Last Call For Bevin Shuts The Door

And the number of abortion clinics in Kentucky is now down to one.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals granted on Wednesday the Bevin administration’s request to temporarily close a Lexington abortion clinic, reversing an earlier Fayette Circuit Court ruling. 

The appellate court said EMW Women’s Clinic on Burt Road is “temporarily enjoined from operating an abortion facility” until it receives a license from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services or until a final judgment is rendered in this case, whichever comes first. 

The appellate court said it agreed with Bevin’s argument “that the circuit court’s findings and conclusions are clearly erroneous.” 

“As the cabinet points out, this case is not about a woman’s right to an abortion,” the court said in its 24-page order. “The cabinet is not seeking to prevent women from obtaining abortions. It is seeking, however, to enforce its right to regulate the manner in which abortions are performed in this commonwealth.” 

In March, Fayette Circuit Judge Ernesto Scorsone denied the state’s request for a temporary injunction to close the clinic. 

The state claimed the lower court misinterpreted and misapplied relevant state laws and relied on unwarranted assumptions and facts that were not in the court record. 

Scorsone said the state cabinet failed to present adequate evidence during a hearing that it eventually would prevail in the lawsuit or that allowing the clinic to remain open as the lawsuit proceeds would cause “irreparable injury.” 

Scorsone also said closing the clinic would be against the public interest because it is the only physician’s office that routinely provides abortion services in the eastern half of Kentucky. 

The state sued the clinic in early March, alleging that it lacked a required state license. The clinic stopped performing abortions March 9 pending a judge’s ruling, but said it would resume offering the procedure after Scorsone’s ruling. 

The state has said the clinic performed more than 400 abortions in 2015.

So at this point, there's a very good chance that between this closing and the Planned Parenthood clinics in Cincinnati still in limbo, that the part of the country I live in may not have an abortion provider within 100 miles, thanks to Republican TRAP laws.

But it's not about "seeking to prevent women from obtaining abortions".  No, it's never about that.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article83964517.html#storylink=cpy

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Equality

Just another reminder that the next time you hear Republicans mention anything about how "divisive identity politics" are ruining the nation, mention to them that they have no problem trying to pit America's Muslims against America's LGBT population (not to mention the fact that LGBT Muslims exist) for political points, and that when it comes down to "protecting" people, Republicans really don't give a good god damn.

House GOP leaders won’t allow a vote this week on a proposal to ensure that federal contractors can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who is gay, filed an amendment to a Defense Department spending bill that would enforce a 2014 executive order prohibiting discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) people. The Defense bill is slated to hit the House floor this week, in the aftermath of the attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando. 

But the House Rules Committee, which serves as an arm of majority leadership in deciding how legislation is considered on the floor, did not green-light Maloney’s amendment for a vote Tuesday night.

Sunday’s shooting, which took place during LGBT Pride Month, has been deemed the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. 

Maloney argued that allowing a vote to prohibit discrimination in the workplace after the targeted attack on the gay nightclub would send a message of solidarity with the LGBT community. 

“It’s hard to imagine that any act that is so horrific could lead to anything positive. But if we were going to do anything, it would be a very positive step to say that discrimination has no place in our law and to reaffirm the president’s actions in this area,” Maloney told The Hill. “Seems to me a pretty basic thing to do.”

Hahaha, you're expecting basic human dignity from Republicans, the vast majority of which refuse to see anyone unlike them as human at all (and the rest look the other way).  Good luck with that, man.

I'm hoping enough people figure this out by November.  We'll see.

Donald Trump In Mathmagic Land

If Donald Trump somehow had not yet convinced a huge swath of Americans that he was a giant prick with tiny hands before last weekend's horrific events in Orlando, then Don the Con's response to the slaughter at Pulse has pretty much sealed that deal.

In the latest sign Americans are dreading their general election options -- and particularly one of them -- negative views of Donald Trump have surged to their highest level of the 2016 campaign, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. 

Trump's unfavorable rating, in fact, far surpasses Hillary Clinton's even as the presumptive Democratic nominee receives her worst ratings in more two decades in public life. 

[Read full poll results and methodology] 

The poll finds 70 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump, including a 56 percent majority who feel this way "strongly." Negative ratings of Trump are up 10 percentage points from last month to their highest point since he announced his candidacy last summer, nearly reaching the level seen before his campaign began (71 percent). The survey was conducted Wednesday through Sunday among a random national sample of U.S. adults, coming after last week's primary contests, but with the large majority of interviews completed before Sunday's massacre at an Orlando club.

Holy cats. it's going to be a mess.  Let's take a look at those crosstabs, which finds that two-thirds of Republicans like the guy, and 5% of Democrats do. Five. Percent. Yikes. Among independents, Trump has a 30% number. Among Hispanic voters that number is down to 11% now.

Trump is down to 33% among white women and 46% among white men (he was above 50% with them last month.), 39% overall among white voters.

Clinton does fare better, 75% among Democrats, 11% among Republicans, and 34% among independent voters. Clinton however is at 64% among Hispanic voters.

Clinton is however at a dismal 23% among white men and 39% among white women, 31% overall.

These numbers are, granted, very bad for Clinton.  But Republicans are bound and determined to run the one person with even more awful numbers against her.

StupidiNews!

• As presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won last night's D.C. primary, she met with Bernie Sanders in order to move forward on unifying the party.
• President Obama will meet with the Dalai Lama at the White House on Wednesday, drawing sharp criticism from Chinese officials who call the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader dangerous.
• Britain's largest banks are expected to have extra trading staff on hand ahead of the country's June 23rd "Brexit" referendum on staying in the EU.
• California has overtaken France in GDP as the most populous US state would now by itself count as the world's sixth largest economy.
• Net neutrality rules won a major battle Tuesday as an appeals court ruled the FCC can regulate the internet as a utility, but internet providers are expected to now appeal to the Supreme Court.

Last Call For The Long, Hot Summer Of Trump

Understand that state polling at this juncture is notoriously inaccurate this far out in front of the unifying conventions in July, and the fact that most Americans simply don't pay attention to the presidential contests until afte Labor Day.

Having said that, if this is even remotely close to being true in November, holy Christ.

Our weekly EV Update - Rolling avg, 60 days, polls only. pic.twitter.com/nkIcgbmBCO

— Benchmark Politics (@benchmarkpol) June 14, 2016

I can understand Arizona being moderately in play and even Missouri, but South Carolina? Georgia? Mississippi? FREAKING KANSAS?  No, odds are extremely good that these polls are just statistical noise at this point, and that changing the electoral map by more than three or four states from 2012 is not going to be very likely, even in this election.

But...not impossible.

Hack The Planet

Somewhere, Vlad Putin is burning hundreds of calories laughing at America again, and deservedly so.

Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach. 

The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system they also were able to read all e-mail and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts. 

The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some GOP political action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available. 

A Russian Embassy spokesman said he had no knowledge of such intrusions. 

Some of the hackers had access to the DNC network for about a year, but all were expelled over the past weekend in a major computer clean-up campaign, the committee officials and experts said.

The DNC said that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken, suggesting that the breach was traditional espionage, not the work of criminal hackers.

Let's face it, Putin has all the information he wants on Hillary Clinton already. And who would have better dirt on Trump than the DNC? Saves you the time from having to gather it yourself.  Of course the Russians want to know everything they can about American politicians.

The intrusions are an example of Russia’s interest in the U.S. political system and its desire to understand the policies, strengths and weaknesses of a potential future president — much as American spies gather similar information on foreign candidates and leaders. 

The depth of the penetration reflects the skill and determination of the United States’ top cyber adversary as Russia goes after strategic targets from the White House and State Department to political campaign organizations. 

“It’s the job of every foreign intelligence service to collect intelligence against their adversaries,” said Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike, the cyber firm called in to handle the DNC breach and a former head of the FBI’s cyber division. He noted that it is extremely difficult for a civilian organization to protect itself from a skilled and determined state such as Russia.

And it's not like we don't engage in the same activities against other world leaders, guys.

The question is why leak the news now?  Pretty sure we'll find out when the other shoe drops during the campaign. I mean, if you're Trump, getting your good buddy Vlad to steal the DNC's oppo research on you is brilliant.  It's like Watergate, only totally legal. You think maybe this is about Trump throwing the newspaper out yesterday?

I'll tell you who looks like the loser in all this: Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Can this finally be the excuse to get rid of her?

Once A Birther, Always A Birther

Donald Trump wasted no time Monday morning implying that President Obama allowed this weekend's slaughter in Orlando to happen on purpose, for political reasons, because Donald Trump is essentially an awful human being.

"He doesn't get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It's one or the other," Trump said of Obama on "Fox & Friends," speaking on the phone. "And either one is unacceptable, No. 1, and No. 2, calling on another gun ban, I mean, this man has no clue. First of all, the shooter was licensed. So he went through all the procedures, he was fully licensed to have a gun. So he would have passed the test that the president would have thrown up there. It's so ridiculous. You know, this is a, this is a mentality, this is a state. And you have thousands of shooters like this with the same mentality out there in this country, and we're bringing thousands and thousands of them back into this country, and into the country every year." 

Trump defended a much-criticized tweet he sent on Sunday, saying, "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism." 

"No, no, no, I'm getting thousands of letters and tweets that I was right about the whole situation," he said. "I mean, I've been right about a lot of things, frankly." 

And Trump again implied that the president was not a trustworthy leader when it comes to fighting terrorism. 

"We're led by a man who is a very -- look, we're led by a man that either is, is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind," Trump said. "And the something else in mind, you know, people can't believe it. People cannot -- they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the ways he acts and can't even mention the words radical islamic terrorism. There's something going on. It's inconceivable."

Trump is basically garbage, but implying that President Obama is bringing "thousands" of Omar Mateens into America on purpose is just ridiculous. Mateen was a US citizen, period.

Sure isn't going to stop the Republicans, who again will tell you that a deadly terror attack is "good for Trump in November".

That's something you might want to reconsider, guys.

StupidiNews!

• London Mayor Sadiq Khan is making good on a campaign promise and will ban "unrealistic body images" in ads from London's transport systems.
• A federal judge has ordered a jury trial for the man suspected of killing nine in a South Carolina black church in Charleston last year, the trial is scheduled for November 7.
• A second US Navy aircraft carrier has entered the Mediterranean as the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower will relieve the USS Harry S. Truman in supporting operations in Syria and Iraq.
• Nigeria's government will enter into talks with the militant Niger Delta Avengers group in order to restart the country's oil production, now at its lowest level since 1989.
• At least one fake Twitter account is pretending to be that of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in order to try to scam people into donations based on this weekend's massacre.

Last Call For Not Going Anywhere

Bernie Sanders will continue to Bernie Sanders for the foreseeable future, in case you were somehow confused about the whole Bernie Sanders thing.

Senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday that he would “take our campaign for transforming the Democratic Party into the convention,” refusing to concede the presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton though not explicitly saying he would challenge her for it. 

Mrs. Clinton earned enough delegates to clinch the nomination last week, but Mr. Sanders has declined to end his campaign. He has contended that he could persuade enough superdelegates, the party leaders who have overwhelmingly backed Mrs. Clinton, to switch their support to him by arguing that he would be the stronger candidate against Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. 

That plan became more improbable last week as high-profile Democrats supported Mrs. Clinton. President Obama endorsed her on Thursday, calling her the most qualified candidate ever to seek the White House and imploring Democrats to unite behind her. 

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also endorsed Mrs. Clinton. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the only senator to endorse Mr. Sanders, told CNN on Friday that he now supports Mrs. Clinton. 

In recent days, Mr. Sanders appeared to acknowledge the odds against him, and began speaking less about beating Mrs. Clinton and more about working to defeat Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. 

On Sunday, he gathered with about 20 key supporters and advisers at his home in Burlington, Vt., to discuss how to proceed. 

“We are going to take our campaign to the convention with the full understanding that we are very good at arithmetic and that we know, you know, who has the received the most votes up to now,” Mr. Sanders said after the meeting, standing on his front lawn with his wife, Jane. Among the dozen or so people who attended the gathering were Benjamin T. Jealous, a former president of the N.A.A.C.P.; Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona; Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator; and Bill McKibben, the environmentalist and author. 

Notably, Mr. Sanders also said he would continue his efforts aimed at “transforming the Democratic Party,” a sign that his main goal may no longer be to become the nominee.

So we've reached the opening phases of the Great 2016 Democratic Unity Swap Meet, which apparently is all about the negotiations involving what Bernie's price will be for endorsing Hillary Clinton, but before we get totally outraged at Sanders, please remember that the same Clinton folks were DEMANDING eight years ago that Barack Obama make Hillary his vice president or else. Even Ed Kilgore was pushing an Obama-Clinton ticket in the summer of 2008, so I'm not really going to buy the "What is Bernie Thinking?" line right about now. That's baked into this little pie, folks.

The Clinton PUMAs were just as obnoxious then as the Bernie or Bust folks are now, frankly, and just as condescending.  No, two wrongs don't make a right, but having said that, Clinton realized that burying the hatchet was the best course of action. I'm not so sure Bernie has gotten to that long game point yet, because this is pretty much his last shot at the brass ring.

Anyhow, I'm fairly sure that a former Senator and Secretary of State may know a few things about high-stakes political negotiations, and that she will find a solution that can satisfy as many people as possible.

We'll see.

Losing To Win

Real Clear Politics DC bureau chief Carl Cannon is convinced that Donald Trump's awful June so far is evidence that he knows he is in over his head and that he is secretly trying to self-sabotage in order to get out.

Let’s call this more reflective subconscious entity “Don Trump.”

Donald Trump loves winning and hates losing, while Don Trump knows that running a smart campaign and beating Hillary Clinton means he’d inherit a job he has neither the qualifications nor the temperament to perform successfully. Don Trump wants to lose. He wants this campaign to be over so Donald Trump can go back to doing what he’s good at: promoting his personal brand and counting his money.

To me, that’s the best explanation for the loony “Mexican” judge comments and other unforced errors Trump has made since clinching the Republican presidential nomination. A man who wanted to win this election wouldn’t make these mistakes.

Let’s start with Susana Martinez. As governor of New Mexico, she’s the chief executive in the state with the highest percentage of Latinos in the country, a border state where Trump’s famous “wall” would be built, and a bellwether that Republicans would like to carry in November. She’s the GOP’s most prominent a female Hispanic, two demographic groups Trump has trouble with. So does he woo Martinez and praise her? No. Because she skips his rally in Albuquerque, he throws a tantrum, gratuitously lashing out at her in her own capital.

“We have got to get your governor to get going,” he told the crowd at his event. “She’s got to do a better job. Okay? She’s not doing the job. Hey! Maybe I’ll run for governor of New Mexico. I’ll get this place going.”

This is Don Trump talking. A candidate trying to win wouldn’t have drawn attention to the fact that the governor was skipping his rally, let alone publicly disparage her. A candidate who wanted to win wouldn’t have mentioned her at all. If he did, it would have come out something like this: “Your governor is doing a great job! She endorsed somebody else in the primary, but we’ll get her on our side because she proves that an independent-minded Republican can carry New Mexico—and we’ll do it together in November!”

This of course is making excuses for the people who are desperately trying to nominate Donald Trump as the Republican party's presidential candidate in 2016. As I have said time and again, Trump is not the cause of the GOP's problems, he's merely the symptom of a larger pathology based on a major American political turning to hatred, demonization of the "other", and "Second Amendment solutions" to America's problems.

If Donald Trump supposedly knows he is unqualified, and you know that he's aware of it, what does that day about the millions who voted for him anyway?

The Last Of The Ohio Moderates

Something of an era has passed in Ohio with the death over the weekend of the state's last reasonable, moderate Republican statesman, former governor and Senator George Voinovich, at age 79.

The news shook friends and supporters across the state, with remembrances pouring in from Democrats and Republicans alike.

“He was a unifier who thought outside the box, never gave up and worked hard for the ideas he believed in up until the very end of his life," Ohio's current governor, John Kasich, said in a statement. "Thanks to that leadership he saved Cleveland, governed Ohio compassionately and responsibly and was a candid voice for reason in the U.S. Senate."

David Pepper, chairman of Ohio's Democratic Party and former Cincinnati city councilman, recalled giving then-Senator Voinovich a tour of Cincinnati.

"It was clear he was still a mayor at heart," Pepper said. "He didn’t miss a detail, and that’s what a great public servant does--focuses on the details and brings people together to find solutions."

Voinovich was deeply religious, believing that everyone had God-given gifts, recalled Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. He took home work every night and weekend as governor. And though he was a "city kid," he loved the Ohio State Fair.

"His administrative style and philosophy were to hire good people, hold them accountable, but let them run their departments," DeWine recalled in the statement.

Voinovich was governor in the 90's and did things like "increase taxes to pay for welfare and other social programs", something that would have gotten him flayed by today's GOP.

As governor, Voinovich cut $720 million from the budget in two years.

But he was also willing to take political risks--and to show a softer side. He once broke into tears when protesters gathered outside the governor's office to demand that he restore cuts the Legislature made to welfare.

And in 1993, Voinovich worked with leaders of both parties in the Legislature to push through a tax increase aimed at shoring up the state's finances. The move angered some conservatives who began questioning the governor's commitment to their cause.

In an interview Sunday, ex-state Sen. Stanley Aronoff, a Cincinnati Republican whose time as Ohio Senate president overlapped with Voinovich's governorship, said "he lived a relatively frugal life, but he also wanted to take care of everybody." Aronoff said Voinovich was a "bipartisan" chief executive in the true spirit of that word.

Former President George H.W. Bush weighed in on Sunday as well. "George Voinovich was, in my view, the quintessential public servant," he said in a statement. "He brought people together, focused on results, and left his state and our country a better place thanks to his selfless commitment."

When he was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1979, the city had defaulted on its loans and was in fiscal ruin. Voinovich raised taxes and balanced the books. He ran for governor in 1990, saying he would bring the same fiscal discipline to the state budget.

"It is not an exaggeration to say he personally saved the city from default and revived the spirit of Cleveland through sheer force of will, an unyielding work ethic and an infectious optimism," Terrace Park Republican Rob Portman, who succeeded Voinovich in the Senate, said in a statement Sunday.

Voinovich was a nice, boring, nerdy Republican numbers guy.  He wasn't a punisher, he didn't try to shut down abortion clinics or drug test welfare recipients of scam the state's parents with charter schools, in fact he was one of the few GOP senators who voted against Dubya's No Child Left Behind bill because the numbers didn't add up.

He did things like "raise taxes in order to fix bridges, roads, and put people to work" and "wanted us to pay for our war in Iraq or leave because we couldn't afford it otherwise".  He thought President Obama's stimulus was too much pork, but he though Dubya's stimulus was too much pork too, and voted against both.

In other words, as far as Republicans went, he was reasonable and wasn't insane, he wasn't a religious fanatic, he didn't want to punish those people all the time and was, by all accounts, a decent guy. When 2010 and the Tea Party rolled around, Voinovich retired from the Senate because he saw what was coming and wanted no part of it. He voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as one of his final acts, thought gun control legislation was acceptable, and didn't go around screaming at his opponents.

He would have been primaried out of existence today.  Never would have made it in the GOP.  No, George Voinovich wasn't great, but he actually did his job.

That's worth mourning.

StupidiNews!

• Four people were wounded after a man hurled a beer bottle full of gunpowder at an airport counter in Shanghai, the man later committed suicide by slashing his own neck.
• An Indiana man has been arrested with a car full of weapons and possible explosives on the way to cause harm to an LA Pride march this weekend.
• Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins have claimed the 2016 Stanley Cup in Game 6 over the San Jose Sharks in a 3-1 win.
• Broadway's "Hamilton" picked up 11 Tony Awards last night, including Best Musical and Best Actor for Leslie Odom Jr., and Best Original Score.
• Ride sharing service Uber faces nearly $1 million in fines for operating in Paris against French law as EU countries continue to sanction the company as an illegal transport service.

Sunday Long Read: Three Years In Singapore

Rather than talk about urban planning and sustainability in a densely-packed urban center like Singapore and the many changes in the city-state since 2013, filmmaker Keith Loutit made a breathtaking three-year time lapse project and edited it into just under five minutes.


The Lion City II - Majulah from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.


Taking a break for the rest of the evening.

Another New Worst Mass Shooting In America

If you guys want to discuss the hideous mass shooting in Orlando at an LGBT nightclub today, that's fine.  But don't ever tell me there's not a dime's difference between the two political parties when Texas GOP Lt. Gov.Dan Patrick is tweeting Bible verses about "reaping what you sow" in the wake of 50 people being slaughtered.

Hours after approximately 50 people were killed at a Florida LGBT nightclub in what federal officials are investigating as an act of terrorism, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas is receiving backlash after tweeting a verse from the Bible.

About 7 a.m. Sunday Dan Patrick tweeted a photo with the words of Galatians 6:7. The verse reads, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows."

You don't even fix the words in your mouth to say that anymore.

Climate Of Hostility

D.R. Tucker over at Washington Monthly reminds us that 15 years ago, Republicans still believed in climate change.

By 2016 Republican standards, Bush’s speech is impressive. Bush spoke of “develop[ing] an effective and science-based approach to addressing the important issues of global climate change” and “recogniz[ing] our responsibility….at home, in our hemisphere, and in the world.” He also refuted the arguments that Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing media figures had been making about climate change for years:

First, we know the surface temperature of the earth is warming. It has risen by .6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years. There was a warming trend from the 1890s to the 1940s. Cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s. And then sharply rising temperatures from the 1970s to today.

There is a natural greenhouse effect that contributes to warming. Greenhouse gases trap heat, and thus warm the earth because they prevent a significant proportion of infrared radiation from escaping into space. Concentration of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution. And the National Academy of Sciences indicate that the increase is due in large part to human activity.

Bush would continue to acknowledge the reality of climate change during the course of his presidency. He would never actually do anything about the climate crisis–besides editing scientific reports, harassing climate scientists, genuflecting to ExxonMobil, and trying to convince the American people that the threat wasn’t that severe, of course. Yet Bush, at the very least, admitted that the science was real and credible.

Who would have thought that fifteen years later, the Republicans would nominate a man who believes that climate change is a hoax invented by China? Who would have thought that fifteen years later, despite the abundant evidence of climate chaos, mainstream media entities would still refuse to give this issue the coverage it deserves? And who would have thought that fifteen years later, the folks who thought that there was no real difference between Democrats and Republicans on such issues as the environment would hold on to that warped and worthless worldview?

It's that last part that's the killer.  I see people saying there's no difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and that they want to see the country burn in order to save it.

What they won't admit is that they want to apparently see the entire planet burn too.