the people that put up her money. She’s totally controlled by Wall Street.”

It's obviously worth asking yourself to what extent this is "left", as opposed to typical Republican populist posturing—how it's different from Ted Cruz railing against "crony capitalism" and "corporate welfare" and the "Washington cartel". What's Trump's proposal? You know, for not being controlled by Wall Street, other than claiming that he's as rich as Lloyd Blankfein, and therefore incorruptible, just like um wait a minute.

Dylan Doubles Down

Or quadruples, as the case may be, with a short piece yesterday afternoon and a rather longer one in the evening, inflated to a majestic six-paragraph lede in Mike Allen's morning soufflé—Dylan Byers in Politico, that is, on the theory that the people buying Ted Cruz's book are actual people who know how to read and intend to do it, which this page was amused by yesterday morning.

Did Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins or the Cruz campaign magnify Cruz's sales figures by a laundering scheme, paying individuals to buy the book instead of doing the traditional bulk buy? Byers doesn't ask the question, but reports the HarperCollins non-answer to an easier question:

Art by Brian Gordon via Tech Digest.

The Ambassadors

Detail from Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors, 1533, copied by Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve.

From the Most Corrupt President Ever department:

You may have gotten an enjoyable giggle last week from Jon Stewart on some of the incompetents that President Obama has nominated to represent our country in the capitals of Hungary, Norway, and Argentina (among who knows how many others). But the reason we watch Stewart, you know, is that his comedy often provides a truer picture of what's happening than the Villagers do, and when you find him in agreement with the Washington Times, Fox, and an extremely purse-lipped Washington Post, that could be a sign that he's missed his bus and jumped into a cab share with a dangerous crowd.

Every US president naming the hundreds of ambassadors and ambassadorial officials that lead American foreign policy implementation all around the world nominates a [jump]