Last Call For Your Chart Of The Week

Tonight's chart of the week comes from the new Washington Post/Univision poll of Hispanic voters on the 2016 presidential race, and shows the net favorability each candidate has among Hispanic voters:

Yeah, that's GOP frontrunner The Donald over there with a net minus 64, when the GOP candidate is going to need at least 40% of the Hispanic vote to have a real shot at winning in November.

Considering 51% of those polled say they would definitely support the Democrat in November, that's going to be nearly impossible for even Rubio to get.  McCain got 31%, Romney 27%.  I'm betting that while Rubio could match McCain's numbers in the general, that's not going to be enough to win the election for him.  Cruz would be close to Romney, and Trump?  Trump might actually get a negative number of Hispanic votes, frankly.

Trump Cards, Con't

Trump's new campaign slogan

Donald Trump remains the preferred candidate of the Confederacy by folks who really are sad that the South lost the war and all.

David Duke, a white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, is urging the listeners of his radio program to volunteer and vote for Donald Trump. 

“Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage,” Duke said on the David Duke Radio Program Wednesday, referring to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. “I’m not saying I endorse everything about Trump, in fact I haven’t formally endorsed him. But I do support his candidacy, and I support voting for him as a strategic action. I hope he does everything we hope he will do.” 

Duke then urged his followers to call Trump’s campaign headquarters to volunteer. 

“And I am telling you that it is your job now to get active. Get off your duff. Get off your rear end that’s getting fatter and fatter for many of you everyday on your chairs. When this show’s over, go out, call the Republican Party, but call Donald Trump’s headquarters, volunteer. They’re screaming for volunteers. Go in there, you’re gonna meet people who are going to have the same kind of mindset that you have.”

At some point this stops being funny, and that point was roughly 1789 when out first President who owned slaves was elected.  Kinda like to think America has seen numerous advances since then (the internet, string cheese, indoor plumbing) but in a lot of ways we're the same Puritan screwups from 250 years ago.

When actual, avowed racists "support your candidacy" you go well past dog whistle territory and into the "bullhorns with tower stacks" area.  I have no sympathy for Republicans who enabled every step of Trump's journey so far and who are in a state of total panic as a result, but at least they are vowing to "save the country" from Trump by voting for Hillary.

We'll see what actually happens soon enough.

A Master Class In Supreme Trolling

President Obama is obviously yanking the GOP's chain with this trial balloon about his SCOTUS pick being Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada.

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, a Republican and a former federal judge, is being considered by President Barack Obama for a possible appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a source close to the process said on Wednesday.

The source, who asked not to be identified, said Sandoval met on Monday in the U.S. Capitol with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, at which time Reid asked the governor whether he would be interested in being considered for the high court job.

"He said he was interested," the source said, adding that "a number of people are being checked out" for the job.

Sandoval is certainly qualified, but so was Scalia from a technical standpoint. Sandoval is clearly not going to be named because he's a Republican, and as Governor of Nevada he has fundamental differences from the President.

The fact that Obama would consider naming Sandoval is surprising, given the governor’s past statements on the Affordable Care Act. In his first State of the State Address in 2011, Sandoval said that “many aspects of the law are unconstitutional” and he pledged to “continue to fight to have them overturned.” He later personally signed briefs filed in the Supreme Court arguing against the law’s constitutionality and claiming that the Supreme Court “should hold the ACA invalid in its entirety.”

It’s worth noting that, after losing this case, Sandoval did agree to implement provisions of the law, such as its Medicaid expansion. Nevertheless, if Sandoval’s position had prevailed in the Supreme Court, Obamacare would have completely ceased to exist.

Sandoval’s record also creates a fair amount of uncertainty regarding how he would rule on several landmark issues currently before the Supreme Court, including whether to defund public sector unions, and the fate of President Obama’s plans to fight climate change and temporarily permit undocumented immigrants to remain in the country.

The bottom line is that this is all a gigantic, obvious trap for the Republicans currently in the Senate.

They fell for it anyway.

However, if Obama's intent in floating Sandoval's name was to box Republicans in to looking even more unreasonable than they already have, then it seems his ploy is already working. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellinstantly said his boss won't consider Sandoval, explaining, "The Leader didn't say the Senate would act 'if' it was a certain type of nominee." Presumably, that means McConnell wouldn't take action even if Obama nominated the ghost of William Rehnquist.

Sen. John Cornyn, the second highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, likewise immediately told Politico that his position on not allowing a nomination to proceed was unchanged. And anti-tax radical Grover Norquist opined, "Obama might nominate the guy who taxed Burning Man. Ugh." Not Burning Man! (Norquist did notoriously attend the counter-cultural desert festival a couple of years ago.) Freshman Sen. Deb Fischer may have summed it up best, though, when she declared, "It's not about the person."

So we have multiple Republican senators now, on record, saying that there is no nominee whatsoever that would be acceptable under any reason, because the nation's first black President no longer has the Constitutional right to name a successor to Scala.

Not even a Republican is acceptable.

Please proceed, GOP Senate.

StupidiNews!

• Both the US and China have agreed to a UN Security Council draft resolution detailing new sanctions on North Korea after Pyongyang's nuclear test earlier this year.
• President Obama has named Baltimore library system head Carla Hayden to the post of Librarian of Congress, the first woman and African-American appointed to the position.
• UN peace talks in Syria will resume after negotiations broke down February 3rd, a new date for talks will be announced on Friday.
• New York City's requirement to have restaurants post high-sodium warnings on menu items has survived its first major legal challenge from the restaurant industry.
• Facebook's like button will now allow you to finally display a range of reactions from love to anger on posts.