It's About Suppression, Con't

The Trump regime's plan to assemble a national database of voters under the guise of "voter integrity" has run into not one but two buzzsaws: blue states understand full well that the information will be used for targeted voter suppression purposes, but red states know that voter registration systems have been completely compromised by the Russians.  Neither group trust the incompetent Trump regime and now 44 states have rejected participation in the scheme.

Forty-four states have refused to provide certain types of voter information to the Trump administration's election integrity commission, according to a CNN inquiry to all 50 states. 

State leaders and voting boards across the country have responded to the letter with varying degrees of cooperation -- from altogether rejecting the request to expressing eagerness to supply information that is public. 

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which President Donald Trump created by executive order in May, sent a letter to all 50 states last Wednesday requesting a bevy of voter data, which he notes will eventually be made available to the public.

The problem is nobody trusts the regime with a massive database of personal info, especially since that info has already been shown to be vulnerable.

But the commission, which is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, seemed to misunderstand voter privacy laws nationwide. Every state that responded to the commission's letter said it could not provide Social Security numbers, for example. Others said they consider information such as birth dates and party affiliations to be private. 

What's more, Kobach asked states to supply the information through an online portal. Many states have rejected this specific request, noting that the commission should file a voter information request through established state websites, as any other party would. 

As of Tuesday afternoon, two states -- Florida and Nebraska -- are still reviewing the commission's request. Another two states -- Hawaii and New Jersey -- have not returned CNN's request for comment. And while six states are still awaiting a letter from the commission, four of them -- New Mexico, Michigan, South Carolina and West Virginia -- have already pledged not to provide voters' private information. The other two of those six states, Arkansas and Illinois, have not released statements ahead of receiving the letter.

A few states have signed on at least.  Sort of.

Just three states -- Colorado, Missouri and Tennessee -- commended Kobach's attempt to investigate voter fraud in their respective statements. 

"We are very glad they are asking for information before making decisions," said Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican. "I wish more federal agencies would ask folks for their opinion and for information before they made decisions." 

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, also a Republican, echoed Williams' sentiment in a statement Friday: "The commission's questions are fair and we will be glad to assist in offering our thoughts on these important matters," he said. "I look forward to working with Sec. Kris Kobach and the commission on its findings and offer our support in the collective effort to enhance the American people's confidence in the integrity of the elections process."

I'm betting state legislators and governors of those states will want to have a word on releasing that data, let alone the voters themselves.

Still, this has to be considered a complete failure by now if Trump can't even get blood red states like Texas and Oklahoma to play ball, or GOP-leaning swing states currently controlled by Republicans like Florida, Ohio, or Wisconsin to pony up data either.

The question now becomes if the regime will compel states to comply or not.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump will travel to Hamburg, Germany this week for the annual G20 summit of world leaders, including formal talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• Record-breaking hot dog eating champ Joey Chestnut again smashed his own 4th of July hot dog contest record by eating 72 hot dogs in ten minutes and earning his tenth career win.
• After eight months of fighting, Iraqi military commanders say they are close to victory over Islamic State forces in Mosul this week.
• Automaker Volvo says it will phase out combustion engines and have electric and hybrid motor models for all its new vehicles by 2021.
• Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered a famed "tower of skulls" in Mexico City as excavations into the ruins of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan continue.

Last Call For Pyongyang's Power Play

The Fourth of July fireworks today were thousands of miles away from the US as the Kim Jong Un regime has definitely upped the temperature on the Korean Peninsula by test-launching what appears to be North Korea's first ICBM. That move, combined with North Korea's previous multiple nuclear tests and very loud and pointed threats has the Trump regime calling for "global action" to be immediately taken against Pyongyang.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson strongly condemned North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile launch, calling it "a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region, and the world" in a statement Tuesday. 

"Global action is required to stop a global threat," he said. "Any country that hosts North Korean guest workers, provides any economic or military benefits, or fails to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions is aiding and abetting a dangerous regime."
Tillerson also called for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and stated the US "will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea." 

North Korea claimed Wednesday that it was just that. A statement from Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday's test was of a new, nuclear-capable ICBM. 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called it an Independence Day present to the US, adding "we should deliver big and small presents often," KCNA said. 

Tillerson's strong statement marks a striking contrast to when North Korea conducted a test in April and Tillerson said: "North Korea launched yet another intermediate-range ballistic missile. The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment."

Two nuclear-armed and mostly incompetent regimes led by narcissitic madmen?  What could possibly go wrong?

The US and South Korea also announced they had conducted a joint exercise in response to North Korea's launch. A South Korean statement said the drill which was "intended as a strong warning against North Korean provocation" took place along South Korea's eastern coastline and "showcased precision targeting of the enemy's leadership in case of an emergency." 

The drill is a clear signal from the Pentagon that the US and South Korea have no intention of stopping joint military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its missile and nuclear testing, as China and Russia earlier suggested. 

Earlier a US official told CNN that the US had "high confidence" that Monday's launch was an ICBM. 

The official said analysis suggests a second-stage booster ignited and produced 30 seconds of additional flight. 

Trump administration national security, military and diplomatic officials gathered for unexpected July 4 meetings to discuss what options might be needed, several administration officials told CNN.

We live in a world where right now China and Russia are playing the role of "voices of reason".  Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP couldn't have asked for a better "wag the dog" scenario to distract America while they make their final moves on Trumpcare.

Watch these developments closely.  Between this and Qatar's outright rejection of Saudi Arabia's demands as the blockade of Doha continues, the world just shifted into a far more dangerous place than it was a few days ago.

Red, White, And Brownshirt

History teaches us that a political party having its own armed security force is a really, really good predictive sign that said political party is going to descend into bloody fascism with no small amount of both celerity or gusto, particularly when that force is already made of people who gladly extol the "virtues" of using force to resolve political conflicts in the name of "liberty".

I mention this because five weeks ago we had that nasty train stabbing by a white supremacist in Portland, and the response from the GOP there is that maybe hiring armed militia groups would be necessary in order to protect them.

It should then come as no surprise here in the American moment of 2017 that this has now come to pass and right-wing militia groups like Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters will be deputized as the GOP's newest personal private security force in the era of Dear Leader Trump.

The Multnomah County Republican Party voted this week to use far-right milita groups as private security at events.

The resolution is the brainchild of party chairman James Buchal, who last month suggested to The Guardian that the GOP could use Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, two paramilitary groups, as security guards to protect them from antifascist protesters, or antifa.

"Antifa" is the new catch-all bogeyman of the Trump Era, the way "Occupiers" were during the Dubya years.

"We are an all-volunteer organization with no money," Buchal tells WW. "So if we are going to get security services, we are going to get them from volunteers. And people who are going to volunteer to provide security services to Republicans are generally going to be people who share the view that the government has developed an unconstitutional overreach of power."

Buchal says he and the Multnomah County GOP won't be attending tonight's far-right "free speech" protest near the Waterfront Blues Festival, unless he is personally invited. (He hasn't been.)

WW reported last week that Buchal has been fundraising by warning of "threats of Leftist violence" making it difficult for Republicans to hold events in Portland.

His last fundraising letter repeated his plan to hire Oath Keepers as security guards. “Organized bands of masked thugs who call conservatives fascists or Nazis are rising rapidly within the city,” he wrote.

So naturally the logical response to being compared to right-wing white supremacist fascists like the Nazis is to behave exactly like the Nazis did historically., right?

Fun fact, because it keeps coming up: Oregon was founded as a haven for white supremacy and in particular Portland and Multnomah County, Oregon has a rather nasty history of racism. Today Portland remains the least diverse and whitest major city in America.

So of course the rise of the American Brownshirt is happening there

More Republican security forces of armed "volunteers" will follow, I guarantee it.  And when they finally get around to killing someone in that capacity, that's when this country will be truly tested in a way it hasn't in a long time.

Independence Daze

A new Marist poll for PBS NewsHour and NPR News finds that 70% of Americans believe the country has become less civil since the Trump regime came to power, with 61% saying they have little or no trust in the White House right now. While that's certainly a good sign, a far more frigening aspect of the poll shows that Republicans in particular are very receptive to Trump's attacks on the media, on those who protest the regime and on voting rights, and a healthy chunk of Republicans want all of these groups restricted.

When asked if they trust the media, fewer than a third of U.S. adults — 30 percent — said they do at least a good amount. And the differences along party lines show sharp divisions with only nine percent of Republicans saying trust the media, a stark contrast to 56 percent of Democrats and 28 percent of Independents who said the same. And on the media’s right to freedom of the press, four out of 10 Republicans said the nation had “gone too far in expanding the right,” while two out of 10 Independents and one out of 10 Democrats agreed with that statement. Overall, a quarter of U.S. adults said the press had too many rights, while nearly half of Americans — said “things are okay the way they are.”

Delving deeper into the traditional American values, 52 percent of Americans said the nation should preserve the right to protest and criticize the government. But just 41 percent of Republicans think the right to protest should be scaled back, while only seven percent of Democrats and 11 percent of people who identify as independents said they feel the same way. 

Overall, half of U.S. adults said freedom of religion in this country is just fine as it is, while an additional third of Americans said the United States now restricts this right too greatly, and one-tenth of all respondents said the country needs to do more to rein in this freedom, something Republicans were more likely to say than Democrats or Independents, according to the survey. 

And when asked about the right to vote, six out of 10 Americans overall think the United States needs to change nothing. But among Republicans, a quarter of respondents think the U.S. has gone too far in expanding that right, far more than five percent of Democrats and eight percent of people who are politically independent. And half of U.S. adults said they have at least a good amount of trust that the nation’s elections are fair. Of those, 17 percent of Americans said they trust elections “a great deal.” Nearly as many respondents — 18 percent — said they don’t trust elections at all. Only six percent of Republicans said they had no trust at the ballot box, compared to 19 percent of Democrats and 20 percent of Independents who said they felt the same.

Some of the cross-tabs are dismal.  For example, of people making less than $50,000 a year, only one in 4 trust the media at all.  More 18-29 year olds trust the Trump regime (27%) than the media (22%). That's true of all age groups save those over 60, who slightly trust the media more by one point.

Meanwhile, 40% of Trump supporters think America has gone too far in allowing people to criticism the government.  Let that sink in.

Last Call For No Ground To Stand On

Florida's now infamous "Stand Your Ground" self-defense law cost Trayvon Martin his life and allowed his killer, George Zimmerman, to walk free.  In part, the law helped catalyze the Black Lives Matter movement as a national issue.  Now, Florida's latest iteration of the law has been declared unconstitutional by a Miami judge in what will surely be a major court battle ahead.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch ruled that lawmakers overstepped their authority in creating the law this year that forces prosecutors to disprove a defendant’s self-defense claim at a pre-trial hearing. 

The judge ruled that under Florida’s constitution, that change should have been crafted by the Florida Supreme Court, not the Legislature. 

“As a matter of constitutional separation of powers, that procedure cannot be legislatively modified,” Hirsch wrote in a 14-page order. 

The ruling is a victory for prosecutors who have firmly opposed the law they believe makes it easier for defendants to get away with murder and other violent crime.

The law, an update to the already controversial “Stand Your Ground” statute passed over a decade ago, was pushed by the politically powerful National Rifle Association. Gov. Rick Scott signed the new law into effect in last month. 

First passed in 2005, Florida’s controversial self-defense law has been criticized for fostering a shoot-first mentality – and giving killers a pass at justice. The law eliminated a citizen’s duty to retreat before using deadly force to counter an apparent threat. 

More problematic for prosecutors, the law made it easier for judges — before ever getting to a jury — to dismiss criminal charges if they deem someone acted in self-defense. 

The Florida Supreme Court later ruled that defendants, in asking for immunity from criminal prosecution, must be the ones to prove they were acting in self-defense. 

In Miami-Dade, judges have thrown several high-profile murder cases after pre-trial immunity hearings, but have also allowed many more to go to a jury. 

But the NRA-backed bill, passed in May despite fierce opposition by prosecutors and gun-control advocates, upended the legal framework. 

Now, at those pre-trial hearings, prosecutors shoulder the burden of disproving a defendant’s self-defense claim. State Attorneys contended that it essentially forces them to unfairly to try the case twice, making it easier for criminals to skate on violent charges. 

Under the law, prosecutors must prove by “clear and convincing” evidence that a defendant was not acting in self-defense.

In other words, Florida's GOP legislative super-majority responded to the Florida Supreme Court's ruling that proof of "Stand Your Ground" was on the defendant who used force by changing the law to nullify the ruling and put the burden on the state to disprove self-defense, and GOP Gov. Rick Scott simply signed the law to ignore Florida's state Supreme Court entirely.

It seems patently obvious that Judge Hirsch is correct here, but Republicans given total control simply no longer care about rule of law anymore.  We have plenty of national examples of this from the Trump regime, so why would Florida be any different?

Imagine that I shoot and kill someone in Florida.  The state would have to prove with "clear and convincing" evidence that it wasn't self-defense.  In other words, I'd be treated the way nearly every other state treats police officers who use deadly force.

Keep a close eye on this one, guys.

Supreme Disappointment

The Anthony Kennedy Retirement Watch (aka The End Of The Civil Rights Era) is still on, folks, and the target is this time next year.

One week ago, the persistent rumor that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement was imminent was put to rest when the 2016-2017 Supreme Court term ended with no announcement from the 80-year-old jurist. Now it’s back. 

Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog noticed this new clue hiding in an NPR story on Justice Neil Gorsuch that was published on Saturday. Nina Totenberg reported:

But it is unlikely that Kennedy will remain on the court for the full four years of the Trump presidency. While he long ago hired his law clerks for the coming term, he has not done so for the following term (beginning Oct. 2018), and has let applicants for those positions know he is considering retirement. 

Clerk hiring can offer clues about whether a justice is mulling retirement. Current justices get four clerks each and retired justices get one, so sometimes justices only hire one clerk if they don’t think they’ll finish out their term. Though, as Above the Law’s David Lat explained, that’s not a hard and fast rule:

Now, hiring clerks for 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 is not dispositive evidence that a justice will remain on the bench. There’s a nice tradition at the Court of justices picking up “orphaned” hires of their colleagues (which is what happened with Justice Antonin Scalia’s displaced clerks), so the clerks aren’t necessarily left in the lurch. But as a matter of collegiality and consideration — and whether or not you like his jurisprudence, Justice Kennedy is collegial and considerate — it’s not nice to impose upon your colleagues by hiring clerks you know will never work for you, putting pressure on these colleagues to sacrifice their own hiring discretion to scoop up your leftovers (because of SCOTUS tradition).

It could be that Kennedy is taking things one term at a time.  But if he retires at the end of June 2018 just before the midterms, it would definitely allow Trump enough time to appoint his successor, no matter what happens to the GOP in November of 2018.  Mitch McConnell has already eliminated the filibuster for a Supreme Court nominee, so Dems wouldn't be able to stop Trump.  The Senate could have that all wrapped up in September or next year, and that would basically be it for civil rights, voting rights, reproductive rights, and the New Deal.  All that would come to an end by 2020.

If Trump is able to appoint a second justice like Neil Gorsuch, America will suffer for decades and may never recover, even if Trump is removed from office (and as Judd Legum reminds us, Trump's removal remains an dangerous and damaging fantasy among liberals. He's not going anywhere.) None of the Trump drama will matter because the Roberts Court will make sure we lose everything since Jim Crow was struck down.

So pray that Kennedy, Ginsberg and Breyer make it to 2021 and we get a Democratic president and Senate by then, because if Trump is allowed to replace any of the three, the America you know will be gone overnight.

Meanwhile, In Washington...

Meanwhile as everyone is looking on in horror at Trump and his garbage fire of a weekend, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans like Ted Cruz are quietly moving ahead with taking away health care from tens of millions.

Senate Republicans have asked the Congressional Budget Office to analyze Sen. Ted Cruz's proposal for further health insurance deregulation, and they've asked for one estimate of a health care bill that includes his changes and one that doesn't, according to a GOP aide familiar with the discussions.

The bottom line: That would give Republicans a better idea of the impact of his proposal, which would let insurers sell health plans that don't meet Affordable Care Act standards — including, potentially, waiving the pre-existing condition rules — as long as they also sell plans that comply with all of the ACA insurance regulations.

What to watch: Among the issues CBO would have to weigh: would the non-ACA plans be cheaper, what would happen to premiums in the ACA plans, and what would happen to the cost of federal subsidies.

As Jack Moore at GQ points out, having the ACA gutted of all measures to stabilize the market would be a disaster.

On first blush this seems great. More options! As long as there's one plan that has Obamacare protections, then there can be skimpy cheap plans. Everyone wins! Except... this is not how the health care industry works. Health care premiums only stay low if healthy people buy into the system; that's the reason the individual mandate exists. You need the pool of insured people to be balanced between healthy and sick.

What this plan would do is lead to sick people buying the Obamacare-compliant packages because they need the protections, while healthy people would buy the cheaper plans because they don't need them in the moment. This would lead to the Obamacare-compliant plans featuring giant premiums to offset the unbalanced pool. Put simply: This will not actually save those protections, it will just appear to save those protections. Ted Cruz is acting like this is a genius policy move when it's actually just a crock of shit.

But the real issue is this allows Senate Republicans to blame states, insurance companies,  insurance regulators, governors, basically anyone who's not a Senate Republican for the coming disaster.  "We gave you the options.  You failed to use them correctly.  You can't blame us."

And then the stage is set for full repeal.

StupidiNews!

• At least eight people are dead after a rescue helicopter crashed in Java, Indonesia following a volcanic eruption at Sileri Crater.
• New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie is again facing sharp criticism after being spotted at a state park beach he ordered closed to the public for the July 4th weekend.
• China is accusing India of incursions along the Tibetan border, demanding that the Indian government withdraw troops from what China considers its province.
• Qatar says it will respond to Saudi Arabia's demands today as the deadline for Doha's compliance runs out Monday night.
• A European satellite nearing the end of its operational lifespan is partially malfunctioning after technicians lost contact with it last month and regained control this weekend.

Last Call For Climate Of Mistrust, Con't

It's now safe to say that the position of the Trump regime and that of EPA head Scott Pruitt is is that it is the American federal government's job to openly question the world consensus on climate science, if not to attempt to disprove it entirely.

The Trump administration is debating whether to launch a government-wide effort to question the science of climate change, an effort that critics say is an attempt to undermine the long-established consensus human activity is fueling the Earth’s rising temperatures.

The move, driven by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, has sparked a debate among top Trump administration officials over whether to pursue such a strategy.

A senior White House official, who asked for anonymity because no final decision has been made, said that while Pruitt has expressed interest in the idea, “there are no formal plans within the administration to do anything about it at this time.”

Pruitt first publicly raised the idea of setting up a “red team-blue team” effort to conduct exercises to test the idea that human activity is the main driver of recent climate change in an interview with Breitbart in early June.

“What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,” Pruitt said in an interview with Breitbart’s Joel Pollack.

But officials are discussing whether the initiative would stretch across numerous federal agencies that rely on such science, according to multiple Trump administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because no formal announcement has been made.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who once described the science behind human-caused climate change as a “contrived phony mess,” also is involved in the effort, two officials said.

At a White House briefing this week, Perry said, “The people who say the science is settled, it’s done — if you don’t believe that you’re a skeptic, a Luddite. I don’t buy that. I don’t think there is — I mean, this is America. Have a conversation. Let’s come out of the shadows of hiding behind your political statements and let’s talk about it. What’s wrong with that? And I’m full well — I can be convinced, but let’s talk about it.”

The idea, according to one senior administration official, is “to get other federal agencies involved in this exercise on the state of climate science” to examine “what we know, where there are holes, and what we actually don’t know.” 

Understand that this will not just be the position of the EPA, but the position of the Trump Energy Department, Trump Education Department, Trump Commerce Department, Trump Labor Department, and all federal agencies.

That's what regimes do, guys.  This one is no different.

Separation Of Trump And Reality

The official, stated position of the Trump regime from Dear Leader himself is that America is a Anti-Muslim Christian fundamentalist theocracy.

President Trump told a group of evangelical Christians late Saturday that his administration will always “support and defend your religious liberty.

“We don’t want to see God forced out of our public square,” he said at a “Celebrate Freedom” concert at the Kennedy Center, according to a reporter traveling with the president. “We want to see prayers before football games if they want to say prayers.”

“No one is going to stop you from practicing your faith or saying what’s in your heart,” he added.Trump also said one of the greatest threats to religious liberty is terrorism, specifically “radical Islamic terrorism.”

“We cannot allow this terrorism and extremism to spread in our country or find sanctuary on our shores or in our cities,” he added.

“We love our families, we love our freedom and we love our God,” the president said.

"We" love family, freedom and God.  "Those people" do not.  "Those people" are the enemy and the implied threat here is that Trump will soon deal with them.  "Those people" include the free press as well.

“The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House, but I’m president and they’re not,” Trump said. “The fact is the press destroyed themselves because they went too far. Instead of being subtle and smart, they used the hatchet and the people saw it right from the beginning."

“The dishonest media will not stop us from accomplishing our objectives on behalf of the American people," he said. "Their agenda is not your agenda.”

Actually, forget the theocracy part, we're rapidly becoming an autocracy.  The playbook calls for Trump to start taking legal action, executive action, if not police action or military action against the free press sooner rather than later.  He'll have to as long as they keep reporting the truth of how broken and dishonest he is.

We have a leader who is at rallies naming enemies of the people and of the state.  The state will soon stop naming these enemies and start eliminating them.  History teaches us that.  It's how regimes work kids, and to paraphrase Geoffrey Rush in Pirates of the Caribbean, you'd best start belivin' in regimes, dear reader.

You're in one.

Time Turner, Or Nina Stares Into The Abyss

Having lived in the Cincy area for more than a decade now, I've watched former Ohio state senator Nina Turner go from one of the champions of black liberal values in an increasingly red Midwest state to Bernie Sanders supporter to where she is now as the new head of "progressive" outfit Our Revolution, and in Collier Meyerson's interview with Turner in The Nation this week, unfortunately it seems like both Turner and her advocacy group are now only committed to the total elimination of the Democratic party as it stands today.

CM: How will Our Revolution relate to the DNC, the DCCC, the DSCC, that kind of establishment that so many activists and politicians, including you, have frequently criticized?

NT: I don’t think it is our job nor our obligation to fit in. It’s their job to fit in with us. But the overwhelming majority of registered voters in this country, I think it’s 53 percent or maybe 54 percent, identify as independent. Now, we know independents lean one way or the other but they identify as independent so that means that both political parties need to do some soul searching. I’m certainly willing to sit across the table with almost anybody if we gonna work towards the collective good, but it is not Our Revolution’s job to fit in with them.

CM: And how will Our Revolution relate to progressives within government who didn’t back Bernie, like Sherrod Brown and Tammy Baldwin, if they go on to seek reelection?

NT: If they want Our Revolution’s endorsement they will seek it like everybody else and so they gotta start with the local affiliates, and if the local affiliates say that this is the person that we want to back, then there it is. There it is.

CM: And what about the Democratic Party at large. Do you see Our Revolution working to bring some unity to factions in the party?

NT: No. Not really. I want people to be unified. I would say that the board of directors wants that too, but we’re here for a very specific purpose, and that is to help the everyday Americans in this country who feel left behind. That is what this movement is about, for people to know that the power is absolutely in their hands and we are providing the organizational structure to give the power back to the people.

CM: Will the group be endorsing non-Democrats?

NT: You know what, yes. We are open to it. And for me, I’ve also heard the senator say this lately too: Let’s put the political affiliation to the side. If there is a Republican or a Libertarian or Green Party person that believes in Medicare for all, then that’s our kind of person. If there’s somebody that believes that Citizens United needs to be overturned, that we need the 28th amendment to the Constitution that declares that money, corporate money, is not speech and that corporations should not have more speech than Mrs. Johnson down the street and Mr. Gonzalez around the corner, then that’s our kind of people.

And there we have it.

Look, she's not completely wrong: there are terrible Democrats out there that aren't reliable votes for progressive issues and who will never will be.  They come from places where there really isn't too much difference between being a Democrat and being a Republican.

But the approach she's describing right now, when we have Republicans actively working to undo decades of classical liberalism, civil rights, and voting rights in America? We don't have the luxury of relying on that.  We have to get rid of the GOP now, not embrace them if they have the correct values on her check box, because in the end they'll still support the GOP.

It's not your job to fit in the Democratic establishment, Nina?  Neither is that of the GOP.  Think long and hard about that one.

Sunday Long Read: Love Of The Game

This week's Sunday Long Read is Vanity Fair's cover piece on tennis legend Serena Williams and her rise in 2017 to removing the "arguably" in front of "arguably the greatest tennis player of all time" as she won the Australian Open this year while pregnant.  Her relationship with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and her appointment to the company's board means she's not only one of the most powerful black women figures in sports, philanthropy and entertainment but potentially in tech as well.  And if anyone's up to that challenge, it's Serena.

Which leads us, on the surface at least, to the seemingly mismatched pairing of 35-year-old Serena Williams and her fiancé, 34-year-old Alexis Ohanian. She is the beyond remarkable tennis player, although all superlatives are pointless. He is in the high cotton of high tech as the co-founder of the Web site Reddit, which has 234 million unique monthly users. They became engaged last December, after first meeting roughly a year and a half earlier, then found out in January that Serena was pregnant. They will be married in the fall after the birth of the baby.

With 23 grand-slam wins on the women’s pro tennis tour spanning nearly three decades—from her first, at 17 years old, in September of 1999, to her latest, at 35, in January of 2017, and the most in the open era—Serena is in the heart of every conversation concerning the best athlete of her time. “If I were a man, then it wouldn’t be any sort of question,” she told me. She may well be right, a society still conditioned to believe that men are better than women in everything except the superfluous.

Alexis, on the other hand, had never seen a tennis match until he met Serena, in May of 2015 in Rome. He knew so little about the game that the photo he excitedly posted on Instagram of her playing her first match in the Italian Open showed her foot faulting.

Serena plays a sport that requires the mental focus of instantaneously letting go of losing points and moving on because there are a lot of excruciating ones no matter how great you are, continual regrouping and re-inventing: dwell on them, you lose confidence; lose confidence and you lose. She is also superbly conditioned, given that a female tennis player may run about three miles in a match without the luxury of coming out of the game because you feel winded or lost too much money gambling with teammates the night before on the charter and would rather mope on the bench.

Alexis’s athletic history amounted to the level of a very gangly defensive tackle for Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland, far more interested in science fairs and programming and building Web sites. His skill at tennis is not one of potential; when Serena offered to give him a lesson, he turned it down so he could tell his friends that he once turned down a lesson with Serena Williams.

I really do hope this works out for the both of them.  Serena has long deserved this kind of happiness and has been at the top of her game now since turning 30.  We'll see where the rest of the match takes them.

They Blinded Science With Me, Con't

Since the White House is too incompetent to even moderately politicize science coming out of the executive branch these days, the Trump regime is just getting rid of all the scientists anyway.

The science division of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was unstaffed as of Friday as the three remaining employees departed this week, sources tell CBS News.

All three employees were holdovers from the Obama administration. The departures from the division -- one of four subdivisions within the OSTP -- highlight the different commitment to scientific research under Presidents Obama and Trump. 

Under Mr. Obama, the science division was staffed with nine employees who led the charge on policy issues such as STEM education, biotechnology and crisis response. It's possible that the White House will handle these issues through staff in other divisions within the OSTP.

On Friday afternoon, Eleanor Celeste, the assistant director for biomedical and forensic sciences at the OSTP, tweeted, "Science division out. Mic drop" before leaving the office for the last time.

Oh well.  Guess it's hard to tell America that climate change is a hoax if the place is full of scientists who believe in climate change and have the figures to back it up.

No science is best science if you're the Trump regime.

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It's About Suppression, Con't

It appears the joke's on Mike Pence and Kris Kobach.  The former Indiana Governor and Trump's running mate and Kansas Secretary of State, respectively, can';t even get their respective states to go along with their voter suppression plan.  Why?  Well, who wants to be responsible for handing over millions of voter records, including Social Security information, to the Russians?

At least 24 states are pushing back or outright refusing to comply with the Trump administration’s request for voter registration data.

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, formed by President Trump to investigate his widely debunked claim that millions of illegal votes cost him the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election, sent letters this week to the 50 secretaries of state across the country requesting information about voters.

The letter, signed by commission vice chairman and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), asked for names, addresses, birth dates and party affiliations of registered voters in each state. It also sought felony convictions, military statuses, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting records dating back to 2006, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Hill. 

Many states immediately raised concerns and voiced their opposition to providing the information.

And two of those states?  Kansas and Indiana.

Kobach said Friday that Kansas, at least for now, also won’t be sharing Social Security information with the commission, on which he serves as vice chairman. The state will share other information about the state’s registered voters, including names and addresses, which are subject to the state’s open records laws.

Kobach sent letters on behalf of the commission to every state requesting names, addresses, voting history and other personal information, such as the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, earlier this week.

Kobach said Thursday that Kansas would provide all the information requested in the letter, but in a follow-up interview Friday, he said the state would not be sharing the Social Security information at this time.

“In Kansas, the Social Security number is not publicly available. … Every state receives the same letter, but we’re not asking for it if it’s not publicly available,” Kobach said.

He did not rule out the possibility of providing that information to the commission in the future.

“If the commission decides that they would like to receive Social Security numbers to a secure site in order to remove false positives, then we would have to double check and make sure Kansas law permits,” Kobach said.

“I know for a fact that this information would be secured and maintained confidentially,” he added in response to security concerns.

But of course he won't do it now, despite assurances that "the information would be secure".  It's because he knows it won't be secure at all, especially given that this is precisely the information the Russian hackers who hit our election and voter registration systems wanted, and that the Trump regime must be considered still compromised by Moscow.  It would be an utter disaster, and Kobach knows it.

They won't even go along with thier own voter suppression scam, because of the chance Putin will use it in other ways.  I'd laugh, but this is how much of a dark comedy America is right now.

Even Texas turned Kobach down.  Hell, Mississippi told him to go to hell.  Crooks we can understand in America.  Traitors on the other hand, well not even the GOP will put up with them, it seems.