America

While few predicted the stock market surge should Trump get elected, virtually everyone anticipated a thawing of relations between Russia and the US if Donald Trump were to occupy the White House. And yet, 5 months later, the opposite has happened: stocks are just shy of the record 2,400 while relations between the Kremlin and the White House, despite all the rhetoric of Trump being an extended KGB agent or whatever the NYT/WaPo unsubstantiated narrative of the day is, have remained abysmal with no hope of improvement in sight.

The six year Syrian proxy war to dethrone president Bashar al Assad quietly ended with a whimper yesterday when at a news conference in the Turkish capital, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested the end of Bashar Assad’s presidency is no longer a prerequisite for a way out of the Syrian crisis, in a dramatic U-turn from Washington’s long-held policy.

The other candidate called them Deplorables, even if she herself was a card-carrying Despicable. Well, never mind her, as she lost and will never darken the halls of power again. Perhaps a more fair term for Trump’s key demographic, more accurate than what she coined, would be the Pitifuls. Pitiful they are.

Seemingly no amount of brand destruction will ever be sufficient to convince Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz that while most adult-aged Americans seem to like his company's coffee, roughly 50% of them couldn't give a flying flip about his leftist political opinions that he's constantly try to shove down their throats along with their morning java.

Drudge Report founder Matt Drudge does not personally tweet too often, so when he does, it is either when something has infuriated him or, more rarely, when he has words of affirmation.  Today it was the latter, when Drudge praised Senator Rand Paul, tweeting that he had an "Intriguing lunch in hill office of America's best senator, Rand Paul. He's bold, brave and has somehow kept his heart in such a corrupt city."