The President Drops The Mic

President Obama's final White House correspondents' dinner speech was arguably his best.

Next year at this time, someone else will be standing here in this very spot and it’s anyone guess who she will be. But standing here I can’t help but be reflective and a little sentimental.

Eight years ago I said it was time to change the tone of our politics. In hindsight, I clearly should have been more specific. Eight years ago, I was a young man full of idealism and vigor. And look at me now, I am gray, grizzled and just counting down the days to my death panel.

Hillary once questioned whether I would be up ready for a 3 a.m .phone call. Now, I’m awake anyway because I have to go to the bathroom. I’m up.

In fact somebody recently said to me, ‘Mr. President, you are so yesterday. Justin Trudeau has completely replaced you. He is so handsome and he’s so charming. He’s the future.’ And I said ‘Justin, just give it a rest.’ I resented that.

Meanwhile, Michelle has not aged a day. The only way you can date her in photos is by looking at me. Take a look. [Show photos over the years] Here we are in 2008. Here we are a few years later. And this one is from two weeks ago. [skelton photo from Canada dinner] So time passes.

In just six short months, I will be officially a lame duck, which means Congress now will flat out reject my authority, and Republican leaders won’t take my phone calls. And this is going to take some getting use to. It’s really gonna… It’s a curve ball. I don’t know what to do with it. Of course, in fact, for four months now congressional Republicans have been saying there are things I cannot do in my final year. Unfortunately, this dinner was not one of them.

But on everything else, it’s another story. And you know who you are, Republicans. In fact, I think we’ve got Republican senators Tim Scott and Cory Gardner. They are in the house, which reminds me … security bar the doors. Judge Merrick Garland come on out. We are going to do this right here. Right now.

It’s like the red wedding.

My God am I going to miss this man.

Sunday Long Read: Finding Faith

This piece from The California Sunday Magazine on two men, Juan Carlos and Rene, attempting to convert people in heavily Catholic and poor Colombia to Judaism is fascinating to me precisely because I do not prescribe to any organized religion or faith.

BUT HOW TO be a Jew?

Juan Carlos had no idea. Neither did René. They sought out Medellín’s tiny Jewish community. A close-knit group of about 300 dating back to before World War II, they had once numbered more than 500, but many had fled the country during the drug war. Few kept kosher; most attended synagogue services only during the High Holidays. Judaism was a cultural, not a religious, identity.

At the time, the entire Jewish population lived in El Poblado, the most affluent neighborhood in the city. As Arie Eidelman, manager of the Hebrew School, points out, there were “no low-income Jews in Medellín.” Many were prominent in finance and textiles. The ride from Bello to El Poblado is just 40 minutes, but for René and Juan Carlos, it was a world apart. René had previously met Eidelman and other Jewish leaders when they had hired his band for their celebrations and he had blown the shofar. But when René and Juan Carlos told them about their decision to convert to Judaism, the leaders rejected them out of hand.

Leaving the church with René and Juan Carlos were factory workers, cleaning ladies, carpenters, taxi drivers, small-shop owners. Why would any ofthem want to become Jewish except to take advantage of the community’s wealth? This suspicion was not just a matter of class but also of power. The leaders could envision a future in which the Jews of Bello would outnumber the Jews of El Poblado.

Juan Carlos and René realized they had to look beyond Medellín. They emailed the Great Rabbi of Colombia, Alfredo Goldschmidt, asking for help. The rabbi was sympathetic, but demurred. Colombian Jews lacked the means to respond to such an unusual case, he told them. They were on their own.

With the sole guidance of books, Juan Carlos introduced the most critical changes to the congregation: Shabbat, kashrut (dietary restrictions), and circumcision. Members stopped working on Saturdays, though for months they continued to play music, take photographs, and pursue a number of activities that were prohibited. Pork and shellfish were banned; meat and milk were no longer mixed. When ordering coffee at a café, members asked that it be served in a disposable cup to ensure that it hadn’t been polluted by pork. When René visited his mother for meals, he brought his own cooking pots.

Others broke with their friends and families permanently. But Juan Carlos’s parents felt the son they had lost to Pentecostalism had come back to them and to his senses. “My husband is an intellectual. He is a teacher. And that church…” Juan Carlos’s mother told me, rolling her eyes. “When Juan Carlos moved toward Judaism, my husband said, ‘Finally, something serious.’” They decided to become Jews as well.

What moves a person inside to seek faith, to embrace what resonates with themselves and with others?  In a way I respect that, finding something good and worthwhile from religion, when often here I discuss how religion can be and has been used to divide, demoralize, demonize and destroy people.

Of course there are good people of faith in the world.  I'm just not one of them.  I'd like to think you can be good, and that you can make a difference through actions and not beliefs, but then again I have my beliefs as well and I'm sure all of you do too.

School Daze, Con't

New analysis of America's sixth graders in school districts across the country find that once again, class and race are the most important factors in how well kids do in school.  White kids with rich parents do much better than black or Hispanic kids with poorer parents, and the differences between white and non-white kids within the same school district are often two or three grade levels' worth of performance.

We’ve long known of the persistent and troublesome academic gap between white students and their black and Hispanic peers in public schools.

We’ve long understood the primary reason, too: A higher proportion of black and Hispanic children come from poor families. A new analysis of reading and math test score data from across the country confirms just how much socioeconomic conditions matter.

Children in the school districts with the highest concentrations of poverty score an average of more than four grade levels below children in the richest districts.

Even more sobering, the analysis shows that the largest gaps between white children and their minority classmates emerge in some of the wealthiest communities, such as Berkeley, Calif.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Evanston, Ill. (Reliable estimates were not available for Asian-Americans.)

The study, by Sean F. Reardon, Demetra Kalogrides and Kenneth Shores of Stanford, also reveals large academic gaps in places like Atlanta and Menlo Park, Calif., which have high levels of segregation in the public schools.

In LA Unified, the country's largest school district, white sixth graders are usually score a grade level above average.  White and Hispanic students score about 2 grade levels below average.  Evanston, Ill. finds white students ripping the lid off tests, nearly four entire grade levels above average, and on average their parents are some of the wealthiest in the country in this tony Chicago suburb.  Black and Hispanic students in the same district?  Average for Hispanic and half a grade level below average for black students.  A full four and a half grade levels in testing performance by sixth grade.
Washington DC?  Nearly 5 entire grade levels between white and black students.

Five.

By grade 6.

Why racial achievement gaps were so pronounced in affluent school districts is a puzzling question raised by the data. Part of the answer might be that in such communities, students and parents from wealthier families are constantly competing for ever more academic success. As parents hire tutors, enroll their children in robotics classes and push them to solve obscure math theorems, those children keep pulling away from those who can’t afford the enrichment.

“Our high-end students who are coming in are scoring off the charts,” said Jeff Nash, executive director of community relations for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

The school system is near the flagship campus of the University of North Carolina, and 30 percent of students in the schools qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, below the national average.

The wealthier students tend to come from families where, “let’s face it, both the parents are Ph.D.s, and that kid, no matter what happens in the school, is pressured from kindergarten to succeed,” Mr. Nash said. “So even though our minority students are outscoring minority students in other districts near us, there is still a bigger gap here because of that.”

By contrast, the communities with narrow achievement gaps tend to be those in which there are very few black or Hispanic children, or places like Detroit or Buffalo, where all students are so poor that minorities and whites perform equally badly on standardized tests.

So really, it comes down to wealthy parents who can afford to live in exclusive places can afford to provide more education reseources for thier kids.  Poor parents can't do that, and more and more the public schools we depend on to try to narrow that gap are instead more segregated, more underfunded, and more divided.  Even in the same school districts, the money and resources go to the "good" schools with the "good" students.  Even bothering to educate the leftovers is seen as a waste, because these poorer kids are seen as, well, a waste of taxpayer dollars.

I'd say this is because of Republicans, but the truth is Democrats are just as bad at education funding, and more and more Americans are turning their back on poor districts.  After all, they have their own kids to educate, right?

Last Call For Zika Gets Real

And we have our first reported death in the US to the Zika virus reported in Puerto Rico.

A Puerto Rican man died from complications of the Zika virus earlier this year, the first reported death attributed to the disease in the United States.

The victim, a man in his 70s, died in February from internal bleeding as a result of a rare immune reaction to an earlier Zika infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Puerto Rico now has 683 confirmed Zika infections in its outbreak, which began in December; 89 are in pregnant women, according to Dr. Ana Ríus, the territory’s health secretary. Fourteen of those women have given birth, and all their babies are healthy, she said.

Seventeen patients have been hospitalized for Zika-related causes in Puerto Rico. Of those, seven had Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare form of paralysis that strikes about two weeks after an infection and, although frightening, is usually temporary.

The man who died was a resident of the San Juan area who fell ill withfever, rash and other typical Zika symptoms early this year, said Tyler M. Sharp, a C.D.C. epidemiologist working in Puerto Rico.

“That illness resolved,” Dr. Sharp said. “But very soon after, he had bleeding manifestations.”

He was hospitalized and died within 24 hours.

The condition that killed him, immune thrombocytopenic purpura, is similar to Guillain-Barré in that the Zika infection triggered his immune system to produce antibodies that attacked his own cells. In Guillain-Barré, they attack nerve cells, while in this case, they attacked the platelets, which cause the blood to clot.

The death was not described earlier because it took time to be sure Zika was the cause. “We had to check with family members, his personal physician and the doctors who managed him to be sure he didn’t have something else going on,” Dr. Sharp said.

I'm sure Republicans will get off their asses any time now and approve emergency funding to help fight this virus.  How many more people will die in the meantime, well, hey, it's just Puerto Rico, right?

Except of course the most likely point of entry into the mainland US will be in Southern states.  You might hear some concerns if things play out like they did Ebola in say, Texas a while back.

Clinton Goes Off

I thought that this Hillary Clinton interview with CNN was actually somewhat amusing.

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton says she has experience dealing with men who “get off the reservation” like GOP front-runner Donald Trump.

“I have a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak,” Clinton told CNN Friday.“I’m not going to deal with their temper tantrums or their bullying or their efforts to try to provoke me,” she said. “He can say whatever he wants to me. I could really care less.”

That's exactly how Trump should be treated.

Trump has been attacking Clinton in recent weeks, from calling her “Crooked Hillary” to accusing her of using the “woman card” to get votes.

Trump escalated those attacks Thursday in an interview with the "Today" show, saying “without the woman’s card, Hillary would not even be a viable person to even run for city council positions.”

“I think the only thing she has going for her is the fact that she’s a woman,” he said. “She has done a terrible job in so many ways.”

He's such a dick.  Let him and his followers rot in the ashes of time.

Like A Kansas Tornado, Con't

Over in Brownbackistan, Kansas Republicans are facing a wipeout in November at the state level unless they find a way to plug the state's $290 million hole.  Things are so bad for Republicans across the country right now that state lawmakers are considering the unthinkable: eliminating GOP Gov. Sam Brownback's business tax exemptions.

Kansas lawmakers are moving forward with a bill to roll back the state’s income tax exemption for business owners, Gov. Sam Brownback’s signature policy.

The bill would repeal the exemption, which allows the owners of limited liability companies and other pass-through businesses to avoid paying any state income tax, on Jan. 1, 2017.

Rep. Mark Hutton, R-Wichita, said the bill is estimated to bring in about $220 million annually into state coffers.

“It’s a structural change we believe puts us on a stronger path,” Hutton said.

The state wouldn’t begin collecting the tax revenue until the 2018 fiscal year, which will start in July 2017, because of the delayed implementation. That means the bill won’t help the state out of its current $290 million budget hole.

“There’s a lot of people who want that vote,” Hutton said. “They believe it’s at least time to have the conversation.”

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article74661562.html#storylink=cpy

Kansas business groups and the Governor are predicting that anyone who votes for the rollback will face obliteration by voters.

“The Governor does not believe taxing our small business job creators is the way to grow the Kansas economy. An important component in attracting and retaining businesses is a stable regulatory and tax policy environment,” Eileen Hawley, Brownback’s spokeswoman, said Friday.

Hutton’s proposal drew strong opposition from business groups upon its unveiling.

“The business community is not the reason we’re in the current situation that we’re in. They only represented 29 percent of the tax relief in 2012 and yet they’re the ones that are being singled out,” said Mike O’Neal, president of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and a former speaker of the Kansas House, who oversaw the 2012 tax reforms.

O’Neal said that 20 percent of respondents to a recent poll of business owners conducted by the chamber said that the tax changes helped them stay in business. “So a vote in favor of this is basically a vote to shut down 20 percent of those people, who but for the tax reforms in ’12 would have gone out of business,” he said.

Once again, Brownback has already been re-elected and doesn't have to face voters anymore.  Kansas state lawmakers however do.

Will they go down with Brownback, the most unpopular governor in the country?

We'll find out.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article74661562.html#storylink=cpy

The AirBnB Up There

Given the tech industry's absolutely dismal record on diversity, it's no surprise that business models based on the "sharing economy" come complete with all the internal biases of the people sharing them.  AirBnb is a perfect example, where people looking to stay a night or two are matched up with people who can rent out their homes for short term stays and owners can accept or reject people wanting to stay there.

Guess who has a problem getting a place to stay?

Quirtina Crittenden was struggling to get a room on Airbnb. She would send a request to a host. Wait. And then get declined. 

"The hosts would always come up with excuses like, 'oh, someone actually just booked it' or 'oh, some of my regulars are coming in town, and they're going to stay there,'" Crittenden said. "But I got suspicious when I would check back like days later and see that those dates were still available." 

In many ways Crittenden, 23, is the target audience for AirBnb. She's young, likes to travel, and has a good paying job as a business consultant in Chicago. So she started to wonder if it had something to do with her race. Crittenden is African American, and on AirBnb, both hosts and guests are required to have their names and photos prominently displayed on their profiles. 

Crittenden shared her frustrations on Twitter with the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack. She started hearing from lots of friends who had similar experiences. 

"The most common response I got was, 'oh yeah, that's why I don't use my photo.' Like duh. Like I was the late one," Crittenden said.

And of course it's not just her, racism is baked into the system because America is a racist nation, period.

Crittenden's story fits within a larger finding that racial discrimination on AirBnb is widespread. Michael Luca and his colleagues Benjamin Edelman and Dan Svirsky at Harvard Business School recently ran an experiment on AirBnb. They sent out 6,400 requests to real AirBnb hosts in five major American cities—Baltimore, Dallas, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Washington. 

All the requests were exactly the same except for the names they gave their make-believe travelers. Some had African American-sounding names like Jamal or Tanisha and others had stereotypically white-sounding names like Meredith or Todd. 

Luca and his colleagues found requests with African American sounding names were roughly 16 percent less likely to be accepted than their white-sounding counterparts. They found discrimination across the board: among cheap listings and expensive listings, in diverse neighborhoods and homogenous neighborhoods, and with novice hosts as well as experienced hosts. They also found that black hosts were also less likely to accept requests from guests with African American-sounding names than with white-sounding ones. 

Luca and his colleagues found hosts pay a price for their bias—when hosts rejected a black guest, they only found a replacement about a third of the time. In a separate study, Luca and his colleagues have found that guests discriminate, too, and black hosts earn less money on their properties on Airbnb.

So black hosts and black guests are discriminated against openly, and there's basically nothing that they can do.  There's a reason I don't use "sharing economy" services like Uber or AirBnb, because there's no protections there.  The fact that you can pick and choose who you let stay in your home is arguably the major selling point of being a host, as well as being able to pick a host as a guest.

People want to do that.  "I'm not staying in her home, it's probably dirty" or "I don't feel comfortable letting them stay here" happens a lot more than people will ever admit.

The larger problem is the tech world's idiotic insistence that the internet makes race invisible or irrelevant, when clearly the opposite is true.  And that's because the flawed business models are nearly all invented by white techbros who have never had to think a day in their lives about their privilege.

"I don't see color" doesn't work in reality, folks.  At best, these guys are clueless to the point of being unaware of the damage they are causing, at worst, they know damn well their business model allows people to "curate" who interacts with them for money in ways that would be legally actionable in traditional business arrangements, and gosh, maybe that's the point.

This has been repeated in too many ways for it to be coincidence, guys.

Last Call For Not Dodging A Bullet

Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley is actually pretty glad that the GOP told the Queen City to go to hell and picked Cleveland instead, considering what's coming with Trump and his "supporters" in July.

It was a sad day in May 2014 when Cincinnati leaders reluctantly withdrew their bid for the Republican National Convention after learning their facilities weren’t good enough. 

Hand-wringing soon followed over the outdated U.S. Bank Arena and lack of public transportation, which had cost the city a week-long event worth more than $200 million in direct spending. 

Now, two years later, some Cincinnatians are actually relieved the city lost the convention.

As Cleveland prepares to host the RNC in July amid threats of riots and concerns about delegate safety, many in Cincinnati’s political and business circles are quietly glad that they will not host what could be the most tumultuous convention in decades. 

“We’ve seen the violence at the Donald Trump rallies and I just think it’s probably best that it’s not coming here,” said Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley. 

Political conventions are usually tame events full of party pageantry and expensive dinners that bring an economic boom to host cities. 

Yet this year’s RNC could see a real floor fight between frontrunner Trump and those who want to deny him the nomination. If he doesn’t win it, Trump said in March that riots would follow.

It's beginning to sink in to Ohio voters how much of a disaster Trump is going to be, but it doesn't mean he can't still win the state, or the nation.  I don't think he will myself, but the other point is that the abstract "riots in Cleveland" because of the convention is going to affect real people, and it's not going to be Trump voters that are going to feel it when Cleveland PD breaks out the "urban pacification systems" on a hair trigger.

I understand why Mayor Cranley would be relived.  It doesn't mean Cuyahoga County isn't going to bleed.

Ed Man Walking

You guys didn't really think all these years that Ed Schultz really cared about anything other than his own wallet, did you?

Back when he hosted a prime-time talk show on MSNBC, Ed Schultz divided the world into heroes and villains. The heroes usually included Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The villains were most Republicans, and especially Donald J. Trump. When Trump obsessed over Obama’s birth certificate and academic credentials in 2011, Schultz branded him “a racist.” When Trump flirted with running for president the next year, Schultz ridiculed him. “Who has shown any interest in Donald Trump being the next president of the United States other than Donald Trump?” he fumed. “Mr. Trump, stop embarrassing yourself!” 

Another bad guy was Russian President Vladimir Putin. Schultz delighted in ripping conservatives for what he called their “love affair” with the Russian leader and his ability to make Obama look weak on the world stage. “They hate Obama so much they will even embrace the head of the KGB ... ‘Putie’ is their new hero!” Schultz said in one 2013 segment. In another, he smugly reminded conservatives about Putin’s “nasty human rights record” and the way his “reckless behavior” was “crippling” Russia. More generally, Schultz often framed GOP opposition to Obama as “anti-American” or “unpatriotic.”

That was all before last July, when MSNBC abruptly canceled The Ed Show after a six-year run and dumped the 62-year-old prairie populist from the network. By the time Schultz resurfaced this January, he had been reincarnated in a very different journalistic form: as a prime-time host, reporter and political analyst for RT America, the U.S. branch of the global cable network formerly known as Russia Today, funded by the Russian government. 

Gone is the praise for Obama and Clinton. Gone, too, are the mocking references to “Putie.” And gone are the judgments about others’ patriotism. Schultz’s 8 p.m. RT show, The News with Ed Schultz, now features Putin-friendly discussions about the failings of U.S. policy in the Middle East, America’s “bloated” defense budget and the futility of NATO strategy. 

Even Trump is getting a new look from Schultz. Speaking at various points on RT in recent months, Schultz has said that Trump “has tapped into an anger among working people,” is “talking about things the people care about,” and even, as Schultz recently declared, that Trump “would easily be able to function” as president. 

Those are strange words coming from an ex-MSNBC liberal better known for casting Trump as a racist lout. But RT is a strange place. It styles itself as an edgy CNN or BBC, delivering unvarnished news and commentary with a mostly hip, young cast. But just under the surface is a bought-and-paid-for propaganda vehicle trying to nudge viewers toward Russia’s side of the story at a time when Moscow has increasingly become an international pariah, estranged from the West over its military aggression in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere, its elites sanctioned and its economy struggling with isolation, decaying infrastructure and collapsing energy prices.

Yes, I know any article coming from Politico Magazine about the state of our political media is hysterical, but it doesn't mean that Schultz isn't the opportunistic, self-obsessed jackass that he always was, the same jackass who famously told liberal voters to stay home in 2010 because Obama had failed the country.

When somebody shows you who they really are, you should believe them.  And Ed Schultz going from happy liberal warrior to now taking Putin's paychecks is something you could have predicted six years ago.

After all, he still gets to trash Obama either way, and that's all that he waned to do in life.

How Bitter Will Bernie's End Be? Con't

The Sanders camp has finally moved to the acceptance stage of electoral grief and is now coming to the Clinton camp for negotiations for a unity ticket. Greg Sargent:

The signs are everywhere this morning: The Clinton and Sanders camps are now signaling how the Democratic primaries might wind down without too much noise, contentiousness, disruption, and anger. Could things still get very ugly? Yes. But at this point, that’s looking less likely than the alternative. 

In an interview with me, Rep. Keith Ellison, a top supporter of Bernie Sanders who is also the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, suggested the Clinton camp had some work to do in order to appeal to Sanders’s supporters. But he also carefully noted that Sanders would not do anything to imperil the party unity that will be required to defeat Donald Trump. 

“Young people have a set of priorities that make them want to support Bernie Sanders,” Ellison said. “If hypothetically she wins the nomination, in order to get people to support Bernie, she’s going to have to carry the banner that Bernie carried in an overt way. She’s going to have to make it clear to people who support Bernie that she gets where he’s coming from.” 

But Ellison added: “Every Bernie supporter knows that this Supreme Court issue is looming. We’ll have party unity….everybody has a responsibility to make sure there will never be a President Trump. Bernie has been around a long time….he’s not going to hand this country over to Donald Trump.”

Bernie is a lot of things, but he's not stupid.  You don't survive Congress without being able to negotiate and compromise at some level.  It's what a lot of the Tea Party stalwarts are finding out the hard way in this election cycle.  Perform or be replaced by somebody who will.

Meanwhile, Politico reports that Sanders is increasingly focused on seeking influence over the party agenda as a way to wind things down. He’s hoping for signs of genuine commitment to priorities like debt free college and a $15 minimum wage, and to reforms to the nomination process that might maximize participation among the sort of young, unaffiliated Sanders voters who were excluded from the New York primary.
On the Clinton side, the Post reports that a top Clinton backer, Senator Dianne Feinstein, is now calling for both camps to “work together, across our party, to have a platform that represents the views of Democrats.” And:

In 2008, after the divisive primary season concluded, Feinstein opened her Washington manse to host a secret unity meeting between Obama and Clinton. She said she would reprise that role for Clinton and Sanders. “I’d be very happy to offer that,” Feinstein said.

The other day, another top Clinton backer, Senator Sherrod Brown — who has great credibility among economic progressives — also offered in an interview with me to take part in any negotiating efforts to unite the camps. He even suggested that Clinton “should work with him on the platform,” and offered some areas of common ground they could reach on financial reform (an area of real disagreement), such as how to toughen up Dodd-Frank’s requirements for big banks’ plans to wind down in a crisis.

Clinton, for her part, isn't stupid either.  Sanders has definitely pushed her platform to the left on a number of issues.  The trick here is to be as gracious as possible and to share the credit (if at times to even give the credit to Sanders) in order to unify the left.

Remember, she's been through this before from Sanders's perspective.  And she ended up Secretary of State as a result.

We'll see if Bernie is that clever, but he seems to have at least surrounded himself with competent surrogates at the top end, Sherrod Brown and Keith Ellison are pretty sharp and are used to doing heavy lifting on negotiating with other large egos.

That this was the plan has been apparent for a good six to eight weeks now, with the primary essentially being over back on March 15, if not March 1. Reconciliation and unity was always going to happen, because this is what adults do in a system that requires compromise and moving forward.

Hatchets get buried, guys.

StupidiNews!

• In the second case of an American sentenced by North Korea to hard labor in as many months, a hotel businessman faces ten years for allegedly spying against the regime in Pyongyang.
• Colombia's highest court has legalized same-sex marriage, joining Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay as the fourth South American country recognizing the rights of couples to marry.
• Nearly 20 demonstrators were arrested outside a Donald Trump rally in California on Thursday night as hundreds gathered to protest Trump's stance in immigration.
• Comcast will acquire DreamWorks Animation in a nearly $4 billion deal, giving the entertainment and cable giant the largest competitor to Disney's animation empire.
• Google has officially brought its fiber service to Nashville, the fifth city in six years to get the company's low-cost high-speed service.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

I know that Republicans will fall in line and that Trump will get minimum 45% of the vote in November (in a two candidate fight), the question at this point is if he gets any more than that.

I'm thinking...no. Greg Sargent argues in fact that Trump may not even get 45%.

The basic case for nominating Ted Cruz rather than Donald Trump is that, while Cruz would arguably be the most right-wing nominee in modern American history, and would probably lose to Hillary Clinton, he would not unleash the sort of blood-dimmed tide of down-ticket destruction that Trump would. 

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll lends some support to this view: It finds that Trump’s numbers are unspeakably awfulamong all the voter groups that Republican strategists had hoped to improve the party’s performance among in 2016. On the other hand, Cruz’s numbers aren’t that great among these groups either — they are certainly worse than John Kasich’s are. 

First, Trump. Marvel at these findings: Trump is viewed unfavorably by 67 percent of Americans overall; 75 percent of women; 74 percent of young voters; 91 percent of African Americans; 81 percent of Latinos; 73 percent of college-educated whites; 66 percent of white women; and 72 percent of moderates.

People dislike Hillary Clinton, surely.  But they friggin' hate Donald Trump.  Ted Cruz fares little better.

Could Trump win somehow by running up a huge margin among white voters — particularly blue collar whites and white men? Well, Trump is viewed unfavorably by 59 percent of whites overall, and he is even viewed unfavorably by majorities of non-college whites (52 percent) and white men (51 percent). And Trump’s awful numbers among college educated whites and white women (detailed above) make the run-up-the-white-vote strategy look still more far fetched. 

Now, Cruz. The Texas Senator is viewed unfavorably by 53 percent of women; 50 percent of young voters; 51 percent of blacks; 46 percent of Latinos (versus 32 percent who view him favorably); 65 percent of college educated whites; 56 percent of white women; and 55 percent of moderates. All of that is significantly better than Trump. But he’s underwater with all these groups, and Cruz’s struggles among college educated whites and women (particularly white women) lend some credence to the Democratic assessment that Cruz’s conservatism on social issues could prove crippling among key swing voter groups.

So no matter what, Hillary's 40-ish favorable numbers may be enough, compared to Cruz's worse and Trumps far more awful ones.

Drug Paraphernalia

Missouri Dem Sen. Claire McCaskill opened up a can of whoopass on executives and investors of Valeant Pharmaceuticals before a Senate hearing on Wednesday, and it was glorious.

The Senate Special Committee on Aging is one of two U.S. congressional panels investigating sky-rocketing price increases of certain decades-old drugs acquired by companies including Valeant and Turing Pharmaceuticals, a company founded by Martin Shkreli.

Ackman, a major Valeant shareholder, appeared Wednesday alongside the company's outgoing Chief Executive Michael Pearson and Howard Schiller, a board member and former chief financial officer.

Ackman joined the board last month as Valeant faced mounting scrutiny by members of Congress, prosecutors and regulators over its drug pricing, business practices and accounting - issues that have caused its share price to plummet almost 90 percent since August.

Valeant has about $30 billion of debt and has been negotiating with creditors, some of whom issued notices of default after it missed a deadline for the filing of its financial results.

Ackman said Wednesday that one of his top priorities is to protect the company from bankruptcy. Later, in response to a question from Reuters, he expressed confidence that the company will recover.

“There is not going to be any bankruptcy of Valeant,” he said. “We were in a death spiral, and we have taken steps to deal with the banks. We are going to file our 10K on time. We brought in a new CEO.”

Pearson, Ackman and Schiller all told lawmakers on Wednesday they regretted Valeant's pricing decisions.

"The company was too aggressive and I, as its leader, was too aggressive in pursuing price increases on certain drugs," he said.

But many lawmakers on the panel appeared skeptical. They questioned Valeant's business model of investing little in research and development, and the company's practice of acquiring decades-old drugs and raising the prices.

Senator Claire McCaskill, the panel's top Democrat, angrily asked each of the panelists at one point if they could recall one drug that Valeant didn't raise the price on.

"Not in the United States," Pearson responded, while Schiller was only able to come up with the name of one drug Valeant acquired after its purchase of Salix.

"That is not social good, that is social bad," McCaskill said.

Even worse, Valeant disclosed that current CEO Michael Papa will be taking a measly $1.5 million a year base salary...and stock options that could be worth tens, if not hundreds of millions.

On Wednesday evening Valeant disclosed Papa’s employment agreement. A first look at the compensation terms indicate the embattled company plans to continue offering stock awards that reward a focus on aggressively increasing the company’s share price.

Documents Valeant filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicate Papa could make nearly $100 million if its stock can return to an October 2015 level of $150 a share. If Valeant’s share price hits $270, Papa will make well over $500 million in stock awards, along with cash bonus awards. The stock closed at $34.92 Wednesday.

One stipulation in the agreement, a lockup requiring Papa to own shares for a number of years, wties his rewards to sustainable growth, in theory. But Papa’s stock incentives, called performance share units, are similar to the arrangements that turned Pearson into a paper billionaire as Valeant became a stock market darling.

So yes, Mr. Papa would be a moron to pass up hundreds of millions by not jacking up prices once again on life saving drugs, because his job is to do exactly that.

That's how the game is played.

Frankly, Stein's Monster

Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein has been relatively quiet this campaign (or completely ignored, your choice) but she's definitely making some noise with this offer to Bernie Sanders.

While overly presumptive Republican presidential candidates are rushing to announce potential vice presidential running mates, one presidential candidate is openly courting the idea of a bipartisan unity ticket.

Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, wrote an open letter to Bernie Sanders, asking the Independent Vermont senator to consider ditching his attempt to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination for a real “revolution for people, planet and peace” alongside Stein. 

Stein, who has long called on Sanders to join forces with her in the interest of their “shared goals,” wrote to Sanders over the weekend: “I invite you to join me in pushing the boundaries of that system to a place where revolution can truly take root.” 

“You’ve proven that in today’s rapidly changing America, a populist progressive agenda covered by the media and the televised debates can catch on like wildfire and shake the foundations of a political establishment that seemed invulnerable just a few short months ago,” Stein wrote to Sanders, asking if “in this wildly unpredictable election where the old rules are giving way one by one, can we think outside the box and find new and unexpected ways to synergize beyond obsolete partisan divides?”

I can't imagine Bernie's ego allowing him to consider being Jill Stein's running mate, but if he did, you could pretty much start printing out the inaugural ball invitations for President Trump the second he actually took her up on the offer.

You thought Ralph Nader was bad for the country?  A Stein/Sanders Green Party ticket would absolutely hand the White House over to the GOP and would be an unmitigated disaster.

I pray that Bernie isn't this stupid.  Signs are very, very clear that he's ignoring Stein overtures here, and that he should continue to do so.

StupidiNews!

• Sen. Bernie Sanders says he will lay off hundreds of campaign staffers and restructure his campaign towards states that haven't had primaries yet.
• Sen. Ted Cruz is trying to jumpstart his Republican campaign for president by naming former rival Carly Fiorina as his running mate should he win the nomination.
• A second North Korean missile test has failed in two weeks as South Korea's military is reporting the test missile crashed seconds after takeoff.
• Puerto Rico is now considering defaulting on its loan payments as Republicans in Congress continue to block any efforts to help it restructure its debt.
• The House has unanimously passed a bill requiring a warrant for email and heads to the Senate where it faces a far more uncertain future.