Last Call For The Chicago Way

Donald Trump holding a rally in Chicago went exactly as you would suspect Trump showing up at a university campus in a large Northern urban city would go.  It's what he was counting on.

A scheduled rally for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in Chicago on Friday was postponed.

A spokesperson for the GOP presidential front-runner cited safety concerns for the “tens of thousands gathered in and around” the University of Illinois-Chicago Pavillion.

This story has been updated.

The event drew thousands not only to the arena, but protests outside and inside the venue. A live stream from the scene captured Trump supporters blaming reporters for the cancellation; one woman could be heard yelling, “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”

The activist group Voto Latino released a statement calling on demonstrators to also participate at the polls.

“The frustration felt tonight in Chicago has been felt by communities across the country. And while we should all work together and take a stand against hateful rhetoric, we must do that by rising and organizing,” said the group’s president, Maria Teresa Kumar. “We urge those protesting to channel this discontent to engage their communities, to encourage everyone to participate, register our families and friends to vote and together take a stand against hate.”

According to the Associated Press,Chicago police released a statement saying that they did not advise Trump to cancel the event, and that the department did not tell him there was a security threat at the arena.

Police spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said the department felt it had enough officers at the scene to maintain order at the rally.

The progressive activist group MoveOn released a separate statement saying that Trump and Republican candidates supporting “hate-filled rhetoric should be on notice after tonight’s events.”

“To all of those who took to the streets of Chicago, we say thank you for standing up and saying enough is enough,” said Ilya Sherman, the group’s director of political action. “To Donald Trump, and the GOP, we say, welcome to the general election.”

Amazing stuff here, and Trump will play the victim here as much as he can.

We'll see if he gets away with it.

Trump Cards, Con't

The most awful moment of last night's GOP debate was how none of the four candidates condemned the beating of a black protester at a Trump rally in NC this week. When given the opportunity by CNN's Jake Tapper to condemn the attack, nobody had the courage to call what happened wrong, not even Trump's opponents.

"I think for every one of us, we need to show respect to the people. We need to remember who it is we're working for," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). "You know, we've seen for seven years a president who believes he's above the law, who behaves like an emperor, who it is all about him and he forgot that he's working for the American people. And let me — let me ask, turn the camera our here. How many of y'all feel disrespected by Washington?" 

When some audience members cheered, Cruz said confidently that "the frustration that is boiling over" came from people feeling disrespected.

Cruz blamed Obama but at no point said that the violence was wrong.

But John McGraw, the man arrested for assault in North Carolina, did not give reporters the impression of a man driven to temporarily over-reaction by big government. Interviewed by Inside Edition, he expressed no remorse. 

"Yes, he deserved it," McGraw said. "The next time we see him, we might have to kill him. We don't know who he is. He might be with a terrorist organization." 

None of Trump's rivals opted to condemn that action — or condemn Trump for anything he'd done to incite it. 

"I worry about the violence at a rally period," said Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio). "I mean, it's — you know, elections are important but the unity of this country really matters. Jake, here's what I think is happening. There are people out there who are worried about their jobs."

Kasich blamed Obama and unemployment.  He's worried, but that's as far as he's willing to go.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) ran even further away from the context, opting — like Trump — to immediately change the subject from vigilante violence at a rally to how law enforcement officers "deserve our respect" every day. 

"On the issue of anger: Yes, people are angry," said Rubio. "Of course they're angry. Every institution in America has been failing us for the better part of 20 years or 30 years." 

The "violence" round of the debate was in sync with the rest of the night, as candidates passed on chance after chance to criticize Trump. (Cruz was often the exception, but he said little that was not recycled from stump speeches.) The debate ended with none of Trump's rivals criticizing him for incitement, or for expressly criticizing the violence that had swallowed a day of news — and more directly, injured a peaceful protester.

Nobody on that stage gave a damn about a black man getting his face punched in for the crime of being a black man at a Trump rally.  Nobody who supports these monsters cares,  Nobody who enables these monsters cares. Nobody who created these monsters cares.

Here's Trump's response this morning to the assault:

Let me just tell you, we’ve had some violent people as protestors. You know, they are not just people saying, ‘Oh’ — these are people that punch. These are people that are violent people. I get the biggest crowds, by far, not even a contest and — you know, you people don’t like to report it, but actually the one thing good about protestors is you have to go and go into these stadiums, these massive stadiums with 25,000 and 30,000 people and you have to — [indecipherable] because the cameras never turn. I bet the cameras never, ever turn and show the stadium. I always say turn and show the — they don’t. But when is a protestors up in the corner it’s great, because the camera is all there [indecipherable]. Because, you know it’s a negative as opposed to a positive so they turn.

But we’ve had a couple that were really violent. And the particular one when I said, like to bang him. That was — a very vicious — you know, he is a guy who was swinging very loud and then started swinging at the audience. And you know what? The audience swung back. And I thought it was very, very appropriate. He was swinging, he was hitting people and the audience hit back. And that’s what we need a little bit more of. Now, I’m not talking about just a protesters. This was a guy who was — should not have been allowed to do what he did. And frankly, if you want to know the truth, the police were very, very restrained. The police have been amazing. But the police were very, very restrained.”

What rough beast, indeed.

Land Of The Rising Core Temperature: Five Years Later

As I mentioned this morning, today is the anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, which resulted in tens of thousands dead, tens of thousands more displaced, and a nuclear plant meltdown that will continue to cause detrimental environmental effects for generations.

Reactor number one at Fukushima Daiichi is still so hot that five years later, robots still can't enter.

The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima's nuclear reactors have “died”; a subterranean "ice wall" around the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t know how to dispose of highly radioactive water stored in an ever mounting number of tanks around the site. 

Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a 10-meter high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods in the quake and tsunami. 

Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods, weighing hundreds of tonnes. Five robots sent into the reactors have failed to return. 

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco)  has made some progress, such as removing hundreds of spent fuel roads in one damaged building. But the technology needed to establish the location of the melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not been developed. 

“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant," Naohiro Masuda, Tepco's head of decommissioning said in an interview. "The biggest obstacle is the radiation.” 

The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now. This part of the plant is so dangerous to humans, Tepco has been developing robots, which can swim under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods. 

But as soon as they get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring and renders them useless, causing long delays, Masuda said. 

Each robot has to be custom-built for each building.“It takes two years to develop a single-function robot,” Masuda said.

And so the cleanup will continue, probably for the rest of the lives of the people there working to decontaminate the site now.  It's a massive environmental disaster that should have been the end, worldwide, of nuclear power technology.  It's not.  And there are hundreds more potential Fukushima meltdowns waiting to happen.  We do this to ourselves and see the results, and we still do it.

We only get one planet, and we've killed it multiple times over.

StupidiNews!

• New Mexico police are searching for two convicts who escaped from a prison transport van last night near the town of Artesia.
• Japan is marking the five-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 18,000 and caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor meltdown.
• A defector from Islamic State has delivered a flash drive with information on tens of thousands of supporters in 50 countries to a Sky News journalist in Britain.
• The founder of Russia Today news service who was found dead in a Washington DC hotel room last year was killed by blunt force trauma to the head, according to medical examiners.
• Nearly half of Americans surveyed mistakenly believe the Zika virus is fatal, rather than causing birth defects in children.

Last Call For Berned Notice

Some important points here by Washington Post reporter Janell Ross on the anti-Obama purity caucus folks that have attached themselves to the Sanders movement and how they are hurting him among voters of color.

Something -- we cannot say what -- inside certain corners of the ostensibly progressive and overwhelmingly white ranks of Sanders voters is amiss. There is a pattern -- demonstrated time and time again -- by both Sanders and some Sanders supporters of racial cluelessness, an infantilizing and almost colonial kind of condescension about policy, and a tendency to react to anyone who points that out by, well, supplying even more evidence of racial tone-deafness, self-ordained intellectual superiority and sometimes completely open displays of various forms of outright bigotry. 

That's right. We said it. In trying to make their case, Sanders, and far more often some subset of his supporters, behave in ways that are difficult to square with their claims to progressive politics and building a more inclusive and egalitarian society. 

One final note before we get to a few examples of the behavior characterized above: The portion of Sanders supporters who read the paragraphs above and began to compose their tweets, emails and below-story comments, we are aware of that Intercept piece that argues that the "Berniebro" and his alleged public misbehavior is media-generated fiction. 

But the emails, Twitter messages and comments I have received tell a different story. They use a variety of curse words and insults typically reserved for women. More than one has suggested that I deserve to become the victim of a sex crime. They critique the "objectivity" of what is clearly political analysis based on polling data and other facts; they insist that black voters are dumb or that I have a personal obligation to help black voters see the error of their Clinton-voting ways. It is vile. And it stands in sharp contrast to the claim that no portion of Sanders supporters are angry people who sometimes engage in or embrace bigotry. 

We could print the emails. But those of you who sent them know who you are and the horrendous things said. We doubt that this would do much for your progressive street cred.

And it's important here to note that this kind of thing was happening long before Bernie's 2016 run and that it's not endemic to him, and it's what has bothered me about the "progressive" movement in America for a long time.

There's a group of mostly white progressives who really do have awful misconceptions about black and Latino Democrats in this country, that we're stupid and will pull the lever for any D no matter how vile, that we're not really liberal at all, that we're anti-LGBT bigots who despise atheists, and that we're really the unwashed masses in the Democratic party and have to have a white liberal savior to lead us, who knows better.

None of that is true, but the people who perpetuate the monolith of the dumb black voter who needs the smart white guy to organize them got a nasty wake-up call in 2008 when Obama came along. They've hated him ever since.  Clinton was acceptable to them in 2008.  Now it's Bernie.  These folks were obnoxious eight years ago and even more annoying now.

So yes, there are racist assholes on the left, the folks searching for the new Great White Hope and while the vast majority are hanging out with Trump and friends, some are in Bernie's camp (and a few Hillary fans to boot).

This does happen, and it's good to be reminded of the damage they can cause.  Look no further than the obscene, punishing response to this article.

Meanwhile, In Trump's America...

We're not too far off now from the pogroms and purges if this is any indication of what's to come from the Trumpian States of the Confederacy.

Multiple videos show a protester at a Donald Trump rally in North Carolina being sucker-punched by a Trump supporter. 

The videos, which appeared on social media early Thursday and are shot from different perspectives, show an African American with long hair wearing a white T-shirt leaving the Trump rally as the audience boos. He is being led out of the rally by men in uniforms that read “Sheriff’s Office.” The man extends a middle finger to the audience on his way out. 

Then, out of nowhere, the man is punched in the face by a pony-tailed man, who appears to be white, in a cowboy hat, black vest and pink shirt as the crowd begins to cheer. The protester stumbles away, and then is detained by a number of the men in uniforms, who handcuff him while he is on the ground. 

“Chill, chill!” an onlooker says. “You don’t gotta grab him like that!”

This is what actual fascism looks like.  I know I keep saying that when it comes to videos of people daring to protest Herr Drumpf and then getting clocked in the head by his supporters while getting dragged off by the cops, but it keeps happening at a rather depressing rate.

Someone is going to be hurt or killed at this rate.  Who among us will vote for The Donald just to make the wolves go bother someone else's door?

Seriously though, the cops didn't stop the guy, the onlookers didn't either, this man got the crap stomped out of him, and you wonder why maybe, just maybe I'm willing to overlook Bernie's problem or Clinton problems to keep Trump out of the White House?

This is why.  A stadium full of people who wish anyone who looks like me bodily harm for no other reason than I'm black? The same for our Muslim, Latino, and LGBTQ friends and loved ones? Giving them political power by igniting their hatred?

No matter how you feel about Bernie or Hillary, I'll take them in a heartbeat over Trump and this is why.

Looking Way Down The Road

It's not entirely out of line to speculate on the Veepstakes for a Clinton ticket, and a whole lot of names are getting thrown around: Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren, Julian Castro.  Tommy Christopher puts forth an obvious (but not obvious) alternative:.

There is, however, one pick who checks off every box for Hillary Clinton, who matches her strengths without hurting the ticket in other ways, who gives her the opportunity to groom a successor, who delivers broad support both from the Democratic base and independents, and who won’t fold in a debate with the Republican VP candidate. Hillary Clinton should pick Joe Biden as her running mate, for a single term as vice president. 

Biden has the chops, the name ID, and a reservoir of goodwill among Democrats, Obama coalition voters, and the working-class white voters that Donald Trump is attracting, plus the toughness to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Hillary, and toe-to-toe with the Republicans. Unlike a lesser-known pick, there will be no surprises with Joe Biden, and his free-wheeling style is a perfect counter-punch to the Trump phenomenon that would also afford Hillary the luxury of remaining a few feet above the fray. 

A third Biden term would also give the deep Democratic bench time to come into focus, and perhaps shore up thin credentials like Castro’s. 

Hillary Clinton’s greatest asset in this general election will be her toughness, and that’s an asset she can’t afford to have diluted by a weak running mate. Joe Biden is the rare pick that can match her toughness without overshadowing her, and whose unique resumé makes him something of a Rosetta Stone for huge groups of voters. 

Then, after he’s served his four years, and helped shepherd the confirmation of Chief Justice Barack Obama, Biden can make way for the next VP pick when Hillary runs for her second term.

I certainly wouldn't mind Biden, but the major, major problem with Biden is that it puts two white Democrats on the same ticket in the post-Obama era.  That's something that might be an issue. Biden making way for Castro in 2020 would go a long way, but I'm not sure Biden's going to be a ton of help in getting the votes that Hillary would have trouble getting in 2016.

Yes, it would be a major reinforcement of keeping President Obama's policies, absolutely.  But that's what Hillary should be running on anyway.

I respect Tommy's argument and it does make sense on paper, Biden as the foil to Trump, and let's face it, it's not like Republicans have been making good Veep choices lately.  Biden for a single term might not be a terrible idea, but I don't know if he really wants it.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro says he will recall the country's ambassador to the US after Washington extended sanctions against the country's top officials.
• The armed seditionists that took over a federal wildlife refuge earlier this year have been indicted on more than two dozen new federal charges by a grand jury.
• Pittsburgh police say two suspects ambushed a backyard party, killing five people and wounding three more, the suspects then fled.
• Ukraine continues to be mired in cabinet infighting as NATO nations are frustrated over the government coming closer to a vote of no confidence for PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
• Volkswagen's US division chief, Michael Horn, is the latest casualty of the carmaker's diesel emissions cheating scandal as Germany's investigation into VW expands.

Last Call For Battling Back In Bevinstan

There was some good news in Kentucky last night, with Gov. Matt Bevin scheduling special elections to replace four general assembly seats, two Republicans and two Democrats.  With House SPeaker Greg Stumbo and the Democrats having a 2-seat lead in the General Assembly, Bevin was hoping to force a 50-50 tie and throw the Assembly into chaos.

Instead, Democrats won three of the four seats.

The House will have 53 Democrats and 47 Republicans through the fall elections. It is the final state legislative chamber in the South to remain in Democratic control, and it is the last bastion of Democratic Party power in Kentucky, which otherwise has been trending Republican in state and federal elections.

Democrats won elections in Western Kentucky’s 8th District (Jeffrey R. Taylor of Hopkinsville), Central Kentucky’s 62nd District (Chuck Tackett of Georgetown) and northeastern Kentucky’s 98th District (Lew Nicholls of Greenup). The sole Republican won race in Central Kentucky’s 54th District (Daniel B. Elliott of Danville).

Two of the House seats were held previously by Republicans who won election to statewide office in November. The two others were held by Democrats who resigned to accept state posts from Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican.

Tackett, a farmer, won the night’s most exciting race by picking up a seat for the Democrats that had been held by Republican Ryan Quarles, who was elected state agriculture commissioner last November. A Republican group, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, ran radio and television ads attacking Tackett as “a government insider” because he once served on Scott County Fiscal Court.

“I stayed myself,” Tackett said Tuesday night after he was declared the winner. “I did not try to be somebody I was not. And I stayed positive. I don’t see any point in going negative.”

Tackett said he was not ready to take a position on the state budget, where Bevin wants deep cuts to higher education and other services to find money for the ailing state pension systems. But Tackett’s time on the campaign trail introduced him to Central Kentuckians who need help, including “one young lady with $28,000 in college debt,” he said.

Taylor, the only black candidate in Tuesday’s elections, won with support from Democratic President Barack Obama, who made automated calls to voters in the district on Taylor’s behalf.

Now this makes me very, very proud.  Hopkinsville is out west near Interstate 24 and the Tennessee border with Clarksville.  President Obama helped a black candidate there win in my state.  I cannot tell you what that means to me up here in NOBAMA country.

For now, the last bastion in Bevinstan holds.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article64860612.html#storylink=cpy

Like A Kansas Tornado, Con't

Time to check in with Kansas again and GOP Gov. Sam Brownback, currently still involved with attempting to fully convert the state into a Laboratory of Democracy(tm) complete with actual lab accidents.  We've previously noted that the one thing keeping the state from completely collapsing has been the Kansas Supreme Court, ruling that the state's draconian austerity measures violate parts of the state's constitution when it comes to providing for the state's common good, crazy socialist things like "schools" and "roads" and whatnot.

You'd think Kansas Republicans would at least be willing to play along.

You'd be wrong.

Republican lawmakers in Kansas, weary of conflicts with a judiciary that has been pushing for more school spending, are beginning to act on a measure to expand the legal grounds for impeaching judges. 

The move is part of an intensified effort in red states to reshape courts still dominated by moderate judges from earlier administrations. 

A committee in the GOP-controlled Senate plans to vote Tuesday on a bill that would make "attempting to usurp the power" of the Legislature or the executive branch grounds for impeachment.

Impeachment has "been a little-used tool" to challenge judges who strike down new legislation, said Republican Sen. Dennis Pyle, a sponsor of the measure. "Maybe it needs to be oiled up a little bit or sharpened a little bit." 

The proposal has considerable support in a Legislature in which Republicans outnumber Democrats more than 3 to 1. Nearly half the Senate's members have signed on as sponsors. It's unclear whether its novelty could complicate passage. 

The serious consideration of the measure, though, signals the exceedingly bitter political climate in the state.

You don't say.  Here's the real issue:

Four of Kansas' seven Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who served from 2003 to 2009, and two by her predecessor, Bill Graves, a moderate Republican. Only one was appointed by Brownback. 

Replacing the justices through elections is difficult in Kansas because they don't run in contested races. Instead, they face a "retention election" every six years, remaining in office unless more than 50 percent of voters vote against them. No justice has ever been voted out. 

Conservative groups are expected to mount a major effort to vote out four of the Supreme Court justices on the ballot this fall. But critical lawmakers also hope to make impeachment a tool. 

Currently, the state constitution allows impeachment only for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. No public official has been impeached since 1934.

Time to eliminate the state's Democratic appointees on the Supreme Court, and Democrats in the state, period.  They have to go, one way or another, in order to pave the way for the single-party Republican utopia that awaits America.

Won't that be fun?

Berned Up From Battle Creek To Bay City

Bernie Sanders edged out Hillary Clinton last night in Michigan, and yet again all the polls and conventional wisdom and pundits were absolutely wrong about the race. So how did Bernie win a race he was 20 points behind in?  The exit polls show the way.

Here's the big one:  The youth vote (21%) outnumbered the senior vote (20%) for the first time in a Dem primary, and Bernie also won the Gen X vote.  The college kids showed up big time for Sanders.



The second big factor is that Bernie did a lot better among non-white voters than he has been here, especially among Michigan's Arab-American communities in cities like Dearborn and Hamtramck.  He also got 30% of the black vote. while winning the white vote by 16 points.

Finally the third factor:



Michigan's open primary paid off for Sanders, as more than a quarter of the vote came from independents, and Bernie won that group nearly 3-to-1.  A closed primary would have been a far better result for Hillary Clinton.

So what does this mean going forward?  Sanders did what he needed to in Michigan, gaining nine delegates on Clinton there.  But considering Clinton completely obliterated Sanders in Mississippi by more than 60 points, he lost all those and then some.  Despite Sanders getting a badly needed and impressive win last night, Clinton ended up increasing her total delegate lead by 16, and Sanders simply cannot win at this point unless every state is like Michigan, and he wins those states by bigger margins than two percent.

Sanders won this battle, certainly.  He's still losing the war, and lost ground last night.  Clinton can afford to lose proportional states and split the remaining states.  Sanders needs a chain of blowouts, especially in big states like Ohio, Florida and Illinois next Tuesday.

He's not going to get them.

StupidiNews!

• The US Secret Service has confirmed the arrest at the White House of a man suspected in the shooting of an Idaho pastor over the weekend.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is claiming that Pyongyang has nuclear missiles as a "true" deterrent to the West.
• Attorney General Loretta Lynch has reportedly asked President Obama not to consider her as a nominee to the US Supreme Court, citing the Justice Department's "urgent issues".
• Legendary British music producer George Martin, known as the "Fifth Beatle", has died Tuesday at the age of 90.
• The FCC will vote soon on a program to replace home phone subsidies through the Lifeline program with broadband internet subsidies.

Last Call For Flipping The Script On SCOTUS, Con't

I personally believe that President Obama is awaiting the March 15th primaries that will all but end the Sanders campaign, so that he can then release information on his nominee for the Supreme Court to fill Justice Scalia's seat and use that as the rallying cry for Dems to pivot to the general.

Republicans, in what is increasingly looking like a Trump vs Cruz deathmatch on the set of Mad Max Fury Road, are themselves laying the groundwork for never replacing Scalia.  At least, not by a Democrat.

Dean Reuter, vice president of the Federalist Society, hinted that there might even be too many justices, reported Right Wing Watch. 

“There’s no time limit in the Constitution, and there’s nothing magical about there being nine justices,” Reuter said during a panel meeting at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). 

“The country started out with six justices, we’ve had as many as ten at some point in time,” he continued. “As recently as 2010, when Justice Elena Kagan came on the Court, she had been solicitor general so she recused herself in over a third of the cases (so) I don’t see a sense of urgency.” 

Reuter led a brief workshop last week at CPAC with John Yoo, the author of the infamous “torture memos” as a member of the Bush administration, on topics covered in their new book, “Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State.” 

“The president surely does have a duty to nominate someone, but the Senate has a co-equal duty as a co-equal branch of government, to in this case operate as a check,” Reuter argued. “It doesn’t have any responsibility or any duty to host one-on-one meetings with the nominee, or hold a hearing, or hold a committee vote, or a floor vote. There’s no timetable. It’s not as if the president sends somebody over and says, we need this back next month, or next Wednesday, or whatever.” 

Reuter, whose group shepherded Samuel Alito’s nomination through the Senate, suggested that Supreme Court appointments were an example of executive overreach. 

“The Senate is perfectly well within its prerogative, even the proper understanding of checks and balances, it can easily be said that the role of the Senate is to check the president’s power in this instance, the appointment power, especially I think when you’re dealing with a third branch of government and a lifetime appointment,” he argued.

I've said for months that this would end up being the GOP's view.  Right now, the argument is "let the people decide" but they're losing the battle for public opinion on that.  Putting a face on the nomination would give Republicans a target and a fight, but that could easily backfire too.

Do I think the GOP will be able to get away with it?  Until and unless voters turn the Senate back over to the Democrats, yes.  That could very well happen if they nominate Cruz or Trump, in which case that sets up a battle over the filibuster in 2017.

But that's down the road, A lot could change and the GOP could very well fold.  But I don't think it's likely.  The notion that the GOP simply shouldn't allow a replacement at all will be with us for some time.

Canada Has Idiots, Too

I have absolutely zero tolerance for people who make decisions like this, amounting to child endangerment and criminal negligence.

Two Mormon parents who own a nutritional supplement company are accused of letting their toddler son die from meningitis because they tried to treat him with home remedies instead of medicine. 

David and Collet Stephan have pleaded not guilty to charges that they failed to provide the necessities of life to their 19-month-old son Ezekiel, reported CBC News. 

Prosecutors in Alberta, Canada, say the couple did not call an ambulance until the boy stopped breathing and instead fed him supplements with an eye dropper and lay down with him. 

Collet Stephan, 35, told police that a friend told the couple their son had meningitis — inflammation caused by an infection of the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. 

She said they tried to boost the boy’s immune system by feeding him with olive leaf extract, whey protein, water with maple syrup and juice with frozen berries. 

They finally fed the boy, who was becoming stiff and lethargic after two weeks of illness, a mixture of apple cider vinegar, horseradish root, hot peppers, onion, garlic and ginger root. 

The child was airlifted to a hospital after he stopped breathing, and doctors removed him from life support after five days. 

Prosecutors played recordings during the couple’s trial of Collet Stephan describing their attempt to treat the boy.

Not sure what Canadian laws are on this, but having grown up as the son of two health care professionals, this makes me absolutely seethe.  I just don't understand why you would massively increase the risk of a child's life like that when the means to treat disease are available.

Just absolute idiocy.

The Bloomberg Is Off The Rose

As I mentioned this morning, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is officially not going to get into the race for the White House as a third party spoiler, and the NY Times received some of Bloomberg's research on the run.  It's interesting stuff indeed.

Bloomberg's advisers thought he had a real shot as the third party alternative in a Trump v Sanders matchup:

Amazing.  Bloomberg's team thought he would win the Upper Midwest with the exception of Minnesota, while utterly breaking Trump in the South, with Bloomberg somehow being competitive in both Texas and California and being in position to get to 270 win easily.

But the reality of a Clinton/Trump matchup apparently forced him to fold his cards completely.

The scenario here is that Bloomberg weakens both sides to the point where nobody gets to 270, and then the GOP-controlled House would decide the election for Trump.

Note the maps come from our old friend Doug Schoen, which means they are vastly overstating Bloomberg's chance of winning any state whatsoever.  The actual reality is that much like Perot's run two decades ago, Bloomberg wouldn't win a single state, but would split a vast number of states that would make for a different swing state group.  That chaos would almost certainly benefit Trump as well, allowing him to win states that he wouldn't have a shot at.

The upshot would be the same: Bloomberg would create a path for President Trump.  Luckily that's not something that he wants to be remembered for, so for now, we're being spared his ego.