StupidiNews!

• The latest complication in Iraq is PM Nuri al-Malaki's refusal to step down as a new government is being formed after elections and military forces loyal to him are in Baghdad's streets.
• Israel and Hamas have agreed to another 72-hour cease fire for now, but both sides are very far apart on any sort of lasting peace.
• Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline is ready to begin clinical trials of a vaccine for the Ebola virus, the company announced over the weekend, as the virus advances in West Africa.
• Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won the country's first direct presidential election, allowing him to combine the powers of both offices to build "a new Turkey".
• Scientists say a new process to create ammonia for fertilizer using just water and air could lead to lower carbon emissions.

Last Call For Another Lost Soul

Another week, another police murder of an unarmed black youth, this time in the St. Louis neighborhood of Ferguson, where 18-year old Mike Brown was due to start college on Monday before cops put ten bullets in him and left him dead in the middle of a city street.  The police story:  Brown was shot as he reached for a police firearm in the back of a police car.

Brown was found dead 35 feet from the cruiser at the scene.

The killing drew criticism from some civil rights leaders, and they referred to the 2012 racially charged shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a Florida neighborhood watch organizer who was acquitted of murder charges, as well as the New York City man who died from a police chokehold.

"We're outraged because yet again a young African-American man has been killed by law enforcement," said John Gaskin, who serves on both the St. Louis County and national boards of directors for the NAACP.

The Rev. Al Sharpton called the shooting death "very disturbing" and the New York-based civil rights leader said he planned to go to Ferguson to meet with the family Monday night or Tuesday.

A few hundred protesters gathered outside Ferguson Police headquarters about the time the news conference was to begin. At one point, many of them marched into an adjacent police building, some chanting "Don't shoot me" while holding their hands in the air. Officers stood at the top of a staircase, but didn't use force; the crowd eventually left.

Protesters outside chanted slogans — "No justice, no peace" and "We want answers" — and some carried signs that read "Stop police terrorism" and "Disarm the police."

Critics have contended that police in the St. Louis area too often target young black men. Statistics on police-involved shootings in the region were not immediately available.

St. Louis County Police Department is in charge of the investigation. County Executive Charlie Dooley, who showed up at the protest Sunday to urge calm, said he will request an FBI investigation. U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson said Sunday that Attorney General Eric Holder had instructed attorneys in the department's civil rights division to monitor developments.

My father had "The Talk" with me when I was ten, growing up in North Carolina.  "You can't lose your temper being who you are.  You have to remain calm and always be yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full sir."  It's advice I've taken to heart since then.  It's advice I'd give my own children, should I ever become a father.

But Mike Brown is dead, and a weary country shrugs its shoulders and moves on.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/08/10/4062851/naacp-feds-should-investigate.html?sp=/99/102/111/#storylink=cpy

Abercrombie & Finished

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie is done, getting crushed in the Democratic primary by State Sen. David Ige by 35 points.

In the governor's race, Ige, 57, begins the general election as the frontrunner, given Hawaii's long tradition of electing Democrats. But he faces a potentially challenging race.

In addition to Republican nominee and former lieutenant governor Duke Aiona, Ige also faces former Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann, a well-known former Democrat who is running as the Hawaii Independent Party candidate. Because of his appeal to some Democrats, Hannemann could attract voters who would otherwise vote for the Democratic nominee.

Ige celebrated his victory by reminding supporters how much of an underdog he once appeared to be.

“People told me I was crazy for giving up my seat in the state Senate, but I knew we needed change. They reminded me that no incumbent governor had ever lost a primary election. That changed tonight," Ige told supporters.

The loss by Abercrombie, 76, likely marks the end of a political career spanning more than two decades.

A longtime liberal congressman who was elected to the state's top job in 2010, Abercrombie's approval rating has been very low during the past couple of years.

He pushed an unpopular pension reform program and clashed with organized labor leaders. He also faced heat for appointing Schatz to the Senate in late 2012 instead of Hanabusa, following the death of Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D), a political icon. Inouye wanted Hanabusa to succeed him.

Ige overcame Abercrombie's heavy cash advantage. The governor outspent him by about 10-1.

A rare win for the little guy here, as Abercrombie is a career politician and trashed Hawaii's liberal base whenever possible.  The result?  He got his ass soundly and deservedly kicked.   Picking Brian Schatz to fill Daneil Inouye's Senate seat made him among the least popular governors in the country, and despite raising the state's minimum wage and signing into law same-sex marriage, Abercrombie was doomed from the start when he picked Schatz, his own Lt. Governor, to succeed Inouye in the least white state in the nation.

Not sorry to see him go.

Wrecker-tary Of State

Hillary Clinton has officially gotten to the "I would have done a better job than President Obama" part of her triangulation phase of her "I'm not actually running for president" campaign, just in time to remind Democrats why she lost to Obama in 2008.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.

As she writes in her memoir of her State Department years, Hard Choices, she was an inside-the-administration advocate of doing more to help the Syrian rebellion. Now, her supporters argue, her position has been vindicated by recent events.

So yes, President Hillary Clinton would have gotten us into Syria's civil war.  Awesome.  Just what we needed!

Of course, Clinton had many kind words for the “incredibly intelligent” and “thoughtful” Obama, and she expressed sympathy and understanding for the devilishly complicated challenges he faces. But she also suggested that she finds his approach to foreign policy overly cautious, and she made the case that America needs a leader who believes that the country, despite its various missteps, is an indispensable force for good. At one point, I mentioned the slogan President Obama recently coined to describe his foreign-policy doctrine: “Don’t do stupid shit” (an expression often rendered as “Don’t do stupid stuff” in less-than-private encounters).

This is what Clinton said about Obama’s slogan: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”

Of course.  This is why I voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries.  "Don't do stupid stuff" is very much an organizing principle, and if Hillary can't see that, and if she's going to spend the next 27 months running on how she would have done a better job than President Obama and expecting those Democrats who disagree with her to just shut up and fall in line, she's got another thing coming.

Scare Tactless

Every now and again I'm reminded that Democrats do stupid things on occasion too, and Dianne Feinstein is pretty terrible for at times turning into a Republican.

Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein warned Friday of the risk that the insurgent group ISIL could be preparing fighters to attack American and European targets.

“It has become clear that ISIL is recruiting fighters in Western countries, training them to fight its battles in the Middle East and possibly returning them to European and American cities to attack us in our backyard,” the California Democrat said in a statement backing military action authorized by President Barack Obama. “We simply cannot allow this to happen.”

Feinstein called for a broader military campaign against ISIL, not just the targeted missions authorized by the president.

“It takes an army to defeat an army, and I believe that we either confront ISIL now or we will be forced to deal with an even stronger enemy in the future. Inaction is no longer an option. I support actions by the administration to coordinate efforts with Iraq and other allies to use our military strength and targeting expertise to the fullest extent possible,” Feinstein said.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., warned of a similar possibility in an opinion piece for Time.com.

If your stance on military authorizations ever sounds "similar to Ted Cruz", you need to stop talking immediately.  DiFi really, really needs to be replaced by a better Democrat one of these days.

Silicon Valley's Race To The Bottom

What is it with Silicon Valley and apps that allow you avoid "ethnic" neighborhoods, and why does anyone think this is a good enough idea to throw actual money at?

SketchFactor, the brainchild of co-founders Allison McGuire and Daniel Herrington, is a Manhattan-based navigation app that crowdsources user experiences along with publicly available data to rate the relative "sketchiness" of certain areas in major cities. The app will launch on the iTunes on Friday, capping off a big week for the startup, which was named as a finalist in the NYC BigApps competition. 

According to Ms. McGuire, a Los Angeles native who lives in the West Village, the impetus behind SketchFactor was her experience as a young woman navigating the streets of Washington, D.C., where she worked at a nonprofit.

Now, I can totally understand why you would want an application that would allow women to avoid street harassment.  That is a noble goal.  This app doesn't do that.  What SketchFactor does is just say "Hey, this whole neighborhood is scary, don't go there."

 It's less racism as it is classism, but there's still a pretty awful component to it.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• US jets have leveled airstrikes against ISIS positions near Irbil, Iraq as they try to stop ISIS convoys and artillery heading for the Kurdish regional capital.
• A judge has ruled against the NCAA in a lawsuit and injunction that directs schools to offer student athletes a limited share of college sports revenue.
• Israel has resumed airstrikes on Hamas in the Gaza strip as Egyptian mediators are calling for cease fire talks to resume in Cairo.
• Ukraine is threatening to cut off Russian access to oil and gas pipelines to the EU as the next step in sanctions against Moscow.
• Sci-fi series Babylon 5 could be heading for the big screen as creator J. Michael Straczynski is in talks to write and finance the film.

Last Call For A Post Hobby Lobby America

Just a reminder that with Republican bigots blocking ENDA and the Supreme Court leaving a hole in religious freedoms big enough to drive a tank through, if you're LGBTQ in America, you still can be legally discriminated against in dozens of states, like Pennsylvania.

Two women who hoped to buy gowns to wear to their wedding were turned away from a bridal shop in Bloomsberg, Pennsylvania, prompting a torrent of criticism for the store online and by word-of-mouth. 

According to PAHomepage.com, the brides-to-be were informed that the W. W. Bridal Boutique “does not service same-sex couples” because to do so would be a violation of their “religious beliefs.” 

One of the two women — who wish to remain anonymous — posted on Facebook that she called the store to schedule a fitting for herself and her partner. She was reportedly placed on hold for several minutes, then told, “Unfortunately she would not be able to schedule an appointment for us because they currently do not service same-sex couples — it’s just not something they do.”

The bridal shop’s Facebook page has been deluged with angry criticism from people who believe that businesses shouldn’t be allowed to pick and choose who they serve based on sexual orientation. 

“As a fellow Christian, I’m ashamed of people like you,” wrote one commenter. “We are taught to love our neighbor regardless. Did you skip that part?” 

Channel 7 Eyewitness News contacted a local civil rights attorney who confirmed, however, that the bridal store’s actions are legal. Pennsylvania currently has no laws against discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

And why do I care about this?  Because there's no moral difference in saying "We won't serve you because you're lesbians" and "We won't serve you because you're black."  There is however a legal difference:  one's patently illegal, the other is fine and dandy.

That must change, and it will in my lifetime.  I think it will happen in the next decade, actually.

Big Dog Loose In Coal Country

As I've been saying, Bill Clinton was always going to end up stumping for Alison Lundergan Grimes as her ace in the hole.  Her daddy Jerry and Big Dog go way back.  The former president's appearance Wednesday with Grimes in Perry County, the heart of Kentucky coal country, was there to remind everyone why the last Democrat to win a presidential election in the state was Clinton himself.

As former President Bill Clinton stepped to the podium following Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes' emphatic introduction, a coal miner whispered something to him. 

The miner's advice, the former president told the audience packed inside the Hal Rogers Center, was "don't forget to remind people she's much prettier than Mitch McConnell is." 

"You got that right!" a man in the audience shouted. 

That was one of many contrasts Clinton tried to draw between McConnell, the U.S. Senate minority leader, and Grimes, the Democrat hoping to unseat him, as he traveled to a part of the state that has seen coal jobs evaporate and laid much of the blame on President Barack Obama. 

"I am a Clinton Democrat," Grimes shouted to the approving audience. 

For Grimes to win in Eastern Kentucky, she'll need voters to believe that declaration and not that she is "Obama's Kentucky candidate," as McConnell and his allies have asserted repeatedly. 

Grimes has endeavored from the start of her campaign to prove herself as a pro-coal Democrat. 

On Wednesday, as Grimes and Clinton spoke, members of the United Mine Workers of America sat onstage behind them, serving as flesh-and-blood proof that Grimes had won the group's endorsement. 

"Let's get the record straight, senator: I am the pro-coal candidate in this race," Grimes said, arguing that McConnell "hasn't saved or created one coal job" in his 30 years in office.

You may not like Big Dog that much, and you may not like the fact that Grimes is running as a Clinton Democrat when Obama is president.  Tough titties, kids.  This is how Kentucky politics rolls, and King Coal still calls the shots.  That means Grimes is going to have to stump with Bill here and not Barack.  She's going to remind voters in the mountains that the last time things were good there is when Bill was in charge, and that since then Mitch the Turtle has given the store away from hard working miners to nasty energy companies who don't give a damn about safety and wages and the people who live here, because they don't.

So yeah, that means playing the Clinton card with gusto, and doing it several times between now and November.  Bill Clinton's still real big here, and you play to win.

GOP Minority Outreach, Brimful Of Assholes And A .45 Edition

Our latest edition of GOP Minority Outreach Theater goes like this: Yadda yadda, freedom of religion, something something Second Amendment remedies, blah blah blah You're The Real Racist(tm) and then we all threaten Muslims with large caliber handguns.

Gavin Ellzey, the vice chairman of the Kansas Republican 3rd Congressional District Committee, advised on Twitter in early July that “offending Muslims is the duty of any civilized person.” 

Ellzey added, “Especially with a .45.” 

In an interview with The Star, the Overland Park resident acknowledged writing the tweet in response to television news reports about Christians being “crucified” overseas. 

“Sometimes you overreact,” Ellzey said.

Hey, at least he didn't shoot anyone.  Yet.

Clay Barker, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, said the state party has “no responsibility for or connection to the public statements of private citizens who perform volunteer work for the party.” 

He added that the “party in no way shares Ellzey’s sentiments on Muslims.”

The "party" doesn't.  The large majority of the people who compose the party, well, that's a different story.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article1160420.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article1160420.html#storylink=cpy

StupidiNews!

• President Obama has authorized limited airstrikes in Iraq to stop Islamic State fighters from attacking US interests in the region, including helping religious minorities in northern Iraq.
• Tropical Storm Iselle is dumping several inches of rain on the Big Island of Hawaii, with Category 3 Julio now close behind.
• As the 72-hour cease fire in Gaza has expired, Hamas rockets were fired into Israel, followed by another night of IDF airstrikes and artillery as talks have now completely broken down.
• West African leaders and the World Health Organization have now declared the deadly Ebola outbreak there to be a public health emergency as the death toll reaches 932.
• Netflix has now surpassed HBO in revenue in the second quarter of 2014 as the internet streaming service continues to add subscribers.

Last Call For A Final Walsh-Out

Montana Dem Sen. John Walsh, dogged by a plagiarism scandal that broke last month, languishing with low poll numbers, and under heavy pressure from the state's newspapers to forego his campaigning, has decided to drop out of the November election.

"I am ending my campaign so that I can focus on fulfilling the responsibility entrusted to me as your U.S. senator," Walsh said in a statement, according to The Billings Gazette. "You deserve someone who will always fight for Montana, and I will." 

Walsh's decision follows a report in The New York Times in July which said that Walsh plagiarized significant parts of his master's thesis. 

Since then Walsh had reportedly been trying to decide whether to continue running in the race or not. Even before the plagiarism story broke Walsh had an uphill battle to victory and faced a formidable challenge in Rep. Steve Daines, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

"Uphill battle" is being friendly.  Walsh was down by double digits before the scandal broke.  Now that his career is over, Montana Democrats have only a few days to find a replacement, and by replacement I mean "Getting Brian Schweitzer to run for Senate."

Of course, Schweitzer has his own problems, which pretty much ended his dark horse 2016 presidential aspirations before they could aspirate.

Is there anything else that Montana Dems can do?  There's rules for this all, apparently.

The first stop is at the Secretary of State's office. Linda McCulloch, who holds that position, will first authorize the state Democratic Party to replace Walsh. 

At that point, the party's Rule 15 kicks in. That rule articulates the replacement process: a special nominating convention held by the party at which a new nominee is selected. The party would send out written notices of the time and date of the special convention -- or, if time is running short, simply call the party delegates who are allowed to vote for a replacement candidate. 

Those delegates represent a broad swath of party leadership from across the state: voting members of the executive committee, the chair and vice chair of the central committees for each of Montana's 56 counties, the state committeeman and committeewoman from each county, presidents of charter organizations, and so on. In total, the party estimates, it's about 175 people -- which is actually about 0.2 percent of all of the voters in the Democratic primary election. That number is an estimate. Many counties might not have assigned committeewomen, for example, and not every county has a central committee. 

The convention will likely be held in Helena, with the goal of making it "as open as possible," according to party spokesman Bryan Watt. The first priority will be voting delegates, of course, but Watt would also like to accommodate press and "as many people as possible," should such a convention become necessary. 

Once the convention begins, the process gets a bit murkier. (Again: Uncharted territory.) Delegates will be able to nominate candidates from the floor, and those candidates will have a chance to speak. Then others could speak for or against the nominees. Finally, voting will begin. If none of the candidates got more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, the lowest vote-getter drops from the ballot, and voting continues until there's a nominee.

So is anyone left to run other than the already damaged Schweitzer?

The names that have been floating around: 

John Bohlinger. Bohlinger was lieutenant governor of the state under Gov. Brian Schweitzer -- and was a Republican at the time. When Baucus left his seat, Bohlinger ran in the primary to replace him, losing to Walsh in June by over 40 percentage points. 

Nancy Keenan. Keenan is the former superintendent of public instruction in the state and former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion access advocacy group. She spoke at both the 2008 and 2012 Democratic presidential conventions. 

David Wanzenried. Wanzenreid currently sits in the Montana State Senate, representing the area around Missoula.

And I'm pretty sure all three of those folks are going to have an even tougher time.  So yeah, unless a minor miracle happens, kiss this seat goodbye for the Dems due to several self-inflicted wounds.

GOP Minority Outreach, Operation Mo-Mentum Con't

Mississippi GOP Rep. Mo Brooks is the new hero of the bigoted right for his comments earlier this week on the "War on Whites" that the Democrats are supposedly waging.  And every time Brooks opens his mouth, the Republican party proves it's the party of casual racism, this time calling the GOP's outreach efforts to court Latino voters "race-bating".

The Huffington Post reported that the comments came in response to a passage from the Republican National Committee's Growth and Opportunity Book 2013, that was read aloud by the National Journal's Ron Fournier, who was also a guest on the show.

"If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn't want them in the United States, they won't pay attention to our next sentence. It doesn't matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies," Fournier quoted from the report, while appearing on "The Dale Jackson Show" on WAPI.

Brooks responded by saying "Americans shouldn't be divided by race" and that targeting Hispanic voters would be "race-baiting."

"That argument, is playing hand in glove with the Democratic race-baiting strategy, and it has to come to a stop," he said. "I'm one of those who thinks that it doesn't make any difference if you're Hispanic, or you're white, or you're Asian, or you're black, people throughout America want to do what's in the best interest of America."

Nothing like an old white guy telling black, Latino, and Asian people that race doesn't matter, and if you think it does, You're The Real Racist(tm). Why can't you people be like us awesome white people and not worry about your race at all because it's meaningless or something?

This argument is as old as race in America.  "Why is there a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and not one for all Americans?  That's racist!"  It's a favorite tactic of the right and has been for decades.  The answer of course is "I look forward to the day when the NAACP is no longer needed", meanwhile, Republicans like Brooks are happily helping to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, civil rights, and everything in between.

Just because white America is "tired" of civil rights and wants people to "get over race already" doesn't mean the need for civil rights is obviated, kids.  Today's bigots in the GOP are proof of that.

PS, keep doing those interviews, Mo.  I really hope you get to the point where you're eventually talking about the "need for more organizations to help white people".  You know, like the KKK.

America First, Unless That's What Obama Would Want

Over at Vox's evil twin with the goatee that is The Federalist, David Harsanyi has suddenly decided that nothing is less patriotic and American than being an American company paying taxes to the American government, and that liberals and President Obama are probably fascists for suggesting that they do so.

Jonathan Alter at the Daily Beast has an idea that will infuse the president’s “economic patriotism” rhetoric with some bite: Compel companies to take “loyalty oaths” to prove their patriotism.

You may find this suggestion a little creepy, maybe even a little fascistic; but Alter says that “it’s time for red-blooded Americans to take matters into our own hands.”

And by taking the matter into “our” hands, Alter means that President Obama would unilaterally bar any company that practices “inversion” – corporate merging with foreign firms to save on U.S. tax bills – from doing business with the federal government. Companies that follow the administration requirements will earn a government seal of approval. If you act “un-American” and fail to recognize your “real interests” and those of the United States – which are, naturally, indistinguishable from the president’s agenda – you will be shunned and your business punished.

You will be powerless to stop it.

You know, except for the part where if you don't like what the executive branch is doing, you get a chance every four years to elect a new one.

It's funny, for six years now people have been slagging President Obama for not putting America's interests first.  When he does, by making sure companies in the US pay taxes to the US government to help fund our roads and bridges and power grids and water mains, infrastructure that these companies use to provide and transport goods and services, it's "fascistic".

Of course, The Federalist thinks any Democrat is a fascist, so that's par for the course.  Harsanyi's conclusion:

As far as patriotism, it’s typically defined as a devotion to one’s country and a concern for its welfare. While people are free to argue that Tea Party types misunderstand or misappropriate the Constitution, at the very least they’ve hitched themselves to a patriotism that is tangentially related to some form of recognizable American idealism. If Alter is right, and our “deepest sense of who we are” really entails whining about tax receipts of multinational companies, then we’re probably in bigger trouble than I think.

"We're libertarians, but we think the Tea Party is pretty okay."  What a shocker, right?  It's funny how the gang at The Federalist regularly lands in the Tea Party GOP camp time and time again, right?

StupidiNews!

• Two former leaders in Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime of the the late 70's were found guilty of crimes against humanity in a special Cambodian court Thursday.
• The Mississippi GOP has officially denied Senate primary candidate Chris McDaniel's challenge of the election he lost last month, saying the issue must be decided by the courts.
• Russia is responding to the latest round of EU and US sanctions with a one-year ban on imports of food ranging from American dairy to Norwegian fish.
• As the 72-hour truce between Israel and Hamas holds into its third day, indirect talks between the two sides in Cairo continue with heavy international pressure to reach an extended peace deal.
• Yellowstone National Park rangers are looking for a drone that a tourist crashed into the park's Grand Prismatic Spring over the weekend.