Last Call For Can't Get Work Done

It turns out that Paul Ryan is an even worse Speaker of the House than John Boehner was, if you can imagine that.  Ryan is so bad that he can't get House Republicans, with the largest margin of control they've had since Herbert Hoover, to even pass their own budget on time.

Under the government's arcane budget law, the House is supposed to produce a budget by this Friday, April 15. But a tea party revolt over Ryan's embrace of last year's bipartisan deal with President Barack Obama to increase spending has left him well short of the votes he needs.

"It would appear that we're not going to have a budget," the No. 2 House Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, told reporters Tuesday. "They made it a big deal. Hypocrisy is part of it," he added. "They're in deep disarray."

House Republicans met the budget deadline each of the five years they controlled the House under the leadership of John Boehner, who was ousted as speaker last fall under conservative pressure. Ryan himself, his party's 2012 vice presidential nominee, chaired the House Budget Committee for much of that time and guided the "Ryan Budget" that slashed entitlement spending. But he also cut a deal with Senate Democrats and the White House that enhanced his profile as a charismatic, policy-focused conservative.

The Wisconsin Republican has repeatedly lambasted Democrats when they didn't get budgets done while in congressional control, even backing a law that would have cut off the paychecks of lawmakers if they failed to pass a budget.

Ryan's own inability to deliver now that he's speaker raises questions about his stewardship of the House, and whether his repeated promises to return power to rank-and-file lawmakers can produce results, given how unwilling some of them are to compromise. And amid an angry GOP presidential campaign that's exposed deep divisions in the party, Ryan's honeymoon in the House may be coming to an end if he's unable to bridge the same divide between hard-core conservatives and more pragmatic-minded lawmakers that defeated his predecessor.

"There was a lot of excitement last fall when newly elected Speaker Ryan was talking about 2016 being a year of policy and passing a robust policy agenda," said Dan Holler, spokesman at Heritage Action for America. "It's been pretty underwhelming."

If I were a betting man, I'd say that Ryan is dragging his feet for a reason.  The "Ryan Budgets" with their trillions in austerity cuts absolutely helped to sink Mitt Romney four years ago.  Now Paul Ryan would have to take total ownership of a House Republican austerity budget as a presidential candidate.  That's a recipe for a loss nearly as bad as what a Trump candidacy would bring and he knows it, and he's looking past 2016.

So no, don't look for a budget from Republicans anytime soon, especially in an election year.  Actually putting down on paper what they would cut for Democrats to run against is the last thing the GOP wants to do.

A Mess Of Carolina BBQ, Con't

North Carolina's awful omnibus bad bill continues to have serious financial repercussions for the state as Republicans find out that enshrining bigotry into law is really a bad idea if you want to sell the state as a destination to people everywhere else.  First, Wake County where state capital Raleigh is could lose millions in tourism dollars and that's just the beginning.

A report released by Wake County’s leading tourism agency on Monday says that the county has lost more than $700,000 in response to the controversial House Bill 2 – and could lose millions more.

The Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau reported that four groups have canceled plans to hold events in Wake because of HB2, which some say discriminates against the transgender community, gays and lesbians.

The International Association of Security and Investigative Regulators, Johnstone Supply, the Matria Tech Leadership Conference and the N.C. State Library Conference cited HB2 in canceling their events, which were mostly scheduled at hotels in downtown Raleigh. In addition, the GIS-T Symposium, a gathering of state transportation officials, cut the number of attendees expected at its conference because of HB2. Combined, the bureau reports that Wake has lost out on an estimated $732,000 in economic benefits.

“We just felt that it’s not in the best interest of our membership to go someplace that’s not inclusive,” said Janet Tipton, spokeswoman for Oregon-based Johnstone Supply, which considered bringing 300 people.

The visitors bureau reported that 16 other groups, the names of which it didn’t disclose, also are reconsidering plans to hold events in Wake County. The groups would bring a combined 73,500 people to the area and infuse an estimated $24 million into the local economy, the report says.

Oh well.  But hey, bathroom cops, so.  And speaking of events that will bring in tens of millions...

A team of bipartisan senators on Tuesday urged the NBA to take their All Star game business out of North Carolina in a stand against the state's sweeping anti-LGBT law.

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Pat Leahy (D-VT), Cory Booker, (D-N.J.), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Patty Murray (D-WA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) all signed onto the letter by asking NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to "take a stand against this latest form discrimination and move the 2017 NBA All Star Game away from Charlotte, N.C."

Kirk was the only Republican who signed onto the letter and is running for re-election in 2016 in Illinois.

The letter, which was first reported by Politico, is the latest in an effort to force North Carolina to reconsider its law, which forces individuals to use restrooms that may violate their gender identity and bars local communities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances.

"We hold no ill-will toward the people of Charlotte, who passed an anti-discrimination measure that HB2 overturned or towards the people of North Carolina," Senators wrote. "However, we cannot condone nor stand idly by as North Carolina moves to legalize and institutionalize discrimination against the LGBT community."

Actions have consequences, NC GOP.  Gov. Pat McCrory, sensing he just lose re-election in November over this, is trying to put a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.

Here comes the damage control. On Tuesday, McCrory announced a new executive order that makes some very small tweaks to the law. Here is what the order does, according to McCrory's office:

Maintains common sense gender-specific restroom and locker room facilities in government buildings and schools

Affirms the private sector's right to establish its own restroom and locker room policies

Affirms the private sector and local governments' right to establish non-discrimination employment policies for its own employees

Expands the state's employment policy for state employees to cover sexual orientation and gender identity

Seeks legislation to reinstate the right to sue in state court for discrimination

There are some very modest advancements for LGBTQ rights here, particularly the move to protect LGBTQ state government employees from discrimination. But LGBTQ workers who don't work for the state government remain unprotected from workplace discrimination under state law.

But these changes don't really address the main concerns with North Carolina's law. The law still prohibits — and, in fact, McCrory affirmed that it prohibits — trans people from using the bathroom in schools and government buildings that matches their gender identity. And the law still blocks cities and counties from legally banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace, housing, and public accommodations. These provisions remain untouched, regardless of any new protections for state government employees.

It's still a bad law, and hey, in November, North Carolina might want to do something about the Republican lawmakers who created it and stuffed it through the General Assembly, Senate, and McCrory's desk in less than a day.  But if these poll results are correct, that's not going to happen.

Although McCrory's approval rating is down to 43% and half of voters disapprove of the bill, a majority also believe trans people using the bathroom of their choice are a "security risk to women and children".  That's a consistent majority across all age groups and both men and women and includes 42% of Democrats and a third of people who say LGBT rights should be protected.

So no, don't expect HB2 to be repealed without continued devastating pressure from businesses.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article71223992.html#storylink=cpy

Trump Cards, Con't

Yet another "meet your local racist misogynist Islamophobic passionate Trump supporter" piece, this time focusing on Trump's younger proponents, who are -- surprise! -- male, white, and generally obnoxious.

Jack Rowe, an 18-year-old high school student from St. Paul, Minnesota, sat in the front row of a Donald Trump rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin last weekend, sandwiched between two friends.

He had caucused for Trump in Minnesota for the very first time a few weeks earlier. Freckled and grinning, he sported a red "Make America Great Again" hat and a gray Trump t-shirt.

Rowe had some thoughts on Trump's rhetorical treatment of women, which had been dominating the news lately thanks to the Republican front-runner's comments about punishing women who have abortions. Mainly, Rowe said, it's a non-issue.

"Misogyny was an issue about maybe 60, 80 years ago," said Rowe. "That's not an issue today. There are a lot bigger fish to fry...You know, ISIS is chopping off heads. We've got 19 trillion dollars in debt."

And he's got all kinds of bros eager to vote for the guy who will continue to make sure that nobody will make him or his bros think about their misogyny or racism or Islamophobia and never bother them again over it.  They're white guys, the natural alpha males of America.  Why should they have to share? They want to take the country back for themselves and put the rest of us in our respective places.  You know, like 60, 80 years ago.

David Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports -- the frat-focused sports website where the "Smokeshow of the Day" serves as the ultimate clickbait -- said Trump's appeal to young men speaks to anxiety over a creeping political correctness throughout American society.

"There is a sentiment among frat guys, lacrosse players and middle class affluent white kids that they are kind of getting persecuted lately," Portnoy told CBS News.

"You tell a joke it gets blown out of proportion. You gotta walk on eggshells. There's kind of that feeling, and Trump, he tells a joke and doesn't back down. He says things that would normally been frowned upon. At a school, a kid would get expelled. Not that it's right or wrong, but he's sort of defending a lot of the things they've been attacked for in the last five years or so."

"It's an F-U to society, who is telling us we are a bad guy because we like hooking up with girls on spring break," he added. "And they see Trump sticking up for that."

J. Camm, the managing editor of Bro Bible, another bro-focused site, said Trump's lack of policy details means little to his young supporters.

"Part of the allure of Trump is that people find him to be someone who tells it like it is and honest, although he has no specific policies to back up anything that he's actually saying," Camm said.

Trump's rich, he's famous, he's orange white, and he can do and say pretty much everything he wants to.  Of course he's the Bro Candidate.  And should he not get the nomination that his Bros believe he's entitled to?  It's not the Democrats that are the immediate problem right now.

After expressing reservations about Donald Trump, some of Indiana's delegates to the Republican national convention say they've received threatening messages from a few of the GOP front-runner's supporters.

The emails warn that the delegates are being watched and imply they could be targeted. Some send ominous wishes to delegates' families.

Trump's Indiana campaign called the threats "deplorable."

Craig Dunn, a delegate and Republican chairman of Indiana's 4th Congressional District, was among the Trump critics who received the threatening messages.

"You sorry (expletive)!" one email said. "I hope the worst for you and yours!"

Dunn was stunned by the response.

"Little did I know that in expressing your 1st Amendment rights, that they’d come after you so hard," he said. "It's very disappointing. I probably received 25 to 30 hate emails, phone calls and voice mails, posts on Facebook that I deleted. Now they're hunting down friends of mine and posting that kind of stuff on their Facebook pages."

That kind of treatment is usually reserved for "libtards" and "social justice warriors" who must be purged by the Bros from America.  But the only thing worse are the insufficiently American anti-Trump "cuckservatives" who supposedly enable them.  Trump's violent, racist hatemongers will come for Democrats soon enough.

But first they have to burn their own house down.  Try not to get too gleeful.  We're definitely next.

Make America For Rough Beasts Again.

StupidiNews!

• Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport is again operating normally after parts of terminals were evacuated due to a possible bomb threat, with two arrests made.
• A white former police officer in South Carolina has received probation and community service as part of a plea deal after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black motorist in 2014.
• Turkish forces have attacked Islamic State targets in northern Syria for a third day in response to rocket attacks on refugee border settlements.
• Nearly 40,000 Verizon union employees have gone on strike in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states after talks broke down this week.
• Space exploration startup Breakthrough Starshot plans a $100 million program to push a nano-scale "spacecraft on a chip" to Alpha Centauri using focused lasers.

Last Call For A Big L On Your Forehead

Now presenting Concerned White Guy Theater, starring Bill and Don, just two regular guys.

“The jobs have been taken out of the United States like we’re a bunch of babies,” Trump said. “I’m telling you, it’s an economic message. If you look at President Obama, he’s been a President for almost 8 years, it will be 8 years, you have with black youth, with African American youth, you have a 59 percent unemployment." 

“But how are you going to get jobs for them?” O’Reilly cut in. “Many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads, and I hate to be generalized about it, but it's true. If you look at all the educational statistics, how are you going to get jobs for people who aren't qualified for jobs?” 

Trump replied, “We’re going to have Apple computers made in this country, not just…” 

“But you have to have skills to make Apple computers," O’Reilly interjected again. 

“We will get the skills and we’ll develop the skills,” Trump replied, saying jobs are going to China and Mexico because of incompetent politicians. 

“It’s more challenging for a poor child in Harlem without parental guidance in a school that’s falling apart than it is for some white kid out in Garden City," O’Reilly pushed back. "You say you can bring jobs back, but if the kid isn’t qualified to do the job and can’t do the work. I mean, you’ve got to get into the infrastructure of the African-American community." 

“Well, it is true. It’s about education, but it’s also about spirit. A lot of people don’t have spirit,” Trump responded. “Not only African-Americans, they don’t have spirit in our country.”

We're all just tattooed, skill-free kids with no spirit anyway, so who really cares if a classy, yooge Trump presidency doesn't fix 59% unemployment (which is actually 22.9% by BLS March 2016 standards but hey, you can't expect Trump to be a numbers guy, he's a big picture guy that creates jobs for numbers guys without tattoos on their foreheads) or whatever.

Still can't understand why people think I'm too hung up on race here in 2016 but at least we replaced the dog whistle politics with easy-to-understand full-blown racists Bell Curve garbage for simplicity's sake.

Make America Overtly Racist Again.

Back To The Driving Range

A reminder today that driving while black or brown isn't just a problem in the South, but in diverse blue states like California too.

African Americans and Latinos in California are more likely than others to lose their driver's licenses because of unpaid tickets and then to be arrested for driving with suspended licenses, according to a report released Monday. 

The report, by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, examined U.S. Census Bureau data, records from the California Department of Motor Vehicles and information from 15 police and sheriff's departments in the state to document by race the impact of unpaid traffic fines. 

"Individuals who cannot afford to pay an infraction citation are being arrested, jailed and prosecuted, and are losing their licenses and their livelihoods," the report said. "The communities impacted by these policies are disproportionately communities of color." 

Black drivers were found to be arrested at higher rates than whites for driving with licenses suspended because of unpaid tickets, the report said. The highest suspension rates in 2014 were found in poor neighborhoods with large percentages of black and Latino residents.

It's not just selective actions like this, but police culture as a whole, even in places like LA and San Francisco.

In Los Angeles County, black people make up 9.2% of the population but accounted for 33% of those arrested for driving with a suspended license from September 2013 to September 2015, the report said. 

Whites represent 26.8% the county but accounted for only 14.8% of those arrested at that time for driving with a suspended license. During that time, 85% of 20,000 people arrested by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department for driving with suspended licenses were black and Latino, according to the report. 

In San Francisco, 5.8% of the population is black, but 48.7% of those arrested for traffic warrants in 2014 and 2015 were African American. Whites make up 41.2% of the city's population but accounted for only 22.7% of the arrests, according to the lawyers' group.

And guess what?  It's not just places like Ferguson, Missouri that made money off of traffic ticket fees, fines and warrants.

Monday's report, based on data gathered in the last year, follows anearlier study by the group that found more than 4 million Californians had their licenses suspended for unpaid tickets since 2006. The cost of tickets soared during the state's budget crisis because a variety of fees were added to the fines to pay for state programs. 

In response to the earlier report, the state created a traffic ticketamnesty program to make it easier for drivers to get their traffic fines reduced and licenses reinstated. Court leaders also ended requirements that required drivers to pay the tickets before they could contest them. 

"While these actions represent significant progress, they fail to adequately address the underlying racial and economic injustices of California's debt collection and license suspensions policies and traffic court practices," the new report said.

What a surprise.  The biggest blue state in the nation has one of the biggest problems in police racial bias. I'm very interested to see what California Attorney General Kamala Harris has to say about this, considering she's the prohibitive favorite running for Sen. Babara Boxer's seat in November.

Harris has one ugly mess to clean up before she goes to Washington, that's for damn sure.

Operation Robar Mi Voto

The more you take a look at former Kansas GOP chair and current Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the more you realize just how pervasive the Republican plan is to disenfranchise Democratic voters in red states truly is.

The Spanish-language voter guides from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach's office include two errors about registering to vote in the state, while the English guides do not include the same errors. 

The Spanish-language guides said that voters could register up to 15 days before the election, while the English version included the correct deadline, 21 days before the election, as the Daily Kos flagged last week. And while the English guides told voters they could use their passport as a photo ID, the guides in Spanish did not include a passport in the list.

Kobach is notorious for his push to enact strict voter ID laws in the state, impose other voting restrictions, and pursue criminal prosecutions of alleged voting fraud. Kansas faces several challenges to its law requiring proof of citizenship for residents to register to vote. 

Craig McCullah, the official in charge of publications for the Kansas secretary of state, claimed responsibility and said that the office would correct the errors, according to the Kansas City Star. 

"It was an administrative error that I am diligently working to fix," he said.

If you believe for a microsecond that this was an "administrative error" well I've got some coastal property in Kansas to sell you.   Remember the only reason this was caught at all was because Daily Kos pointed it out.  Otherwise this would have been an "unfortunate oversight" if it had been noticed after the voter registration period.

I'm sure it was an honest screw up coming from the biggest single proponent of "preventing voter fraud" in the Republican party, too...

StupidiNews!

• Peruvian tax agents have raided the home of one of the representatives of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the heart of the international "Panama Papers" tax avoidance scandal.
• Police arrested more than 400 demonstrators at the US Capitol Monday over "Democracy Spring" protests against corruption in American politics and voter-suppressing ID laws.
• Top US health officials say the mosquito that's responsible for spreading the Zika virus is present in about 30 US states and could become a serious health issue for pregnant women.
• Subsidies for US farmers are the highest in a decade as crop surpluses and lower energy prices are leading to cheaper food and lower biofuel payments.
• Republican lawmakers will again attempt to strip net neutrality regulation authority from the FCC, as well as cutting funding for providing internet service to low-income households.

Last Call For Social Faux Pas

This Carl Bialik story at FiveThirtyEight profiling Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson and his quest to leverage his substatial social media presence into a campaign for Mayor of Baltimore may be the most FiveThirtyEight story ever:

On Twitter, Mckesson, 30, is the most prominent voice in a grass-roots movement to ensure that black lives matter. But at this stage of the race, in late March, he’d been struggling to gain an audience in his campaign to be mayor of his hometown, where he’d filed to run at the deadline in February,surprising other candidates and many of his activist allies. He was fighting criticism that he is a carpetbagger: a creature largely of Twitter and of the places other than Baltimore where he has protested and rallied. Fewer than 1 percent of voters in the most recent Baltimore Sun poll of the race had said they were going to vote for him. He had about a month to change thousands of minds.

Mckesson is bidding to lead a city of 623,000 that lost 344 of its people to homicide last year, is undertaking the most comprehensive set of agency audits in decades, is considering one of the largest taxpayer-subsidized developments in the country, is failing to help most young students meet college and career readiness standards and is still reeling from the death of Freddie Gray while in custody of the city’s police department last year. Mckesson is one of 13 contenders in the April 26 Democratic primary, effectively the general election in a city where eight of nine voters in 2012 cast a ballot for President Obama. (Five Republicans, four Green Party candidates, two independents, five unaffiliated candidates and a libertarian are also running.) 

The Sun poll showed half the vote going to two longtime political insiders: former Mayor Sheila Dixon and state Senate Majority Leader Catherine Pugh. (Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced in September that she wouldn’t run for re-election, amid low approval ratings and criticism of her leadership during the unrest after Gray’s death.)
Mckesson and many of the other candidates are trying to tap into a desire for change, citing what they say are their city government’s failings — its inability to stop the state from canceling a long-planned train line, to complete the audits to cut waste, or to protect its people from violence from one another or their police officers. 

Mckesson was part of the protests calling for police accountability after Gray’s death, as he was in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of Michael Brown in August 2014, and a dozen other places over the past 20 months. Last August, he and fellow activists launched a set of policy proposals,Campaign Zero, that they say will help reduce police violence. And he has met with Obama, as well as Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to press them to back Campaign Zero’s policy proposals. 

Yet he is building his mayoral campaign on a broader pitch: that he is not only the candidate best positioned to increase police accountability, but also the one who wants to get down and dirty with lower-profile issues, even ones as uncomfortable as cockroaches’ effect on asthma or as obscure asEnvironmental Protection Agency consent decrees and stormwater runoff. He says the next mayor must address problems at scale and measure outcomes. He’d assign his senior staff to meet monthly with community leaders and talk policy. “The weeds are the work,” he said.

Mckesson is a hell of an activist and more power to him.  But I'm pissed off that it takes 34 paragraphs to get down to answering the article's question:

So far, his donations and Twitter followers haven’t paid off in the polls. Thelatest Sun poll, conducted from April 1 to April 4, still showed Mckesson getting support from less than 1 percent of voters.

So you've read pages to get down to the point that Deray Mckesson has less than one percent in the polls and has no chance of becoming Mayor of Baltimore.  None.  It's a gigantic waste of time.

Data journalism at its finest.

To Live And Die In LA (And Other US Zip Codes)

A new major study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that when adjusting for race and income, where you live may have a major impact on your given life expectancy. Wealth is the number one factor and the more money you have, the longer you'll live, but the less money you have, the more geography plays a part in life expectancy.

The poor in some cities — big ones like New York and Los Angeles, and also quite a few smaller ones like Birmingham, Ala. — live nearly as long as their middle-class neighbors or have seen rising life expectancy in the 21st century. But in some other parts of the country, adults with the lowest incomes die on average as young as people in much poorer nations like Rwanda, and their life spans are getting shorter.

In those differences, documented in sweeping new research, lies an optimistic message: The right mix of steps to improve habits and public health could help people live longer, regardless of how much money they make.

One conclusion from this work, published on Monday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is that the gap in life spans between rich and poor widened from 2001 to 2014. The top 1 percent in income among American men live 15 years longer than the poorest 1 percent; for women, the gap is 10 years. These rich Americans have gained three years of longevity just in this century. They live longer almost without regard to where they live. Poor Americans had very little gain as a whole, with big differences among different places.

And it's not just race that plays a part, either.  Again the paper finds evidence that white Americans are suffering from shorter life expectancies if they are poor.  Money buys options, and being well-educated and prosperous leads to a longer life regardless of race.

Life expectancy for the poor is lowest in a large swath that cuts through the middle of the country, and it appears in pockets in the rest of the country, in places like Nevada. David M. Cutler, a Harvard economist and an author of the paper, calls it the “drug overdose belt,” because the area matches in part a map of where the nation’s opioid epidemic is concentrated.

The new findings dovetail with a much-discussed paper by Anne Case and Angus Deaton published last year. That research showed rising death rates among middle-age white Americans, especially those with low education. It also showed a sharp increase in drug and alcohol poisonings, suicides and accidents in the first years of this century. Research from the Brookings Institution published in February also found a growing gap in life span between the rich and the poor. 

“There is some deeper distress going on among white middle-aged Americans that may continue to propel these mortality rates higher,” Mr. Deaton, a Princeton economist who wrote an editorial critiquing the new paper by Mr. Chetty and his colleagues, said in an interview. “If so, these people at the bottom will live even less long than they’re calculating.”

The places in America with the worst overall life expectancy aren't Detroit or the Appalachians or Chicago, like the media would have us expect.  Rather, it's the Texas-New Mexico border area (Midland-Odessa, Lubbock, and especially Pecos) and southwestern Indiana (Terra Haute and Vincennes) where your average life expectancy is 5-7 years less than New York City or San Francisco.

But if you're poor, that gets even worse no matter where you are.

Something to think about.  If you're poor, avoid the Ohio/Kentucky/Indiana tri-state.  Hell, being poor in the Midwest is worse than being poor in the South.  That should tell you something.

Flipping The Script On SCOTUS, Con't

Team WIN THE MORNING details President Obama's "charm offensive" as he's personally making the rounds to visit key Republicans in the Senate, trying to work them into allowing a vote on Judge Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court.  The problem is of course it's not working in the least.

Politico queried three dozen Senate Republicans and found eight who have spoken directly with Obama about the Supreme Court vacancy and a ninth who had discussed the issue with Vice President Joe Biden, who has also been working the phones with GOP senators.

Most of Obama’s appeals have concentrated on the epicenter of the Garland blockade, the Senate Judiciary Committee, all of whose 11 Republican members signed a vow to not move his nomination this year.

The president made two calls to Flake — once before Garland was named and again shortly afterward. In the first conversation, Obama told the Arizona Republican that he would nominate a centrist candidate, perhaps someone whose name had already been out there.

“I’m going to play it straight. I’m not looking to make a political point,” Obama told Flake, according to the senator, who generally believes a president should be given deference on his nominees.

Once Garland was chosen, Obama called Flake back and told him: I did what I said I’d do.

Flake was pleased. But it was still a no-go on Garland’s nomination — at least before November.

“I’ve said in a lame duck, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” Flake added.

A day or two before Garland was nominated, Obama dialed Graham, the South Carolina Republican who helped confirm his other two Supreme Court nominees. But this time was different, Graham reasoned. Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor came before Senate Democrats deployed the “nuclear option” in 2013 to lower the filibuster threshold for nearly all nominations.

“I told him that changing the rules the way y’all guys did made it harder for a guy like me to be sympathetic to something outside the normal,” Graham said in recalling his conversation. “He said one of the reasons he’s calling is because I’ve tried to be balanced in my view. And I said ‘Mr. President, when you were in the Senate, if I used your standards, you would be in trouble.’”

Nevertheless, the White House won a small victory with Graham last week when the senator reversed his initial opposition to meeting with Garland, agreeing to meet with the nominee in the coming weeks. But the president hasn’t had similar luck so far with other Judiciary Committee members.

President Obama is again trying to win the fight here by playing the game above-board, when the Republicans have already vowed not to lift a finger on Garland's nomination until after the election.

But frankly, there's little upside in the Republicans actually doing their job after all, they've been rewarded with Senate control for six years of obstruction, two more isn't going to make too much of a difference.  At the very least, Senate control does slide over to the Democrats in 2017, but not by more than a few Senators, a margin that will almost certainly be erased in another depressingly low-turnout 2018 mid-term.

I foresee a more reasonable climate after the election in the lame duck session, but a lot can happen between now and then.

Meanwhile, President Obama will keep trying, and the GOP will keep doing nothing.

StupidiNews!

• South Korean officials confirm a senior intelligence officer with North Korea has defected, the colonel is reportedly the highest-ranking known North Korean military official to do so.
• Dozens were reported injured when Macedonian police fired tear gas and stun grenades into a crowd of Syrian refugees trying to break through a border fence with Greece.
• A US Navy Lt. Commander faces espionage charges as he reportedly spied for China and Taiwan, Pentagon officials say the officer has been held in confinement for eight months.
• UK Prime Minister David Cameron will face British lawmakers Monday after a week of  statements over his personal tax information brought up in the "Panama Papers".
• With US auto regulators in the Obama administration wanting to move forward on self-driving car rules, auto industry groups are signaling a yellow light to slow down on new regulations.

Last Call For Do Red State Democrats Matter?

So many of the commenters have been dancing around this particular question over the primary season.  Do Democrats in places like Kentucky, Alabama, Oklahoma, Alaska, etc matter when it comes to presidential contests?

In a brutally pragmatic sense only, no.  Electoral votes are winner take all except in Maine and Nebraska.  Looking at the 2012 electoral vote map:




Dems in red states don't matter, Republicans in blue states don't matter, but supposedly they roughly balance each other out.  So that brings us down to representation in the House and Senate.  Gerrymandering in the House and staggered six-year Senate terms again make some places very depressing for red state Dems.

KY-4 is a good example, it's where I live, it's heavily Republican and has Mitch and Rand as Senators and Thomas Massie as the Representative. Boone County has 31k plus registered Dems, Kenton County next door has 50k Dems.  Overall it's 95% white, Charlie Cook rates it as a very partisan  R+16.

I have little to no political power as a Democrat here, admittedly.  But do I matter?

I'd like to think I do at least as a primary goes.  But here's the thing: if you're going to try to convince voters like me to vote in the primary, browbeating me with "Your vote doesn't matter in November" really isn't the way to go about doing it.

Putting out a plan to get more Dems in Congress to help me at the state and local level is.

Berning Bridges With The Southern Vote

I do not understand why Bernie Sanders keeps saying stuff like this when he's supposedly trying to convince voters to join him.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — who has run off an impressive string of primary victories — dismissed actual vote totals that show former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a commanding lead, saying those votes “came from the South.”
Host George Stephanopoulos noted Clinton’s lead in delegates and asked the senator if he would take his fight for the nomination to the floor of the convention.

“Well, here’s what I think,” Sanders replied. “I think at the end of the day, what Democrats all over this country want to make sure is that somebody like a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz does not end up in the White House. And I think what more and more Democrats are seeing is that Bernie Sanders is the stronger candidate.”

“She’s getting more votes,” the host pressed.

“Well, she is getting more votes. A lot of that came from the South,” Sanders parried. “But if you look at the polling out there, we do a lot better against Trump and the other Republicans in almost every instance — not every one — than she does. And the reason is that we both get a lot of Democrats, but I get a lot more independents than she does.”

Sanders comments fall in line with statements made by his own campaign that Clinton is doing well in states that might not fall into the Democratic column in the November election despite inroads made by President Obama in 2012.

I just do not understand this constant antagonistic attitude towards red state Democrats, the vast majority of which are black voters, voters that Sanders admits he has trouble reaching.  If you know you have trouble reaching black Democrats, and you're trying to unite the party behind you, then why keep dismissing them?

Sanders also addressed the controversy from earlier in the week when he claimed Clinton is not “qualified” to be president, blaming his response on her campaign questioning his competency.

“Well, she didn’t quite say that. But her surrogates implied that,” he responded. “And all that I meant by that is that if you vote for the war in Iraq, which turned out to be the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of America, if you take, through your super PAC, tens and tens of millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests, if you support almost every disastrous trade agreement in this last 30 years…”

“Well, President Obama supported that,” the host interrupted. “Is he not qualified?”

“No, he is very qualified. But my point is, it is a question of judgment. It is a question of judgment,” Sanders replied.

That is also a cop out, and really, really bothers me.

Trump Cards, Con't

The behind-the-scenes fight for delegates on the GOP side is getting ugly.  Ted Cruz may have won Colorado yesterday while nobody was looking:

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has swept the Colorado GOP convention, winning all 13 of the state’s at-large delegates. 

And after also winning all 21 delegates awarded at the congressional district conventions throughout the week, the Texas senator leaves Colorado with a complete shutout of his opponents.

In a statement Saturday night, Cruz said the win proves that Republicans are coming together behind him.

"Today was another resounding victory for conservatives, Republicans, and Americans who care about the future of our country," Cruz said in the statement. "Utah, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and tonight’s incredible results in Colorado have proven this: Republicans are uniting behind our campaign because they want a leader with real solutions who will bring back jobs, freedom, and security."

But meanwhile, Kasich and Trump returned the favor in the much larger Michigan:

Ted Cruz suffered a rare convention loss Saturday after delegates backing John Kasich and Donald Trump boxed him out of key positions in the Michigan delegation. 

The Texas senator's campaign ran eight delegates for eight committee spots and lost every one, alleging it was "double-crossed" by Kasich supporters. 

The Michigan delegation picked one Trump supporter, Matt Hall, and one Kasich supporter, Judi Schwalbach, for the two seats on the powerful rules committee. The Cruz campaign lost votes for both seats. 

The rules committee seats have become highly coveted prizes for their role in shaping a contested convention in Cleveland. After the delegates are selected in each state, they meet as a group and pick the members of four convention committees, the most important of which is the rules committee, which will ultimately decide who can be nominated president. 

Michigan Cruz leader Saul Anuzis said they were "double-crossed" by Kasich's campaign. The Kasich delegates were supposed to vote with Cruz delegates, he said, but switched sides and voted with Trump behind closed doors Saturday afternoon. 

The reality is that the GOP's contested convention in July in Cleveland is actually already being contested now at the state-level conventions following the primaries.  These battles are being fought in state GOP rules committees ahead of Cleveland.  The real race is controlling these committees ahead of a contested convention.

We'll see which Republican can play the game the best.