Last Call For Bernie Does Sacramento

Looks like the Bernie Bros are putting their votes where their mouths are: The Our Revolution gang has taken over the California Democratic Party and looks to leverage control of the largest state party in the country to affect national Democratic priorities.

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) turned out en masse at ordinarily sleepy party caucuses earlier this month, electing a slate of delegates who could be poised to take over the largest Democratic Party organization outside of Washington, D.C. 

As final vote totals trickled in, Sanders backers claimed to have elected more than 650 delegates out of 1,120 available seats chosen at this month’s caucuses. Those delegates will choose the next state Democratic Party chairman, along with other party officials. 

Sanders supporters say they hope to change the very nature of the Democratic Party. 

“One of the issues we’re looking to do is transform the party,” said Shannon Jackson, executive director of Our Revolution, the organization that grew out of the Sanders’s presidential campaign. “This is the first step in that process.”

Our Revolution ran an on-the-ground get-out-the-vote effort, to make sure supporters attended caucuses in each of the state’s 80 assembly districts. The group sent out more than 100,000 emails and delivered 40,000 text messages, Jackson told The Hill. More than 800 Sanders supporters signed up to run for delegate seats. 

Longtime Democratic activists, used to low-turnout caucuses in which only party regulars show up, were stunned by the long lines they faced this year. One party strategist in Sacramento said he waited 45 minutes in line before being able to vote, when he was used to walking in and out in the space of five minutes. 

The surge in turnout, and Sanders backers’ success, caught the attention of elected leaders in Sacramento. 

“There’s a lot of energy in the party right now. We need to move really quickly to harness this energy,” state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D) said in an interview, marveling at the turnout in his Los Angeles-area district.

I don't always agree with Sanders guys (to put it mildly) but credit is given where credit is due, all the times I've said "Well then get off your asses and do something to change things if you don't like the party rules" to these guys, well they did exactly that in California.

Getting involved in the local and state party level?  That's precisely what we need a hell of a lot more of and in all 50 states too.  Maybe this is the start of getting the Democratic party turned around.

I'm also very glad to see the Sanders folks finally realize that working from within the Democratic party rather than against it is the far more effective path to long-term victory.  If these are the activists ready to get involved and start filling local and state candidate slates rather than abandoning them to the GOP, then you know what?  That's how representative democracy works, guys.

More power to 'em.  They were told put up or shut up, and they put in the work and got involved.  We need more of that.  A lot more.

And not just in California.  This is a good place to start, however.

Bulls On Parade

Trump, like most authoritarian despots, wanted actual goddamn tanks rolling down the streets for his inauguration parade, because he's a goddamn tyrant.  The Pentagon politely told him no for several reasons.

The military “may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue,” Trump told the Washington Post in an interview published Wednesday. “That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military.”

Trump spoke about his vision of military parades in vague terms, suggesting it was something he might oversee in the future. But according to several sources involved in his inaugural preparations, Trump has endeavored to ensure that his first day as commander-in-chief is marked by an unusual display of heavy military equipment.

During the preparation for Friday’s transfer-of-power, a member of Trump’s transition team floated the idea of including tanks and missile launchers in the inaugural parade, a source involved in inaugural planning told The Huffington Post. “They were legit thinking Red Square/North Korea-style parade,” the source said, referring to massive military parades in Moscow and Pyongyang, typically seen as an aggressive display of muscle-flexing.

The military, which traditionally works closely with the presidential inaugural committee, shot down the request, the source said. Their reason was twofold. Some were concerned about the optics of having tanks and missile launchers rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue. But they also worried that the tanks, which often weigh over 100,000 pounds, would destroy the roads.

“I could absolutely see structural support being a reason [not to use tanks],” a Department of Defense official said. “D.C. is built on a swamp to begin with.”

Two things here: One, these are now the people in charge of the United States of America and its military, the strongest on the planet by an order of magnitude or so.  Two, it wasn't Trump who immediately shot this idea down, like most actual human beings with souls would do.  No, the request to roll tanks down Pennsylvania Avenue actually made it to the Pentagon.

By the way, Trump will get military flyovers.  Lots of them.  The last president to have flyovers as part of an inauguration?  Truman, after being re-elected after the Allies won WWII.  You know, the guy that nuked Japan twice.

We are in dire trouble from the word go.

The Age Of Austerity Is Coming

It's going to be a race to see who can cause more misery with draconian austerity cuts: Paul Ryan and the House (who have been cooking up brutal Medicaid Medicare and Social Security cuts for years and will almost certainly get them) or the Trump regime, who is apparently working on cutting everything else in the budget.

Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned. 

The changes they propose are dramatic. 

The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations. 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely. 

Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years. 

The proposed cuts hew closely to a blueprint published last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has helped staff the Trump transition. 

Similar proposals have in the past won support from Republicans in the House and Senate, who believe they have an opportunity to truly tackle spending after years of warnings about the rising debt. 

Many of the specific cuts were included in the 2017 budget adopted by the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus that represents a majority of House Republicans. The RSC budget plan would reduce federal spending by $8.6 trillion over the next decade.

Congrats, America.  You're not going to get a "government small enough to drown in a bathtub", you're going to get a government that drowns you in one instead.

So many Americans voted for Trump on the basis that he would hurt those people instead of the people ignorant enough to buy his con.  So many Americans are about to find out they were always going to get screwed by him.  Sure, there are plenty of folks who will be content to suffer just as long as it means anyone darker than a paper bag ends up back in crushing poverty, but as I keep reminding people, the majority of Americans on cash welfare, SNAP food assistance, SS disability checks and housing assistance programs are all white people.  When they start really hurting too, maybe they'll come around.

Probably not though.  At least they wont be, you know, black.  Long as Trump can keep that scam going, he can end the New Deal and start a new Gilded Age, no problem.  So as the Trump regime takes power (I refuse to call them "administration" because that would assume they 1) care about governance, 2) are capable of competent governance, 3) aren't a bunch of actual thieves and con artists, 4) aren't a white nationalist movement) this afternoon, remember:

It gets darkest just before it all goes pitch black.

StupidiNews, Inauguration Day Edition!

Donald Trump will be sworn in at America's 45th President at noon in Washington DC today.


This is really less of a news event as it is a warning of impending disaster.

New tag:  Trump Regime.

Last Call For Climate Of Hostility, Con't

As the Trump regime assumes power this weekend, keep in mind that the earth has now hit three straight years of record global temperatures, and we're in a pattern where new records will be set monthly.

Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016 — trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row. 

The findings come two days before the inauguration of an American president who has called global warming a Chinese plot and vowed to roll back his predecessor’s efforts to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases. 

The data show that politicians cannot wish the problem away. The Earth is heating up, a point long beyond serious scientific dispute, but one becoming more evident as the records keep falling. Temperatures are heading toward levels that many experts believe will pose a profound threat to both the natural world and to human civilization. 

In 2015 and 2016, the planetary warming was intensified by the weather pattern known as El Niño, in which the Pacific Ocean released a huge burst of energy and water vapor into the atmosphere. But the bigger factor in setting the records was the long-term trend of rising temperature, which scientists say is being driven by increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The good news is with El Nino over, 2017 will probably not be a global record-breaker.  But there are still major problems in the Arctic.

Even at current temperatures, billions of tons of land ice are melting or sliding into the ocean. The sea is also absorbing most of the heat trapped by human emissions. Those factors are causing the ocean to rise at what appears to be an accelerating pace, and coastal communities in the United States are spending billions of dollars to fight increased tidal flooding. Their pleas for help from Congress have largely been ignored. 

The finding that a record had been set for the third year in a row was released on Wednesday by three government agencies, two American and one British, that track measurements made by ships, buoys and land-based weather stations. They analyze the figures to correct for known problems, producing an annual average temperature for the surface of the Earth. The national meteorological agency of Japan also confirmed the findings in a preliminary analysis. 

The findings about a record-warm year were also confirmed by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, a nonprofit California group set up to provide a temperature analysis independent of governments. That group, however, did not find that three records had been set in a row; in its analysis, 2010 was slightly warmer than 2014.

So the Trump regime will try to legislate all mention of the problem away as Republicans are salivating over cuts to climate science and research.  But it's looking more and more like it's too late to stop the first stages of a positive feedback loop in the polar ice zones.  Science doesn't require your belief, as the truism goes.

Where The Hate Comes Screaming Down The Plain

Not to be outdone by Texas, North Carolina or Kentucky in January, Oklahoma Republicans are now in contention for the worst legislation so far in the very young year of 2017 as they attempt to enshrine compulsory anti-LGBTQ bigotry into state law.

In 2016, Oklahoma set a record for the most anti-LGBT bills introduced in one session, worsting Texas from the year before. Fortunately, legislative deadlines kept them from advancing, but now one lawmaker is back with what appears to be one of the most extreme “religious liberty” proposals any state has considered. 

Behind the measure is Sen. Joseph Silk (R), who has an extensive record of particularly anti-LGBT legislation and statements. He calls his new bill, SB 197, the “Oklahoma Right of Conscience Act,” but it explicitly enables discrimination against LGBT people — and possibly just about anyone else! 

SB 197 ensures that no one ever has to provide any services used in or to promote “a marriage ceremony or celebration of a specific lifestyle or behavior.” Additionally, such denials will be immune to any civil claim or governmental penalty. In fact, if someone tries to sue or the government takes an adverse action against the person who discriminates, that person will actually have a claim to “recover all reasonable attorney fees, costs, and damages” incurred as a result of the “violation.” 

The proposal seems to borrow from two other prominent pieces of legislation, Mississippi’s currently-unenforceable HB 1526 — which specifically enables discrimination against LGBT people — and the proposed First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which protects people who might discriminate against same-sex couples from any governmental penalty. Congressional Republicans are very optimistic about passing that bill given President-elect Donald Trump’s assurances that he would sign it.
Though the use of “marriage ceremony or celebration” seems to suggest that, like the other bills, SB 197 is designed to target same-sex couples for discrimination, the language is so broad that it could allow quite a bit more. 

There is virtually no limit to what “specific lifestyle or behavior” an Oklahoma wedding vendor could imagine to justify refusing service to a person. As written, the law would make it legal for them to discriminate against vegetarians, people with tattoos, people who tweet in ALL CAPS, people who are left-handed, people who enjoy shopping at Target, or people who enjoy the musical Oklahoma! a bit too much, as examples.

And again, the larger story is that Republicans are going to put the "First Amendment Freedom Act" on Trump's desk within the next couple of months, if not weeks, enshrining bigotry into federal law and almost certainly destroying state-level LGBTQ protections in the process.

It would be eminently unconstitutional, but given this regime, I fully expect that to no longer be the case for long.

The Creamsicle Cabinet

When Trump says "Make America Great Again" judging from his cabinet selections "America" is about 90% white men, a few white women, Ben Carson, Nikki Haley, and Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao.  With Trump reportedly tapping former Georgia GOP Gov. Sonny Perdue as Agriculture Secretary, that means for the first time since 1988 there will be no Hispanic members in the Cabinet.

Donald Trump's Cabinet is poised to become the first since 1988 without any Hispanic officials — a huge disappointment for members of the nation's second-largest ethnic group — as reports indicate he'll tap former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue for agriculture secretary.

Two Hispanic Texans were under consideration for the post: former U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, a San Antonio Republican, and Elsa Murano, a former Texas A&M president and former undersecretary for food safety.

"We're extremely worried. This is anti-democratic," Hector Sanchez, chairman of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, an umbrella group of 40 advocacy organizations, asserting that Trump is undoing decades of progress toward more inclusion.

Ronald Reagan named the first Latino to the Cabinet in 1988 when he picked Texas Democrat Lauro Cavazos for education secretary. Cavazos, a former Texas Tech president, stayed on under George Bush. Every president since, from both parties, has had at least one Hispanic in the Cabinet at all times.

"Trump has not only been the most anti-Latino, anti-immigrant president in the history of the nation. By not including Latinos in the Cabinet he is just showing how he is planning to govern," Sanchez said, noting that Latinos now account for 17 percent of the U.S. population. 

Carson has zero experience in running an agency like HUD (and has said so), Haley has zero foreign policy experience (and has said so), and ironically the one actual person in the Orange Cabinet who is actually qualified to be there is Chao, as Dubya's former Labor Secretary, as an obvious sop to her husband.

I'm thinking that it's almost an accident that Trump's cabinet has any diversity in it at all.  Hispanic voters should definitely be thinking that.  And Mouth of Sauron Sean Spicer?

Asked Wednesday about the dearth of Hispanics in the Cabinet, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer called it more important to pick people who can do the jobs well.

"He has continued to seek out the best and the brightest to fill out his Cabinet," Spicer said. "We have 5,000 positions and I think you're going to see a very strong presence of the Hispanic community" among senior administration appointments and White House staff.

"I don't have any concern about diversity," he said.

It's pretty apparent you don't, guys.

StupidiNews!

• Dozens of firefighters and other first responders were injured and trapped by a collapsed commercial building in Tehran, Iran Thursday after a fire destroyed several floors.
• The CIA is unveiling its full rules and guidelines for collecting data on Americans just days before a new president takes power.
• Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will take a 10-day medical leave of absence starting Monday, the 74-year-old leader had been treated for an ear infection last June.
• Troops from several West African nations are gathered on Senegal's border with Gambia to assure the peaceful transfer of power to Gambia's Adama Barrow by President Yahya Jammeh.
• CBS's on-line Star Trek series Discovery has been indefinitely delayed after being pushed back several months, the show has had multiple problems with production.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

The Trump regime assumes power in less than 48 hours, and we have this bombshell from McClatchy's Peter Stone and Greg Gordon on the Kremlin possibly funding the Trump campaign.

The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies have collaborated for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election, including whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided President-elect Donald Trump, two people familiar with the matter said. 

The informal, inter-agency working group began to explore possible Russian interference last spring, long before the FBI received information from a former British spy hired to develop politically damaging and unverified research about Trump, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the inquiry. 

The agencies involved in the inquiry are the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the director of national intelligence, the sources said. 

Investigators are examining how money may have moved from the Kremlin to covertly help Trump win, the two sources said. One of the allegations involves whether a system for routinely paying thousands of Russian-American pensioners may have been used to pay some email hackers in the United States or to supply money to intermediaries who would then pay the hackers, the two sources said.

That the Trump Organization as a front for Russian money laundering has long been a unifying theory in the story of Moscow's involvement with our elections, but this story intimates that multiple intelligence and law enforcement agencies took that possibility seriously for months.  Apparently this is a much, much bigger story than the January 6 report let on, and it definitely looks like FISA warrants were issued in conjunction with the investigation.

So again, we have serious evidence that our next president is a Russian asset.

What will anyone do about it?

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article127231799.html#storylink=cpy

The Big Orange Basement

It's only now that the prospect of "President Trump" is sinking in with his supporters and that he won't serve as any sort of check on unlimited GOP lunacy, with Americans only growing more and more horrified at him over the last two months.  As such, he'll be entering office Friday with the lowest starting approval rating of any president in recent history.

It has been 10 weeks since Donald Trump was elected president, and more Americans disapprove (48 percent) than approve (37 percent) of the way he has handled his presidential transition. They are split on his cabinet picks. Views divide heavily along party lines.

Just days before his inauguration, Donald Trump’s favorable rating (32 percent) is the lowest of any president-elect in CBS News polling going back to Ronald Reagan in 1981, when CBS News began taking this measure.

However, a majority of Americans are at least somewhat confident in how Mr. Trump will handle the economy, ISIS and U.S. trade policy. Fewer are confident in his decisions on foreign policy and illegal immigration.

President-elect Trump gets more negative than positive marks for the handling of his Presidential transition. Forty-eight percent disapprove of the job he is doing, while 37 percent approve.

Confirmation hearings for some of Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments are underway. Americans are divided over Mr. Trump’s choices for his Cabinet, similar to last month.

On both of these matters, views are highly partisan. More than seven in 10 Republicans approve of how Mr. Trump has handled his presidential transition and his cabinet choices. Most Democrats disapprove.

Evaluations of Mr. Trump’s cabinet appointees are more negative than those of his two immediate predecessors: seven in 10 Americans approved of the cabinet appointments of Barack Obama, and six in 10 approved of those appointed by George W. Bush. 

More broadly, Donald Trump will enter the White House with the lowest favorable rating of any president-elect in CBS News polling going back to Ronald Reagan in 1981. Thirty-two percent have a favorable view of Mr. Trump, while 42 percent view him unfavorably. In 2009, 60 percent held a favorable view of Mr. Obama, and just nine percent had an unfavorable view of him. George W. Bush had a 44 percent favorable rating in Jan. 2001, and Bill Clinton had a 45 percent approval rating. Ronald Reagan came into office with a 47 percent approval rating. Still, unfavorable views of Mr. Trump have declined since he was elected in November.

Trump is already in the low 30's and I think it's going to get worse for him from here.  Unfortunately, it also means things are going to get a lot worse for Americans too.

Still, expect Republicans to shout MANDATE while ripping the last 80 years of classic federal liberalism apart.  It's really too bad that the GOP will do unprecedented damage to the country and the wealthy will loot the treasury completely before voters will be able to do much of anything to stop them.

If we, you know, still have elections.

Heavens To Betsy, What A Mess

The Trump regime's pick for Minister of School Privitization Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is a trainwreck of a choice whose only seeming qualification is that she donated millions to Republicans on the Senate committee overseeing her confirmation process.  Her hearing Tuesday was a disaster all around as she gave risible answers to questions from Democrats.

On Tuesday, Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s Education Secretary nominee, answered a question about the presence of guns in schools during her confirmation hearing by saying students need protection from grizzly bears.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy (D) asked DeVos, “Do you think guns have any place in or around schools?”

DeVos said that is decision “best left to locales and states to decide.”

When Murphy asked her again, DeVos said, “I will refer back to Senator Enzi and the school he was talking about in Wyoming … I would imagine that there is probably a gun in the schools to protect from potential grizzlies.”

When Murphy was a member of the House of Representatives, he represented the district including Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 elementary school students and six school employees were gunned down in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre. Murphy invited DeVos to come to Connecticut and “talk about the rule of guns in schools.”

When asked whether DeVos would support the president-elect’s plan to ban gun free zones, she said, “I will support with the president-elect does. If the question is around gun violence and the results of that, please know that my heart bleeds and is broken for those families that have lost any individual due to gun violence.”

Bears.  We have to have guns in schools because of bears.  Oh, but DeVos is far worse than just on guns in the classroom.

Since her nomination, DeVos hasn't said much publicly about her views on education—or whether she plans to defend the separation of church and state in public schools. (DeVos declined Mother Jones' request for an interview, but a Trump transition team spokeswoman replied in an email, "Mrs. DeVos believes in the legal doctrine of the separation of church and state.") However, in a 2001 interview for "The Gathering," a group focused on advancing Christian faith through philanthropy, she and her husband offered a rare public glimpse of their views. Asked whether Christian schools should continue to rely on philanthropic dollars—rather than pushing for taxpayer money through vouchers—Betsy DeVos replied, "There are not enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education…[versus] what is currently being spent every year on education in this country…Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God's Kingdom."

Said Dick DeVos: "As we look at many communities in our country, the church has been displaced by the public school as the center for activity…[I]t is certainly our hope that more and more churches will get more and more active and engaged in education."

Although the DeVoses have rarely commented on how their religious views affect their philanthropy and political activism, their spending speaks volumes. Mother Jones has analyzed the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation's tax filings from 2000 to 2014, as well as the 2001 to 2014 filings from her parents' charitable organization, the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation. (Betsy DeVos was vice president of the Prince Foundation during those years.) During that period, the DeVoses spent nearly $100 million in philanthropic giving, and the Princes spent $70 million. While Dick and Betsy DeVos have donated large amounts to hospitals, health research, and arts organizations, these records show an overwhelming emphasis on funding Christian schools and evangelical missions and conservative, free-market think tanks, like the Acton Institute and the Mackinac Center, that want to shrink the public sector in every sphere, including education.

This woman will be our next Education Secretary with a lifelong mission to completely dismantle public schools and replace them with private education and religious education.

I actually miss Arne Duncan.  And I hate Arne Duncan.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama has commuted the sentence of convicted US Army soldier Chelsea Manning to be freed in May, Republicans are furious over the move.
• A massive fracture in the Brunt ice shelf is causing British researchers in Antarctica to shut down the Halley VI Research Station for safety reasons.
• Former President George HW Bush has been hospitalized in Houston for an undisclosed illness, but the 92-year-old is reportedly "doing fine".
• The least affordable housing on Earth is in Hong Kong, according to a new Oxford University economics study of large world cities.
• Republicans and even some Western-state Democrats in Congress are looking to gut or even reverse the Endangered Species Act.

Last Call For Cryer's Remorse

There seems to be a whole heck of a lot of buyer's remorse for Trump among the demographic of white women who voted for him (by ten points I might add) and they're only now just figuring out what total control of women's rights in the hands of Republicans means: things like the end of Planned Parenthood here which bothers USA Today contributor Melody Forbes.

I voted for Donald Trump because I wanted to see change in our country. One change I didn’t want to see was access to health care at Planned Parenthood blocked. 

But Republican congressional leaders have already promised to do just that, with a provision to stop reimbursements for the health care Planned Parenthood provides. 

Just like one in 5 women across the country, I went to Planned Parenthood here in Arizona in my 20s for health care. I was newly divorced, unemployed and uninsured, and I needed health services I could not otherwise afford. 

These are services every woman needs at some point, and they are at risk. Vice President-elect Mike Pence and anti-women’s health members of Congress are pledging to attack Planned Parenthood and block patients from essential care, as they have threatened to do as many times as they could in last 10 years. The difference this time is that they think President-elect Trump, as a Republican, will sign the bill. 

It doesn’t make any sense for Trump, who said he would defend the American people from politics as usual, to sign a bill like this. Millions of mostly low-income people who rely on Planned Parenthood for essential health care like birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, well-woman exams and more, would no longer have access within their communities. And people who already face outsized barriers to getting care, especially people of color and people in rural communities, would face additional hurdles. A bill to defund Planned Parenthood doesn’t cross out a line in the federal budget — it stops people with Medicaid from being able to go to Planned Parenthood for basic reproductive health care.

Well all that is true, but Trump is going to sign the bill anyway because he's promised to do just that.

Yes, because as long as they do the abortion I am not for funding Planned Parenthood but they do cervical cancer work. They do a lot of good things for women but as long as they’re involved with the abortions, as you know they say it’s 3% of their work, some people say it’s 10%, some people say it’s 8%, I hear all different percentages but it doesn’t matter. As long as they’re involved with abortion, as far as I’m concerned forget it, I wouldn’t fund them regardless. But they do do other good work. You look at cervical cancer. I’ve had women tell me they do some excellent work so I think you also have to put that into account but I would defund Planned Parenthood because of their view and the fact of their work on abortion.”

So the question remains ma'am...why the hell did you vote for Trump if Planned Parenthood is that important?

So Long And Thanks For All The Net Neutrality

That the Trump team wants to get rid of net neutrality measures to protect consumers is a given and almost 100% assured at this point.  But remember, Trump is vindictive and destructive, so the real plan is to all but dismantle the FCC completely to make sure the commission never has power to actually do anything ever again.

President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is reportedly pushing a proposal to strip the Federal Communications Commission of its role in overseeing competition and consumer protection.

Multichannel News has what it calls an exclusive report that says the incoming Trump administration has "signed off on an approach to remaking the Federal Communications Commission." The plan, offered by transition team members appointed by Trump, "squares with the deregulatory philosophies of FCC Republicans Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly," who will take a 2-1 majority after Trump's inauguration on Friday, the report said.

Besides restructuring FCC bureaus, the majority of the transition team wants to "eventually move functions deemed 'duplicative,' like, say, competition and consumer protection, to other agencies, particularly the Federal Trade Commission," Multichannel news reported. The story cites "sources familiar" with a recent meeting involving Trump officials and FCC transition team members. The Trump team has not made any on-the-record statements about specific plans for the FCC.

Pai and O'Rielly have already promised to take a deregulatory approach to broadband and telecom industries, and it's within their power to do so. But that doesn't mean the Trump administration could unilaterally reduce the FCC's authority in such a way that the changes last beyond Trump's presidency. Congress would have to be involved in a permanent reduction of FCC authority, though that isn't inconceivable as Congressional Republicans have previously said they'd like to overhaul the Communications Act that gives the FCC its authority.

The FCC transition team appointed by Trump has six people including three individuals affiliated with the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), namely Roslyn Layton, Jeffrey Eisenach, and Mark Jamison. The majority plan offered by the transition team "was said to dovetail with comments from Eisenach and Layton to Congress in 2014," which said FCC "functions are largely duplicative of those of other agencies," Multichannel News reported.

In other words, say goodbye to the FCC's power to protect American internet consumers as Trump will almost certainly assure internet near-monopolies, total lack of competition, and Americans paying some of the highest internet prices of any developed country.

But after all, that's what you voted for, right?

As Goes Ohio, Goes The White House

Trump's win in Ohio wasn't just impressive for a Republican, in more than a third of Ohio counties it was an historic margin of victory for a Republican president.

With the ascension of Donald Trump coming this week, we decided to look again at Ohio’s presidential election results — and stumbled across some amazing facts that perhaps shed a different light on his victory than what we’ve seen to date. 

In 22 counties — exactly a quarter of Ohio’s total — Trump rolled up the largest percentage of any Republican ever. Yes, that’s since 1856. 

So that’s higher than the Bushes, Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt and several Ohio GOP presidents — all the way back through Abraham Lincoln. 

In 11 additional counties, the Trump share of the vote was the second highest for a Republican in Ohio history. 

Seven of the 22 record-breakers were in southeastern Ohio.

Trump won the Ohio counties along the Kentucky and WV borders by huge margins, and that gave him the state.  He also flipped Montgomery County, where Dayton is.

While much of the focus since Election Day justifiably has focused on traditionally Democratic counties that swung Trump’s way, a pair of new story lines emerges from these numbers. 

One is that many marginally Republican counties went for Trump in a big way. For example, coal country neighbors Belmont and Monroe counties each gave Mitt Romney about 53 percent support in 2012. But this time, 68 percent of Belmont’s voters and 72 percent of Monroe’s went for Trump. 

The other is that numerous faithfully Republican areas went huge for Trump. Adams County, at the southern tip of the state east of Cincinnati, registered from 61 to 63 percent support for every GOP candidate from 2000 on — until last year, when it backed Trump with 76 percent. 

Even Mercer County, the western county that went for Romney with 76 percent, topped that mark with an amazing 81 percent for Trump.

It was a long time coming, but at this point Ohio must be considered a strong red state.  Democrats need to look to somehow securing North Carolina and Florida if they wish to win in 2020.   The good news is that demographics favors the Dems there and in Virginia, not so much in the Midwest anymore.

Outside Illinois and Minnesota, the Dems are in trouble.  They've been dismantled in the Rust Belt locally.  Hopefully Trump will go a long way towards people giving the Dems another chance. Hopefully.