Last Call For Battling Back In Bevinstan

There was some good news in Kentucky last night, with Gov. Matt Bevin scheduling special elections to replace four general assembly seats, two Republicans and two Democrats.  With House SPeaker Greg Stumbo and the Democrats having a 2-seat lead in the General Assembly, Bevin was hoping to force a 50-50 tie and throw the Assembly into chaos.

Instead, Democrats won three of the four seats.

The House will have 53 Democrats and 47 Republicans through the fall elections. It is the final state legislative chamber in the South to remain in Democratic control, and it is the last bastion of Democratic Party power in Kentucky, which otherwise has been trending Republican in state and federal elections.

Democrats won elections in Western Kentucky’s 8th District (Jeffrey R. Taylor of Hopkinsville), Central Kentucky’s 62nd District (Chuck Tackett of Georgetown) and northeastern Kentucky’s 98th District (Lew Nicholls of Greenup). The sole Republican won race in Central Kentucky’s 54th District (Daniel B. Elliott of Danville).

Two of the House seats were held previously by Republicans who won election to statewide office in November. The two others were held by Democrats who resigned to accept state posts from Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican.

Tackett, a farmer, won the night’s most exciting race by picking up a seat for the Democrats that had been held by Republican Ryan Quarles, who was elected state agriculture commissioner last November. A Republican group, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, ran radio and television ads attacking Tackett as “a government insider” because he once served on Scott County Fiscal Court.

“I stayed myself,” Tackett said Tuesday night after he was declared the winner. “I did not try to be somebody I was not. And I stayed positive. I don’t see any point in going negative.”

Tackett said he was not ready to take a position on the state budget, where Bevin wants deep cuts to higher education and other services to find money for the ailing state pension systems. But Tackett’s time on the campaign trail introduced him to Central Kentuckians who need help, including “one young lady with $28,000 in college debt,” he said.

Taylor, the only black candidate in Tuesday’s elections, won with support from Democratic President Barack Obama, who made automated calls to voters in the district on Taylor’s behalf.

Now this makes me very, very proud.  Hopkinsville is out west near Interstate 24 and the Tennessee border with Clarksville.  President Obama helped a black candidate there win in my state.  I cannot tell you what that means to me up here in NOBAMA country.

For now, the last bastion in Bevinstan holds.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article64860612.html#storylink=cpy

Like A Kansas Tornado, Con't

Time to check in with Kansas again and GOP Gov. Sam Brownback, currently still involved with attempting to fully convert the state into a Laboratory of Democracy(tm) complete with actual lab accidents.  We've previously noted that the one thing keeping the state from completely collapsing has been the Kansas Supreme Court, ruling that the state's draconian austerity measures violate parts of the state's constitution when it comes to providing for the state's common good, crazy socialist things like "schools" and "roads" and whatnot.

You'd think Kansas Republicans would at least be willing to play along.

You'd be wrong.

Republican lawmakers in Kansas, weary of conflicts with a judiciary that has been pushing for more school spending, are beginning to act on a measure to expand the legal grounds for impeaching judges. 

The move is part of an intensified effort in red states to reshape courts still dominated by moderate judges from earlier administrations. 

A committee in the GOP-controlled Senate plans to vote Tuesday on a bill that would make "attempting to usurp the power" of the Legislature or the executive branch grounds for impeachment.

Impeachment has "been a little-used tool" to challenge judges who strike down new legislation, said Republican Sen. Dennis Pyle, a sponsor of the measure. "Maybe it needs to be oiled up a little bit or sharpened a little bit." 

The proposal has considerable support in a Legislature in which Republicans outnumber Democrats more than 3 to 1. Nearly half the Senate's members have signed on as sponsors. It's unclear whether its novelty could complicate passage. 

The serious consideration of the measure, though, signals the exceedingly bitter political climate in the state.

You don't say.  Here's the real issue:

Four of Kansas' seven Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who served from 2003 to 2009, and two by her predecessor, Bill Graves, a moderate Republican. Only one was appointed by Brownback. 

Replacing the justices through elections is difficult in Kansas because they don't run in contested races. Instead, they face a "retention election" every six years, remaining in office unless more than 50 percent of voters vote against them. No justice has ever been voted out. 

Conservative groups are expected to mount a major effort to vote out four of the Supreme Court justices on the ballot this fall. But critical lawmakers also hope to make impeachment a tool. 

Currently, the state constitution allows impeachment only for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. No public official has been impeached since 1934.

Time to eliminate the state's Democratic appointees on the Supreme Court, and Democrats in the state, period.  They have to go, one way or another, in order to pave the way for the single-party Republican utopia that awaits America.

Won't that be fun?

Berned Up From Battle Creek To Bay City

Bernie Sanders edged out Hillary Clinton last night in Michigan, and yet again all the polls and conventional wisdom and pundits were absolutely wrong about the race. So how did Bernie win a race he was 20 points behind in?  The exit polls show the way.

Here's the big one:  The youth vote (21%) outnumbered the senior vote (20%) for the first time in a Dem primary, and Bernie also won the Gen X vote.  The college kids showed up big time for Sanders.



The second big factor is that Bernie did a lot better among non-white voters than he has been here, especially among Michigan's Arab-American communities in cities like Dearborn and Hamtramck.  He also got 30% of the black vote. while winning the white vote by 16 points.

Finally the third factor:



Michigan's open primary paid off for Sanders, as more than a quarter of the vote came from independents, and Bernie won that group nearly 3-to-1.  A closed primary would have been a far better result for Hillary Clinton.

So what does this mean going forward?  Sanders did what he needed to in Michigan, gaining nine delegates on Clinton there.  But considering Clinton completely obliterated Sanders in Mississippi by more than 60 points, he lost all those and then some.  Despite Sanders getting a badly needed and impressive win last night, Clinton ended up increasing her total delegate lead by 16, and Sanders simply cannot win at this point unless every state is like Michigan, and he wins those states by bigger margins than two percent.

Sanders won this battle, certainly.  He's still losing the war, and lost ground last night.  Clinton can afford to lose proportional states and split the remaining states.  Sanders needs a chain of blowouts, especially in big states like Ohio, Florida and Illinois next Tuesday.

He's not going to get them.

StupidiNews!

• The US Secret Service has confirmed the arrest at the White House of a man suspected in the shooting of an Idaho pastor over the weekend.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is claiming that Pyongyang has nuclear missiles as a "true" deterrent to the West.
• Attorney General Loretta Lynch has reportedly asked President Obama not to consider her as a nominee to the US Supreme Court, citing the Justice Department's "urgent issues".
• Legendary British music producer George Martin, known as the "Fifth Beatle", has died Tuesday at the age of 90.
• The FCC will vote soon on a program to replace home phone subsidies through the Lifeline program with broadband internet subsidies.

Last Call For Flipping The Script On SCOTUS, Con't

I personally believe that President Obama is awaiting the March 15th primaries that will all but end the Sanders campaign, so that he can then release information on his nominee for the Supreme Court to fill Justice Scalia's seat and use that as the rallying cry for Dems to pivot to the general.

Republicans, in what is increasingly looking like a Trump vs Cruz deathmatch on the set of Mad Max Fury Road, are themselves laying the groundwork for never replacing Scalia.  At least, not by a Democrat.

Dean Reuter, vice president of the Federalist Society, hinted that there might even be too many justices, reported Right Wing Watch. 

“There’s no time limit in the Constitution, and there’s nothing magical about there being nine justices,” Reuter said during a panel meeting at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). 

“The country started out with six justices, we’ve had as many as ten at some point in time,” he continued. “As recently as 2010, when Justice Elena Kagan came on the Court, she had been solicitor general so she recused herself in over a third of the cases (so) I don’t see a sense of urgency.” 

Reuter led a brief workshop last week at CPAC with John Yoo, the author of the infamous “torture memos” as a member of the Bush administration, on topics covered in their new book, “Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State.” 

“The president surely does have a duty to nominate someone, but the Senate has a co-equal duty as a co-equal branch of government, to in this case operate as a check,” Reuter argued. “It doesn’t have any responsibility or any duty to host one-on-one meetings with the nominee, or hold a hearing, or hold a committee vote, or a floor vote. There’s no timetable. It’s not as if the president sends somebody over and says, we need this back next month, or next Wednesday, or whatever.” 

Reuter, whose group shepherded Samuel Alito’s nomination through the Senate, suggested that Supreme Court appointments were an example of executive overreach. 

“The Senate is perfectly well within its prerogative, even the proper understanding of checks and balances, it can easily be said that the role of the Senate is to check the president’s power in this instance, the appointment power, especially I think when you’re dealing with a third branch of government and a lifetime appointment,” he argued.

I've said for months that this would end up being the GOP's view.  Right now, the argument is "let the people decide" but they're losing the battle for public opinion on that.  Putting a face on the nomination would give Republicans a target and a fight, but that could easily backfire too.

Do I think the GOP will be able to get away with it?  Until and unless voters turn the Senate back over to the Democrats, yes.  That could very well happen if they nominate Cruz or Trump, in which case that sets up a battle over the filibuster in 2017.

But that's down the road, A lot could change and the GOP could very well fold.  But I don't think it's likely.  The notion that the GOP simply shouldn't allow a replacement at all will be with us for some time.

Canada Has Idiots, Too

I have absolutely zero tolerance for people who make decisions like this, amounting to child endangerment and criminal negligence.

Two Mormon parents who own a nutritional supplement company are accused of letting their toddler son die from meningitis because they tried to treat him with home remedies instead of medicine. 

David and Collet Stephan have pleaded not guilty to charges that they failed to provide the necessities of life to their 19-month-old son Ezekiel, reported CBC News. 

Prosecutors in Alberta, Canada, say the couple did not call an ambulance until the boy stopped breathing and instead fed him supplements with an eye dropper and lay down with him. 

Collet Stephan, 35, told police that a friend told the couple their son had meningitis — inflammation caused by an infection of the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. 

She said they tried to boost the boy’s immune system by feeding him with olive leaf extract, whey protein, water with maple syrup and juice with frozen berries. 

They finally fed the boy, who was becoming stiff and lethargic after two weeks of illness, a mixture of apple cider vinegar, horseradish root, hot peppers, onion, garlic and ginger root. 

The child was airlifted to a hospital after he stopped breathing, and doctors removed him from life support after five days. 

Prosecutors played recordings during the couple’s trial of Collet Stephan describing their attempt to treat the boy.

Not sure what Canadian laws are on this, but having grown up as the son of two health care professionals, this makes me absolutely seethe.  I just don't understand why you would massively increase the risk of a child's life like that when the means to treat disease are available.

Just absolute idiocy.

The Bloomberg Is Off The Rose

As I mentioned this morning, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is officially not going to get into the race for the White House as a third party spoiler, and the NY Times received some of Bloomberg's research on the run.  It's interesting stuff indeed.

Bloomberg's advisers thought he had a real shot as the third party alternative in a Trump v Sanders matchup:

Amazing.  Bloomberg's team thought he would win the Upper Midwest with the exception of Minnesota, while utterly breaking Trump in the South, with Bloomberg somehow being competitive in both Texas and California and being in position to get to 270 win easily.

But the reality of a Clinton/Trump matchup apparently forced him to fold his cards completely.

The scenario here is that Bloomberg weakens both sides to the point where nobody gets to 270, and then the GOP-controlled House would decide the election for Trump.

Note the maps come from our old friend Doug Schoen, which means they are vastly overstating Bloomberg's chance of winning any state whatsoever.  The actual reality is that much like Perot's run two decades ago, Bloomberg wouldn't win a single state, but would split a vast number of states that would make for a different swing state group.  That chaos would almost certainly benefit Trump as well, allowing him to win states that he wouldn't have a shot at.

The upshot would be the same: Bloomberg would create a path for President Trump.  Luckily that's not something that he wants to be remembered for, so for now, we're being spared his ego.

StupidiNews!

• The White House says it is surprised to learn from the Israeli press that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected a meeting with President Obama next week.
• Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg says now that he will not run for President, citing his fear that his third-party candidacy would not win and end up electing Trump or Cruz.
• Iran continues to defy its recent deal with the US and sanctions on its ballistic missile program and has test-fired several missiles.
• Tennis star Maria Sharapova has admitted to failing a doping test at this year's Australian Open for a newly banned substance, the result could cost her tens of millions in endorsements.
• A Federal court has blocked a recent FCC order to cap fees on inmate phone calls, with the phone companies who handle inmate calls saying the FCC exceeded its authority.

Last Call For The Ryan King

At least one group of desperate Republicans is putting their money where their insanity is by forming a SuperPAC trying to draft Zombie-eyed Granny Starver Paul Ryan as the GOP standard-bearer.

Earle Mack, a Brooklyn-born businessman and former ambassador under President George W. Bush, is the major force behind a “super PAC” that is attempting to draft the Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and speaker of the House, as the party’s presidential nominee. 

Mr. Mack said in an interview that he would spend up to $1 million on “The Committee to Draft Speaker Ryan,” which was formed last week, but has kept its backers secret until now. Mr. Ryan has disavowed the group, which is plowing ahead anyway. 

Mr. Mack will serve as the honorary chairman of the group. He said he had no animus toward Donald J. Trump, the front-runner for the party’s nomination. 

“I’ve never had any fights with him,” Mr. Mack said. “Our parents were friendly. Fred Trump used my father’s contractors to build his house.” But he added, “It all comes down to winning the election, not dividing our party, and I think that this presidential election has descended into more of a schoolyard scuffle.” 

Mr. Mack, who was the ambassador to Finland, said he believed the tone of the campaign had touched “them all with the finger of pollution.” Winning a general election would be a struggle for all of the candidates after so much mud has been flung, he added. Mr. Mack said that Mr. Ryan was not aware of the effort while the group was being put into place. 

The push is expected to include digital ads and other measures. The group’s chairman and senior adviser is Rob Cole, who was the top adviser to the presidential campaign of George E. Pataki, the former governor of New York. Susan Del Percio, a Republican strategist in New York, will be another senior adviser. David Catalfamo, a former spokesman for Mr. Pataki, is also working with the group.

Talking about throwing bad money after worse.  Look, Republicans, if you're trying to get Paul Ryan in your race after Super Tuesday, something has gone horribly wrong.

And that's good for the Dems for once.

Out Like Flint, Con't

With Michigan's primary on Tuesday, both parties are battling for votes, and the Flint Water Crisis has been front and center for GOP Gov. Rick Snyder.  Snyder is complaining that Democratic candidates in his state for last night's debate will be gone by Wednesday, but that Snyder will be around to deal with the problems.

I will fix this crisis and help move Flint forward.

— Governor Rick Snyder (@onetoughnerd) March 7, 2016

Only one problem with that: Snyder knew in January 2015 that Flint's water was poison and sent water for state employee offices there, doing nothing for Flint residents.  No wonder then that both Clinton and Sanders have now called for Snyder's resignation.

For the first time, Hillary Clinton called for the resignation of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder during the Democratic debate Sunday night. 

“The governor should resign or be recalled,” Clinton said, staking out a bolder claim on the issue. 

Clinton has made the Flint lead crisis a centerpiece of her campaign, and has repeatedly criticized the Republican governor for his role in the disaster. Sanders has not emphasized Flint as much as his rival, but he’s been calling for Snyder’s resignation since January. Clinton had stopped short of calling for his resignation.

Sanders made the call for Snyder’s resignation again at the debate, before Clinton was asked about Flint. 

“One of the points that I have made is the governor of this state should understand that his dereliction of duty was irresponsible,” Sanders said. “He should resign.”

As far as the people in Flint are concerned however, it's not like Republicans actually give a damn if people have water to drink in a city that votes blue.

A couple of U.S. senators including Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah continue to delay review of a $220 million Flint-inspired bill, pushing a vote on the measure into next week. 

Among Lee’s problems with the legislation are that it didn’t go through the Senate’s ordinary procedure, and the funds designated to pay for the legislation are repurposed from a stimulus appropriation, according to a Senate staffer familiar with the deliberations. 

Lee is also concerned that the bill is federalizing what has traditionally been a local issue — the maintenance of public water infrastructure.

So who knows if or when Flint's water pipes will get fixed?  Republicans are more concerned with Senate procedure than kids with lead poisoning, you know.

Just another day in GOP-controlled America.

Sunday's Primary Motivations

To his credit, Bernie Sanders did win Maine's Democratic Caucus on Sunday by a solid margin, 64-36% over Hillary Clinton.

The Vermont senator's victory is his third of the weekend, along with wins in Kansas and Nebraska on Saturday, and his eighth state overall.

Sanders had courted the state's voters aggressively, while Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton had not made an appearance in the state since September. Both have counted on surrogates, with actress Susan Sarandon campaigning for Sanders, and Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan on Tuesday for Clinton.

Sanders has done well in states with largely white populations — like Maine — but has struggled among non-white voters, especially across the South.

Maine awards its 25 Democratic delegates on a proportional basis. As of Sunday morning, Clinton was leading Sanders by more than 200 pledged delegates, a margin that will narrow after Maine's are apportioned. When superdelegates are added to Clinton's total, she holds a commanding lead of more than 600 total delegates.

In a statement, Sanders thanked Maine's voters and claimed "momentum" heading into upcoming contests in Michigan and Mississippi on March 8.

So yes, Bernie will narrow Clinton's delegate lead a bit, but she still will lead by more than 200 delegates.  And unless Sanders starts winning states like Michigan and Mississippi this week, he's not going to close that gap.  Recent poll averages show Clinton winning Michigan by 20 points and Mississippi by more than 40 points, as well as 18-point-plus margins in states on March 15th, so I'm not seeing how that 200 delegate edge does anything but grow too large for Sanders to make up.  Maine may very well be his last significant win.

On the GOP side yesterday, Marco Rubio won Puerto Rico by like 60 points, so surely he's got the nomination wrapped up.  Surely.

If that margin is sustained, Rubio would top the 50-percent threshold needed to win all 23 of Puerto Rico's delegates. It would still leave him a distant third in his party's delegate chase. Rubio's previous victory was in Minnesota on March 1. He's under pressure from opponents to drop out of the White House race if he fails to win the Florida primary on March. 15.

So how's that going?  Surely the savior of the GOP can win his home state, where he's a sitting US Senator, correct?



Oh.  Well then.  Trump nearing an outright majority.

That should go over well.

StupidiNews!

• A mine accident in the Chinese city of Baishan, near the North Korean border, has killed 12 of 13 trapped miners on Sunday, the incident is being blamed on a methane gas explosion.
• Former President Jimmy Carter says he no longer needs treatments for the cancer he was diagnosed with last year.
• Super Bowl 50-winning QB Peyton Manning says he will retire from the Denver Broncos and the NFL, ending a 18-year career with two championships and numerous AFC records.
• Exports of Iranian oil have reached Europe for the first time since sanctions were lifted on Tehran as part of last year's historic diplomatic nuclear deal with the West.
• The man responsible for the @ symbol in your e-mail address, inventor Ray Tomlinson, has died at the age of 74.

Last Call For A First Lady

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan passed away today at age 94.

Reagan died at her home in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure, according to her spokeswoman, Joanne Drake of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. 

"Mrs. Reagan will be buried at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, next to her husband, Ronald Wilson Reagan, who died on June 5, 2004. Prior to the funeral service, there will be an opportunity for members of the public to pay their respects at the library," Drake said in a statement. 

The former first lady requested that contributions be made to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Foundation in lieu of flowers, the statement said.

Like most folks of my generation, I grew up with her Just Say No motto all over TV in the 80's and her husband's DARE programs in school.  Whether or not they worked, well, I don't honestly know. Did they stop anyone from trying drugs?  Couldn't tell you, I never had the desire to try.

That's about the fairest thing I can say, other than I hope to make it to 94 myself.

The Vote In Bevinstan

Donald Trump won the Kentucky GOP Caucus last night, the one put together for Rand Paul (no longer in the race) at taxpayer expense, and the entire process was a gigantic mess in more ways that one.

About 1.28 million Republicans in the state were eligible to vote on a damp, cool Saturday in the Bluegrass State from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time. In Kentucky’s 2012 GOP presidential primary, about 15.7 percent of the party’s voters went to the polls.

The Republican Party of Kentucky issued a statement Saturday afternoon declaring the caucus a success, but only two-thirds of the vote had been reported to the public more than 6 hours after polls closed.

Trump and Cruz split the vote in the state’s most populous counties, with Trump claiming wins in Jefferson and Pulaski and Cruz taking Fayette, Kenton and Warren. In all, Trump won 78 of Kentucky’s 120 counties.

Leading up to the state caucus, some conservative elites in the state were working to stop Trump’s national momentum.

Several, including former U.S. Rep. Anne Northup of Louisville, state House Republican Leader Jeff Hoover of Jamestown, and state Senate Republican Leader Damon Thayer of Georgetown, publicly backed U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and spoke of stopping Trump. Rubio, however, trailed Trump and Cruz badly.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Louisville never said who would get his vote Saturday but the New York Times recently reported that McConnell told vulnerable U.S. senators up for election this year that they could run ads against Trump even if he wins the nomination.

FoxNews.com reported Saturday that a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Bowling Green said the senator will not say for whom he has cast a ballot and noted he has yet to endorse a candidate since dropping out after the Iowa GOP Caucus in early February. Warren County, where Paul lives, chose Cruz over Trump by a 6.53-point margin.

Rubio came in a distant third, with John Kasich just behind.  All four will receive delegates for the convention.  However, Cruz won Kansas and Maine.  It's now looking like a Cruz vs. Trump fight to the finish for the GOP, the two least-electable Republicans in the general, and I couldn't be happier.  Marco Rubio has fallen to also-ran.

Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi vote on Tuesday, Wyoming voets on Saturday, and then on March 15 the big, big battle: Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina.  With Cruz now holding his own against The Donald at least for the moment, this could turn into a real fight soon.

But Cruz and Trump are the most hated by the GOP establishment, and at least in Kentucky, and in three other states, Republican voters simply don't give a damn about Rubio or Kasich anymore to stop Trump.  The pressure on the two of them to drop out will be massive, but Rubio's home state is Florida and Kasich's is Ohio, so they will still be in through the 15th.

After that is anyone's guess.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article64360982.html#storylink=cpy

Sunday Long Read: Baldwin's Legacy

BuzzFeed's Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah visits the home where legendary writer James Baldwin died in France, examining the legacy of a man who is more relevant than ever to the global black experience. 

What makes us want to run away? Or go searching for a life away from ours? The term “black refugees” applies most specifically to the black American men and women who escaped in 1812 to the British navy’s boats and were later taken to freedom in Nova Scotia and Trinidad, but don’t many of us feel like black refugees. Baldwin called these feelings, the sense of displacement and loss that many Black Americans ponder, the “heavy” questions, and heavy they are indeed. Sometime in early ’50s, after being roughed up and harassed by the FBI, James Baldwin realized that while he “loved” his country, he “could not respect it.” He wrote that he “could not, upon my soul, be reconciled to my country as it was.” To survive he would have to find an exit. On the train to Baldwin’s house I thought more about that earlier generation and about the seemingly vast divide between Baldwin and my grandfather. They had very little in common, except they were of the same era, the same race, and were both fearless men, which in black America actually says a lot. Whereas Baldwin spent his life writing against a canon, writing himself into the canon, a black man recording the Homeric legend of his life himself, my grandfather simply wanted to live with dignity.

It must have been hard then to die the way my grandfather did. I imagine it is not the ending that he expected when he left Louisiana and moved to Watts — to a small, white house near 99th Street and Success Avenue. After his death, I went back to the house in Watts that he had been forced to return to, broke and burned out of his home, and gathered what almost 90 years of black life in America had amounted to for him: a notice saying that his insurance claim from the fire had been denied, two glazed clay bowls, and his hammer (he was a carpenter). My grandfather had worked hard but had made next to nothing. I took a picture of the wall that my grandfather built during his first month in LA. It was old, cracked, jagged, not pretty at all, but at the time, it was the best evidence I had that my grandfather had ever been here. And as I scattered his ashes near the Hollywood Park racetrack, because he loved horses and had always remained a country boy at heart, I realized that the dust in my hands was the entirety of my inheritance from him. And until recently, I used to carry that memory and his demand for optimism around like an amulet divested of its power, because I had no idea what to do with it. What Baldwin understood, and my grandfather preferred not to focus on, is that to be black in America is to have the demand for dignity be at absolute odds with the national anthem.

From the outside, Baldwin’s house looks ethereal. The saltwater air from the Mediterranean acts like a delicate scrim over the heat and the horizon, and the dry, craggy yard is wide and long and tall with cypress trees. I had prepared for the day by watching clips of him in his gardens. I read about the medieval frescos that had once lined the dining room. I imagined the dinners he had hosted for Josephine Baker and Beauford Delaney under a trellis of creeping vines and grape arbors. I imagined a house full of books and life.

I fell in love with Baldwin all over again in France. There I found out that Baldwin didn’t go to France because he was full of naïve, empty admiration for Europe; as he once said in an interview: “If I were twenty-four now, I don’t know if and where I would go. I don’t know if I would go to France, I might go to Africa. You must remember when I was twenty-four there was really no Africa to go to, except Liberia. Now, though, a kid now … well, you see, something has happened which no one has really noticed, but it’s very important: Europe is no longer a frame of reference, a standard-bearer, the classic model for literature and for civilization. It’s not the measuring stick. There are other standards in the world.”

Baldwin left the States for the primary reason that all emigrants do — because anywhere seems better than home. This freedom-seeking gay man, who deeply loved his sisters and brothers — biological and metaphorical — never left them at all. In France, I saw that Baldwin didn’t live the life of a wealthy man, but he did live the life of man who wanted to travel, to erect an estate of his own design, and write as an outsider, alone in silence. He had preserved himself.

Baldwin has been dead for almost thirty years, but he and his words, his warnings, his admonishments and his triumphs, have never really been gone.  Here in 2016, what he wrote means more than ever, and the power of that comes all the way from Europe and all the way through decades of history. As he said greatly once and I attempt to follow today:

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

 Amen to that, James.

Last Call For Primary Motivations

Over at Reality-Based Community, Mark Kleiman analyzes where the Dems are right now and what Team Bernie has left to fight for as the nomination is all but out of reach right now.

So what are the Sanders people up to? Someone I know who talks to people inside the Sanders campaign is hearing that realists inside the campaign do not see a realistic path to his nomination, yet are committed to staying in the race for the purpose of maximizing leverage by building a large group of delegates, with 1000 being used as a rough target.

For some Sanders supporters, that would be a good enough reason to carry on. But others still sincerely think he can be nominated, and that either (1) he would be a better president than HRC or (2) he has a better chance than HRC to beat Trump or whoever. It’s not at all clear that those folks would keep working and giving for the purpose of building a movement or influencing the platform. And some of them, if they knew that Clinton had a virtual lock on the nomination and that the Sanders campaign understood that, would probably decide that their effort was better given to the task of winning in November. It’s hard to tell a story where Sanders’s continued hammering away at Clinton as a tool of Wall Street makes us safer from Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.

It seems to me that second group is, in effect, being cheated out of time and money. I bitterly recall writing what for me at the time was a substantial check to the McGovern campaign in the fall of 1972, in response to a desperate-sounding direct mail appeal and inspired by the idea that I was helping to defeat Richard Nixon. Only later did I learn that McGovern’s advisers, having given up on the Presidency by October, decided to cut back on expenditures to run a surplus, which was then diverted – perfectly legally – to McGovern’s Senate re-election campaign two years later. I felt – still feel – that I’d been flim-flammed.

Now, there’s no reason to think that the Sanders campaign is contemplating a similar gimmick. But the principle seems to me the same: the managers of the campaign getting people to give, and to work, in the false belief that they’re helping to elect a President. Not OK.

Footnote: Surely this is not a secret from the reporters covering the Sanders campaign. But I’ve seen no hint of it in print. Of course as long as the campaign continues, the people writing about it have stories to write, and of course any one of them who reported what was said to me would get the cold shoulder from Sanders and his staff. Still, isn’t it the job of journalists to tell their readers what they know?

It's a very good question, and the answer is that the Bernieswarm as our faithful readers put it aren't going to accept that Sanders doesn't have a way to get to the delegates he needs.  The reality of the night is Clinton's win in Louisiana tonight more than makes up for the delegates that Sanders is getting from winning Kansas and Nebraska, if not increasing her delegate lead.

Tonight I've seen people act like those two Midwestern states are the start of a massive wave of wins that will propel Bernie to the presidency, because "Hillary can't win outside Confederate States."  That's not only incorrect but massively devalues black voters, which has been a hallmark of the Sanders side of things for the entire primary season so far.

I'm still not completely sold on Hillary, and the primary will be long wrapped up by the time I get to vote here in Kentucky in May, but Team Bernie is making me less and less likely to vote for him by the hour and by the time March 15th rolls around and Maine, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio vote, we ought to be at a point where we ought to start asking why Bernie's still in the race.

By the time April 26 comes, and Wisconsin, Wyoming, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have voted, I'm betting that's going to be answered.

Trump Cards, Con't

The civil war in the GOP, long predicted by yours truly, is now front and center.  The only question now is how bad the damage will be and if the GOP, or America for that matter, survives the conflict.

From Michigan to Louisiana to California on Friday, rank-and-file Republicans expressed mystification, dismissal and contempt regarding the instructions that their party’s most high-profile leaders were urgently handing down to them: Reject and defeat Donald J. Trump. 

Their angry reactions, in the 24 hours since Mitt Romney and John McCainurged millions of voters to cooperate in a grand strategy to undermine Mr. Trump’s candidacy, have captured the seemingly inexorable force of a movement that still puzzles the Republican elite and now threatens to unravel the party they hold dear. 

In interviews, even lifelong Republicans who cast a ballot for Mr. Romney four years ago rebelled against his message and plan. “I personally am disgusted by it — I think it’s disgraceful,” said Lola Butler, 71, a retiree from Mandeville, La., who voted for Mr. Romney in 2012. “You’re telling me who to vote for and who not to vote for? Please.” 

“There’s nothing short of Trump shooting my daughter in the street and my grandchildren — there is nothing and nobody that’s going to dissuade me from voting for Trump,” Ms. Butler said.

A fellow Louisiana Republican, Mindy Nettles, 33, accused the party of “using Romney as a puppet” to protect itself from Mr. Trump because its leaders could not control him. “He has a mind of his own,” she said. “He can think.” 

The furious campaign now underway to stop Mr. Trump and the equally forceful rebellion against it captured the essence of the party’s breakdown over the past several weeks: Its most prominent guardians, misunderstanding their own voters, antagonize them as they try to reason with them, driving them even more energetically to Mr. Trump’s side. 

As Mr. Romney amplified his pleas on Friday, Mr. Trump snubbed a major meeting of Republican activists and leaders after rumblings that protesters were prepared to demonstrate against him there, in the latest sign of Mr. Trump’s break from the apparatus of the party whose nomination he is marching toward.

And the hard truth is that Republicans have been officially courting the white racist vote since Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy.

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

That abstract is dead and gone.  Now Republicans openly support a madman who wants to deport undocumented immigrants and round up Muslims, who happily admits he would order our military to commit war crimes and that he expects the Pentagon to follow those orders. Trump was the inevitable result of decades of hatred and division clashing with the demographics of a truly multicultural America. He has attracted the worst of us, and attracted those who wish to enable them in order to build a coalition based purely on rancor, all white loudly protesting their own role in unleashing the racism in our midst.

There is no doubt that Trump is a racist, and that the people who support him are racists, and that the people who enable him are worse than racists.  And that comprised the majority of the GOP right now.  Disown him? They are him.

But man, are the Powers That Be trying to sell this as "populist anger against government".

Among people likely to vote in the Republican primary, people are 86.5 percent more likely to prefer Donald Trump as the first-choice nominee relative to all the others if they “somewhat” or “strongly agree” that “people like me don't have any say about what the government does.” Using statistical techniques, we can conclude that this increased preference for Trump is over and beyond any preferences based on respondent gender, age, race/ethnicity, employment status, educational attainment, household income, attitudes towards Muslims, attitudes towards illegal immigrants, or attitudes towards Hispanics.

Make no mistake, "people like me don't have any say about what the government does" is the new "states' rights"  And it will only get worse from here.

Your Political Cartoon Of The Moment

Pulitzer Prize-winning Lexington Herald-Leader cartoonist Joel Pett takes on Planned Parenthood's fate in Bevinstan:



The LHL pulled the cartoon before it went to print.  Can't piss off the Gov, even if he has let women in Kentucky have it.  Pett posted it anyway.  And yes, Pett has run afoul of Governor Bevin before.

I wonder if Bevin will lay down any more unconstitutional and open threats against Pett like he did back in November, despite the First Amendment clearly being on Pett's side here.

We'll see.

The Canarinho In The Coal Mine

Brazil's economy is falling apart at this point, President Dilma Rouseff is barely holding on, unemployment is rising quickly along with inflation and the country is now facing its worst recession in a century.

Brazil's economy shrank by 3.8 percent in 2015, the government said Thursday, with the biggest contraction in 25 years set to push the Latin American giant into its worst recession for more than a century.

The latest gloomy news from Brazil was no surprise, but the severity underlined the depth of problems facing President Dilma Rousseff's government as it battles both declining economic output and 10.67 percent inflation.

The state statistics office said 2015 registered the worst single annual fall in GDP since 1990, a year when the economy dipped 4.3 percent.

With the International Monetary Fund predicting a further 3.5 percent shrinkage this year, Brazil appears to be well into a recession that would be worse than any on government record going back to 1901.

The GDP results shove Brazil into the bottom bracket for performance in Latin America, where it is easily the biggest economy. Only Venezuela, with what the IMF estimates was a 10 percent plummet in GDP, is worse off.

Leading Brazil's slide was the industrial sector, which was down 6.2 percent in 2015. In the last quarter of 2015 the all-important mining sector was down 6.6 percent, reflecting the worldwide slump in commodity prices and demand for Brazil's iron ore and other raw materials.

When times were good, Brazil's natural resource bounty was a good source of income for the country as China grabbed everything it could in order to build, build, build. Now that China's economic engine has blown a gasket and is sputtering, Brazil's financial picture has turned very dark.

The slump has made Brazil increasingly toxic on the investor landscape. Last week, Moody's became the third big credit rating agency to downgrade Brazil to junk status, warning of slow recovery and political uncertainty.

A Markit Brazil Services survey of the private sector released Thursday found a record contraction in economic activity in February, as "companies continued to link the adverse operating environment to the ongoing economic, financial and political crises."

"The Brazilian economic downturn took a real turn for the worse in February, as the financial and political difficulties in the country drove down output and led to reduced order intakes," said Rob Dobson, author of the report.

"The domestic market is especially weak" and "the labor market also appears to be in dire straits."

Brazilian economists warn that 2016 could turn out to be worse than the IMF's prediction, with the economy shrinking even more than in 2015.

"Brazil has never had such a high level of uncertainty and this is freezing everything up. There is no consumption or investment or credit with this historic level of uncertainty," Daniel Cunha, an analyst at XP Investimentos in Sao Paulo, said.

Brazil used to be the leader of the BRIC nations, emerging markets in Brazil, Russia, India and China were powering the global economy.  Now?  The BRIC is broke, and Brazil has definitely fallen the hardest.  And most of that can be pinned on Rouseff and Brazil's ruling party, and her predecessor, former President Lula who has just been detained in the state's ongoing national oil company bribery scandal.

Brazil's in real trouble, folks.  It's not going to get better anytime soon.