And A Merry Cliff-Mess To All

The always awesome LOLGOP has a piece on the five outcomes of this week's Fiscal Cliffmas deal (or possible lack of one:)

While the sequestration President Obama and Speaker Boehner agreed on in 2011 to avert the manufactured debt limit crisis will include $11 billion in Medicare cuts along with billions in defense and other cuts, it would not change any benefits that beneficiaries of the program receive. But there’s no doubt that if the whole of cuts and tax breaks ending in the fiscal cliff are allowed to come into being — cutting the deficit in half — they would eventually damage our already-shaky economy, despite the fact that right-wingers have been claiming for years that the deficit was to blame for our slow recovery. And if Republicans want to hold the debt limit — which expires early in 2013 — hostage again, a fiscal crisis could be inevitable.

Well true.  So what could happen?  LOL sees 5 possible outcomes:

1. Three month or more punt (GOP wins, unlikely)
2. President Obama's most recent offer.
3. Compromise between Obama offer and Boehner "Plan B".
4. Short-term cliff jumping, then a deal (Most likely scenario)
5. Thelma and Louise and no looking back.

Given 2 and 3 have already been rejected, and 5 will cause Wall Street to have a major sad (not to mention the economy, the American people, and the global economy) that leaves 1 and 4.  Republicans are going to be pushing for 1 as it disarms the President's leverage and gets them off the hook.  Democrats are going to be pushing for 4 for the opposite reason.

My money's still on 4, as is LOLGOP's. We'll see where we land this Cliff-Mess season.

Naming The WOLVEREEEEEENS In Our Midst

The latest conservative freakout:  gun ownership permits are the new Obama enemies list.

An interactive map showing the names and addresses of all handgun permit-holders in New York's Westchester and Rockland counties has drawn a response from mostly disgruntled readers since it was posted Saturday on a newspaper's website.

The interactive map published by the Journal News, prompting more than 1,300 comments as of Tuesday, allows readers to zoom in on red dots that indicate which residents are licensed to own pistols or revolvers.

"So should we start wearing yellow Stars of David so the general public can be aware of who we are??" wrote one commenter.

Sure.  This is just like the persecution of Jews in Germany, guys, they had guns too.  

What happened to "Bring it on, libtards!"  Aren't you proud of owning your gun, as a warning to all those bad guys out there that you're ready to water the Tree of Liberty at any time?  What about it, Reasonoids?  Isn't this information being free?

Do you own a registered gun? Well, they know where you live. By "they" I mean the government (which you knew), and the Freedom of Information Act-using, technology wielding media, which can with some effort build maps like the one you see on the right, showing the Westchester County addresses of people who have registered their handguns.

You think Matt Welch and his crew of merry pirates would be thrilled.  Nope.

The map, which "does not include owners of long guns — rifles or shotguns — which can be purchased without a permit," was brought to my attention by Twitterer "Russ" (@burnt_wick), who comments that this "is why you should acquire all of your firearms illegally." 

Ahh, there's the pouty anarchist I know.  The freakout is pretty epic:

My guess would be that the number of people in that area who would like more information about food stamp recipients, families on welfare rolls, or other government programs far exceeds the number who want info on gun owners. Why not publish that information?

It's nobody's business whether you've got a gun permit, or if you accept food stamps. This outrageous violation of privacy by ignorant liberals should be denounced by both sides. And if I were not a gun owner and lived in that area, I would be livid. The paper just put that family at risk because the criminal element now knows who is helpless and who can defend themselves.

On the contrary, Republican small-government conservatives think it's everyone's business if you accept food stamps, and as such think you should be drug-tested before you should be allowed to receive food because of course all people on food stamps are potential criminals.  You know, unlike gun owners.

Oh, and these are the same people who want a national database of the mentally ill, but a map of gun owners is just like the Holocaust. 

There's your "outrageous violation of privacy", morons.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama will cut short his family Hawaii vacation to return to Washington DC today and tackle the fiscal cliff.
• Famed Russian arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov, cfather of the AK-47 rifle, is intensive care after complaining of weakness and chest pain.
• Environmentalists and local officials in North Carolina and Virginia are raising concerns about a planned $10 billion uranium mine in southeastern Virginia.
• It's Volkswagen versus General Motors in China as trade disputes with Japan sink Toyota to a distant third in Chinese auto sales.
• The world's property insurance giants are taking climate change seriously as weather-related incidents are costing the industry $1.2 trillion yearly.

Last Call

You didn't actually think a slimeball outfit like FreedomWorks, the Republican money machine led by former GOP House Speaker Dick Armey, was going to be able to spend tens of millions of dollars in a losing effort to elect basically zero Republicans and yet that nobody's head was going to roll, right?

Take it away, David Corn!

When the news broke in early December that former GOP Rep. Dick Armey had abruptly resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, a powerhouse of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the tea party, Armey maintained that the nasty split was due to differences he had with the top management of FreedomWorks about the group's operations and future. Immediately, media reports disclosed that Armey had been concerned that Matt Kibbe, the group's president, had used FreedomWorks resources to promote a book he had written (which was released in June) and that Armey himself had received an $8 million payout from a FreedomWorks board member to ease his departure. But internal documents obtained by Mother Jones show that the bitter war inside FreedomWorks has also resulted in allegations of staff wrongdoing (prompting an investigation by lawyers) and counter-allegations that Armey and his allies tried to turn FreedomWorks into a partisan outfit backing establishment Republicans over tea party insurgents.

Grab some popcorn and find a comfortable chair, folks.  This sordid tale of winger cannibalism is about to begin.

On December 12, James Burnley IV and C. Boyden Gray, two FreedomWorks board members (and allies of Armey), sent Kibbe a letter informing him that they had received "allegations of wrongdoing by the organization or its employees." They notified Kibbe that the group's board of trustees had retained two attorneys, Alfred Regnery and David Martin, to conduct an independent investigation of the allegations. Burnley and Gray ordered Kibbe to cooperate with the lawyers, to make sure no records were "destroyed, deleted, modified or otherwise tampered with," and to send Regnery a check for $25,000 to cover his initial fees. (Regnery, a prominent conservative, is the past president of Regnery Publishing, a right-wing firm that has put out books by Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Pat Buchanan, and other notable conservatives.) The letter did not specify the allegations being investigated. In an interview with Mother Jones, Burnley declined to discuss the alleged wrongdoing at FreedomWorks. "The letter speaks for itself," he says. Gray, Kibbe, and a spokeswoman for FreedomWorks did not respond to requests for comment.

So Dick Armey was shown the door by Matt Kibbe and the Tea Party wing of the organization.  As a result, Armey's remaining allies in FreedomWorks accused Matt Kibbe of wrongdoing.  But now Kibbe has fired back:

Shortly after receiving the December 12 letter, Kibbe wrote a memo outlining his beef with Armey, Burnley, and Gray. In the document—titled "Republican Insiders Attempt Hostile Takeover of FreedomWorks"—Kibbe accused the three of being shills for the Republican establishment and undercutting the group's standing as an independent, non-partisan, conservative organization. (FreedomWorks has at times endorsed tea party candidates in primary elections against mainstream or incumbent Republicans, drawing the ire of mainline Republicans.) Kibbe charged that the three men were trying to punish him for defying their effort to steer FreedomWorks into the conventional Republican fold. He contended that the divisive fight within FreedomWorks was not really about his book contract or other organizational matters; it was a grand ideological clash pitting those fully loyal to the tea party cause (such as Kibbe) against backroom, Washington-centric pols attempting to wield their influence to benefit their pals.

Now the big question:  given the fact that basically nobody FreedomWorks got money to actually won in November, if you're a big-time GOP donor, are you going to give these clowns another $100 million to blow in 2014?

I'm thinking FreedomWorks won't be the only GOP dark money operation to implode before November 2014, either.  Watch the bonfire, kids.  It'll keep you warm this winter, as the long-predicted GOP civil war is about to break into the open.

All I Want For Christmas Is Fluffy's Head

Apparently, when our conservative blogger friends aren't getting into the spirit of Christ's word unto men by celebrating the guy's birthday through calling their liberal neighbors ignorant know-it-alls and glib and warped totalitarians, they're too busy spending the day gleefully plotting the prosecution of people who think peace on Earth might be a good idea.

On Sunday, in an interview with the National Rifle Association’s head, Wayne LaPierre, Gregory displayed what appeared to be a 30-bullet gun magazine. He pushed LaPierre on the question of whether fewer children would have died during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre this month had the gunman had access to fewer bullets.

The presence of the gun magazine on the show raises questions about a section in the D.C. code — much cited by conservatives and gun rights activists after “Meet the Press” on Sunday — which stipulates that “No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any large capacity ammunition feeding device regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm. For the purposes of this subsection, the term ‘large capacity ammunition feeding device’ means a magazine,” among other devices.

As such, the DC Metro cops are now investigating this "incident".  Nobody's happier than our old friend Col. Mustard, who has decided that David Gregory must burn as a lesson to liberals and conservatives alike, and that because NBC won't respond to him, that they must be guilty.

There's your Christ-like behavior on Christmas.  And people wonder why I'm agnostic.

Not A Good Christmas For Hockey Fans

As the National Hockey Leagues lockout pitting millionaire players versus multimillionaire owners reaches the 100-day mark, it's fans who are getting the biggest lumps of coal this year.

Team owners have wiped out 625 games through January 14, just over half the planned schedule that was to have started in October, and vow they will not stage a season with less than 48 games per team, requiring a mid-January deal.

Players, who were paid 57 percent of revenues under the old deal, have moved closer to the 50-50 split found in other North American sports, but want owners to increase the amount of shared revenue from strong teams to bolster the fortunes of owners pleading poverty under the previous system.

Ice hockey fans, who returned from the prior lockout in record-setting numbers, have lost half a season because rich players and richer owners cannot hammer out a way to divide $3.3 billion in annual revenues.

Players have approved decertifying the NHL Players Association as a union to allow players to file US anti-trust lawsuits against NHL club owners, although that move has not yet been made.

Forget the fiscal cliff, we're talking about the very real prospect of the end of pro hockey here in North America.  Two lost seasons out of nine when you're arguing about who gets the tens of millions the fans give you to play, and you don't play two entire seasons in a decade because you can't decide who should get even more millions, in this economy?

The entire league can go straight to hell.

Sorry, NHL.  Columbus Bluejax tickets being easy to get or no, I'm sticking with minor league hockey from now on.  At least the Cincinnati Cyclones take to the ice.

Merry Christmas, you greedy jagoffs.

StupidiNews, Christmas Edition!

• Emmy winning actor Jack Klugman, known for his roles in The Odd Couple and Quincy, has died at the age of 90.
• Former British PM Margaret Thatcher is spending Christmas Day in a London hospital recovering from bladder surgery.
• A team of architects from Puerto Rico have submitted the winning design to rebuild Port-au-Prince's cathedral, destroyed in the devastating Haiti earthquake three years ago.
• Utility companies in the Northeast are looking towards drone technology to help them quickly assess damage from future storms like Sandy.
• An Australian study finds termites stockpile gold particles in their mounds, indicating nearby larger deposits of precious metals.

Last Call

If there is going to be a fiscal cliff deal before January 1, it's quite possible that the late Sen. Daniel Inouye's seat will have to be filled in order to have someone on hand to help break a guaranteed GOP filibuster. 

In his last wishes, Sen. Inouye expressed his desire to have current Rep. Colleen Hanabusa replace him by sending a personal deathbed letter to Gov. Neil Abercrombie, but that's apparently causing something of a stir in Sensible Centrist circles, who are apparently arguing that Abercrombie should fight back against Hawaii's old guard political machine and appoint somebody else.

Political analyst and University of Hawaii political science professor emeritus Neal Milner said Inouye knew exactly what he was doing when sent the letter to Abercrombie. It was meant to put the governor on the spot.

“What’s pretty elegant about this is how straightforward this is,” Milner said. “It’s about as straightforward as it can be and it’s about as dramatic as it can be. It certainly does raise the ante.”

It had been assumed that Hanabusa would be Inouye’s successor when the senator eventually left office, and over the years it appeared the senator had taken a liking to the congresswoman, according to political experts. The two even had lunch just before he entered the hospital.

Milner said it’s also likely that when the senator looked around at his options that he saw a “thin bench” of replacement candidates.

“If you put yourself in his position and looked around to see who was qualified to take his position there’s not much to look at,” Milner said. “The pool gets narrowed very quickly if you look at it through the eyes of the senator. He’s not interested in pulling someone out of nowhere and giving him or her the seat. That just wouldn’t register with him.”

It's also political maneuvering, something Inouye knew a lot about.

Whoever Abercrombie does appoint will most likely serve out until the end of their days in the seat, given the state's politics. 

Abercrombie is said by several close to him to prefer other candidates over Hanabusa. They include Blake Oshiro, his deputy chief of staff, Brian Schatz, his lieutenant governor — even Ed Case, with whom he served with in Congress. Case, 60, announced Sunday he was applying for the job.

Age may also be a consideration. Oshiro and Schatz are in their early 40s, meaning they could theoretically serve longer in the Senate and build up greater seniority. Hanabusa is 61 and Hirono is 65.

Harry Reid wants Abercrombie to make up his mind pretty quickly, regardless.  We'll see what happens.  This flap seems to be all about getting somebody other than Hanabusa in the office, and again a lot of that favors moderate Ed Case.  Frankly, I've got no problem with Hanabusa in the office, and I'd take Ed Case in Kentucky in a microsecond, but I think this is meddling with the Hawaii Democratic Party, plain and simple.

I think Abercrombie will go with Hanabusa.

Season's Greetings!

Merry Christmas from Bon and an elk named Fred!

Insert Your Own Crapo Joke Here

Idaho GOP Sen. Mike Crapo had a bit of a rough weekend, being arrested for a DUI early Sunday morning in Virginia while, you know, being a supposedly devout and tee-totaling Mormon.

Sen. Michael Crapo (R-ID) apologized late Sunday in a written statement released by his office following his arrest on suspicion of drunken driving.

In an email to TPM, Crapo’s spokesman Lindsay Nothern said the senator was charged with a misdemeanor of drunken driving early Sunday after being pulled over in Alexandria, Va. for running a red light. Crapo was released from custody upon posting $1,000 bond, according to Nothern. The senator is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 4.

"I am deeply sorry for the actions that resulted in this circumstance," Crapo said in the statement. "I made a mistake for which I apologize to my family, my Idaho constituents and any others who have put their trust in me. I accept total responsibility and will deal with whatever penalty comes my way in this matter. I will also undertake measures to ensure that this circumstance is never repeated."

Virginia is pretty tough on DUIs.  Crapo is facing a mandatory $250 fine and a year long license suspension, plus the installation of a dashboard breath test device on his car for that year.  Crapo was re-elected to a third term two years ago.  I don't expect any political fallout from this, but the people of Idaho may surprise me.

We'll see where Crapo's dice roll.

Even More Mitten-freude

The Boston Globe gives their version of how the Romney campaign blew it:

To this day, Romney’s aides wonder how it all went so wrong.

They console each other with claims that the election was much closer than realized, saying that Romney would be president if roughly 370,000 people in swing states had voted differently. Romney himself blamed demographic shifts and Obama’s “gifts”: ­federal largesse targeted to Democratic constituencies.

But a reconstruction by the Globe of how the campaign unfolded shows that Romney’s problems went deeper than is widely understood. His campaign made a series of costly financial, strategic, and political mistakes that, in retrospect, all but assured the candidate’s defeat, given the revolutionary turnout tactics and tactical smarts of President Obama’s operation.

One of the gravest errors, many say, was the Romney team’s failure, until too late in the campaign, to sell voters on the candidate’s personal qualities and leadership gifts. The effect was to open the way for Obama to define Romney through an early blitz of negative advertising. Election Day polls showed that the vast majority of voters concluded that Romney did not really care about average people.

These failures are now the subject of scrutiny by national GOP ­officials who say they plan to “reverse engineer” the ­Romney effort to understand what went wrong. A number of Romney’s top aides stressed in interviews that, while they ­remain proud of their work, they feel an obligation to ­acknowledge their numerous mistakes so lessons are learned.

And yet we all know that if Team Romney had gotten those 370,000 votes and put the country into recount hell, or 500,000 votes and won the electoral college, we'd all be reading from our Village betters about how the Obama campaign was the largest failure in human history, and that despite these deeper problems in the Romney campaign, the Obama campaign must have been worse because after all, they still lost to the guy.  And the Romney campaign would have been "right all along".

So no, knowing how close the country came to abject disaster, knowing that Mitt Romney could have won the presidency and lost the popular vote by 3% and 4 million votes, I choose not to dance the dance of Loser Mitt, but to remember that despite every dirty trick in the book and a few new ones, it was only the Romney camp's massive incompetence that saved our country, and that 61 million Americans, less than 20% of the country, could have doomed us all.

They were close.  They needed but four states:  Florida, Ohio, Virginia and New Hampshire.  They almost got them.  We'd be wise to remember how close they were.

Merry Christmas.  We've still got a lot of work ahead.  Take the 2012 election as the warning it was.  Savor the victory, but stay vigilant.

StupidiNews!

• Law enforcement officials in New Delhi, India are cracking down to restore order after protests against a woman gang raped on a bus spilled over into a third day.
• The genetically engineered AquaVantage salmon, aka the "Frankenfish", is nearing final FDA approval for human consumption.
• A large survivalist group, The Citadel, plans to build a walled and heavily armed 7,000 family complex south of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
• UK housing prices continue to fall into 2013 as the country's housing market has yet to recover amid continued recession.
• Three Google executives have seen their 2010 conviction under Italy's internet privacy laws thrown out as the law faces legal challenges in court.

Last Call

My favorite Zombie Lie of the housing collapse is back again, Broke Ass Black People Caused The Recession.  Every six months or so we get another iteration of this idiocy that centers around the Community Reinvestment Act, which because of "racial quotas" forced banks to make subprime loans to unqualified brown people, which collapsed the housing sector and the economy.  No surprise, it's Investor's Business Daily again with this lie.

Democrats and the media insist the Community Reinvestment Act, the anti-redlining law beefed up by President Clinton, had nothing to do with the subprime mortgage crisis and recession.

But a new study by the respected National Bureau of Economic Research finds, "Yes, it did. We find that adherence to that act led to riskier lending by banks."

Added NBER: "There is a clear pattern of increased defaults for loans made by these banks in quarters around the (CRA) exam. Moreover, the effects are larger for loans made within CRA tracts," or predominantly low-income and minority areas."

Except as I've been saying for years now, the CRA's effect on the housing collapse was minimal because the banks that made the vast majority of bad subprime loans never made them under the CRA.  Investor's Business Daily has been pushing this outright falsehood for four years now.

 

And I've killed this lie again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

 

Once again, the mortgage brokers that made nearly all of the subprime loans that went bad were MORTGAGE BROKERS and NOT BANKS.   Because they WERE NOT BANKS, they were NOT SUBJECT TO THE COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT ACT AT ALL.

This "study" doesn't prove anything, other than Investor's Business Daily is the NewsMax of the financial world.

Method To His Madness

Hey folks?  Listen up.  NRA executive VP and spokesman Wayne LaPierre is crazy.  Like a fox.

Gun enthusiasts thronged to shows around the country on Saturday to buy assault weapons they fear will soon be outlawed after a massacre of school children in Connecticut prompted calls for tighter controls on firearms.

Reuters reporters went to gun shows in Pennsylvania, Missouri and Texas, and found long lines to get in the door, crowds around the dealer booths, a rush to buy assault weapons even at higher prices and some dealers selling out.

The busiest table at the R.K. Gun & Knife show at an exposition center near the Kansas City, Missouri airport was offering assault weapons near the entrance.

West Plains, Missouri dealer Keith's Guns sold out of about 20 AR-15 style assault rifles in a little over an hour, owner Keith Gray said.

And NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo is doing everything he can to help the NRA sell more guns, more ammo, more everything.

In a radio interview on Thursday with Albany’s WGDJ-AM, New York governor Andrew Cuomo said that he plans to work with state legislators next month to submit a proposal for new gun-control laws; in particular, Cuomo said, “our focus is assault weapons,” because current state laws regulating the weapons “have more holes that Swiss cheese.”

“I don’t think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, ‘I need an assault weapon to go hunting,’” he said.

Cuomo continued, “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it.”

Boom.  The NRA is going to be using Cuomo's comments for years and the gun lobby will keep getting richer and richer and buy off more lawmakers.  The NRA's response as the nation's largest firearms manufacturer lobbyist group to the Newtown massacre could not have worked out any better for them, frankly.

So glad politicians on "our side" are happy to do all the lifting for them.

Maker's Mark Of Bad Taste

So depressingly expected that I haven't written about it, but this week details of a lawsuit versus the Maker's Mark Bourbon House and Lounge in Louisville's 4th Street Live district became public.  Ian Boudreau has the deets:

The suit, filed in Jefferson County court by Andre Mulligan, alleges that he and his brother approached the Maker’s Mark Bourbon House and Lounge management in August this year to secure reservations for an event scheduled for Aug. 18. According to Mulligan’s suit, the restaurant management “demanded to know the ratio of ‘black people’ to ‘white people’” in the party, and then refused to grant a reservation when Mulligan explained that everyone attending the party would be black.

When the Mulligans and their party showed up anyway on Aug. 18, the complaint says the 4^th Street Live security personnel barred them from entry into the downtown area, which covers about two city blocks (the Baltimore-based Cordish Operating Ventures, which runs 4^th Street Live, is also named in the complaint).


This isn’t the first time 4^th Street Live and associated clubs have been accused of racism. In 2006, a Jefferson County judge ordered two clubs to visibly post the “dress codes” they had cited when barring two African-American men from entering The Red Cheetah and Parrot Bay. These dress codes had drawn a lot of local criticism at the time for being rather obviously targeted at African-American men – many felt as if Cordish’s ban on “gang-related” clothing was being used specifically to prevent young black men from entering the area at night, when the bars and clubs are busiest.

Living here in Kentucky, I've had friends of both races tell me 4th Street Live at night is not very friendly for groups of black folk.  People don't like to be reminded it seems that what few black folk live here are in the urban areas of Louisville and Lexington.  It's been a long time problem at 4th Street Live, and that's why I've only been there once two years ago (and during the day.)  Overpriced tourist trap area anyway, but the vibe I got there definitely made me not want to go back.

Which was the point, I guess.  Everyone acts surprised that this kind of thing still exists in 2013, but why should we be?  As Ian points out, we elected arguably the most racist senator in the country in Rand "The Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional" Paul.  What did you expect from Kentucky?