Trump's Transition Poll #s Dropping Fast | Trump Says Repeal ACA At Once

Trump's Poll Numbers Diving

1. Only 37% of voters approve of Donald Trump's transition to the presidency, writes a new Quinnipiac University poll. Women lead the way with 59% of female voters disapproving of how Trump is doing his job. 

The measures of Trump's personal qualities all are more negative than they were in a November 22 Quinnipiac University poll:

53 - 39 percent that he is not honest, compared to 52 - 42 percent November 22;
49 - 44 percent that he has good leadership skills, compared to 56 - 38 percent;
52 - 44 percent that he does not care about average Americans, compared to 51 - 45 percent who said he did care;
62 - 33 percent that he is not level-headed, compared to 57 - 38 percent;
71 - 25 percent that he is a strong person, compared to 74 - 23 percent;
68 - 27 percent that he is intelligent, compared to 74 - 21 percent.

Trump Takes on Vaccine Safety

2. Long a skeptic of vaccines, president-elect Donald Trump met with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to chair a new commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity, Kennedy told reporters in Manhatan's Trump Tower lobby on Tuesday. 

The unprecedented move would contradict established science, medicine and the US government's position on links between medical conditions like autism and vaccines. Kennedy is a proponent of a widely discredited theory that links vaccines and autism. 

In 1998, a well-respected journal published the work of researcher Andrew Wakefield and 12 of his colleagues that linked standard measles, mumps and rubella vaccines to autism. Based on a tiny sample size of 12 and speculative conclusions, the research was embraced by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey and Trump who actually called upon parents to stop vaccinating their children. 

The problem: The study was an elaborate fraud.

Editors of the Lancet, which published the original piece, discovered that Wakefield had been funded by attorneys for parents who were pursuing lawsuits against vaccine companies and that a number of elements of the paper were misreported.

In February 2010, the journal retracted the piece, and in an investigative piece in 2011, in The BMJ found even more shenanigans in the way the study was conducted. Some parents of children in the study reported by Wakefield to have autism said they did not, and others who were listed in the study as having no problems before the vaccine actually had had developmental issues. via The Washington Post

Trump Tells GOP To Quickly Replace Health Care Law

3. President-elect Trump told Republicans to "get to business" and quickly repeal President Obama's Affordable Care Act, saying "Obamacare has been a catastrophic event." Trump indicated that he expected a repeal "probably some time next week", then saying "the replace will be very quickly or simultaneously very shortly thereafter."

Several Republicans are very nervous about repealing the ACA without a clear alternative plan in place. via The New York Times

Watching 'The Crown' With the QE2 Falling Apart In Dubai & John Boehner's Tears Long Gone From Trumpworld

Watching 'The Crown' With the QE2 Falling Apart In Dubai & John Boehner's Tears Long Gone From Trumpworld

Could we agree that any woman trying to lead the free world, who cried in prime time, would be run out of Dodge? I finally tuned into the Netflix series 'The Crown', and I assure you that the young queen Elizabeth will be steely and duty-driven -- keeping it together when her father dies. And that is exactly how the second episode ends, with Elizabeth burying her adoring love and grief for her dead father deep in her heart, now masked by royal obligations to her public and the entire British Empire.

Watching 'The Crown' knowing that the electoral college voted on Monday for Donald Trump as America's next president, I can't help thinking about Republican John Boehner's arrival as Speaker of the House.  He wept through his 2010 60 Minutes interview, a reality that did not amuse me in the least, given the Republican agenda for America. In fact, those tears are typically called a charade when a damsel in distress turns on the floodgates.

Indeed when I wrote about Boehner's intentions to lead the charge against abortion and contraception rights in America, it was after after watching a chilling meeting with his chief of staff Mick Krieger accepting one of those tiny plastic babies in perfect form meant to represent a six-week old embryo. In reality, those cells and molecules are a blob about the size of a pomegranate seed, and I don't mean to be disrespectful in any way. But it's another example of post-factual information suggesting that these perfectly formed cereal box creatures (I am not making this up. Republicans put them in cereal and candy boxes at state fairs) are in any way representative of the actual pregnancy process.  To me the meeting signalled the hell that poor women in America would go through as Republicans ripped away not only abortion rights but also access to contraception and general health care for women living all over America in impoverished communities. There is no satisfaction in saying that my instincts were correct.

Amal & George Clooney Host April 16 Hillary Clinton Fundraiser In LA, April 15 In San Francisco

Superstars George and Amal Clooney will be co-hosting cocktails and dinner with Hillary Clinton in April fundraisers in Los Angeles on April 16 and San Francisco a day earlier. Proceeds will go to the Hillary Victory Fund.

The Clinton campaign is running a contest that gives supporters across America the chance to meet Clinton, George and Amal at their home. Would-be guests can text CLOONEY to 47246 and donate $10 to enter the lottery.

George Clooney has nothing but praise for Hillary Clinton, while agreeing that candidate Bernie Sanders has offered much critical conversation to the public dialogue. Without mentioning Donald Trump by name, George Clooney refers to the GOP frontrunner's slogan and rhetoric in his letter to friends and potential donors.

“If you listen to the loudest voices out there today, you’d think we’re a country that hates Mexicans, hates Muslims, and thinks that committing war crimes is the best way to make America great again,” Clooney writes.

“The truth is that the only thing that would prevent America from being great would be to empower these voices.”

It's important to note that Clooney has not hesitated to criticize Clinton in the past. Today Clooney sent out a letter about theClinton April 16 LA fundraiser, praising her as the only candidate ready to lead America. 

“In all of this clutter, there’s been one consistent voice — a voice of tolerance and experience from a candidate who’s spent a lifetime fighting for the rights of the less fortunate,” Clooney says of Clinton, the “only grown-up in the room” and the leading Democratic contender for the presidential nomination. “A candidate who knows firsthand the complexity of our international relationships. That candidate is Hillary Clinton.”

Co-sponsors for the Clooney LA event are Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg, Steven Speilberg and Kate Capshaw, and Haim and Cheryl Saban. HIllary will be in Los Angeles on Thursday, March 24 for a series of fundraisers, including an event at the nightclub Avalon Hollywood and a reception at the home of ICM Partners’ Chris Silbermann and Julia Franz.

About Victory Funds

In late February 2016, the Washington Post reported that a record 32 state parties signed onto the Democratic National Committee's victory fundraising committee. Thanks to a much disputed 2014 US Supreme Court decision that eliminated a cap on how much donors can contribute to federal campaigns in a single year.

Victory funds allow candidates to pool large amounts of money from a single donor. They work like this, explains US News: An individual can give $2,700 for a candidate's primary campaign, another $2,700 for the general election, $33,400 every year to the party and $10,000 per year to each state party.

That means a victory fund like Clinton's, which is aligned with 33 state parties, can — and does — take checks of more than $350,000.

Obama and 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney both used those fundraising devices in the last election, but they became even more powerful in 2014, when the Supreme Court struck down the cap on what any one donor can contribute each year.

The Democratic National Committee began 2015 $1 million in the red, a situational that Clinton remedied with fundraising efforts that had the DNC closing out the year with $17 for Democratic candidates. Bernie Sanders has raised nothing for other Democratic candidates at a moment when Democrats see the opportunity of regaining the Senate. A Trump candidacy could potentially even put the House of Representatives in play.