Smacking Northern Kentucky Around

If there were any doubt left as to how bad the opioid epidemic is here in the NKY, the region's top football prep school is resorting to drug testing all students.

According to USA Today affiliate Cincinnati, Covington Catholic High School officially announced on Wednesday (May 18) their plans to implement the procedure for the 2016-2017 school year. The method is connected to Northern Kentucky’s battle with drug overdoses, mostly due to heroin usage. In 2015, it was reported 1,087 residents statewide died from drug overdoses, with 30 percent of the deaths stemming from heroin use. The Office of Drug Control Policy adds Senate Bill 192 (known as the Heroin Bill) was also passed in the same year, giving harsher penalties to dealers and better treatments for addicts.

Principal Bob Rowe says he wants the all-male student body to feel the pressure of saying no to drugs. While the school hasn’t had a rampant use of opioids, they’ve faced issues with drugs in the past. “This program, with technical and financial support from St. Elizabeth Healthcare, Medicount Management, and the Drug Free Clubs of America (DFCA), is intended to provide our young men with an additional tool for deterrence, as well as tools to address usage with appropriate treatment if/when it occurs,” the letter to parents read. “We try to change the culture to where they say I can’t do that, or I have no interest in that, it’s going to take me down the wrong road,” Rowe added.

The random testing will begin when the new school year kicks off on Aug. 10. Positive tests will be kept confidential at first. If a second positive test permits, the student will be axed from extracurricular activities. A third offense will likely lead to expulsion. Counseling and assistance to students will also be provided by the school.

If parents don’t want their children to be tested, they will not be allowed to register as “CovCath” students. “Why not educate our young men so they lead and have a safe lifestyle for the rest of their lives,” Rowe said.

Now keep in mind that CovCath is the big private prep high school around here, where the money as old as the rolling bluegrass hills send their kids so that they don't have be bothered by the unwashed public school masses.  It's all about sports here, particularly football, and avoiding those people.

For them to announce they are subjecting everyone to random drug tests is something of a major earthquake.  The kids who can afford CovCath don't exactly expect to be treated like plebes they expect to have people look the other way.

I find this very, very funny.  It's not heroin they are going to catch these kids for using, trust me.

School Daze, Con't.

A generation of exurban white flight, combined with rapid gentrification of urban neighborhoods, has led to the de facto segregation of America's public schools once again, undoing much of the progress made since I went to school 20 years ago. A new report finds almost two-thirds of poor public schools are racially segregated, and the situation is rapidly getting worse.

A report released this week by the Government Accountability Office illuminated the extent to which school systems across the US are, once again, becoming more segregated. The report found that more than 60% of schools with high levels of poor students were racially segregated, which the report defined as being at least 75% black or Latino.

The study reviewed federal data from 2001 to 2014 and found 16% of all US schools were both racially segregated and poor, increasing from about 7,000 schools in 2001 to 15,089 by 2013 to 2014. Observers and advocates for school desegregation said the report should be a “huge warning sign” that needs to be addressed. 

“There are many who believe in this country that we are operating on an even playing field,” said Jadine Johnson, staff attorney at the Massachusetts-based Opportunity to Learn Campaign. 

“I think what this report revealed … is that the legacies of slavery in this country, the legacies of Jim Crow, are alive and active,” she said. “That did not go away with Brown v Board of Education.” 

Compared to other schools, the GAO report found, segregated schools offered fewer college prep, science, and math classes to take, and a disproportionate number of students were either held back in ninth grade, suspended, or expelled.

So the number of poor, segregated schools in the US has doubled in 13 years.  Certainly the Bush years (and the resulting Great Recession) has made things worse, but the Obama administration's awful Race to the Top program and its dependence on charter schools shares much of the blame for refusing to correct the problem (thanks again, Arne Duncan.)

Here's the worse news: it's going to Democrats winning Congress back in order to fix it.

Michigan congressman John Conyers was among several lawmakers who requested the report, which was released on the 62nd anniversary of Brown v Board of Education. Conyers and Virginia congressman Bobby Scott are pushing legislation that would amend Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and restore the rights of parents to file lawsuits against segregated school districts under claims of disparate impacts, which are based on ascertaining the discriminatory effect of a policy rather than ascertaining a discriminatory intent.

“This GAO report confirms what has long been feared and proves that current barriers against educational equality are eerily similar to those fought during the civil rights movement,” Conyers said in a statement. “There simply can be no excuse for allowing educational apartheid in the 21st century.” 

Johnson said the loss of parents’ ability to file disparate impact cases was a “huge blow to the civil rights community”. Johnson has assisted in filing several Title VI complaints in recent years with the federal department of education – complaints that could have been filed in federal court under Conyers’ proposal. 

“Us having that right could have potentially … slowed down the school closures crisis that’s happening today,” she said.

And yet educational apartheid is the stated political platform of the GOP at the federal level and in dozens of state GOP platforms as well.  "We can't afford it!" is all we hear from the Republican party, who has decided that those people don't need or deserve education as a right, it's something we have to earn.  States setting up us vs them education funding plans pitting rich exurban white school districts against large, poor black and Latino urban districts is a battle that the white kids win every time, and the rest of the black and Latino kids end up several grade levels behind even in the same district.

Making education a civil right again is the only way to fix this, and you will never have that happen as long as the GOP is in charge of making laws.

Paul Ryan Starring In The Replacements

It's been several months since House Republicans tried to con America with the ol' "replacement plan for Obamacare" scam, mainly because the GOP base has finally figured out that the House GOP really doesn't have an actual plan to replace Obamacare.

But hey, since this is the House GOP and the GOP base here and it's an election year, it's time to try the Obamacare replacement scam again in order to stave off the effects of Trumpism on those down ballot races.  Republicans aren't too bright after all.

Two Republican lawmakers on Thursday introduced an alternative to ObamaCare as the House develops its own healthcare plan.

The bill from Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) does not fully repeal ObamaCare, a notable departure from the GOP’s long-stated goal.

But it would eliminate many central aspects of the Affordable Care Act, including the mandates for individuals to have coverage and for employers to provide it, as well as requirements for what an insurance plan must cover.

The core of the plan is a $2,500 tax credit that any citizen would be eligible for and use to purchase health insurance. The lawmakers say this gives flexibility to people, whether they get employer-based insurance or not, to more directly control their healthcare spending, for example by using a health savings account.

Sessions and Cassidy are putting forward their plan as a task force set up by Speaker Paul Ryan(R-Wis.) is nearing the release of its own plan to fully repeal ObamaCare and replace it with an alternative.

Sessions, the chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, said in an interview that his plan is not meant to compete with that effort.

“Everybody's submitting their ideas, so it's very complimentary,” he said.

The Ryan-backed task force, though, will not be releasing a bill; it will instead be a general outline of ideas.

“The thing that makes us different is we made a bill out of it, and that's the hard part,” Sessions said. “It's really easy to have ideas. It's really hard to put it in a bill that works.”

Well, unless you think a $2,500 tax credit is going to help people who don't pay a lot of federal taxes to begin with buy health insurance they will no longer be able to afford, the bill doesn't work, and millions (if not tens of millions) will lose their insurance under the plan.   The rest of us get to toss our money into spend-it-or-lose-it Health Savings Accounts (which Wall Street loves.)

So of course this is a bad idea, Republicans came up with it.  They hope it will be able to stanch the Trump rage of "throw them all out" in November.

Somehow I don't think it'll be enough.

Last Call For Where The Hate Come Sweeping Down The Plain

Oklahoma Republicans have been really busy this week, and that really shouldn't be considered a good thing most of the time. First of all, they've decided that women shouldn't be getting those abortion things anymore, and they'll send doctors to jail if they perform them.

Oklahoma lawmakers have passed a bill that makes performing an abortion a felony. 

NPR's Jennifer Ludden told our Newscast unit that the bill is the first of its kind, and an pro-abortion rights group plans to sue if the governor signs the bill into law. Gov. Mary Fallin has not yet indicated what she plans to do. Here's more from Jennifer:

"Under the bill, doctors who perform an abortion could face three years in prison, and lose their medical license. There are no exceptions for rape or incest — only the mother's life. Oklahoma lawmakers passed the measure with no debate. The only doctor in the Senate — a Republican — voted no, calling it 'insane.' " 

That doctor, Sen. Ervin Yen, predicted it would be "declared null and void" should it be signed into law, The Oklahoman reported. 

As Jennifer reported, "Abortion rights groups say the bill is unconstitutional, a direct violation of Roe v. Wade," the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. 

According to The Associated Press, State Sen. Nathan Dahm, one of the bill's authors, is hoping the law will be a step toward overturning Roe v. Wade. 

"Since I believe life begins at conception, it should be protected, and I believe it's a core function of state government to defend that life from the beginning of conception," Dahm told the wire service.

That was yesterday.

But today, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin actually ended up vetoing the bill because it was wildly unconstitutional., but not after these same idiots decided that anyone even tangentially involved with President Obama's advisory letter on treating transgender kids as human beings needs to be removed from office.

Oklahoma's Republican-dominated legislature has filed a measure calling for President Barack Obama's impeachment over his administration's recommendations on accommodating transgender students, saying he overstepped his constitutional authority. 

Lawmakers in the socially conservative state are also expected to take up a measure as early as Friday that would allow students to claim a religious right to have separate but equal bathrooms and changing facilities to segregate them from transgender students. 

The bill introduced on Thursday night could force schools into costly construction, which would be difficult for them to complete after lawmakers significantly cut education funding to plug a $1.3 billion state budget shortfall.

The impeachment resolution also introduced on Thursday night calls on the Oklahoma members of the U.S. House of Representatives to file articles of impeachment against Obama, the U.S. attorney general, the U.S. secretary of education and others over the letter.

I'm not sure where the "costly construction" nonsense is coming from, considering how many schools are already falling apart thanks to austerity budgets across the country.   But it seems to me that Oklahoma Republicans really need to calm down before they all have strokes or something.

Relax, the guy's going to be gone in January.

Of course, they probably won't like his replacement.

Paying The Price So Bernie Plays Nice

With Hillary Clinton basically guaranteed to win the Democratic nomination for president at this point, the DNC is now shifting to dealing with Bernie Sanders in the approaching convention endgame in Philly, now just two months out.

Allies of both Clinton and Sanders have urged Democratic leaders to meet some of Sanders’s more mundane demands for greater inclusion at the Philadelphia convention. Their decision to do so is expected to be finalized by the end of the week, according to two people familiar with the discussions. But growing mistrust between Sanders supporters and party leaders have threatened to undermine that effort.

Even with the committee assignments, Sanders plans an aggressive effort to extract platform concessions on key policies that could prompt divisive battles at a moment when front-runner Hillary Clinton will be trying to unify the party. Among other issues, he plans to push for a $15 national minimum wage and argue that the party needs a more balanced position regarding Israel and Palestinians, according to a Sanders campaign aide who requested anonymity to speak candidly. 

Much like their view that the economy has been “rigged” to benefit the wealthy more than the middle and working classes, Sanders supporters have become increasingly convinced that national Democrats have stacked the political deck with rules that have made it difficult for Sanders to win enough delegates to threaten Clinton’s nomination. 

Party leaders, meanwhile, have grown more frustrated with Sanders, who they say has unfairly fueled that perception.

“I don’t think they’ve handled it very well and I think they’ve lost the moral high ground on this,” said Ken Martin, chairman of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer Labor Party. “It’s very clear now that the longer they stay in this race the more damage they’re doing.”

Neither side is happy, and I understand that Sanders was in it to win it.  But he's not going to win it, so he needs to pack it in,  The notion that 95% of Clinton's superdelegates are going to go to the Sanders camp at this point is insanity, and anyone who believes otherwise is delusional.

So yes, the story now becomes what Bernie's price will be to endorse Hillary, tie up the loose ends, and go forward to crush Trump.  That has been the known outcome since Super Tuesday back in March, and the rest has been posturing.

Time to face reality,

The Return Of The Slouchy Beast

It's starting to look a lot like eighty years ago in Europe and the US, as NY Times columnist Sylvie Kauffmann grimly points out the parallels between 2016 and 1936 as Austrians go to the polls this weekend with a far-right candidate leading for president.

Far-right populist movements have joined governing coalitions in Finland and Norway. They influence the political agenda in Denmark and the Netherlands. In Germany, which seemed immune from that disease, the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany recently scored 12 percent to 24 percent of the vote in three state elections. In Croatia, the minister of culture is trying to rehabilitate the fascist ideas of the Ustashe. 

Those developments have generally been seen as negative but marginal — the center was still holding. Then the “illiberal wave” swept Central Europe, following the model of the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. Poland and Slovakia are now also ruled by populist, anti-immigration, euroskeptic parties. The election of a far-right Austrian president would add a new dimension, extending the phenomenon beyond the post-Communist space where populist governments could be seen as a transitional stage for young democracies. Austria is not new Europe. It is old Europe. 

We struggle to explain the rise of the far right in its various guises. Immigration is important, but the dynamics predated the refugee crisis. The euro crisis has not helped. High unemployment is crucial in France and Austria, but not an issue in Britain. Chaos in the Arab world, following the fiasco of the American-led invasion of Iraq, fuels new Middle East wars and terrorist attacks in Europe, adding to feelings of insecurity. Globalization, the loss of middle-class jobs, the rise of inequality and anxiety over the European social model have left immense frustration. Everywhere, anger toward ruling elites and mainstream institutions is patent. 

Sound familiar? Yes, this is a trans-Atlantic phenomenon. Here and there, surfing on this anger, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson or Marine Le Pen utter statements that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. By accepting daily verbal assaults on immigrants (“They bring disease”), the European Union (“like Hitler,” it wants to impose one authority over Europe), Islam (not part of Europe; Muslims should not be allowed into the United States), torture (bring it back), we are legitimizing a public discourse that may, one day, translate into political decisions. 

Like most European center-right or center-left leaders, President Obama understands this. On the day after the first round of Austria’s election, he warned in a speech in Hanover, Germany, against “the creeping emergence of the kind of politics that the European project was founded to reject: an us-versus-them mentality that tries to blame our problems on the other.” 

“Our progress,” he pointed out, “is not inevitable.”

And yet, we seem to be losing to precisely that mindset once again.  We've had a relatively decent period of peace in the Western World at least, the Middle East and North Africa have not been anywhere close to "peaceful" and the blowback to that is absolutely fueling this movement here.

There are some real problems ahead for liberalism in general, and it will get far worse before it gets better.

StupidiNews!

• San Francisco's chief of police has resigned after a fatal police shooting on Thursday, the city has seen several unarmed people of color killed by SFPD officers in 2016.
• As Americans head for the pool for summer swimming, the CDC wants to remind you that 80% of public pools in 2013 had at least one violation, and one in six had to be closed. 
• Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon has resigned, saying that the country's government has been taken over by "extremist and dangerous elements".
• Egyptian military authorities say they have located some debris from EgyptAir flight 804, which vanished from contact early Thursday.
• Ride-sharing service Uber says it will begin testing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, but experts say fully automated driverless rides may not be available until at least 2030.

Last Call For GOP Animal Farm

The Party Of Trump won't even follow their own rules if it means preventing anyone from helping those people even for a moment.

The House floor devolved into chaos and shouting on Thursday as a measure to ensure protections for members of the LGBT community narrowly failed to pass, after Republican leaders urged their members to change their votes.

Initially, it appeared Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney's (D-N.Y.) amendment had passed, as 217 "yes" votes piled up over 206 "no" votes when the clock ran out. The measure needed 213 votes to pass.

But it eventually failed, 212-213, after a number of Republican lawmakers changed their votes from "yes" to "no" after the clock had expired.

GOP leaders held the vote open as they pressured members to change sides. Infuriating Democrats, they let lawmakers switch their votes without walking to the well at the front of the chamber.

"Shame! Shame! Shame!" Democrats chanted as they watched the vote tally go from passage of Maloney's amendment to narrow failure.

Twenty-nine Republicans voted for Maloney's amendment to a spending bill for the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects, along with all Democrats in the final roll call.

"This is one of the ugliest episodes I've experienced in my three-plus years as a member of this House," Maloney, who is openly gay, said while offering his amendment.

According to the office of House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), at least seven Republicans changed their votes, including Reps. Jeff Denham (Calif.), Darrell Issa (Calif.), Bruce Poliquin (Maine), David Valadao (Calif.), Greg Walden (Ore.), Mimi Walters (Calif.) and David Young (Iowa).

Denham, Valadao, Poliquin and Young are among the most vulnerable Republicans up for reelection this year. Walden, meanwhile, chairs the House GOP campaign arm.

So now the House GOP has inserted a poison pill that would override President Obama's executive order banning LGBTQ discrimination in federal defense contracts, meaning that contracts could go to companies that openly discriminate against gay and lesbians.

Awesome.

So what does the House GOP leadership have to say?

When asked about the vote-switching, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) denied knowing whether his leadership team pressured Republicans.

"I don't know the answer. I don't even know,” Ryan told reporters.

He defended the provision in the defense bill.

"This is federalism; the states should do this. The federal government shouldn't stick its nose in its business,” he said.

Democrats accused Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of leading the Republican operation to flip votes.

The federal government has no business regulating federal defense contracts?

These people are awful.

The Jackasses Next Door

The problem with the tech industry's blinding lack of diversity is there's nobody around to tell these developers and programmers and disrupty types "Hey, maybe people might use our new app for something pretty awful and racist."

One message on the web forum asked neighbors to be on the lookout for “two young African Americans, slim, baggy pants, early 20s.” Another warned of a “light skinned black female” walking her dog and talking on her cellphone. 

“I don’t recognize her,” the post read. “Has anyone described any suspect of crime like her?” 

These postings appeared on the Oakland forums of Nextdoor.com, a website intended to be a virtual neighborhood hangout for the tens of thousands of neighborhoods and hundreds of local police departments that use it to communicate with residents. The site’s chief executive and co-founder, Nirav Tolia, describes it as a place to find a babysitter, a plumber or a missing cat, and to have a “kind of ‘Leave It to Beaver’ chatter.” 

But people also use it to report suspected crimes. And as Nextdoor has grown, users have complained that it has become a magnet for racial profiling, leading African-American and Latino residents to be seen as suspects in their own neighborhood.

Sigh.

The site plans to require users who wish to alert neighbors of suspicious activities or people to fill out a form with a description of clothing or some other identifying markers beyond race. In this way, the company says, it will prevent users from relying on race alone in their descriptions, reducing the likelihood that innocent neighbors are targeted unfairly. 

The site already requires people to register using their real names and verifies their home addresses before approving their profiles, a policy that was meant in part to prevent the antagonistic posts that are common on social media. 

“This isn’t just our issue, this is a broad societal issue that was playing out on Nextdoor,” Mr. Tolia said. 

He added that “really egregious” racially charged posts represent a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of posts that are up each day and are usually flagged by other users. “But this is a bigger issue than one guy sniping at his neighbor,” he said. 

The complaints about Nextdoor have come from across the country, but have been loudest here in Oakland, where nearly a third of all households use the platform, according to the company. The city is 28 percent black, 26 percent white, 25 percent Latino and 17 percent Asian. 

“What I saw was just shocking to me,” Monica Bien, who signed up for Nextdoor after moving to Oakland in 2014, said of the comments on the site.

Yeah, see, the problem is not how the people in the post are being described, the problem is that people are automatically assuming that black or brown men in their neighborhood must be suspicious.

God I despise the tech world at times.

OK, Take The Money And Run

Oklahoma Republicans are about to test out what hurts them most; taking Obamacare's Medicaid expansion or having to cut services or raise taxes to make up a $1.3 billion budget gap. And with oil money down the drain, even Obama-hating Republicans are willing to take the money and run.

Despite furious opposition by conservative groups, Republican Gov.Mary Fallin and some GOP legislative leaders are pushing the plan, and support appears to be growing in the overwhelmingly Republican Legislature. Details have not been ironed out but the proposal is based on an Indiana program that received federal approval. 

Obama called on states to expand their Medicaid insurance for low-income residents as part of his 2014 health overhaul designed to shrink the population of uninsured Americans. Most Democratic-led states did so, along with a handful of GOP states. 

But in Oklahoma, even with 20 percent of its population on Medicaid, it's been no way, no how. Until now. 

A bust in the oil patch has decimated state revenues, compounded by years of income tax cuts and growing corporate subsidies intended to make the state more business-friendly.
Oklahoma's Medicaid agency has warned doctors and other health care providers of cuts of up to 25 percent in what the state pays under Medicaid. 

Oh, and let's not forget that this is the morally correct thing to do here, as well as Oklahoma legislators not really having much of a choice.

"We are nearing a colossal collapse of our health care system in Oklahoma," warned Craig Jones, the president of the Oklahoma Hospital Association, which represents more than 135 hospitals and health care systems in the state. "We have doctors turning away patients. We have people with mental illnesses who are going without treatment. Hospitals are closing, and this is only going to get worse this summer if the Legislature does not act immediately to turn this around." 

In the poverty-wracked southeastern corner of the state, where 96 percent of babies in the McCurtain Memorial Hospital are born to Medicaid patients, most health care would end, said hospital CEO Jahni Tapley. 

"A 25 percent cut to Medicaid would not put my hospital in jeopardy, because we are already in jeopardy," Tapley said. "A 25 percent cut would shutter our doors for good, leaving 33,000 people without access to health care."

Closing hospitals and nursing homes because you're too prideful to take money from the black president's plan that's designed to give you money kind of makes for really good attack ads against you, just saying.

Have to ask how many people suffered in the meantime.

StupidiNews!

• An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo has vanished after entering Egyptian airspace at 37,000 feet, 66 people were aboard the late night flight that apparently crashed into the Mediterranean.
• For the first time, 90% of Americans are covered by health insurance as Obamacare regulations continue to reduce the number of uninsured Americans.
• The trial for the 2012 mass shooting rampage that killed 12 in Aurora, Colorado had its closing arguments Wednesday, jury deliberations will begin today.
• Federal Reserve policy makers are indicating an interest rate hike in June if the economy continues to pick up steam, but much depends on Britain's June referendum to stay in the EU.
• Game maker Nintendo looks to be getting into the restaurant business, following software maker Square Enix into video game theme eateries in Japan.

Last Call For Going Into Overtime

The Obama administration is making a huge move that will give millions of salaried US workers overtime pay they haven't been getting for years.

Under a new rule announced by the White House Tuesday, anybody making a salary of less than $47,476 ($913 a week) will automatically qualify for overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a week. 

That's roughly double the $23,660 threshold (or $455 a week) that's currently in place.
The change -- which has been criticized as too drastic by many employers -- will go into effect on Dec. 1, 2016. It is intended to expand access to overtime pay for otherwise low-salaried workers who log long hours but have been treated as exempt from overtime because they perform some managerial duties. 

Vice President Joe Biden characterized the changes as "restoring and expanding access to the middle class." 

The percent of salaried workers automatically eligible for overtime has fallen to 7% from 62% in 1975. Under the new threshold, 35% of salaried workers will become automatically eligible, according to Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. 

The new threshold will be updated every three years to make sure it stays at the 40th percentile of full-time salaries in the lowest income region of the country. Based on wage growth projections, that means it could rise to $51,000 by 2020.

And it could add $12 billion a year to paychecks.  This is serious stuff folks.  This is going to make a big difference in the lives of retail managers, IT workers, entry level office folks, and more.  Going from 7% of salaried workers getting OT to 35% is a massive win for the working class, and the salary level for OT will keep place with inflation too.

I fully expect this to be challenged in court, and of course the second a Republican president gets into office you can kiss overtime pay goodbye.

But we'll see.  At the very least, employers won't be forcing salaried workers to put in 60-70 hours a week with no OT anymore.  Not unless they are making a significant wage to start with.

Clowns To The Left Of Them, Jokers To The Right, Here They Are

Stuck in the middle with Trump.

As Democrats portray Donald Trump as a dangerous leader for his party, most of them barely acknowledge he could be president. But some centrist Democrats say they’re ready and willing to work with the business mogul should he defeat their party’s nominee. 

“The people will have a chance to vote. If Donald Trump is elected president there will be a great opportunity to sit down and have a conversation about what that agenda looks like,” explained Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who has long backed Hillary Clinton. “If he’s president, we’re going to have disagreement. But we’d better all figure out how to come up with an agenda for the American people.”

Getting ready for a potential Trump presidency in their home states may just be good politics for moderate senators such as Heitkamp, Jon Tester of Montana and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. They’ll be top targets for Republicans in 2018, a midterm year that could favor the GOP if recent trends of lower turnouts in nonpresidential elections continue. And it’s a good bet that they’ll need Trump voters to keep their jobs. 

Trump should easily win North Dakota and neighboring Montana this fall if past is prologue: Montana went to Bill Clinton in 1992, while North Dakota hasn’t gone Democratic since 1964. He’ll also certainly win West Virginia and be favored to win Missouri as well: Both states have been in the GOP column since 2000. 

For Democrats in those states, ignoring Trump’s political success, and by extension his supporters, would be a risky move. So some Democrats say they can see some opportunities for working together during a hypothetical Trump presidency, given that the Republican front-runner has based his campaign on being a deal maker — unlike any other prominent GOP candidate this cycle.

Sure, because running away from a Democratic president worked so well in 2010 and 2014, especially if turnout is an abysmal 36% like the last midterm election.

Look, I understand the impulse to appease Trump voters if you're in friggin' West Virginia and whatnot, but odds are very, very good that Democrats are going to lose these seats, plus Joe Donelly's seat in Indiana, giving the GOP five pickups in 2018.

So unless Democrats out in those states get super-motivated, they are going to get smashed again, and acting like Trump's your buddy is only going to get you a bigger loss.

Ask Kentucky Senator Alison Lundergan Grimes and Governor Jack Conway how well it works to run screaming from a Democratic president.

On the other hand, if Trump does actually win, what Joe Manchin does in 2018 will be the least of our problems as Democrats.

A Photo Finish In This Kentucky Horse Race

Hillary Clinton is claiming victory here in Kentucky as the last few thousand votes come in from the mountain counties, but the margin of victory looks to be very, very close.



The O'Malley vote, the uncommitted vote, even the bonkers vote for Rocky De La Fuente (we do love our colorful long shot candidates here in the Bluegrass State) all could have given Sanders the win, and it didn't.  The closed primary and friendly political establishment here favored Clinton, the angry coal country vote and 90% white demographics of the state favored Sanders, and in the end it was a narrow win for Clinton.

The difference was Jefferson County, Clinton won Louisville 64k to Sanders' 45k, and that margin stood up all night. She also won Lexington's Fayette County 20k to 17k, and again that margin held. What few black voters in the state live in those two counties, and they came out big for Clinton.

Interestingly enough, Clinton also did well here in the NKY, taking Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties, picking up a total of about 750 votes across all three over Sanders.  That means my vote counted, the first Kentucky primary I can honestly say where it did.

Sanders did well in both the east and west, particularly in Pike County (that big pointy county furthest to the east in KY). He won there by 2,400, more than doubling Clinton's total there, but there were also a whopping 1,400 uncommitted voters there as the real draw was the race for State Senator in Pike and surrounding counties.

State Senate minority leader Ray Jones was able to keep his seat against primary challenger Glenn Hammond as they argued about how much each hated Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the heart of Pikeville coal country.  Jones got 6,400 votes to Hammond's 2,900, well more than the Clinton/Sanders race. It means a hell of a lot of people turned out to vote for the local race, and could have cared less about which Dem ran for President...probably because they were going to vote for Trump anyhow.

Anyway, this win is a definite problem for Clinton.  She should be able to put Sanders away at this point and she can't.  She won here 8 years ago by 36 points over Obama.  Last night she won by .3%. I still expect Trump to win here by 15 points, if not 20 in November, so it's not like we're a good example of how Democrats think here.

But she can end this in New Jersey and California next month. The question that remains now is how much damage Bernie Sanders will do before he concedes the race.

StupidiNews!

• The vote count in Kentucky remains too close to call this morning in the Democratic primary, Clinton has a slim lead, but Bernie Sanders handily won Oregon's primary.
• South Carolina Republicans have passed legislation outlawing abortions after 19 weeks, GOP Governor Nikki Haley has indicated she will sign the bill.
• Donald Trump says if elected president, he would all but completely dismantle the 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation that strengthened regulation of Wall Street.
• Mitsubishi Motors President Tetsuro Aikawa will resign in the wake of the automaker's fuel economy reporting scandal, rival Nissan will purchase a controlling stake in the company.
• A new study finds psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound in some mushrooms, may be effective in treating depression.