Last Call For A Tale Of Two Mayors

One former Democratic mayor is on his way up:

The Senate easily confirmed San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro on Wednesday to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, boosting the national profile of a Democrat with a compelling biography who’s considered a vice presidential contender in 2016. 

The 71-26 vote makes the 39-year-old Castro one of the government’s highest-ranking Hispanics, a growing group of voters who lean solidly Democratic. His ascension comes two years after he got his first broad national exposure when President Barack Obama picked him to deliver the keynote address at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Senator Ted Cruz voted against confirming Castro. Senator John Cornyn voted to support the confirmation, after publicly backing Castro during a Senate hearing last month.

And another former Democratic mayor is on his way down.

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in federal prison for corruption during the critical years of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. 

A jury in February found Nagin, a Democrat, guilty on charges including bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and tax evasion. 

Nagin, 58, stirred national controversy with his erratic behavior after Katrina breached floodwalls and inundated New Orleans in 2005, killing at least 1,500 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless. 

Citing Nagin's devotion to family and commitment to helping New Orleans, U.S. District Judge Helen Ginger Berrigan said a shorter prison term than that recommended under federal sentencing guidelines was warranted.

She ordered Nagin to turn himself in to begin serving his sentence by Sept. 8. With good behavior, and barring any appeals, Nagin could get out of prison after about 8-1/2 years.

Just a reminder that sometimes, regardless of party, there are good politicians, and bad ones.  Julian Castro is definitely a rising star, as is his twin brother Joaquin.  Ray Nagin, on the other hand, got caught red-handed.  I hope to hear a lot about the former.  The latter, not so much.

Well, There's Definitely A "By Proxy" Problem Here

Here's your daily epistemic closure 101 for you: Republicans have now shouted "Obama has caused this border crisis on purpose!" enough times to their followers that they've deluded themselves into no believing America has accepted this as fact, and they've moved on to "For what sinister, evil reason has Obama caused this border crisis on purpose?"  This is their favorite part, because they get to use up all of Grandma's tinfoil from the most recent holiday dinner and then attempt to come up with a solution.

Today's contestant on Conspiracy Challenge is Texas Republican Larry Smith, who turns to the DSM-V for his diagnosis of derpitude.

Iraq War vet Larry Smith is the Republican nominee to take on Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas) in November. He's also, it turns out, an armchair psychiatrist. According to Smith, Barack Obama's handling of the child refugee crisis along the Mexican bordersuggests the president is suffering from Münchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare psychological condition that causes caretakers to abuse kids. 

"Today, we hear of reports that children are being abused, being used by drug cartels, and even dying," Smith said in a statement on his website last Thursday. "If a high school administrator prompted such mass abuse, that person would quickly be without a job and perhaps even found behind bars. The mental stability of the school administrator would be in question. Is a President of the United States who does such horrific acts deserving of less scrutiny and accountability?…People who intentionally hurt children for attention can be accused of Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy."

That's right, Obama is torturing kids because he's bonkers.  This is where we are with conservative intelligence these days, using plot devices stolen from Law and Order episodes.

Also, who taught this clown how to Google things?

We Gratefully Request To Be Allowed To Discriminate

Welcome to the "post-Hobby Lobby FREEDOM for all the kids" era, where thanks to SCOTUS, religiously affiliated companies that hire federal contractors are happily asking the President to allow them to discriminate against those awful, awful gay people because MURICA.

After a setback in the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case, President Obama is facing mounting pressure from religious groups demanding to be excluded from his long-promised executive order that would bar discrimination against gay men and lesbians by companies that do government work. 

The president has yet to sign the executive order, but last week a group of major faith organizations, including some of Mr. Obama’s allies, said he should consider adding an exemption for groups whose religious beliefs oppose homosexuality. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the court ruled that family-run corporations with religious objections could be exempted from providing employees with insurance coverage for contraception.

I talked about this some last week, but this is precisely what Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor warned about in their dissents on this ruling.

To give an example, faith leaders said a Catholic charity group that believes sex outside heterosexual marriage is a sin should not be denied government funding because it refused to employ a leader who was openly gay. Gay-rights groups countered that it would be unacceptable to allow religious organizations receiving taxpayer money to refuse to hire employees simply because they were gay, and said they did not expect the White House to provide such an exclusion. On Tuesday they stepped up their calls for Mr. Obama to quickly complete and sign the order.

I do hope the President remembers who voted for him in the first place, and what the right thing to do is both morally and legally.  I know he will, because I trust him.  That's why I voted for him in two elections.

StupidiNews!

• At least five people are dead and 300,000 lost power Tuesday as severe storms hit the Mid-Atlantic states, including 4 dead in a building collapse in Syracuse, NY.
• The West Virginia chemical company that polluted drinking water for tens of thousands in January in a chemical spill will receive a mere $11,000 fine from OSHA, according to sources.
• In one of the most lopsided matches in World Cup history, home team and favorite Brazil was dismissed by Germany with a 7-1 semifinal crushing.
• Mortgage giant Citigroup is said to be near a $7 billion settlement deal with the government over subprime mortgage manipulation that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
• A new climate change report from Colombia University says in order to limit global warming to just 2°C, the 15 largest carbon-emitting nations must cut emissions by 70% by 2050.

Last Call For Impeach-Moose Proceedings

Incessant attention whore Sarah Palin realized nobody cared about her anymore, and that her old shticks weren't working, so she's going for the Full Enchilada.  WaPo's Aaron Blake:

Sarah Palin on Tuesday joined a growing chorus of Republicans calling for the impeachment of President Obama, writing in a Breitbart op-ed that the influx of young illegal immigrants over the southern border "is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, 'no mas.' " 

Mixed/careless metaphors aside, this is nothing but bad news for Republicans — especially four months until the 2014 election. 

Palin is hardly the first GOP politician to raise the issue of impeachment over the past couple years. Others include Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Reps. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.), Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.), Michael Burgess (R-Tex.), Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), former congressmen Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) and Allen West (R-Fla.), and the South Dakota Republican Party. Not all of these folks called for Obama's impeachment directly, but all of them suggested that it is or should be on the table.

Such lofty company.  Still, as Blake points out, the 'MURICA crowd loves her, and it's clear her "perpetual fundraising for the next election" coffers are getting low, so she needs to remind the hoi polloi why they need to hand over another twenty bucks to her so she can go shoot and pose with a giant squid on the Hardwood Channel.

What none of these folks have, though, is a national following. That's where Palin comes in. She's the first Republican of any significant national stature to make this call. And she's the kind of figure who could potentially recruit others to the cause — people who will want to be heard. Palin surely doesn't carry the kind of weight she once did in the GOP, but she still has a significant tea party following and is highly popular among the conservative base. 

If a significant pro-impeachment portion of the conservative base does materialize — and that's a big "if" — it will put Republican lawmakers in the unenviable position of responding to questions about whether they, too, agree with the idea of impeachment.

Oh please, let's spend the next 28 months talking about how much Sarah Palin wants those Republican wimps to impeach Obama, and reminding America exactly why the next president (or 4) will be a Democrat too.

The Old North State (Of Insanity, Yet Again)

Everything the Republican Party in North Carolina is trying to do right now involves them trying to make sure Democrats never regain power in the state again.  That means voting in the state must be curtailed as much as possible, and the latest GOP scam is reducing the number of places to vote "to save taxpayers money". Of course, the cuts are coming in poorer urban areas where Democrats live.  One such place is Shelby, NC, near where I grew up. Cleveland County is losing 3 or its 5 voting precincts, and they just happen to be in areas where black voters are.

When Alan Langley, a Republican member of the local elections board here, explains a new proposal to consolidate five voting precincts into two, it sounds procedural and well-meaning: He speaks of convenient parking and wheelchair access at the proposed polling places, and of saving more than $10,000 per election. 

Those precincts, however, are rich with black voters who generally vote Democratic. And when the Rev. Dante Murphy, the president of the Cleveland CountyN.A.A.C.P. chapter, discusses the plan, he talks of “disenfranchisement” and “conspiracy.” 

“We know,” Mr. Murphy said, “that this is part of a bigger trend — a movement to suppress people’s right to vote.” 

The bitter disagreement in this city of 20,000 is part of a broader voting rights battle charged by race and partisan politics that is happening in a number of communities, many of them Southern, where changes to election laws no longer require advance approval from the federal government after a year-old Supreme Court ruling voided a key section of the Voting Rights Act.

Mr. Langley here is shocked -- shocked, he'll tell you -- that anyone would attribute racial animus to these precinct cuts.  Cuts in a predominately black part of the county, of course.  He's hurt that the NAACP doesn't trust Republicans in North Carolina.  Republicans who instituted multiple hoops to jump through in order to vote in the worst set of voter ID laws in the nation to prevent "voter fraud" they accused Democrats of perpetrating, and they speak of trust.

Sure.

Voting rights advocates fear that these local changes — combined with a number of new state laws restricting ballot access and requiring voters to show picture IDs — amount to a concerted effort to reduce voting by minority groups. Conservatives say that the laws ensure against voter fraud, and in some cases are more cost-efficient. 

In places affected by the Supreme Court decision, the overt racism of the 1960s is largely a thing of the past: What often lingers is a racial mistrust that can make the moving of a polling place from a fellowship hall to a public park seem innocent to some, sinister to others. 

It's a hard past to overcome.  It's even harder when one party is trying to take the country back to the worst times of that past.

Who honestly believes that the solution to a county's problems is making it harder to vote?

The Old North State (Of Insanity, Con't)

The Department of Justice has finally dropped the hammer of NC Republicans and their odious voter suppression law with a lawsuit announced on Monday by AG Eric Holder.

A North Carolina judge will decide whether portions of the state’s voter ID law, described as “discriminatory” by critics, should be implemented or delayed, following suits filed by the federal government and others. 

The law requires voters to show photo ID at the polls, eliminates same-day registration and pre-registration for students as young as 16, and cuts the early-voting period from 17 to 10 days. Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice, NAACP, and League of Women Voters will argue for a preliminary injunction against portions of the law in a U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem on Monday. A trial will be held in the case in 2015,according to the Associated Press. 

“The state legislature took extremely aggressive steps to curtail the voting rights of African-Americans,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit Monday. “This is an intentional step to break a system that was working and it defies common sense.” 

The law, 49 pages long, includes a number of other changes to the state’s elections and campaigns, including increasing the amount of money donors can give to candidates by $5,000, eliminating a one-box straight-ticketing voting option on ballots, and repealing the requirement that candidates appear in their own campaign ads and say they “approve this message.”

This isn't a voter ID law, this is a "help Republicans and their donors" law, and the NC GOP knows it.  It's why the Moral Monday movement in NC has been protesting for over a year now, and are moving now to register as many voters as they can for November.

In 2011, Republicans, with the help of free-spending non-profit advocacy groups, seized both chambers of the legislature, also called the General Assembly, from the Democrats. Republican Pat McCrory won the governor’s mansion two years later, giving his party its first lock on North Carolina’s government since 1870. That set the stage for last year’s overhaul of the state’s election laws: In a single bill, lawmakers eliminated same-day registration, youth preregistration and out-of-precinct voting, and reduced the number of days of early voting. They required voters to show government-issued photo identification starting in 2016; student ID cards from state universities won’t be honored. Republicans say the law was aimed at creating consistency and eliminating fraud. State statistics show almost no documented cases of impersonation fraud at the polls. 

Now, the Moral Monday movement, the NAACP and the League of Women Voters have the DoJ backing them up.  Hopefully, my home state of North Carolina will find a way through this mess and vote out the GOP.

StupidiNews!

• Four people were injured Monday when a roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California derailed after a tree branch fell on the tracks.
• The White House is confirming that most of the unaccompanied children crossing the border from Mexico will not be allowed to stay in the US and will be deported.
• Half a million people were urged to evacuate Monday as Japan's southern coast was battered by Super Typhoon Neoguri, the storm continuing to bring heavy rain across the country.
• Ukrainian forces are not resting on a cease fire as they continue to retake territory from pro-Russian separatist rebels, as EU sanctions against Russia may be expanded as early as Wednesday.
• Dutch-rooted space tourism company XCOR says if the Netherlands can survive the World Cup and win this week, the Dutch team is going to space on the house.

Last Call For It Finally Registering With You

Pew Research has more details on the one group in their political ideology poll from last month that didn't have a voting preference: the 10% of Americans who both aren't registered to vote and who don't care about politics enough to do so.  Pew calls them "Political Bystanders".

While Bystanders view the Democratic Party more favorably than the GOP, they have a mix of liberal and conservative attitudes. They are sympathetic to the plight of the poor, but as many say that government aid to the poor does more harm than good as vice versa. They express fairly liberal views on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but 54% say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. 

Bystanders are young (38% are under 30), and nearly a third (32%) are Hispanic. A third of Bystanders are foreign born, a higher share than any of the other typology groups, including 29% total who are not citizens. 

Asked about their interest in a number of topics, 73% of Bystanders say they have no interest in government and politics, and two-thirds (66%) say they are not interested in business and finance. So what topics do interest them? Health, science and celebrities: 64% of Bystanders are interested in celebrities and entertainment (vs. 46% of the public). And, in a sign of their youth, they are drawn to video games: 35% call themselves a “video or computer gamer” (vs. 21% of the public). 

In our survey, Bystanders were often more likely than other political cohorts to answer “don’t know,” to say they’ve “never heard of” the topic in question or to refuse to answer questions altogether.

So, minus the 29% of Political Bystanders who aren't US citizens and can't vote, that still leaves 71% of 10% of voting age Americans -- some 7.1% of eligible voters -- who could vote if they wanted to register. Or could register, with awesome GOP voter suppression laws.

The 38% of the Bystanders who are Millennials are the ones most likely to have common cause with the Democrats.  If even half of them were convinced to register and vote blue in 2014, that would be a 2% boost across the board for the Dems, and that would go a long, long way in saving the Senate.

Why do you think Republicans are trying to make voting so difficult for the young and the poor?

Tryin' To Catch Me Ridin' Dirty

We've long known that conservatives (being those completely logical, reasonable creatures that they are) will do anything detrimental, obnoxious, stupid, childish, or dangerous as long as they know that doing it pisses off liberals.  Case in point: diesel pickup trucks that are "rolling coal".

Pickup trucks customized to spew black smoke into the air are quickly becoming the newest weapon in the culture wars.

"Coal Rollers" are diesel trucks modified with chimneys and equipment that can force extra fuel into the engine causing dark black smoke to pour out of the chimney stacks. These modifications are not new, but as Slate's Dave Weigel pointed out on Thursday, "rolling coal" has begun to take on a political dimension with pickup drivers increasingly viewing their smokestacks as a form of protest against environmentalists and Obama administration emissions regulations. 

Last month, Vocativ noted many coal rollers focus their fumes on "nature nuffies," or people who drive hybrids, and "rice burners," or Japanese-made cars.

"The feeling around here is that everyone who drives a small car is a liberal," a roller named Ryan told Vocativ. "I rolled coal on a Prius once just because they were tailing me."

To recap, people spend money tricking out their diesel pickups to purposely make them more fuel-inefficient so they can belch more carbon smoke because screw you Obama liberals in your hybrids.  Adding more of a carbon footprint on purpose to counteract environmentally conscious folks because haha, Al Gore is fat is a completely, 100% viable thing to do if you're a winger, kids.

You have to be impressed with people who deny global warming so vehemently that they pay money to make it worse just in case it's real.  These guys are like Bluto from the old Popeye cartoons.

With this explosion in online attention, the battles between coal rollers and their environmentalist enemies are playing out in social media pages, Youtube videos and internet comment sections. Many of the rolling coal Facebook pages feature memes that mock hybrid drivers and liberals. Coal rollers have also posted videos showing their trucks blasting more environmentally efficient cars with smoke.

Opponents of the practice have also taken to the internet. Weigel noted "a mid-June surge of comments" from progressives attacking coal rolling social media pages in the wake of the Vocativ article. In 2012, one outraged YouTube user posted a video entitled "Victim Of Coal Rolling" that showed a pickup shooting fumes at his car.  

"Blow your smoke at me you son of a bitch," the driver says in the video. 

Though the clip seemed designed as a criticism of coal rollers, it attracted a slew of comments from people who were clearly on the side of the pickup driver. 

"What a loser you are, ain't nothing wrong with rolling some confederate coal," one person replied. 

"Stupid ricers. what were you gonna do you bitch?" another said.

And of course, it all comes back to douchebags still fighting the War of Nawthun Aggression.

Ridin dirty, indeed.

Soccer It To Her, Boys

MoDo The Red cracks open another box of Franzia Sunset Blush and attacks her computer again, disgorging her latest incomprehensible paean to mediocrity, apparently something having to do with the US men's national team in the World Cup in Brazil.

AMERICA’S infatuation with the World Cup came at the perfect moment, illuminating the principle that you can lose and still advance.

Once our nation saw itself as the undefeatable cowboy John Wayne. Now we bask in the prowess of the unstoppable goalie Tim Howard, a biracial kid from New Jersey with Tourette’s syndrome.

With our swaggering and sanguine image deflated by epic unforced errors, Americans are playing defense, struggling to come to grips with a world where we can no longer dictate all the terms, win all the wars and lead all the charges.

“The Fourth of July was always a celebration of American exceptionalism,” said G.O.P. pollster Frank Luntz. “Now it’s a commiseration of American disappointment.”

From Katrina to Fallujah, we’re less the Shining City Upon a Hill than the House of Broken Toys.

Dowd goes on like this for another 1500 words or so, and I'll spare you all that, but apparently our inability to win World Cups is proof that America sucks now, when we used to just hate and laugh as soccer and didn't care about it at all.  Now, mushy Millennials are worried about hashtags and are too global and not MURICA enough or something and oh yeah, Obama sucks and it's his fault (there always has to be "Obama sucks" in these drunken outbursts) and maybe it was always like this.

Then she crawls back into the box of wine, and a nation is grateful for the point she stops writing her stream of unconsciousness.

Amazing, even for Dowd's normal drunken "AbFab" benders.

StupidiNews!

• Some 63 kidnapped women and girls abducted by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria have escaped and returned home over the weekend, but hundreds more women and girls remain in captivity.
• A Study published this week in the journal Science finds fracking responsible for the 23,000% increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma since 2008.
• Hamas militants are claiming Israeli air strikes early Monday have killed seven in retaliation for roughly 25 rockets fired from Gaza into Israel on Sunday.
• Ukraine's army has scored the largest victories so far in its three-month battle with pro-Russian separatists, reclaiming several towns in the Donetsk region and pushing rebels eastward.
• New software from a PhD student at the University of Longborough in the UK will allow doctors to use 3D printers to customize splints for rheumatoid arthritis patients and more.

Last Call For Bundystan

Looks like the long arm of the law in Nevada has finally had enough of Cliven Bundy, Professional Scofflaw and his violent thugs.

In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board, Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said that BLM-defying rancher Cliven Bundy must be ‘held accountable’ for his actions.

Gillespie said he had spoken with Bundy multiple times in the months before the BLM rounded up his cattle which were grazing on government land despite Bundy’s refusal to pay grazing fees. Gillespie said that he he made it clear to Bundy that, if there was going to be a protest, it must be peaceful.

However, the sheriff said, Bundy crossed the line when he allowed supporters, including armed militia members, onto his property to brandish weapons at police.

“If you step over that line, there are consequences to those actions. And I believe they stepped over that line. No doubt about it,” Gillespie said. “They need to be held accountable for it.”

At some point we're a nation of laws, or a nation of guys with the biggest weapons making those laws.  I'm glad that Sheriff Gillespie is finally going to take care of things.

I hope.

The Law Of Unitended Consequences

The Hobby Lobby decision and its terrible, silppery slope reasoning will wreck American jurisprudence for years.  It's so broad and so sweeping that you could justify just about anything based on religious beliefs, including, say, the rights of Gitmo detainees.

Lawyers for two Guantanamo Bay detainees have filed motions asking a U.S. court to block officials from preventing the inmates from taking part in communal prayers during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The lawyers argue that – in light of the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision – the detainees’ rights are protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

The motions were filed this week with the Washington D.C. district court on behalf of Emad Hassan of Yemen and Ahmed Rabbani of Pakistan. U.K.-based human rights group Reprieve said both men asked for the intervention after military officials at the prison "prevented them from praying communally during Ramadan."

During Ramadan, a month of prayer and reflection that began last weekend, Muslims are required to fast every day from sunrise to sunset. But what is at issue in this case is the ability to perform extra prayers, called tarawih, "in which [Muslims] recite one-thirtieth of the Quran in consecutive segments throughout the month."

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Myles B. Caggins III, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, told Al Jazeera on Friday that the "Defense Department is aware of the filing," and that the "government will respond through the legal system."

The detainees' lawyers said courts have previously concluded that Guantanamo detainees do not have "religious free exercise rights" because they are not “persons within the scope of the RFRA.”

But the detainees’ lawyers say the Hobby Lobby decision changes that.

"Hobby Lobby makes clear that all persons – human and corporate, citizen and foreigner, resident and alien – enjoy the special religious free exercise protections of the RFRA," the lawyers argued in court papers.

Which is exactly what justice Alito said in his ruling.  Despite claiming how narrow it is, the ruling itself is a door big enough to drive a truck through.  Meet the new truck, folks.

Spies Like Us, Again

Washington Post's Barton Gellman both simultaneously screws over Team Dudebro Defector by stomping all over the "big scoop" and embarrasses himself with the same breathless hyperbole of "The NSA is watching everything Americans are doing!" when that's simply not the case.  He does get around to the actual story, however in paragraph five.

Among the most valuable contents — which The Post will not describe in detail, to avoid interfering with ongoing operations — are fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. computer networks.

Months of tracking communications across more than 50 alias accounts, the files show, led directly to the 2011 capture in Abbottabad of Muhammad Tahir Shahzad, a Pakistan-based bomb builder, and Umar Patek, a suspect in a 2002 terrorist bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali. At the request of CIA officials, The Post is withholding other examples that officials said would compromise ongoing operations.

News flash:  the NSA spies on foreign bad guys who do bad, bad things.  Like, nuclear things.  But apparently we stopped these bad guys by then having conversations with Americans.  This means we have to apparently throw away these conversations, in Snowden's world.

As I keep saying, if your goal was to inflict maximum damage on the US capability to gather intelligence, what Edward Snowden has done in the last several months could not have been more effective.

Which, as I keep saying, was Snowden's goal all along.