StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump will meet with House Republicans still opposed to the current bill to repeal and replace Obamacare as the GOP bill's support continues to flag.
• The leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee says testimony from former acting AG Sally Yates later this week could be "the ball game" when it comes to Trump and Russia.
• A suicide bombing attack on a NATO convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan has killed eight and injured dozens as several civilian vehicles in the area were damaged or destroyed in the blast.
• Auto theft in Mexico is up more than 20% from this time last year as police are struggling to keep up with recovery efforts.
• San Francisco and AirBNB have settled their lawsuit over the city's short-term rental policy, and the city will keep its Office of Short-Term Rentals and require registration for room rentals.

Last Call For Mitch Doesn't Wan't The Blame

GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell knows that the only thing between him and total Republican victory right now is the filibuster.  Without it, the GOP could pass every bill they wanted to, with zero Democratic votes, and Trump would sign it.  No surprise then that this level of responsibility is the last thing he wants.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is shooting down President Trump's push for Republicans to change the Senate's rules for blocking legislation.

Asked if Republicans would nix the 60-vote filibuster to allow legislation to pass by a simple majority, McConnell told reporters, "That will not happen."

"There is an overwhelming majority on a bipartisan basis not interested in changing the way the Senate operates on the legislative calendar" on legislation, McConnell said during a weekly press conference.

Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning that voters should either elect more Republicans or get rid of the 60-vote requirement needed for ending debate on legislation.

"The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate which are not there! We either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good 'shutdown' in September to fix mess!" he wrote in a series of tweets. 

But McConnell — who pledged last month to keep the filibuster — said the move would "fundamentally change the way the Senate has worked for a very long time. We're not going to do that."

Again, why not?  What's Mitch afraid of?

Unless of course he realizes that Trump and the House GOP would absolutely wreck the country and that the Senate would be blamed for helping them, and that it would empower the Democrats for a decade or more.  Mitch is a lot of things: vile, odious, greedy, possibly even a criminal depending on who you ask, but he's not stupid.  He knows what's coming.

And he doesn't want any part of it.

Billy Versus The Bill

It's no secret that Republicans are trying to quietly sneak the end of Obamacare through undetected after the very public collapse of the first two versions of the legislation.  But tt turns out that the most powerful voice against Trumpcare 3.0 (and its provisions to let states opt out of protecting people with pre-existing medical conditions) may be that of late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, and his newborn son Billy.

In a heart-wrenching 13-minute monologue, Jimmy Kimmel opened up about his son’s heart condition, which was discovered just hours after his birth ten days ago. With tears in his eyes, the host described the harrowing ordeal, which started with a nurse noticing baby William John Kimmel’s color was off and ended with him being rushed into open-heart surgery.

Baby Billy is doing well, though he’ll need several more surgeries. Kimmel closed with a plea for politicians to make sure others have a similarly happy outcome, even if they aren’t born to wealthy parents. 

We were brought up to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world, but until a few years ago, millions and millions of us had no access to health insurance at all. You know, before 2014, if you were born with congenital heart disease, like my son was, there’s a good chance you’d never be able to get health insurance, because you had a pre-existing condition. You were born with a preexisting condition. And if your parents didn’t have insurance, you may not even live long enough to get denied because of a preexisting condition.

If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make. I think that’s something that whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right?

Kimmel said that regardless of party, “We need to make sure that the people who are supposed to represent us, people who are meeting about this right now in Washington, understand that very clearly.”

Last night America saw just how callow and cruel our Republican "leaders" are.  maybe they'll choose to do something about them, not just today, but 18 months from now on election day too.

Going After Her Lunch

The Trump Regime continues its erasure of the Obamas in every way, this time completely dismantling former First Lady Michelle Obama's championed programs for kids, including global education for girls.

The Trump administration is discontinuing a signature girls education initiative championed by former first lady Michelle Obama, according to officials. 

The "Let Girls Learn" program, which she and President Barack Obama started in 2015 to facilitate educational opportunities for adolescent girls in developing countries, will cease operation immediately, according to an internal document obtained by CNN. 

While aspects of the initiative's programming will continue, employees have been told to stop using the "Let Girls Learn" name and were told that, as a program unto itself, "Let Girls Learn" was ending. 

"Moving forward, we will not continue to use the 'Let Girls Learn' brand or maintain a stand-alone program," read an email sent to Peace Corps employees this week by the agency's acting director Sheila Crowley. 

" 'Let Girls Learn' provided a platform to showcase Peace Corps' strength in community development, shining a bright light on the work of our Volunteers all over the world," Crowley wrote. "We are so proud of what 'Let Girls Learn' accomplished and we have all of you to thank for this success." 

Gotta get "Moochelle's" name off the letterhead I guess.  But the real hatred against her has always been over her efforts to make school lunches healthier, a national initiative that fostered unending, volcanic, inchoate and incandescent rage among conservatives.  Those standards are now in the dumpster as newly confirmed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue's first move.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue took steps Monday to roll back healthy school lunch standards promoted by former first lady Michelle Obama in one of his first regulatory acts.

In an interim final rule, aimed at giving schools more flexibility, Perdue and his department are postponing further sodium reductions for at least three years and allowing schools to serve non-whole grain rich products occasionally as well as 1 percent flavored milk.

The rule allows states to exempt schools in the 2017-2018 school year from having to replace all their grains with whole-grain rich products if they are having a hard time meeting the standard.

USDA said it will take “all necessary regulatory actions to implement a long-term solution.”

“This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals,” Perdue said in a statement.

“If kids aren't eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren't getting any nutrition – thus undermining the intent of the program.”

The real issue was of course healthier meals are something that A) poor black and brown kids who can't pay for school lunches don't deserve apparently, and B) something that Big Ag was furious about having to help provide when they could be selling snacks and soda to kids in vending machines in every school in the country instead.

For this, Michelle Obama was treated as an object of pure racist hatred, for the unforgivable crime of wanting kids to eat healthier and for girls to learn more.  Thank goodness we're making school lunches great again, or some garbage like that, cause that Obama bitch needs to be put in her place, right boys?

God some days I hate this country.  I really do.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the subjects are expected to be Syria, North Korea and terrorism.
• Maine GOP Gov. Paul LePage is suing Maine Democratic AG Janet Mills for opposing Trump regime court cases that LePage says the state must join under his orders.
• North Korea is warning that the US is pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war after the US flew nuclear bombers in a joint training drill with Japan and South Korea.
• US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says that fracking will allow the US to gain not just energy independence, but global dominance as oil drilling is massively ramping up under Trump.
• Netflix's Orange is the New Black is the latest victim of hackers posting entire seasons of shows online months before their premiere date unless their ransom demands are met.

Last Call For Economic Anxiety, Again

The "economic anxiety" excuse for why Trump won will never, ever die it seems, and the latest proponents of the odious theory are the Democrats themselves.  Greg Sargent took a look at the internal polling from the Democratic "autopsy" of the 2016 campaign and has some grim figures:

One finding from the polling stands out: A shockingly large percentage of these Obama-Trump voters said Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy — twice the percentage that said the same about Trump. I was also permitted to view video of some focus group activity, which showed Obama-Trump voters offering sharp criticism of Democrats on the economy.

Priorities USA, the super PAC that is working to restore Democrats to power, conducted focus groups of Obama-Trump voters in Wisconsin and Michigan — two states that Trump snatched from Democrats — in late January and polled some 800 Obama-Trump voters nationally at around the same time. The pollsters also conducted focus groups with so-called drop-off voters — people who voted for Obama in 2012 but didn’t vote in 2016 — in the same states and polled 800 drop-off voters nationally.

“[Hillary] Clinton and Democrats’ economic message did not break through to drop-off or Obama-Trump voters, even though drop-off voters are decidedly anti-Trump,” Priorities USA concluded in a presentation of its polling data and focus group findings, which has been shown to party officials in recent days.

The poll found that Obama-Trump voters, many of whom are working-class whites and were pivotal to Trump’s victory, are economically losing ground and are skeptical of Democratic solutions to their problems. Among the findings: 

• 50 percent of Obama-Trump voters said their incomes are falling behind the cost of living, and another 31 percent said their incomes are merely keeping pace with the cost of living.
• A sizable chunk of Obama-Trump voters — 30 percent — said their vote for Trump was more a vote against Clinton than a vote for Trump. Remember, these voters backed Obama four years earlier.
• 42 percent of Obama-Trump voters said congressional Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy, vs. only 21 percent of them who said the same about Trump. (Forty percent say that about congressional Republicans.) A total of 77 percent of Obama-Trump voters said Trump’s policies will favor some mix of all other classes (middle class, poor, all equally), while a total of 58 percent said that about congressional Democrats.

“If you felt like your life wasn’t getting better over eight years, then you might draw a conclusion that Democrats don’t care about you,” Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, told me in an interview. “Certainly a subset of these voters were responsive to what Trump was selling them on immigration. But you had a lot of consistency with the Obama-Trump voters … in terms of the severe economic anxiety they face.”

The economic anxiety angle remains an excuse.  I know that because Clinton adopted a lot of Bernie's economic policies before the election, and Tom Perez has adopted even more now ($15 minimum wage comes to mind) and yet nobody seems to give a damn.  If it was ever really about economics and not a white supremacist in the White House, the Dems would have won.

The message is clear: the Dems have to kick black, Hispanic, and Aisan voters to the curb and go after white votes, because only they matter.

I'm tired of it and I'll fight that every step of the way.

The Whitest Of Whitewashings

Don't look now, but not only is Trump trying to rehabilitate his political hero Andrew Jackson, he's actually trying to say that Jackson could have stopped the US Civil War if he had been around.

President Trump during an interview that airs Monday questioned why the country had a Civil War and suggested former President Andrew Jackson could have prevented it had he served later. 

"I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart," Trump said during an interview with the Washington Examiner's Salena Zito.

"He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, 'There's no reason for this.'"

Jackson, the nation's seventh president, died in 1845. The Civil War began in 1861.

The president further questioned why the country could not have solved the Civil War.

"People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?" Trump said during the edition of "Main Street Meets the Beltway" scheduled to air on SiriusXM.

"People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"

During the interview, the president also compared his win to that of Jackson.

"My campaign and win was most like Andrew Jackson, with his campaign. And I said, when was Andrew Jackson? It was 1828. That's a long time ago," Trump said. 

"That's Andrew Jackson. And he had a very, very mean and nasty campaign. Because they said this was the meanest and the nastiest. And unfortunately, it continues."

The fact that Jackson died 16 years before the Civil War and served as president more than 30 years before aside, Jackson was one of America's biggest proponents of slavery.  Jackson's estate, The Hermitage, was a slave plantation, pure an simple, and Jackson himself signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, leading directly to the Trail of Tears.  This is a man who thought both blacks and Native Americans were savages who could not be reasoned with because he didn't view either group as human.

“My original convictions upon this subject have been confirmed by the course of events for several years, and experience is every day adding to their strength,” he said during his Fifth Annual Address to Congress in 1833. “That those tribes can not exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain.

“They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”

Jackson’s steadfast belief in racial inferiority fueled his early career as a slave trader, which in turn funded his purchase of the Hermitage plantation in 1804. More than 150 slaves worked the land at one point and throughout his life, Jackson is believed to have owned upwards of 300 slaves.

And this is who Trump not only admires, but is someone who Trump believes could have prevented the US Civil War.  I'll leave the theories on how a man who directly profited from slavery and ran tens of thousands of Native Americans off their lands would have "worked it out" to you, dear reader.

But I do know that Trump has long been Old Hickory's biggest fan, and has often pointed out the parallels between his campaign and Jackson's in 1828.  That shouldn't aurprise anyone at this point, because of course we elected both of them.

Third Time's A Horrow Show

Republicans in the House say they are very close to having enough votes this week to finally and completely dismantle Obamacare, and the resulting pressure on Republicans to pass Trumpcare 3.0 is enough that party leaders are going all out to secure the votes that they need.

House Republican leaders and White House officials are increasingly confident about passing their long-stalled Obamacare replacement bill: More lawmakers than ever are committed to voting “yes," they say, and GOP insiders insist they’re within striking distance of a majority.

But the window of opportunity for Speaker Paul Ryan and his leadership team is closing fast. The House is scheduled to leave town for a one-week recess on Thursday, and some senior Republicans worry that failing to get it done by then would fritter away critical momentum. Skittish Republicans would return home to face a barrage of pressure from Democrats and progressive outside groups.

Some senior Republicans and White House officials are advising Ryan (R-Wis.) and his top lieutenants to cancel the recess if needed, and to keep the House in session until they have the votes.

"I think they could have voted on Friday," President Donald Trump said in a Sunday interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" to discuss his first 100 days in office. "I said, 'Just relax. Don't worry about this phony 100 day thing. Just relax. Take it easy. Take your time. Get the good vote and make it perfect.'"

"I think health care reform, repealing and replacing Obamacare is just around the corner,” Vice President Mike Pence added on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think we’re close.”

While Trump and the White House have been overly optimistic before about repealing Obamacare, senior House Republicans agree with them this time.

“We’re very close," Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

All sides agree that right now the Republicans are still short on the votes, and if they don't get it done this week, it might never happen.  But that's no reason to relax.  If like me you're in a GOP district, it's time to make some phone calls.  Thomas Massie is still a no here in NKY, so that's something at least, but we still need a few more no votes to seal this thing in the dumpster.

There are a lot of undecided Republicans out there still.  Time to convince them to say no.

StupidiNews!

• A bipartisan budget deal in Congress will keep the government going through September but several Trump priorities are not in the bill, including funding for a border wall with Mexico.
• Donald Trump is facing heat from both parties for inviting Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte to the White House after a Saturday phone call between the two.
• North Korea vowed Monday to boost nuclear testing "to the maximum" in continuing violations of UN resolutions, saying it will do so "at any moment" to counter the US.
• Global soccer organization FIFA is now seeing the fallout of last year's bribery scandal spread to Asia as the head of Guam's soccer association admitted to taking $1.1 million in bribes.
• Toxic algae blooms in the Atlantic are becoming more widespread and more frequent as oceans warm, but there are some differences in the Pacific according to researchers.

Last Call For Full Court Press

The signs of the Trump regime's growing authoritarianism continue to come at a rapid fire pace, now we have White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus suggesting on ABC's This Week to Jonathan Karl that maybe the Constitution shouldn't cover a free press any longer.

KARL: I want to ask you about two things the President has said on related issues. First of all, there was what he said about opening up the libel laws. Tweeting “the failing New York Times has disgraced the media world. Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change the libel laws?” That would require, as I understand it, a constitutional amendment. Is he really going to pursue that? Is that something he wants to pursue?

PRIEBUS: I think it’s something that we’ve looked at. How that gets executed or whether that goes anywhere is a different story. But when you have articles out there that have no basis or fact and we’re sitting here on 24/7 cable companies writing stories about constant contacts with Russia and all these other matters—

KARL: So you think the President should be able to sue the New York Times for stories he doesn’t like?

PRIEBUS: Here’s what I think. I think that newspapers and news agencies need to be more responsible with how they report the news. I am so tired.

KARL: I don’t think anybody would disagree with that. It’s about whether or not the President should have a right to sue them.

PRIEBUS: And I already answered the question. I said this is something that is being looked at. But it’s something that as far as how it gets executed, where we go with it, that’s another issue.

"We've looked at" giving the Trump the power to sue or take other action against a press that publishes stories critical of the regime, particularly involving Trump's Russia ties.  You'd better believe that this is a open threat to journalists across the country, and one that will be cheered by tens of millions.

This isn't just a threat, either.  It's a promise.  You should take Priebus at his word that the regime is looking for ways to limit free speech to friendly press only.  This is what authoritarian regimes do. This is what controls America now.

The Retirement Party Continues

Republicans in the age to Trump are falling like dominoes, and the most recent one is big: First House Oversight Committee chair Jason Chaffetz announced his retirement, now Florida's top House Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is leaving the House after 35 years.

“It's been such a delight and a high honor to serve our community for so many years and help constituents every day of the week,” the Miami Republican told the Miami Herald in an exclusive telephone interview Sunday. “We just said, ‘It's time to take a new step.’” 

Her unexpected retirement marks the end of a storied career in which Ros-Lehtinen repeatedly broke political ground as a Cuban-American woman -- and gives Democrats an opportunity to pick up a South Florida congressional seat in 2018.

Ros-Lehtinen, 64, was elected last November to Florida’s redrawn 27th district, a stretch of Southeast Miami-Dade County that leans so Democratic that Hillary Clinton won it over Donald Trump by 20 percentage points. It was Clinton's biggest margin of any Republican-held seat in the country.

Ros-Lehtinen defeated Democratic challenger Scott Fuhrman, a first-time candidate, by 10 points. It was her closest reelection race in years and forced her to deplete her $3.4 million campaign account, but she said Sunday she wasn't worried about 2018.

“There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I would not only win in this election, but I would win by a greater percentage,” Ros-Lehtinen said, adding that she would have been able to raise at least $2.5 million and win in a midterm election without a Democratic presidential candidate leading the ballot. 

But she said the prospect of another two or four or more years in Congress just didn’t appeal to her anymore.

“There was no epiphany. There was no moment, nothing that has happened that I've said, “I've got to move on,’” Ros-Lehtinen said. “It was just a realization that I could keep getting elected — but it's not about getting elected.”

But she's leaving, and when Republicans have total control to implement whatever legislation that they like with minimal Democratic interference.  Again, she's only 64.  She had another 10 years ahead of her easily, if not longer, during a time of near-total Republican dominance in her home state and the country.  Even Ros-Lehtinen herself was a Republican beloved by Democrats in her home district, where Clinton won huge, but Ros-Lehtinen herself won by double digits.

So when a lifelong politician who's been in office since I was a child says "It's not about getting elected", especially a House Republican, it's a massive lie.

Expect more mysterious, unexplained retirements of Republicans at the top of their political power in the era of Trump.

Trump Cards, Con't

Dear Leader Donald held a patriotism rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania last night to tout his "most successful first 100 days in history" and his supporters in the Keystone State showed up to play along.

President Trump marked his 100th day in office with a campaign rally in Pennsylvania this evening, assailing one of his favorite targets from the electoral cycle, the media, as he skipped the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

He also revisited many other themes from his campaign: building a border wall, repealing and replacing Obamacare, ensuring border security and assailing the Obama administration and Democrats as weak leaders while touting "100 days of devotion hard work and love for our country."

Trump's remarks were interrupted by several protesters, and as had been the case during some campaign rallies, he paused his speech and told security officials to "get 'em out."

"There's no place I'd rather be than right here in Pennsylvania," Trump told the crowd in Harrisburg.

"As you may know there's another big gathering taking place tonight in Washington D.C.," Trump added. "Did you hear about that? A large group of Hollywood actors, and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation's Capitol right now.

"They are gathered together for the White House Correspondent's Dinner -- without the president. And I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from Washington's swamp, spending my evening with all of you."

He went on to call the media "a disgrace" and "incompetent."

Trump said that many journalists are "trapped at the dinner, which will be very, very boring," but he suggested that he could "make it more interesting" next year by showing up.

He made it very clear who the enemies of America are now: the free press that dares question him, the Democrats who dare oppose him, and the people who dare not revere him.  They will be dealt with.

The phenomenon of a Trump rally is its collapsing of the space-time continuum. It’s timeless and timely with the recitations of the old themes—“does anyone remember who our opponent was?”—and the introduction of the new material—“Senator Schumer is a bad leader.”

Within these spaces, Trump is largely impervious to criticism. His failures are the faults of the Democrats and Republicans who won’t cooperate with him, and his successes are the result of a unique businessman’s approach to the presidency.

“What Donald Trump really is is an independent president, if you will, for lack of a better term hijacking the Republican Party,” Michael Avila, a Trump voter from New York City, told The Daily Beast. “Which I think is a good thing.”

“I think he needs to get rid of Paul Ryan somehow, someway,” Avila added. “I think he’s a big issue.”

For Edward X. Young, a 57-year-old actor from New Jersey, sporting an assortment of buttons including pictures of the president and his wife, Trump achieved a great deal in the first 100 days considering the “quasi-Marxist Democratic party” he had to work with.

His one major issue was that Trump didn’t fulfill the campaign promise of putting Hillary Clinton in jail.

“She’s behind the Resistance,” Young told The Daily Beast, referring to Clinton. Trump “should prosecute her and put her and her lousy husband behind bars, and her daughter too.”

 When our economy starts falling apart, the scapegoats are already lined up: "illegals", non-Christians, "the blacks", the Democrats,  They are Resistance, and as far as Trump's supporters are concerned, they have no rights because they chose to no longer be American, and who who never were in their eyes are less than human anyway.  In Trump's America, "those people" will not be mourned when they are gone.

It's dangerous enough with a semi-stable economy and decent unemployment, but the clouds are already on the horizon signaling a very bad time ahead, and with Trump at the helm the pain coming for everyone will be a crate of lit sparklers dropped in a field of dry tinder.  Very soon the creaming for blood at rallies and the calls for "give him some time" will not be enough to sate the Rough Beast.

And then America will become very dangerous, very quickly.

Sunday Long Read: When The Bullet Meets The Bone

Huffington Post writer Jason Fagone goes on the front lines of Gunmerica with Philadelphia trauma surgeon Dr. Amy Goldberg to see just what firearms are designed to do to flesh and bone, and what the doctors that try to repair that damage see on a daily basis.

The first thing Dr. Amy Goldberg told me is that this article would be pointless. She said this on a phone call last summer, well before the election, before a tangible sensation that facts were futile became a broader American phenomenon. I was interested in Goldberg because she has spent 30 years as a trauma surgeon, almost all of that at the same hospital, Temple University Hospital in North Philadelphia, which treats more gunshot victims than any other in the state and is located in what was, according to one analysis, the deadliest of the 10 largest cities in the country until last year, with a homicide rate of 17.8 murders per 100,000 residents in 2015.

Over my years of reporting here, I had heard stories about Temple’s trauma team. A city prosecutor who handled shooting investigations once told me that the surgeons were able to piece people back together after the most horrific acts of violence. People went into the hospital damaged beyond belief and came walking out.

That stuck with me. I wondered what surgeons know about gun violence that the rest of us don’t. We are inundated with news about shootings. Fourteen dead in San Bernardino, six in Michigan, 11 over one weekend in Chicago. We get names, places, anguished Facebook posts, wonky articles full of statistics on crime rates and risk, Twitter arguments about the Second Amendment—everything except the blood, the pictures of bodies torn by bullets. That part is concealed, sanitized. More than 30,000 people die of gunshot wounds each year in America, around 75,000 more are injured, and we have no visceral sense of what physically happens inside a person when he’s shot. Goldberg does.

She is the chair of Temple’s Department of Surgery, one of only 16 women in America to hold that position at a hospital. In my initial conversation with her, which took place shortly after the mass shooting in Orlando, where 49 people were killed and 53 injured by a man who walked into a gay nightclub with a semi-automatic rifle and a Glock handgun, she was joined by Scott Charles, the hospital’s trauma outreach coordinator and Goldberg’s longtime friend. Goldberg has a southeastern Pennsylvania accent that at low volume makes her sound like a sweet South Philly grandmother and at higher volume becomes a razor. I asked her what changes in gun violence she had seen in her 30 years. She said not many. When she first arrived at Temple in 1987 to start her residency, “It was so obvious to me then that there was something so wrong.” Since then, the types of firearms have evolved. The surgeons used to see .22-caliber bullets from little handguns, Saturday night specials, whereas now they see .40-caliber and 9 mm bullets. Charles said they get the occasional victim of a long gun, such as an AR-15 or an AK-47, “but what’s remarkable is how common handguns are.”

Goldberg jumped in. “As a country,” Goldberg said, “we lost our teachable moment.” She started talking about the 2012 murder of 20 schoolchildren and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Goldberg said that if people had been shown the autopsy photos of the kids, the gun debate would have been transformed. “The fact that not a single one of those kids was able to be transported to a hospital, tells me that they were not just dead, but really really really really dead. Ten-year-old kids, riddled with bullets, dead as doornails.” Her voice rose. She said people have to confront the physical reality of gun violence without the polite filters. “The country won’t be ready for it, but that’s what needs to happen. That’s the only chance at all for this to ever be reversed.”

She dropped back into a softer register. “Nobody gives two shits about the black people in North Philadelphia if nobody gives two craps about the white kids in Sandy Hook. … I thought white little kids getting shot would make people care. Nope. They didn’t care. Anderson Cooper was up there. They set up shop. And then the public outrage fades.”

Goldberg apologized and said she wasn’t trying to stop me from writing a story. She just didn’t expect it to change anything.

Odds are this story won't change anything either.  But you should read it anyway, because you should know the true cost of the Second Amendment and its fetishization in this country.

You Can Only Fail Upwards

Conservative pundits in the Trump era can only be rewarded it seems, and the more ridiculous and irrelevant that they were eight years ago, the more of a hot commodity they are today.  Take Hugh Hewitt, the often-mocked and even more often-wrong conservative radio host.  MSNBC leaped at a chance to make him a contributor (one of the many reasons I've stopped watching the network completely) and they've vindicated my boycott by floating the idea of giving Hewitt his own show. 

Today MSNBC announced that Nicolle Wallace––former McCain-Palin ’08 senior advisor and current NBC News political analyst––will be hosting a new 4 pm weekday show on the network. And now it appears conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt may be next up for a hosting position.

Hewitt, an MSNBC political analyst, has not only appeared on the network for a while now, but he has made appearances on Meet the Press panels in the last few months.

Yashar Ali reports for New York Magazine that the liberal network is in talks with Hewitt for a program that would air on “weekend evenings.”

Wallace’s 4 pm program and Hewitt’s reported show will be in addition to Morning Joe––Joe Scarborough being a former Republican congressman––and Greta Van Susteren––formerly of Fox News––in providing analysis that won’t exactly win over all of MSNBC’s liberal audience.

People say "But Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Lawrence O'Donnell have been ripping into Trump for months now!"  Somewhat True.  But people forget that Maddow started out her show by giving Pat Buchanan a voice, that Hayes has been rolled by conservative guests because he's too nice, and that O'Donnell and Matthews are more interested in bashing Obama than Trump these days.  Oh, and remember Ed Schultz, now literally working for Putin's English language propaganda network where he's free to rip on Dems all day?

Also let's not forget how MSNBC treats black pundits: firing Melissa Harris-Perry and Tamron Hall and demoting Joy Reid and Al Sharpton from weekday regulars to weekend shows.  Now in the Trump era when MSNBC is looking to grow, they staff the network with white conservative voices like Nicole Wallace and Hugh Hewitt.  Now that Obama's gone, being black doesn't work for ratings it seems.

So now, I've avoided watching MSNBC for more than a year now.  If I wanted a network where  could see 16 hours of Obama/Clinton bashing, I'd run by the TV in the breakroom at work.

The Sheriff Of Going-HAM

White the Trump regime Minister of Homeland Security post may have gone to John Kelly, remember "law and order" in the Trump era means a populace needs to be held in constant fear, and that means headknockers and knuckledraggers like Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke will always have a Homeland Security job if he wants it.

Clarke is in line to be appointed as assistant secretary at DHS’ Office of Partnership and Engagement, which coordinates outreach to state, local and tribal officials and law enforcement. The position does not require Senate confirmation.

A senior administration official cautioned it’s “not a done deal yet.”

Clarke, a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, has long been rumored as a possible candidate for a job in the administration and met with Trump in November at Trump Tower. He also spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last year.

He has come under fire in recent days amid revelations about the case of Terrill Thomas, who died of dehydration last year at the Milwaukee County Jail after guards turned off the water in his cell.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, has said he won’t remove Clarke from office over Thomas’ death.

Clarke also has faced criticism for participating in a National Rifle Association-backed trip to Russia in 2015, where he and other members of the group’s delegation reportedly met with Dmitry Rogozin, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deputies. Rogozin was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2014.

Somebody willing to kill an inmate in his care though neglect and to also be willing to meet with Putin's thugs?  No wonder Trump wants him on the team to tell the country's cops that it's open season on criminals.  There's no clearer signal to the nation's LEOs that the federal government and and AG Jeff Sessions will absolutely look the other way if perps end up in graveyard rather than a cell, and that's doubly true if the inmate is black.

Clarke's reward for overseeing a county sheriff's department that kills an inmate through dehydration is a major promotion in the Trump regime.  Let that sink in.