Last Call

You know that little domestic terrorist problem we continue to have since the nutjobs are coming out of the woodwork these days?  Still an issue, still luckily law enforcement is up to the task.

Federal authorities say a Michigan man bought and hid more than 4,000 pounds of explosives with enough potential firepower to equal the Oklahoma City bombing and told an undercover informant that “when the government takes over, we will be mercenaries.”


John Francis Lechner, 64, was arrested last week on a charge of possessing explosives while facing other charges and ordered held following a U.S. District Court hearing Monday. His attorney said Lechner, a builder and farmer from Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Peninsula, obtained the materials years ago for construction projects.

“He’s not a terrorist, he’s not a mercenary, he’s not some freedom fighter,” defense attorney Charles Malette told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “He intended no type of violence, pro- or anti-government. The man is not like that.”

Prosecutors and agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not accuse Lechner of plotting to detonate the mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. Assistant U.S. Attorney Maarten Vermaat told the AP he had “no idea” what Lechner planned to do with the materials.

You know, asking the guy what he plans to do with 2 tons of explosives is a fair question for the state to ask.  He deserves his day in court.  Having said that, he's expecting the government to "take over", and he expects to have been able to fight back with said 2 tons of things that go boom.

Seems like yeah, there's probably a case here.

Not Exactly A Laughing Matter

Yeah, well, if NC Dem Gov. Bev Perdue wasn't in trouble before back in my home state, she is after this massive gaffe speaking at the Rotary Club in Cary, NC yesterday.

"You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things. I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. The one good thing about Raleigh is that for so many years we worked across party lines. It's a little bit more contentious now but it's not impossible to try to do what's right in this state. You want people who don't worry about the next election."

No, see, even in the full context, that's a terrible thing to say, and something that's going to be used against her for pretty much the rest of her political career.  The folks on the right are having a complete meltdown over this (no surprise there) but that's not even the kind of thing you want to say as a grim joke or hyperbole as an elected politician.

Considering Republicans are trying to do everything they can to make elections optional for most of America anyway, it only gives the GOP cover to continue with their "voter ID" nonsense laws designed to disenfranchise traditional Democratic voters right on out of the electoral process.  Nice to know that for the rest of this election cycle any serious inquiry into red state Voter ID laws will be met with cries of "BEV PERDUE IS A FASCIST".

Stupid, stupid, stupid.  And as the title of the blog says, I'm against that particular thing.

Bucking The System

The House GOP wants to get rid of the paper dollar and switch to the dollar coin, but both Massachusetts Senators, Republican Scott Brown and Democrat John Kerry, would rather have the greenback back.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) and two other House Republicans — including supercommittee co-chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) — introduced legislation last week aimed at retiring the paper dollar. Schweikert said his bill would save $184 million a year and $5.5 billion over 30 years by transitioning to a dollar coin in four years, or as soon as $600 million worth of dollar coins are in circulation.

Schweikert said three billion paper dollars are shredded every year, and the constant need to destroy these dollars and create new ones is a cost the government can no longer bear. He said metal coins would last longer and therefore save money.

"At a time when we are staring down a record-breaking $1.3 trillion deficit, any commonsense measure that cuts billions needs to be given serious consideration," he said of his Currency Optimization, Innovation and National Savings (COINS) Act. "That is exactly what the COINS Act will do and why I am introducing it."

But Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced a competing bill over the weekend, the Currency Efficiency Act. That bill is aimed at protecting the paper dollar from what the senators call a "massive overproduction" of the "unpopular one dollar coin."

"The one dollar coin is misleading because it costs taxpayers so much more," Brown said. "In fact, we have over $1 billion worth of extra one dollar coins sitting idle in vaults and that's set to double over the next several years."

On one hand, the company that makes dollar paper for the US mint is in Dalton, Massachusetts, Crane & Co., the nation's first paper manufacturer dating back from the days of Paul Revere, so there's a definite reason why both Bay State Senators are defending the paper buck.  On the other hand, the dollar coin is very, very popular with vending machine manufacturers...and Texas and Arizona account for over 100 of the country's nearly 800 such manufacturers.  No surprise there, either.  The House bill is supported by the vending machine lobbyist group, the Dollar Coin Alliance, its honorary chairman is former Arizona GOP Congressman Jim Kolbe.

And let's not forget the reason why there's a billion plus dollars in dollar coins sitting around US Mint warehouses is that 75% of Americans prefer the paper dollar because the dollar coin legislation in the late 90's was put forth by, you guessed it, Arizona Republican Jim Kolbe and the same groups promised us that the dollar coin would be wildly popular.  It wasn't.

Now Republicans want to fix the issue and change the currency of the country itself to make vending machine makers happy, not to mention copper mines and smelters.  Yes, there are environmental benefits to the dollar coin, but there are drawbacks as well.

Any time I see House Republicans pushing environmental benefits of something, I wonder what the catch is and why it hasn't been done already, and I'm thinking it has everything to do with the companies who want to make a mint off minting these coins.  I don't mind releasing the coins we already have into circulation, but getting rid of the paper buck seems like a bad way to force people to use something they don't want to use.

Hey wait a minute, I thought Republicans were against that sort of thing, after all.

[UPDATE] Stan Collender at CG&G makes some good points as to why the COINS Act is nothing more than the GOP shifting corporate welfare dollars to their constituencies.

StupidiChat Has Arrived!

Those who visit the page may have seen earlier today that there is now a StupidiChat link on the left side of the page.  We have big plans for this, but for the time  being we will start off slowly.

For now, Z and I will be spending some random time in the room for wanderers to come in and say hi.  We will also use the room and post chat times for important events, both political and otherwise, so we can all talk live.  Some transcripts may even find their way into the posts, because we know our readers have some great ideas.

Sometime in the next week or so, we will release a few regular times that you can always count on us to be in the chat room, so you can come say hi or chat us up about whatever is on your mind.  Before we set those dates, we want to make sure they are sustainable, so expect those to roll out in very shortly.

Woman Will Be Lashed For Driving

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a woman to 10 lashes for breaking the country's ban on female drivers.

The woman, identified only as Shema, was found guilty of driving in Jeddah in July.

Women2drive, which campaigns for women to be allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, says she has already lodged an appeal.

The sentence comes two days after the Saudi leader King Abdullah announced women would be allowed to vote for the first time in 2015.

It has been established that the King's decree allowing women to vote is a hollow joke.  It isn't bound by law so it can be repealed at any time, and the ability to vote is a farce in a country where underground deals determine who is in charge.  Elections are for show, so giving women that right is an insult when they are not able to walk or drive without an escort.  It's amazing to me that in our progressive time, women are still treated so badly in other places.  Again, we see reports of women being treated as slaves or property, forced through life with no choices or hope of change.  Women are forced to live a life of servitude, while their husbands answer to nobody for how they treat another human being.

This must be stopped.  Freedom to walk or drive is about as basic as it gets.  What does it matter if they can vote, if they must have a male relative drive them down there?  What good is it to be born in a world where you can never show your face or drive without an escort?

This will stain my entire day.  My heart goes out to that poor woman, ten lashes will be agonizing, and the scars will haunt her forever.

Damn The Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead

At the outstanding Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, Sarah Kliff makes the case as to why the Obama administration wants SCOTUS to rule on the Affordable Care Act ASAP.

The Justice Department said Monday night it would not ask a federal appeals court in Atlanta to review its ruling against the Affordable Care Act last month. That decision, from a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, found the mandated purchase of insurance to be unconstitutional.

If the Obama administration had asked the lower court to re-hear the case, with all 11 judges weighing in, the extra steps could have delayed a Supreme Court decision until 2013. Now, a Supreme Court case looks very likely to come by next summer, right in the thick of the 2012 presidential election.

The conventional wisdom has always been that, for the White House, a longer timeline on health reform’s legal challenges is better: it gives the law more time to be implemented and benefits to kick in. So why did it choose the faster route to the Supreme Court this time? There are at least three reasons that could make a 2012 Supreme Court decision a more compelling one for the White House:

And they are in order:

1. The Obama administration will definitely handle the case.
2. The review might not have been granted— or gone against the administration.
3. The move shows confidence.

I agree with Kliff on all three of these, and it's a smart move.  The right fully expected the President to punt on this until 2013 because they are convinced that 2010's losses were in part due to the passage of the law in the first place.  Having the court rule on it now they figure means the President is handing the GOP a grenade to toss right in his face for the last several months of the 2012 campaign.

But let's be honest: the GOP was going to do everything they can to mobilize their voters on the "Obamacare" issue anyway by attacking the President, so there was no advantage in delaying the ruling until after the election anyway. 

Smart move, and I don't see how the administration had much choice anyway.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

What Morgan Freeman said:



What FOX News heard:



Any questions about why these assholes need to be shown the door, and why you need to do your part in making that happen?

Dick Morris Is Lying About Black Support Of Obama

Shocking, I know.  But Dick Morris is lying through his teeth when he says President Obama has lost support among African-Americans.

According to a Washington Post/ABC News survey, his favorability rating among African-Americans has dropped off a cliff, plunging from 83 percent five months ago to a mere 58 percent today — a drop of 25 points, a bit more than a point per week!

Nothing is more crucial to the president’s reelection strategy than a super-strong showing among black voters. In the election of 2008, he was able to increase African-American participation from 11 percent of the total vote in 2004 to 14 percent. He carried 98 percent of them. This swing accounted for fully half of his gain over the showing of John Kerry. Now his ability to repeat that performance is in doubt.

The bolded part is an outright lie.  I will repeat this and call Mr. Morris out:  he is a liar and is lying on purpose to make President Obama look bad.  Here is what the poll actually said:

New cracks have begun to show in President Obama’s support amongst African Americans, who have been his strongest supporters. Five months ago, 83 percent of African Americans held “strongly favorable” views of Obama, but in a new Washington Post-ABC news poll that number has dropped to 58 percent. That drop is similar to slipping support for Obama among all groups.

So yes, the number of African Americans holding strongly favorable opinions of the President right now are down.  This is not the same as these opinions going to unfavorable, and Dick Morris knows it.  He thinks you're too stupid to notice.   And what's President Obama's actual, total favorability rating among African Americans, counting both strongly favorable and favorable positions?

Obama is strongest in the West, and has maintained substantial favorability among Hispanics (61 percent) as well as among African-Americans (86 percent).

That's right, 86 percent.  A far cry from the 58 percent that Dick Morris claims, because Dick Morris is an outright liar.  He takes one fact and claims it's another, and he does it on purpose to suggest that the President has lost 25 percent of African Americans in just a few months.  He hasn't.

But Dick Morris knows the news orgs aren't going to fact check him, not even the Washington Post or ABC News.  It was their poll after all, and the first thing they talk about is the drop among those strongly favorable numbers.  Is that a problem?  Yes.  Does it mean Obama has "lost blacks" as Morris's column implies?  No.  He's lying.  Period.  End of story.

But he'll go unchallenged by the people who should call him on it.

StupidiNews!

• After 41 years, the FBI has finally caught up with now 68-yearo-old fugitive plane hijacker George Wright near Lisbon, Portugal.
• The President's western state swing went through Denver yesterday as he continues to press Congress to pass the American Jobs Act.
• Painter Wolfgang B admitted in a German court to forging over a dozen modern art masterpieces worth tens of millions of euros in Europe's largest "art scam".
• The government of Greek PM George Papandreou got a major win with a successful vote to raise property taxes to raise badly needed revenue to meet EU bailout conditions.
• New Apple CEO Tim Cook will unveil the iPhone 5 officially next week on October 4th.

Last Call

Yeah, this story has me hopping mad.  Turns out the banks had some help selling subprime garbage to minority groups, in particular Wells Fargo had radio host Tavis Smiley on their payroll selling crap loans during the housing bubble and now I can't think of anyone else who deserves the lawsuit against them as a result.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions:

As the housing market began booming in the mid-2000s, Wells Fargo & Co. teamed up with prominent African American commentator and PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley and financial author Kelvin Boston, the host of “Moneywise,” a multicultural financial affairs show, to host something called “Wealth Building” seminars in black neighborhoods.

Smiley was the keynote speaker, and the big draw, according to Boston and Keith Corbett, executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, who attended two of the seminars. Smiley would charge up the audience — and rattle the Wells Fargo executives in attendance — by launching into a story about how he hated banks, and how they used to refuse to lend him money for his real estate projects in Compton, Calif., and elsewhere. After Hurricane Katrina, Smiley also emphasized the importance of building assets and wealth, saying those who had done so were able to leave New Orleans, while people with nothing had to stay behind, Boston said.

Seems like a good plan, until Wells Fargo went in to close the sale.

But what appeared on the surface as a way to help black borrowers build wealth was actually just the opposite, according to a little-noticed explanation of the “Wealth Building” seminar strategy, contained in a lawsuit recently filed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

Wells’ plan for the seminars all along was to target black borrowers for higher-cost subprime mortgages, not for wealth-building, the suit charged. And the seminars were a part of the bank’s overall illegal and discriminatory practice of steering black and Hispanic borrowers into riskier and more expensive loans, the suit said.

“According to a former Wells Fargo Home Mortgage employee, one of these ‘Wealth Building’ seminars held in Maryland was planned for an audience that would be virtually all African American,” the suit said. “The plan for the seminar was for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage employees to talk about subprime mortgages, although they were directed by Wells Fargo Home Mortgage to use the term ‘alternative lending’ when marketing these products.”

The former employee, who is white, was scheduled to speak at the seminar, but was told by a manager that she was “too white,” and that only black employees could make presentations, the suit said.

Yeah, in other words, Tavis Smiley and Kelvin Boston  got paid to bring in the marks and Wells Fargo bagged subprime loans as a result.  Boston seems to be throwing Smiley under the bus pretty quickly in this story, and Smiley has said very little.

If I didn't think Smiley was a brazen opportunistic asshole before, I sure as hell do now.  Not everybody that ruined the economy for minorities was white, folks.

About As Bright As A Potted Plant

Because the Winger mindset is that everything political must be motivated by the unending desire to win more power, the only possible explanation of the "horrifying" exchange between the President and a Google employee named Doug Edwards at yesterday's LinkedIn town hall in Silicon Valley where Edwards asked the President to raise his taxes is that the employee had to be an obvious plant in the audience.

Oh, liberals gushed when a rich audience member asked Obama that question today. It seems relevant to point out that this rich liberal is Doug Edwards from the Obama-friendly and regulation-friendly Google.

Edwards has given $300,000 to politicians since 2000 -- every single dime to Democrats. He specifically said he wanted his higher taxes to cover Pell Grants.

Oh, the abject horror of that!  The wingers are in full poutrage mode this morning, with FOX Nation calling Evans a plant and Malkin shrieking about President Obama possibly doing something Bush 43 did for eight years without a peep out of her.

The Right's position on taxes is that every successful businessperson in the country succeeded in spite of them, not because of services and programs funded by them.  The fact that Massachusetts Dem Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren dared to call out conservatives on this has clearly struck one hell of a nerve, and the President took up Warren's argument yesterday at the town hall event.  Greg Sargent:

Conservatives have offered a number of responses to this argument. Some have insisted that if wealthy people like Buffett and the former Google exec want to pay higher taxes, by God, they should go ahead and pay higher taxes. But this badly misses the point: These men are making an argument about the imperative that their whole income group do more to help solve our fiscal mess, not just about their own desire to chip in more themselves. 

And that's what the modern GOP can't comprehend, the notion that with great wealth in society and the power and freedom that wealth brings there comes responsibility to help maintain that society.  Since as I mentioned before the only possible motivation in the GOP worldview is self-aggrandizement and the relentless pursuit of more wealth, it's simply a foreign concept to many of them.

It all comes down to whether or not you believe society's wealthy should work to make the system capable of producing more like themselves, or to do everything they can to produce fewer so that wealth stays with those who have it, and by dint of possession are those most capable and worthy of having it by making sure it's not "malinvested" with the unwashed, unworthy masses.

Or, as the joke goes, American exceptionalism means a bunch of people who were born on third base in life believing they got there because they hit a triple.

He's Just Doing His Job

Behold the power of the free market libertarian utopia.

While European government and financial leaders are scrambling to prevent a financial crisis in the Eurozone that would likely throw the global economy into even more turmoil, stock trader Alessio Rastani took to BBC today to tell the world that traders were looking forward to the possibility of a second big recession. “For most traders, it’s not about – we don’t really care that much how they’re going to fix the economy, how they’re going to fix the whole situation,” he said. “Our job is to make money from it.” Rastani, who also claimed “Goldman Sachs rules the world,” said, “Personally, I’ve been dreaming of this moment for three years…I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession. When the market crashes… if you know what to do, if you have the right plan set up, you can make a lot of money from this.”

Of course if you're not in position to take advantage of another recession that will likely wreck our economy for another decade or more, that's not really Alessio Rastani's problem now, is it?  There's no wrong or right, no black or white, only green green green.  That's the best part about the GOP "wreck the economy by making sure nothing gets done to prevent another financial crisis" plan:  if you know the catastrophe is coming, you can make money off of it.

Hey, that's all that matters, right?  Rest of the planet gets brutally Darwined and you win.  His job is to make money.  Who cares if people get destroyed while doing it?  It's your fault for being too poor not to play the game and win.

Bowels In An Uproar Over Juice

Fruits and veggies are helpful at preventing certain diseases.  Many components of fruit are helpful at preventing bowel cancer, including rectal cancer.  A new study suggests that fruit served in the form of juice may backfire, the sugar content actually raising the risk of cancer without the nutitional benefits that offset the risk.

As a diabetic, I can chip in on this to a degree.  I have to offset the nutritional value of sugary foods to make good choices.  Juice is a no-no because it offers no fiber or other benefits from fruit, so I have to get my vitamins from whole oranges and apples.  One thing the study overlooked was low-sugar offerings.  Mott's apple juice has a variety that has all the nutrients but half the sugar. 

There is a disclaimer in the article that explains this is a new study, and that it is difficult to measure food's affect on health when we eat a varied diet.  Some patterns emerge overall, such as limit red meat and increase fiber, but even red meat has a place in our diet, just in a smaller amount. 

It might just be that I am overwhelmed by the studies, but it seems to me every food has a benefit and a downside.  After all the studies are categorized and analyzed, I imagine the end result will still be "eat well and with variety and moderation."  Good advice then and now.

What Bon Would Like To Ask Candidates

It's time for all the politicians to start aligning themselves and we'll soon be bombarded by what every candidate says and how we all feel about it.  I thought I would get ahead of the curve and throw out some questions that would get to the root of some issues, at least for me.  Interviews are all a shell game now, misdirection combined with banter, and a slick talker can move past a question without saying anything... usually by making it into a similar but safer topic.

I know this isn't covering everything.  I don't even mention jobs or the economy, because I want to ask questions that might be missed, not the ones that every single interview will cover.  After you cover the obvious, there are always some frequently missed questions.  Here are a few of mine:

• Instead of your list of what Obama has done wrong, what do you plan to continue?  We can't expect much when the entire country reboots every four years.  What is going in the right direction, and what should be done to continue it?
• What are you going to do to protect our privacy?  The Patriot Act is a big deal, and it was supposedly for a specific purpose that has long since passed (it was weak to begin with).  Are you going to give us our rights back and defend us against powers of abuse?  People need peace of mind and protection. Still, in my opinion this was the worst Bush-ism that Obama failed to put right.
• Rather than what you believe (though of course that is a point of interest), do you plan to respect our right to be different?  Instead of restricting rights and legal recognition of lawful citizens, do you plan to represent all Americans?  Do you think it is right to allow one section of Americans to tell another how to live their personal lives, or are you finally willing to allow gay families to be acknowledged as Americans?  I mean, they pay taxes, fight in our military, teach our children and save our lives in hospitals.  Do you believe they deserve a voice?
• What are you going to do to bring the country together?  What are your plans to empower the working and protect the poor?  What incentives are you going to bring that will change the state of life for hundreds of thousands of hungry people?
• How have you handled mistakes in your past?  Everyone has them, that's not the concern.  But were they buried in lies and outrage, or dealt with quickly and professionally?  Are you the type to pretend you're perfect, or are you a realist and able to react quickly when you see an adjustment is required?

Those are the things I'd like to know about, even though it isn't nearly the equivalent of foreign policy or economic balance.  It speaks to me about their views and the things I can expect from them.  I got a taste of what it was like to have a mature, thoughtful leader, and I hope we continue in that direction.  The bottom line is how are they going to bring us together, and how are we going to climb out of this mess?  It's going to take more than an endless supply of bullshit to get that done.

What are you guys watching for?  We should assemble a few points to follow as we go into 2012.  What is on your minds?

Shutdown Countdown: Here We Go Again, Part 5

Looks like the Dems held their ground on the FEMA/disaster relief provisions in the Senate and the Republicans have caved totally with a 79-12 vote.  So how did the Dems win?

What ultimately broke the impasse was FEMA's announcement Monday that it won't run out of funds early this week -- a presumption House Republicans had hoped would force Senate Democrats to accept a partisan budget cut, on the threat that disaster victims would otherwise be deprived of assistance for days or even weeks.

Indeed, according to a Senate Democratic aide, FEMA has assured Congress that they will be flush through the end of the fiscal year on Friday night -- no need, in other words, for a supplemental funding bill.

When the need for emergency funds disappeared, though, so did the GOP's leverage and at the last minute Reid introduced a compromise: Clean legislation to fund the government -- including more money for FEMA, no offsets.

In other words, Republicans clearly overplayed their hands and got burned.  Dems presented a united front and the GOP had nothing to fight with.  Imagine that, Dems.  Despite the truly stupid notion that standing up for something as controversial as a clean disaster bill was picking a fight (because in Washington, the Dems should always cave to their Republican betters in the name of bipartisanship) Harry Reid and company got it done.

Well played, Mr. Senate Majority Leader.  This one is a solid win for the Democrats and for the American people.  Let's see more of this spinal fortitude thing, please.

That's the good news.  The bad?

Under the terms of the agreement, the Senate nixed all of the plans at the center of last week's government shutdown fight. In its place, it passed legislation to fund the government through mid-November, setting up the possibility of yet more bickering and brinkmanship about the budget in six weeks. 

So yeah, I'll pick up with Part 6 of this series in November.  Hooray.