StupidiNews!

• President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren have all formally endorsed Hillary Clinton as the Democratic party nominee for President.
• The US military will now be allowed a greater role in assisting Afghan forces against the Taliban by joining regular Afghan troops into combat and not just special operations forces.
• Russia says it will respond the the entry of a US naval ship into the Black Sea ahead of a July NATO summit in Poland.
• The success of recent Broadway musicals like Hamilton is spurring the theater industry to push for the same tax deductions that television and movie productions get from Congress.
• The names of four heavy elements on the periodic table have been formalized by scientists as the world officially meets Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson.

Last Call For Becoming A Target

The wingnut "backlash" against Target stores and the company's trans-inclusive bathroom policy just stopped being "funny".

A small bomb exploded in the women's bathroom at a Target store in Evanston on Wednesday, and officials are investigating whether it’s connected to the company’s policy allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice. 

Commander Joe Dugan says no one was inside the bathroom when the small explosion happened a little after 4 o'clock. It caused minor damage and no one was injured. Early indications are that a plastic bottle was used but no projectiles like nails or tacks were inside it. Investigators are gathering evidence including examining store security camera video. 

Target has been criticized recently for its stand on allowing people in the LGBT community to choose whichever bathroom they identify mostly with, either male or female, stating the company welcomes, "transgendered team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.” 

In response, 700,000 people signed an online petition promising to boycott Target. Evanston police say they have not ruled out the explosive device planted here may somehow be connected.

So yeah, now we have open domestic terrorism in public bathrooms, and even if this is somehow not connected to Target's inclusiveness, somebody is still blowing up bathrooms.  If I'm one of the people boycotting Target for having a soul, I would want this case solved in milliseconds. Hell, I want this case solved regardless because it's a terrible thing to do.

Jesus.

Getting The Sharap(ova) End Of The Stick

Tennis star Maria Sharapova now faces a two-year suspension from the sport after testing positive for doping.  She's appealing her suspension to the sports world's governing body, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Sharapova tested positive for meldonium, a World Anti-Doping Agency banned substance, following a January 26 urine test. Sharapova admitted to the ITF and to the press in March that she had used the substance. 

Sharapova said she had been taking a medicine known to her as mildronate, which she said she did not know is also called meldonium, for 10 years, and that the WADA had only added meldonium to the list of banned substances starting January 2016. She characterized the doping as unintentional. 

The tennis player had a hearing in May in front of an Independent Tribunal, after which it was determined she should be suspended for two years retroactive to January 26, and have the results of her Australian Open “disqualified.” 

On Facebook, Sharapova said she will appeal the suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, calling the two-year suspension “unfairly harsh.”

I have to wonder about anyone using a "medicine" for ten years to improve her performance and then saying "Oh gosh, I didn't know". We're not talking Flintstones vitamins here, guys.

In the Independent Tribunal’s report on Sharapova’s suspension, it said she is the “sole author of her own misfortune”:

The contravention of the anti-doping rules was not intentional as Ms Sharapova did not appreciate that Mildronate contained a substance prohibited from 1 January 2016. However she does bear sole responsibility for the contravention, and very significant fault, in failing to take any steps to check whether the continued use of this medicine was permissible. If she had not concealed her use of Mildronate from the anti-doping authorities, members of her own support team and the doctors whom she consulted, but had sought advice, then the contravention would have been avoided.

In other words, Sharapova was using this stuff for a decade and got away with it because she was using it secretly.  If she had asked any of her doctors or WADA, they could have helped and settled the matter privately. She didn't, and she's paying a heavy price for it.

The WADA doesn't screw around.  Ask Marion Jones or Lance Armstrong sometime.

TrumpIng Kentucky Republicans

Here in Kentucky, Democrats are barely holding on to control of the State House as the last line of defense against increasingly unpopular GOP Gov. Matt Bevin's austerity regime, and November could very well hand over control of the House to the Republicans.  But along came Donald Trump...

Kentucky Republicans say they have years of momentum and that a big voter turnout in November for a presidential election will help them seize majority control of the Kentucky House of Representatives for the first time since 1921. 

“A fantastic chance,” said Tres Watson, spokesman for the Republican Party of Kentucky. “We have good candidates. And the demographics of a presidential year combined with how Kentuckians are voting more and more Republican at the federal level make us highly competitive.” 

But Democrats survived an GOP aggressive challenge in 2014 and say that momentum swung back their way in March when Democrats won three of four special elections for vacant House seats. 

“I feel very strong about our prospects to hold onto our majority,” said Rep. Sannie Overly, of Paris, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus and the Kentucky Democratic Party. “We’ve heard this from those folks (Republicans) before. And we have consistently out-recruited, out-worked and out-performed their candidates. This year is no different.”

Democrats now hold a 53-47 majority in the House, which remains the only legislative chamber in any southern state in Democratic control. 

The stakes are extremely high. Republicans are sure to retain a big majority in the Kentucky Senate in November, and flipping the House would allow the GOP and Republican Gov. Matt Bevin to pass much more of their conservative agenda. 

Many Republicans believe the presidential race pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton will help many of their candidates – particularly in Eastern Kentucky, where Clinton’s March comment about putting miners out of work resonates loudly despite her efforts to say the comment was a mistake and taken out of context. 

But Overly said, “The Trump campaign appears to be imploding on a daily basis. Who knows what it will look like in November? He may well be a drag on their ticket.” 

House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said Democrats plan to run against Bevin on the funding cuts he initiated to universities and his veto of a budget provision that would have expanded preschool eligibility. 

“I don’t believe the governor’s message is popular," he said. "We ran against it in the special elections, we’ll run against it again this fall.”

If Trump isn't a drag on the ticket for KY state races, Bevin may very well be.  His education cuts are becoming more and more of an issue here along with his Medicaid cuts and across-the-board cuts to many state cabinets.  I don't have any illusions that Clinton will win here, but it doesn't mean that people won't keep sticking with Greg Stumbo and the Democrats this fall, either.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• Thousands are expected at the funeral service for boxing legend Muhammad Ali today in Louisville, the city continues its three-day celebration of the Champ's life and legacy.
• A House bill to help bail out Puerto Rico from its $70 billion debt crisis is set for Thursday as final amendments were set in the House Rules Committee.
• Israel has revoked work permits for tens of thousands of Palestinians after two gunmen opened fire on an Israeli shopping center in Tel Aviv Wednesday, killing four before being captured.
• As the US solar power industry had a record quarter, for the first time the majority of new power capacity in the country came from solar.
• The nation's internet security companies are hoping that they can help automakers secure "connected car" wi-fi code at a conference in Detroit this week.

Last Call For Golden State Blues

As John Nichols reminds us, the only thing more dysfunctional than the Party of Trump at the national level is the Party of Trump in California, and Trump may finish them off for a second generation.

Fifty years ago, California was a reasonably Republican state—with a Republican named Reagan on his way to being elected governor, two Republican senators representing the state in Washington, and the pieces in place to back the GOP nominees in the next six presidential elections. Republicans did not always win California, but they had the upper hand.From 1952 to 1988, only one Democratic presidential candidate won the state—and that was Lyndon Johnson in the Democratic landslide year of 1964. 

As recently as 1988, Californians voted for Republican George H.W. Bush for president and Republican Pete Wilson for the US Senate. But that was the end of it. California has not voted for a Republican for the presidencyor for the Senate since that year. 

This year, the California GOP looks to be headed for disaster in the presidential race, with some recent polls showing Donald Trump gainingless than one-third of the vote. And that’s not the worst of it. The GOP won’t even have a Senate candidate on the ballot.

Yep, that's right.  Sen. Barbara Boxer's replacement will be a Democrat, because Republicans are so pathetic in the state they couldn't even finish second in the state's primary.  And let's not forget what started the end of the decline for the GOP in California: immigration.

Two decades ago, Republican Governor Wilson championed California Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative designed to discriminate against undocumented immigrants. The initiative’s proposed restrictions on access to education, healthcare, and social services were draconian, and unconstitutional—as the federal courts eventually determined. 

The Republican push for the measure proved to be political folly in a state with a growing Hispanic population and a substantial Asian-American community. The Proposition 187 fight identified California Republicans with anti-immigrant policies, while Wilson’s veto of legislation that sought to prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation fostered additional concerns about the party’s intolerance in a state with a large and active LGBT community. 

Wilson was certainly not the sole source of the California GOP’s image problems. But when he left office in 1998, Wilson’s tenure was recalled by The Washington Post as an era of “divisive politics” in which the California governor and his party “championed voter propositions to end affirmative action, social services for illegal aliens and bilingual education.”

Demographics crushed the Republicans in the state, and the rest of the union is headed California's way.  The fact that Republicans are toast in the most populous state in the country should have clued them in years ago, but then again, these are Republicans we're talking about.  They've lost the state since Clinton and will probably not win the state again in my lifetime.

Mitch The Turtle Meets Don The Con

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is watching GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump destroy the Republican's Senate control in real time, and he's scrambling to try to put The Donald's racist toothpaste (whitening formula!) back in the tube.

At an event promoting his memoir Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it was “stupid” for Donald Trump to single out a judge’s Mexican heritage and said the Republican presidential candidate should apologize and “get on script.” 

He did not, though, back away from supporting the New York real estate magnate.
Instead, McConnell criticized Trump for statements the Republican presidential candidate has made about Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge presiding over a court case involving his defunct real-estate training program, Trump University. 

“I worry about these gratuitous shots at a variety of Americans,” McConnell said in a discussion of his book, “The Long Game,” at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington policy group. “Basically, we’re writing off Hispanic Americans.” 

Trump has said that Curiel is biased against him because Trump has proposed to build a wall at the Mexican border to curb illegal immigration. Although Curiel’s parents are from Mexico, he was born in Indiana and is known for his tough approach to Mexican drug cartels. 

“Even if you thought that was appropriate in any way, which I don’t,” McConnell said of Trump’s singling out of Curiel’s Mexican heritage, “it’s stupid to do that.” 

McConnell and many prominent Republicans have criticized Trump’s remarks but continue to back him. Trump should apologize and “get on script,” McConnell said. 

“It’s time for him to look like a serious candidate for president,” he said. “This could be a winnable race.”

And by "get on script" he's saying "please use the more acceptable racist dog whistle terms for Hispanic voters rather than your overt foghorns, you're killing us in the polls."

It seems Sen. McConnell has discovered that Donald Trump may in fact have coattails of negative length, and are suprised that after a couple decades of treating (non-Cuban) Hispanic immigrants like an infestation that people are less likely to vote for the guy who wants to deport millions and build a giant wall to keep "them" out.

The real problem is that Trump is just saying out loud what the GOP has been implying for years, and there's a lot of increasingly uncomfortable Republican voters who are finding out that there's not a whole lot you can do to avoid being labeled a racist when you've nominated an unapologetic racist nationalist popular with white supremacist groups as your party's standard-bearer.

Oh and Mitch: you wrote off "Hispanic Americans" a long time ago.  Pay attention.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article82431632.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article82431632.html#storylink=cpy

The Last Days Of Bern-peii

With Clinton taking California and New Jersey, Bernie Sanders is now over and done, and he knows it.

Senator Bernie Sanders plans to lay off at least half of his campaign staff Wednesday as his battered presidential bid continues despite Hillary Clinton’s being declared the presumptive Democratic nominee, two people close to the campaign said Tuesday.

Many of those being laid off are advance staff members who often help with campaign logistics, as well as field staff members who have been working to garner votes for the senator, according to a campaign official and a former campaign staff member, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. Some campaign workers may move into jobs at Mr. Sanders’s Senate office, but others will be terminated, they said.

Word of the layoffs came on a night that Mrs. Clinton declared that she had captured the majority of pledged delegates needed to capture the Democratic nomination, despite a spirited fight from Mr. Sanders, who has showed no signs of ending his campaign.

Mr. Sanders insists that he is prepared to challenge Mrs. Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in July, holding out hope that his lobbying of superdelegates — party officials and state leaders who cast their final votes at the convention — will siphon support from Mrs. Clinton as he makes his case that he is a stronger candidate against Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Mr. Sanders’s spokesman, Michael Briggs, said Tuesday that Mr. Sanders planned to travel to his home in Vermont on Wednesday and then head to Washington on Thursday. Campaign aides say he plans to hold rallies in Washington, which holds the last nominating contest on June 14.

And as a reminder, the continued sour grapes coming from the defeated Sanders camp comes from Sanders himself.

There’s no strategist pulling the strings, and no collection of burn-it-all-down aides egging him on. At the heart of the rage against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, the campaign aides closest to him say, is Bernie Sanders.

It was the Vermont senator who personally rewrote his campaign manager’s shorter statement after the chaos at the Nevada state party convention and blamed the political establishment for inciting the violence.

He was the one who made the choice to go after Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz after his wife read him a transcript of her blasting him on television.

He chose the knife fight over calling Clinton unqualified, which aides blame for pulling the bottom out of any hopes they had of winning in New York and their last real chance of turning a losing primary run around.

And when Jimmy Kimmel’s producers asked Sanders’ campaign for a question to ask Donald Trump, Sanders himself wrote the one challenging the Republican nominee to a debate.

There are many divisions within the Sanders campaign—between the dead-enders and the work-it-out crowds, between the younger aides who think he got off message while the consultants got rich and obsessed with Beltway-style superdelegate math, and between the more experienced staffers who think the kids got way too high on their sense of the difference between a movement and an actual campaign.

But more than any of them, Sanders is himself filled with resentment, on edge, feeling like he gets no respect -- all while holding on in his head to the enticing but remote chance that Clinton may be indicted before the convention.

That's it.  Sanders's message of real progressive change to pull the country left to help the working class is now "I hope the FBI indicts Hillary." And it came from Sanders himself.

It's all he has left now, and it's an unfortunate end to his legacy.  Maybe he can turn it around and support Hillary, but the fact that there's major questions about whether or not he will is everything you need to know.

StupidiNews!

• With Tuesday primary wins in New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota and California, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton now moves towards the general election.
• However, Bernie Sanders told his supporters in Santa Monica last night that he will not concede and will continue to attack Clinton through next month's convention.
• Turkey's Prime Minister is blaming separatist Kurds of the PKK for a car bomb that killed 3 and injured dozens in the city of Midyat.
• South Africa's economy may be nearing recession as low global commodity prices continue to affect the country's mining and farming exports, leading to a 1.2% contraction in 1Q 2016.
• The NFL's official Twitter account was compromised after the account's password was discovered in an email by the league's social media staff.

Last Call For The First Of Many

In the battle of two Tea Party Republicans fighting it out for one seat in NC, it's Rep. Renee Ellmers who ended up without a chair when the music stopped.

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) lost her bid for reelection Tuesday, becoming the first GOP congressional incumbent to lose their seat in 2016.

Ellmers, who was elected in 2010 amid the tea party takeover of the House, lost in the Republican primary to Rep. George Holding (R-N.C.) in North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes suburban and rural Raleigh.

Holding won with over 53 percent of the vote with 96 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press. Ellmers was barely clinging to second place ahead of Greg Brannon, edging him by little more than 200 votes.

Brannon previously ran for Senate in 2014 — earning an endorsement from Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — and lost to Sen. Thom Tillis (R). Brannon ran again this year, losing to Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) in the March Senate primary.

Holding used to represent the 13th Congressional District but chose to run in the 2nd district after court-mandated redistricting took effect earlier this year, prompting an incumbent-versus-incumbent showdown.

It's important to note that in the case of this GOP primary, Ellmers had the endorsement of Donald Trump. Which is weird, because she's one of the handful of Republicans who realized that in an increasingly larger Hispanic voting population in NC, voting against the President's executive orders on immigration was a bad idea.

While Ellmers criticized Obama’s executive actions, saying she would “fight tooth and nail to put a stop to his amnesty plan,” she said in a statement that the bill was “overly broad in scope, as it has the potential to have a real negative and lasting impact on jobs and families in North Carolina.”

“There are businesses in the Second District who contract with Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and many of these jobs could be put in jeopardy with the passing of this legislation,” Ellmers said in the statement her office issued in response to questions.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article24778438.html#storylink=cpy

She forgot she's a member of the party that wants to deport millions, and it cost her with them.

A whole lot of Republicans are going to find themselves in similar positions this year.

I won't miss them when they are back home and out of Congress.

Trump Cards, Con't

And the septic tank that is the GOP continues to make excuses for Trump's overt racism.

This was probably not the interview that New York state Representative Lee Zeldin had in mind.

The Republican Congressman sat down with CNN’s John Bermanand Kate Bolduan Tuesday morning to address his support for Donald Trump head-on in the aftermath of the newest controversy embroiling the campaign. Trump, the party’s presumptive nominee for President, has been arguing that an Indiana-born judge of Mexican heritage can not fairly oversee a lawsuit involving Trump University given the candidate’s proposed southern border wall.

Shortly after House Speaker Paul Ryan called Trump’s comments — but not the man — “textbook racism,” Representative Zeldin had a tougher time walking that razor-thin tight rope.

“I think that Mr. Trump made a regrettable mistake with his statement,” Rep. Zeldin admitted.

But as soon as Berman and Bolduan turned up the heat on Zeldin to hold him accountable for defending someone embattled in a controversy of racism, Zeldin seemed to buckle and squirm with discomfort.

His answer on Trump?

"There’s more than just words to define a person and, by the way, aside from words, there’s a whole lot more to define everyone, but you can easily argue that the President of the United States is a racist with his policies and his rhetoric."

Ahh, the ol' "prove the NAACP isn't racist" canard.  From a grown man and Member of Congress, no less.  But this is who they are, folks.  And they are proud of their hatred.

And in November, they will still control a hefty chunk of this country.

The Huckster Returns

With Trump now the presumptive nominee, his former opponents have of course been on his side against the Republican establishment since the beginning, right?

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said in a radio interview on Friday that establishment Republicans should be happy that they are not being executed by angry voters.

“Who made it possible for Obama to have the Iranian deal, full funding for Obamacare, Planned Parenthood funding? Republicans did that,” Huckabee, a Trump surrogate, said on the Sean Hannity Show.

“And they’re getting what they justly deserve, they’re getting spanked,” he continued. “And they need to be happy they’re only getting spanked and not executed because there is seething rage out in country for those who have fought to help some of these guys get elected. And they get there and they surrendered to Obama and people are sick of it. And I think that’s why we’ve seen the spirit of this election, and frankly Donald Trump gives me great comfort. I tell people, ‘I don’t have any hesitation going out there and genuinely supporting Donald Trump.’”

Now you can say Huckabee realized early on that Trump was going to win, backing The Donald well before he packed his own campaign in, appearing at Trump events as early as January, taking on the role of Trump surrogate.

The problem is of course that The Huckster's not a very good surrogate.

KELLY: When did he repeatedly disavow the Klan?

HUCKABEE: Well, he did it in his Twitter account. He did it on Friday --

KELLY: The Klan or David Duke?

HUCKABEE: Well, both. And I don't know of anybody who has ever suggested that Donald Trump is a racist. I'm not speaking as somebody who's out there advocating for Trump. I just want to say that I just don't think that Donald Trump has given any indication that he's supportive of the Ku Klux Klan. My gosh, who would be? --

KELLY: None except in that interview, is what his critics say. None except in that interview, is what his critics say. Because it was so strange that he would say on Friday, "I disavow David Duke," and then when specifically asked on Sunday, act like he didn't know who David Duke was.

HUCKABEE: You know, I can't answer that. You know, I really can't. You'll have to ask Donald Trump because I haven't talked to him about it. But the fact is --

KELLY: How do you explain that? What his critics say is the explanation is he heard very well and he was trying to give some sort of a dog whistle to people in the South who don't want to hear David Duke disavowed. That's what Mitt Romney is suggesting right there.

HUCKABEE: Sure. Mitt Romney wasn't on the ear piece. Neither was Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz. And I wasn't either.

KELLY: But Trump heard, Trump heard David Duke in that ear piece. You know that. Because he repeated back David Duke to Jake Tapper.

HUCKABEE: Yeah. Look, here's the one thing I think is important. Is Donald Trump a racist? I don't think he is. Does Donald Trump support the KKK? Heavens no. I don't think anybody seriously is suggesting that he is giving a wink and a nod at the KKK. They're a deplorable, disgusting, abominable entity. Sometimes I'm amazed that they even still exist. I just don't know of anybody who embraces them anymore except a handful of crazy people.

KELLY: The very point you're making, that it's such a no-brainer, is what makes his response to Jake Tapper so confusing to many.

Of course, now we know that there's plenty of support among white supremacist groups like the KKK for Don The Con.  And Huckabee has backed him for months anyway.

Remember, the GOP establishment is "the enemy" because they haven't stopped the first black president.

Cleveland is going to be mighty fun in a few weeks, huh?

StupidiNews!

• Analysis by the AP shows that Hillary Clinton has enough delegates and commitments from super-delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination going into today's final primary contests.
• The ruling party of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto suffered a number of defeats in state and local elections, losing governor's races in at least four Mexican states, including Veracruz.
• Washington, DC's City Council will vote on a proposal to boost the district's minimum wage to $15 by 2020, which would affect about one-seventh of jobs in the district.
• A car bomb in Istanbul has killed at least 11 and injured dozens one day after Turkey announced the end of military operations in two cities against separatist Kurds of the PKK.
• Google's AlphaGo AI will soon face off against China's world number one Go player, child prodigy Ke Jie, before the end of the year, according to China's Xinhua news agency.

Last Call For Donald The Buzz Kill

News and entertainment site BuzzFeed has pulled out of a $1.3 million advertising deal with the RNC over Donald Trump's racist rhetoric, which is pretty much unprecedented for a political news site to do.

In an email to staff on Monday, BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti explained that in April, the RNC and BuzzFeed signed an agreement to "spend a significant amount on political advertisements slated to run during the Fall election cycle." But since Trump became the nominee his campaign has proven themselves to be "directly opposed to the freedoms of our employees in the United States," because of proposed bans on Muslim immigration and comments about descendants of immigrants, among other policies.

"We don't need to and do not expect to agree with the positions or values of all our advertisers. And as you know, there is a wall between our business and editorial operations. This decision to cancel this ad buy will have no influence on our continuing coverage of the campaign," Peretti said in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO.

"We certainly don't like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company," Peretti wrote. "However, in some cases we must make business exceptions: we don't run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health, and we won't accept Trump ads for the exact same reason."

In a follow up email, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said the decision was from the business side and would not affect coverage of the Trump campaign "This was Jonah’s call, and the prerogative of a publisher,” Smith wrote.

BuzzFeed has had an at times contentious relationship with the Trump campaign, with their reporters being denied credentials or general entry to Trump rallies and being directly targeted by the campaign and Trump himself. Reporters at the site told POLITICO that the decision likely won't change their relationships with the campaign, which they described as already strained.

It's also far from the first time the site has taken a position on a topic. In early 2012, BuzzFeed blacked out parts of their site in solidarity with the protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act. Following the Supreme Court ruling in 2015 which legalized same sex marriage, the site changed its logo to the rainbow flag colors, which are a symbol of the gay pride movement. Smith said at the time: "We firmly believe that for a number of issues, including civil rights, women’s rights, anti-racism, and LGBT equality, there are not two sides."

Let's understand that political ad money is basically free cash for news outlets, and those pockets get deeper and deeper every election cycle.  Given the precarious state of digital news sites in 2016, turning down a cool million plus seems suicidal, but BuzzFeed apparently says they can turn down the RNC's ad money.

But let's face it, what BuzzFeed is really risking is the wrath of the Republican Party for their news and editorial division, and I'm pretty sure that if it was difficult for BuzzFeed to get news from the Trump camp before, it's going to be impossible now.

On the other hand, good for BuzzFeed for not taking money directly from the scuzzballs.

The Day Bernie Faces The Music

The Sanders campaign faces a tough decision tomorrow: all indications are that Clinton will win New Jersey handily, and take enough delegates in California to clinch the nomination. The real question then becomes "does Bernie stay in?"

A split is emerging inside the Bernie Sanders campaign over whether the senator should stand down after Tuesday’s election contests and unite behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, or take the fight all the way to the July party convention and try to pry the nomination from her… 

Tad Devine, a senior Sanders strategist who advised Democratic nominees Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, among others, suggested the “path forward” is uncertain, hinging on the outcome in California and other states that have yet to vote. He voiced a conciliatory note, describing how the two campaigns might set aside differences that have grown more pronounced in the heat of the year-long campaign… 

Campaign manager Jeff Weaver, who has worked in Mr. Sanders’s congressional offices and Vermont-based campaigns dating to the mid-1980s, takes a more aggressive approach… 

“The plan is as the senator has described it: to go forward after Tuesday and keep the campaign going to the convention and make the case to superdelegates that Sen. Sanders is the best chance that Democrats have to beat Trump,” Mr. Weaver said. “The trajectory is the same regardless of the outcome in California.”

As Nancy LeTourneau points out:

Ultimately, the candidate himself will have to make the call. It will be up to Bernie Sanders to decide whether he continues to be a progressive voice within the Democratic Party or sidelines both himself and his supporters as disrupters.

Frankly, I don't see the Sanders camp throwing in the towel until the convention.  It's only a matter of how much damage Sanders does and is rightfully blamed for heading into the Clinton v. Trump general election matchup.

We'll see very soon.  But the notion that Sanders is somehow "winning" ends Tuesday night.