Last Call For Dissed Christie

What a precipitous fall for New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie. He's run into a massive backlash over his failed presidential campaign and recent endorsement of Donald Trump.  Now papers in his home state are calling for the governor's resignation, the largest of which is the Newark Star-Ledger. Their editorial board is now openly calling for Christie to step down.

Gov. Chris Christie has made it abundantly clear that governing New Jersey is a distant second priority for him, far behind the demands of his personal ambition. 

He has answered every crisis with neglect during his disastrous second term. 

Atlantic City is about to go bankrupt, and yet he sat on a reform package for six months without explanation. The transit system is in disrepair, with our link to New York City vulnerable to a crippling breakdown, and he watches passively as the transit fund drifts toward bankruptcy. New Jersey's fiscal crisis is the nation's second worst, and he has charted no viable path toward a political deal. 

All this is infuriating when you consider that Christie possesses the political talent to steer the state towards safer ground. He made that clear in his first term, when he scored substantial wins on a centrist agenda. 

But if his first term showed that he has the talent, his second term has shown that he lacks the character. 

His craven endorsement of Donald Trump is only the final blow, the moment when he lost any last shred of credibility. His fulsome praise of Trump, after his stinging condemnations only a few weeks ago, is impossible to believe.

New Jersey's paper of record ends with a brutal assessment of Christie's multiple failures:

Our hope is that the calls for his resignation grow into a roar, that it includes Republican voices, and that Christie finds some face-saving way to step aside. 

Failing that, we can only hope that he takes a moral inventory of his own conduct and changes course. If not, it will be time to consider a recall election. 

The best answer for New Jersey would be for the governor to quit on his own. It's time for fresh leadership in this state. Christie has done enough damage.

He won't step down of course, and the editorial makes no mistake in falsely believing Christie possesses the moral character to do so at all.  It's very apparent however that Christie's higher political ambitions are done.

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving pile of garbage.

Flipping The Script On SCOTUS, Con't

So, what is President Obama's plan to get his Supreme Court nominee a hearing?  The first obstacle is Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the current Senate Judiciary Chair. Grassley has vowed that President Obama's nominee won't get consideration at all, letting the rest of the Senate Republicans off the hook.

Only one problem.  Grassley is up for re-election.  And President Obama knows how to play this game.  First the left hook:

President Obama is vetting Jane L. Kelly, a federal appellate judge in Iowa, as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, weighing a selection that could pose an awkward dilemma for her home-state senator Charles E. Grassley, who has pledged to block the president from filling the vacancy. 

The F.B.I. has been conducting background interviews on Judge Kelly, 51, according to a person with knowledge of the process. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is closely guarding details about Mr. Obama’s search to fill the opening created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. 

The president is expected to make his selection in the next couple of weeks, a decision that could reshape the court for decades but faces heated opposition from Republicans in Congress. 

Mr. Grassley is at the center of that fight as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a post in which he alone can decide whether to hold confirmation hearings on a nominee. Like the panel’s other Republicans, he has vowed not to take any action until after the November election, arguing that the choice should be left to the next president.

And then when you've got them stunned, you land the right cross.

Former Iowa Lt. Gov. and Secretary of Agriculture Patty Judge will enter Iowa’s U.S. Senate race, multiple sources confirmed to The Des Moines Register Thursday. 

Judge, a Democrat, will challenge long-time incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has been under fire in recent weeks over his refusal to hold confirmation hearings for a successor to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly earlier this month. 

Sources in Washington, D.C., and in Des Moines – including people who have spoken with Judge as recently as this morning – confirmed to the Register that she will announce her candidacy on Friday. 

Judge told the Des Moines Register late last week that she was considering a run, largely because of Grassley’s stance on the court vacancy. 

"I don’t like this deliberate obstruction of the process,” she told the Register last week. “I think Chuck Grassley owes us better. He’s been with us a long time. Maybe he’s been with us too long.”

Boom, baby.  Suddenly Grassley has a formidable challenger to his seat in Patty Judge, and she has an immediate issue to run on, for Jane Kelly is an eminently qualified federal judge whom Grassley himself recommended to the bench.

If you doubted Barack Obama on this, doubt no more.  Do not be surprised if Jane Kelly is his pick.

Debbie Has To Go

I've been calling for DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign for months now.

Schultz has been an unmitigated disaster as DNC chair, with the Democrats losing the House and Senate under her tenure and giving Republicans that largest margin in the House in three generations. Now she sandbags the President on Iran? 

Unacceptable. She's clearly more afraid of AIPAC than Democrats, and that alone is a serious problem. But when that turns into direct action against the President of her own party and his signature foreign policy achievment, she can't be shown the door quickly enough. 

I'm tired of her losing. I'm tired of her running against Barack Obama and losing to Tea Party Republicans. I'm tired of her idiocy. 

She needs to go.

With Super Tuesday out of the way and Clinton on the clear path to the nomination, it's time to clean house so we can clean House, if you know what I mean.  The only way we get what both Hillary and Bernie have been calling for is a Democratic Congress, and nobody has been worse at that since Schultz took over in Obama's first term only to run into the buzzsaw that was 2010 midterm elections.

Enter Chuck Pierce, who reminds us that Schultz is now actively working to create legislation that will help big banks and wreck any wort of financial sector reform.

It is time for her to go. More important, it's time for Hillary Rodham Clinton to insist that she go.

In addition to putting the Congress behind some of the worst predatory bastards in America, this move also gives the lie to anything HRC says about her dedication to reigning in financial crimes. Moreover, this puts the DNC squarely on the other side of the issue from both Bernie Sanders and Senator Professor Warren and, therefore, on the other side of the issue from about 90 percent of some voters she is going to need desperately in the fall. (The payday loan industry always has been something that jumps on SPW's last nerve). This latest move by DWS completely undermines the work of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, which already is under siege from a number of different directions and will be one of the prime targets of any Republican president also armed with a Republican Congress. And can I imagine Herr Trump talking shameless ragtime about payday lenders as part of his absurd kabuki financial populism? You bet I can.

Yeah, this is long overdue.  We need somebody in the DNC now with the goal of winning back Congress, and Schultz is not it.  Not even close.

She's got to go.

StupidiNews!

• Astronaut Scott Kelly has returned from his year aboard the ISS as NASA will look at how his body has changed compared to his twin brother and former astronaut Mark Kelly.
• Scientists have discovered ancient fossils of fungus strands thought to be over 440 million years old, making them Earth's oldest-known land organism fossils.
• Ben Carson has effectively suspended his presidential campaign and will not attend tonight's GOP debate in his home state of Michigan.
• Fracking pioneer Anthony McClendon has died in a single-car accident in Oklahoma the morning before he was to face federal grand jury charges of bid rigging in oil drilling leases.
• New federal regulations to authenticate student information for college loans are causing headaches for students, parents, and universities.