So I guess 2016 claimed its biggest victim yet - America

I stand corrected. I forgot about how they shot him alongside the road outside the area they took over. But you could argue the only shots were fired by the good guys and not the bad guys in that case.

Let’s not gloss over the fact that they shot him while he was arguably going for a gun. If he’d kept his hands in the air the way they told him to and stopped with the smack talk he’d probably still be alive today.

Oh, I remember the video. But let’s also not gloss over the fact that the shots that were fired were far from the compound and were fired by the good guys, not the bad guys.

Ooh, I like this game, I’ll take Dick Cheney for 1000, Alex.

I absolutely do. Anyone with eyes and ears could see what Trump is. Best case, he’s grotesquely unqualified for the job. That’s the most charitable interpretation.

If the electorate so flagrantly abdicates its sacred duty, democracy won’t function.

You are either drastically overestimating people’s intelligence or underestimating their willful ignorance. Now, if you’d said “no person with a lick of sense” I’d have agreed, but the number of people that fail to meet that standard is much larger than you seem to think.

I could have said anyone with any common sense, but that was implied. Anyway, willful ignorance is not an excuse. I blame the people who chanted Lock Her Up and all the rest. I blame them more than Trump himself, who like a virus acted according to his essential nature. That they couldn’t be bothered to look up real information doesn’t let them off the hook.

Definitely not an excuse, I agree. All I am trying to say is I’m not holding my breath if we are waiting for the people that voted for him to wake up.

The poll also painted potential disaster for congressional Republicans in the 2018 midterms: 54% of respondents said they wanted Democrats to win control of the House of Representatives, compared to 38% who want Republicans to maintain control.

That was the widest margin Quinnipiac has ever measured for that question. The last record, in 2013, was a margin of 5 percentage points in favor of Republicans gaining control of the House.

The old record was a 5 point gap, and the current gap is… 16 points? Am I reading this right? If correct, this is uncharted territory.

Of course Trump has private thugs, so he probably doesn’t care.

Foreign Policy: Our country is at a crossroads, and the right path forward must not include Donald Trump as president.

We have all the makings of a banana republic. But worse, we are showing the telltale signs of a failing state. Our government has ceased to function. Party politics and gross self-interest has rendered the majority party oblivious to its responsibilities to its constituents and the Constitution of the United States. On a daily basis, Republicans watch their leader violate not only the traditions and standards of the high office he occupies, but through inaction they enable him to personally profit from the presidency, promote policies that benefit his cronies and his class to the detriment of the majority of the American people, and serially attack the principles on which the country was founded — from freedom of religion to the separation of powers.

Recent events have taken this grim situation and turned it dire. We now know that Donald Trump chose a man as his top national security advisor whom the prior president had both fired and warned him against hiring. We know that Trump’s White House failed to vet this man who would be entrusted with some of America’s most sensitive secrets and decisions. We know they did not get him the security clearance his position required, yet allowed him to operate freely in that position. We know that this man, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, took significant cash payments from an enemy, Russia, and from a nominal ally with which we have precarious relations, Turkey. We know Flynn failed to disclose those payments in violation of the law.

Democratic Underground: Consider the chaos of Trump’s upcoming foreign travel

In just over a week, on Friday May 19, Trump leaves for a 10-day trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Brussels, and Sicily. Who knows what will be going on with the investigations by then, but later no doubt it will still be hopping. Quite the distraction.

Add that Obama will be in Berlin with Merkel on May 25, prior to her joining Trump in Sicily. I expect there will be a lot of things getting under Trump’s skin the next few weeks. It will be interesting to watch. I will be in Europe the next four weeks, in Belgium when Trump is there.

Can Trump hold it together while traveling for this long?

Will he bow to and hold hands with a Saudi king? Maybe a kiss too?

So here is a devastating headline:

Wall Street Journal: Take an early look at the front page of The Wall Street Journal

It died in 1865 when we defeated your treasonous asses.

I hear Jefferson Davis is going great things.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Gil Cedillo announced today that he would introduce a motion at Friday’s council meeting to require contractors seeking to do business with the city to disclose whether they have submitted a bid to work on the U.S.-Mexico border wall proposed by President Donald J. Trump.

Under the proposed ordinance, companies that fail to disclose that they have sought contracts to build the wall would face “strict penalties and fines,” according to Cedillo.

“The City of Los Angeles has taken a strong position against Trump’s immigration policies, and Angelenos deserve to know if public dollars are going to contractors involved in building the wall,” the councilmember said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-issues-sweeping-new-criminal-charging-policy/2017/05/11/4752bd42-3697-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html?utm_term=.7e58a134a41d&tid=notifi_push_breaking-news&pushid=5915967efdd5491d0000003f

Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned the sweeping criminal charging policy of former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. and directed his federal prosecutors Thursday to charge defendants with the most serious, provable crimes carrying the most severe penalties.

The Holder memo, issued in August 2013, instructed his prosecutors to avoid charging certain defendants with drug offenses that would trigger long mandatory minimum sentences. Defendants who met a set of criteria such as not belonging to a large-scale drug trafficking organization, gang or cartel, qualified for lesser charges — and in turn less prison time — under Holder’s policy.

But Sessions’s new charging policy, outlined in a two-page memo and sent to more than 5,000 assistant U.S. attorneys across the country and all assistant attorneys general in Washington, orders prosecutors to “charge and purse the most serious, readily provable offense” and rescinds Holder’s policy immediately.

Gotta keep those private prisons full.