Last Call For Alex, Sunk

In the special election for Florida's 13th district to replace the late career GOP Rep. Bill Young, Democrat Alex Sink couldn't flip the seat as Republican David Jolly won 48.5% to 46.6%, with independent Lucas Overby serving as spoiler and taking 4.8% of the vote, enough to split the opposition to Jolly and allow the GOP to keep the seat.

The outcome does not change anything for Democrats in their calculus for retaking the House in next November's midterms. They still need to pick up 17 seats.

Political handicappers consider that a tall order, considering the shrinking number of competitive congressional districts nationwide.

Jolly served as a former general counsel for Young and also worked as a lobbyist.

"Tonight brings an end to this election," a victorious Jolly told supporters. "Tomorrow provides the opportunity for us to embark together on a new journey of representation here in Pinellas County."

Sink, the former Florida Chief Financial Officer, narrowly lost the 2010 gubernatorial election to Rick Scott.

She conceded the contest more than an hour after the polls closed, expressing pride in her campaign and thanking volunteers and supporters.

"I have congratulated David Jolly and wish him the best success in representing the voices of Pinellas in Congress," she said.

Florida-13 is a swing district in a swing state. It covers most of Pinellas County between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, including parts of St. Petersburg. 

This is a district that voted Young pretty handily in 2012, but also helped President Obama win the state in his re-election.  Republicans are already saying this portends absolute doom for the Dems in 2014, but unless the GOP plans to help run glibertarian douchebags like 27-year old Overby in all the competitive districts to split the youth vote, it's not indicative of the country as a whole.

On the other hand, Jolly has to now immediately defend the seat in November, and I'm betting 8 months of doing nothing by voting against Obamacare isn't going to get him the win when turnout should be higher than the 39% this special election brought around.

We'll see.

Meanwhile, In Ukraine...

The saber-rattling is getting pretty, well, rattling if you ask me.

Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY.

The United States, Great Britain and Russia agreed in a pact "to assure Ukraine's territorial integrity" in return for Ukraine giving up a nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union after declaring independence in 1991, said Pavlo Rizanenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

"We gave up nuclear weapons because of this agreement," said Rizanenko, a member of the Udar Party headed by Vitali Klitschko, a candidate for president. "Now there's a strong sentiment in Ukraine that we made a big mistake."

His statements come as Russia raised the possibility it may send its troops beyond the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea into the eastern half of Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said lawlessness "now rules in eastern regions of Ukraine as a result of the actions of fighters of the so-called 'right sector' with the full connivance" of Ukraine's authorities.

Rizanenko and others in Ukraine say the pact it made with the United States under President Bill Clinton was supposed to prevent such Russian invasions.

The pact was made after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 and became Russia, leaving the newly independent nation of Ukraine as the world's third largest nuclear weapons power.

I'm hoping this is the opinion of a grumpy Soviet-era hardliner who's still kicking around Kiev's parliament some 25 years later.  But former heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko and the Udar party have been arguably the highest profile players in Ukraine's revolution.  But it shows that the situation in Ukraine is getting increasingly perilous, and that Putin has raised the stakes considerably with his actions.

Good thing we have President Obama at the helm, and not McCain or Romney.

Fish With Martyr Sauce

CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson has apparently had enough of the network not running her Benghazigate pieces and is, I assume, leaving for someplace where she can happily smear the President more often over in Winger Welfare land.

Sources at CBS told the Washington Post's Erik Wemple that Atkisson was upset that the network hadn't used more of her reporting on the Sept, 11 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, and she's currently working on a book that details her struggles with the Obama administration (title: "Stonewalled: One Reporter's Fight for Truth in Obama's Washington").

But Atkisson had long ago carved out a special place in the hearts of conservatives.

Not only did she earn a reputation for relentlessly hounding the Obama administration over Benghazi, she also doggedly reported on the federal government's gun-walking operation known as "Fast and Furious," another conservative obsession.

The right showed its appreciation for her "Fast and Furious" coverage in 2012, when Atkisson received the Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Her reporting was also regularly picked up by the aforementioned conservative news sites. Peruse through the archives at Breitbart, The Blaze and Townhall, and you'll find Atkisson's work cited frequently.

Of course, maybe it was because Attkisson is basically working for the GOP and helping to launder leaks to damage the Obama administration as recently as November.

On November 11, a CBS News report cited selectively leaked partial transcripts from Affordable Care Act (ACA) opponent Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to claim that "the project manager in charge of building the federal health care website was apparently kept in the dark about serious failures in the website's security." The network was criticized by Maddow producer Steve Benen when he found that the warnings referenced a function of the health care website that won't be active until early 2014 and has nothing to do with the parts of the website that are currently in use. A Democratic staffer Benen talked to also said that this part of the website "will not submit or share personally identifiable information."

CBS' faulty report aired just days after the network faced widespread criticism and was forced to apologize for failing properly vet an unreliable source that was prominently featured in the network's October 27 60 Minutes report on the Benghazi attack. But CBS wasn't the only outlet to promote misleading claims from the leaked Oversight Committee transcript.

On November 11, The New York Times reported that The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Henry Chao, "[t]he chief digital architect for the federal health insurance marketplace," was "not aware of tests that indicated potential security flaws in the system, which opened to the public on Oct. 1," citing excerpts released by Issa. The same day, FoxNews.com claimed that Obamacare security concerns had been "withheld," but never mentioned that its story was based on a partial transcript. CNN's New Day, and Fox News' America's Newsroom and On The Record with Greta Van Susteren all ran the story on November 12. The Associated Press repeated the claim "Chao was unaware of a memo earlier that month detailing unresolved security issues" as late as November 13 -- after contradictory reports had surfaced.

The media's failure to confirm the suggestions made by partial transcripts from the House Oversight Committee is a significant oversight, considering the committee chairman Darrell Issa's history of releasing misleading material the press.

So yes, she gladly wants to run false and misleading pieces to hurt Democrats, and is upset that maybe, in the wake of Lara Logan's 60 Minutes Benghazi fiasco that had to be publicly retracted, that the network is actually being more critical of GOP propaganda pieces.

That's enough to make you a "victim of liberal bias" when you quit your job.

StupidiNews!

• A new report from the American Society of Clinical Oncology finds that cancer will surpass heart disease as the number one killer of Americans by 2030.
• The use of public transit is growing in the US, as Americans took a record 10.7 billion trips on public transportation systems in 2013.
• Maoist rebels are claiming responsibility for 16 deaths during an ambush of police in eastern India ahead of next month's general elections.
• Malaysian officials say the two individuals that boarded missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 with stolen passports do not have any terrorist ties, as the search for the plane continues into day 4.
• Cable giant Comcast has cut a deal with Sony to stream the first season of Netflix's House of Cards and a number of other TV shows on its Xfinity on-demand streaming service.

Last Call For Whom The Bridge Tolls

The Brent Spence Bridge connecting northern Kentucky with Cincinnati is reaching the end of its structural lifespan.  It's one of the busiest bridges in the country, carrying twice its intended traffic daily, and replacing it isn't going to happen anytime soon, or at all, it looks like.

The Kentucky legislative session is more than halfway over, and Northern Kentucky state lawmakers show no signs of embracing tolls — despite support for them from the Ohio and Kentucky governors, business leaders and lawmakers elsewhere, who think tolls are the only way to finance the $2.6 billion project.

Kentucky owns the bridge, and the Northern Kentucky delegation holds almost all the power on whether the project gets done. But no one has come up with another money source besides tolls to pay for the bridge replacement and highway corridor overhaul.

“I don’t think it’s ever gonna be dead until it’s addressed, but it’s probably not going to move forward right now,” said Kentucky House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg. “Over time, they’re going to have to replace that bridge.”

It's pretty simple:  if northern Kentucky lawmakers vote to stick voters like me with the bill through tolls, they'll be unemployed.  Everyone else in Kentucky and Ohio wants to do just that.  But Democrat or Republican, liberal blogger or Tea Party patriot, you will see any state lawmaker around here who votes to pay for the new Brent Spence through $2-$5 tolls each way get launched out of office at near relativistic speeds.  And they know it.

Ohio and Kentucky have spent or committed $104.9 million to the project since 2005. Top regional businesses, meanwhile, have invested more than $2 million since 2012 to advocate for a new bridge on Interstates 71 and 75 — fearing that nightmarish rush-hour congestion on the 50-year-old Brent Spence will eventually hinder the region’s ability to retain and add jobs.

Northern Kentucky lawmakers’ inability to move the project along could become a real problem for Ohio, which has no power to get the project done despite paying for almost half of it. Ohio is in the midst of a massive overhaul of I-75, a plan that calls for remaking several interchanges and adding a lane each direction along a 17-mile section.

The Brent Spence Bridge is scheduled to be replaced in 2035. It is “functionally obsolete” because of its narrow lanes, lack of emergency shoulders and limited visibility on the lower deck. The bridge carries double its intended traffic each day, but is structurally sound and in no danger of falling, engineers say.

Everyone acknowledges we need a new bridge.  Nobody wants to pay for it, especially not through a regressive toll that would cost commuters a couple thousand a year.

GOP Still On Cruz Controlled

Here's your cause:  Ted Cruz says Republicans will repeal "every word of Obamacare" in January.

"If there's one things that unifies politicians of both parties, you know, their top priority is preserving their own hide," Cruz said on ABC's "This Week" when asked if the GOP could repeal the health care law while President Obama remains in office. "And if enough Congressional Democrats realize they either stand with ObamaCare and lose, or they listen to the American people and have a chance at staying in office, that's the one scenario we could do it in 2015. If not, we'll do it in 2017."

Cruz reiterated that he can repeal "every single word" of the law.

When host Jonathan Karl asked if Cruz was positive a repeal was possible with Obama in the White House, the senator indicated it wasn't a large factor.

"You know, what's funny, Jon, is the media treats that as a bizarre proposition," Cruz said.

"Well, it is," Karl responded. "It is a bizarre proposition."

Cruz then said that pushing for a full repeal was the best way for the GOP to win elections in 2014.

Here's your effect:  House Republicans are now holding the Medicare "doc fix" hostage over Obamacare.

House Republicans have a bold new strategy to attack Obamacare, which involves huge pay cuts for physicians unless Democrats agree to delay the law's individual mandate to buy insurance.

GOP leaders intend to vote on legislation this week, aides say, to delay the individual mandate in order to fund a "doc fix" that avoids a 24 percent pay cut to physicians under Medicare -- which will automatically take effect on April 1 unless Congress acts. Inaction would disrupt the health care system, in part by causing many doctors to stop accepting Medicare patients.

Break the system so it can't work, then blame Democrats for it not working.  The Ted Cruz Shutdown wing of the GOP still calls the shots...because every Republican is a member.

Repeat after me:  there are no moderate Republicans.

About That Rand Paul CPAC Straw Poll...

So Rand Paul easily won this year's CPAC straw poll, but as to why, well...

Rand Paul handily won the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday, one gauge of the Republican base’s mood less than two years before the 2016 primary season kicks off.

The Kentucky senator received 31 percent, far ahead of second place Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who received 11 percent. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson finished third with 9 percent, ahead of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who received 8 percent.

The announcement came at the end of the group’s annual three-day confab. Organizers said that 2,459 attendees voted on computer kiosks.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum tied for fifth place, with 7 percent.

Certainly seems like there's an overwhelming favorite in the 2016 race for the GOP, right?

GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, who has run the straw poll since 1986, said that nearly half of the straw poll voters were between the ages of 18 to 25.

“This is a sampling of people from all 50 states who are at the forefront of the conservative moment,” he said. “They’re the people who go knock on doors.”

Oh sure, that seems like a fully representative sample of the GOP and America as a whole.  So, if you think that the makeup of the GOP primaries and the 2016 general election will be 50% white dudebro frat boys who worship Bitcoin, hate the government, but are happy to live on their parents' health insurance because they're under 26, then sure, Rand Paul has a real chance to be your next President.

Of course the flip side of this is "these guys will definitely vote."  Will you?

StupidiNews!

• The hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continues as Vietnamese naval officials say they have located debris of the country's southwest coast.
• Astronaut Koichi Wakata has become the first Japanese national to take command of the International Space Station.
• Former Ford Motor Co. CEO and last surviving grandson of Henry Ford, William Clay Ford Sr., has passed at the age of 88.
• Google will be releasing tools to create apps for its Google Glass technology as the company ramps up creation of the next generation of wearable computing apps.
• The hackers who allegedly cleaned out Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox of millions have posted information accusing the exchange's CEO of fraud.

Last Call For The Entire Universe

If you missed the premier of Cosmos, hosted by astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson tonight, you can catch it on NatGeo Monday at 10 PM.



 My first thought is "Everyone needs to see this."

My second thought is "A whole lot of future astrophysicists just did."

The Rage Of The Turtle

Mitch McConnell seems to be feeling pretty good about not only his primary chances, but the primary chances of all his GOP establishment buddies, because apparently screw the Tea Party wing 

"I think we are going to crush them everywhere," McConnell said about Tea Party challengers in a New York Times interview published Saturday. "I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country."

McConnell faces a primary challenge from the right. The Senate Conservatives Fund, which backs Tea Party challenger Matt Bevin, believes the candidate has a chance of defeating McConnell the the primary.

"Mitch McConnell is clearly in trouble in this primary or he wouldn’t be attacking Matt Bevin and declaring war on conservatives," Matt Hoskins, the head of the SCF, told the New York Times.

Unless time and space have become unhinged, the last time I checked, Bevin was losing by 26 points.  So, the Turtle may actually be right about Bevin not having a shot in hell.  It would be too bad if the rest of Bevin's drooling maniacs also lost their primaries, because it would make it far easier for the Dems to keep the Senate if they won.

On the other hand, Mitch isn't exactly making friends with this interview among the Tea Party set, either...

Meanwhile, In Crimea...

Seems ol' Vlad here doesn't buy the idea of standing down too much ahead of the "referendum" at the end of next week for Crimea to "join" the guys pointing all the very large weapons at them.

Or else.

 Russian forces tightened their grip on Crimea on Sunday despite a U.S. warning to Moscow that annexing the southern Ukrainian region would close the door to diplomacy in a tense East-West standoff.

Street violence flared in Sevastopol, home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, when pro-Russian activists and Cossacks beat and kicked a group of Ukrainians at a meeting.

Russian forces' seizure of the Black Sea peninsula has been bloodless but tensions are mounting following the decision by pro-Russian groups that have taken over the regional parliament to make Crimea part of Russia.

The operation to seize Crimea began within days of Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich's flight from the country last month. Yanukovich was toppled after three months of demonstrations against a decision to spurn a free trade deal with the European Union for closer ties with Russia.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk will visit Washington this week for talks, a White House official said.

 So things get real on March 15th, when the "referendum" is scheduled.  Of course the vote will be overwhelmingly to join Mother Russia.  Then this all becomes about "the Russian minority in Crimea needing protection from the West."

It's been relatively bloodless so far.  That could change any second...and I'm not sure if there's anything we can do to stop Putin at this point, anyway.

Last Call For Realpoli-Ticked Off

Condi Rice is mad about Crimea, you guys.

The notion that the United States could step back, lower its voice about democracy and human rights and let others lead assumed that the space we abandoned would be filled by democratic allies, friendly states and the amorphous “norms of the international community.” Instead, we have seen the vacuum being filled by extremists such as al-Qaeda reborn in Iraq and Syria; by dictators like Bashar al-Assad, who, with the support of Iran and Russia, murders his own people; by nationalist rhetoric and actions by Beijing that have prompted nationalist responses from our ally Japan; and by the likes of Vladimir Putin, who understands that hard power still matters.

These global developments have not happened in response to a muscular U.S. foreign policy: Countries are not trying to “balance” American power. They have come due to signals that we are exhausted and disinterested. The events in Ukraine should be a wake-up call to those on both sides of the aisle who believe that the United States should eschew the responsibilities of leadership. If it is not heeded, dictators and extremists across the globe will be emboldened. And we will pay a price as our interests and our values are trampled in their wake.

The funny part is the absolute entirety of Condoleezza Rice's credibility as a serious foreign policy expert is completely obliterated by the words "Iraq" or "Afghanistan", which ends up being about 2,498 words fewer words than she vomited out to the WaPo's opinion page.

Oh well.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

National Journal's Alex Seitz-Wald asks:

Is Ben Carson the Republican Who Can Defeat Hillary Clinton?

Before you laugh, consider this: The group that put Carson on the hotel keys has outraised Clinton's draft committee, Ready for Hillary; has been on the ground in Iowa; and is working from the playbook written by Howard Dean and Barack Obama.

It's all the work of the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee, which is trying to get the conservative neurosurgeon to run for president. It's part fan club, part savvy campaign.

The case for Carson is all about math and race. Carson is African-American and his supporters think that will be his path to victory. He's "a respected figure among black Americans," the video explains, and if he can win just 17 percent of the black vote, it is "mathematically impossible" for a Democrat to win the White House.

17% of the black vote is turns out to be about 2% of the voting public, but if the black vote really is that important, why do Republicans keep doing such a miserable job of attracting black voters?

Big problem for GOP. Most important #CPAC2014 panel. Topic: minority outreach. View: largely empty room. pic.twitter.com/LQKQ0QwwVc
— John Hudak (@JohnJHudak) March 6, 2014

Of course, Republicans could accomplish the same thing (reducing the African-American vote by 17%) with restrictive voting laws in swing states like Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia.

Which explains the empty room at the minority outreach panel.

Millennial Mish-Mash

The latest Pew Research study on Millennial voters finds a number of facts:  They are political independents (50% are), more likely to not have a religious affiliation than older Americans (29% do not), far less likely to be married (26% are), very cynical when it comes to trusting most people (19% do), much more likely to have a four-year college degree (33% of those 26-33 do) and support gay rights (51% do).

But there's a big gap in the political views of Millennials based on race, and it's larger than any other generation.

 

The political views of Millennials differ significantly across racial and ethnic lines. About half of white Millennials (51%) say they are political independents. The remainder divide between the Republican (24%) and Democratic (19%) parties. Among non-white Millennials, about as many (47%) say they are independent. But nearly twice as many (37%) identify as Democrats while just 9% identify as Republicans.

These partisan patterns are closely linked to views of Obama. While Millennials as a group are somewhat more approving of Obama than Gen Xers, Boomers or Silents, these differences are driven more by race and ethnicity than by age. White Millennials’ views of Obama are not substantially different from those of older whites. Some 34% of white Millennials approve of the job Obama is doing as president, compared with 33% of Gen Xers, 37% of Boomers and 28% of Silents. By contrast 67% of non-white Millennials give Obama high marks for the job he’s doing as president.

So two huge things here:  first of all, age doesn't make any real difference among whites when it comes to Obama's job approval.  Younger whites have essentially the same low approval of President Obama as their Gen X parents, Boomer grandparents, and Silent great-grandparents do.

Second, the gap is actually largest between white and non-white Gen X'ers when it comes to the role of government in our lives. 

White and non-white Millennials have different views on the role of government as well. On balance, white Millennials say they would prefer a smaller government that provides fewer services (52%), rather than a bigger government that provides more services (39%). Non-white Millennials lean heavily toward a bigger government: 71% say they would prefer a bigger government that provides more services, while only 21% say they would prefer a smaller government. The racial gaps are about as wide among Gen Xers and Boomers. 

Majorities of white Millennials what smaller government and don't think healthcare is the government's business, but actually the racial gap here is much larger among my fellow Gen X'ers.  Two-thirds of whites in my generation want smaller government, 71% of non-whites want more. 61% say it's not the government's business to provide healthcare, 64% of non-whites find the opposite true.

In both cases, I would have easily guessed the gap would have been largest among the Boomers.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Malaysia Airline flight 370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing has vanished, as search and rescue teams have now been deployed looking for the crew and 239 passengers.
• The US Border Patrol has issued new guidelines for use of deadly force in the wake of 28 migrants dead since 2010.
• US and EU cyber security officials say they have uncovered a sophisticated Russian spyware operation dubbed "Turla" targeting government networks.
• California under the most recent term of Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is beating the national average in growth of millionaires...and growth in people on SNAP benefits.
• A judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has rejected the federal government's bid to keep exiting metadata records for longer than five years.