StupidiNews!

• Arizona law enforcement officials are saying that 73-year old Carey Hal Dyess went on a shooting spree near Yuma and killed five before turning the gun on himself.
• The New York Times has named Jill Abramson as the paper's next executive editor, the first woman to ever hold the post.
• Sukanya Roy of Scranton, PA survived a knock-down, drag-out 20 round fight to win...the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
• Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has survived a no-confidence vote, but has vowed to resign after the Fukushima Daiichi crisis is "contained".
• Scientists have discovered a tiny worm that lives a kilometer below the earth's surface, thriving in the depths of a South African mine.

Last Call

Mitt Romney announced his candidacy for President today.  Nobody really seemed to care.  Money quote:

"This president's first answer to every problem is to take power from you, your local government and your state so so-called experts in Washington can make decisions for you," Romney said. "And with each of those decisions, we lose more of our freedom."

Says the guy who is running on a party platform that the government must make all decisions about a woman's reproductive system.



Good luck with that.

Proving A Negative

The hard-right think tank American Enterprise Institute argues that Herman Cain's mere existence absolves the Tea Party, conservatives, and Republicans from all charges of racism.

"The [tea party] movement is, in the mind of many in the Democratic Party and liberal organizations, rooted in a fundamentally racist view of America and of the president," wrote AEI scholar Lazar Berman in an article posted to the institute's online journal TheAmerican.com. "Then why is Herman Cain, a conservative black businessman and radio host from Georgia, generating such excitement among the very people maligned as angry white racists?"

A staunch conservative who has wholly embraced the tea party's rhetoric and agenda, Cain was tied for second in a poll of Iowa Republican voters Wednesday. He came 5th among Republican primary voters in a national Gallup poll last week. Six weeks ago he received just 1 percent support in the same survey.

"[T]he Left loves to hurl the racist label at those who stand in the way of their policies and candidates," Berman wrote, adding that Cain proves the "grassroots anti-Obama movement is about ideas and the future of the country, not race."

"Racism is by no means dead in America," Berman concedes, but "the idea one must be racist to oppose Obama’s policies is cheap and intellectually feeble."

Oh I agree, you don't have to be a racist to be a Tea Party conservative Republican, nor are all of them racist.  But saying Herman Cain proves anything about the Tea Party is an equally "cheap and intellectually feeble" argument, one just as stupid and silly as saying all those who voted for Obama are anti-white racists.

But as I've explained before, racism is just a means to an end here, as the much bigger effort by the GOP is to paint Obama as "the other".  The racism argument is a canard, an easy way to muddy the waters with "both sides do it" false equivalence and straw men while the right continues to attack Obama from a number of "he's just not like us" angles.

Anti-Obama otherists have wrapped themselves in the flag of American exceptionalism, contending that Obama is different because he doesn't believe that the United States is special and superior to other nations. Last summer, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who at the time was mulling a bid for the GOP's 2012 presidential nomination, told Politico that Obama's "worldview is dramatically different than any president, Republican or Democrat, we've had… He grew up more as a globalist than an American. To deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation." (In March, Huckabee, à la Gingrich, claimed, wrongly, that Obama had grown up in Kenya and had thus absorbed an anti-colonialist sentiment that prompted him to have a "very different view" of the British than "the average American.") In November, former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum, another 2012 wannabe, told College Republicans at American University, "America is exceptional, and Americans are concerned that there are a group of people in Washington who don't believe that any more."

Cain is only useful to the right precisely because he is racial cover for them, and last time I checked that's racism, pure and simple.  Doesn't take a think tank to come up with this.

You Have To Believe It's Getting Better, Getting Better All The Time

Maddowblog writer and producer Jamil Smith notes the San Francisco Giants have become the latest sports franchise to join the It Gets Better project and argues that the walls of homophobia may finally be coming down in the world of pro sports:

Yesterday, the San Francisco Giants, winners of last season's World Series, became the first American pro sports team to release a video for the project. It features pitcher Barry Zito and several of his teammates speaking out on the common themes of the project: highlighting homophobia and bullying, and declaring them unacceptable.

One Giants fan commenting on the YouTube was particularly appreciative:

I've been a Giants fan since my sister taught me the game when I was 8 (and I've been gay since forever). I cannot begin to describe how much this means to me, and will mean to scores of young gay sports fans.

Some could snark and say that the Giants are not exactly going out on a limb, that "of course a team from San Francisco would put out the anti-gay video." That snark may have substance, but this is part of an emerging, and encouraging pattern in pro sports.

Last month, the president of the NBA's Phoenix Suns revealed that he is gay. So did a popular sports radio host and a former starter for the Villanova men's basketball team. Add on top of that the serious fines levied against two NBA stars for using homophobic slurs on the court, and you see that the culture -- even one as admittedly paleolithic as the locker room -- is starting to change.

It's a slow change, but long overdue.  Arguably sports has led the way as far as social changes and tolerance:  Joe Frasier, Jackie Robinson, Martina Navratilova, Wilt Chamberlain, but when it comes to gay men in team sports, that door has been welded shut for a very, very long time.

Perhaps that will change sooner than we think.

No Dealing On The Debt Ceiling, Part 13

House Republicans are increasingly convinced that they've won the debt ceiling battle and are confident that they will get their trillions in spending cuts, and that President Obama and the Democrats have no choice but to cave.

“Of course, it’s dangerous,” a House Republican close to Boehner said of the politics of a government default. “But it’s dangerous for everybody, especially the president. At the end of the day, [Obama] will have to give in.”

“Who has egg on their face if there is a sovereign debt crisis, House Republicans or the president?” asked another senior GOP lawmaker.

With a potential debt default by the U.S. government just two months off, and a continued standoff between the White House and GOP congressional leaders on how to move forward in boosting that limit, Republican lawmakers say publicly and privately that they believe Obama will be the one who has to cave.

Boehner and his top lieutenants — Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — are demanding that Obama put forth a comprehensive proposal to reduce the government’s $1.5 trillion deficit, and they are refusing to move on a debt-limit boost until the president does so.

Orange Julius figures he'll have a deal by Fourth of July, and that deal will include Medicare cuts, completely disarming the Democrats on the issue and assuring that the donks will walk right into the jet engine intake.

Politico's analysis aside, there should be absolute outrage from everyone that the Republicans are willing to trigger another recession just to win in 2012, but our "liberal media" is assuring we're too busy worrying about Anthony Weiner's weiner rather than the screwing our country is about to get.

Bend over, folks.  Once again the country's economic future depends solely on the Democrats not caving.

[UPDATE]  Nancy Pelosi and House Dems say they are standing firm and will not give in.  Frankly, I'm not worried about House Democrats caving...I'm worried about Senate Dems doing so.

Minty Fresh: Hello, Old Friends

I had just one day to appreciate this in Ubuntu before I made the move to Mint: Chromium Apps. Chromium is a great Chrome alternative, and this access to the market has taken it from great to incredible. My Blogger, Google Docs, favorite games and even access to RetroMUD can all be had from within my browser.

Evolution is available, and even works better than it did with Ubuntu.  This alternate to Microsoft Outlook has all the great tools and seems to integrate with other programs seamlessly.  My calendar and contacts are accessed by my computer at all times, so it's extremely easy to move that information into use by another system.  All my old friends were waiting for me; Empathy, Banshee, Chromium and Kjots were set up within minutes.

The move has been completely painless, and I have yet to find a single sacrifice by having done so.  My opinion is high and continues to climb.

A 74-Year-Old Hottie Is The Epitome Of Discipline

Yes, you read that right.  A 74-year-old woman is the oldest competing female bodybuilder and looks the part.  I find it interesting that she isn't the type I am used to seeing, where ropes of muscle and veins the size of highlighters overburden a medium-sized frame.  In fact, Ernestine Shepherd is toned and beautiful, and every bit a lady.  Just don't call her an old lady, or she may break you into little pieces.

Not only does Ernestine work out to extremes, she puts as much effort into encouraging others as she does pushing herself to the limit.  She is both warm and tough, and knows full well that being outperformed by a woman of her age is just the shove that some need to get motivated.

I just thought this was cool, and a nice break from ugly news and disaster.  Somewhere out there, we can know there is a butt-kicking grandma looking out for us.

The GOP Medicare Replacement Plan Is Going Down In Flames

Republicans are really in the soup on their Couponcare plan, and all major groups of voters are now opposed to the GOP plan, including Republicans and conservatives.

The poll indicates that 58 percent of the public opposes the Republican plan on Medicare, with 35 percent saying they support the proposal. The survey's Wednesday release comes as the president met with House Republicans to discuss, among other things, Medicare reform.


The House Republican 2012 budget, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, passed the chamber in April without a single Democratic vote and included a proposal to overhaul Medicare. Under the plan, the government would no longer directly pay medical costs for those 55 and younger, but instead would offer subsidies for seniors to use to get private health insurance coverage.

"Half of those we questioned say that the country would be worse off under the GOP Medicare proposals and 56 percent think that GOP plan would be bad for the elderly," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Opposition is highest among senior citizens, at 74 percent, suggesting that seniors are most worried about changes to Medicare even if those changes are presented as ones that would not affect existing Medicare recipients."

"A majority of all demographic groups don't favor the GOP Medicare proposals," Holland adds. "That includes conservatives - 54 percent of them don't like the plan. As a result, rank-and-file Republicans are split right down the middle, with 48 percent favoring the GOP plan and 50 percent opposed."

The poll is another sign that the House Republicans’ Medicare proposal could be politically damaging to the party. Last week the Democrats won a special election to fill a vacant House seat in New York's 26th congressional district, which the GOP held for over a generation. The Ryan Medicare plan became a major issue in the race, with both the Democratic and Republican candidates, the party committees and outside organizations spending millions of dollars to run ads that focused on Medicare.

Let me repeat that:  A majority of Republicans and conservatives and a massive majority of seniors oppose the Republican plan to replace Medicare with a voucher system.  C'mon, Democrats.  You are literally being handed the 2012 elections on a silver platter.

Follow through on this.

University Of Hard Knocks, Part 2

With the housing market in shambles, 9% unemployment becoming the new normal and the American consumer reeling, the next big debt bubble looks to be the student loan industry in the country.

Young people between the ages of 16 and 24 face an unemployment rate nearly twice that of the rest of the population, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. 2010's 18.4 percent rate for youth was the worst in the 60 years that economists have collected such data. ColorLines notes that in 2010, 8.4 percent of white college graduates were unemployed, 13.8 percent of Latino graduates, and a dismal 19 percent of black graduates.

Those bright, shiny new degrees simply aren't worth the paper they're printed on all too often. The cost of a college degree is up some 3,400 percent since 1972, but as we all know too well, household incomes haven't increased by anything close to that number -- not for the bottom 99 percent of us, anyway.

Pell Grants for students have shrunk drastically in relation to the ballooning cost of a four-year college, and Paul Ryan wants to cut them even more, pushing some 1.4 million students into loans, more of which come each year from private lenders with little to no accountability.

The problem is simple.  College costs have gone up by more than 30 times in the last 40 years, wages haven't.  Yet, employed college graduates make nearly a million dollars more over the course of their working years than non-college graduates.  That's a big gap between haves and have-nots.  On the other hand, unemployed college graduates are facing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

And let's not forget a lot of college debt is held by private finance players and big banks.  There's a reason why they are more than happy to sacrifice this generation of college grads to the unemployment line to avoid any inflation whatsoever, because in an inflation economy, the creditor loses.  In a deflation economy however, the creditor makes out like a bandit.  And with wages falling across the board, it's turning into a real nightmare.

Something's got to give, and when it does, it's going to be brutal.

StupidiNews!

• Rare tornadoes in western Massachusetts have claimed 4 lives and caused millions in damage in the city of Springfield.
• NATO has extended the mission in Libya another 90 days, authorizing the use of force to September.
• Mitt Romney will officially enter the 2012 presidential race today in New Hampshire, despite his mixed popularity ratings there.
• Government antitrust proceedings against Google may ultimate take years, legal experts say, which could drain the company's resources.
• Quantum computing with "extra useless quantum bits" may actually serve as redundancy protection, serving to safeguard against certain problems.

Last Call

Via The Kroog, Martin Wolf at the Financial Times sees the Greek Fire burning through the eurozone and quickly on the failure of Greece to meet its targets.  Austerity has failed, and the only choices left are a permanent bailout system at the expense of the EU countries like Germany that will eventually collapse the Euro, or massive sovereign debt restructuring that will most likely lead to the same result.

Debt restructuring looks inevitable. Yet it is also easy to see why it would be a nightmare, particularly if, as Mr Bini Smaghi insists, the ECB would refuse to lend against the debt of defaulting states. In the absence of ECB support, banks would collapse. Governments would surely have to freeze bank accounts and redenominate debt in a new currency. A run from the public and private debts of every other fragile country would ensue. That would drive these countries towards a similar catastrophe. The eurozone would then unravel. The alternative would be a politically explosive operation to recycle fleeing outflows via public sector inflows.

 

Events have, in short, thoroughly falsified the premises of the original design. If that is the design the dominant members still want, they must remove some of the existing members. Managing that process is, however, nigh on impossible. If, however, they want the eurozone to work as it is, at least three changes are inescapable. First, banking systems cannot be allowed to remain national. Banks must be backed by a common treasury or by the treasury of unimpeachably solvent member states. Second, cross-border crisis finance must be shifted from the ESCB to a sufficiently large public fund. Third, if the perils of sovereign defaults are to be avoided, as the ECB insists, finance of weak countries must be taken out of the market for years, perhaps even a decade. Such finance must be offered on manageable conditions in terms of the cost but stiff requirements in terms of the reforms. Whether the resulting system should be called a “transfer union” is uncertain: that depends on whether borrowers pay everything back (which I doubt). But it would surely be a “support union”.

The eurozone confronts a choice between two intolerable options: either default and partial dissolution or open-ended official support. The existence of this choice proves that an enduring union will at the very least need deeper financial integration and greater fiscal support than was originally envisaged. How will the politics of these choices now play out? I truly have no idea. I wonder whether anybody does.

And as I have been warning in the Greek Fire series for over a year now,  the end result will be the end of the Euro as a currency.   The larger effects will almost certainly include another serious hit to the global financial system as well.  The individual banks in countries like Ireland, Greece, and Spain owe German banks serious money, and if they default, the whole thing is going to come apart...either that or Germany's going to have to eat billions of euros in debt restructuring, causing basically the same thing.

The Greek Fire situation just got a whole lot worse, folks.  Count on it.

Being Civil In The Land Of Lincoln

Illinois becomes the sixth state in the nation to have a civil union law go into effect as of today, June 1.

Starting Wednesday, same-sex couples in Illinois can enter into civil unions and enjoy many of the legal protections granted to married couples.

In January, Illinois joined five other states in legalizing civil unions. Gov. Pat Quinn signed the law in front of a crowd of cheering residents during a ceremony in a Chicago auditorium.

"We are showing the world that the people of Illinois believe in equality for all," Quinn said January 31. "We look forward to individuals and businesses from across the country choosing to move to Illinois where we believe that everyone is entitled to the same rights."

The provision, which goes into effect Wednesday, is called Senate Bill 1716 and creates the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act.

The new law will allow same-sex and heterosexual couples to enter into civil unions granting them many rights given to married couples.

These rights include automatic hospital visitation rights, the ability to make emergency medical decisions for partners, the ability to share a room in a nursing home, adoption and parental rights, pension benefits, inheritance rights and the right to dispose of a partner's remains, the governor's office said.

"In addition to Illinois, five other states and the District of Columbia have civil unions or similar laws on the books. Those states include California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington," the governor's office said.

It's good to know that equality is slowly coming to the US, state by state.  Very slowly, but it's making forward progress.  Any serious student of civil rights in this country should recognize the long struggle here, but it's one that will eventually be won in all 50 states.

Indeed Returns Ralph Reed

Our liberal media has declared former Christian Coalition front man Ralph Reed absolved of his ties to convicted lobbyist fraudster Jack Abramoff, and back in the political god-botherer business. His new outfit, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, is ready to become a major force in the 2012 GOP primary.

Mr. Reed is pursuing these grand, some say grandiose, plans with a nonprofit group that he has described as “a 21st-century version of the Christian Coalition on steroids.” As the name implies, the Faith and Freedom Coalition hopes to rope in a broader constituency. His “sweet spot,” he says, is the millions of people who were fired up by the fiscal concerns of the Tea Party and share the cultural values of evangelicals.

“That’s our market,” he added.

The coalition’s red, white and blue logo is reminiscent of the Christian Coalition’s. The new group is holding its second annual conference in Washington on Friday and Saturday, conjuring memories of the “Road to Victory” events that the Christian Coalition held in the capital every year.

As with the Christian Coalition, this group’s conference roster includes nearly all the likely contenders for the presidential nomination, including former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Herman Cain, a retired businessman, and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, as well as a famous almost-candidate, Donald Trump. There will also be evangelical leaders like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and establishment Republicans like Speaker John A. Boehner and Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman.

“Ralph is rebuilding his image,” said Matt Towery, a columnist and pollster in Atlanta who formerly managed Newt Gingrich’s Congressional campaigns. “How powerful will he be? We have no way of knowing, but he’s very clever and has the talent and connections to reinvent himself.”

Many of the retirees gathered here could not even recall who Ralph Reed was, let alone ponder his past. But they loved his message. Weaving together themes of the Tea Party and evangelical Christians, he called the debt crisis a sign that the country has lost sight of its founding moral principles. He said that by working together, fiscal and cultural conservatives can “begin the process of turning the country around.”

“Our goal for 2012 is to build a file of 29 million conservative voters,” he said, describing to cheers the political “ground game” he is best known for, now souped-up with Internet technologies. “We’ll e-mail them, we’ll call them, we’ll knock on their doors and, if necessary, we’ll drive them to the polls.”

No matter if his goals are realistic, Mr. Reed’s return is welcomed by many Republicans, said Phil Cox, executive director of the Republican Governors Association, because “Ralph has a great track record.” The Abramoff ties are “largely in the rear-view mirror,” Mr. Cox said. 

Any wonder then that the last time Ralph Reed had any political pull was in the mid 90's, as Newt and the Contract With America swept to power and the Christian Evagelicals flocked to stop the horrors on a Clinton second term?

Who says Republicans don't believe in recycling?  Those of you too young to remember what Reed and friends did to Clinton 16 years ago, you're about to get a front row seat.

A Weiner Is Not Andrew Breitbart Or The Village

Old Weinergate theory:  It's a hoax.  Shut it.

New Weinergate Theory:  Weiner told the press to go frak themselves yesterday, so we're now saying he's guilty of something.

Weiner’s actions raise questions: At first glance, it was easy to dismiss the story that a lewd photo to a young woman had come from Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) Twitter account. The explanation: Weiner’s account was hacked, and that seems like a common thing these days. But the congressman’s actions over the past 24 hours have raised more questions than answered them. For one thing, he hired an attorney. Second, and more importantly, he refused to answer reporters’ simple question on whether or not he sent the photo. Question: Was it from you or not? Weiner’s non-answer: “If I were giving a speech to 45,000 people and someone in the back threw a pie or yelled out an insult, I would not spend the next two hours of my speech responding to that pie or insult.” Third, he refused to answer why he was following the young woman on Twitter. Here’s this truism about Washington scandals: If someone is guilty, it’s never an isolated incident. Weiner has now put himself in a position of having to prove innocence -- which is never a good place to be for a politician, especially one who resides in the media capital of the world.

So sayeth Chuck Todd's crew at MSNBC, so shall it now be the "truth".  Andrew Breitbart?  Totally believable.  Anthony Weiner?  Dirty liar.  Also he's following someone on Twitter, which is illegal when a Democrat does it.

You guys should have stuck with the first assumption, because one of Joe Cannon's readers over at Cannonfire has figured out how the hoax was pulled off and has reproduced the method.  The vulnerability was in the yfrog.com picture service and not Twitter.

Not only that. Believe it or not, when an outsider sends a pic to someone else's Yfrog account in this fashion, the action creates a message in the "twitterstream." The message seems to originate with the Twitter account holder -- but it doesn't. It comes from somewhere else -- from someone mailing a picture to the account holder.

This is a serious security flaw in the design of Yfrog and Twitter. It allows a malicious outsider to "spoof" a tweet that seems to come from someone else.

Click on the image below (to enlarge it) and examine the "twitterstream." You'll see what I mean.

Please understand that I have never sent a single tweet in my entire life.

The first two instances were created automatically, when I uploaded those first two test pictures to Yfrog (as outlined in previous posts). The third instance was created when milowent sent a pic to my Yfrog address.

Both the tweet and the image seem to originate with me, but they did not.

This was the perfect frame. We know it was a frame because of the URL address beneath the header -- or rather, the lack thereof in the Weiner "crotch shot" screen cap.

Oops.  A little detective work seems to indicate that using the Yfrog.com vulnerability is a much, much more likely explanation as to what really happened.  So yes, that could explain why Weiner lawyered up, too.  So would I, I'd want to know what my rights and legal recourse options were if I were a public figure like Rep. Weiner is.

So, somebody want to explain to me how this isn't a hit job on one of the most outspoken liberals in Congress?

Ahh, but I have to keep the Democrat Stupidity tag because Weiner keeps refusing to say that the picture isn't of him.  Sigh.



If this is something as stupid as an old girlfriend getting revenge, or someone hacking the guy's hard drive because hey, he kept a picture of his junk on it, admitting to that would actually be better in the long run than the long, slow death of his career by Breitbart and News Corp.

[UPDATE]  Looks like A. Weiner will set the record straight on The Rachel Maddow Show tonight.

Minty Fresh: Look And Feel

The software manager works just like Ubuntu, handling dependencies intuitively and letting you search and add as you please. I was able to get it to connect to the router and after a run of updates I was completely at home.

One subject of debate with Minty is the difference in menu styles.  However, with a few clicks I had reset my Ubuntu drawers and customized menus. I actually like the menu, but those who do not can go back to the Ubuntu look and feel with a little tweaking.

As you can see above, the top left corner has the traditional main menu that is instantly recognizable. You can pin favorites on the new menu, or browse all your applications.

The desktop and window graphics are superior to Ubuntu.  The green tones are actually subdued and attractive (you can change them if you like) and the little pretty things are even prettier.  The graphics don't seem to burden my laptop, unlike the last couple of Ubuntu updates.  The workspace manager lets you stay organized and productive.

Look and feel gets a five out of five.  It's the best of Ubuntu with significant improvement.  It is efficient and clean, and geared towards productivity.  What a newbie wouldn't know, they could find with some modest effort on their part.  The support and help files are friendly and easy to follow.  The menu allows you to make as many taskbars as you like, and line them with drawers that are 100% customizable as well.  If you have a certain way of doing things, it would be hard to find a setting that can't be easily altered to suit you.  This is completely newbie friendly and ready to run.  When compared to Ubuntu 11.04, Mint 11 wins by miles.  When compared to Windows it wins by an even wider margin, because it allows you to set up with ease and is even more attractive than what I've seen of Windows 7.  I have no Mac comparison, but if any of you are Mac people please let me know what you think.