March 29, 2016

Aide Fired From Trump Campaign for Being Racist Endorses Ted Cruz

How do you save face when America’s most prominent racist fires you from his campaign for doing something racist? The answer is simple: endorse the racist’s less-racist opponent, and claim you’re doing it because the racist is too racist for you.

Such was the situation faced by Sam Nunberg, a Donald Trump aide who was fired from the candidate’s campaign last year over a Facebook post that referred to Al Sharpton’s daughter as “N—-!” and others calling Barack Obama a Kenyan Muslim and “Socialist Marxist Islamo Fascist Nazi Appeaser.” (Nunberg said at the time that he was “shocked” and did not remember writing the posts.)

Now, according to an item in this morning’s Politico Playbook, Nunberg is endorsing Ted Cruz. He told Mike Allen that he was concerned about Trump’s lack of national security bona fides, but said that the last straw was the candidate’s “KKK Tapper interview,” in which he failed to immediately disavow the support of former the Klan leader David Duke. Coming from Nunberg, a close associate of fellow racist and ex-Trump staffer Roger Stone, that’s pretty rich.

Of course, it’s not strictly true to say that Nunberg was fired from Trump’s camp for being racist—the candidate himself is plenty racist, after all. Nunberg was fired for expressing his racism in direct terms, not using vague signifiers to give it a patina of plausible deniability, as is the traditional GOP way. And while Trump is pretty good at this dog-whistling, Ted Cruz is even better. You don’t see nearly as many commentators calling Cruz out for racism, despite his proposition that we surveil and patrol law-abiding American Muslim neighborhoods, for instance.


http://gawker.com/aide-fired-from-trump-campaign-for-being-racist-endorse-1767535959

March 29, 2016

Dan Savage Trolls Susan Sarandon Over Suggestion She’d Vote Trump Over Clinton (VIDEO)

Susan Sarandon, a vocal surrogate for Bernie Sanders, joined Chris Hayes on MSNBC last night, and suggested to Hayes that she might consider voting for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton if the choice came down to that.
Said Sarandon:

“I think a lot of people are ‘sorry, I just can’t bring myself to [vote Clinton]’…I don’t know [what I’ll do]. I’m going to see what happens. Some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately. If he gets in, then things will really explode. Some people feel that. If you feel it’s pragmatic to shore up the status quo right now then you’re not in touch with the status quo. The status quo’s not working.”

Sarandon’s interview was followed by an interview with Dan Savage, who joined Hayes to talk about the anti-LGBT push by Republicans in the states to repeal rights protections and pass “religious freedom” bills.

But Savage started his segment with an unsolicited response to Sarandon:

“Can I just say I’m for Bernie, or Hillary, or both. Come November I plan to vote for the Democratic nominee whoever it is, because the lesser of two evils is less evil, and I don’t think Donald will bring the revolution.”

http://www.towleroad.com/2016/03/dan-savage-susan-sarandon/

March 29, 2016

Susan Sarandon: Trump Might Be Better for America Than Hillary Clinton

As they continued to discuss the issue, Hayes pressed Sarandon to see the election as potentially a choice between Clinton and Trump, arguing that Sanders himself would “probably” urge his supporters to vote for her.

“I think Bernie would probably encourage people, because he doesn’t have any ego in this thing,” Sarandon told him. “But I think a lot of people are, ‘Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to [vote for Clinton].’”

“How about you personally?” Hayes asked.
“I don’t know. I’m going to see what happens,” Sarandon said.

That bit of honesty prompted Hayes to stop in his tracks. “Really?” he asked incredulously.

“Really,” Sarandon said, adding that “some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in, things will really explode.” Asked if she thinks that’s “dangerous,” she replied, “It’s dangerous to think that we can continue the way we are with the militarized police force, with privatized prisons, with the death penalty, with the low minimum wage, threats to women’s rights and think you can’t do something huge to turn that around.”


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/29/susan-sarandon-trump-might-be-better-for-america-than-hillary-clinton.html

March 29, 2016

A little perspective on the 2016 Hawaii Presidential Caucus

Turnout for 2016 Hawaii Presidential Caucus: 33,655

Turnout for 2014 Hawaii Special Democratic Senate Primary: 237,942

March 28, 2016

Jimeny Cricket, we just got hit with hate speech at the office.

Someone just sent a hate piece on our printers and I'm kind of wound up even though I'm not the target. I hope we catch the bastard.

March 28, 2016

New International 'Suicide Squad' Trailer (VIDEO)

March 28, 2016

Ted Cruz Names Friends, but Silence From G.O.P. Brass Deafens

Ted Cruz was naming friends.

Seated for an interview inside a stately Midtown Manhattan library, just south of Trump Tower, the Texas senator leaned forward in his chair, ticking off the unlikely coalition drifting his way.

There was Jeb Bush, who announced his endorsement in a terse predawn news release, and Mitt Romney, who initially said his support applied only to his voting preference in Utah.

Mr. Cruz had swung Mike Lee, his greatest ally in the Senate, nearly a year after his campaign began, and Mark Levin, a conservative radio host who recently made his longstanding admiration on the airwaves official.

“They are coming to us,” Mr. Cruz said. “We welcome their support with open arms, but my positions, my policies have not changed.”

Nor has Mr. Cruz’s reputation, particularly.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/us/politics/ted-cruz-names-friends-but-silence-from-gop-brass-deafens.html?_r=0

March 27, 2016

538: Bernie Sanders Continues To Dominate Caucuses, But He’s About To Run Out Of Them

Sanders’s strength in caucuses may also be, in part, coincidental. Every state that has held or will hold a Democratic caucus this year has a black population at or below 10 percent of the state’s total population, and black voters have been among Clinton’s strongest demographic groups. Without those black voters, Clinton just can’t match the enthusiasm of Sanders’s backers. (In Southern states, where Clinton romped, her voters were far more enthusiastic than Sanders’s supporters were.)

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: How do we know that Sanders’s big wins this week aren’t a sign that something more fundamental about the Democratic race has changed? We don’t, necessarily. But look at the calendar: Sanders also outperformed his delegate targets in Colorado, Kansas and Maine earlier this month, and he still went on to suffer big losses on March 15. And that was after his shocking Michigan victory. Moreover, Sanders greatly underperformed his delegate targets last Tuesday in Arizona, which held a primary and has a more diverse electorate.

Most likely, Sanders will need to find another way to make up ground on Clinton in the delegate race. Wyoming (April 9) and North Dakota (June 7) are the only remaining stateside caucuses. The rest of the stateside races are primaries. Sanders has exceeded his delegate targets in just three stateside primaries. He’s matched them in three and underperformed in 15. Given that Sanders is still so far behind in the delegate count, he needs to outperform his delegate targets by a lot.

How likely is that? Well, he’s behind by about 6 percentage points in Wisconsin, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted polling average. That’s not a huge deficit, and it wouldn’t shock me if Sanders won Wisconsin given that the black population there is below 10 percent. (To match his delegate target in Wisconsin, he needs a net gain of 10 delegates there.) Sanders, though, will likely have more difficulty in later primaries in April, such as Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania, where African Americans make up more than 10 percent of the state’s population.

Sanders had a strong week, and this has been a crazy year in politics. But there’s nothing in the recent results to suggest that the overall trajectory of the Democratic race has changed. Clinton was and is a prohibitive favorite to win the nomination.


http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-continues-to-dominate-caucuses-but-hes-about-to-run-out-of-them/

March 27, 2016

Now Coca-Cola may be threatening to leave Goergia.

Even a pillar of the Atlanta business community may pick up and leave.

Georgia's generous tax incentives have provided a warm welcome to filmmakers. But now, some studios say the state's southern hospitality is being tested by a proposed law they believe discriminates against the LGBT community.

Backers of the so-called "religious liberty" bill say the measure would protect faith-based groups that refuse to serve or hire someone for religious reasons. But major companies, like Walt Disney, are threatening to pull their business.

Disney issued a statement saying, "...we will plan to take our business elsewhere should any legislation allowing discriminatory practices be signed into state law."

Similar sentiments have been voiced by AMC Networks, which films "The Walking Dead" in Georgia, as well a list of other corporations. Viacom, Delta, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Intel and representatives for two of Georgia's sports teams -- The Falcons and The Braves.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-religious-liberty-bill-proposal-companies-warn-of-boycott-for-lgbt-discrimination/

March 27, 2016

Two economic recruits abandon Georgia over ‘religious liberty’ bill

An expanding list of corporate chieftains and Hollywood heavyweights have urged Gov. Nathan Deal to veto the controversial”religious liberty” legislation and threatened to pull investments from Georgia if he doesn’t. Now, though, we have evidence that the debate may have cost the state regardless of whether he signs the legislation.

An email exchange between the top aides to Deal and House Speaker David Ralston, a supporter of the measure, offered a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes fallout from the legislation since it passed more than a week ago.

In the March 19 email, obtained through an open records request, Ralston chief-of-staff Spiro Amburn forwarded a dispatch to Chris Riley, his counterpart in Deal’s office, that included a copy of talking points about House Bill 757 describing criticism of the measure as “exaggerations or misinformation.”

Within 30 minutes, Riley thanked Amburn for the note with this addendum:

“We received official notification this morning that Georgia was dropped from contention from two pending economic projects we had been working at gdec prior to any decision being made on the bill,” Riley wrote, referring to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. “Both projects cited Hb 757 as why they were removing Georgia from consideration.”


http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/03/27/state-two-economic-recruits-abandon-georgia-over-religious-liberty-bill/