Last Call For Trump's America

This is our country now.  Collectively, we are all responsible for acts like this.

Ian Grillot, hiding behind a table, counted the gunshots. When he thought the gunman was out of bullets, he jumped up to pursue the man. 

But the man who opened fire inside Austins Bar & Grill about 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday night still had one round left, and he used it to shoot Grillot. The bullet went through the 24-year-old Olathe man’s hand and into his chest. 

“I guess I miscounted,” Grillot said Thursday from his hospital room, in a video released by the University of Kansas Health System. He had acted, he said, to try to stop a man who had just shot two other bar patrons, one of whom died. 

“I wasn’t really thinking when I did that,” Grillot said. “It was just, it wasn’t right, and I didn’t want the gentleman to potentially go after somebody else.” 

Grillot, a 2010 graduate of Olathe North High School, remained hospitalized in stable condition and is expected to recover. Employees at Austins Bar & Grill said they weren’t surprised that Grillot, a bar regular there to watch a basketball game, stepped up to defend the two men when another was spouting racial slurs at them. Grillot was known by some employees to be the calm guy to defuse tense situations. 

Grillot’s sister, Maggie, recounted the shooting in a Facebook message to update friends and others on his condition. 

“He tried standing up for two people who were being wrongly bullied,” Maggie Grillot wrote. 

Grillot was inside the Austins patio area when a man directed derogatory, racial statements at two men. At one point, suspect Adam Purinton, 51, of Olathe, was kicked out of the bar and then came back in “to open fire,” according to Grillot’s GoFundMe page.

Purinton is the Missouri man who allegedly shot Grillot and two Indian engineers at Austins while screaming "Get out of my country".  One of those engineers, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, is dead.  Purinton faces murder and attempted murder charges.  But it's Missouri, so hate crime charges?  Probably won't happen.

And if you're somehow expecting the Trump DoJ and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to step in and do the right thing, well...

You've got another thing coming, America.

This is our country now.  You should be ashamed of it.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article134581204.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article134581204.html#storylink=cpy

Bannon Presses The War

Meanwhile at this year's CPAC, the yearly conservative hootenanny where Republicans hang out with their Bircher buddies, Trump regime propaganda minister Steve Bannon is happily declaring war on America's free press, vowing to exterminate anyone who doesn't agree with Dear Leader Donald.

Even Chris Cillizza is starting to catch on.

It's no secret that Stephen K. Bannon, the past chairman of Breitbart News and now a senior strategist to the president, is behind much of Trump's anti-media rhetoric. The idea of the media as the “opposition party” or the “enemy" — two phrases Trump has used of late to describe those who cover him — is pure Bannon. 

So, there was no reason to think that Bannon was going to be anything but confrontational with the media during a joint appearance with Trump White House chief of staff Reince Priebus at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday afternoon. 

But, even by Bannon's standards, he seemed to ramp up his attacks on the media and offer a very clear message to political journalists: You think this is bad? Just wait. 

“It's going to get worse every day for the media,” Bannon said, insisting that the “corporatist” media would continue to see Trump pursue exactly the sort of economic nationalism that journalism allegedly despises. Then he added this call to arms: “If you think they are giving you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken.” 

The message from Bannon was unmistakable: The enemy of Donald Trump and those who think like him is not, really, Democrats but, in actuality, the media. And the only way to combat the media is to fight like hell against them on everything and anything. 

As I've noted before, presidents (and their staffs) always have an adversarial relationship with the press. The administration insists the press isn't telling the story of the White House right. The press complains about a lack of access to the key players in the White House. It's been that way for as long as I can remember. 

But what Bannon and, by extension, Trump are up to is something very different than simply an adversarial working relationship with the media. Bannon doesn't want to change the media. He wants to totally dismantle the media. He wants to break its back and leave it for dead by the side of the road. And he's not afraid of telling the media to their faces about that plan.

Why yes Chris, he does want to exterminate you.

Maybe you should start treating him like that's his plan before he starts rounding up journalists like yourself as enemies of the state for publishing leaks.

Just an idea.  Anyway, today the Trump regime started to make good on its threats.

The White House blocked a number of news outlets from covering spokesman Sean Spicer’s question-and-answer session on Friday afternoon.

Spicer decided to hold an off-camera “gaggle” with reporters inside his West Wing office instead of the traditional on-camera briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.

Among the outlets not permitted to cover the gaggle were news organizations President Trump has singled out for criticism, including CNN.

The New York Times, The Hill, Politico, BuzzFeed, the Daily Mail, BBC, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News were among the other news organizations not permitted to attend. 

Journalists from several right-leaning outlets were allowed into Spicer’s office, including Breitbart, the Washington Times and One America News Network.

A number of major news organizations were also let in to cover the gaggle. That group included ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Reuters, Bloomberg and McClatchy.

By the way, the news outlets excluded?  All have broken at least one major story on Trump and Russia over the last five weeks.  And as Bannon said yesterday, it will only get worse for the media from here.

Your move, media.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The Trump/Russia story continues, this time with a CNN story that the Trump regime directly asked the FBI to publicly disavow its own ongoing investigation into the regime's ties with Russia.

The FBI rejected a recent White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump's associates and Russians known to US intelligence during the 2016 presidential campaign, multiple US officials briefed on the matter tell CNN. 

But a White House official said late Thursday that the request was only made after the FBI indicated to the White House it did not believe the reporting to be accurate. 

White House officials had sought the help of the bureau and other agencies investigating the Russia matter to say that the reports were wrong and that there had been no contacts, the officials said. The reports of the contacts were first published by The New York Times and CNN on February 14. 

The direct communications between the White House and the FBI were unusual because of decade-old restrictions on such contacts. Such a request from the White House is a violation of procedures that limit communications with the FBI on pending investigations. 

Late Thursday night, White House press secretary Sean Spicer objected to CNN's characterization of the White House request to the FBI. 

"We didn't try to knock the story down. We asked them to tell the truth," Spicer said. The FBI declined to comment for this story.

So, at best, this is the Trump regime putting pressure on the FBI to publicly comment on an ongoing investigation in the regime's favor, when the rules exist expressly for the purpose of preventing such an obvious conflict of interest.  Worst case: Reince Priebus is guilty of outright obstruction of justice.  Democrats are not going to let this one slide.

House Judiciary Committee ranking member John Conyers said the report was cause for bipartisan concern, renewing a call for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from an investigation into what he called "clear ties" between the Trump administration and Russian officials.

"The need for an independent, bipartisan investigation into these matters has never been more clear," he said. "The Trump team has clear ties to the Russian government—and we ignore those ties at our own peril."

Several other former federal employees blasted the actions as improper.

Former Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem blasted Priebus' reported actions as "so wrong" and "so desperate." Another Justice Department alum, Matthew Miller, called the interaction "beyond inappropriate," adding that it "veers dangerously close to tampering with an investigation."

Brian Fallon, former press secretary to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, responded to the story by alluding to the FBI Director's letter to Congress about reopening the investigation into Clinton's emails.

"On the plus side, this story means Comey is going to leak word of any attempt by Trump WH to meddle in his inquiry," Fallon wrote on Twitter Thursday.

I'm sure this will be spun by the usual suspects as Priebus simply trying to get Comey to put the "rogue Obama deep state leakers" in the FBI in line, but the expectation is clearly there that the regime expects Comey to make the Russia story vanish by ending the investigation, and soon.

StupidiNews!

• Human rights groups and Turkish state media are reporting that a car bomb near the Syrian village of Sousian has killed 60 and wounded dozens more.
• Reports from Malaysia suggest that the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may have been killed by a cloth coated in VX nerve gas.
• With the Trump regime removing Obama-era guideline on transgender students, the focus moves to the Supreme Court which will take up a transgender student's case on March 28.
• Trump regime spokesman Sean Spicer says the Justice Department will take aim at states that currently allow recreational marijuana use.
• Google is taking on Uber over patent infringement for self-driving vehicles, naming one of its former engineers as chief suspect in the case.

Last Call For Bridge To Labor

Meanwhile, we know a bit more about Trump's quest for a new Labor Secretary, which is kind of difficult because rich CEOs are all terrible at convincing anyone they care about the guys making minimum wage.  It seems like Trump's next plan was simple: Pick a Republican who's such a loser, they'd jump at the chance.

President Trump offered New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie the job of Labor secretary after a lunch meeting last week, Politico reported on Wednesday. 

The offer came as the president’s previous labor secretary pick Andrew Puzder’s nomination was in jeopardy. He eventually withdrew from consideration, and Trump quickly tapped Alexander Acosta for the job. 

Christie, who backed Trump’s presidential bid early on, served as the head of the president’s transition team until November, when he was replaced by Vice President Mike Pence. 

Still, the New Jersey governor and onetime GOP presidential candidate has been the frequent subject of rumors that he could be tapped for a post in the Trump administration. 

In an interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly earlier this month, Christie said he was not offered a job in Trump’s administration that would have made him consider leaving his current post as governor. 

“The fact is that I wanted to be the governor of New Jersey, and if the president had offered me something that really was compelling me to get to Washington, I would have made the sacrifice to do it,” Christie said. 

And while he ultimately turned down the Labor secretary offer, that position was one of several jobs Trump has offered to Christie, according to Politico.

Actually, I'm fairly sure Christie my end up with a higher approval rating than Trump pretty soon. Go figure, even facing Bridgegate and a possible indictment and a GOP that hates him now, Christie still figures he's in a better position than Trump, at least good enough to turn the man down for a cabinet position.

Think about that.

Climate Of Disaster

Meanwhile, the worst flooding in a century in San Jose, CA has forced thousands out of their homes along the Coyote Creek.

Over the last two weeks, heavy rains pushed water levels at Santa Clara County’s largest reservoir into the danger zone, with officials warning it could overflow.

That happened over the weekend, sending massive amounts of water into the Coyote Creek, which runs through the heart of San Jose.

By Tuesday, the creek was overflowing at numerous locations, inundating neighborhoods, flooding hundreds of homes and forcing the frantic evacuations of more than 14,000 residents, who remained out of their homes Wednesday.

The worst flooding to hit Silicon Valley in a century left San Jose reeling and residents angry about why they were not given more warning that a disaster was imminent. Even city officials on Wednesday conceded they were caught off guard by the severity of the flooding and vowed a full investigation into what went wrong.

“If the first time a resident is aware that they need to get out of a home is when they see a firefighter in a boat, then clearly there has been a failure,” said San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. “There is no question that we’ll need to do things differently next time.”

Late Wednesday, Assistant City Manager Dave Sykes said officials had learned that the information they had on the capacity of Coyote Creek channel was not accurate. He also said the city was working with the Santa Clara Valley Water District to determine whether debris caused blockages that contributed to flooding.

“The creek spilled over the banks faster and higher than anybody expected,” said city spokesman David Vossbrink.

Residents told harrowing stories of water flowing into homes and flooding streets. Many had to be rescued by boat. Some said they were surprised they did not get urgent warnings about the extent of the flooding.

“They didn’t say it was going to go up as high as it did,” said Louis Silva, 48. He said that his possessions were swallowed up in the flood and that the city should have warned people about the scale of the disaster with a cellphone text alert or by knocking on doors.

“They should’ve put the footwork in to show the urgency of the situation,” Silva said. “It hurt everyone. ... When Mother Nature shows up, she shows up.”

Dawn Rogers, 47, said she was in the mandatory evacuation zone but decided to hunker down instead of leave. She watched as firefighters took a boat down the street to rescue residents in homes that were flooded.

By 1 p.m. Tuesday, residents were rushing to fill up their cars with priceless valuables.

“It was scary,” Rogers said. “Being in a drought for all these years, you don’t ever think you’re ever in danger of a flood.”

Remember, the problem with climate change isn't just long-term temperature increases, but the appearance of more extreme short-term weather events (like floods) and medium-term ones as well (like California's four-year drought) and the occurrence of these events more often and in a shorter time space.  Going from a 100-year drought to a 100-year flood is a really, really good example of this.

Expect to see a lot more of this in the near future, especially with this regime in charge.

The Criminalization Of Dissent Continues

Republicans aren't wasting any time in their legislative response to protesters around the country as the party has been saddled with the most unpopular regime in modern history.  Now the GOP is moving at the state level to criminalize these protests and in Arizona at least the goal is to seize all assets of anyone involved in assembly.

Claiming people are being paid to riot, Republican state senators voted Wednesday to give police new power to arrest anyone who is involved in a peaceful demonstration that may turn bad — even before anything actually happened.

SB1142 expands the state’s racketeering laws, now aimed at organized crime, to also include rioting. And it redefines what constitutes rioting to include actions that result in damage to the property of others.

But the real heart of the legislation is what Democrats say is the guilt by association — and giving the government the right to criminally prosecute and seize the assets of everyone who planned a protest and everyone who participated. And what’s worse, said Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, is that the person who may have broken a window, triggering the claim there was a riot, might actually not be a member of the group but someone from the other side.

Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Phoenix, acknowledged that sometimes what’s planned as a peaceful demonstration can go south.

“When people want to express themselves as a group during a time of turmoil, during a time of controversy, during a time of high emotions, that’s exactly when people gather as a community,’’ he said. “Sometimes they yell, sometimes they scream, sometimes they do go too far.’’

Quezada said, though, that everything that constitutes rioting already is a crime, ranging from assault to criminal damage, and those responsible can be individually prosecuted. He said the purpose of this bill appears to be designed to chill the First Amendment rights of people to decide to demonstrate in the first place for fear something could wrong.

Join a protest, get rung up on RICO charges if anyone so much as breaks a window...even if it was not anyone involved in the protest.  Republicans will not tolerate dissent, and they will use the power of the state to crush anyone who disagrees with them.

But Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said that chilling effect is aimed at a very specific group of protesters.

“You now have a situation where you have full-time, almost professional agent-provocateurs that attempt to create public disorder,’’ he said.

“A lot of them are ideologues, some of them are anarchists,’’ Kavanagh continued. “But this stuff is all planned.’’

There’s something else: By including rioting in racketeering laws, it actually permits police to arrest those who are planning events. And Kavanagh, a former police officer, said if there are organized groups, “I should certainly hope that our law enforcement people have some undercover people there.’’

Once again, the next step is to declare liberal protest groups and organizations like Black Lives Matter as terrorists and enemies of the state.  These are the laws that will be used to justify that the full power of the state be used to obliterate anyone who fails to bow to Trump the Tyrant.

These laws will be used against American citizens.  They will be spread to other states, and I would suspect they will be implemented as federal crimes as well, and soon.

We're moving very quickly into the authoritarian era of America.  My prediction that the next major Black Lives Matter protest in a red state will be met with overwhelming, lethal force is all but a guarantee at this point.

This is happening in real-time, guys. 

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime has withdrawn federal protections for transgender students using bathrooms and facilities of their choice, citing "legal confusion" caused by the Obama-era directives.
• Mexico is sharply criticizing new Trump regime deportation regulations that would deport anyone illegally entering the country from Mexico to Mexico and not their country of origin.
• North Dakota GOP Gov. Doug Burgum is claiming victory over Standing Rock pipeline protesters as the Army Corps of Engineers ordered mass evacuations on Wednesday.
• McDonald's will cut prices on drinks as the fast-food industry faces leaner times thanks to more Americans turning to lower grocery store prices and eating at home.
• In a 2-1 ruling the 5th Circuit has ruled that the public can film police under the First Amendment, but there are limits balanced by public safety.

Mitch The Turtle Gets Shelled

Sen. Mitch McConnell is definitely among the scores of Republicans running scared from constituents this week as people are showing up at town halls and other events to let the GOP know just how they feel about the Trump/Ryan plan to cut billions from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security to give tax cuts to the rich.

But at a luncheon in Lawrenceburg yesterday, Mitch ran into the jet intake and got spit out into the wall going 200, maybe 250 MPH.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) got an earful from an angry constituent at a luncheon in Kentucky on Tuesday.

The exchange began innocently enough, with the woman saying she loved McConnell.

“Thank you,” he replied. “I needed that.”

But he wouldn’t thank her for what she said next.

The unidentified voter berated McConnell over jobs and health care, saying:

“The last I heard, these coal jobs are not coming back and now these people don’t have the insurance they need because they’re poor. And they work those coal mines, and they’re sick, the veterans are sick, the veterans are broken down, they’re not getting what they need.”

And that's true.  Mitch was not prepared for it.  And if people are confronting him, in Kentucky, and he's not even up for re-election until 2020?  Suddenly Republicans really are in trouble at home, guys. Things are moving pretty fast.  People are figuring out that Trump will never be able to keep all his promises, and there's going to be hell to pay.

Democrats found out the hard way in 2010 that this can happen.  I'm hoping Republicans get crushed by this next year.

We'll see.

No Sanctuary In The Cities

A new Harvard-Harris Poll finds that four out of five Americans want sanctuary cities to go.

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that cities that arrest illegal immigrants for crimes should be required to turn them over to federal authorities.

The poll shows that President Trump has broad public support in his effort to crack down on sanctuary cities.

A survey from Harvard–Harris Poll provided exclusively to The Hill found that 80 percent of voters say local authorities should have to comply with the law by reporting to federal agents the illegal immigrants they come into contact with.As it stands, hundreds of cities across the nation — many with Democratic mayors or city councils — are refusing to do so.

Trump has signed an executive order directing Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to find ways to starve these sanctuary cities of federal funding. A Reuters analysis found the top 10 sanctuary cities in the U.S. receive $2.27 billion in federal funding for programs ranging from public health services to early childhood education.

Kelly is expected to hire thousands of new immigration enforcement agents with broad authority to detain and deport those in the country illegally, potentially setting up a showdown between the federal government and sanctuary cities.

The Harvard–Harris Poll survey found strong support for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, with 77 percent saying they support comprehensive immigration reform against only 23 percent who oppose.

“While there is broad support for comprehensive immigration reform, there is overwhelming opposition to sanctuary cities,” said Harvard–Harris co-director Mark Penn. “The public wants honest immigrants treated fairly and those who commit crimes deported and that's very clear from the data.”

Both the Dubya and Obama administrations looked the other way on sanctuary cities because it was an ugly fight that they considered to not be worth it.  The Trump regime on the other hand is happy to pick this fight, and it's a fight that these cities are going to lose.  Cutting billions in federal grants to these cities will have a major effect, and while that 80% number may go down as a result, it's still a losing fight.  The Constitution's Supremacy Clause makes the legal picture very clear here, and as a result Miami has already thrown in the towel. I expect several other cities will follow suit when it becomes evident that Trump really will cut funding to programs to punish cities.

Los Angeles and New York City will probably hold out longer than most, there's ample reason to believe blue states will work to make up additional state funding for cut programs, but that's not going to be an option in states like Florida, Texas, or Ohio.

We'll see how long this takes, but if 80% of Americans really are against sanctuary cities, then it's only a matter of time.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime is expected to release a revised executive order on immigration as soon as Wednesday, detailing a much narrower ban on entry from seven Muslim countries.
• A Texas judge has stopped the state's plan to cut all Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, saying the state has overstepped its authority.
• Malaysian officials are looking for a North Korean diplomat in connection with last week's assassination of the brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
• US farmers are expected to plant a record harvest of soybeans this year as rising global meat consumption is raising the price of the crop as animal feed.
• The Federal Trade Commission is looking into subprime auto lenders who install GPS-based kill switches on autos as the ultimate "repo man" assistant.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

As I pointed out last night, the Trump regime has set the groundwork for mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants.

In other words, rather than previous administrations focusing on undocumented people with criminal records and those immediately caught crossing the border, nearly all undocumented immigrants in the US would be targeted for "removal" by Trump regime ICE. Just the crime of being an undocumented immigrant could be enough for deportation proceedings and removal, depending on what the new field guidance priorities are.

We now have these ICE field guidance directives, and they are just as bad as feared.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a sweeping set of orders Tuesday that implement President Trump's plan to increase immigration enforcement, placing the vast majority of the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation. 

The memos instruct all agents, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to identify, capture and quickly deport every undocumented immigrant they encounter. 

The memos require undocumented immigrants caught entering the country to be placed in detention until their cases are resolved, increase the ability of local police to help in immigration enforcement, call for the hiring of 10,000 more immigration agents and allow planning to begin on an expansion of the border wall between the United States and Mexico. 

The memos make undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of a crime the highest priority for enforcement operations. But they make clear that ICE agents should also arrest and initiate deportation proceedings against any other undocumented immigrant they encounter. 

"Department personnel have full authority to arrest or apprehend an alien whom an immigration officers has probable cause to believe is in violation of the immigration laws," one memo read. "They also have full authority to initiate removal proceedings against any alien who is subject to removal under any provision of the (Immigration and Nationality Act)." 

A Homeland Security official who briefed reporters Tuesday said that deportation protections President Obama granted in 2012 to undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children will continue to be honored so long as those immigrants abide by the rules of the program. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the memos.

So for now, DREAMers will be marginally "safe" under DACA.  This will not last long, I suspect.

Everyone else, as many as ten million, are now subject to arrest and deportation.  As I said last night, it's now only a matter of logistics.  It won't happen right away, but now the tools to start are in place.

Expect many, many more raids as ICE has been given carte blanche.  As I keep saying, those private deportation facilities don't make any money unless they are full.

Still The Same Old Trump Rallies

Author Jeb Lund went to Trump's rally in Melbourne, Florida over the weekend and found that Trump supporters are still happily riding the Trump Train, not seeming to mind the occasional missing hunk of track or BRIDGE OUT signs ahead.

If people told you that MAGA hats come 25 percent off when you look peevish and 50 percent off when you're already wearing a sneer, the line snaking out of the airport hangar and a quarter mile down S. Apollo Blvd. in Melbourne, Florida, and awaiting President Trump's first rally since his inauguration would have made you believe them. 

These are the wages of a campaign and an ideology of apocalyptic civilizational struggle: a pep rally that feels undergirded with dread, voters who dismiss leftists as "special snowflakes living in a bubble," gathering in an 83 percent white county that went for Trump by nearly 20 points, and pointing across the road at a few hundred protesters behind a net barrier, wondering whether an international Jewish financier has underwritten a special attack for Saturday afternoon.

Whitey Taylor—"it's not Blackie, it's Whitey," he clarified—hawked MAGA hats and Hillary For Prison shirts at 50 Trump rallies in 33 states during the campaign and was unconcerned about the stakes. A customer asked if he was worried about protester violence; as Taylor turned his face to look at the man, a little smirk embedded in the off-white beard and deep lines framing his nose and mouth. "I've got a 9mm. I don't worry about any of these people." 

The worry grew stronger down the road, where the line looked interminable and threatened to disappear into the gray that seems to swallow the horizon under the lowering sky of a Florida afternoon. Two retired women sat in folding canvas camping chairs, watching the line, waiting for the rest of their party to gather, certain the protesters across the road were paid by George Soros. 

"I think there's a good share of them," said Francis Gilmore, who'd moved down to Florida in the last decade. They were here to advance the Soros agenda. "You can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, live the way you want, say anything you want. No sort of control. They will control us." Soros was the bad kind of billionaire, not like the ones in Trump's cabinet, who "don't have to rob the money from us because they've got enough of their own." 

Her friend, who refused to give her name, agreed. "There are many others besides George Soros but George Soros is the biggie," she said. "All the braindeads suck in the false news, because they don't have the ability to read and get the proper information." The friend had gotten a lot of the hidden details from The Creature from Jekyll Island, a Federal Reserve conspiracy book written by an HIV/AIDS denialist who believes he knows the location of Noah's ark and can cure cancer with a poisonous plant extract. When asked where else she gets her news, she replied, "Mostly radio." 

Gilmore and The Nameless Friend agreed that the protesters represented an unprecedented rejection of the office of the president and an ahistorical breach of civility. 

A man with dusty clothes, gap teeth, and a tan darker than his sandy blonde hair walked by with a four-year-old girl on his shoulders. 

"Hey, who wants to kill an unborn baby?" he said, gesturing across the street. "All them are retards. That's some shit."

So yeah, this is Trump's America, endless fear and demonization of those people, hollow chest beating, and a shared sense of camaraderie through perceived victimization.  We're all in control of the country and those stupid libtard snowflakes, but they're coming for us and  at any point we may have to start shooting.

These folks are uninformed, but they vote.  They vote GOP.  And there's nothing Trump can do that would make them not vote for him, short of being nice to liberals.  This is what I mean by impeachment or removal of Trump through the 25th Amendment being a dangerous fantasy.

Democrats need to stop relying on it, they need to stop considering it, they need to find a way to deal with the damage Trump and the GOP are causing people in real time rather than wasting breath on something that will never happen.  And the reason it will never happen is that Republicans fear Whitey Taylor and Francis Gilmore infinitely more than they fear the rest of the country.  Until they turn on Trump, he's president.

And they will never, ever turn on him.  Dems need to stop chasing these folks and worry about the millions of Dem voters who are going to be wrecked by Trump policies.

Suddenly 60 In The Senate May Not Be In Play

The last key to total domination for the GOP at this point (after the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and replacing either Ginsberg, Breyer, or Kennedy with a second pick) is getting to 60 Senate seats in 2018.  

Most observers find that far more likely that the GOP will pick up the 8 seats it needs in a midterm election compared to the 3 Democrats would need to get to 51, given the map and that fact that Dems would have to flip at least one GOP Senate seat in a state that Trump won in 2016 by double digits, whereas Dems have to defend a whopping ten Senate seats in states that Trump won last November.

But part of rolling to that victory depends on recruiting, and a month into the Trump regime, Republicans, with the best shot they've had in decades at 60 seats, are suddenly having a lot of trouble finding people to run against these supposedly vulnerable Dems.

The 2018 Senate cycle presents Republicans with a host of opportunities, but the party has already lost several top-tier candidates to fill the seats.

GOP Reps. Sean Duffy (Wis.) and Pat Meehan (Pa.) both recently announced that they’ll run for reelection instead of mounting Senate runs in blue-leaning states where President Trump pulled off upset victories.

Republicans are losing out on potential challengers in safely GOP states, too. Indiana Rep. Susan Brooks ruled out a run. Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke will likely be confirmed to lead the Interior Department, taking a top competitor out of the mix in that deep red state.

“The House [members] are generally pretty politically savvy people,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a politics website that handicaps elections. “They know midterms are often—not always—bad for the president's party.”

“Trump is off to a historically weak start in terms of his approval. …You got a lot of members of the House who are in relatively safe seats. Maybe they’re making the determination that this might not best year to run for Senate.”

While a few star GOP contenders have bowed out, Republicans are shrugging it off. They point to a deep bench of other credible candidates who they believe are just as capable of taking on vulnerable Democrats.

Republicans argue that it’s too early to tell whether Trump’s performance or midterm election dynamics are impacting House members’ decisions against Senate bids. While the first few weeks of his administration have been chaotic, they say voters in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin may view the president differently than those within the Beltway.

“It’s kind of hard to see the ‘this caused that,’ because what is “happening in the states is a lot different than what’s happening in our view,” said a national Republican operative.

If Republicans are getting cold feet this early in the 2018 cycle, it must mean that they're scared. Republicans have destroyed Democrats in midterms the 2010 and 2014, and that was before the help of new voter suppression laws that went into effect for 2016.

Republicans should be lining up to pick off supposedly doomed Dems like Jon Tester, Joe Donnelly, and Claire McCaskill.  But they're not.

Suddenly Trump's sub-40% and sinking approval rating in just 30 days is looking like a distinct liability.

Maybe there's a small hope for Democrats after all.

StupidiNews!

• Vandals have damaged a Jewish cemetery in Missouri as the FBI and Justice Department are investigating dozens of bomb threats called in to Jewish Community Centers nationwide.
• Donald Trump has selected Army Lt. Gen H.R. McMaster as his new National Security Adviser, McMaster is widely considered a capable and intelligent commander.
• Another round of Syrian peace talks will get underway in Geneva this week, the UN considers the talks part of a "political transition process" away from Assad regime rule in Damascus.
• US Census Bureau and IRS figures find that more than two-thirds of Americans aren't putting money at all into their employer-based retirement accounts.
• Apple is planning new iPad models next month for the iPad, iPad Mini, iPad Pro and a new 10.5 inch iPad model.