Ted Cruz FIRST! To Declare Candidacy For Also-Ran Loser Of 2016

• The 2016 race to lose the White House to Hillary Clinton (or a Pet Rock or a pile of dust bunnies or basically any person or thing that is not a Republican) officially begins TODAY:  

  Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz will become the first major candidate for president when he launches his campaign Monday, kicking off what's expected to be a rush over the next few weeks of more than a dozen White House hopefuls into the 2016 campaign.

  Cruz will formally get into the race during a morning speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, choosing to begin his campaign at the Christian college founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell rather than his home state of Texas or the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. It's a fitting setting for Cruz, a 44-year-old tea party darling whose entry into the 2016 campaign drew cheers Sunday among fellow conservatives.

• Our friends at Happy Nice Time People pass along this sage wisdom about how boys are different from girls, when it comes to marital sexytime, from the patriarch of the Duggar family:

  What sort of things to Jessa and Ben need to know before committing to spend the rest of their lives together no matter what at risk of eternal hellfire? Nothing but the most hackneyedMen Are from Mars, Women Are from Won’t-Shut-Up-villeadvice, apparently. “Both of y’all will like the physical relationship, but for the guy that will be like the main focus. But for a woman, communications like the most important thing, so taking time each to communication, that’ll mean the world to her,” says Pa Duggar. So just talk dirty to each other, and you’ll both be happy, right?

  So a husband’s main focus is getting laid, huh? This ultra-depressing marriage advice is a pretty solid argument why young people should get to fuckin’ before they get to marryin’. As awesome as it is, it shouldn’t be anybody’s “main focus” in marriage. Go ahead and get past that stage so you can build your life together on something stronger.

• Do you like Mad Max and also lots of explosions?

• Guess the wingnut:  

  The left doesn’t hate evil, the left hates carbon emissions.

•  Nepotism : it's as American as apple pie!

  How bad is America’s nepotism problem? Can data science help us gauge its depth? It can — and what the data shows is that something has gone haywire. [...]

  An American male is 4,582 times more likely to become an Army general if his father was one; 1,895 times more likely to become a famous C.E.O.; 1,639 times more likely to win a Pulitzer Prize; 1,497 times more likely to win a Grammy; and 1,361 times more likely to win an Academy Award. Those are pretty decent odds, but they do not come close to the 8,500 times more likely a senator’s son is to find himself chatting with John McCain or Dianne Feinstein in the Senate cloakroom.

•  RIP -- finally:  

  Richard III was finally getting the ceremony and honor a king deserves, 530 years after his ignominious death in battle.

  Hundreds of people, including some in period costume and armor, turned out in Leicestershire on Sunday to watch a procession carrying the remains of the medieval king whose bones were found in 2012 under a parking lot. The cortege made its way to Leicester Cathedral, where the monarch will be properly reburied.