Last Call For Berned Out, Con't.

The big question on the Democratic side of the race remains: will Bernie Sanders finally call it and endorse Hillary Clinton?  President Obama hasn't been able to cajole him into it, the DNC certainly hasn't, and the voters?  Well, Bernie listens to them selectively at best.

Enter the Biden!

Vice President Joe Biden is confident that Bernie Sanders is going to endorse Hillary Clinton and that the Democratic party will unify.

"Oh, I've talked to Bernie, Bernie's going to endorse her, this is going to work out," Biden said in an interview with Rachel Martin, host of NPR's Weekend Edition. "The Democrats are coalescing even before this occurs."

Sanders was asked about Biden's comment in an interview with MSNBC on Thursday evening and said he wasn't quite ready to endorse Clinton.

"I talked to Joe, I think it was three weeks ago," Sanders said. "Look, on that issue we are trying to work with Secretary Clinton's campaign on areas that we can agree." The Vermont senator also repeated his pledge "to do everything that I can to defeat Donald Trump."

Sanders said that the two camps are discussing issues like free public college and universal healthcare, which he says are critical to get his supporters to back Clinton. Those discussions may come to a head at a Democratic National Committee platform meeting in Orlando, Fla., late next week.

"Right now my hope is that we can reach an agreement on some very important issues and I can go forward to the millions of people who supported me and say, 'Look, this is the progress that you've made. This is where we're gonna go as a country,'" Sanders added on MSNBC. "So, I hope it happens. As of this moment, we're not there quite yet."

Biden's coming in to do what he does best, and that's force people hands.  He was a master of it in the Senate, and did it more than a few times as Vice President (remember him backing same-sex marriage back in 2012?) Bernie can dance around it all he wants to, but it looks like Joe has boxed him in.

So what now?  Bernie's going to have to either call out the VP or endorse Clinton, and do one of the two very soon.

We'll see how long it takes.
 

Chris Bag O' Veeps?

Don't look now, but Donald Trump's Guy Friday and McDonald's gofer Chris Christie (who may actually be Governor of New Jersey in his spare time, we're kinda cloudy on that) may be Trump's sidekick on the ticket come November.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is being vetted as a possible vice presidential pick for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to two ranking Republican officials. 

Despite Christie going through the vetting process, the two ranking Republican officials told ABC News they doubt Christie would ultimately be Trump’s pick. 

Christie endorsed Trump for president in February, just weeks after suspending his presidential campaign, and has been a surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail. 

In addition to having been tapped to lead Trump’s potential transition in May, Christie has emerged as an influential voice on the Trump team.

At a press conferenceat the New Jersey statehouse, Christie denied that he would be vice president. 

"All I can tell you is that my intention is that I'm going to serve the rest of my term as governor until Jan. 16, 2018, and then return to the private sector," Christie said.

All I have to say is that New Jersey will be happy to get rid of the guy if he goes, but that would mean he'd be VP, and Trump...well...yeah.

I understand Mars is nice this time of year.

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if it's Christie, he's just as mean as Trump is, only without the charisma. We'll see.

Trump Cards, Con't.

It's not a question of whether as president, Donald Trump would have an enemies list or not, the question is how many people, including Republicans, are already on it.

Donald Trump said Wednesday that he thought his Republican primary opponents who vowed to support the Party's nominee should follow through or be banned from running for public office.

Trump, speaking at a campaign rally in Bangor, Maine, said those who signed the RNC's pledge should "honor the pledge."

Trump went on to note that some of his former opponents, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and Dr. Ben Carson, had endorsed him. But not everyone has given Trump the support he desires.

"But just remember this, they signed a pledge saying they will abide, saying they will back the candidate of the party. And now they sit back," Trump said. "They broke their word. In my opinion, they should never be allowed to run for public office again. Because what they did is disgraceful."

Yeah, as president and commander-in-chief of America's armed forces as well as our nuclear assets, I would totally feel like Donald Trump would be calm and level-headed leader who would never take petty revenge on people for slights either real or perceived.

Don't you?

In all seriousness, it's not surprising to see Republicans shrug and look away when Trump displays all the behavior that they have accused President Obama of engaging in for the last seven plus years, the narcissism, the anger, the need to settle scores.  Trump is all that and more, and yet Republicans are more than happy to nominate and vote for the guy.

Anyone still surprised at the rise of Trump really has been living under a rock for the last decade.

StupidiNews!

• The Pentagon says US airstrikes hit an ISIS convoy of hundreds of trucks fleeing Fallujah, where coalition forces have driven militants out of the city and reclaimed it.
• President Obama will make his first campaign appearance along with presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on Tuesday.
• Congress has passed legislation to bail out Puerto Rico ahead of a looming debt default tomorrow, but critics including Sen. Bernie Sanders say austerity provisions are far too harsh.
• Several UK ministers are challenging Conservative Party heir apparent and former London Mayor Boris Johnson for leadership of the Tories as fallout from Brexit continues.
• A new study on US women and grooming habits finds that 84% shave their pubic areas for reasons ranging from hygiene to sexual reasons, and 40% groom to prep to see a gynecologist.

Last Call For The Gas Face

Gas is around $2.30 a gallon here in the Cincy/NKY area right now, and it looks like once again the Memorial Day - July 4th stretch will be the year's peak as gas prices are expected to fall again.

Gasoline prices may have peaked for the year, already falling as the busy Fourth of July travel weekend approaches, according to analyst projections. 

Prices at the pump typically top out near the end of June - absent major swings in crude oil costs - and this year gasoline prices likely will fall throughout the second half of 2016, according to a forecast by GasBuddy, which tracks fuel costs nationwide. Gasoline costs started decreasing just before the July 4 holiday in seven of the past 10 years.

"This defies the general consensus on Main Street that prices rise ahead of a major travel holiday," said Gregg Laskoski, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy. 

Motorists will enjoy the lowest Fourth of July prices since 2005, according to GasBuddy. The average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline on Tuesday was unchanged in the Houston area at about $2.11 from the past week, down from $2.54 for the same week last year and $3.48 in 2014. Nationally, pump prices fell an average of about 3 cents to $2.30. 

GasBuddy predicts the national average will dip to $2.27 per gallon on July 4, down significantly from 2014, when the national average hit $3.66 per gallon.

So why the good news?  Ask Nigel Farage.

The decision by United Kingdom voters to exit the European Union will add even more downward pressure to summer gasoline costs despite record-setting demand, Laskoski added. That's because the so-called Brexit is weakening global economies, depressing oil demand and prices. Cheaper oil - the primary feedstock of gasoline - means less expensive fuel. 

GasBuddy projects that average gas price nationally will again slip below $2 a gallon as early as November as demand falls after summer and refineries begin pumping out cheaper winter-blend fuels. The average U.S. price for gasoline is expected to fall to an average of $2.21 in August, $2.02 in October and $1.88 in December, according to GasBuddy.

Gas under $2 a gallon again this winter?  More than likely.  We'll see.

NC GOP Goes Down The Crapper, Con't

With heavy pressure coming from businesses (mainly the NBA) and activists alike, NC GOP lawmakers are thinking about tweaking the state's awful HB2 bathroom bill discrimination law.  If this sounds like feebly trimming the edges on a lawn full of evil mutant plants that are eating the neighborhood pets, you're probably right.

The draft bill would not change a key part of HB2 – the prohibition on transgender persons using the bathroom or locker room of their gender identity in public facilities.
It would restore the right to sue for gender discrimination in state court, a right removed by HB2 but sought by Gov. Pat McCrory. 

And it would use federal anti-discrimination standards in determining discrimination, not the standards in HB2. That could extend protections to sexual orientation, according to a lawyer familiar with the legislation. Critics, however, said the changes would do nothing to protect the LGBT community. 

The impact of certain rewritten sections of the law is difficult to gauge at first glance, said Charlotte lawyer John Gresham, an employment law specialist. 

For example, the revisions appear to reinstate and even broaden LGBT and transgender protections on hiring, firing and other workplace issues, Gresham said. But it excludes bathroom access from being classified as discrimination. 

The draft would make it easier for people who’ve had reassignment surgery to be recognized by requiring a “certificate of sex reassignment,” not necessarily a birth certificate, to prove their new gender. It would also increase penalties for violating people’s privacy in bathrooms or locker rooms. 

And it would create an “anti-discrimination task force” to review issues surrounding the law, including how claims of discrimination are handled in North Carolina.

This is a hideous compromise. Are you seriously telling me that the process of "fixing" the law is creating a legally separate class of human beings who need a certificate from the state in order to use the damn bathroom?  Have you guys even remotely read a histroy book down there?  Last time I checked, they still taught the humanities in the state concerning why this might be a bad, bad idea.

God I hope the NBA pulls All-Star Weekend from Charlotte.  This is repugnant.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article86419362.html#storylink=cpy

Terror In Istanbul

Three suicide bombers armed with guns as well as explosives hit Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport late Tuesday, killing 36 and wounding dozens more.

"There was a huge explosion, extremely loud. The roof came down. Inside the airport it is terrible, you can't recognize it, the damage is big," said Ali Tekin, who was at the arrivals hall waiting for a guest when the attack took place.

A German woman named Duygu, who was at passport control entering Turkey, said she threw herself onto the floor with the sound of the explosion. Several witnesses also reported hearing gunfire shortly before the attacks.

"Everyone started running away. Everywhere was covered with blood and body parts. I saw bullet holes on the doors," she said outside the airport.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest in a string of suicide bombings in Turkey this year, but the Dogan news agency said initial indications suggested Islamic State may have been responsible, citing police sources.

A Turkish official said it was too soon to assign blame.

The attack bore some similarities to a suicide bombing by Islamic State militants at Brussels airport in March which killed 16 people. A coordinated attack also targeted a rush-hour metro train, killing a further 16 people in the Belgian capital.

Paul Roos, 77, described seeing one of the attackers "randomly shooting" on the departures floor of the terminal.

"He was just firing at anyone coming in front of him. He was wearing all black. His face was not masked. I was 50 meters (55 yards) away from him," said Roos, a South African on his way back to Cape Town with his wife after a holiday in southern Turkey.

Both Turkish nationals and foreign tourists were killed in the attack, but to see something like this happen during Ramadan is going to draw nearly immediate accusations of Islamic State from President Erdogan, regardless.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• A CNN investigation finds more than 5,000 municipal and county water systems violate EPA regulations on lead and copper content, affecting 18 million Americans in all 50 states.
• Florida is reporting the its first case of a child born with microcephaly caused by the Zika virus, at least 40 pregnant women with the virus have been reported in the state.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she doesn't see any possibility of Britain reversing last week's referendum on leaving the European Union and wants to accelerate talks on leaving.
• Coca-cola will pull some products from shelves in Vermont completely to relabel them in order to comply with the state's new GMO labeling law taking effect July 1.
• Officials at this year's Tour de France race will use thermal imaging in order to catch cheaters who could be using secretly motorized bikes.

School Of Hard Knocks, Con't.

The overarching failure of charter schools in America over the last two decades, a failure that both parties and both the Bush and Obama administrations must be held responsible for, has now crushed a generation of public schools. But nowhere has been hit harder by this than the state that went all in on charter schools 23 years ago: Michigan, and especially the city of Detroit.

Detroit schools have long been in decline academically and financially. But over the past five years, divisive politics and educational ideology and a scramble for money have combined to produced a public education fiasco that is perhaps unparalleled in the United States. 

While the idea was to foster academic competition, the unchecked growth of charters has created a glut of schools competing for some of the nation’s poorest students, enticing them to enroll with cash bonuses, laptops, raffle tickets for iPads and bicycles. Leaders of charter and traditional schools alike say they are being cannibalized, fighting so hard over students and the limited public dollars that follow them that no one thrives. 

Detroit now has a bigger share of students in charters than any American city except New Orleans, which turned almost all its schools into charters after Hurricane Katrina. But half the charters perform only as well, or worse, than Detroit’s traditional public schools. 

“The point was to raise all schools,” said Scott Romney, a lawyer and board member of New Detroit, a civic group formed after the 1967 race riots here. “Instead, we’ve had a total and complete collapse of education in this city.” 

The city has emerged almost miraculously fast from the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Downtown Detroit hums with development — a maze of detours around construction sites with luxury apartments, a new Nike store along a stretch of prime but empty storefronts. Even where blight resumes a few blocks out, farm-to-table restaurants and modern design stores sprout hopefully. Last year, the city had its smallest population decline since the 1950s. 

But the city’s residents — many of them stranded here after whites and middle-class blacks fled in waves — will not share in any renaissance as long as only 10 percent of rising high school seniors score “college ready” on reading tests.

“We’ll either invest in our own children and prepare them to fill these jobs, or I suppose maybe people will migrate from other places in the country to fill them,” said Thomas F. Stallworth III, a former state Representative who steered the passage of the 2014 legislation that paved Detroit’s way out of bankruptcy. “If that’s the case, we are still left with this underbelly of generational poverty with no clear path out.”

Charter schools have been a multi-billion dollar scam for taxpayers for years now, the promise of "professional education corporations" coming in to bring failing school districts around.  The reality is that generational poverty assures that it can't work, and voters perpetuate the system every time elections come around.

Public school in 2016 is essentially educational triage. The good kids in the wealthy districts get the money, instruction, attention and do well in life.  Everyone else gets thrown in the deep end with whatever is left and told to fend for themselves.  Increasingly, that's nothing, and only a few make it out of hell every year.  Everyone else, well, they're not worth saving, are they?

So while corporate Detroit is having a renaissance complete with hipsters and urban renewal, the people that lived here all their lives are getting none of that.

And so it goes.

The GOP Purity Patrol

Former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee is angry at RINOs like George Will and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, declaring they aren't really Republicans if they don't back Trump.

“My feeling about George Will is, if he wants Hillary Clinton to be president, and if he’s willing to go vote for her as he said he would, then he is not a Republican. And he needs to just be honest and frankly, if he’s one of these guys, ‘it’s my way or no way,’ then goodbye.”

“Senator Ben Sasse too?” asked Kilmeade.

“Yes, absolutely,” Huckabee replied. “I’m frustrated because we have a party, we have an election, not a selection. It’s not a back room bunch of good old boys who get to make the decision. We respect the voters.”

 If that's the case, then Huckabee should keep in mind that Trump never did get a majority of voters in many state primaries, and that Republican voters aren't satisfied with him as their choice.

Just 45 percent of Republican voters say they are satisfied with Donald Trump as their party's presumptive presidential nominee, while 52 percent say they would have preferred someone else, according to results from the latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

By comparison, the numbers are reversed for Hillary Clinton among Democrats - 52 percent of Democratic voters are satisfied with Clinton, and 45 percent prefer someone else.

GOP attitudes about Trump break along ideological and educational lines. By a 53 percent-to-45 percent margin, conservative Republicans say they prefer a different nominee to Trump, while moderates are split 49 percent to 49 percent.

Maybe more tellingly, 58 percent of Republicans with a high-school education or less are satisfied with Trump as the party's presumptive nominee, versus 60 percent of Republicans with a college degree who want someone else.

So while Clinton is still consolidating her support, it looks like Trump still has serious problems uniting his party.

Do you blame them? They know what's coming.

StupidiNews!

• House Republicans will release their report on the 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, finding that there was evidence that an attack should have been expected.
• Two credit ratings agencies have downgraded Britain's bond rating in the wake of Brexit, including the loss of AAA status from Standard & Poor's.
• Texas abortion providers are considering slowly reopening in the wake of Monday's Supreme Court decision ending the state's TRAP laws that closed half the state's clinics.
• British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will not seek to replace departing PM David Cameron, saying he is "not the person" to unify the Conservative Party.
• US Customs officials are proposing that visitors to the US reveal any social media identities they have in order to provide more screening information.

Last Call For Messing With Texas

The Supreme Court finished off the 2015-2016 term today with a 5-3 decision finding Texas's TRAP laws unconstitutional.

Passed in 2013, the law said clinics providing abortion services must meet the same building standards as ambulatory surgical centers. And it required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. 

Since the law was passed, the number of clinics providing abortion services in Texas dropped to 19 from 42. Opponents said that number would fall to ten if the Supreme Court upheld the law. 

The Center for Reproductive Rights called the law "an absolute sham," arguing that abortion patients rarely require hospitalization and that many patients simply take two pills. 

Justice Stephen G. Breyer in writing the majority opinion said "neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes. Each places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a pre-viability abortion, each constitutes an undue burden on abortion access, and each violates the Federal Constitution."

The question now turns to states with similar laws restricting abortion clinics through regulation of hospital admission privileges and surgery center layouts, most notably Ohio, where these same laws are threatening to shutter Cincinnati and Dayton's last two remaining abortion providers. Think Progress breaks down the beatdown:

As Breyer notes, the admitting privileges requirement is a solution in search of a problem. As the trial court determined in this case, “[t]he great weight of evidence demonstrates that, before the act’s passage, abortion in Texas was extremely safe with particularly low rates of serious complications and virtually no deaths occurring on account of the procedure.” Accordingly, “there was no significant health-related problem that the new law helped to cure.” 

Indeed, when Texas’ solicitor general was “directly asked at oral argument whether Texas knew of a single instance in which the new requirement would have helped even one woman obtain better treatment, Texas admitted that there was no evidence in the record of such a case.” 

A significant reason why the admitting privileges requirement imposes such a heavy burden on abortion providers is that many hospitals require doctors to actually admit a certain number of patients in order to maintain those privileges. But abortion doctors rarely have a reason to do so. One clinic, for example, performed over 17,000 abortions over a decade, and “not a single one of those patients had to be transferred to a hospital for emergency treatment, much less admitted to the hospital.” Thus, Breyer writes, “doctors would be unable to maintain admitting privileges or obtain those privileges for the future, because the fact that abortions are so safe meant that providers were unlikely to have any patients to admit.” 

I don't see how John Kasich's TRAP laws survive in Ohio in the wake of Breyer's ruling, and we'll see how it plays out, but the damage has largely already been done as a result.  Texas still will have lost half its abortion providers, as will Ohio.

I'm pretty sure it's a gamble Republicans were willing to take, and we'll just move on to the next set of regulations that red states will come up with to close clinics.

The Turning Of The Screw Job

Republicans know Hillary Clinton isn't going to pick Bernie Sanders as her VP, and the GOP plans to use that in order to convince Sanders supporters to abandon her in November.

In a detailed memo outlining its strategy to combat Clinton’s VP choice, the committee says it will frame the selection as both a cynical play to certain constituencies and as an emotional letdown for voters who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic primary. 

The goals, the memo says, are to “drive wedges between these top contenders and either Clinton and/or traditional Democrat constituencies, such as labor, environmentalists, and gun control advocates, and other traditional left-wing constituencies;” and “[w]here applicable, frame the choice as an insult to the large, deep base of Bernie Sanders supporters who are struggling with the notion of supporting Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democrat nominee.” 

Titled “Project Pander,” the RNC’s strategy memo also reveals which candidates the committee views as most likely to be selected. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), HUD Secretary Julian Castro and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) occupy the top tier; Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) are in the second. 

Authored by Raj Shah, the research director and deputy communications director at the RNC, the memo telegraphs a campaign of subterfuge that is traditionally executed in private. Parties normally don’t like their fingerprints on the attacks against the opposition. But this has been an untraditional election, with both sides relatively unapologetic about the mud they are slinging.

Sean Spicer, the RNC’s communications director and chief strategist, said that the committee already has conducted extensive field research in San Antonio, Boston and Richmond, Virginia (homes to Castro, Warren and Kaine, respectively) in addition to investigative work on all six potential choices. 

“We’ve audited previous research efforts from allied folks, ID-ed relevant video and historical paper archives,” Spicer said. He added that the committee had filed more than 20 freedom of information requests at the local, state and federal level on these potential VP choices and was ready to deploy operatives for further dirt-digging within 12 hours of an announcement.

Of course the Republicans are counting on the Bernie or Bust idiots to help Trump win, and they are more than happy to rile them up in order to get the job done. I don't know how I can make it too much more clear to Sanders than until he endorses Hillary and drops out of the race, he is a liability and he is helping Donald Trump, and so are his supporters.

There comes a time guys in which you have to choose a side.

Your choices are Hillary or Trump.

Choose.

History Doomed To Repeat Itself

Things got ugly in Sacramento this weekend as a Neo-Nazi rally outside the California state capitol building turned violent.

The white nationalists and skinheads, clad in black, began to arrive a little before noon Sunday for their planned march on the state Capitol grounds. They were met by hundreds of protesters toting signs that denounced “Nazi scum.”

Violence began almost immediately, authorities and witnesses said, and by the time the clashes ended 20 minutes later, at least seven people had been stabbed, nine were hospitalized and many more suffered bruises, scrapes and cuts.

"They attacked each other without hesitation," said counter-protester Chandra Zafra, 50, a member of the Mexica Movement nonprofit. "It was a war zone."

For much of the afternoon, the historic domed Capitol was locked down, with staffers and tourists inside. Police swarmed the park-like grounds, but by Sunday evening there had still been no arrests.

The Sacramento stabbings came several months after another violent confrontation between members of a Ku Klux Klan group and counter-protesters at an Anaheim park.

As Shakezula over at LGM puts it, these are our Brexit thugs, they are the guys that are going to be very, very angry after November 8 and they're not going anywhere.  This was the mistake the left made in 2008-2010, figuring that an America that could elect a black President was an enlightened, awesome place.  Instead we got the almost immediate Tea Party backlash, the beginning of the end of the Democratic Party in the South and Midwest, and a GOP Congress after two disastrous midterms.  We're one election away at this point from going back generations on civil rights.

These guys aren't going anywhere when Hillary wins, and 2018 is going to be brutal.

StupidiNews!

• UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has sacked 10 new shadow cabinet members after surviving an attempt to oust him as Labour Party leader over Brexit.
• Wildfires in central California have destroyed 150 homes and damaged dozens more as firefighters are only now starting to contain the blaze. 
• President Obama will attend his final "Three Amigos" NAFTA trade summit with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Ottawa this week.
• Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy will remain in his position as voters shifted towards the ruling People's Party after this week's Brexit results.
• Whale researchers in the Caribbean have discovered evidence that sperm whales share dialect, society, and even culture as they move and hunt in "clans".