Bernie climbs on the bandwagon

If you weren't asleep or kidding yourself, you saw it coming a long, long, time ago.

We can count on some Hillbots acting the predictable part of being assholes who can't be satisfied, some who are still parsing his words, and as best I can tell there's a not-insignificant number of Berners who aren't climbing on with him.

I'm #FineWithStein, have been for a long time now and not because Bernie's really done anything to lose me.  I don't object to his not-quite liberal gun stances (he's from a very rural state, after all, and he isn't a gun nut, despite what my pal Gadfly thinks) and only have had some mild objections -- call them sad realizations -- to his advocating for the military/industrial complex in Vermont.  It was the objective of the Defense Department long, long ago to tie military bases, production facilities, etc. firmly to the US economy in towns small and large (just look at the local angst and fury every time the military has closed a base) from sea to shining sea, gathering up all of the procurement votes of Republicans, Democrats, and yes, independent Democratic Socialists in executing that task.  Mission accomplished.

I'd like to have lived the past 58 years in a different world, but you get what you get and that's all that you get.  If we can thwart President Hillary Clinton's desperate urge to start a fresh war in Iran or somewhere else in the world... I can be okay with that alone over the course of the next four years.  Happiness = low expectations, you know.  That was my problem ultimately with Barack Obama: high hopes.  Far too high for the amount of change delivered that he promised (or that I mistakenly inferred he promised).

As for Bernie, he's put the right people in the right places to effect change in the Democratic Party platform and its other procedures that is his revised-downward goal.  The establishment Democrats -- more corporate, more hawkish, more conservative than him -- will probably succeed in making only the smallest revisions to their system.  If Clinton and her minions have spoken -- and acted -- truthfully about anything at all, it's that.  She's simply not going to do anything more than tinker around the margins of progress.

That's why my vote, unlike Bernie's, is #NeverHillary.

His greatest transgression in my view is swallowing all of the same mythology that has kept Democrats scared and inside the pen for a few generations now.  We used to have active Socialist, Progressive, and other political parties in this country that thrived before there was a mass media to ignore them, so it's partly the fault of our dumbed-down electorate.  And Democrats did make strides during the past decade or so to create their own media, like the GOP; Al Franken and Janeane Garafalo were the first on the radio to left-counter punch the Limbaugh-esque brain food, MSNBC early on had Phil Donahue opposing the Iraq war before they canned him due to corporate and "Merrcan patriot" objections, and then there was the rise of the progressive blogosphere in the new century -- when 'progressive' stood in for Democrat and 'liberal', a word made dirty by the conservatives going back to Reagan.

But this is about Bernie Sanders and his 'not wanting to be a spoiler' mentality from as far back as 2011 (thanks Blue Nation Review; this is the only time I will write that), a stubborn urban legend most recently perpetuated by the execrable Jonathan Chait.

I have grown weary of correcting people on social media that still believe and regurgitate the Gore/Nader/Bush/2000 lies.  Repeating them has become grounds for immediate friend/follow termination at this point.  If Jim Hightower and others figured it out in November of 2000, which was a couple of weeks before Gore conceded after his 5-4 loss at the Supreme Court, then it's a marvel of modern ignorance that so many Democrats still don't get it.

(For a treat, read this PBS transcript of the debate between Hightower and the late Sen. Paul Wellstone from October of 2000 and realize how long we have been having this conversation.  Two things worth noting: Wellstone advocated the 'safe states' premise, which Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb ran on in 2004, and underperformed badly.  And Al Franken, as we know, eventually took Wellstone's Senate seat back from the GOP... and endorsed Hillary.  In 2014.

So as this article carefully details, it's always been an illusion that progressives -- the modern definition, not to suggest those social but corporate and and 'foreign policy'-weighted liberals who have come to be known as neoliberals in their tack to the center-right over the past few years --  could reform the Democratic Party from within.  Nobody has written more cogently about the self-defeating mentality; indeed the Democratic delusions -- 'safe  states', 'inside-outside', 'party within the party', voting LOTE, and the Berners' cry of writing his name in -- than Howie Hawkins.  Here's just one must-read pull-quote.

When I wrote a critique of [the 'inside-outside' tactic] in the Summer 1989 issue of New Politics, I was addressing the left wing of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, which proposed an inside-outside strategy of supporting progressives inside the Democratic Party and running progressive independents against corporate Democrats. By the time the next iteration of the inside-outside strategy was promulgated by the Progressive Democrats of America, which grew out of the Kucinich campaign in 2004, outside was now reduced to lobbying the Democrats for progressive reforms. Running independent progressives against corporate Democrats was not part of the outside strategy anymore.

The inside-outside proponents from the Rainbow Coalition believed their strategy would heighten the contradictions between progressive and corporate Democrats, leading to a split where either the progressives took over the Democrats or the progressives broke away to form a viable left third party with a mass base among labor, minorities, environmentalists, and the peace movement. But the logic of working inside meant forswearing any outside options in order to be allowed to inside Democratic committees, campaigns, primary ballots, and debates. Many of the Rainbow veterans became Democratic Party operatives and politicians whose careers depend on Democratic loyalty. Meanwhile, the corporate New Democrats consolidated their control of the policy agenda. And today the “outside” of the inside-outside strategy has been scaled down to pathetic attempts at political ventriloquism – clicking, lobbying, and demonstrating to try to get corporate Democrats to utter messages and enact polices that are progressive.

So it's very frustrating for this observer to have to watch leftish Democrats and even avowed and elected socialists like Kshama Sawant (who absolutely ought to know better)  perform this quadrennial insanity definition ritual again.  Running as an independent for president is now something to do in 2020, because it's too late to do so in 2016.  Sanders hasn't figured out something many of his smartest supporters have: it's time to Go Green.

Make your own choice about whether to accept the blame for Clinton's defeat in November after a close swing state loss, like Ohio maybe.  As Matt Taibbi points out, lesser evilism means Democrats can be lazier than ever this year.  Know that the blame will be applied irrespective of how shitty a campaign Clinton runs to lose the election at this point.  I don't think she'll lose, close or otherwise, but there's plenty of time and lots of unpredictable developments that could occur over the course of these remaining 120 days (remember we'll be voting early in late October).  Essentially the one thing that can upset her applecart is a federal grand jury indictment for mishandling classified information, and I'm on record as doubtful of that happening despite the evidence for it.

If you're a leftist who wants peace and not war, to start the process of healing the Earth (it might be too late already), to remove the corporate money from our political system and a whole lot of other democratic principles, then it's time to abandon the so-called Democratic Party as your default voting option.  Don't be an enabler of bad behavior.  They're still the only leftish choice locally you'll have in too many races on your ballot as it is, and some of those aren't really all that left, so you'll have to decide if ethical pillars of the community like Ron Reynolds, an "environmental rock star" who loves fracking like James Cargas, Dems who are terribly confused or determinedly misleading when they call themselves 'progressive' like Chris Bell, and all but invisible flakes with semi-famous names are worthy of your vote.

My own choices have gotten a lot clearer over the years.  As Eugene Debs observed, I'd rather vote for something I want, and not get it, than vote for something I don't and get that.

'Chaos' predicted in wake of Supremes' immigration tie

Dale Wilcox of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, writing for The Hill:

The 4-4 split affirms the Fifth Circuit’s decision to maintain Judge (Andrew) Hanen’s injunction establishing a binding precedent in that circuit only. But one key, closely related-question arises: will the underlying injunction apply across the country as Judge Hanen intended or will it be likewise limited to the Fifth Circuit by the Supreme Court. If the former, the Justice Department, pro-amnesty attorneys-general, and open-borders groups will be using all their firepower to challenge it in states where they’ll argue the precedent doesn’t apply leading to conflicting rulings around the country. If the latter, DAPA will basically go into effect nationwide because a ‘confined injunction’ against freely moveable people is absolutely meaningless. In other words, chaos is inevitable.

Click here, and make sure you understand which side of the discussion the IRLI, legal arm of the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) is on.

So it isn't the chaos of muddying the waters for the lives of the millions of men, women, and children who have come to America seeking a better life, or the abomination of treating economic refugees humanely, it's the travesty of the laws (invalidated presidential executive orders in this case) not being applied evenly and fairly across the land.  Wilcox at IRLI excoriates the Obama administration in advance for a predicted 'end-around' the Hanen/Fifth Circuit judgment might produce in other states and circuits, and bemoans the fate of "minorities, single-mothers, the elderly, the mentally handicapped, teenagers, recent legal immigrants, etc." who have "traditionally worked these jobs".  In other words, the mostly white and legal poor and not the brown and Ill Eagle really poor.  Gotta keep our class distinctions carefully delineated, even if racists like Wilcox intentionally conflate and obfuscate them.

Immigrants and the nativist backlash to them has now become, in the immediate wake of BREXIT, a global political concern.  A British MP has already paid for her activism for a humane resolution with her life, at the hands of a modern-day Bill the Butcher.  And a right-wing British politician has already made a wildly inappropriate statement about it.

The coming fall election for a new prime minister in the UK is going to mirror in many aspects the choice we have in the United States between Trump and Clinton.  It doesn't change anything about the predictable Electoral College result -- except in the small number of swing states, like always -- but it is going to be a loud, shrill national discussion during the two nations' political football seasons.

Update: Starring Raw Story as Captain Obvious.

Republicans cheered after the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday thwarted President Barack Obama’s plan to offer millions of undocumented immigrants relief from deportation, but any sense of triumph might last only until the November presidential election.

If recent history is a guide, the stalled cause of immigration reform could energize Hispanic voters in support of likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, hurting Republican Donald Trump’s chances of reaching the White House.

Unless, you know, a global recession takes precedence.  Not to worry: the bottom-feeding capitalists already have advice for those who are waking up this morning scared about their stock portfolios.  As long as the wealthy don't suffer too badly, allegedly the rest of us will get more trickle-down instead of devastation.  If we're lucky.

Update: Charles' take is somewhat thin and antiseptic, but he does have some good links to the immediate reactions from the usual Democratic/liberal-but-not-so-much-progressive sources.

BREXIT, SCOTUS decisions, and another troublesome Clinton email

Burying the lede today because what's happening across the pond is more important.

-- Markets across the world are being whipsawed by the UK vote -- 72% turnout, by the way -- to leave the European Union.  Britain's currency, the pound, has hit an 31-year low -- that's 1985, the Reagan-Thatcher years -- to the dollar, stocks in Germany and elsewhere in the EU are plummeting but the stock futures markets are melting down.  The carnage has spread to Asia, as Chinese and Japanese equities are down almost 10% overnight.  Investors are leaving 'on paper' assets for safe havens like gold.  US stocks are slumping and even oil is down again, under $50/bbl as a global recession suddenly looms.

When the rich get hit this hard, it's the middle class and the poor who get slammed harder.  Any possible recovery -- and US election years generally present enough uncertainty to stall markets all by themselves, to say nothing of what  2016 has already wrought -- is by the wayside now.  Central banks are going to be forced to pump money into their economies to stave off calamity.  "It's the economy, stupid", a Clinton 1.0 rallying cry, is going to get a remodeling.

The most adverse ramifications are yet to be felt.  Capitalism is going to take a body blow in the months to come, as economic pain exacerbates the stress in nations like Greece and Puerto Rico, which will infect other countries.

 As this is posting, British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his intention to resign.  A new PM will be in place by the fall.  Considering the rise of the British right-wing, and particularly the anti-immigrant backlash in the stunning BREXIT results, don't expect it to be Jeremy Corbin.  Oh and meet the UK's Donald Trump.

Here's the BBC's "what we know at this time".

Update: Let's jump ahead in the action and take note of this political climate advisory from Down With Tyranny:

The vote in Britain wasn't entirely about racism, bigotry and xenophobia-- though that was certainly part of it. A lot of people who felt they had no stake in the status quo-- no stake in Britain's financial good times-- voted to smash he system. Many of Trump's supporters are what we've been referring to as "life's losers" and their motivations are not unlike many of the Brexit voters. "When you ain't got nothin', you ain't got nothin' to lose."

David Atkins got it right when he pointed out that we can "blame Brexit on racism and a lunatic fringe all [we] want. People are freaking pissed off and want to destroy the system they have because it's not working for them. A lot of people with conservative tendencies take it out on immigrants and 'the other.' But a whole lot of other people just want to get 'their' jobs and 'their' country back-- even if it means doing something patently stupid like Brexit or electing Donald Trump. Middle-class people forced into lower living standards do stuff like this. And the most shocked people about it are the centrists who clutch their pearls and tut tut over how untoward it all is."

Hillary and those around her are exactly who those tut-tutters are in our country. That's why Bernie outpolls her and outpolls Trump in every general election match-up. Trump knows exactly how to exploit this kind of toxic brew-- and count on him doing just that.

-- Among the decisions announced yesterday at the Supreme Court, mediocre white legacies at the University of Texas failed to take down affirmative action, as Wonkette bluntly wrote.  Obama's immigration executive orders were undone by a Supreme tie, leaving in place the appeals court's decision to strike them down.  Ken Paxton gets to declare victory, and Lyle Dennison at SCOTUSblog declares the orders -- one of Obama's hoped-for legacies -- as 'doomed'.  If Latin@s needed another reason to turn out and vote in November, they have one; the immigration policies of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could not offer a more striking contrast.  Oh, and the cops can test your breath without a warrant if you get pulled over for drunk driving, but not your blood.

Personally I'm still reeling from the SCOTUS rewrite of the Fourth Amendment earlier this week.

We still await a momentous decision on the case of the restrictions on women's reproductive freedoms in Texas (and elsewhere) to be announced.  That will dominate another day's news cycle when it finally gets handed down.

-- All of this news shoved Drumpf out of the headlines for another day, but Hillary Clinton still has email problems.

Former Secretary Hillary Clinton failed to turn over a copy of a key message involving problems caused by her use of a private homebrew email server, the State Department confirmed Thursday. The disclosure makes it unclear what other work-related emails may have been deleted by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

The email was included within messages exchanged Nov. 13, 2010, between Clinton and one of her closest aides, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin. At the time, emails sent from Clinton's BlackBerry device and routed through her private clintonemail.com server in the basement of her New York home were being blocked by the State Department's spam filter. A suggested remedy was for Clinton to obtain a state.gov email account.

"Let's get separate address or device but I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible," Clinton responded to Abedin.

Clinton never used a government account that was set up for her, instead continuing to rely on her private server until leaving office.

The email was not among the tens of thousands of emails Clinton turned over to the agency in response to public records lawsuits seeking copies of her official correspondence. Abedin, who also used a private account on Clinton's server, provided a copy from her own inbox after the State Department asked her to return any work-related emails. That copy of the email was publicly cited last month in a blistering audit by the State Department's inspector general that concluded Clinton and her team ignored clear internal guidance that her email setup violated federal standards and could have left sensitive material vulnerable to hackers.

So Abedin had the email, but Clinton didn't (and she wrote it).  The timebomb is still ticking, Hillbots.  Keep hoping and praying it doesn't explode.

Sit-ins and town halls

-- The Congressional sit-in yesterday seems to suggest that Hillary Clinton is going to be the president of a much different nation psychologically than has been the case before this year.

Democrats turned the floor of the House of Representatives into the stage of a wild effort to force a vote on gun control on Wednesday.

CSPAN covered the event live and you could watch the event from the Periscope livestream brought onto the floor by one House member, but it’s hard to convey the sense of chaos and outright insanity that gripped one of the most august institutions in American politics on Wednesday.

Among the unusual things that happened on the floor of the US House in just under a couple of hours on Wednesday night:

• Most of the Democratic House caucus breaking out into a "We Shall Overcome" chant for several minutes, sprinkling reference to overcoming cloture amendments and passing gun control legislation. Outside the Capitol, well over 50 protesters led a song of "We Shall Overcome" and later a call and response of "No Bill, No Break!"
• Democratic House members shouting "Shame! Shame! Shame!" at the top of their lungs at House Speaker Paul Ryan.
• Ryan’s attempts to address the Democrats breaking down several times amid shout and chants from the floor. They chanted "No Bill, No Break!" as Ryan lamented the decline of "decorum in this institution to which we belong."
• Capitol police asking people in the galleries to quiet down with the possibility of removing them.
• Democrats physically sitting on the floor in an apparent attempt to slow Republicans’s access to vote.
• Republicans sitting beyond a scrum of the Democrats interrupting speeches by interjecting criticisms. "Rule of law means order!," one shouted as a Democratic House member tried speaking over him from the front of the chamber.
• Two members of the House of Representatives — Republican Louie Ghomert and Democrat Corrine Brown — screaming in each other’s faces just a few feet away from each other. (Some reporters said on Twitter that it looked as if they were about to get in a physical altercation.)
• Audible laughs from reporters breaking out in the House press gallery when one Democrat shouted, "This isn’t about partisan politics!"
• Police escorting out someone after Republicans complained about a gallery visitor who shouted something.
• Some Congressmembers brought food, pillows, and even sleeping bags, according to CNN.

The Democrats began a sit-in on the House floor early Wednesday a week after a Senate filibuster forced a vote on gun control measures ...

In the modern world of Twitter hashtags ruling the national conversation, #NoBillNoBreak was meekly countered by #StopThisStunt, which shows how effective Paul Ryan has been throughout the demonstration.  There was also the cynics club that weighed in with #DemsNeverSat (for a whole bunch of other atrocities real and imagined, a truism but a digression for pessimists).

Let's neither overstate nor understate the value of yesterday's protest.  Last week it was Chris Murphy's filibuster which grabbed attention -- but alas not any guns, in the hyper-bloviated right-wing response.  These things have importance and meaning so long as they are part of of an ongoing effort toward progress, which really hasn't been the case previously.  If the worst conservatives in the world can surreptitiously record and edit video of Planned Parenthood officials discussing fetal tissue and call it "baby-killing for profit", then surely a few folks could camp out in front of Wayne LaPierre's house or the NRA's headquarters and call those bastards practitioners of genocide.  Couldn't they?

-- The Libertarian town hall on CNN, upstaged to some degree by the House demonstration, did get to point out a few inconvenient truths to the D/R political duopoly.

"I'd feel just fine" if Libertarians acted as a spoiler in the election, (Gary) Johnson said. "I believe that the two-party system is a two-party dinosaur and that they're about to come in contact with the comet here. I think that's a real possibility." 

Johnson outlined the challenge of reaching the presidential debates — a feat that could be their only chance of having a significant impact on the race. 

"The only opportunity to win is to actually be in the presidential debates, the Super Bowl of politics. To do that, we've got to be at 15 percent in the polls. To be at 15 percent of the polls you've got to be in the polls," Johnson said. "And right now we see day after day where really it's two candidates running for president — occasionally they throw in our names." 

(William) Weld followed by conceding that merely getting into the debates would be "harder" than the task of persuading people they were the better alternative than the Republicans or Democrats.

There's a significantly greater percentage of the American electorate that no longer wants to think -- or play -- inside the two-party box.  Sign the petition to open the debates.

Clinton up by nine, but down 5 since mid-June (post-Orlando)

I mentioned last week that we should take note of polling in the wake of the Pulse massacre, and today's Reuters/Ipsos results do indeed reveal that the American sheep are nervous.

Hillary Clinton’s lead over Republican rival Donald Trump has slipped by about five percentage points since mid-June, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday, bringing the race for the White House to within nine points.

The poll showed that 44.5 percent of likely voters supported former secretary of state Clinton while 35.5 percent backed businessman Trump. That compares with 46.6 percent support for Clinton and 32.3 percent for Trump on June 12, a date that marked her widest lead for the month.

Trump has focused much of his energy in recent days on the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, by a U.S.-born gunman pledging allegiance to Islamic State militant group. Trump vowed to ban people from entering the United States from countries with links to terrorism against America or its allies.

Raw Story does not link to the poll nor does it reveal the third-party results, so I tracked that down and found them lumped into the "other/wouldn't vote/refused" category, totaling 20%.

So as a two-horse race national survey, it's just not worth anything beyond the spin for Trump and Clinton and the various media outlets who think it is worth something.  What's more telling is this poll from Quinnipiac for the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, via NYT.

Donald J. Trump’s recent rough patch has taken a toll on his standing in three crucial swing states, according to a new poll that shows voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania viewing Hillary Clinton as being better prepared to be president.

A survey from Quinnipiac University found Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Trump by a margin of 47 percent to 39 percent in Florida, where they were essentially tied in May. Mrs. Clinton also erased Mr. Trump’s narrow lead in Ohio, where the candidates are now deadlocked at 40 percent. In Pennsylvania, Mrs. Clinton leads by a single percentage point.

The polls had margins of error of plus or minus three percentage points, rendering Ohio and Pennsylvania very much up for grabs a month before Republicans hold their nominating convention July 18-21 in Cleveland.

Update: Raw Story does better with this republish of NJ.com's Jonathan Salant and five takeaways from Q's swing state polls.

Polls this early blahblahblah and other cautionaries aside, if Florida is moving out of contention then Clinton is a shoe-in.  If she picks a Latino (and Julian Castro is being rumored as a finalist -- I like Tom Perez and Xavier Becerra better now that I have scrutinized them) then a swath of states move closer to purple -- not Texas, but a Castro selection forces the GOP to play defense on turf that they should have easily been able to hold.  Rice's Mark Jones got this one right.

Rice University political scientist Mark P. Jones put some parameters on what "better" could look like for (Texas) Democrats.

"'Better' is keeping Trump's victory in the single digits, and taking back somewhere around a half-dozen state House seats, taking back Congressional District 23 and turning Harris County blue," Jones said.

Let's also note for the record that among the vice-presidential contenders, Elizabeth Warren and Perez have drawn the most objections, from Wall Street to Big Business.  That may actually mean something in Hillary's thought process about her pick.

In other news, Jonanthan Chait screwed the "Nader/Gore/Bush/2000" pooch for all to see and take selfies of.  There's a cottage industry that thrives on this guy's foibles, so I'll only repeat the truth  for those that still don't get it.  And if you don't believe me, you really should believe Jim Hightower.

And starring Sonya Sotomayor as The Voice

The voice of freedom, of conscience ... the liberal lion on the SCOTUS roared yesterday.

"It is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny," she wrote. "For generations, black and brown parents have given their children 'the talk' -- instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger -- all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them. 

"By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time," she added. "It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged."

Co-starring the Five as The Police State.

In a 5-3 decision Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police have the right to detain anyone without cause and then arrest them on the spot if that person has an outstanding warrant.

For you budding constitutionalists out there, that is the direct opposite of what the Fourth Amendment guarantees.  Is this a conservative court or a fascist one?

In Monday’s ruling on the Utah vs. Strieff case, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and Chief Justice John Roberts, argued that a police officer who randomly detains someone on the street without cause is not violating the rights of that detainee if they run their identification, find an outstanding warrant for a past offense, arrest them, and proceed to charge them with additional crimes based on what they find in a search. Any evidence found as part of such a search is now admissible in court.

So even if police violate the Constitution by stopping someone without suspicion, an arrest warrant entitles them to conduct a search.  In that circumstance, five justices said there is no "flagrant police misconduct."  Nina Totenberg at NPR:

The decision came in the case of Edward Strieff who was stopped after leaving a house that was under police observation because of an anonymous tip that it was being used for drug dealing. Though narcotics detective Douglas Fackrell later admitted he had no reason to believe Strieff had done anything wrong, he stopped him demanded that he identify himself and detained him while radioing in to see if there were any outstanding warrants against Strieff.

As it turned out, there was one for a minor traffic offense, so the detective searched Strieff and found a small amount of methamphetamines. The Utah Supreme Court later threw out the drug conviction because it stemmed from an illegal stop. Today, however, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the conviction. Writing for the five-justice majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that officer Fackrell's discovery of the outstanding warrant broke the connection to the unconstitutional stop. And that therefore the evidence found in the search could be used to prosecute Strieff. The generally liberal Justice Stephen Breyer provided the fifth vote to make a majority. 

I have to say that I'm stunned.  Not so much by Kennedy Breyer's fifth vote (thanks for the correction, Gadfly), but by all of the rest of the Supreme conservatives.  There's no life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to be found in this decision.  And it's not law and order, it's extending your local po-po a few more liberties as judge, jury, and executioner.

The decision was controversial because in some cities thousands of people have arrest warrants pending against them, mostly for traffic violations as insignificant as unpaid parking tickets.

There were 16,000 outstanding arrest warrants in Ferguson, Mo., as of 2015 — a figure that amounts to roughly 75% of the city’s population — the Justice Department found during its investigation into the 2014 police shooting of an unarmed, 18-year-old African-American man. Cincinnati recently had more than 100,000 warrants pending for failure to appear in court. New York City has 1.2 million outstanding warrants.

If you have a traffic ticket that you haven't paid, you have created probable cause to be arrested for something else.  Do you feel safer now?

With four major decisions due in the next week, including cases on affirmative action, abortion and immigration, Sotomayor's anger signals that what has been a quiet term since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia could get increasingly contentious.  

And three of the eight remaining decisions due are Texas cases.  Summer is about to get a lot hotter.  If some of you people living in swing states feel like the whole Supreme Court argument suddenly works for you, here's your hall pass.  And along that note, Quinnipiac's fresh polling suggests that Ohio and Pennsylvania still are, bur Florida may not be.

A lot of food for thought this morning.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is celebrating the summer solstice with a cold beverage and toes in the sand as it brings you his week's blog post roundup.

Off the Kuff sets a couple of hopefully attainable goals for Texas Democrats in 2016.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos has had it with political inaction after yet one more tragic mass shooting. Enough is enough. The carnage has got to stop. Fire the cowards who enable gun slaughter: When Political Cowardice is Lethal.

Socratic Gadfly reads Bernie Sanders' call for election reforms and wishes he had real reform that included third parties.

The Texas Democratic Convention was held in San Antonio this past weekend, and by all accounts was underwhelming, as PDiddie at Brains and Eggs predicted.

Oil and gas exploration is threatening the health of all Texans, and TXsharon at Bluedaze has it all mapped out.

Egberto Willies interviewed an East Texas secessionist who's closely following the Brexit scenario to see if Texas can apply any lessons.

Texas Vox takes note of the 17th and most recent state, New York, to call for a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United.

Dru Murray at the Lewisville Texan Journal toured that city's newest whiskey distillery.

Neil at All People Have Value took his efforts to the streets to promote the value of everyday life to the corner of Cesar Chavez and Harrisburg in Houston. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

======================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Diana Wray recaps Dan Patrick's very bad day on Twitter following the Orlando massacre, and TFN Insider reviews state Rep. Matt Krause's claims that it "doesn't matter" that the Orlando victims were gay.

Kris Banks asserts that gun safety is an LGBT issue, and Nancy Sims mourns the tragedy in Orlando and asks what we all will do about it.

The TSTA blog calls for educators to unite against Donald Trump.

Highlighting the divide among Texas bloggers (and the rest of the Texas Democratic electorate), Somervell County Salon didn't attend the TDP convention this year and won't be voting for Hillary Clinton in the fall.

Ben Becker has some questions for TEA Commissioner Mike Morath about the STAAR test.

Alamo Heights ISD Superintendent Kevin Brown and several of his colleagues warn that we can no longer fool ourselves into believing that just because many students seem to do well and graduate prepared for college and career, that we can sustain those results over time.

Scott Braddock peeks behind the curtain at the handful of rich radicals who were trying to buy this year's legislative elections.

Grits for Breakfast goes beyond the narrow, politicized explanations for the spike in homicides last year.  He also has a terrific aggre-post regarding the limits of Politifact, crime wave hype, police pension politics, and Harris County as a driver of mass incarceration.

And in the latest installment of 'West Texas Exceptionalism', Make West Texas Great Again retells the stories of the Texas Cowboy Reunions from the 1930s up to the present day.

Revolutionary News Vol. 8: The Wisdom of Dads

Is your mind capable of holding competing thoughts simultaneously?  Here we go ...

-- Donald Trump does NOT have a path to victory in November.

To reach 270, Trump’s team is aiming to capture America’s Rust Belt — specifically, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin — where polls generally show him performing better than Mitt Romney did at this point in 2012. If he can capture Florida and keep North Carolina — the 2012 red state of the lightest hue — a strong showing that includes capture of the Rust Belt could, Trump’s team believes, put him over the top.

But the odds are long, veteran strategists said.

“It’s a fantasy. Romney got 19 percent of nonwhites. Is Trump going to do better? I don’t think so,” said Stuart Stevens, Romney’s 2012 campaign strategist. “It’s a joke. It’s just talking. It has no grounding in reality.”

-- Neither should anyone expect the entrenched insider Republicans to overthrow the will of their voters and install someone -- anyone -- else as the GOP nominee at their national convention in Cleveland next month.  There would be an actual revolution, complete with lots of shooting from many guns and real blood running in the streets if they tried.  Bernie Sanders does, in fact, have a greater chance of being the Democratic nominee than (fill in the blank with any name you like) has of being the Republican one.  And Bernie has essentially no chance at all.  Better chances of winning the Powerball.

Only a federal indictment can stop her now, and perhaps not even that.

That won't stop the Sandernistas from their #SeeYouInPhilly mission, and whatever they accomplish beyond a few platform positions that some will characterize as "transforming" the Democratic Party will be, in reality, negligible.  Their hearts are in the right place, I suppose, but they're using their heads to beat against the castle wall.  It will feel so good to them when they stop that.

The head of Debbie Wasserman Schultz on a pike comes about three months too late.

-- More evidence that they aren't getting on the Clinton bandwagon.

Hillary Clinton may be the presumptive Democratic nominee, but the fight to unify the party and its traditional allies in the wake of an unexpectedly long and contentious primary is poised to go on much longer.

The more than 3,000 Bernie Sanders supporters and progressive activists gathered here at the "People's Summit" have engaged in little open talk about Clinton, preferring instead to plot a path forward in the wake of the Vermont senator's defeat -- and questioning the motivations of the Democratic Party and the legitimacy of its nominating contest. 

"There is massive corruption in the machinery of the Democratic Party," said RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of National Nurses United, the powwow's principal organizer, who had endorsed Sanders. "The only way that we can overcome that corruption and manipulation is for all of us not to work in isolation."

The People's Summit folks shut out Jill Stein and the Greens.  Everybody seems to want to start from scratch; I'm getting email now from the United Progressive Party. Their website is inoperable at this posting, but their logo should tell you everything you need to know.

The progressive left in the United States -- which has one foot inside the tent and one foot out -- has always been fractured and disorganized and ineffective as a result, and it may be even more so in 2016.  That would be unfortunate but not unexpected.

-- So Stein is going full-bore after the ruling duopoly.  Read all of this profile of her and her party; it's the best one yet.  Here's a snip about "safe states":

Sanders has drawn fire from Democrats for staying in the race despite lacking the delegates to win the nomination, but Stein may be even more politically brash than Bernie. Not only does she lack Sanders’ squeamishness about tipping the race to the Republicans, she is burying the tentative approach to presidential campaigning tried by 2004 Green candidate David Cobb. Following the 2000 election, when many blamed Nader for contributing to Democrat Al Gore’s defeat in Florida, Cobb pioneered a “safe-state” strategy—hunting only for votes in deep blue and deep red states, thus successfully protecting the Greens from the “spoiler” label. But he wasn’t successful in winning votes, garnering only 120,000 votes compared to Nader’s 2.9 million.

Stein defiantly told Politico Magazine she has a “No Safe State strategy,” because “there is no safe state under a Democratic or Republican future.” She’ll be stumping in Pennsylvania later this month.

--  Noam Chomsky has co-written a treatise about it; Counterpunch has counter-punched it. Bold emphasis below is mine.

[Chomsky and co-author John Halle] ... make an argument that by electing Clinton (i.e. by voting for her in swing states) this allows for the continuing growth of the left and reduces the amount of harm that will be caused over the next four years. I do not doubt their desire for radical change, nor do I doubt that they make these arguments because they find them morally justifiable in consideration of the consequences of our actions. Yet, it is dubious whether we can consider Clinton an LEV, just as much as it is dubious whether electing Clinton would enable the growth of the Left. I am not arguing from what they call a “politics of moral witness”, but argue in the same analytic vein that they have placed their brief. That is, is Clinton on topics such as climate change, trade, and militarism actually an LEV in comparison to Trump? Taking their criteria of consequences over rhetoric, there seems at best a “dimes worth of difference” on these topics.

Go ahead and try it on, see if it fits.

I'm an advocate of the "safe states" mission, but am swiftly moving in the direction of the "fuck 'em all" premise.  Some people say that's white privilege.  I say if someone wants to fix white privilege, then they need to go vote it out of office.  I won't be bothered one little bit by that.

-- The Texas Democratic convention this weekend past was, as I predicted, a joke.  These accounts of the steamrolling of Sanders delegates are essentially all you need to know about why there is a #SeeYouInPhilly movement.  But it was funny/not funny in pretty much every other way you can think of.  I'm glad John had a good time, though.

Sunday Keepin' Bear Funnies

Texas Dems prepare to underwhelm once again

The key to happiness is low expectations, some philosopher once said.

Statewide races on the 2016 ballot are lackluster: a no-contest Railroad Commission faceoff -- better options with the Green candidate, just as with the Ag Commissioner's race in 2014 -- and a few high civil (SCOTX) and criminal (CCA) court justices we mentioned in December last, in the spring and we'll mention again in October.

More than 75% of those gathering in San Antonio this weekend (Update: John says it's 65%, and he's on site) will celebrate the crowning of the presumptive nominee despite her accumulating baggage, and they'll exercise the same old tyranny of the majority over the 25% 35% left-wing.  The Berners should be easily abused because apparently their plan is to to lie down and take it.  Oh well, San Antone is still a great place to fiesta.  Who wants to sit in a convention hall when you could be drinking margaritas on the Riverwalk, anyway?

Drumpf is going to Bigfoot the state conclave with fundraisers and rallies in Dallas today and the Alamo City and H-Town tomorrow, sucking all the media oxygen out of the state.

Charles can still find a few small things to dream big about; good on him for his PMA.  Most of the so-called party leaders are more pragmatic, however.

And to some portion of the 25% of Texas Democrats who didn't vote for Hillary -- not to mention the half of the state's adults who are not registered to vote, and the 80+% of those who are who didn't participate in the primary -- it just doesn't look like much difference.

When it comes to thinking in binary: I have observed that the stronger the support one has for Hillary, the less this premise can be comprehended.  But at least that makes more sense than voting for Clinton in the primary because of 'the Supreme Court'.

This will be the first convention in ten years that I have actively boycotted, despite being granted both Sanders delegate and media credentials.  (I guess Sarah Slamen was right; some people don't read this blog after all.)  I'll still be following whatever action there is on social media, but I don't expect much.  Housing Secretary Julian Castro, once-presumptive vice-presidential nominee (or is it brother and Congressman Joaquin?  Or is it both?) will be keynoting, and the rest of the agenda looks primed to be knockout gas.

I kid because I care, Texas Dems.  Get your shit together for 2018.

Update: Worse than I suspected.

Another view of the Electoral College

Pretty much the same view as the previous ones.

No matter the 2016 presidential matchup after the primary campaigns, the Democratic nominee was likely to have an edge over the Republican candidate once the election turned toward the November race.

In the past six presidential elections, 32 states and the District of Columbia have voted solidly Democratic or solidly Republican. If none of that changes this year, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would start out with 242 electoral votes — just 28 shy of the 270 she needs to win.

The GOP candidate would start out with just 102, if that trend were to hold. And if presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump won Arizona, Montana and the seven Southern states that voted Democratic only when Bill Clinton was on the ballot, Trump would be up to only 180 electoral votes.

That leaves 116 votes in 10 states. As always, Florida becomes crucial.

If Trump can win nine of those 10, he still would lose, unless Florida is among his victories. Clinton can lose nine of those 10, but if she wins Florida, she would move into the White House come January.

After the San Bernardino shootings, Drumpf gained in the horse-race polling... for the GOP nomination.  And he has also done so -- slightly -- in the wake of Orlando.  FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten says not to read too much into it; the Republican primary electorate is quite obviously not the general election one.  And Clinton has otherwise bitten into Trump's lead among male and Caucasian voters.  Polling released next week will tell more, but he simply has no ground to lose.

If you're still nervous about the Queen's November prospects after reading this, be consoled with the takeaway, again: National polls are not the Electoral College.

And if you're #NeverTrump or #NeverHillary, you'll have at least two other choices in Texas -- Green and Libertarian, no indies -- and also in roughly forty other states in the Union to express your disgust with the D/R options that would be much more effective than a hashtag.  The candidate foreordained to win your state -- and/or the White House -- won't be affected in the slightest.  So vote your conscience, your principles, or your values; just don't vote for the status quo.  That's how we got to this sorry state in the first place.

And it's exactly why they take your vote for granted.

A Muslim terrorist... or a closeted, self-loathing gay man?

Who might have had some daddy issues, who beat his ex-wife, and who was investigated by the FBI for terrorist sympathies but whose case was ultimately dropped?

The gunman who attacked a Florida LGBT nightclub had attended the club before the attack and had used a gay dating and chat app, witnesses said.

Kevin West, a regular at Pulse nightclub, said Omar Mateen messaged him on and off for a year before the shooting using the gay chat and dating app Jack’d.

But they never met – until early Sunday morning.

West was dropping off a friend at the club when he noticed Mateen – whom he knew by sight but not by name – crossing the street wearing a dark cap and carrying a black cellphone about 1 a.m., an hour before the shooting.

Orlando gunman used gay dating app, visited LGBT nightclub on other occasions, witnesses say:

At least four regular customers of Pulse, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender nightclub where the massacre took place, told the Orlando Sentinel on Monday that they believed they had seen Mateen there before.

"Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent," said Ty Smith, who also uses the name Aries.

He saw Mateen at the club at least a dozen times, he said.

"We didn't really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times," Smith said. "He told us he had a wife and child."

He physically abused his former spouse; his father was a minor-league crackpot.

FORT PIERCE, Florida — Years before he shot up an Orlando gay club in what became the largest mass shooting in American history, Omar Mateen regularly picked up lunch from a drag queen at Ruby Tuesday. He may have even gone to see a drag show or two, a former high school classmate told The Daily Beast.

About 10 years ago, Mateen, a few years out of high school, was working at the supplement store GNC. Samuel King, a year ahead of him in high school, was working next door at the restaurant chain. Mateen was a few years out of playing football in high school while King, who is openly gay, had long, flowing extensions, and prettier hair than most of his female co-workers.

“He always had a smile on his face,” King told The Daily Beast on Sunday. “Maybe it’s because he was working in customer service.”

Ex-wife: Mateen had 'gay tendencies', used dating app Grindr

Former classmate says Mateen was gay

So do you draw 'jihadist' from this?  It appears the FBI did not consider him a menace to society, despite their attempts yesterday to cover their asses by saying he was 'radicalized'.  Conservatives are religiously avoiding using the G-word to describe Mateen but have rushed to judgment on 'Islamist terrist', and are vigorously defending their 'Raght to Keep N Bare', both of which are the most predictable of responses.

What if Mateen was just conflicted, awkward socially, a little strange, someone who was mocked as an adolescent and who became resentful and socially -- ultimately socio- and psychopathically -- dysfunctional as an adult?  What can we do for a person like that (besides not letting him buy guns)?  Maybe 'love IS the answer', but it seems as if Mateen had that externally... but not internally.

I'll save any more shade-tree psychology for additional facts to come out, but IMHO we still need some sane Republicans demanding sensible gun safety legislation.  The GOP electeds just won't listen to anybody else.

Update: Amanda Marcotte picks it up and adds the GOP critique.

Stupid things allegedly smart people say, RNC convention edition

(This is Part Two, Part One was here.)

"How the GOP could Dump Trump in Cleveland":

Do we think that the Republican Party will ditch presumptive nominee Donald Trump at its convention in July and select someone else to replace him — a notion that seems to be catching on among conservatives and commentators in the wake of Trump’s controversial remarks about the Mexican-American judge overseeing his Trump University suit?

No, we do not.

And yet, if there were ever an election weird and wild enough to make such a switcheroo possible — just barely — 2016 would be it.

Cleveland is a long way away. A lot can happen between now and then. So what would have to happen to make “Dump Trump” a reality?

To give our fellow convention fanatics something to fantasize about for the next 40 days, Unconventional has assembled a step-by-step instruction manual for dumping Trump. If any of these steps are skipped, the whole chain reaction fizzles out. But if every one of them is completed, there is still a chance — a very, very slim chance — that Donald Trump won’t be competing against Hillary Clinton in fall.

Tenuous and ignorant premises out of the way early; on to the jokes.

Step One: Trump keeps saying offensive stuff

Trump has said plenty of objectionable things since launching his campaign last summer: the Mexicans-are-rapists thing, the John-McCain-isn’t-a-war-hero thing, the Muslims-should-be-barred-from-entering-the-U.S. thing, and so on.

But the Judge Curiel-can’t-do-his-job-because-he’s-of-Mexican descent thing is the first toxic thing that Trump has said since becoming the GOP’s presumptive nominee. The content may be similar, but the context is very different. Before, during the primaries, Republican leaders could brush off Trump’s remarks. He’s not my candidate, they could say. Maybe the voters will still reject him. And if not, he’ll probably grow up in time for the general.

Back then, Trump didn’t represent the GOP. Now he does. So now whenever Trump says something offensive, other Republicans have to choose: Do I defend this? Or do I denounce it? Hiding isn’t an option anymore.

As we’ve seen over the last week, the risk of guilt by association has dramatically lowered the GOP’s tolerance for Trump’s most distasteful remarks.

“ ‘Bigot, bigot, bigot. Racist. Racist Racist,’ ” said influential conservative talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt Wednesday, recapping the morning’s headlines. “The Republican National Committee needs to step in and step up, and go see Donald Trump and tell him to get out of the race.”

Hugh Hewitt bailing out is huge.  Yuuuuuuuuge. 

Step Two: Trump’s poll numbers plummet

Right now, Trump is trailing Clinton by only 3.8 percentage points, on average, in the general-election polls. That’s reasonable. To be expected. He’s still “well within striking distance,” as they say.

But what happens if Trump’s numbers go into a free fall and Clinton starts to pull away? What if she crosses the 50-percent threshold and he plunges into the 30s? What if the gap between them widens — to five points, 10 points, 15 points?

Somebody else who does not understand how the Electoral College works.

This is key. 

This is not key.  Popular vote percentages -- you know, the same ones that Berners use to say that Sanders should be nominated over Hillary because he beats Trump -- might be the excuse the GOP uses to try to defenestrate their popularly elected nominee, but most DC electeds understand that's not how a president gets chosen.  And the EC numbers are grim already.

The major problem with dumping Trump is political.  It looks like GOP elites are conspiring to deny the will of GOP voters — the most galling offense imaginable in a year that’s been all about the voters denying the will of the elites.

But Trump’s plummeting poll numbers would provide objective evidence that actual voters agree with party leaders that he’s gone too far. The GOP would start to fear a down-ballot disaster. More Republicans would jump ship. Combined with a series of Curiel-like controversies, a sickening slide in Trump’s public-opinion stats might establish a new anti-Trump argument that doesn’t ask rank-and-file Republicans to reject the nominee just because establishment types like Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio are doing it: Trump had his chance. Now he’s tanking — and he’s taking the party with him. 

So if you were wondering where Ted Cruz has been all this time ...

Step Three: Someone else steps up

Mitt Romney refused. Ben Sasse begged off. James Mattis said no sir. Even David French — a bald, bearded conservative lawyer that no one had ever heard of — decided against it.

You can’t fault the #NeverTrump movement for lack of effort. But so far, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and his anti-Donald cronies have been unable to convince anybody to take on Trump.

For the whole “Dump Trump” scheme to work, this would have to change. As Curly Haugland, a member of the convention Rules Committee from North Dakota, recently told the New York Times, “In order to have a contested convention, we need to have contestants.”

Some Republican politicians are starting to signal their interest in a convention challenge. As Yahoo Senior Political Correspondent Jon Ward reported (last) week, conservatives are increasingly mentioning Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as a “possible replacement.” RedState reported (a week ago) that there are “rumors” that Walker is “open” to such an outcome. One of Ward’s sources said that Walker, who mounted a brief bid for the 2016 GOP nomination, has told those working to find an alternative that he would be willing to step up at the convention if Trump continues to implode.

The likeliest substitute, however, would be someone who can already claim considerable support among the convention delegates. Ted Cruz comes to mind. Right now, he has 559 delegates to Trump’s 1,542. But remember: Many of the delegates now pledged to Trump were loyal to Cruz (or some other candidate) first.

For his part, Cruz has kept his options open, refusing to endorse Trump and suggesting that if he sees “a viable path to victory” in the future, he “will certainly respond accordingly.”

“I am looking and listening and watching the candidates,” Cruz told CNN earlier this week. “I’m doing the same thing millions of voters are doing and … time will tell.”

"Now for the fun part", the piece continues.  I'll pass; you go on ahead.  Hint: the GOP/RNC has to rewrite their rules.  How many Trumpeters do you think will take that lying down?

Go back to the top and read the part where they wrote, 'if any of these steps are skipped, the whole chain reaction fizzles out'.  And then read this again: 'But if every one of them is completed, there is still a chance — a very, very slim chance — that Donald Trump won’t be competing against Hillary Clinton in fall.'

No.  Just no.  And it has nothing to do with guns, or responsible gun safety legislation (which is the third rail of GOP political viability).

Sorry you had to waste five minutes reading all that.  I just document the atrocities, folks; I can't really influence them too much.

How you know Bernie's already conceded

This Weak with George Snufflelufagus may have been pre-empted in your market for coverage of the Orlando tragedy, so if you missed this, take note.

The Vermont senator also plans to meet with Clinton Tuesday to press her to embrace his progressive agenda.

On ABC's "This Week" Sunday, Sanders said he and Clinton will discuss "if she wins, what kind of administration she will have."

"What I need to see [is] a commitment that there will be progressive taxation," Sanders said.

"Will she go as far as I would like her to go? No, she won't," he said. "But I think millions of people want to understand and see is what kind of commitment she has to addressing the real crises in the country." 

Sanders is done, y'all.  Fought the good fight and all that happy horseshit, but now he's tired and he wants to go to bed.  All that's left to negotiate is his severance package.  Vice-president?  I doubt it.  Senate Majority Leader?  Kinda laughable, to say nothing of that blogger's command of the English language.

Some party platform BS, BS?  Yeah, he'll take that.  A tax increase, though?  In the words* of Hillary Clinton, 'you gotta be shitting me, old man'.

Over to you, Bern Unit.

*Paraphrasing slightly.