Now That's How You Welcome Home Your Sailor For The Holidays

And in 2011, thanks to the tireless work of activists, Democrats in Congress, and President Obama, this completely happened.

Thanks to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — a policy that prohibited gays from serving openly in the military — a lesbian couple won the first kiss honor at a Navy homecoming. The couple won the first kiss honor, a Navy tradition, in a raffle.

“I think that it is significant because it is the first time where we can actually show who we are,” Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell told the Virginian Pilot. “Being in the military were it was not allowed — we can show it, we can be public about it, and we don’t have to hide our relationship. And I think it is something that is going to open a lot of doors not just for our relationship but all the other gay and lesbian relationships in the military now.”

“I feel good about it, it is nice to be able to be myself,” her partner, Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta, added. “It’s been a long time coming.”

The two met after boot camp and have been dating for a little over two years. They plan to get married.

Nothing like a sailor in uniform to make a girl's heart skip a beat, as they say.   Stick that on a recruitment poster, fundies.

Stop Telling The Truth, Citizen

Earlier this year, prosecutors charged Julian P. Heicklen, a retired chemistry professor, with jury tampering because he stood outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan providing information about jury nullification to passers-by. Given that I have been recommending nullification for nonviolent drug cases since 1995 — in such forums as The Yale Law Journal, “60 Minutes” and YouTube — I guess I, too, have committed a crime.

The prosecutors who charged Mr. Heicklen said that “advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without constitutional protections no matter where it occurred.” The prosecutors in this case are wrong. The First Amendment exists to protect speech like this — honest information that the government prefers citizens not know.

Laws against jury tampering are intended to deter people from threatening or intimidating jurors. To contort these laws to justify punishing Mr. Heicklen, whose court-appointed counsel describe him as “a shabby old man distributing his silly leaflets from the sidewalk outside a courthouse,” is not only unconstitutional but unpatriotic. Jury nullification is not new; its proponents have included John Hancock and John Adams.

The rest of the article goes on to explain a few things about how juries work and what they may not know about their rights and responsibilities. Jurors are allowed to let their personal moral lines influence their decisions. It also explains the dark side of the effect, that racist or elitist regions have used this to warp the justice system. Of course someone will, but if you believe in people then you have to hope that educating the public about this will do more good than harm.

If nothing else, just knowing this is how the system can (and was intended) to work is a good thing. We should all be more educated about our judicial system, which is chewing us up and taking advantage of its complexity and the public's ignorance.

Circuits Can Heal Themselves With New Approach

"In a multilayer integrated circuit, there's no opening it up," Nancy Sottos, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in a statement. "Normally you just replace the whole chip. It's true for a battery too. You can't pull a battery apart and try to find the source of the failure."

To get around the need for external intervention and diagnostics (which may not be readily available for spacecraft or defense-based aircraft, for example), the researchers adapted a previous technique they'd developed for self-healing polymer materials.

They placed tiny microcapsules (as small as 10 microns in diameter) filled with liquid metal on top of a gold line functioning as a circuit. When the circuit cracks, the microcapsules break open, releasing the liquid gallium-indium alloy into the gap and restoring electrical flow--up to 99 percent in most cases. The liquid does its bidding in less time than it takes to blink.

This has so many applications. Cell phones, computers, and someday even medical devices could benefit from this advancement. Imagine what we could do for the environment if we didn't have to treat electronics like disposable equipment. For those times when devices must have a zero percent failure rate, this can help reach that goal. And it's just spiffy to watch technology develop. I have a feeling this is only the beginning of a trend towards finding ways to get more out of their electronics.

A Pair Of Jacksons From Your Paycheck

The White House is wisely asking American workers what losing $40 in take home pay from their bi-weekly paycheck would mean to them as House Republicans are about a week away from raising taxes on 160 million Americans.

House Republicans on Tuesday rejected a Senate deal to temporarily extend the payroll tax cut, leaving the White House and Congress at an impasse and creating a showdown between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner.

The tax cut is set to expire on December 31. Ending the tax break would cost the typical family about $1,000 a year, or $40 per paycheck.

Americans are telling the White House what $40 means to them. So we wanted to know if you agreed that $40 is a significant amount of money. We asked you if the end of the tax cut affect your family or if it would have little difference in your daily life. Here's what you said:

Selena Campbell is a 21-year-old from Orlando, Florida, who works in Admissions Control at Full Sail University. She said that the money she may be losing each paycheck would help buy new shoes for her husband. He has to walk to work every day because they can't afford a second car. But Campbell said that isn't the only thing it would help out with.

"For me and my family, $40 is $10 less than what we pay for groceries every week," she said. "There have been weeks, where we have only been able to spend $10 on groceries and have lived off of mac 'n' cheese and hot dogs."

I know for me, $40 a paycheck is gas money to get to work, plain and simple.   The new job's a longer commute, and that payroll tax cut for me makes up for the extra gas money.  I'm not totally screwed without it, but a thousand bucks over the course of a year is still nothing to laugh at.

And yes, as if I didn't need another reason to not vote for Republicans in 2012, this one's personally costing me money.  It's going to personally cost you money too, I'm betting.  So what would losing $40 in your paycheck mean you and your family would have to cut back on?

Like A Blimp, He's Full Of Hot Air, Part 2

And Ron Paul can't even handle a media interview about his racist newsletter garbage.  He can't even stick around long enough to "tell his side of the story" because apparently he's too busy storming out of even talking to CNN:

“Is it legitimate? Is it a legitimate question to ask that something went out in your name?” Borger continued.

“And when you get the answer, it’s legitimate you sort of take the answers you get. I didn’t write them. didn’t read them at the time and I disavow them. That is your answer.”

“It’s legitimate, it’s legitimate. These things are pretty incendiary,” Borger pressed.

“Because of people like you,” Paul riffed.

But Borger continued to barrage Paul with questions, at which point Paul took off his mic and walked out of the interview.

“It seems like Ron Paul got tired of talking about it,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said.

Yeah, there's a cool head under pressure, real Presidential timber there.  So once again, if the explanation is so simple, how come Ron Paul can't stick around long enough to explain it?  Maybe because he's realized that his "other people wrote that in my name" defense when you're running for the Oval Office makes you look like an asshole?



Compare that to President Obama.  I can't wait to hear the defense for this idiocy.

StupidiNews!

• Wal-Mart has pulled Enfamil baby formula from its shelves after the death of a newborn in Missouri linked to a bacterial infection from the product.
• Pakistani Prime Minister Raza Gilani publicly berated "conspirators" aiming to destabilize his government and oust him.
• The EPA's tough new emissions standards for mercury, arsenic, and other toxic substances will require the 40% of the nation's coal power plants that are non-compliant to clean up or shut down.
• British Airways will buy German carrier Lufthansa's BMI division in the UK, giving the airline dozens more flight slots out of London's Heathrow Airport.
• Romanian hackers rang up a whole lot of extra five dollar footlongs at Subway franchises across the country, stealing credit card data over a three-year period.

Last Call

Mitt Romney knows that there's only a short step for Republican primary voters between calling for the deportation of President Obama's uncle to calling for the deportation of President Obama, and that's exactly why he's opening his mouth on this birther surrogacy issue.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday joined Reps. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Steve King in making political hay out of the August arrest of President Barack Obama’s uncle on DUI charges.

Romney — who’s been getting hammered by Democrats over his “for Pete’s sake” response to a previous question on immigration — didn’t seem to know what Boston radio host Howie Carr was talking about when he brought up Onyango Obama’s arrest during an interview, ABC reports. “Who is Uncle Omar, Howie?” Romney asked.

Once Howie explained, Romney said “the answer is ‘yes.’”

“Well, if the laws of the United States say he should be deported, and I presume they do, then of course we should follow those laws,” Romney said, according to ABC. “And the answer is ‘yes.’”

He presumes of course, but it's not like he knows.  Nice one, Mitt.  Meanwhile, he keeps having to spend all his time bowing and begging to the nutjobs on the right who would basically deport everyone darker than Taylor Swift if they had their way.

Mitt Romney's a hack.

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.