Worst Kasich Scenario, Part 2

Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich is bound and determined to drive his approval numbers down into the dirt, it seems.  This week, he's given Ohio women a lovely holiday gift: banning Ohio's state insurance exchange from offering any plans that cover abortion.

House Bill 79, which would prohibit insurance plans participating in a yet-to-be created state health exchange or marketplace from providing abortion coverage, was among 13 bills Kasich signed this morning. They were passed last week during the legislature’s final session days of 2011.

“Ohio is witnessing historic gains in legislation that protects mothers and saves unborn babies," said Mike Gonidakis, executive director for Ohio Right to Life.

The new federal health-care law requires states to have an exchange in place by 2014 to give consumers and small businesses a place to shop and compare policies. Gonidakis said the federal health-care law allows states to opt out of abortion coverage. 

Ahh, but there's a catch: the ACLU is eager to challenge the law, based on Issue 3 that passed in the state last month:

But the ACLU of Ohio has said the constitutional amendment that Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved last month was a message in opposition to the mandated insurance provisions of the federal health-care law and can now be used to block measures to restrict abortion access.

Issue 3 says that no state law shall "prohibit the purchase or sale of health care or health insurance" or "impose a penalty for the sale or purchase or health care or insurance." 

In other words, the same legal mumbo-jumbo that Kasich and the GOP used to "eliminate" the individual insurance mandate is now the same legislation that the ACLU will use to fight this anti-abortion measure.

And make no mistake, this is a bill that will eliminate insurance providers from covering abortions, making them all but unaffordable to women.  That's the point...and there's probably going to be a number of court battles in states over this as well as a Supreme Court fight eventually.

Let's keep in mind the GOP plan is to have as many blatantly unconstitutional bans on abortion as possible to make it de facto unavailable for any woman.  After all, court battles can take far longer than pregnancies.

So women of Ohio, what do you plan to do about the Republicans in November?

Buckeye Black Eye

And the NCAA dropped the hammer yesterday on The Ohio State University's football program, in a pretty meaningful way, hitting the Buckeyes with a postseason ban for next year plus scholarship reductions and a big fine.

Several players, including star quarterback Terrelle Pryor, allegedly swapped team and personal memorabilia and equipment for tattoos and other benefits. Tressel became aware of the transactions, which violate NCAA rules, but did not report them on a form that all coaches are required to submit.

"Of great concern to the committee was the fact that the former head coach became aware of these violations and decided not to report the violations to institutional officials, the big Ten Conference or the NCAA," the NCAA Division 1 Committee on Infractions said in its report.

Tressel received a five-year show-cause order that limits his athletic-related duties and applies to any NCAA school that may want to hire him.

In addition to the postseason ban, the NCAA imposed penalties of additional scholarship reductions, three years' probation, and the forfeiture of almost $340,000 and all of Ohio State's victories for the 2010 season.

No bowl games or Big Ten title game for the Scarlet and Grey next season, and frankly I thought Tressel got off light.  The fact of the matter is major infractions seem to keep happening because for now, the risk of getting caught pales in comparison to the reward from winning at all costs.  Sadly, as anyone can tell you who has been paying attention to either politics or finance in the last 10 years, that's exactly the life lesson you need to be teaching people these days, apparently.

The Dumbest Pizza-Related Story You Will Ever Read. Ever.

SMYRNA, Tenn. - For the rest of the semester, a Rutherford County elementary student has to eat lunch at the "silent table" for allegedly waving around a slice of pizza some say resembled a gun.

Nicholas Taylor attends David Youree Elementary School in Smyrna, about 30 miles southeast of Nashville.

School leaders say the 10-year-old threatened other students at his lunch table with a piece of pizza with bites out of it so it looked like a gun and when asked about it was initially not truthful.

Nicholas' mother LeAnn calls her son's punishment "absolutely ridiculous" saying he was just playing around and never said anything derogatory or anything about shooting anyone.

"The kid across the table from him said it looked like a gun so he picked it up and started started shooting it in the air," she told Nashville's News 2 Investigates.

The school says they are just using an abundance of caution.  Abundance, my ass.  This is stupid.  What in the hell is "silent lunch" and why is a little boy punished for doing something totally normal for his age and stage of development?  Boys play.  You can't threaten someone's life a piece of pizza, no matter how hard you try (I may or may not have tried that once).  There seemed to be no attempt to explain to him why he might not want to do that, but the mother says they made it clear they would suspend him if there was a second episode.

I'm not done with this.  I'm just taking a break to gather my thoughts on so many problems in the article I linked to.  I'll start with an upcoming bit on silent lunches, something I had never heard of until this came up.  The preliminary searches aren't kind, but if this is really what it seems I'll have a lot to say about this.  I will then likely finish with yet another rant about zero tolerance stupidity.

Pizza.  Gun hand.  Ten-year-old boy.  Silent lunch.  Load of crap.

Bag of Bones Disappointing (Spoiler Alert)

I hate the "Stephen King movies suck" bandwagon, but I'm afraid they may have a genuine point here.  Bag of Bones fell flat.  It wasn't all their fault, though.  It's hard to translate a book that took place in a man's head and turn into a four hour movie.  To my surprise, Pierce Brosnan did okay as Mike Noonan.  He was a bit too smooth,  but handled the scenes pretty well.  The only real casting error was Ki, who was about twice as old as she should have been.  She went from a toddler in the book to at least seven or eight in the movie, and still acted like a toddler.  No bueno, though the little actress did a phenomenal job of holding "terror face" for a long time and keeping it genuine.

The heavy-handed plot changes took their toll, that's all.  I can't see why they made Noonan a stranger to the land, it made little sense.  He would have had knowledge of these people, he would have had friends and family friends at Dark Score Lake, which is how it was originally written.  This was nothing but a ploy to have some discovery dialogues and it failed miserably.  Some of the best scenes were lost because of this.  His argument with Bill, his uneasy relationship with the townsfolk, etc.  Some of the other plot changes were just damn stupid.  Making Lance try to kill his daughter?  Having him shot to death in front of her?  Conveniently never really talking about it after that came out?  Did these guys even read the book?

I knew there would have to be some muttering to himself segues and I accepted it, but they still went overboard.  In this world, he didn't know Bill at all.  So why would he tell him something so intimate as "when we got frisky on this couch she would say we were ringing Bunter's bell?"  That's not the sort of thing two men share, especially not old Maine farts full of Yankee pride.  And Jellison's where he got an unexplained updated on what had happened on the TR for the last several years was unbelievable.  They were cheap tools used to scar a masterpiece.  It also barely touched on the most terrifying part of the story, the collective "village" mentality that allowed all of this to happen in the first place.  I can think of several ways they could have included that in the story but decided to avoid it at all costs.

The end was unforgivably lame.  The epic battle between Sara and Jo, not even mentioned.  The owls never came into play.  The amazing moment of understanding, when he realized his dead wife had been talking to him all along in their own language, we were robbed of it.  Realizing he was the character from his nightmare was one of the most powerful moments of a book that was full of them.  Not even mentioned.  He poured some dust and the war was won.  I'm sorry guys, but you could have done better even with your limited ability to tell the story.  "Mattie had come to her daughter one last time, dressed in the lake, to tell her goodbye" was reduced to "ghost in bathtub whispers something."  Inexcusable.  Not since The Shining have they failed so badly at bringing a beautifully crafted finale to life.

Having gotten all of that off my chest, the sets were perfect.  Whoever took his descriptions of the buildings and the grounds did a perfect job.  From Jellison's cafe to the color of the ribbon on Bunter's bell, it was dead on.  I can't think of a thing that could have been better.  Even though her taste in art never came up, the paintings in Mattie's house were exactly as described, and told a bit about good taste and a K-Mart budget.  It's too bad that amount of detail couldn't have been put in other places as well.

My other hope is that this doesn't derail any efforts on the Dark Tower movies.  Unlike these books, that is the one time he told a story that would translate over to film beautifully.  For once he let situation and environment move the story instead of deeply private character knowledge.  Don't get me wrong, I love getting into his character's heads and learning their secrets but Roland is a shallow man, his single-mindedness is his super power.  Everyone around him is the real story, and it can be done. I will hold out just a little bit of hope just in case.

Like A Blimp, He's Full Of Hot Air

Ron Paul has decided that the only reason anyone's calling him a racist is that his "policies are winning".  Silly me, and here I thought it was because he was actually a man with a long an obnoxious history of racism.

“You refer to disturbances in Washington’s Adams Morgan [neighborhood] as ‘animals taking over the D.C. Zoo,’ referring to African Americans,” Velshi noted. “You said that Martin Luther King seduced underage girls and boys. You talked about Ronald Reagan proclaiming ‘annual hate whitey day’ with Martin Luther King Day. And you advocated prohibiting AIDS patients from eating in restaurants. These things were published under your name.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t write them and I disavow them,” Paul insisted.

“But you’re a presidential candidate. That’s tough,” Velshi observed. “It kind of comes back to bite you that you made money off of things that were published under your name that were hateful and racist.”

“Yeah,” Paul agreed. “But this has been addressed for 20 years and nobody accuses me of that type of belief or language. I’m a true civil libertarian, and I think people dig these up when people think that ‘Oh, his economic policies are winning. His foreign policies are winning. His monetary policies are winning.’ So, they have to dig these things up that they really can’t pin on me.”

“But I didn’t write them and those aren’t my beliefs. So, I sleep well,” he added.

“Are you comfortable in telling us who did write them?” Velshi asked.

“I really don’t know,” Paul explained. “Twenty years ago, I had six or eight people helping me with the letter, and I was practicing medicine to tell you the truth. And so, I really do not know.”

“Well, we could find out?” Velshi pressed. “Because you had six or eight people? Like, it was one of those six or eight people?”

“Well, possibly I could,” Paul admitted. “These charges are a total contradiction of everything I’ve said and everything I believe.”

That's quite the copout there.  "It wasn't me writing that racist stuff in my own newsletter with my name on it!"  In all honesty, if Ron Paul can't exercise better judgment in the people working for him than this, how is he supposed to run cabinet departments as Chief Executive of the United States?

Oh wait, he wants to basically eliminate nearly all cabinet departments. Probably because apparently he can't keep racists out of them and writing policy papers in his name.  Seriously, either Paul is a racist himself, or tolerates a long history of having people write horrifically racists things in his publication.  I would argue the latter is worse, unless somebody from the Paul camp wants to explain to me how Ron Paul never read his own newsletter for several years.

It would be one thing if it was an isolated case and Paul immediately fired the individual responsible, printed an apology, and fixed the problem.  He didn't.  It happened time and time again, as Ali Velshi pointed out in that CNN interview above.  Multiple instances, over a long period of time. As recently as May, Paul was saying how America would have been better off without the Civil Rights Act.

What America would be better of without is Ron Friggin' Paul.  Well, unless he runs as a third party libertarian candidate and assures an Obama win.

Can't Quit Hitting The Sauce

The mighty Tea Party has feet of clay, and nobody's more clay-colored than Orange Julius as the House GOP picks up their payroll tax cut and unemployment benefit extensions ball and goes home for the holidays.





The Tea Party drinks your smoothie, John. They drink it up.

Obama insisted today that the only path to continuing the tax break past its Dec. 31 expiration is for the House of Representatives to send him a two-month extension passed by the Senate. At the White House today, he blamed a “faction” of Republicans for blocking the bill by including extraneous issues.

Meanwhile, Boehner and the Republican-controlled House pressed ahead with their plan. The House voted 229-193 to reject the Senate bill and insist on a year-long extension of the tax cut. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, then chose eight House Republican negotiators and demanded the Senate name lawmakers to attend formal talks.

“There’s no reason we can’t do this,” Boehner said at a news conference.

Actually there is, Johnny. And it's called "You have no control over your caucus anymore." They're over you. You're irrelevant, you can't deliver a deal, you have no clout on the Hill, and you're a joke.

In other words, you're everything in the actual leadership failure category that you choose to constantly project on to President Obama. Tell you what, call up Nancy Pelosi and ask her how to do your job, because in about 13 months, she will be doing your job.

So now, in just over a week, 160 million Americans are going to take a hit in their paychecks because John Boehner is the most incompetent person in Washington. And that's a government that includes Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul.

Brian Beutler pieces together the implosion of Boenher's career here, because let's face it, after this, it's over.

(Pic courtesy of Magic Love Hose over at Matt Osborne's place, original drawing of Boehner here...and speaking of Matt, give to his year-end donation drive and Fill The Inkwell, will you?)

StupidiNews!

• House Republicans have adjourned business and left town after rejecting the bipartisan Senate payroll tax and unemployment benefit compromise.
• TV's South Park finds itself in a lawsuit over use of copyrighted materials in a parody over what constitutes fair use. 
• US automakers continue to strengthen in sales after emerging from government assistance, but challenges remain.
• The US is now joining the EU in getting Asian and European allies to limit buying oil from Iran, but the move could raise oil prices globally.
• Firefox 9 arrives as an early present for users, finally with much-needed improvements to Javascript performance.

Last Call

And everyone knew this was coming considering the lengths Politifact went to in order to include it in their short list for the year's biggest whopper:  the fact check site has indeed named the DCCC's claim that the GOP voted to end Medicare as we know it their Political Lie of the Year.  But there's a distinct reason they did so, and they were happy enough to include it in the text.

"Both parties use entitlements as political weapons," Ryan said in an interview with PolitiFact. "Republicans do it to Democrats; Democrats do it to Republicans. So I knew that this would be a political weapon that the other side would use against us."

Liberal bloggers and columnists contend it's accurate to say Republicans voted to end Medicare. Left-leaning websites such as Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and The New Republic said PolitiFact's analysis was wrong, as did New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

"According to (PolitiFact's) logic, if the FBI were replaced with a voucher program wherein citizens would receive subsidies for hiring private investigators to look into criminal activity, but the agency running the voucher program were still called the FBI, it would be unfair to say that the FBI had been ended," wrote Jed Lewison for Daily Kos. "I guess it's their right to make that argument, but it's transparently absurd."

In a blog post, the DCCC stood by its claim, saying the ad accurately stated Ryan's plan would "abolish" Medicare.

And it does.  Politifact's argument about Medicare is absurd, because only an absurd argument can justify such an awful conclusion.  It would be like replacing sugar with asphalt, then writing "sugar" on the side of the container.  You can argue that there's sugar in there, but try selling cookies made out of what's in there and see how long that lasts.

The Kroog was merciless again this morning:

The answer is, of course, obvious: the people at Politifact are terrified of being considered partisan if they acknowledge the clear fact that there’s a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. So they’ve bent over backwards to appear “balanced” — and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.

Way to go, guys.

And as Dave Weigel points out, the actual lie that Politifact attributes to the DCCC actually came from...Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.

Getting somewhat lost in this discussion is where the "ends Medicare" line came from. It was not birthed like Athena from the skull of Nancy Pelosi. It came from an April 4, 2011 preview of the Ryan plan by Naftali Bendavid, writing in the Wall Street Journal -- that simmering pot of liberal bias.

Yep, the fact checkers can't get their facts straight on this one...all the way to calling this the lie of the year, just to play "See, both parties tell massive evil lies!"  Politifact really is useless, irrelevant, and as of now, no longer cited at ZVTS.

See ya.

Too Big To Fail Is Failing

The country's largest bank, Bank of America, is now on life support with its stock under the $5 a share poison price as of close yesterday on the Dow.

Bank of America dropped 4.1 percent to $4.99 at 4:15 p.m. in New York, the worst showing in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, after falling as much as 5.4 percent, the most in more than a month. The lender has plunged 63 percent this year.

European regulators are struggling to quell concern that their lenders may be hurt by the sovereign-debt crisis. For Bank of America, a sustained decline below $5 could reduce its appeal to investors, said Eric Teal, chief investment officer at First Citizens Bancshares Inc., which manages $4 billion in Raleigh, North Carolina, including Bank of America shares.

“As active managers, we have screens that usually prohibit us from buying stocks under $5,” Teal said in an interview, citing the greater volatility and risk of such equities. “If we own it, we would not kick it out automatically, but generally we tend to avoid stocks like that.”

Bank of America shares have been pummeled as bond buyers and insurers demanded the company repurchase soured mortgages made by Countrywide Financial Corp., the home lender acquired in 2008 whose lax underwriting contributed to record U.S. defaults. Concern has also focused on the impact that a sovereign European default could have on the world’s largest financial firms. 

No secret here that B of A has too much exposure to a European implosion, as do the rest of the big banks in the US.  But there's still Foreclosuregate to deal with, and the two combined mean this bank is in real trouble.

Enough to be in $5 freefall and falling.  Could this be the trigger event that causes the Fed to step in?  Can the Fed even try to step in without the Republicans literally trying to string up Helicopter Ben?  And how bad will it get before the Fed is allowed to do anything about this mess?

2012 will show us these answers and more, I suspect.

And Then...Enter The Moose

Sarah Palin's bank account must be running dangerously close to under a couple million or so, either that or her narcissism is kicking in full blast, because...she's baaaaaaaaaaaack!

In a pre-taped interview set to air tonight on Fox Business Network’s “Follow The Money,” Eric Bolling mentioned to Sarah Palin that people constantly tell him they wish she was running for President. Instead of tut-tutting the idea, Palin — who said on Sunday that she wasn’t ready to endorse any Republican candidate yet — swung the door wide open for a possible entry into the GOP field:

“Any chance we can see you making a play, even after Iowa or New Hampshire?” Bolling asked. “There’s still plenty of time, Governor.”

“You know, it’s not too late for folks to jump in,” Palin replied. “And I don’t know, you know, it — who knows what will happen in the future?”

So… good news for all those people who bought “Palin 2012″ t-shirts as a joke four years ago; they may soon be wear-able outside of Halloween parties or in ironic neighborhoods of Brooklyn. And love her or hate her, Palin entering the race could add a fun element to the GOP race, which is due for another major shake-up soon.

And so, the Great Alaskan Grifting resumes.  People will send her money, she'll get on TV, she'll get attention...and then she'll pull out like she always does.  And her fans will love her all the more for it.

She can do this for decades.

"Record Number" Of Youths Leaving Church & Questioning Ethics

(CNN) -- Republican conservatives should be worried. Evangelical churches that frequently support conservative candidates are finally admitting something the rest of us have known for some time: Their young adult members are abandoning church in significant numbers and taking their voting power with them.

David Kinnaman, the 38-year-old president of the Barna Group, an evangelical research firm, is the latest to sound the alarm. In his new book, "You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith," he says that 18- to 29-year-olds have fallen down a "black hole" of church attendance. There is a 43% drop in Christian church attendance between the teen and early adult years, he says.

• Seven in 10 millennials say sex between an unmarried man and woman is morally acceptable (PDF). (According to Kinnaman, young Christians are as sexually active as non-Christians.)

• Most women in their early 20s who give birth are unmarried.

• More than six in 10 millennials (including 49% of Republican millennials) support same-sex marriages.

• Six in 10 millennials say abortion should be legal (PDF), a higher proportion than found in the general population. A higher percentage say abortion services should be available in local communities.

Millennials also part ways with conservative orthodoxy on wealth distribution and caring for the environment. According to a report in The Christian Science Monitor, three out of four say that wealthy corporations and financiers have too much power and that taxes should be raised on the very wealthy, and two out of three say financial institutions should be regulated more closely. In addition, most say that creationists' view on evolution is outdated.

Sounds a lot like Democratic ideology to me.

I come from a strong religious background, and from an area famous for using religion to bully people.  I'm glad to see our young people stop, pause, and think it through.  There are many conclusions they can come to, but the moment of pride is when they use common sense and independent thinking to reach their decisions.

Politically speaking, this can mean a lot of changes.  The "voting army" of Republicans may be on the decline.  It also means that religious behavior won't be associated so strongly with Republicans.  After all, there are plenty of spiritual Dems out there.  Most important of all, these young people are able to see these issues as separate topics instead of a bundle, which is a major weakness in the Republican design.

We have educated, free-thinking individuals coming up as a next generation who believes in equality and fairness.  That is the biggest threat to the elitist, compartmentalizing disposition of the GOP.  They are less likely to fall for the "if you don't believe my every word you are my enemy" strategy employed thus far, and are actually likely to be turned off and disgusted by the open discrimination we see when Republicans rally to restore DADT and dismiss the working poor.  The closing paragraph says it the best:

And that's a good thing. As the most diverse generation ever, they've shown themselves to be better than their elders at seeking areas of common ground and making compromises. They're also more optimistic: Despite the economic instability of their generation, more than two-thirds believe they can achieve success regardless of race, ethnicity or social class. All of us, whether we're churched or unchurched, could use that kind of faith.

Can I get an amen?

To Be Franco About It

A former NYU professor claims he got the chop because he dared give James Franco a "D" -- this according to a new lawsuit.

José Angel Santana -- who taught Franco in his "Directing the Actor" class -- is now suing the University for his job back, claiming he was wrongfully terminated ... simply because he gave Franco a low grade.

According to the lawsuit, Santana dropped the D on Franco for missing 12 of the 14 classes in the MFA course. No shocker, considering the pic TMZ posted back in 2009 ... showing Franco passed out at one of his Columbia classes.

Twelve of fourteen? He deserved an F. Sleeping in class, disrespecting the teacher, all reasons to score poorly. I find myself sympathizing with the teacher here, who wants the craft to be taken seriously.

Besides, I've seen Franco's movies. He should have stayed awake.

The Comeback Kid

No, not Bill Clinton, Barack Obama.

Aided by comparison to the vastly unpopular Congress, Barack Obama has advanced to a 49 percent job approval rating in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll - his best showing since spring, and one that, if it holds, that may put his re-election prospects back within reach.

The result continues an improving trend for the president amid some signs of economic gains. And it contrasts with both parties in Congress, embroiled in their latest game of political chicken. A mere 27 percent of Americans now approve of the Democrats in Congress, and just 20 percent approve of the Republicans – both new lows in ABC/Post polling back to 1994.

Obama’s rating, while still (barely) under 50 percent, is up from his career-low 42 percent in October, and back at the level at which he could run competitively for a second term. George W. Bush had 47 percent approval as close as three months before he won re-election in 2004.

Now because this is a major Villager poll, they proceed to dump on the President for the entire rest of the article, but these numbers are a serious improvement.

It also means that the House is up for grabs in 2012...but it also means the Senate is up for grabs too.  It's going to be a long campaign season and every race, every vote is going to count.  Make sure you do your part.

The Sandbag Game, Orange Julius Version

Having completely lost control of his caucus to the Tea Party, Orange Julius is now using legislative parlor tricks to assure that the payroll tax cut extension fails and that the Senate bill, passed 89-10 by an overwhelming bipartisan majority is scrapped for the House version.  On top of that, the House plans to leave town for the holidays after the vote, leaving both Senate Republicans and Democrats with a take it or leave it deal.  Brian Beutler:

“We will have a motion to reject the Senate amendment and go to conference,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told reporters at a Monday press briefing. “We expect the minority to have a motion to instruct conferees. And then we will have a majority resolution that will lay out our House position that is consistent with the bill that we passed last week.”

In other words, House GOP members will get to vote “yes,” but in a way that says “no” to the Senate bill. This bears some resemblance to the health care reform-era controversy over so-called self-executing rules, when Democrats briefly considered tying two votes together into one, thus “deeming” unpopular legislation passed. Under the GOP’s plan, there’s no way for a vote to result in passage of the Senate bill.

Despite the delays and the procedural hijinx, House GOP aides confidently predicted that their measure will pass Tuesday. That would leave Reid to decide whether to stick to his guns or to appoint negotiators to work through the holidays on a full-year plan to renew the payroll tax cut, extend unemployment benefits, and patch a Medicare reimbursement formula to make sure physicians don’t take a big paycut on the first of the year. Reid has insisted he considers the matter closed and will leave Boehner holding the ball — giving him a choice between quelling the rebellion and passing the bipartisan Senate bill before January 1 or triggering a tax increase on middle class workers in a weak economy.

Republicans will hit back and call on Democrats to return to Washington to strike yet another compromise. Complicating that message for them? Many Republicans plan to leave town tomorrow after the close of votes. 

In other words, after the deal was worked out in the Senate and Speaker Boehner signed off on it Saturday, the Tea Party revolted.  Orange Julius has now lost complete control of his own caucus, and the Senate deal cannot be passed under this 2 for 1 vote.  If today's vote passes, the Senate deal is automatically scrapped, if it fails, the Senate deal dies normally.  Jon Chait points out why the revolt happened:  Boehner is a terribly weak leader, and the Tea Party caucus has decided that America's poor, working class, and middle class aren't paying enough taxes.

Republican opposition to extending the payroll tax is, in part, an expression of this same belief that the lower-earning half of the income distribution is getting a free ride – that the “takers” are exploiting the “makers,” to use Paul Ryan’s increasingly common catchphrase. This happens to be a wildly unpopular position, and Republicans are attempting to avoid having to defend it openly. (Being unpopular obviously isn't the same as being wrong, though I do disagree with the Republican position.)

Surprise, the Tea Party has always been the political patsy of the one percent, and nowhere is this more clear than the payroll tax cut rebellion in the House.  The fact of the matter is the Tea Party doesn't care if the 160 million Americans get burned with higher taxes next year...as far as they're concerned, you're all looters and moochers anyway.

StupidiNews!

• Travel across the Rockies and Great Plains will be "difficult" and "dangerous" today due to a powerful blizzard dropping more than a foot of snow from Utah to the Dakotas.
• A new study finds 1.6 million homeless children in the US, up 27% since the recession began in 2007.
• Iraq's Shiite government has ordered the arrest of the nation's Sunni Vice President after bodyguards confessed to his role in assassinations of Shiite officials.
• Lockheed Martin has won a multibillion dollar Japanese contract for 42 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft over the next 20 years, beating out rivals Boeing and Eurofighter.
• Apple is experimenting with "wearable displays" and other peripherals to interface with smartphones.