Last Call

FOX News:  we report, you decide that we're pretty much crazy.  Crazy all the way to the bank, that is.  Also, dear Current TV owners Al Jazeera English:  Welcome to the neighborhood, love, Lisa Daftari.

The point is they want to differentiate themselves from their sister network, but at the same time, it’s the same thing. They’re having the same type of coverage. They’re apparently expanding to eight cities, including Detroit, Michigan. Detroit, Michigan is a large ex-pat community of Muslim-Americans and sleeper cells have been detected. You can Google this, you can find out all this information. So if you’re trying to set yourself apart the Qatari petro-dollars are backing this, you’re still developing in this area where the sleeper cells have been detected. They’re going to have do do much more to prove to me that they’re different from their sister network. 

Paranoid and bigoted much, ma'am?

I mean to be a FOX News contributor, apparently take any statement true to FOX, and replace all the FOX stuff with something liberal.  The reverse seems to hold true:  "So if you're trying to set yourself apart the Exxon petro-dollars backing this, you're still developing in this area where patriot militias and white supremacist groups have been detected."

Any more projection from this one, and she can get a job in your local theater.

Reality Is Clearly On The Obama Payroll

I’m sure the wingers are already trying to unskew this one…

President Obama starts his second term with a clear upper hand over GOP leaders on issues from guns to immigration that are likely to dominate the year, a USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll finds. On the legislation rated most urgent — cutting the budget deficit — even a majority of Republican voters endorse Obama’s approach of seeking tax hikes as well as spending cuts.

The survey underscores the quandary for the GOP as it debates the party’s message in the wake of disappointing losses last November for the White House and in the Senate.
Now just 22% of Americans, nearly a record low, consider themselves Republicans.

Ouch.  I’m actually kind of starting to feel bad for the GOP.  They can’t even find their usual 27% anymore.  And yeah, I’m aware that if Americans think cutting the deficit right now is our most urgent priority over firearms, climate change, and immigration, we need to get that unskewed real damn fast.  We’ve got far bigger issues than the GOP brand meltdown here.

There is bipartisan agreement on this: Dealing with the budget deficit is urgent.
That’s a change. When Obama took office in 2009, during a cascading financial crisis, Americans put deficit reduction in the middle of a list of policy goals in a Pew poll. Now it has risen near the top. Seven of 10 Americans (including not only 81% of Republicans but also 65% of Democrats) say it is essential for the president and Congress to enact major deficit legislation this year.

Just 4% say nothing needs to be done within the next few years.

Umm, two-thirds of Democrats say we need a grand bargain this year to reduce the deficit?  Eff austerity.  We’re taking ourselves out here, guys.

The Battle Of Fourteen

Nate Silver reminds us that the Democrats were very much on track to lose the Senate last November, but they were saved by a convergence of unlikely factors that actually allowed the Democrats to beat the odds and gain two seats.  In 2014, the Dems will need those five seats as a cushion, because the task of not losing six or more (and control of the Senate) to the Republicans is going to be difficult.

The party will face a difficult map again in 2014, however. Twenty-one of the 35 seats up for election are now held by Democrats. Moreover, most the states that will be casting ballots for the Senate in 2014 are Republican leaning: 7 of the 21 Democratic-held seats are in states carried by the former Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, while just one of the Republican seats is in a state won by President Obama.

Democrats could also suffer from the downside to presidential coattails. Most of the seats up for grabs in 2014 were last contested in 2008, a very strong Democratic year. Without having Mr. Obama on the ballot, and with an electorate that is likely to be older and whiter than in presidential years, some Democrats may find that their 2008 coattails have turned into a midterm headwind instead.

Are the conditions favorable enough to make Republicans odds-on favorites to gain six seats and win the Senate majority? Not quite. Six seats are a lot to gain, and Republicans are at risk of nominating subpar candidates in a number of races. But it would not take all that much to tip the balance toward them.

Nate shows West Virginia, with retiring Dem Jay Rockefeller, as a pretty clear GOP pickup.  Four other states:  Montana, North Carolina, Louisiana and South Dakota are tossups, with SD favoring the GOP, Montana and NC slightly favoring the Dems, and Louisiana as a true 50/50 matchup.

But three more states are in striking distance for the GOP:  Alaska, Arkansas, and retiring Dem Tom Harkin's seat in Iowa.  That means a GOP across the board tilt could put the Dems in a real hole, real fast...and the Dems don't have much of a clear shot at any pickups, yet.

For now, the road is going to be long and rough, but the way GOP senators are acting right now, they may completely pull a 2012 again...

What a shame that would be, right?

New tag, he's more than earned it:  Nate Silver.

StupidiNews!

• Georgia officials are investigating a small plane crash last night that killed 5 and injured two more as the Hawker Beechcraft went off the runway in Thomson, Georgia.
• Outspoken British MP George Galloway has quit an Oxford University debate after discovering his opponent was an Israeli.
• Pentagon officials continue to prepare to furlough hundreds of thousands of civilian employees if next week's sequester cuts take effect.
• Bulgaria's Premier Boyko Borissov is expected to resign today following anti-government protests across the EU's poorest nation.
• Two Canadians face a nearly $50,000 fine for modeling a Counter-Strike game map after a Montreal subway station.

Last Call

Old and brokedown, GOP "savior" Sen. Marco Rubio.  New hotness, GOP "savior" Sen. Ted Cruz.

In an interview that aired Wednesday on Pat Robertson's 700 Club, CBN's David Brody told Cruz that the media had dubbed him "the Republican Barack Obama" and a "GOP rock star."

"I try to pay very little attention to the media," Cruz insisted. "It is, as you know, a fickle creature."
Instead, Brody said Cruz was focused on creating a "new Republican Party."

"I think President Obama is the most radical president we've ever seen, but I think an awful lot of Republicans failed to stand for principle and contributed to getting us into this mess," the senator explained.

During an appearance at a weapons manufacturer in Texas on Tuesday, Cruz accused both Democrats and Republicans of trying to "silence" him for using McCarthyism to smear Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel with suggestions that the former Nebraska senator had taken $200,000 from North Korea.

"Washington has a long tradition of trying to hurl insults to silence those who they don't like what they're saying," Cruz told the crowd.

"A lot of media attention has been focused on the attacks leveled on me and I would encourage all of you if you want to write stories on that great, knock yourself out, but I would ask for every ten stories you write, attacking me, perhaps write one story on the substance of Chuck Hagel's record."

Yep, he sounds nothing like the old victim mentality, why is Obama so mean to us coupled with Obama Derangement Syndrome GOP at all.  Not a single friggin' bit.

(Bad) Food For Thought

Laugh all you want to at Europe's horse meat in the mix problem.  As Aviva Shen at Think Progress reminds us, the American meat supply and the regulatory safety system here is in far, far worse shape.

Food regulators recently uncovered horsemeat masquerading as beef in Burger Kings, school cafeterias, and hospitals across Europe and the UK, prompting multiple product recalls and widespread horror. The horsemeat scandal has not touched the US, and many experts and journalists have rushed to reassure Americans that their burgers are safe from horse contamination. But compared to the dangerous pathogens hiding in US-produced meat, Americans might want to consider replacing their beef patties with European horsemeat.

The debacle has exposed weaknesses in the EU’s food safety procedures. However, horsemeat poses a negligible health risk. There have been no reported deaths or illnesses caused by this contamination. Though a harmful horse painkiller called bute was found in 8 of the 206 horses, a human would have to eat more than 500 burgers made entirely of horsemeat to ingest a human dose.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the average American consumes roughly 270 pounds of meat per year, and it’s unlikely that horsemeat is in the mix. There is, however, plenty of evidence that many Americans are inadvertently eating a side of deadly bacteria like salmonella or e. coli with their burgers. According to Center for Disease Control estimates, 48 million Americans get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne illnesses every year. In comparison, the entire European Union had roughly 45,000 illnesses and 32 deaths from contaminated food in 2008. That means foodborne illness strikes 15 percent of Americans each year, but only .00009 percent of Europeans.

Pay attention to that last part, kids.  You're over a thousand times more likely to get food poisoning from food here than in Europe.  Maybe socialism isn't so bad when foodborne illnesses kill 3,000 a year in this country and we're pretty much okay with that.

Strike that, Republicans aren't okay with that.  They say that number should be higher because we've got too much government regulation.  You know what's getting cut as part of the sequestration meat axe?  The guys inspecting meat axes.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the White House have caused quite a stir in food and agriculture circles by warning that budget sequestration could lead to a two-week furlough of federal meat inspectors, which would effectively halt American meat and poultry processing.

The meat industry has responded by arguing that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is actually legally obligated to provide Food Safety and Inspection Service inspectors at meat plants — without an FSIS inspector plants are not allowed to operate — so USDA should instead furlough less important, or “non-essential” employees to meet the automatic cuts.

Sorry folks, Republicans are more than happy to let these cuts happen. These cuts will have consequences, and the GOP is hoping those consequences are "We block it and you'll blame Obama."

Somehow, that's a load of bull.  Or horse.

Moving Those Goalposts

Greg Sargent points out that the goalposts on deficit reduction in Very Serious Washington just got yanked hard to the right in the new revised Simpson-Bowles Punish The Proles Plan.  The amount of new revenues in the plan is drastically lower, and spending cuts, drastically higher.

In other words, the plan roughly represents the ideological midpoint between the Obama and Boehner fiscal cliff blueprints — which is why the plan is so heavily tilted towards cuts. As Kevin Drum notes, this is particularly odd, given that spending cuts have already been “75 percent of the deficit reduction we’ve done so far.” Drum adds: “this sure makes it hard to take Simpson-Bowles 2.0 seriously as a plan.”

That’s true, but it also provides a useful window into the arbitrariness of Beltway conceptions of what constitutes the ideological “center.” After all, the Boehner fiscal cliff plan raised taxes only on income over $1 million; the Obama offer raised taxes only on income over $400,000. Both of these are to the right of the balance Obama just won an election on: The expiration of the Bush tax cuts for income over $250,000. Yet these were designated the two ideological outer poles for the purposes of defining the debate.

Of course, there is actually a liberal position in this debate, and it isn’t the one held by Obama. As you may recall, House progressives recently released their own blueprint for Round 3 of deficit reduction; it proposed some $948 billion in new revenues, derived entirely from closing loopholes and deductions enjoyed by the rich. The result of this plan, if enacted, would be that overall, our short term fiscal problems would have been resolved through roughly equivalent spending cuts and tax hikes — which is to say, through roughly equivalent concessions by both sides.

But of course, such a notion of balance is so obviously a nonstarter in Washington that it doesn’t even factor into the discussion in any way, shape, or form. The left outer pole of the debate, then, is to the right of the position that helped decisively reelect Obama.

Punish The Proles 2.0 is about selling the Ryan Plan, plain and simple.  The little people have to be weaned off Medicare and Social Security, and more and more of our Village elders are moving past the "if it needs to happen" part to "when it needs to happen", and that's apparently going to be Obama's second term legacy, whether or not Obama actually wants to do it (which he's repeatedly said he won't.)

But the Simpson-Bowles plan is now calling for at least $5 trillion in deficit reduction, and basically all of the additional cuts from the $4 trillion or so plan from last time is coming from the social safety net.  Tinkering around the edges like Obama has already done will affect people down the road (and in some cases substantially), but the changes these guys are now demanding will turn the scalpel into an orbital particle cannon.

I'm hoping Obama can hold out.  I don't think the rest of Democrats in Congress will give him much of a choice.

StupidiNews!

• A Georgia inmate with an IQ of 70 has been granted a last-minute stay of execution as the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reviews his case.
• An Italian website is reporting that Pope Benedict XVI is "nearly blind in one eye" and suffers from hypertension as medical reasons for his retirement from the station of Pope.
• While Congress is on yet another vacation this week, President Obama is pushing for legislators to come up with a plan to avoid "devastating" job cuts from sequestration by March 1.
• Former Swiss billionaire Thomas Straumann is selling a few things to get back above the billion mark, including his 1965 James Bond Aston Martin from the movie Thunderball.
• Embattled console-maker Sony is expected to reveal the new PlayStation 4 today, as the struggling company tries to keep up with Microsoft and Nintendo.

Last Call

Louisville Courier-Journal winger nutjob John David Dyche is calling it quits after the paper refused to publish his latest screed on how evilly liberal the Louisville Courier-Journal is.

Conservative columnist John David Dyche will no longer write for The Courier-Journal after the newspaper rejected a piece he'd written that suggested reforms to the editorial page and that the paper disclose political affiliations of editors and reporters.

On Monday, Courier-Journal Editorial Director Pam Platt told Dyche that his most recently submitted column would not be published. Platt explained that piece didn't reflect what he was supposed to be writing—a conservative take on the issues of the day, according to Dyche's transcript of a voicemail left by Platt.

Dyche wrote back to Platt and C-J Publisher Wes Jackson arguing that he'd never before been told what his column was supposed to be about and that a conservative take on issues includes "liberal media bias." Dyche told Platt that if the paper wouldn't change its mind, he'd sever their relationship. Platt wished him well on future endeavors.

"I never had a column censored or refused before," Dyche told WFPL on Friday. "I wrote about things that were interesting to readers and things that were public issues. I thought this was both. Media bias, the status of newspapers, et cetera. This seemed to me to be interesting, and the only problem apparently was that it was about The Courier-Journal itself. They just don't seem willing to subject themselves to the same scrutiny and demands that they routinely subject others to."

Platt responds via e-mail: "I believe my remarks about the reason I declined (the) column and my best wishes to him in the future have been posted."

Any newspaper editor will tell you that if you've got a problem with the paper's op-ed rules, formal or informal, writing a column for public consumption about your beef with them is the last thing you do.   No newspaper is going to want to make themselves the story, so Dyche did it for them.

If you can show me where in the Constitution it says that Dyche has the inalienable right to slag his employer in his column and that they must print it, go for it.  And let's remember, Dyche then tendered his resignation, he wasn't fired.

Good riddance.  His column was crap anyway.

Right Out Of Existence

The LIBERTY and FREEDOM guys apparently have no issue with using the power of government to regulate small businesses right out of existence, as long as those small businesses are women's clinics.

The Alabama House of Representatives is expected to take up abortion legislation Tuesday that supporters claim will protect patients in clinics and opponents claim will close down abortion providers.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin, R-Pelham, would require physicians at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals; require clinics to follow ambulatory clinic building codes and make it a felony — punishable by up to 10 years in prison — for a nurse, nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant to dispense abortion-inducing medications.


McClurkin and other supporters of the bill, known as HB 57, argue that the nature of abortion should require strict regulations, and claim that abortion clinics have a higher rate of regulatory violations than any other providers.


“When a physician removes a child from a woman, that is the largest organ in a body,” McClurkin said in an interview Thursday. “That’s a big thing. That’s a big surgery. You don’t have any other organs in your body that are bigger than that.”

So in one fell swoop, Alabama will all but close the last remaining few clinics in the state by making it impossible to meet the criteria, and to criminalize birth control drugs like Plan B.   Hell, depending on how they define "abortion-inducing medications" it could make prescribing any birth control a state felony.

But remember, small government, individual choice, freedom and liberty...unless it comes to your uterus.

Science, GOP Style

This Huffington Post article calls out the stupidity of Mary Sue McClurkin, who decides to change science to make her point.  As always, those pesky facts get in the way.

Alabama state Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin (R) is pushing legislation that would impose restrictions on abortion clinics -- a move that she argues is necessary because the procedure is a major surgery that removes the largest "organ" in a woman's body.

“When a physician removes a child from a woman, that is the largest organ in a body,” McClurkin told the Montgomery Advertiser on Thursday. “That’s a big thing. That’s a big surgery. You don’t have any other organs in your body that are bigger than that.”

Most junior high science classes could easily dissect this argument, and it is yet another embarrassment for a group already famous for being at odds with science.  She could at least use the correct word.  Oh wait, if she uses the correct word then her entire argument falls apart.  Very well, then.  Let the clown car skid into the courtroom once more.

Maybe this whole thing is just an argument for better elementary education in Alabama.

StupidiNews!

• Olympic runner Oscar Pistorious faced his first court date in South Africa with the defense arguing he shout and killed his girlfriend because he thought she was a burglar.
• CBS News reports that the motive for alleged Newtown shooter Adma Lanza was to "beat" the death toll of 77 gunned down by Norwegian Anders Brevik in 2011.
• Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made a surprise trip home to Caracas on Monday after his ongoing cancer treatment in Cuba.
• Legendary LA Lakers owner Jerry Buss has died at the age of 80, his teams took a record 10 NBA titles in the space of 34 seasons.
• Google continues to bet big on its Project Glass wearable computer glasses, recent Glass Foundry events produced 8 teams to develop code for the devices.

The Right's Hagel Finagle

Jen Rubin is a meta-hack, but she's a pretty reliable barometer of the winger zeitgeist, and the wingers are pretty pissed off that senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham seem to be crumbling on Chuck Hagel.

In any event, McCain and Graham shouldn’t fold when the going gets tough. If this nominee is as bad as they say, they should, and indeed must, filibuster him if the White House (unlike the Bush White House) and the Democrats (unlike the GOP senators of yesteryear) won’t do the right thing.

Here's the thing, when Susan Rice was floated for Secretary of State, Republicans readily had John Kerry's name at hand because they wanted a shot at his seat.  But have you heard Republicans mention a possible replacement for Chuck Hagel?

Not to my knowledge.  We hear how awful, incompetent, and even anti-Semitic Chuck Hagel supposedly is, but nobody seems to have a name of somebody who would be an acceptable replacement.

Funny how that works.

Criss Cross Crash

For the first time in recorded history, Mickey Kaus may actually be right about something when it comes to the leaked draft of the President's immigration bill that may end up on the table in case Senators can't come up with anything.

So what’s the purpose of this hollow threat? The only explanation I come up with is that it’s a Double Kabuki play: 1) The President gets to posture as the tough guy demanding a deal (or else he’ll unleash his draft!). Meanwhile the Hispanic caucus and the amnesty lobby can gnaw on all the pro-illegal statutory tweaks they would like to see in the “path to citizenship,” etc.  But more important 2) Republicans like Rubio and Paul Ryan get to posture by denouncing the President’s draft (Rubio: “Dead on Arrival” Ryan: “the wrong direction”) thereby earning themselves seeming-tough-on-illegals street cred that might serve them well when they sell out by endorsing an instant-legalization compromise  (as, in fact, Rubio has already done).

That would not only explain why the plan exists but why it was leaked by “an Obama administration official” to USA Today. Obama wants to give Rubio and Ryan the opportunity to look like they are fighting him. But it’s a fake fight.

Got a better explanation?

Actually I think Kaus is correct in his own paranoid way.  I agree that the plan was leaked to USA Today in order to give Republicans something to publicly beat up on for a while, but the reality is immigration has to pass, or the GOP will take the blame for killing it, and that means the Dems will continue to get the vast majority of the growing Latino vote forever.  Dubya may have been a meathead, but even he was smart enough to listen to Rove and Cheney on this.  The problem is that he underestimated the bigoted monster he helped to create, and it turned on him.

That monster still rampages around the Republican countryside, and the last few Republicans left to be motivated by enlightened self-interest are trying to slay it.

I think it will fail.  The Republican Party is a hate group in 2013, period.  They will have to be reconstituted at some point in the future, but they are effectively done right now.

StupidiNews!

• Country music star Mindy McCready is dead at the age of 37, found at her Arkansas home on Sunday with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
• Journalists at the BBC are on a 24-hour strike in protest of "compulsory redundancy" measures used to terminate 30 employees.
• Members of the Lumbee Indian tribe of North Carolina say they will continue to use eagle feathers in tribal ceremonies even if the tribe is not federally recognized to be able to do so.
• Danica Patrick is the first woman to qualify for a pole position in a NASCAR Sprint Cup race, putting in the fastest time for next week's Daytona 500.
• A laser intended for measuring carbon samples on Mars is being used by the EU to detect counterfeit honey smuggled from China.