Last Call For Mr. Unpopularity Over Here

Meanwhile the Trump regime train wreck is starting to take its toll on the Donald.

A record 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the job President Trump is doing, according to Gallup's daily tracking poll.

That is slightly higher than Trump's previous disapproval threshold, which was 59 percent in late March, according to the poll.

Meanwhile, 36 percent of those surveyed in the latest tracking poll approve of the job Trump is doing, near the record low of 35 percent from March 28. Neither former President Barack Obama nor President Bill Clinton ever reached 60 percent in the survey, while George W. Bush reached the 60 percent disapproval mark nearly five years into his presidency.

The daily poll of approximately 1,500 U.S. adults is conducted via telephone and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

To be fair, it took Trump all of five months to end up at "Dubya who got wiped out in the 2006 midterms" level.  Five months to stack up as much incompetence as Bush did in five years.

And it's only just begun.  We're seriously at the level of finding out if Trump has a floor to his disapproval numbers...or a ceiling to his malfeasance.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

A double header tonight on Russia, first up, given the Trump regime's multiple failed attempts to remove sanctions against Russia, it looks like the Senate is taking that option out of Trump's hands.

Senators have struck a deal to put a comprehensive Russia sanctions bill on the floor this week, according to those negotiating the legislation. 

The measure, which will be attached to a bill to stiffen Iran sanctions that is under consideration, incorporates proposals to codify existing Russia sanctions, introduce punitive measures against Moscow in light of Russia’s aggressive activities in Ukraine, introduce measures addressing Syria and the realm of cyberhacking, and give Congress the power to review efforts by the administration to scale back sanctions against Russia before they can go through. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filed the amendment late Monday, setting up a vote for later this week, after extensive talks with Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Democrat, Benjamin L. Cardin (Md.), Banking Committee ranking Democrat Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and vocal Russia critics John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) were also involved in various stages of the discussion. 

“This is a very comprehensive piece of legislation,” Corker said Monday night after the measures were introduced. “It really touches all the components.” 

Various senators involved in the discussions had filed three different bills to increase sanctions against Russia over its involvement in the wars in Ukraine and Syria, as well as over allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Some proposed bills also included measures to give Congress the power to block the president from easing up on sanctions against Russia and to better counter Russian propaganda in the United States and Europe.

Corker said that he had drafted a fourth bill about three months ago addressing several of the points, but that his office had never released it. 

The measure filed Monday night directs sanctions toward Russia’s intelligence and defense apparatus, as well as parts of its energy, mining, railways and shipping economy. It also includes provisions to punish those engaged in corruption and human rights abuses.

Tacking this on to the Iran sanctions bill is clever, meaning it will get GOP support (as well as force Trump to swallow it.)  Senator Brown yesterday all but said that the measure has enough votes to override any possible Trump veto attempt, and the House won't be a problem here.   Senator Corker too believes this will pass with well more than 67 votes.

Trump's boss in Moscow won't be happy.  That's because the other big Russia story has to do with their interference in our elections, it wasn't just a few states, but 39.

Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported. 

In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said. 

The scope and sophistication so concerned Obama administration officials that they took an unprecedented step -- complaining directly to Moscow over a modern-day “red phone.” In October, two of the people said, the White House contacted the Kremlin on the back channel to offer detailed documents of what it said was Russia’s role in election meddling and to warn that the attacks risked setting off a broader conflict. 

The new details, buttressed by a classified National Security Agency document recently disclosed by the Intercept, show the scope of alleged hacking that federal investigators are scrutinizing as they look into whether Trump campaign officials may have colluded in the efforts. But they also paint a worrisome picture for future elections: The newest portrayal of potentially deep vulnerabilities in the U.S.’s patchwork of voting technologies comes less than a week after former FBI Director James Comey warned Congress that Moscow isn’t done meddling. 

“They’re coming after America,” Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in the election. “They will be back.” 

A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington declined to comment on the agency’s probe.

Again, the easiest way to ensure Republican dominance was to have someone take out as many Democratic voters as possible out of the voter databases, since the GOP was in the process of doing that anyway.  The result:  Trump won the electoral college by fewer than 100,000 votes in the right four states, all states that showed dramatic reductions in black voter turnout.

We'll see what the White House does here.

Mulling Over Mueller

The Trump Regime is at least floating the trial balloon if Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is currently investigating Russia/Trump connections, should be fired.

Donald Trump is considering dismissing the special counsel assigned to the Russia investigation, a confidant said on Monday.

Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy told PBS Newshour that Trump is “considering perhaps terminating” Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who was appointed to run the investigation into Russian influence on the campaign by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on May 17.

Asked later if Trump is really considering firing Mueller, Ruddy said: “Yes.”

The "enlightened" pundits on the right are trying to do everything they can to sell this, the reason being that Mueller cannot be objective because of 1) his personal and professional friendship with James Comey from their FBI years and 2) as former FBI Director, his investigation would only serve as a cover-up for failures by the intelligence community to stop Russian interference.

Yeah, suddenly the Trump regime and its lackeys are worried about possible conflicts of interest, guys.

Meanwhile, Jack Goldstein at Lawfare ponders if Trump could fire Mueller himself, or if he has to order the person who appointed him, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, to do it.  The legal iddues say Trump most likely has the authority, but from a non-legal standpoint, it's a nightmare scenario.

It is a matter of Rosenstein’s judgment--about whether he is convinced by Trump’s reasons for the firing, about his relationship to the president and his view of the president’s prerogatives in this situation, about how he characterizes the overall situation he finds himself in, about the actions he is or isn’t willing to associate himself with, and about what his sense of integrity demands. At least two factors lead me to think Rosenstein will resign: (1) He has already seen his reputation soiled and his judgment questioned by the manner in which the President used his memorandum as a pretext for firing Comey; and (2) He appointed Mueller to great bipartisan acclaim, and he presumably did due diligence and convinced himself that Mueller was fit to serve. Unless Trump comes up with a clinching reason for firing Mueller that is now hard to fathom, it is hard to see how Rosenstein carries out the the order. He will resign.

Second, what happens as Trump moves down the line of succession? Newly confirmed Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand would be next, and then (I think) would come acting AAG for the National Security Division Dana Boente, who is not confirmed for that job but who has been Senate-confirmed as a U.S. Attorney. What a spot these two would be in! Would they carry out the President’s order, or resign? It might seem obvious that they would resign because they would not want to carry out or associate themselves with what Rosenstein would have thought, by hypothesis, was a bad faith or at least unacceptable order by the President. I think this is what would happen. But at some point down the chain of command a countervailing principle, call it the Bork principle, arises: stability in the Justice Department and in law enforcement more generally.

The decision by Brand or Boente to execute the President’s order or resign would be complicated by at least two unusual factors: (1) Unlike in Watergate, Attorney General Sessions remains in place above them, and could ensure, outside the Russia investigation from which he is recused, that the Department continued to function (assuming Sessions himself does not resign); (2) Amazingly, DOJ has no other Senate-confirmed officials, and there are complex questions about the line of succession after Brand and Boente for non-confirmed DOJ officials, and about the operation of the new Trump EO, and whether there is discretion on this matter and who can exercise it.

It is easy to imagine Brand resigning and perhaps Boente after her. It is also easy to imagine that one or the other carries out the President’s order on the Bork principle but at the same time announces that she or he plans very quickly to appoint a new Special Counsel of undoubted integrity to continue Mueller’s investigation. (I will ignore for now—these hypotheticals are getting depressing and complicated—what happens if Trump fires Brand or Boente for appointing a new Special Counsel.)

Third, what does Congress do? That is obviously the really important question. There is no doubt that firing Mueller would cause a backlash in Congress. The question is how much of one, and specifically, would it be enough to cause Republican leadership to intervene strongly with the President, and ultimately with impeachment? The answer depends on the reasons Trump gives for firing Mueller, the manner in which he does it, the precise reaction in DOJ, and what the nation’s reaction is. If Congress does not check the President, that leaves only the midterm or presidential elections, or possibly a 25th Amendment solution, as ways to stand up to the President. That may seem a depressing conclusion. But I predict it would not come to that. If the crazy scenario that got me to this point in the hypothetical decision chain materializes, Congress would rise up quickly to stop the President, and the pressure on the cabinet would be enormous as well. If I am naive in thinking this, then we are indeed in trouble.   

From a raw political standpoint, there's nothing at this juncture that makes me think the Trump Cult will do anything but cheer Mueller's firing.  Trump obviously thinks he can get away with it and win, and frankly why wouldn't he?  Which GOP members of Congress would stand up to Trump and demand his resignation or threaten impeachment?  McCain? Ryan? Rubio? McConnell?  The string of Republicans who have at every juncture so far shown nothing but abject cowardice?

Do you think Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan will appoint a special prosecutor?  Do you think Trump voters will care?

Goldstein does.

I do not.

StupidiNews!

• Attorney General Jeff Sessions will face the Senate Intelligence Committee today under oath, he will respond to allegations made last week in testimony by fired FBI Director James Comey.
• North Korean state news is responding to a Donald Trump tweet about the country's missile tests with a threat that its missiles can reach New York City.
• After a week of sanctions and a blockade by its Gulf State neighbors, Qatar's finance minister says the government is still "extremely comfortable" in its financial position.
• During a trip to Miami later this week, Donald Trump is expected to announce the reversal of much of President Obama's diplomatic and economic normalization with Cuba.
• The malware suspected of being used by Russia to crash Ukraine's power grid last December has been found in the wild, prompting warnings that it could be used more widely.

Last Call For The Trump-go Cult

At this point, the Cult of Dear Leader Trump has reached Jim Jones/David Koresh/Charles Manson levels of insanity, as CNBC's John Harwood reports.

Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has displayed various reactions to the pressures of his job, from angry tweets to effusive exaggerations to self-defeating candor. 

On Monday, Trump tried something new: bathing in praise from his Cabinet in front of TV cameras. 

After a weekend dominated by discussion of whether he had committed obstruction of justice, the president called in reporters for what he billed as his first full Cabinet meeting. He began with an opening statement laced with the sort of wild self-congratulatory boasts that are his trademark.

"Never has there been a president with few exceptions … who has passed more legislation, done more things," Trump declared, even though Congress, which is controlled by his party, hasn't passed any major legislation. 

He hailed his plan for the "single biggest tax cut in American history," even though he hasn't proposed a plan and Congress hasn't acted on one. He said "no one would have believed" his election could have created so many new jobs over the past seven months (1.1 million), even though more jobs (1.3 million) were created in the previous seven months. 

Typically, a president's initial comments mark the end of on-camera coverage of White House Cabinet meetings, with administration aides then escorting members of the small press "pool" out of the room. But Trump invited reporters to remain as he called on his senior-most advisers to "go around, name your position" and say a few words about the administration's work. 

"Start with Mike," Trump said, referring to his vice president. Mike Pence, whom Trump kept in the dark for two weeks after learning that then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had given the vice president false information earlier this year, responded by saying that serving as Trump's number two is "the greatest privilege of my life." 

"An honor to be here," said Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recently offered his resignation amid strains over the Russia investigation. 

"My hat is off to you," said Energy Secretary Rick Perry, referring to the president's explanation of his decision to abandon a global climate change agreement. 

"We thank you for the opportunity and blessing you've given us to serve your agenda and the American people," said Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, the subject of recent reports that Trump may fire him.

The kayfabe continues.  The true believers will believe.  Most of all, they will vote.

But please, tell me another one about Obama's "cult of personality".

The Worst-Kept Secret In Washington

Meanwhile, Trumpcare is most likely going to become law of the land and tens of millions of Americans will lose their health insurance outright, tens of millions more will be kicked off Medicaid as it will go to a block grant program, while the rest of us will find our employer plans will now cover far less and be far more expensive.  In other words, as Trumpcare sneaks through the Senate, going back to 2009 isn't an option, it's going back to a far worse and far more broken health-care system.

The Affordable Care Act is in deep trouble — in Washington and large swaths of the country. 

Senate Republicans began to coalesce around the framework of a plan to repeal and replace the law last week. Their plan would, like the bill the House passed in May, almost certainly cause millions of low-income Americans to lose coverage by ending the Medicaid expansion. It would help the young and healthy at the expense of the older and the sick. 

Meanwhile, across the nation, health insurance plans are beginning to flee the Obamacare marketplace. They’ve cited the uncertainty around the health care law’s future, sown by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration. The number of counties with zero health plans signed up to sell 2018 coverage keeps growing. 

The possibility that Republicans will repeal Obamacare or drive it into collapse is an increasingly real one. That’s a reality where millions fewer have health insurance coverage and lower-income Americans struggle to afford coverage. 

“Slowly but surely, I think we’re gonna get there,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the No. 2 Republican, told reporters on Thursday, regarding Obamacare repeal. “We’re coming together.”

And it's the same "moderate Senate Republicans" who are now planning to throw tens of millions of Americans in the gutters.

Behind closed doors, Senate Republicans have worked out a path toward Obamacare repeal. The plans under discussion would end Medicaid expansion, causing millions of low-income Americans to lose health coverage. They may allow health insurance plans to charge higher premiums to people with preexisting conditions, too. 

In other words: The emerging bill looks a whole lot like the unpopular bill the House passed last month. It creates the same group of winners (high-income, healthier people) and the same group of losers (low-income, sicker people). 

The Republican plan is coming together because moderate senators are beginning to drop some of their initial repeal objections. Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), for example, now back a plan to end the Medicaid expansion. 

Both were ardent critics of the House bill’s deep Medicaid cuts, which would cause 14 million Americans who rely on the public program to lose coverage. Portman put out a harsh statement the day the House passed its health care bill. 

“I’ve already made clear that I don’t support the House bill as currently constructed because I continue to have concerns that this bill does not do enough to protect Ohio's Medicaid expansion population,” Portman said plainly. 

But now Portman has endorsed a plan to phase out the Medicaid expansion entirely, just to do so on a longer timeline than the House bill. Portman and Moore Capito want a seven-year phase out, rather than the House bill’s three-year off-ramp. 

At the end of the day, though, phasing out Medicaid expansion over seven years has the same effect as three years: You end coverage for millions of low-income Americans.

Right now the uninsured is under ten percent.  Under the GOP plan, that could double, if not triple. The bad old days of "rescission" where insurance companies found ways to deny you and your family coverage and treatment whenever possible will now be the government's job as well as Medicaid will have a fixed limit of who it can cover.

It's going to be a disaster unless we can convince the Senate GOP that it will cost them everything, and one of the states hardest hit will be here in Ohio if Rob Portman has his way.

Maybe, you know, we should get rid of the guy.

Reince's Impossible Job

Tang the Conqueror has given his Chief of Staff Reince Priebus three weeks to "fix the White House" or he's fired, which begs the question "Can Priebus start by having Trump resign?"

President Donald Trump has set a deadline of July 4 for a shakeup of the White House that could include removing Reince Priebus as his chief of staff, according to two administration officials and three outside advisers familiar with the matter.

While Trump has set deadlines for staff changes before, only to let them pass without pulling the trigger, the president is under more scrutiny than ever regarding the sprawling Russia investigation, which is intensifying the pressure on his White House team.

Days after his return from his first foreign trip late last month, Trump berated Priebus in the Oval Office in front of his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and deputy campaign manager David Bossie for the dysfunction in the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the conversation.

Trump had been mulling bringing on Bossie as his deputy White House chief of staff and Lewandowski as a White House senior adviser with a portfolio that includes Russia, but told the two at that meeting that they would not be joining the White House until Priebus had a fair chance to clean up shop, according to the sources.

"I'm giving you until July 4," Trump said, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation.

"I don't want them to come into this mess. If I'm going to clean house, they will come in as fresh blood."

White House press secretary Sean Spicer, in a statement on Sunday, refuted the idea that Priebus is facing a July 4 deadline. "Whoever is saying that is either a liar or out of the loop," Spicer said. 

The thing is nobody believes Trump is actually going to do this, because nobody believes Priebus can "clean up" anything in the White House without duct taping Trump's hands together for the next year so that he can't use Twitter for starters.  The biggest non-secret in DC is that Priebus is about as responsible for the problems in the Trump regime as Lex Luthor's accountant is for his failing to beat Superman.

Once Trump realizes the story makes him look bad for makling the threat and even worse if he carries through with it, this will evaporate like so many other of his tantrums.  Three weeks after all is a long time for talking Trump out of something (just ask the Saudis, or Spicer, still gainfully employed.)

Count on it.

StupidiNews!

• Puerto Rico has once again voted for full US statehood in an overwhelming 97% win, but less than a quarter of voters cast ballots as opposition parties pointed out Congress has the final say.
• The Attorneys General of Maryland and DC are expected to announce a lawsuit today against Donald Trump for violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
• Both Downing Street and the White House are denying news reports on both sides of the Atlantic that Donald Trump will delay his planned state visit to London.
• French President Emmanuel Macron's party has placed first in Sunday's first round of legislative elections among record low turnout, Macron's alliance could win 75% of seats.
• Microsoft will launch the Xbox One X 4K console to compete with Sony's PS4 Pro, the console will launch in November at $499.

Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Remember Brandon Russell's arrest last month?  The white supremacist neo-Nazi convert with the framed picture of Tim McVeigh, with the explosive-making materials in his room who was arrested for shooting his roommates?

A man accused of shooting his two roommates Friday in a Tampa Palms apartment told police he shared neo-Nazi beliefs with the men until he converted to Islam then killed them because they showed disrespect for his faith. 

The revelations weren't over. 

Officers found a garage stocked with bomb materials as they arrived to investigate the double homicide, leading to federal explosive charges against Brandon Russell — a Florida National Guardsman and admitted neo-Nazi who kept a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh on his dresser.

Good news, he's out on bond because a Florida judge doesn't believe he's a threat.

Brandon Russell is capable of making a bomb — and he admitted doing so.

Officials believe he also participated in neo-Nazi chat rooms where he threatened to kill people and blow up places.

Investigators found guns, ammunition and white supremacist propaganda in his bedroom, court records say. A framed photograph of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was on his dresser.

Prosecutors believe those reasons should keep Russell behind bars while he awaits trial on federal charges. A judge, however, disagreed and decided that Russell can be released on bond.

In a ruling Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas McCoun III of a federal-district court in Tampa said he does not believe there’s “clear and convincing evidence” that Russell is a threat to the community. Russell, 21, was charged last month with possession of unregistered destructive devices and unlawful storage of explosive material.

Guess he wasn't brown enough to be a terrorist.  The again if he was, he'd be dead by now.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The Trump regime is running scared after last week's testimony by fired FBI Director James Comey, and the Trumps are now going all-out to discredit Comey.  Only one problem: it blew up in their faces.

Soon after former FBI director James B. Comey testified that President Trump told him that he “hoped” the FBI would drop its investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the president's personal lawyer flatly denied that accusation and said Trump “never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone.”

But Donald Trump Jr. — the president's eldest son — seemed to confirm Comey's version of events in a Saturday interview on Fox News as he tried to emphasize the fact that his father did not directly order Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

“When he tells you to do something, guess what? There's no ambiguity in it, there's no, 'Hey, I'm hoping,'" Trump said. “You and I are friends: 'Hey, I hope this happens, but you've got to do your job.' That's what he told Comey. And for this guy as a politician to then go back and write a memo: 'Oh, I felt threatened.' He felt so threatened — but he didn't do anything.”

Trump also said that Comey's testimony “vindicated” the president and that everything in it was “basically ridiculous.”

“I think he's proven himself to be a liar in all of this. I think he's proven himself to be a dishonest man of bad character,” Trump said.

His comment came during an interview with Jeanine Pirro, a former New York district attorney and judge who is a longtime friend of the Trump family. Pirro has long been a go-to interviewer for the president and his allies when they need a sympathetic cable news host who will enthusiastically agree with them and not ask any difficult questions. (That same day, Pirro attended a baby shower in New York for Lara Trump, who is married to Eric Trump.) After the interview aired late Saturday night, Pirro tweeted: “Such a great interview!” Trump agreed and tweeted: “Good times. Thanks Judge.”

Talk about media in the tank for the White House, huh.  The Trump kids aren't nearly as smart as they think they are, but look who they learned from.

Hours after Donald Trump Jr unloaded on James Comey in a Fox News interview on Saturday, President Trump sent a Sunday morning Twitter attack in Comey's direction. 

Trump's tweet: "I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal? Very 'cowardly!'"

Team Trump unleashed their media hitman, Corey Lewandowski, this weekend openly calling for Comey to be prosecuted and jailed, because that's what dictators do to dissidents.

“Look, what he admitted yesterday, George, is this guy’s the leaker. He is the deep state in Washington that is everything is wrong. He admitted under oath that he gave his contemporaneous notes to a law professor,” Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told anchor George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “And if that’s what he has done, he continues to do this, if this is his pattern, as the FBI director he absolutely should have been fired, and if he is the chronic leaker he should be potentially prosecuted for leaking information.”

Again, the toughest job in America right now is being Trump's lawyer screaming internally every time he tweets or his staff pulls nonsense calling for a gross abuse of power.  That's because Robert Mueller continues to expand the Trump/Russia investigation with top personnel, as Paul Rosenzweig at Lawfare notes:

What's the worst thing that happened to Donald Trump this week? It was NOT Director Comey's testimony. Rather, it must be the late Friday news that Robert Mueller has hired Michael Dreeben, on a part-time basis, to help with his investigation. Dreeben, a deputy in the Office of the Solicitor General, has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court. His specialty has, for the last 20 years, been criminal matters and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of criminal law. I once saw him argue a Supreme Court matter without a single note. In short, he is quite possibly the best criminal appellate lawyer in America (at least on the government's side). That Mueller has sought his assistance attests both to the seriousness of his effort and the depth of the intellectual bench he is building.

Trump's incompetent toadies versus the best the government has to offer?  It won't even be a contest.  Having already hired the DoJ's top fraud division lawyer in Andrew Weissmann earlier this month, Mueller is putting together the team necessary to sink Trump.

The question down the road is when Mueller comes back with his tale of money laundering and criminal activity, will Trump simply pardon everyone and Republicans move on as I expect?  It may fall to NY state AG Eric Schniederman to land the real blows as Trump can't pardon state crimes.

But in the end as I've said, only the House GOP can impeach Trump, and even then there will never be 67 Senate votes to remove him, and even should I be wrong on that, who would enforce that when Trump has control of the US military?

This is a marathon, folks, not a sprint.

Sunday Long Read: The Death You Cannot See

Having come of age in the early 90's, the specter of HIV and AIDS was more or less beaten into my generation, that sex was basically going to kill you if you had it.  Having protected sex was still seen as something potentially lethal and terrifying, and largely responsible for the awful abstinence movement that followed in schools 20 years later.

But HIV has always been far worse for the black community, and for the LGBT community, and for black gay and bisexual men in 2017, the rate of HIV infection now surpasses the national rate for any country on Earth.

Early on a balmy morning last October, Cedric Sturdevant began his rounds along the bumpy streets and back roads of Jackson, Miss. Sturdevant, 52, has racked up nearly 300,000 miles driving in loops and widening circles around Jackson in his improvised role of visiting nurse, motivational coach and father figure to a growing number of young gay men and transgender women suffering from H.I.V. and AIDS. Sturdevant is a project coordinator at My Brother’s Keeper, a local social-services nonprofit. If he doesn’t make these rounds, he has learned, many of these patients will not get to the doctor’s appointments, pharmacies, food banks and counseling sessions that can make the difference between life and death.

Negotiating a maze of unpaved roads in Jackson in the company car, a 13-year-old Ford Expedition with cracked seats and chipped paint, he stopped to drop off H.I.V. medication at a couple’s home. One of the men was H.I.V.-positive, the other negative; they lived in the neighborhood locals call the Bottom, where every fifth or sixth home is abandoned, with broken windows, doors hanging off hinges, downed limbs and dry leaves blanketing front yards. Sturdevant banged on the door of a small house, its yard overgrown with weeds; he knew not to leave the package on the doorstep, where it could be stolen. After a while a young man emerged, shirtless, shrugging off sleep. He had just gotten out of jail. Sturdevant handed him the package, shook his hand and told him to “stay out of trouble.”

Sturdevant drove on another 15 minutes to pick up Marq (a shortened version of his name to protect his privacy), a teenager who was still reeling from the H.I.V. diagnosis he received the previous spring. As they headed to and from a doctor’s appointment and a meeting with a counselor, Sturdevant, slow-talking and patient, with eyes that disappear into his cheekbones when he smiles and a snowy beard, gently grilled him, reminding him to stay on his meds. The teenager slumped in the back seat, half listening, half checking his texts. He looked up briefly when Sturdevant told him, “You’ve come a long way. I’m proud of you.” But Marq barely said goodbye as he jumped out of the car in front of a convenience store on an avenue scattered with a pawnshop, a liquor store and several Baptist churches, and he all but admitted he was planning to spend the afternoon smoking weed and looking at Instagram. “Knucklehead,” Sturdevant whispered, as the teenager slammed the door. Pulling off his favorite Dallas Cowboys baseball cap and running a hand over his bald head, Sturdevant added softly, “Breaks my heart.”

These patients of Sturdevant’s are the faces of one of America’s most troubling public-health crises. Thanks to the success of lifesaving antiretroviral medication pioneered 20 years ago and years of research and education, most H.I.V.-positive people today can lead long, healthy lives. In cities like New York and San Francisco, once ground zero for the AIDS epidemic, the virus is no longer a death sentence, and rates of infection have plummeted. In fact, over the past several years, public-health officials have championed the idea that an AIDS-free generation could be within reach — even without a vaccine. But in certain pockets of the country, unknown to most Americans, H.I.V. is still ravaging communities at staggering rates.

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using the first comprehensive national estimates of lifetime risk of H.I.V. for several key populations, predicted that if current rates continue, one in two African-American gay and bisexual men will be infected with the virus. That compares with a lifetime risk of one in 99 for all Americans and one in 11 for white gay and bisexual men. To offer more perspective: Swaziland, a tiny African nation, has the world’s highest rate of H.I.V., at 28.8 percent of the population. If gay and bisexual African-American men made up a country, its rate would surpass that of this impoverished African nation — and all other nations.

The crisis is most acute in Southern states, which hold 37 percent of the country’s population and as of 2014 accounted for 54 percent of all new H.I.V. diagnoses. The South is also home to 21 of the 25 metropolitan areas with the highest H.I.V. prevalence among gay and bisexual men. Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, the country’s poorest state, is best known for blues, barbecue and “The Help.” It also has the nation’s highest rate — 40 percent — of gay and bisexual men living with H.I.V., followed by Columbia, S.C.; El Paso; Augusta, Ga.; and Baton Rouge, La. In Jackson, a small city of just over 170,000, half a dozen black gay or bisexual men receive the shock of a diagnosis every month, and more than 3,600 people, the majority of them black men, live with the virus.

The South also has the highest numbers of people living with H.I.V. who don’t know they have been infected, which means they are not engaged in lifesaving treatment and care — and are at risk of infecting others. An unconscionable number of them are dying: In 2014, according to a new analysis from Duke University, 2,952 people in the Deep South (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas) died with H.I.V. as an underlying cause, with the highest death rates in Mississippi and Louisiana. Among black men in this region, the H.I.V.-related death rate was seven times as high as that of the United States population at large.

We talk about living in a world now where HIV can be treated, but there's still plenty of people who don't get tested and can't afford treatment even if they are aware they have the virus.  Especially for younger black folk, HIV is not something they worry about, or get tested for, like those my age.  That wasn't drilled into them, they took it for granted.

But here it is, destroying the black community, and awareness is just not something that happens anymore.  Maybe this article will help.

Goodbye, Batman

Legendary Adam West, TV's original Batman, has died at the age of 88.

Adam West, the gray-stockinged star of the 1960s Batman TV show, has died at the age of 88.

“Our dad always saw himself as The Bright Knight and aspired to make a positive impact on his fans’ lives. He was and always will be our hero,” his family said in a statement. West died peacefully in his home Friday night after a battle with leukemia, and is survived by his wife Marcelle, six children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

West first caught the eye of the Batman show’s producer after he appeared as a different kind of caped crusader in a series of commercials for Nestle’s Quik.

“You can’t play Batman in a serious, square-jawed, straight-ahead way without giving the audience the sense that there’s something behind that mask waiting to get out, that he’s a little crazed, he’s strange,” West later told the Archive of American Television. He and his co-star Burt Ward added a manic, hilarious energy to the Batman and Robin characters on Batman, which ran for three seasons from 1966 to 1968. The show championed such noble causes as drinking milk, eating your vegetables, and always wearing a seatbelt.

After Batman was cancelled, West struggled to find more onscreen work, making several guest appearances on television but never finding another role as high-profile as the one that had made him famous. Reportedly, he was disappointed when Tim Burton did not tap him to reprise the character in 1989’s Batman. He eventually settled comfortably into a second career as a voice actor after accepting a job to voice the mayer of Quahog on Family Guy—a character also named Adam West.

“The only thing I thought is that it would be the end of me, and it was for a bit,” he said during an appearance at Comic-Con in 2014, where he discussed the end of Batman. “But then I realized that what we created in the show. . . we created this zany, lovable world.

“I look around and I see the adults—I see you grew up with me, and you believe in the adventure. I never believed this would happen, that I would be up here with illustrious people like yourselves. I’m so grateful! I’m the luckiest actor in the world, folks, to have you still hanging around.”

Say what you will about Batman over the years, we all knew him first as played by West, something that still stands 50 years later today.  West, Burt Ward, and Catwoman, Julie Newmar, got together last year to voice an animated movie for the 50th anniversary of the classic 1966 series, and it's actually pretty good.  I'm glad West got to make the film.

Here's to you, Caped Crusader.

Last Call For Elf On The Shelf

The first major effects of James Comey's testimony last Thursday to the Senate Intelligence Committee last week are now known: Attorney General Jeff Sessions will respond to Comey in front of the same committee on Tuesday.

Sessions was originally supposed to testify in front of the House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees this week but said in a statement that he will send a deputy to that hearing instead after hearing that lawmakers would question him about the investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump administration.

“In light of reports regarding Mr. Comey’s recent testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, it is important that I have an opportunity to address these matters in the appropriate forum,” he said in a statement.

He will appear in front of the committee on June 13.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will testify before the Appropriations subcommittee in place of Sessions.

Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation in March after it was revealed that he did not disclose two meetings he had with the Russian ambassador during the course of the Trump campaign.

Comey reportedly told lawmakers that Sessions might have had a third undisclosed meeting during a closed session after his public testimony Thursday.

This is pretty big, because as it stands now, Sessions has lied about disclosing his previous two meetings with Russian Ambassador Kisylak and now has been accused of lying about a third such meeting. We'll see what Sessions has to say, if he doesn't skip out.

The Wall Republicans Really Care About

The only wall the Republicans really care about at this point is the wall they've built around Trump to try to survive the Russia collusion storm, but they're starting to realize that unlike Trump, House Republicans actually facing re-election in 2018 are in dire trouble and many of them will not keep their seats, regardless.  Cracks are appearing in the wall, big ones. Just ask Arizona GOP Rep. Martha McSally.

Congresswoman Martha McSally may be in more political trouble than she's been letting on.

Team McSally has been poo-pooing recent polls showing that more than half of the voters in her district disapprove of her job performance, while her approval has fallen down to the mid-30s, percentage-wise, and that she was losing to a generic Democrat by 7 percentage points.

But last week, in a private talk to the Arizona Bankers Association, McSally conceded that in the current political environment, she has some real challenges in next year's election.

McSally complained that President Donald Trump and his tweets were creating troubling "distractions" and "it's basically being taken out on me. Any Republican member of Congress, you are going down with the ship. And we're going to hand the gavel to Pelosi in 2018, they only need 28 seats and the path to that gavel being handed over is through my seat. And right now, it doesn't matter that it's me, it doesn't matter what I've done. I have an 'R' next to my name and right now, this environment would have me not prevail."

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a Republican who fully expects to lose her job in 2018.

There will be a lot more of them admitting this and soon.

The Kansas Tornado Finally Ends

The ridiculous austerity experiment by Kansas GOP Gov. Sam Brownback has finally crashed the state's financial and political outlook to the point where even Kansas Republicans are done with him. After five years, Brownback's obscene tax cut scheme has been trashed by an angry state legislature that overrode his veto late Tuesday.

After years of budgetary ruin, Kansas’ experiment in trickle-down economics is finally coming to a close. Late Tuesday night, the state legislature voted overwhelmingly to override a veto from Gov. Sam Brownback and increase a slew of taxes in the state. 

Shortly after he became governor in 2011, Brownback dove into an ambitious effort to reshape the state with massive cuts to taxes and social spending. Brownback sold his plan as a conservative economic overhaul, implementing ideas that Republicans had long clamored for. He paid for Reaganomics guru Art Laffer to help craft the plan and convince wary state lawmakers. 

The centerpiece of his plan was a huge reduction in the state’s income tax. Brownback erased the top income tax bracket and lowered rates across the board, with the most benefits handed to the wealthy. And he zeroed out taxes on “pass-through” income, allowing owners of LLCs and other businesses to evade taxes. Analysts warned that such a big reduction in tax revenue would leave a crater in the state’s budget, but Brownback waved away such concerns, promising that the cuts would more than pay for themselves by juicing the economy and creating jobs. When moderate Republicans in the legislature didn’t fully agree with their governor, he teamed up with the Koch brothers’ advocacy organization to back primary campaigns against them and replace them with true believers. 

But Brownback’s promised economic miracle never came to pass. Tax revenue has consistently come in below expectations. 

A wave of moderate Republicans and Democrats swept into office after last year’s election, campaigning on ending Brownback’s experiment. But it’s still a heavily Republican legislature that voted Tuesday to rebuke trickle-down economics, with bipartisan supermajorities in both chambers backing the override of Brownback’s veto. The legislature’s plan would bring in an additional $1.2 billion over two years by bumping up income taxes across the board and ending Brownback’s exception for business owners.

I've talked about Brownback's disaster of an austerity plan for more than five years now and warned that the results would be exactly what panned out: a huge shortfall in the state budget that would have to be made up through brutal austerity cuts to education and public services.  That's precisely what happened, resulting in the state's Supreme Court ruling in 2016 that Brownback wasn't providing adequately funded public education.

And the jobs that the tax cuts were supposed to create never appeared either.  In fact corporations moved out of Kansas because  the schools and roads were an underfunded mess.

Brownback has been an utter failure as a governor and may go down along with Chris Christie and Rick Scott as one of the all-time worst.  I'm glad Kansas has come to its senses, but it will take decades to fix the damage Brownback did.

Kansas could speed the process up by getting rid of Republicans who backed him.