Trump Cards, Con't

At this point even William Saletan over at Slate has figured out that Donald Trump is a racist slimeball.

Since announcing his candidacy, Trump has tested our tolerance. He has insinuated that Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, and Seventh-day Adventists can’t be trusted. He has proposed a ban on Muslims. These statements have thrilled his crowds, and they haven’t cost him the support of Republican leaders. In general election polls, he has pulled even with Hillary Clinton.

So the assault continues. On Friday, at a rally in San Diego, Trump claimed that the federal judge who is hearing the fraud case against Trump’s real-estate “university” isbiased and corrupt—in part, apparently, because the judge is “Mexican.”

Trump has previously portrayed people as biased or untrustworthy, based purely on Latino ancestry, on at least four occasions. Last summer, after retweeting an allegation that Jeb Bush “has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife,” Trump defended this claim on the grounds that Bush’s wife—who had been an American citizen for more than 35 years—was “from Mexico.” On Dec. 12 and Dec. 29, Trump suggested to Republican audiences in Iowa that they shouldn’t vote for Sen. Ted Cruz because “not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba.” In February, Trump accused Gonzalo Curiel, the judge in the Trump University case, of conspiring against him, calling Curiel “Spanish” and “Hispanic.” When Trump was asked to explain the connection between the judge’s alleged bias and his ethnicity, Trump said: “I think it has to do with perhaps the fact that I’m very, very strong on the border.”

Trump’s attack on Friday continued in this vein. “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump,” he told a crowd in San Diego. “His name is”— at this point, Trump, having raised his voice like a drum roll, held up a piece of paper and pronounced the name carefully, gesturing for effect—“Gonzalo Curiel.” The audience booed, and Trump let the moment soak in, shaking his head in solidarity. Trump told the audience two things about Curiel: that he “was appointed by Barack Obama” and that he “happens to be, we believe, Mexican.” After railing against Curiel and the lawsuit for more than 10 minutes, Trump concluded: “The judges in this court system, federal court—they ought to look into Judge Curiel.”

Flat-out, no-holds-barred racism, guys.  This is now what the Republican party stands for. in 2016. And our media is too frightened of Trump and his goons to call them out on it.  Everyone is pretending this is all normal and acceptably behavior, because after all if we have a open racist as president, that would be bad for the country, right?

So instead we hear how about this is probably Al Sharpton's fault or something.

Guys, Trump has to lose by double digits and the GOP along with him.

How To Succeed At Trumping Without Really Trying

CNBC's Jake Novak is now convinced Trump is going to win because Awesome Business Acumen.

A few months ago, I wrote that Donald Trump would win the GOP presidential nomination – but that would be the end of the line for him. I was sure that Trump just couldn't shore up enough of the already too small Republican base to win in November, thus nearly guaranteeing not only a loss but a big loss to Hillary Clinton in the general election. 

Well, I was wrong.

In the 80-odd days since I wrote that piece, I've been seeing more and more evidence of why my predictions for Trump's demise were wrong — and that his chances of winning in the general election look pretty decent.

OK, I'll bite.  How you figure there, champ?

Base? Trump doesn't need no stinking base.

And it hasn't ended there. Trump is still breaking conventional rules by recently insulting New Mexico Governor Susan Martinez, a GOP "golden child," because all the conventional wisdom says Republicans need more women and Latino voters to have a future. But remember, Trump is trying to make sure you don't primarily identify him as a "team player" Republican anyway. That team is a losing team and Trump wants little part of it. And he's probably also aware that it's a waste of time for any non-Democrat to run after elusive female and Latino voters anyway. It sounds crazy to slam Martinez, but as Trump is proving over and over again, Trump's campaign is crazy like a fox. 

It also sounds crazy to a lot of people that Trump has been actively going after the white vote. Why does a non-Democrat ever have to do that? Because white voter turnout has been down in recent elections. Trump knows he needs to energize lots of white voters who have recently stopped voting. He did that in the primaries and it's all still working now.

This is something that's been tossed around before: that demographic changes in states have nothing to do with voting, it's not that there's now more voters of color and more women voting, it's that there's a huge pool of conservative white, male, working-class voters (probably at a Home Depot in Pennsylvania or hanging out at an American Legion baseball field in Ohio, just tens of millions of them, man) that have dropped out of the political process over the last 25 years or so, and if they just simply voted again, Trump would win easily.  They're just disconnected because Republicans are loser cucks and Democrats are pussy SJWs and if they all came out to vote, and turnout nationally would be like 75%, these hero bros would crush those people for good.

It's the notion that with enough while men voting, it relegates everyone else in the country meaningless in a presidential election and in everything else. Make America Great Again, indeed.

Did I mention Jake Novak is a white guy?

Oh it gets better, kids.

The second biggest mistake I made about Trump is something else the CNBC audience should appreciate: I didn't think his incredible abilities and experience at self-promotion would translate very well from the business and entertainment media world to the political arena. But I forgot that Trump has been a master business marketer for decades and has also been working closely with some of the best writers in reality TV for more than 15 years. And probably the best talent those writers have is making events and comments sound truly off the cuff and natural even when they are really completely planned and strategically weighed. 

I don't think Trump has said one thing or sent out even one tweet during this campaign that didn't sound like something he truly believed and would naturally say or write. Even if you've hated 100 percent of the things Trump has said and written, it's important to understand that Trump has won a crucial marketing and persuasive victory simply by convincing you that what he's saying and writing is his genuine voice and authentic personality. It's called building a clear and identifiable brand. Winning an election is still very much about connecting personally with key voters and you can only do that if you present a clear personality or brand to the voters in the first place. If you're the person who sees Trump's personality/brand and have decided you hate everything about it, I have news for you: You're not the target audience. But you're still proof that Trump's messaging is at least very clear and that's often more than half the battle in business and politics.

Trump am sooper smart business guy brain man!  You know, because Andrew Carnegie totally would have tweeted that people were losers.  It's because the orange little peckerhead can slap his name on everything, and that makes him the perfect president for 'Murica.

And that brings me to my last mistake about Trump's chances: I underestimated how bad Hillary Clinton's campaign would be. To be fair, I never thought Clinton was a particularly strong candidate. But at every essential task of marketing and messaging, the Clinton campaign has been surprisingly bad. 

We all know Trump's key slogan/promise is "Make America Great Again." I'm still not sure what Hillary Clinton's key slogan/promise is and I follow her campaign very closely. Is it "I'm with Her?" If so, it's not very good in that it doesn't seem to have anything in it for the person who isn't "her."

Chicks are dumb! You don't need them to win an election, and they suck as candidates, especially when you brand yourself well!

We might as well hang it up, squad.  We can't possibly beat such mastery of politics as salesmanship, and we certainly can't stop this many white guys from winning outright.

Right?

StupidiNews!

• An apparent murder-suicide at UCLA's College of Engineering has resulted in the death of Prof. William Klug and a student as the campus was locked down for 3 hours Wednesday.
• Massachusetts GOP Gov. Charlie Baker says he will sign the state's new anti-discrimination legislation that expands protection to transgender residents.
• The US Treasury Department has instituted further sanctions on transactions from North Korean bank accounts, calling the country a "primary money laundering concern".
• Heavy rain and flooding continue in southern Germany as the river Inn crested several feet over flood stage, at least four are dead in Bavaria and several more are missing.
• Summer air pollution in Paris has led to new restrictions on cars more than twenty years old to be banned from city streets on weekdays, and no cars built before 2011 by 2020.

Last Call For Going Into Overtime, Con't

Last month I talked about the Obama administration expanding Labor Department rules on overtime pay for salaried employees and who should be eligible for it, making millions of people in entry-level salary jobs finally able to earn time-and-a-half pay.


The business community is starting to weigh in on this, and they pretty much despise it.  Their tack is simple: low-level salaried positions are mostly filled by younger workers, and as we all know (snort) Millennials are the worst.

The Dallas Fed surveys factory owners to compile the monthly release, and the final report includes edited anecdotes on how businesses are doing.

In May, a lot was said about the Department of Labor's new overtime rule, which more than doubles the income threshold of eligibility to $47,476 per year from $23,660.

The concern was that this would raise the costs of labor. And one manufacturer was furious while saying that millennials already weren't bothering to give their money's worth.

Those damn kids and their hippity-hop music! 


By the way, that manufacturer's complaint to the Dallas Fed? This:

The Department of Labor rules and other government regulations are seriously slowing down business development, increasing overhead costs, reducing productivity and causing increased management time spent on non-customer-focused/non-value-added efforts. We have a serious productivity problem with office workers and estimated that less than 50 percent of their time is spent on value-creating business activities. The younger workers are often off task, engaged on social media, on the internet, texting on phones and other unproductive activities.

The Department of Labor must realize that if we are supposed to pay them overtime for work they should do during normal work this will make us have to focus on micromanaging employees and reducing compensation to reflect actual productivity of a mandated 40 hour or less workweek.

You kids don't do anything during the day anyway except Snapchat and Reddit, why the hell would we pay you cogs overtime?!?!


I love how the problem is suddenly office workers are playing too much Candy Crush.  Look, I work in corporate IT and I know the largest abusers of company IT policies aren't the rank and file drones, they are the managers, directors and execs who think they are entitled to using the company broadband to watch The Masters and March Madness and check their stock options.


Value-creating business activities my black ass.

DIspatches From Bevinstan, Con't

It seems in his haste to dismantle Medicaid expansion and throw 400,000 off health insurance, Gov. Matt Bevin is running into a few problems, mainly the entire rest of Kentucky thinking that doing so is a terrible idea both morally and fiscally. Backpedaling Bevin is now reversing course on his plan to turn the program into a worse version of neighboring Indiana's and GOP Gov. Mike Pence's hybrid mess.

Kentucky’s Medicaid commissioner says the state’s plan to scale back the expanded Medicaid system will not require beneficiaries to pay premiums, according to an Associated Press report.  

In the report, Commissioner Stephen Miller goes on to say that Medicaid recipients could receive fewer benefits, including reduced vision and dental services. 

Late last year, Gov. Matt Bevin announced that he would by 2017 “transform” the state’s expanded Medicaid system into one where recipients have “skin in the game” by paying for benefits. 

Doug Hogan, communications director for Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services, said that the state couldn’t comment on the proposed changes or negotiations with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). 

“Everything is on the table and no decisions have been finalized. We are continuing to engage stakeholders and CMS in good faith,” Hogan said.

So now the plan is to cut benefits, something too that Bevin will have to sell not only to Kentucky voters but to the Obama administration.

Jonathan Gold, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said “any changes to the program should maintain or build on the historic improvements Kentucky has seen in access to coverage, access to care, and financial security.” 

According to an HHS official, requiring beneficiaries to be employed may not be a condition of eligibility for Medicaid.

Bevin remains one of the most unpopular governors in the country for a reason, and that mostly for mucking around with a system that worked and replacing it with a system that's broken on purpose to keep people off Medicaid and other state benefits.


We'll see how long that lasts. Bevin is crashing and burning pretty hard already.

Trump Cards, Con't

It looks like now that Donald Trump has collected enough Republican delegates to be declared the presumptive nominee, our media is finally starting to vet the guy after ten months. As Kevin Drum notes, The Donald does not like scrutiny.

What Trump Says Now On why it took so long to disburse the money: "When you send checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars to people and to companies and to groups that you’ve never heard of, charitable organizations, you have to vet it. You send people out. You do a lot of work."	What He Said Then: The organizations had been chosen before the event even took place: "The night benefited twenty-two different organizations, a number of which are Iowa based Veterans groups."
On the purity of his motivations: "I wanted to do this out of the goodness of my heart. I didn’t want to do this where the press is all involved."	This was a publicity stunt from the start, driven by Trump's feud with Fox News: "When they sent out the wise guy press releases a little while ago done by some PR person along with Roger Ailes, I said 'Bye bye.'"
On his well-known penchant for low-key philanthropy: "If we could, I wanted to keep it private because I don’t think it’s anybody’s business if I wanna send money to the vets."	This might be the most laughable thing Trump has ever said. When he announced his boycott of the Fox debate, Trump explicitly made it all about ratings: "They can't toy with me like they toy with everybody else...So let 'em have their debate and let's see how they do with the ratings."
On his bad press: "I'm not looking for credit. But what I don't want is when I raise millions of dollars, have people say, like this sleazy guy right over here from ABC. He's a sleaze in my book. You're a sleaze because you know the facts and you know the facts well."	Trump very plainly tried to avoid making the personal $1 million donation he promised.From David Farenthold a week ago: "In the past few days, The Post has interviewed 22 veterans charities that received donations as a result of Trump’s fundraiser. None of them have reported receiving personal donations from Trump....To whom did Trump give, and in what amounts? 'He's not going to share that information,' Lewandowski said."
On the media's lack of suitable gratitude: "Instead of being like, ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Trump,’ or ‘Trump did a good job,’ everyone said: ‘Who got it? Who got it? Who got it?’ And you make me look very bad. I have never received such bad publicity for doing a good job."	Poor baby. Apparently the press hasn't yet gotten into the habit of kowtowing to him the way his employees are required to do. Trump still has a lot to learn about running for president.

In other words Trump is a lying sack of crap and has been for years. He's not even remotely honest when it comes to any number of subjects, and now that he's finally getting called out on it, he's complaining about the evil press.




What I don't understand is how it took this long to make the decision to actually take a look at Trump's statements.  While the rest of us dirty blogger class have been screaming from the ramparts that Trump is a serial liar, unapologetic racist, dangerous demagogue and narcissistic sludge-ball who directly empowers the worst parts of America's darkest and most twisted impulses, the media has been acting like he's a regular, if entertaining candidate who happens to be a ratings goldmine.


Only now is he even starting to get open criticism, and he's immediately attacking the press for daring to ask questions he doesn't want to answer.

On Tuesday, Trump pointed out ABC News reporter Tom Llamas and called him "a sleaze." Llamas' crime? Asking the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to explain why he had misled people about how much money he'd raised for veterans. 

During his tirade about the press, he interrupted CNN's Jim Acosta who was asking Trump about his ability to deal with scrutiny, to say sarcastically, "Excuse me, excuse me. I've watched you on TV. You're a real beauty." 

The attack, which came amid one of Trump's familiar diatribes about the "dishonest" media, was the latest in a string of personal insults Trump has made against reporters covering his campaign. 

Trump has called Fox News host Megyn Kelly "a bimbo." He dubbed NBC's Katy Tur, "little Katy, third-rate journalist." He has also individually tweaked reporters from the New York Times, Politico, CNN and elsewhere. And at nearly every rally, the brash billionaire reams the press as "dishonest," "disgusting," "slime" and "scum," calling political reporters the worst types of human beings on earth, prompting his crowds of thousands of supporters to turn, without fail, to jeer and sometimes curse at the press.

Suddenly the press is a lot less worried about how President Obama is supposedly so mean to them, and their constant bitching about how he's "destroying the free press" because he won't say what they want seems pretty hollow compared to Trump actually being the nightmare they falsely accuse Obama of being.


Similarly, maybe we'll hear less complaining about how Hillary Clinton doesn't make herself available to the press as much as they'd like (because they're too busy covering whatever insult Donald Trump tweeted that morning before breakfast and ignoring her completely).


We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• A World Health Organization report finds Nigeria's booming economy comes at a cost: four of the sixteen world cities with the worst air pollution are there, including #1 Onitsha.
• Major tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook, will cooperate with EU officials to help stop hate speech that violates EU law on the internet.
• A rail strike across France began Wednesday as three of the country's four major rail unions joined in to protest working hours.
• South African President Jacob Zuma is now consolidating power after the nation's highest court ruled against him in graft charges two months ago.
• Microsoft has dropped the price of the Xbox One to $299 ahead of this month's E3 show, where the company is expected to announce a smaller, less expensive version of the console.

Last Call For French's Disconnection

I didn't think it was possible, but Bill Kristol managed to fail so badly he might have pegged the needle on the maximum allowed negative integer and flipped it around positive.

Two Republicans intimately familiar with Bill Kristol’s efforts to recruit an independent presidential candidate to challenge Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have told Bloomberg Politics that the person Kristol has in mind is David French -- whose name the editor of the Weekly Standard floated in the current issue of the magazine.

French is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to the website of National Review, where French is a staff writer, he is a constitutional lawyer, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and an author of several books who lives in Columbia, Tenn., with his wife Nancy and three children.

Reached in Israel late Tuesday afternoon, Kristol declined to comment on his efforts to induce French to run. The two Republicans confirmed that French is open to launching a bid, but that he has not made a final decision. One of the Republicans added that French has not lined up a vice-presidential running mate or significant financial support.

So, David French is a pundit.

A National Review pundit running for President.

A pundit who, as of a week ago, was asking Mitt Romney to run for president.

The American people need the chance to make a better choice. Given the stakes of the election, to simply leave the race to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is to guarantee a terrible presidency marked by incompetence and cronyism. There is just one hope — however slim — of avoiding this national disaster: America needs a third option.

And at this point, Mitt Romney is the only man who combines the integrity, financial resources, name recognition, and broad public support to make a realistic independent run at the presidency. He’s conservative, he’s got an enviable record in business and government, and he’s demonstrated a unique capacity for turning around failing enterprises. Oh, and there’s one other thing: Romney has been proven right.

It's like Kristol went to the National Review staff meeting and said "Hey, do any of you guys want to run for President?" And everyone else backed up a step because David French was checking his phone and playing Angry Birds: Donald Trump Edition. and didn't see, and now you guys he's gonna run for president and stuff.

Sure.  This is going to be great.

The Company Store Is Now The Company Bank

One of the reasons why barely-paid restaurant workers continue to get screwed by giant chains in the name of profits is because these restaurant chains have enough leverage to force their workers (some undocumented) to remain poor, and Wall Street banks are more than happy to sell the rope to hang these workers with.

Workers at Darden Restaurants chains are routinely told they must accept prepaid debit cards instead of paychecks, according to a new report from the worker organization Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) United. A quarter of workers surveyed said they asked to be paid some other way and were told the cards are their only option. 

The practice helps the company, which came under intense pressure to cut costs from dissatisfied investors a couple years back. But it puts an expensive barrier between workers and their money. 

The restaurant conglomerate has roughly 148,000 employees in the U.S. Half of those workers get payroll cards in lieu of standard paper checks. Each card shaves about $2.75 per pay period off of the company’s overhead, saving Darden as much as $5 million per year. 

Darden’s bottom-line bliss means pain and chaos for those 70,000-plus workers. The cards come with a litany of fees: 99 cents for using it to pay utility bills, 50 cents if the card is declined at a cash register, $1.75 to withdraw money from an out-of-network ATM and 75 cents just to check the card’s balance. If a worker loses her card, she’ll pay $10 to have it replaced. 

As Darden cuts its administrative costs, the banks that provide the cards rack up significant income on the back end. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia researchers put median bank earnings at $1.75 per card per month back in 2012. That suggests Darden’s financial partners are pulling down about $1.5 million a year.

So yes, remember the next time you're at Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse or the Capital Grille that half the employees there are forced to used high-fee "payroll cards" rather than direct deposit, so they can nickel and dime their employees to death, and a great many of these low-paid employees are women.

And eventually, these low-paid full-time employees end up on some sort of government assistance while working 40 hours a week or more, because their employers refuse to pay them a living wage.

I know, I've had employers in the past that tried to user these payroll cards to pay me, saying they were a "great deal" for workers and saved hassle and were very convenient right up until you read the fine print and realize that it would cost you hundreds of dollars in fees a year to use the card.

But that's how we now treat workers in America.

StupidiNews!

• Human rights organizations are reporting that airstrikes in Syria have hit a hospital in the Syrian city of Idlib, killing at least 23.
• A transgender man in Vermont was beaten to death over the weekend in what authorities are saying may be a hate crime.
• Germany's foreign minister says it's unclear whether or not the EU will renew sanctions against Russia over military action in Ukraine, current EU sanctions expire in July.
• Profit at Volkswagen AG's flagship brand cratered in the first quarter as ongoing damage from the automaker's diesel emission cheating scandal continues to hurt sales.
• Scientists say cephalopods' adaptability to climate change and ocean acidification are leading to a population boom among octopi, mollusks and squids.

Last Call For Deflecting Defection

So a lot is being made of former AG Eric Holder saying that Edward Snowden "performed a service" to the government by taking a treasure trove of NSA documents to leak, but it's more complicated than that.

In an appearance on former Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod’s podcast, Holder said Snowden’s 2013 leaks “harmed American interests” but that the light he shone on controversial government practices could mitigate some of the damage done.

"I know there are ways in which certain of our agents were put at risk, relationships with other countries were harmed, our ability to keep the American people safe was compromised,” Holder told Axelrod. “There were all kinds of re-dos that had to be put in place as a result of what he did, and while those things were being done we were blind in certain really critical areas. So what he did was not without consequence."

In other words, Snowden forced the NSA to re-examine methods and manners across the board, which for an intelligence agency is I guess a good thing, being stuck with outdated (or in this case, wholly compromised) resources makes the agency useless.

Which of course was Snowden's entire point, to render the NSA powerless internationally. 

“He's broken the law in my view. He needs to get lawyers, come on back, and decide, see what he wants to do: Go to trial, try to cut a deal. I think there has to be a consequence for what he has done,” Holder continued. "I think in deciding what an appropriate sentence should be, I think a judge could take into account the usefulness of having had that national debate."

Appearing from Russia via videoconference at a University of Chicago event earlier this month, Snowden reiterated his willingness to return to the U.S., but only if he could be guaranteed a “fair trial.”

“If I had access to public interest defenses and other things like that, I would want to come home and make my case to the jury," Snowden said. "But, as I think you're quite familiar, the Espionage Act does not permit a public interest defense. You're not allowed to speak the word 'whistleblower' at trial."

Since Snowden's definition of a fair trial is "one where he walks free and is treated like a hero after delivering reams of classified NSA information to Russia and China" no, he's not going to get a fair trial and should stay in Moscow.

Besides Putin is having too much fun laughing at us. In a lot of ways, Edward Snowden is one of the Obama administration's biggest failures with repercussions affecting American intelligence services for years, if not decades to come.

Whether or not you agree that Snowden jump-started the debate over civil liberties in America is one thing, but the fact that Snowden broke the law doing it doesn't absolve him of the crime, either.  Both can be true, that Snowden started a needed debate, and that Snowden needs to face trial, and that continues to be my position.

The Kroog Versus The Math

As Paul Krugman points out, the horse race political "journalism" covering the Democratic primary season is full of crap, and that the people who are telling you Bernie Sanders is going to be the nominee are willfully lying.

First, at a certain point you have to stop reporting about the race for a party’s nomination as if it’s mainly about narrative and “momentum.” That may be true at an early stage, when candidates are competing for credibility and dollars. Eventually, however, it all becomes a simple, concrete matter of delegate counts.

That’s why Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee; she locked it up over a month ago with her big Mid-Atlantic wins, leaving Bernie Sanders no way to overtake her without gigantic, implausible landslides — winning two-thirds of the vote! — in states with large nonwhite populations, which have supported Mrs. Clinton by huge margins throughout the campaign.

And no, saying that the race is effectively over isn’t somehow aiding a nefarious plot to shut it down by prematurely declaring victory. Nate Silver recently summed it up: “Clinton ‘strategy’ is to persuade more ‘people’ to ‘vote’ for her, hence producing ‘majority’ of ‘delegates.’” You may think those people chose the wrong candidate, but choose her they did.

Second, polls can be really helpful at assessing the state of a race, but only if you fight the temptation to cherry-pick, to only cite polls telling the story you want to hear. Recent hyperventilating over the California primary is a classic example. Most polls show Mrs. Clinton with a solid lead, but one recent poll shows a very close race. So, has her lead “evaporated,” as some reports suggest? Probably not: Another poll, taken at the very same time, showed an 18-point lead.

What the polling experts keep telling us to do is rely on averages of polls rather than highlighting any one poll in particular. This does double duty: it prevents cherry-picking, and it also helps smooth out the random fluctuations that are an inherent part of polling, but can all too easily be mistaken for real movement. And the polling average for California has, in fact, been pretty stable, with a solid Clinton lead.

Polls can, of course, be wrong, and have been a number of times this cycle. But they’ve worked better than many people think. Most notably, Donald Trump’s rise didn’t defy the polls — on the contrary, he was solidly leading the polls by last September. Pundits who dismissed his chances were overruling what the surveys were trying to tell them.

Which brings us to the general election. Here’s what you should know, but may not be hearing clearly in the political reporting: Mrs. Clinton is clearly ahead, both in general election polls and in Electoral College projections based on state polls.

It’s true that her lead isn’t as big as it was before Mr. Trump clinched the G.O.P. nomination, largely because Republicans have consolidated around their presumptive nominee, while many Sanders supporters are still balking at saying that they’ll vote for her.

But that probably won’t last; many Clinton supporters said similar things about Barack Obama in 2008, but eventually rallied around the nominee. So unless Bernie Sanders refuses to concede and insinuates that the nomination was somehow stolen by the candidate who won more votes, Mrs. Clinton is a clear favorite to win the White House. 

Accept the things you cannot change, and have the wisdom to know the difference, as the back two-thirds of the serenity prayer goes.

Like A Kansas Tornado, Con't.

The ultimate insult to the injury of the Sam Brownback Austerity Regime is that, like most GOP-controlled governments, what sacrifices that are demanded of the little people are never enforced upon those who make the laws. After all, Kansas has got to cut salaries for state employees like teachers, but not so much for lawmakers.

The one-of-a-kind Kansas pension plan lets representatives and senators sign up for full-time pension benefits while working their part-time elected positions.

“Legislators,” notes an employee benefit sheet explaining the pension plan to new lawmakers, “have a special deal here.”

They get a modest salary for the roughly four months they spend each year in Topeka, but their pensions grow as if the state paid them for a year-round gig.

All told, a salary shy of $15,000 makes a lawmaker eligible for a pension that any teacher, road worker, prison employee or Kansas bureaucrat could qualify for only if their actual pay ran north of $90,000.

“It’s not fair or appropriate,” said Rebecca Proctor, the executive director of the Kansas Organization of State Employees, a union representing 8,000 workers.

She was a member of a Kansas Public Employees Retirement System study commission that in 2011 suggested changing the system for legislators. The Legislature never acted on that recommendation.

Instead, she said, lawmakers have attempted to shore up KPERS by increasing contributions required of regular state employees. In addition, some legislators have floated proposals limiting whether those workers could count unused vacation and sick time toward their pension benefits.

“It’s hypocritical,” Proctor said.

To be sure, members of the House and Senate must pay into the kitty, 6 percent of the supposed salary on which their pensions are calculated. But it’s such a good deal that few pass it up.

Taxpayers typically pay about twice an employee’s contribution toward the pension. So the more legislators sign up for, the more the state also must chip in.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article80590492.html#storylink=cpy

And of course this awesome pension deal isn't new, Kansas lawmakers have been enjoying this since 1982 and no other state employee gets that kind of deal.  But the state lawmaker pension plan wasn't touched when Gov. Brownback installed his austerity regime, while other state employees received massive pension cuts, especially teachers.

Did you think austerity in Kansas actually counted for the "servants of the people"?

Suckers.

StupidiNews!

• Iraqi forces are advancing to retake the ISIS-held city of Falluja as the UN estimates some 50,000 civilians may be caught in the crossfire.
• Tropical Storm Bonnie continues to pound the South Carolina coast as the Atlantic hurricane season gets underway.
• Japan's military is on alert in anticipation of another North Korean missile test, both naval and land units are ready to shoot down any projectile headed for Japan.
• OPEC nations are expected to select the energy cartel's next secretary-general next week after current leader Abdalla El-Badri's six-year term was extended to an unprecedented ten years. 
• The 100th Indianapolis 500 saw a record crowd of over 350,000 on hand for the racing milestone with rookie and former F1 driver Alexander Rossi taking the checkered flag.

It's A Zoo Out There

Something of a tragedy here at the Cincinnati Zoo this weekend as Harambe, one of the gorillas at the zoo's primate enclosure was shot and killed by keepers who were trying to protect a 4-year-old boy who had climbed into the habitat.

The encounter at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden occurred Saturday afternoon when the boy crawled through a barrier and fell into a moat at the facility’s outdoor gorilla center, zoo director Thane Maynard told reporters.

The boy wasn’t seriously hurt in the fall, Maynard said at a news conference, but after he dropped into the enclosure, the gorilla, a 17-year-old male named Harambe, “went down and got him.” The animal grabbed and dragged the child, Maynard said, and that’s why officials determined that the boy’s life was in danger.

“It seemed very much by our professional team, our dangerous-animal response team, to be a life-threatening situation,” Maynard said. “And so the choice was made to put down, or shoot, Harambe. And so he’s gone.”

The 4-year-old boy was taken to a children’s hospital, according to a news release from the zoo. His name was not released.

“It’s a sad day all the way around,” Maynard said. “The right choice was made; it was a difficult choice. We have protocols and procedures, we do drills with our dangerous-animal response team. But we’ve never had a situation like this at the Cincinnati Zoo, where a dangerous animal needed to be dispatched in an emergency situation.”

Zoo employees opted to put down the animal instead of using tranquilizers because in “agitated” situations, it can take time for the drugs to take effect, Maynard said. Harambe also would have had a “dramatic response” to a tranquilizer’s effect, he said.

Maynard praised the workers tasked with handling the incident, saying they had a “tough choice.”

“Because they saved that little boy’s life,” he said. “It could have been very bad.”

The child squeezed into an area where he shouldn't have, getting away from his busy mother, and climbed the wall outside the Gorilla World area. He then fell into the moat surrounding the enclosure, and Harambe dragged the boy out of the water.

That was enough for the keepers to make the call to put the gorilla down.

There's going to be a lot of second guessing here, about if it was the right choice, if the zoo could have done more to protect the enclosure, if the child's mother could have stopped the boy, if the zoo should have had a silverback in the first place.

I don't know the honest answers to these questions, but they need to be answered, I think.