Last Call For Trolling In The Derp

Adele would really, really like Donald Trump to stop using her music at his campaign rallies, and I can't say I blame her.

Pop star Adele has issued a statement to distance herself from Donald Trump, after he used her music at his rallies. 

The Republican presidential candidate, whose slogan is "Make America great again", has recently been playing Adele's hit Rolling In The Deep as his "warm-up" music. 

"Adele has not given permission for her music to be used for any political campaigning," her spokesman confirmed. 

It is not the first time Trump has been criticised for appropriating pop songs. 

Lawyers for Aerosmith star Steven Tyler sent Trump's campaign a cease-and-desist letter last year, after the politician played the band's hit single Dream On at numerous rallies around the US. 

The letter said Trump's use of the song gave "a false impression" he endorsed Mr Trump's presidential bid. 

Trump responded on Twitter, saying he had the legal right to use the song, but had found "a better one to take its place". 

"Steven Tyler got more publicity on his song request than he's gotten in 10 years. Good for him!" he added.

I know, no publicity like free publicity for a showman like The Donald, but at some point one has to wonder if he's the guy were going to get.  America really does deserve a professional troll for President, frankly.

You know, if it wasn't for the fact he'd burn the country down by 2018.

Groundhog Daze

I'm not sure if Paul Ryan has a sense of humor or not, but House Republicans will take up voting to repeal Obamacare again tomorrow.  You know, February 2.  Groundhog Day.

All eyes will be on the Iowa caucuses on Monday, but Congress is back in session this week for an energy fight in the Senate and yet another vote to repeal the healthcare law.

Groundhog Day references will likely be inevitable when the House votes once again Tuesday, Feb. 2, on legislation to repeal ObamaCare.

The House has voted more than 60 times since Republicans took over the majority in 2011 to undo the healthcare law. Tuesday’s vote, however, will be the first attempt to override President Obama’s veto of a measure to overturn his signature legislative accomplishment.

Consideration of the repeal measure - the first to pass both the House and Senate - is expected to stall after this week’s vote. Republicans are not expected to secure the necessary two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto. And once the veto override attempt fails in the House, the Senate won’t be able to consider it.

So it will fail like the other five dozen times, but that sure hasn't stopped Republican lawmakers from trying.  Oh, and wasting America's time and avoiding doing real work.

But that's the point.

The Bern And The Don

Vox's John Judis argues that the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders shows massive discontent with -- all together now -- both political parties, who are ignoring what Americans want on economic policy.

Sanders and Trump differ dramatically on many issues — from immigration to climate change— but both are critical of how wealthy donors and lobbyists dominate the political process, and both favor some form of campaign finance reform. Both decry corporations moving overseas for cheap wages and to avoid American taxes. Both reject trade treaties that favor multinational corporations over workers. And both want government more, rather than less, involved in the economy.

Sanders is a left-wing populist. He wants to defend the "collapsing middle class" against the "billionaire class" that controls the economy and politics. He is not a liberal who wants to reconcile Wall Street and Main Street, or a socialist who wants the working class to abolish capitalism.

Trump is a right-wing populist who wants to defend the American people from rapacious CEOs and from Hispanic illegal immigrants. He is not a conventional business conservative who thinks government is the problem and who blames America’s ills on unions and Social Security.

Both men are foes of what they describe as their party’s establishment. And both campaigns are also fundamentally about rejecting the way economic policy has been talked about in American presidential politics for decades.

That may be technically true, but Judis spends the rest of his article skating around the obnoxious similarities of Trump voters and Sanders voters.  Yes, there are major economic questions that need to be answer by the next President and real issues of inequality across America.  But the people who are affected the most by inequality in America, people of color and women, aren't being represented by Sanders or Trump, and that's the elephant in the room that Judis won't touch.

We'll see what happens today in Iowa, but I think one of the best things we could do in the future is drop-kick Iowa and New Hampshire from their first-in-the-nation status in politics, when America no longer looks like the voters of either state.

Inexplicably there are a dozen Republicans still left in this mess, and the one thing we do know by next week's New Hampshire primary is that a lot of them are going home after, and it's time to consolidate the fight against Trump and Cruz.  Same with O'Malley, I don't see how he goes on after New Hampshire.

But that still leaves Trump and Sanders, and their voters.

StupidiNews!

• Boko Haram militants attacked a Nigerian village on Sunday, killing 46 people and injuring 35, and burning most of the village to the ground.
• The CDC is expected to announce an end to the E. coli outbreak at Chipotle as soon as today, good news for the now struggling Mexican food chain.
• Two Virginia Tech engineering students have been charged in the kidnapping and murder of a 13-year-old girl, her body found 90 miles away in Surry County, North Carolina.
• After a six-week recess of Brazil's Congress ends Tuesday, President Dilma Rousseff will once again face impeachment as the country's economy struggles. 
• Facebook says it will remove posts involving sales of firearms and stop advertising from firearms makers and sellers in response to President Obama's executive orders last month.