Last Call For The Shot Heard Round The GOP

Trump wins, Jeb loses in the Palmetto State.

Jeb Bush is suspending his campaign for the Republican nomination, he announced Saturday night.

Bush struggled for months to make inroads against Donald Trump, who constantly mocked the former Florida governor's "low energy" and for spending tens of millions of dollars on his campaign.

But it was Bush's disappointing finish in South Carolina, where his brother, former President George W. Bush, and mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, campaigned for him, that was the final straw.

"The people of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken and I really respect their decision, so tonight I am suspending my campaign," Bush said, before being overtaken by emotion.

I figured Jeb would stay in until at least Florida, he couldn't even manage that.  It's all Trump, Cruz, and Rubio now.

Big takeaway from the exit polls: 73% of SC GOP primary voters are 45 or older, and 96% were white.  Trump won older voters by 11 points, where Cruz actually won people under 45 by 3 points.

Among the 46% of SC GOP primary voters who don't have a college degree, Trump won overwhelmingly, by 14 points over Cruz for High School or less, and by 12 points for those with some college.  But Trump also won college graduates, edging out Rubio by 3.

Trump won Republicans by 5 points over Cruz, but won the 22% of independent voters by 12 points over Rubio.

Finally, Trump beat Cruz by 4 points among evangelicals.  If you don't believe "prosperity gospel" is Trump's secret weapon, SC proves it beyond a doubt.

Last thing, and you'll hear this a lot: No Republican has ever won both NH and SC and has not been the nominee.  At this point, Trump should be considered the presumptive GOP candidate in November.

And the Republican party deserves every minute of it.

Shuffle Up And Pick A Card In Nevada

Hillary Clinton takes the Nevada caucuses 52-48%, a relatively close race, heading into South Carolina next weekend.

The win provides a jolt of momentum to the former secretary of state as she heads into the February 27 South Carolina Democratic primary and Super Tuesday on March 1.

Clinton faced a surprisingly spirited challenge here from Democratic rival Bernie Sanders. The two were in a virtual dead heat in recent days. A win by Sanders, who trounced Clinton in the New Hampshire primary, would have dealt Clinton a dramatic setback.

Clinton relied on strong turnout from Latino voters to hold Sanders at bay. Her surrogates fanned out across the Silver State this week, attempting to portray her as the more trustworthy candidate for Latinos.


"Thank you, Nevada," Clinton said in a victory speech. "Some may have doubted us, but we never doubted each other."

In a statement, Sanders said he called Clinton to congratulate her.

"I am very proud of the campaign we ran," he said. "Five weeks ago we were 25 points behind and we ended up in a very close election. And we probably will leave Nevada with a solid share of the delegates."

This was by far the best upset opportunity for the Sanders camp. 50% of caucus-goers wanted to continue President Obama's policies, and Hillary won that group 75-22%. She won women by 16 points, 57-41%, and they made up 56% of caucus-goers.  Clinton also won Hispanic voters

Where Sanders got close was the fact that independent voters could caucus, and 20% of the caucus-goers in Nevada were registered independents. Sanders won those folks by almost 50 points, but Clinton won Democrats by 20 points.  Voters under 30, Sanders won in a 82-14% blowout, 30-45 he won 62%-35%, but in total those folks made up only 31% of the caucus-goers.

Sanders also edged Clinton among men and white voters (9 points and 2 points respectively) and he won Hispanic folks by 8, but Clinton won black folks by a whopping 52 points.

Sanders came very close, but if he's losing the black vote by 50 plus points, he can't win heading into SC next Saturday and the SEC primaries March 1.

The GOP Food Police

It's weird, when Democrats make suggestions about what people should eat because of the nation's obesity epidemic, they are called "fascists" and worse.  When Republicans order people on food stamps to do it by law, they are hailed as heroic protectors of tax dollars.

Low-income New Yorkers could soon find Big Brother riffling through their grocery carts, if state Sens. Patty Ritchie (R) and Michael Nozzolio (R) have their way.

The two lawmakers have introduced a bill to ban food stamps cards from being used to buy a laundry list of foods, arguing both that poor people are too fat and that they’re currently allowed to enjoy foods that are too tasty.

“At a time when our state and nation are struggling with an obesity epidemic, it is critically important that taxpayer funded programs help low income consumers make wise and healthy food choices,” reads a legislative memo accompanying the bill. “The purpose of SNAP is to promote good nutrition, but current rules allow the purchase of junk food and luxury items like high-end steaks and lobster.”

If the law were to pass and receive federal approval, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits would cease being a valid form of payment for a variety of purchases.

Sandwiches prepared at bodegas and delis, for instance, could no longer be bought with SNAP anywhere in New York. And bottled water, seltzer, ice, honey-roasted nuts, and vegetable seeds or seedlings intended to be planted at home would all be cut off, according to a review of state sales tax rules.

That’s only the first stage of the ban. The bill also instructs a state agency to go through the list of tax-exempt foods, too, and decide which of them should count as “luxuries” that should no longer be covered under SNAP. This is the provision hoping to target “high-end steaks and lobster” — but there’s no reason to believe the hunt for “luxuries” would stop there. The list of groceries that are exempt from state sales taxes, and that could potentially be targeted by this second stage of the Ritchie and Nozzolio bill, includes staples like baking products, bouillon, cereal, instant breakfast mix, dried fruits and vegetables, peanut butter, all seafood, poultry, and meat products, and all sauces and gravies, the state rules indicate.

Ritchie and Nozzolio aren’t the first conservatives to focus on cracking down on SNAP benefits. Such “junk food bans” have been attempted repeatedly by state lawmakers since 2003, when then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) first tried out the idea in Minnesota. Since then, the idea’s been debated in Maine, Texas, Iowa, California, Florida, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Texas, South Carolina, and Delaware.

How can you be fat if you're poor?  Must mean you're lazy, so let's punish you. You don't like it? Stop being poor. Freedom to eat what you want is for Real Americans, not you poor lazy people.

Republicans really are great, right?  When do we get to the "gruel rule" to replace SNAP?

Eight Justices And A Funeral, Con't

So it turns out President Obama had a very good reason not to be at Justice Scalia's funeral today.  He was asked by the family not to attend.

The White House is defending its handling of Justice Antonin Scalia's funeral, saying the decision for President Obama to pay his respects at the Supreme Court while Vice President Biden attends the funeral was an "appropriate and respectful arrangement." 

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest also lamented criticism of the president for not attending the funeral Saturday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. "There's so much rancor and politics and partisanship that we allow ourselves to get drawn into different corners, to the extent that some people actually want to use the funeral of the Supreme Court justice as some sort of political cudgel," Earnest said. 

He said a variety of factors — including security arrangements and personal relationships — played a role in Obama's decision to not to attend the funeral Mass. 

"Vice President Biden, who had his own personal relationship with Justice Scalia and his family, will be representing the administration at the funeral. Obviously, when the vice president travels to some place his security footprint is at least a little bit lighter," Earnest said.

It was never President Obama disrespecting Justice Scalia's family.

It was Justice Scalia's family disrespecting the President.

Do we understand now just how much hatred the right, and in particular Scalia, had for this guy? When you tell the President of the United States not to attend your funeral, and that it would be a better idea to pay your respects along with the rest of the country outside the main funeral?

Even in death, Scalia was an asshole.

Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

The latest Quinnipiac University national poll has some interesting numbers.

American voters back Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont over Republican candidates by margins of 4 to 10 percentage points in head to head presidential matchups, according to a Quinnipiac University National poll released today. The closest Republican contender is Ohio Gov. John Kasich who trails Sanders 45 - 41 percent.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton trails or ties leading Republicans in the November face-off, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds.

If former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg jumps into the race as a third party candidate against Sanders and Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Bloomberg would hurt Sanders more than either Republican.

Sanders has the highest favorability rating of any candidate and the highest scores for honesty and integrity, for caring about voters' needs and problems and for sharing voters' values. He ties Clinton and Trump on having strong leadership qualities and falls behind Clinton and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on having the right kind of experience to be president.

"It's certainly Sen. Bernie Sanders' moment. The Vermont firebrand leads all potential GOP rivals in raw numbers and raw emotion with the best scores for favorability and several key character traits," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"The candidate running best against Sanders is Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and he's in fourth place with 6 percent in the Republican presidential pack, unlikely to make it to the main event.

"Sanders has a lackluster 51 percent favorability rating, but that's better than all the rest. Most of the top candidates have negative scores." 

Clinton would edge out both Trump and Bush in a virtual tie and lose to Cruz, Rubio and lose big to Kasich.  Sanders would win against all of them.  Bloomberg however would make the country a tossup between Sanders and Trump, oy vey.

Observations from the crosstabs:

1) Clinton versus Trump?  Clinton indeed wins women overall by 11 points, but Trump wins white women by 9 points.  That's the closest she gets on white women overall. She'd lose white women to Kasich by 20 points.  Where Clinton does well is an overwhelming advantage with Hispanic and especially Black women, but that's not enough to counter her massive disadvantage among white men, ranging from 24 to 33 points.

2) Sanders on the other hand wins white women by 3 points against Trump and Cruz and 2 against Bush, and still gets 77-83% of the black vote.  In other words, Sanders does better with white voters right now, and just as well with black and Hispanic voters in head to head matchups versus the GOP.

3) In other words, black and Hispanic voters will pull for the Ds no matter which candidate they get.  It's white voters who are the issue, and they're actually more comfortable with Sanders.

4) The Sanders camp therefore feels pretty confident that it can retain the Obama coalition among voters of color and increase the number of white voters and win.

5) I don't like where that's going, because that's a prime recipe for taking voters of color, especially black voters, for granted, and slagging us in order to get more white voters.  That may have been the Sanders plan all along, but this is kind of crosstab evidence that supports why the Sanders team seems to be focused exclusively on white voters and ignoring the rest of the Obama coalition, because what are we going to do, vote for Trump?

I'm not sure how reproducible this poll is on a national level, and I would need to see a lot more data saying Sanders is the more electable Democrat, because that flies in the face of everything we've seen so far.

Then again, if Sanders keeps up with stuff like this, he's going to lose anyway.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said Thursday that rapper Killer Mike's recent comments that a "uterus doesn't qualify you to be president of the United States" have been "blown out of proportion" by the media covering his race against Hillary Clinton.

The Democratic presidential candidate told reporters traveling with him to Nevada that the rapper was essentially saying that "people should not be voting for candidates based on their gender but what they believe. I think that makes sense."

"No one has ever heard me say, 'Hey guys, let's stand together, vote for a man.' I would never do that, never have," Sanders said. "I think in a presidential race, we look at what a candidate stands for and we vote for the candidate we think can best serve our country."

Ugh.  Seriously, man?  Can we not mansplain the mansplaining?

StupidiNews Focus: What Zee German Knew

We take a closer look at this moning's StupidiNews story finding Volkswagen execs knew about the company's diesel emissions cheating devices back in May 2014, that comes from a NY Times story today by international business reporter Jack Ewing.

Volkswagen internal memos and emails suggest that company executives pursued a strategy of delay and obfuscation with United States regulators after being confronted in early 2014 with evidence that VW diesel vehicles were emitting far more pollutants than allowed.

The documents, first reported on by the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag and since reviewed by The New York Times, could raise the penalties for Volkswagen based on laws requiring public disclosure of problems with potential to affect a company’s stock price. They indicate that top managers knew sooner than they have acknowledged that they could not bring tainted vehicles into compliance with air-quality rules, but led federal and California officials to believe otherwise.

The documents also raise the possibility that Martin Winterkorn, Volkswagen’s chief executive at the time, knew of possible emissions cheating by the company sooner than he has said.

According to the documents reviewed by The Times, a confidant of Mr. Winterkorn wrote to him in May 2014, warning that regulators might accuse the carmaker of using a so-called defeat device — software that recognized when the car was being tested for emissions and activated pollution-control equipment. At other times, the cars produced up to 35 times the allowed amount of nitrogen oxide emissions, which are linked to lung ailments and premature deaths.

It was not until last September, more than a year after the letter of warning to Mr. Winterkorn, that Volkswagen admitted publicly that 11 million diesel vehicles, including about 480,000 Volkswagen cars in the United States, were equipped with defeat devices. The number of cars in the United States has since risen to include about 100,000 Audi and Porsche cars with diesel engines.

Mr. Winterkorn, who resigned on Sept. 23, has said he did not learn of the defeat device until shortly before the company’s public admission. A lawyer for Mr. Winterkorn did not respond to requests for comment. Volkswagen declined to comment on the documents, citing continuing investigations by German prosecutors and internal auditors.

Two people who have held senior positions within Volkswagen in recent years, and who have connections to current and former VW management, confirmed the authenticity of the documents and defended the company’s actions, saying the company had not stonewalled United States officials. The people spoke on condition of anonymity. 

That's kind of a big smoking gun deal if Winterkorn was getting emails about the cheating devices nearly 16 months before he said he had been made aware of the problem.  It's ridiculous to think that the company's CEO wasn't made aware of a project of this scope and magnitude, for cheating devices to be installed in all of its US diesel models for several model years.

Winterkorn is in enough trouble, this report suggesting that he knew more than a year in advance before the story broke means he could be in even more of the stuff, and I don't think Germany's legal system is going to be very kind to him, given EU rules on business ethics.  And that's before the US gets a hold of what's left.

Quite A Syria's War Brewing

As the Russians and Iranians continue to hammer Syrian rebels in Aleppo and cut the city off from Turkey, Ankara is up to its own ends bombing Kurds in Syria (who they see as terrorists) instead of ISIS forces. If Aleppo falls, Bashar Al-Assad consolidates his power and the rebels are effectively done.  The Turks would rather burn everything down rather than have Assad back in power with the Kurds under his protection, so Turkey is ready to throw down in a big way.  That's all bad enough.

This is worse.

Russia has promised to protect Kurdish fighters in Syria in case of a ground offensive by Turkey, a move that would lead to a “big war,” the Syrian group’s envoy to Moscow said in an interview on Wednesday.

“We take this threat very seriously because the ruling party in Turkey is a party of war,” Rodi Osman, head of the Syrian Kurds’ newly-opened representative office said in Kurdish via a Russian interpreter. “Russia will respond if there is an invasion. This isn’t only about the Kurds, they will defend the territorial sovereignty of Syria.”

Conflicting interests in Syria have created a dangerous new phase in the country’s five-year war, even as world powers struggle toimplement a truce agreement. Turkey fears Kurdish gains along its border will morph into an autonomous state and inspire similar ambitions among its own Kurdish minority. But a ground intervention risks conflict with Russia, which backs the Kurds militarily, and would anger the U.S., which sees the group as a major ally in the fight against Islamic State.

Turkey has been shelling Syrian Kurdish forces since the weekend, and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed them for a bombingin Ankara that killed 28 people on Wednesday.

“We are continuing to liberate our territory and it would go faster if it wasn’t for Turkey,” Osman said. Russian warplanes are providing support for the Kurdish offensive, which is aimed at securing full control of the Turkish border, while Russia has also promised to support the Syrian Kurds’ goal of federal status, he said.

A NATO partner involved in a shooting war with the Russians in Syria.  You can kinda see where this is all going, huh?

Russia has said it is helping the Syrian Kurds militarily and Nikolai Kovalyov, a former head of the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet KGB, said that Russian jets would bomb Turkish troops if they enter Syria.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said any foreign incursion into Syria would be “illegal” and the Russian response would depend on the situation. Russian airstrikes in northern Syria are succeeding in driving out Turkish-backed rebels, she told a weekly briefing in Moscow on Thursday.

The Syrian Kurds are trying to create a Kurdish autonomous region in northern Syria by uniting two territories separated by about 100 kilometers of land controlled by Islamist rebels, according to Anton Lavrov, an independent Russian military analyst.

“That is the Syrian Kurds’ dream and the Turks’ worst nightmare,” Lavrov said by phone.

Oh it's not just Turkey having nightmares about that, I assure you.  This one could get real nasty, real quick-like. I'm glad President Obama is in charge, because if it was a Republican, we'd be heading for a quagmire that would make Afghanistan look like a boy scout camping trip.

StupidiNews!

• Uganda goes to the polls this week as President Yoweri Museveni is expected to win a fifth term, having led the country since 1986, the country remains a key US ally in Africa.
• California officials say the state's high-speed rail service will connect San Francisco and Los Angeles by 2029, with initial service beginning in 2025 between Kern County and San Jose.
• With the Zika virus now confirmed in Puerto Rico, the FDA is ordering the island to import blood supplies and expects thousands of infections by the peak of summer.
• Germany's Interior Minister is warning other EU countries of consequences if they continue to refuse to accept Syrian refugees.
• A new report finds evidence that Volkswagen executives knew about the company's diesel emissions cheating software as early as 2014, more than ten months before the story broke.

Last Call For This Is Sparta(nburg), Con't

Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy shows us how far virulent Islamophobia can carry the GOP in 2016 in states like South Carolina.

SPARTANBURG, A MANUFACTURING CENTER in a deep-red patch of the state that helped send Rep. Trey Gowdy (of Benghazi committee fame) to the House, has emerged as one of the loudest centers of opposition to the resettlement of refugees by the Obama administration. Ann Corcoran, a Maryland-based writer and activist whose book, Refugee Resettlement and the Hijra to America, posits that jihadis posing as migrants are deliberately attempting to infiltrate the country, has called the city's fight "Waterloo." As she put it, "I think we will look back at this point in time with Spartanburg as the point where the history of refugee resettlement in America is changed forever."

Residents first began protesting the arrival of refugees in the area last spring, shortly after Corcoran raised the issue at a national conference for Republican presidential candidates in South Carolina. From there, the complaints reached the desk of Gowdy, who griped to the State Department that he had been left in the dark over resettlement plans. Under pressure from legislators last spring, Republican Gov. Nikki Haley—who was once called a "raghead" by a state senator because her parents are Sikh—signed into law a proviso prohibiting the state from spending money on refugee resettlement in a county unless that county had authorized it to do so. (Hence the York County resolution and others like it.) The issue has not gone away; in August, the State Department felt compelled to dispatch Ann Richards, one of the agency's top officials for refugee resettlement, to meet with activists in Spartanburg—including Wiles. Undeterred, Secure Spartanburg County hosted a Refugee Resettlement Summit for several hundred concerned residents in September and flew in a retired Immigration and Naturalization Service agent to talk about the holes in the refugee vetting system. A flier for the event quoted a Holocaust resister.

Rep. Donna Hicks, the Spartanburg lawmaker who previously backed the anti-Shariah bill, has found herself in the middle of the clash over whether to embrace or reject people in need—torn between friends (and many constituents) who support the refugees, and the vocal concerns of constituents who oppose resettlement. Her church provides financial support to World Relief, the nonprofit managing refugee resettlement in Spartanburg. World Relief's Spartanburg director, Jason Lee, is a fellow parishioner. All told, World Relief Spartanburg has settled 69 refugees since it launched last spring—none of whom are from Syria. More than 80 percent of the newcomers are Christians, from places such as Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of Congo. (In order to keep out refugees who might come bearing the flag of ISIS, activists believe it's essential to keep out all refugees.)

"We lose who we are as human beings and as an open nation that welcomes all people if we start seeing a devil behind every face," Hicks told me.

Yet she also believes radical Islam poses a unique threat, and that the methods employed by ISIS challenge the efficacy of the refugee screening process. More to the point, so do the people who voted for her.

"I'm on Facebook a lot; every day I'm on there and so I'm watching what comes through," Hicks said. "And there's continually on my feed posts about refugees, Muslims, what ISIS is doing, Cruz said this, Rubio said this, Trump said [this]. People on Facebook, they're just blowing up with that issue." Three different constituents have given Hicks copies of Corcoran's book.

In this climate, she has found that the kinds of issues that typically fire up her constituents have been cast aside. "As a matter of fact," she said, "I had a press conference the other day—I prefiled a bill to defund Planned Parenthood in South Carolina." No one showed. "[I] just couldn't hardly even stir up media to be interested in that. But they were calling me at the same time, 'Would you like to make a comment on the refugee issue?'"

The fear card is very strong. Living in a state whose economy as largely been destroyed by global corporate greed makes it easy to blame The Other, in this case, Muslims (and to an almost equal extent, Latinos.)  No wonder Southern red states are lining up behind Trump and Cruz.

It's downright scary. Lawmakers claiming they don't have a bigoted bone in their bodies, but hey, all these constituents do, so they have to go along, right?

Profiles in courage!

Eight Justices And A Funeral

President and Mrs. Obama will be paying their respects to the late Justice Scalia on Friday, and Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden will be attending the Justice's funeral on Saturday.

Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden will be the only couple from the White House at Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's funeral Saturday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday. While President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will "pay their respects" to Scalia as he lies in repose in the Supreme Court's Great Hall Friday, Earnest says they do not plan to attend the funeral.

"The president obviously believes it's important for the institution of the presidency to pay his respects to somebody who dedicated three decades of his life to the institution of the Supreme Court," Earnest said.Politico reports that the last time a Supreme Court member died in 2005, then-President George W. Bush both attended the funeral and gave a eulogy for Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

This is apparently enough to start WW III, as the Obama-shaming from the "liberal media" is coming fast and furious.  The LA Times's Michael McGough:

Even if he doesn’t spend Saturday golfing — a scenario raised by a reporter at a White House press briefing — Obama's absence amounts to a slight to the court’s longest-serving member, a justice the president himself described as “one of the most consequential judges and thinkers to serve on the Supreme Court.”

It’s also is a dumb political move. By attending the funeral Obama would have underscored the importance of nonpartisanship when it comes to the court. That could only have helped him make the case that the Republican-controlled Senate has a duty to give fair consideration to the person he nominates to succeed Scalia.

WaPo's Philip Bump comes in with a passive-aggressive list of funerals President Obama has and has not attended.

In June, President Obama and Vice President Biden both attended the funeral service of South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pinckney in Charleston. It was the second time that month that the two men attended a funeral in the wake of a tragedy; the first was the service for Biden's son Beau.

How and when the president attends a funeral comes down to a number of factors: The person's importance to the country, the president's schedule and the significance of the event itself. Obama has frequently been criticized for the funerals he has missed, most notably including that of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

 And MSNBC's Chris Hayes took his shot at the President on Twitter.

Some amazing advice my mom gave me once: "If you're wondering whether you should go to the funeral, you should go to the funeral."

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) February 17, 2016

I'm remembering the number of times Scalia simply skipped the President's State of the Union address (in 2013 he called President Obama's yearly address "a childish spectacle") and frankly, IU don't give a damn if the President attends or not.

The way this President has been treated by Scalia?  Why does he have to put up with it?

Maybe it was a slight of the man.

Good.  He didn't deserve respect.  He was a goddamn monster.

Just Maybe, She Gets It

Expanding more on last night, NY Magazine's Rembert Browne covers Hillary Clinton's speech earlier this week in Harlem, and like me, found himself both surprised and impressed.

Then it hit you that Hillary was going to talk — at length — about black people, almost exclusively. She began with the normal rhetoric of just listing black people she knew, whom she spoke with, whom she associated herself with — but then it took a turn. When she began discussing Flint, the white woman Establishment presidential candidate said, “It's a horrifying story, but what makes it even worse is that it's not a coincidence that this was allowed to happen in a largely black, largely poor community. Just ask yourself: Would this have ever occurred in a wealthy white suburb of Detroit? Absolutely not.”

It was that moment of, Oh shit, did Hillary come to play today? I looked down my row, and multiple people had that same goddamn face etched on their faces. She was making points about privilege that minorities always make, but it packed such a different punch — even if President Obama had said it — because she was chastising her own privilege, putting the privilege of whiteness front and center.

The moment was a brief callback to the controversial opinion of scholar Michael Eric Dyson in his November 2015 New Republic piece, which said that Hillary Clinton will do more for black people than Barack Obama. And like Dyson further argues in his book, The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America, Obama uniquely had to comply with the expectations of whites. That’s not something Clinton will ever have to deal with to the same degree.

Hillary then followed up the Flint statement with the following series of points, all delivered in about two minutes:

• "We still need to face the painful reality that African-Americans are nearly three times as likely as whites to be denied a mortgage."
• "Something's wrong when the median wealth for black families is just a tiny fraction of the median wealth of white families."
• "Something is wrong when African-American men are far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than white men convicted of the same offenses."
• "Black kids get arrested for petty crimes, but white CEOs get away with fleecing our entire country — there is something wrong."
• "Just imagine with me for a minute if white kids were 500 percent more likely to die from asthma than black kids — 500 percent."
• Imagine if a white baby in South Carolina were twice as likely to die before her first birthday than an African-American baby.
• "Imagine the outcry. Imagine the resources that would flood in."
• "Now, these inequities are wrong, but they're also immoral. And it'll be the mission of my presidency to bring them to an end. We have to begin by facing up to the reality of systemic racism."

I genuinely couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The tiptoeing had vanished. She wasn’t trying to win everyone’s vote by flying as close to the middle as possible. And even though the room was markedly black, these thoughts were now on her permanent electoral record for all to see. The use of “imagine” was powerful, because it comes with an almost implied,You can’t imagine it, because that shit wouldn’t fly. She was finally just saying it, bluntly. Hearing this, in February, was so much more powerful than any policy plan. Because before many people want to know your plan — or before people will ever truly consider believing in your plan — they want to know that you understand their world.

And that's what I've been waiting to hear from either candidate, that they understand that 50 years after the Civil Rights movement, the deck is still greatly stacked against black America and in favor of white America.

Actions speak louder than words, of course.  20 years ago Hillary's husband signed GOP laws that made all kinds of things worse for black America, a price we're still paying today.  Promising to do better is literally the absolute least she can do.

But it's a start.

StupidiNews!

• South Korea is treating claims that North Korean Kim Jong Un has given the order to prepare terror attacks as serious in the wake of tensions after Pyongyang's latest nuclear test.
• In a mass given in Ciudad Juarez across from the US border with El Paso, Texas, Pope Francis called for the world's leaders to address the global humanitarian crisis of migrants.
• In response to a suicide bomb attack in Ankara Wednesday that killed 28, Turkey has unleashed airstrikes on Kurdish camps in both Syria and Iraq.
• President Obama will visit Cuba next month as the White House moves to restore regular flights to the island nation.
• New archaeological evidence finds Neanderthals and human ancestors were interbreeding as early as 100,000 years ago, far earlier than believed, after splitting off 700,000 years ago.

Last Call For Flipping The Script On SCOTUS

On Monday Senate Republicans and GOP presidential candidates were united on refusing to allow President Obama a Senate vote or even a hearing on a successor to fill the late Justice Scalia's vacancy on the Supreme Court.

A few days later, some cracks are showing in the wall of opposition.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, who said Saturday it "only makes sense" to let the next president pick the justice, wouldn't rule out holding hearings for Obama's eventual pick.

“I would wait until the nominee is made before I would make any decisions,” Grassley told reporters in a conference call on Tuesday, according to Radio Iowa. “In other words, take it a step at a time.”

Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, also sounded skeptical of simply rejecting any nominee at the outset.

"I think we fall into the trap if we just simply say, sight unseen—we fall into the trap of being obstructionists," Tillis said on The Tyler Cralle Show.

"All we're trying to say is that based on the president's actions, it is highly unlikely" he'll nominate someone in the mold of Scalia, he added. "And if he puts forth someone that we think is in the mold of President Obama's vision for America then we'll use every device available to block that nomination."

The slight cracks in what has been a rallying cry among the party's base of "no hearings, no votes" doesn't mean a confirmation is particularly likely, at least before the November elections.

It's almost like some Senate Republicans realize that they only have a four-seat majority in the Senate, something that Democrats could easily overturn if motivated enough in November, and that President Obama has outmaneuvered them before or something.

Two Republican senators from liberal states, in separate statements, did not call for blocking an Obama nominee.

"The political debate erupting about prospective nominees to fill the vacancy is unseemly," said Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, who is facing a tough re-election fight this year. "Let us take the time to honor his life before the inevitable debate erupts."

Senator Susan Collins of Maine said it's "premature" to speculate on a successor so soon after Scalia's death. But the centrist Republican indicated that the Senate has a duty to consider nominees on their merits.

"More than any other appointment upon which the Senate is called to pass judgment, nominees to the Supreme Court warrant in-depth consideration given the importance of their constitutional role and their lifetime tenure," Collins said. "Our role in the Senate is to evaluate the nominee's temperament, intellect, experience, integrity, and respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Why, I'd almost say that some Republicans realize the potential danger of refusing to even hold a hearing, much less a full Senate vote on something like a Supreme Court nominee, and knowing that would be something even our terrible media couldn't spin as anything other than blanket hatred of this President, especially if he nominated somebody already confirmed by Senate Republicans as say, the current Attorney General or unanimously as a DC Circuit Court judge.

Senate Republicans are a lot of awful things, but even they see that the light at the end of this particular 11-month tunnel is an incoming train.

“Justice Scalia’s passing means the court hangs in the balance,” Clinton said. “Now the Republicans say they’ll reject anyone President Obama nominates, no matter how qualified. Some are even saying he doesn’t have the right to nominate anyone! As if somehow he’s not the real president.

“That’s in keeping with what we’ve heard all along, isn’t it? Many Republicans talk in coded, racial language about takers and losers. They demonize President Obama and encourage the ugliest impulses of the paranoid fringe. This kind of hatred and bigotry has no place in our politics or our country.”

This is gonna hurt, boys.

Dispatches From Bevinstan, Con't

Matt Bevin Old and Brokedown: "Kynect is unsustainable and is gone."

Matt Bevin New Hottness: "Meet your new state medicaid benefits exchange, Benefind!"

Kentucky Medicaid beneficiaries and other welfare recipients will apply for services using a new website called Benefind starting Feb. 29.

Medicaid recipients previously applied for benefits using Kynect, the state health exchange that Gov. Matt Bevin has promised to dismantle by the end of the year.

Health and Human Services Cabinet Vickie Yates Glisson said the plan does away with the paper-version of the application — the program will be entirely online.

“Whether you live in any of our 120 counties, there should be access to a computer system that you will be able to come in and access these programs,” Glisson said.

The new program will also serve as an application hub for other state health, food and cash assistance programs, replacing the Kentucky Automated Management Eligibility System.

So, totally not Kynect.  Nope.  Meanwhile, Bevin's proposed tax cuts are running into reality.

Meanwhile the state’s new Medicaid commissioner said that the cost of the Medicaid program — one of the largest expenditures in the budget —will cost about 20 percent more over the next two years, rising to over $3.7 billion

Rep. Jim Wayne, another Louisville Democrat, said that the state could afford these programs and more if it revised its tax system.

“If people who are as wealthy as the governor would pay their fair share in state and local taxes, we know that these type of programs could easily be sustainable,” Wayne said.

So either Bevin gets his tax cuts, or he'll throw 20% of state Medicaid people off the rolls.  Guess which one this sudden change of state benefits in two weeks to an all online site does in a state with one of the lowest percentages of home internet use in America?

Guess what happens?

You tell me.

This Is Sparta(nburg), Con't

If the Public Policy Polling survey of SC voters ahead of Saturday's primary is any indication, America is in for a delicious treat of pecan pralines and racism.

PPP's new South Carolina poll continues to find Donald Trump with a wide lead in the state. He's at 35% to 18% each for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, 10% for John Kasich, and 7% each for Jeb Bush and Ben Carson. 

What's striking about Trump's support is how consistent it is across different demographic groups- he's at 41% with 'somewhat conservative' voters, 40% with younger voters, 38% with men, 36% with self identified Republicans, 35% with Evangelicals, 35% with middle aged voters, 34% with non-Evangelicals, 31% with women, 30% with self identified independents, 30% with 'very conservative' voters, 30% with seniors, and 29% with moderates. He has a lead of some size within every single one of those groups, similar to what he was able to do in New Hampshire. 

The race is still pretty fluid in South Carolina- 29% of voters say they might change their minds between now and Election Day. Trump benefits from having supporters who are pretty resolute though- 77% of them say they will definitely vote for him, compared to 76% for Cruz and 62% for Rubio. Among voters who say their minds are completely made up, Trump's support goes up to 40% to 20% for Cruz and 16% for Rubio.

Clinton too has a big lead in the state,

On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders 55/34. South Carolina exemplifies the way in which the Democratic race changes in places where there's a large African American electorate. Clinton and Sanders are tied with white voters at 46%, pretty similar to how the race played out in Iowa. But among African Americans Clinton continues to have a substantial advantage over Sanders at 63/23. Clinton is very popular among black voters with a 71/12 favorability, while feelings about Sanders continue to be pretty mixed with him coming in at 39/33. 

South Carolina's being an open primary works to Sanders' advantage. Clinton is up 31 with actual Democrats, 60/29, but Sanders cuts a lot into her advantage thanks to a 55/27 lead with the independents planning to vote in the Democratic primary. Some of the other customary big demographic splits we've seen in other places present themselves in South Carolina as well- Sanders is up 45/43 with men and 44/42 with younger voters, but that is more than drowned out by Clinton's 64/25 advantage with women and 70/20 one with seniors.

But the real fun is down in the crosstab swamps, and woo boy, is it a hog lagoon and a half down here (PDF) when we get to the GOP primary voters.

Q19 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion
of George W. Bush?
Favorable........................................................ 64%
Unfavorable .................................................... 25%
Not sure .......................................................... 11% 

Q20 Would you support or oppose banning Muslims
from entering the United States?
Support banning Muslims from entering the
United States ..................................................60%
Oppose banning Muslims from entering the
United States ..................................................23%
Not sure .......................................................... 17%

Nice.  It gets better.

Q22 Would you support or oppose shutting down
mosques in the United States?
Support shutting down mosques in the United
States .............................................................29%
Oppose shutting down mosques in the United
States .............................................................47%
Not sure .......................................................... 24% 

Q23 Would you support or oppose creating a
national database of Muslims in the United
States?
Support a national database of Muslims in
the United States ............................................47%
Oppose a national database of Muslims in
the United States ............................................36%
Not sure .......................................................... 17% 

Q24 Do you think the religion of Islam should be
legal or illegal in the United States?
Islam should be legal in the United States ...... 53%
Islam should be illegal in the United States .... 25%
Not sure .......................................................... 22%

And then it gets amazing.

Q26 Do you support or oppose the Confederate flag
hanging on the capital grounds?
Support the Confederate flag hanging on the
capital grounds ...............................................54%
Oppose the Confederate flag hanging on the
capital grounds ...............................................32%
Not sure .......................................................... 14% 

Q27 Are you glad that the North won the Civil War,
or do you wish that the South had won?
Glad the North won......................................... 36%
Wish the South had won................................. 29%
Not sure .......................................................... 35%

Q28 In general do you think that whites are a
superior race, or not?
Whites are a superior race.............................. 10%
Whites are not a superior race........................ 78%
Not sure .......................................................... 11% 

Q29 Do you prefer mustard, tomato, or vinegar
based barbecue sauce?
Mustard based ................................................ 26%
Tomato based ................................................. 31%
Vinegar based................................................. 26%
Not sure .......................................................... 17%

Racism and barbecue, baby!

When you're still angry or at least indifferent about the outcome of the damn Civil War and support the Confederate Flag O' Traitors on your state's capitol, you really do need to reassess your life in the year 2016.  Also, screw vinegar based barbecue sauce.  The Carolinas are famous for it and it's *awful*.

Never change, Palmetto State.  Never change.