"The Stupidest Possible Scenario That Can Be Reconciled with the Available Facts"

"Last night ran very late at TPM thanks to the Melania/plagiarism debacle. As I was walking to my apartment well past midnight I started considering the implications of Trump's Razor and I shuddered and recoiled at what it told me. To phrase the principle in Occam's terms, it tells us 'the stupidest scenario is always to be preferred'. And what was the stupidest possible scenario? Right: Melania wrote the speech herself.

"As I said, I couldn't believe what my theory was telling me."

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo applies Trump's Razor.

"It Was Not Supposed to Unfold This Way"

"More than 20 of them convened Monday near the Capitol for a dinner held by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, and the prospect of Trump nearing next year's nominating convention in Cleveland with a significant number of delegates dominated the discussion, according to five people familiar with the meeting.
"Weighing in on that scenario as Priebus and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) listened, several longtime Republican power brokers argued that if the controversial billionaire storms through the primaries, the party’s establishment must lay the groundwork for a floor fight in which the GOP’s mainstream wing could coalesce around an alternative, the people said."

Robert Costa and Tom Hamburger in The Washington Post report on Republican leaders considering a brokered convention in 2016.

Green Splendor

The Boston Globe publishes obituaries for and environmentalist Jim Bohlen and author Harvey Pekar.