Last Call

As long as the Tea Party continues to pay no price with voters for their nutbar rhetoric, they will keep using it.  Case in point locally: the Cincinnati Tea Party group COAST got hammered this weekend for comparing streetcar project spending to -- you guessed it -- 9/11.   When they are made to pay a price, it's amazing how quickly they start acting like human beings again. 

A local anti-tax group member has apologized for an "indelicate tweet" comparing Cincinnati's streetcar project and 9/11.

Early Sunday, the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes tweeted "3% of FDNY died 10 yrs ago by terrorism. Today Cincinnati lost 17.5% of fire companies by brownouts to pay for a streetcar. Which is worse?"

That set off a flurry of outraged comments online, while COAST defended its comment throughout the day.

But late Monday morning, treasurer Mark Miller told News 5's John London that, "Invoking 9/11 was over the top. It was wrong. I shouldn't have done it. I apologize."

 

Miller said the controversy was overshadowing the point of his statement, that Cincinnati citizens are at risk. Miller said he was not making fun of 9/11.

But remember, these COAST assholes were fine with defending their tweet for more than 24 hours until it was clear public opinion was against them.

Oh, and if you're opposed to taxes, you don't get to complain about vital government services being underfunded.  Just saying.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Republicans on President Obama's jobs legislation, unveiled today:

“Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?” said one senior House Republican aide who requested anonymity to discuss the matter freely.

Can we officially stop pretending that Republicans give a damn about America or jobs or the economy or anything else other than making sure President Obama loses?

If you are unemployed, Republicans do not care about you.  If the bridges are falling down in your state, Republicans don't care about it.  If you are worried about the economy, or your mortgage is underwater, or you get sick and don't have insurance, the Republican Party does not give a good god damn about any of that.

All they care about is beating Obama.

Fixing unemployment right now is handing a victory to the President, not helping Americans.  They would rather unemployment went up then do anything to help the millions out of work because it might be good for the man they despise to the point of sabotaging the economy in order to win.

That's it.  Republicans 2012: Keeping millions out of a job to cost one man in the White House his.  They are monsters, period.

A Weiner May Be The Republicans In NY-9

The latest poll numbers this weekend for tomorrow's special election in New York to replace Anthony Weiner aren't looking good for the Democrat, NY State Assemblyman David Weprin, in his race against Republican Bob Turner.  The wild card is Socialist Workers Party candidate Christopher Hoeppner, who is taking 4% of the vote...and Weprin is losing in a true blue Dem district by six in the latest PPP poll.

To determine just how upset NY-09 voters are with government at the moment, PPP asked a series of questions about Congress, the President and direction of the country. President Obama logged only a 31 percent approval rating in the district versus 56 percent disapproval, and Congressional Republicans registered the same approval with 51 percent against. When PPP asked which of those two choices respondents had more faith in to lead the country at the moment, voters in this Democratic district picked the GOP by a slim margin, 44 percent to President Obama’s 42. That frustration with Obama translates into success for Turner within the poll: 23 percent of those who voted for the President in 2008 said they will vote for Turner on Tuesday.

The new poll also confirms what a Siena survey said last week, that Weprin is getting crushed among independent voters and is losing a healthy number of Democrats. In fact, the PPP numbers show him only holding on to 58 percent of his own party, along with only 26 percent of independents, which is actually smaller than the amount of Dems who say they will go for Turner, 29. Turner also gets the support of 83 percent of Republicans and 58 percent of independents.

Weprin still maintains a positive favorability rating, which is not to say his campaign has been perfect, but it further emphasizes the drag that national issues are putting on the Democrat. “If Dems lose this race blaming it on Weprin is an excuse and ignores the bigger issues,” PPP Pollster Tom Jensen tweeted before the release of the numbers. He also pointed to a finding that “37% in NY-9 say Israel ‘very important’ to their votes. They support Turner over Weprin 71-22.” Siena pollster Stan Greenberg was asked about the “Israel effect” on Friday but brushed aside the issue, saying “I don’t see it at all.” 

If the "throw the bums out" effect is favoring the Republicans right now in a district that hasn't had a GOP Representative in nearly 90 years, then something's clearly wrong with the electorate and with Dems specifically.  Dems are clearly not getting behind Weprin, but that 31% approval rating in the district is a bad, bad sign.

We'll see how tomorrow's vote turns out, after all Democrats won a number of special elections in 2009 and 2010 only to lose 63 House seats last November, but this is all kinds of bad if Weprin goes down.

New Feature: StupidiChat!

Coming very soon, Zandar Versus The Stupid will begin a weekly live chat starting at 2:00 PM Central and lasting an hour.  Feel free to come join us and give us you take on current events, recent articles, or whatever is on your mind.

We will also be holding special event chats to cover debates, speeches or whatever else comes along.  We will announce those here and on Twitter and Facebook with as much notice as possible.   Looking forward to seeing you there!

PS

This project is still experimental, so you may notice some appearance or service changes for a while.  If you have any problems or suggestions, let us know!

Pure Virgin BS

This has me so angry that I lost sleep over it.  A lot of sleep, I've mulled this over for a while now.

(CNN) -- Back in March, Amnesty International began reporting that the Egyptian military had subjected 17 women protesters at a Tahrir Square demonstration to "virginity tests." The women told Amnesty that they had been handcuffed and beaten, stripped searched and photographed by male soldiers, then restrained by female soldiers while a man in a white coat performed a virginity check.

The military denied the accusations, but in the past few days, a senior general has confirmed to CNN that indeed, the virginity tests happened. The general justified the abuse by saying these women "were not like your daughter or mine. These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters."

The general went on to insist that the tests were necessary because "we didn't want (the women) to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove they weren't virgins in the first place."

So what, women who aren't virgins can be raped without consequence? I don't think the protesters were trying to be caught so they could level charges at the controllers. This was an assault under a barely-there disguise of self-protection. If you don't want to be charged, how about refusing to treat them like animals? I know that would get in the way of the stripping and searching and beating, but still.

Forcibly checked for virginity, not to protect them but to condemn them. These women weren't like your daughters, they were the Other Type, the type of woman who can be treated like a dog but who cares? They clearly brought this on themselves by thinking for themselves and protesting. Even camping with men, because we all know women can't be in a group without being overcome and putting out for every male within sight.

Seriously, this makes me sick. I think these guys should go through a cavity search to make sure they didn't hide film of illegally beating and raping women. Now there's a plan.

Legislating Bigotry

With New York recently legalizing gay marriage, the Republican efforts to seal equality behind the barrier of state constitutions has progressed to North Carolina.  These battles at the state level are vicious, but will be difficult to overturn...and that's the point.  States with laws on the books are now being targeted for making bigotry part and parcel of the states' constitutional code.

North Carolina's General Assembly has scheduled a legislative session beginning Monday to consider an amendment to the state constitution that would define marriage as solely between one man and one woman.

"This is about far more than gay marriage or LGBT people in our state," said Anthony J. Pugliese, a member of the Board of Directors for the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce. "Every version of this amendment requires a divisive 14-month public campaign. Any version of this amendment would harm business recruitment, stifle economic development and jeopardize the kind of workforce diversity NC companies need to succeed."

"As we work tirelessly to recover from this recession we need to grow our economy and our tax base with as few impediments as possible, but this amendment would have a chilling effect on those efforts and take our state in the wrong direction," he added. "I urge any lawmaker who considers themselves 'pro-business' to oppose this amendment and work diligently toward its defeat."

State law already restricts marriage to opposite sex couples, but a constitutional amendment would protect the law from legal challenges.

If three-fifths of the Republican-controlled legislature approved it, North Carolina voters would ultimately decide the amendment's fate in a statewide referendum in 2012.

North Carolina House Majority Leader Paul Stam said that same sex marriage needed to be banned to protect children.

"We see in countries around the world where they legitimize same-sex marriage that marriage itself is depreciated," he said during a press conference. "I think you'll find that the impetus for same-sex marriage is not for same-sex people to get married – very, very few of them do – rather it is to delegitimize marriage as an institution, as a whole." 

It's kind of hard for same-sex couples to get married at all in North Carolina since Republicans outlawed it, just saying.   But the simple fact of the matter is every time the rights of LGBT Americans are subjected to the tyranny of the majority, they lose those rights.

I often wonder what would happen if bans on interracial marriage or refusal in emancipation from slavery or the continuation of Jim Crow laws or banning women's suffrage had been "put to the people" to add for all time to state constitutions.  There would still be states where I wouldn't be a free American, where people of different races couldn't marry, where women couldn't vote and where even if I was a freedman, I'd be subject to second-class citizenry.

And yet Republicans have no problem with subjecting their own sons and daughters and nieces and nephews and grandchildren and brothers and sisters and parents to this sort of mob mentality of hate.

It's What We Say The Tea Party Is

Over at the Washington Post, Dan Balz reviews what the Tea Party means to American politics.  It's boilerplate stuff really, but the real red flag comes up here:

That the tea party sprang to life during Obama’s presidency should have been less surprising than it was. According to Alan Abramowitz of Emory University, “The tea party movement can best be understood in the context of the long-term growth of partisan-ideological polarization within the American electorate and especially the growing conservatism of the activist base in the Republican Party.”

Over the past three decades, the size of the base within the party has grown significantly. At the same time, those activists were becoming more and more conservative in their views — and more and more hostile in their evaluations of the opposing party. When these activists were asked to rate Democratic presidential candidates on a thermometer scale of 1 to 100, the average fell “from a lukewarm 42 degrees in the late 1960s to a very chilly 26 degrees in the 2000s,” Abramowitz said.

In other words, the Republican base was primed to dislike Obama as president. In fact, it already did before he was ever sworn in. “People attending the tea party events that began early in the Obama administration expressed the same vehement hostility toward Obama first observed at campaign rallies for John McCain and Sarah Palin” in the fall of 2008, writes Gary Jacobson of the University of California at San Diego.

People forget that the Tea Party never gave President Obama a chance, nor were they ever going to.  They had pulled out the racist garbage before he was ever elected, and people conveniently forget that when discussing how the Tea Party wing of the GOP can't possibly be racist.  Michele Bachmann was doing it in 2008.  So was the McCain/Palin campaign.

So no, the Tea Party isn't the magical group of "common sense centrists" or anything.  They are the fringe, batshit insane, John Birch Society, Sons of the South, crackpot lunatic fringe of the party, and they have been purchased lock, stock and barrel in order to attack President Obama.

Even worse, the goal here is to convince moderates that if they vote against President Obama, that maybe the Tea Party will go away and America will get back to functioning again.

All the scholars see the tea party as a mixed blessing for the Republican Party. They describe the movement as the de facto base of the party and cite its energizing force within the party as having contributed significantly to the turnout advantage that the GOP enjoyed in 2010.

But they underscore the risks of the movement pushing the party and its candidates too far to the right. Rae sees the movement and the GOP establishment as having developed “a complex and tense but increasingly interdependent relationship” and writes that the movement will “certainly leave a legacy on American politics, although it is still unclear exactly what that legacy will be.”

And that's the message Balz and others are pushing right now:  the only way to defuse the Tea Party is to dump President Obama as hard and as fast as possible.  It's a message that both the left and the right are happy to push for their own various purposes.

People need to remember that.

About Those Pesky Rules Of Ours

Netflix continues to make friends through pissing off their customer base.

Netflix has started to restrict its users from streaming more than one movie at a time as part of its price hike.


The change could have a major effect on how families use Netflix. No longer can one person watch a movie from the iPad while the rest of the family watches another film on the Xbox, for example.

As website Stop the Cap points out, Netflix has always had a policy that limited streaming, with those on a single DVD or streaming-only plan limited to streaming one film at a time.

But it appears as if Netflix just started enforcing this rule on September 1. The changes seem to coincide with Netflix's price hike, which took effect on Sept. 1 as well. Now, if you attempt to launch two movie streams, Netflix will block it and tell you that your membership plan doesn't support multiple movie streams.

That asterisk next to Netflix's "Unlimited" streaming plan keeps getting wordier and wordier, but that just means the service that can find a way to deliver streaming movies that truly are unlimited and do it right, for a low price, will be the company that replaces Netflix on top of the pyramid.

StupidiNews!

• Dozens of US troops were wounded and two Afghan civilians killed in a truck bombing at a Coalition base in Wardak province, Afghanistan yesterday.
• Some 63% of French voters say former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn should stay out of next year's French presidential election.
• Egyptian police raided news network Al Jazeera's offices in Cairo as the ruling military council cracks down on foreign journalists.
• Greek PM George Papandreou has approved new property taxes and cuts in elected officials' salaries to stave off the country's widely-expected default.
• A rumored AOL/Yahoo! merger may not save either company from Google and Facebook.

Last Call

Meanwhile, the situation between Egypt and Israel is getting exponentially worse by the day.

An Egyptian policemen shot on the border with Israel last month has died of his injuries, a human rights group said Sunday, bringing to six the number of those killed in an incident that has triggered tensions between the two countries.


Imad Abdel Malak died at dawn Saturday in a Cairo military hospital of his injuries, the Egyptian Association for Human Rights said in a statement.

He was driving the car in which a police officer and four soldiers were killed on August 18 as Israeli troops pursued suspects in a deadly attack that killed eight Israelis.

After the killings Egypt demanded an apology from Israel while huge protests erupted outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

Ties between Egypt and Israel, which have been bound by a peace treaty since 1979, have entered a period of turbulence since the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak by a popular uprising in February.

Relations worsened this weekend after protesters stormed Israel's embassy in Cairo, prompting an evacuation of staff and the departure of ambassador Yitzhak Levanon.

The Israeli government said Levanon would return to Egypt only after security could be guaranteed.

Israel has pulled its ambassador from Egypt, and the Egyptian government, such as it is, is very unstable and fragile.  The 1979 treaty is looking more and more flimsy each day, and unless the general direction of things change soon, we're looking at another Six-Day War on our hands.

That is if Israel and Turkey aren't trading shots first.

Louisville Bridge Is Falling Down

And so are dozens of other bridges here in Kentucky, but our senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul tell us that here in the super best most awesome country ever, our government has no place and no money to fix a freaking bridge.  So of course the infrastructure we have is falling apart.

The Sherman Minton Bridge, one of three major bridges spanning the Ohio River between Louisville, KY and southern Indiana, was among the Kentucky bridges listed as deficient. And last night, the Sherman Minton Bridge was closed after further deficiencies, including cracks, were found in a load-bearing part of its structure. The Louisville Courier-Journal reports:

The Sherman Minton Bridge was closed late Friday afternoon and will remain shut down indefinitely after officials discovered cracks in the span.

Will Wingfield, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation, said officials “do not have an estimate” on how long it will take to repair and reopen the bridge, which carries Interstate 64 traffic across the Ohio River.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) ordered the closure of the bridge, as the state of Indiana maintains and operates the bridge. But the 49-year-old bridge serves as a major thoroughfare for Louisville, McConnell’s hometown and Kentucky’s largest city, carrying 50,000 people a day into or out of the city, according to Chuck Wolfe, spokesman for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. The state of Kentucky assists in maintenance and evaluation of the bridge’s structure. While the Sherman Minton Bridge is closed, much of its regular daily traffic will be re-routed over another bridge that was already slated to be inspected for structural damage Monday.

Ironically that's the same bridge I used just recently on my trip to visit Bon in Missouri a couple months back, and I crossed it twice.  And it's not just the Sherman Minton that's in bad shape, in fact, a full third of the bridges here in Kentucky are considered deficient or obsolete.  Putting Americans to work to repair these bridges in Kentucky and other states seems like a pretty smart idea to me, but our lawmakers are convinced the bridges will magically fix themselves if only we eliminate corporate taxes or something.

It's amazing.  You'd think lawmakers here in Kentucky would be falling down all over themselves to stop these bridges from falling down.

But Bush Kept Us Safe

Remember, when nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens died ten years ago today, President Bush kept us safe.

Appearing on Your World with Neil Cavuto on Friday afternoon, Luntz expressed his concern about America’s lack of optimism in the last decade. Then, the Fox analysis shared a controversial sentiment by speaking in positive terms about the the previous Administration despite the attack happening on their watch.

“I don’t think this date is a positive,” Luntz said. “Yes, it allows us to look back and say ‘We haven’t been hit.’ Yes, it allows us to appreciate George Bush and Dick Cheney for keeping us safe. But in the end, it reminds us that we are vulnerable, and that hurts our confidence.”



What, you didn't know the Bush 43 presidency started on September 12th, 2001?  That space between January 2001 and September 2001 was some other guy, I can't remember his name, but dammit Bush kept us safe.  There weren't any terrorist attacks on his watch.  At least none that I can recall.  And that Obama guy, man he almost let that underpants bomber guy burn his own crotch, what a failure.

Not like Bush.  He kept us safe.

Band Of America Relies On Customers, Just Like Any Bank

Time runs an excellent article reminding us we are not powerless when it comes to banks and our choices.

According to DailyFinance, online banks are booming in the aftermath of new fees being added by Bank of America and others. PerkStreet Financial, an online-only bank with no-fee checking and debit cards that aren’t only free but offer 2% cash rewards as well, has been blessed with double the usual number of new customer signups this week.

Meanwhile, small banks and credit unions all over the country have launched advertising campaigns highlighting that, unlike some big banks, they don’t charge for things like checking accounts and debit card usage. One bank in Texas has even begun paying customers 15¢ each time they swipe their debit cards.

We vote with our feet.  If our current bank does not meet our needs, we can take our business to another bank.  Bank of America has felt the anger of their customers, and I predict they will roll back the fees if other major banks refuse to jump on board.  I am not a BoA customer, but I'd have canceled my account the day of the announcement.  I walked from Netflix and I ended a twelve-year run with Yahoo when their service went to crap.  Not only do you  get the better service by making balanced and informed choices, but you tell businesses just how much crap you are willing to take.

From Birdy Legs To Baby Bumps

Yahoo Entertainment News recently ran a video showing how Angelina Jolie's weight has become a concern.  I can't tell that she looks any skinnier than before, but they quote several reasons for her weight loss.  Work, chasing six kids, a husband who is one of the hottest (and most pursued) men on the planet.

How about yokels who analyze her weight as a problem?  This video pretends that they are concerned, but the reality is it's just another excuse to dive into their private lives.

On the other side of the coin is Alyson Hannigan.  The How I Met Your Mother star was out wearing a loose-fitting outfit and led to baby bump rumors.  Unlike Angelina, Hannigan is thin but well fed, with flesh and muscle on her frame.  She went a few pounds over her target weight and was put on the spot to defend herself, which she did.

"NO, I'm not pregnant!" Hannigan Tweeted Sunday. "I just ate too much carnival food, that time of the month, hurt my back & couldn't suck my gut in, and need to do cardio!"

Men don't have to answer for their guts, especially when their gain is in the single digits.   Why in the hell should a woman be held accountable for a bit of bloat?  It happens to everyone, but the pressure to be flat and perfect at all times is insane.  It's actually a surprise that more women don't  starve to avoid stares.

I adore Alyson Hannigan, but I wish she had Tweeted: I am allowed to gain five pounds, and if I'm pregnant you will know WHEN I FEEL LIKE TALKING ABOUT IT.

But that's just me.  I will say if anyone (husband included) inquired about my weight gain or loss they would know they crossed the line (that whole fist upside the head thing is a clue).  Celebrity women are no different, in fact their feelings are more sensitive because their looks are part of the job.  Shame on those who expect them to explain their food and body choices, and then go home and snarf down mac and cheese.

Where Were You The Day Our World Changed?

I think it's the most common thing I hear about September 11, 2001.  History is more than just the facts, it is how events shape people, cultures, and even the future.  Where were you when all hell broke loose on that day?

I had called in sick to work, I remember my back was out from having moved some furniture, and work was slow anyway.  My future husband had gone on in to get what little work there was wrapped up and delivered (family printing business).  He called on his way to work and said a plane had hit one of the two towers in New York.  Even though I'm from a piddly little city in the Midwest, I knew those towers.  I flipped on the news right as the second one hit and they knew it wasn't an accident.

I sat and watched the news for eight solid hours.  For the first time in my life, I was afraid that our whole country was under attack.  Such a concept was groundbreaking for a mostly innocent 25-year-old.  War was in other places, it wasn't supposed to be here.  Then I saw the people jumping to avoid burning to death, and my heart broke.  I cannot imagine facing such a choice, or the fear and pain that went along with making jumping off a building look like the best option.  I'm more afraid of heights than I admit, so this remains my own personal terror.  That's what haunts me when I look back to that day.  A close second is knowing your plane is going to crash and yet somehow that's the right thing to do.  What madness that must have been for those people.  And for their loved ones who knew the score.

That day, everything was different.  Our world was turned upside down and we were all uncertain what the next few minutes might bring.  Volunteers flooded out to assist, the entire country halted and took care of their own.  We were damaged and terrified, and yet we may never have been that strong as a people since.  The attackers showed their brutality, and we showed our goodness in the face of evil.  Even though we lost a lot of lives, we reminded the world what we are really made of, and though the stereotype of the rude fat American was already well in place, the world did its best to protect and comfort us while we recovered.  Did we ever thank them?  I don't recall if we did, there was so much news overload that a lot of details were lost.

From tragedy comes learning, and I hope that most of us learned a few lessons.  There are no guarantees in life, tell your loved ones that you love them every single day, and keep your eyes open.  We're not exempt from war or loss, nor are we any less likely to be thrown into chaos today.  Our generation experienced its Pearl Harbor, and we were reminded that our liberty and lifestyle comes with a price tag. That day we paid, and big time.

I think the thing I took away from that time is the realization that things can change quickly, and we must be prepared for what life throws at us.  Oh sure, we talk about the country going to hell but most of the time that comes from a (false) assurance that things really are going to be okay, this is just a bump in the road.  Instead of waiting for the government to clean everything up, people were forced to act as individuals, and fancy houses or nice clothes didn't mean a damn thing.  In a blink, in a single moment, everything can change. Our country can be devastated, and the people may not be able to prevent it.  Any one of us can be called to action, much like the heroes on the plane who figured it out and saved lives, or the rescue unites who were going about their normal day before a plane came out of the sky.  It's easy to take shots at government, but the real question that day was what happens when the ball is in your court?  Would you stand up, collapse in fear, or turn the other cheek?  This is what defines our country.  Us.