Last Call

With Rick Perry fading fast in the national spotlight and his fundrasing cash starting to dry up as the GOP looks for the next Anyone But Romney, the Texas Governor continues to blow a merry little pied piper tune on the racial dog whistle to play for alms from the Tea Party faithful he'll need to gain ground.  TPM's Benjy Sarlin:

Rick Perry says President Obama, the son of a teen mother who frequently was absent from his life and often was stretched financially, grew up the easy way. It’s the latest in a series of winks at conspiracy-minded conservatives deeply suspicious about the president’s background.

Perry’s comments came as he discussed his new ad attacking Obama for saying US policymakers have grown “lazy” about honing America’s competitive edge, a comment that Republicans have inaccurately suggested was aimed at American workers. Asked by FOX News host Sean Hannity about the spot, Perry launched into a highly personal attack on Obama.

“It reveals to me that he grew up in a privileged way,” he said. “He never had to really work for anything.”

Ding ding ding!  And here Perry plays directly to Birther audience, the folks that gleefully pirouette around racial overtones of a man who "never had to really work" to end up President (who just happens to be black.)  The implications that he's undeserving, unintelligent, lazy, shiftless, one of them is no accident.  Perry knows his audience and he's going full blast on that whistle.  Sarlin ends with this insight:

From a strategic perspective, there’s some sense to these tactics as a last-ditch gambit to turn around the Texas governor’s toxic poll numbers. If Perry can bait Democratic critics into accusing him of racially tinged attacks on Obama, he can cast himself as a victim and rally conservative media and Tea Party activists behind him. So far it hasn’t worked, but it certainly isn’t for lack of trying. 

It's an interesting theory and most likely correct.  Certainly the President is staying above the fray...but the point is these are racially tinged attacks and they need to be called out.

Zombie Ghost Pirate Terrorists Could Kill You Like That, Bob

Ten years after the Transportation Security Administration was created, Republicans have a bunch of conflicting, hypocritical nonsense to helpfully spout in order for you to approve of them grifting the system they made in the first place.

Reps. John Mica (R-Fla.) and Paul Broun (R-Ga.) want to give the Transportation Security Administration a series of drastic reforms for its birthday this week.

Days before the 10th anniversary of the TSA's founding, and also one of the busiest travel periods of the year, the GOP lawmakers took the agency to task Wednesday using a new report titled “A Decade Later: A Call for TSA Reform.”

"Americans have paid $60 billion funding TSA and they are no safer today than they were before 9/11," Broun said during a news conference at Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport announcing the report. Mica, who wrote the the law that established the TSA in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, agreed. Despite the fact that there have not been any incidents since that day, the TSA has not made flying safer, he said.

"We are safer today, but not because of TSA," Mica said. "It's because the American people will not allow an aircraft to be taken over. We saw on Flight 93, and almost every instance of a successful thwarting since, it's been the passengers, the pilots and the crew."

I'm no huge fan of the TSA but the notion that the guy who "wrote the law establishing the TSA" saying we're no safer now than we were on September 10, 2010 is idiocy.  The plan here is obvious, defund the TSA to the point it can't do its job anymore, declare government unable to work, then privatize airport security by farming out everything to contractors to "save money" and create profit for the GOP's corporate masters.  Should anything happen to an airplane, blame the Dems.

The "government can't possibly work" gameplan is in full effect here, just like similar plans to rid us of the Departments of Education, Labor, Energy, yadda yadda.  Why, Zombie Ghost Pirate Bin Laden could steal the treasure of Monkey Island kill your entire family at any time.  Government has failed you again!


Besides, real Americans just beat up any terrorists they see and don't need to rely on others to protect themselves.  Get to work making yourself safer, citizen.  Alternately, we'd like to sell you Zombie Ghost Pirate Terrorist repelling rock for a nominal fee...

The Dems' Job Strategy Is Working, Part 3

House Republicans are beginning to crack under the 9% approval rating of Congress and the numbers showing a majority of Americans believe the Republicans are blocking jobs legislation in order to hurt the President.  Now all of a sudden, House Republicans are more than happy to pass tax incentives for government contractors and hiring veterans in a unanimous move.

 “Veterans of every working-age generation are finding themselves unemployed or seriously underemployed due to the economic downturn,” Representative Jeff Miller, Republican of Florida  and chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said in support of the bill, which passed. 422 to 0, under a fast-tracked process on the House floor.

The vote followed overwhelming Senate approval and represented a rare bipartisan consensus on elements in the package assembled by the White House in its effort to spur hiring. Republicans have rejected or blocked other pieces of the legislation, including proposals for capital works and money for the hiring of emergency workers and public school teachers.

After the vote, the president said in a statement that he wanted to “congratulate Republicans and Democrats in Congress for coming together to pass these tax credits that will encourage businesses to hire America’s veterans.  No veteran who fought for our country should have to fight for a job when they come home.”

He also said approval of the measure was a “only a step. Congress needs to pass the rest of my American Jobs Act so that we can create jobs and put money in the pockets of the middle class.”


At the same time, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, urged the president to hold a public signing ceremony of the legislation to illustrate the bipartisan nature of the bill — a challenge to the president to share some of the credit with Republicans. 

Why, you'd almost think that House Republicans were terrified of losing control of the chamber next November and were desperate for accomplishments to show off to counter the notion that they were sabotaging the economy on purpose in order to gain politically.  And of course, the Village is expecting the President to be magnanimous and allow the Republicans to save face here, to make sure that Republicans are rewarded for their "good" behavior.

That's hysterical stuff, frankly.  But it also means that the Dems' piecemeal approach to passing elements of the American Jobs Act is not only assuring the issue stays in the news, but also dominates the legislative calendar as well...as the issue of jobs should be doing right now.

Keep up the pressure, guys.

Fire Walker Chronicles, Part 2

Wisconsin Republicans are trying an awful new tack in scuttling the recall effort for Gov. Scott Walker: having Lt Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (who would also be recalled under the petition) shame the state into inaction with a thinly veiled threat ad that the cost of a special recall election will have to be taken out of money for "teachers or health care for the poor, or school books for your kids.”

“There might be a day when someone asks you for your signature,” Kleefisch says in an ad released Wednesday. “Signing a recall petition is like saying you’re O.K. with spending $7.7 million on another recall election, 7.7 million that may already be allocated to merit raises for teachers or health care for the poor, or school books for your kids.”

“Signing a recall petition is like saying you’re O.K. with taking money away from those things and spending it on another special election,” she continues.

“Signing a recall petition is like saying you’re O.K with spending more months, and more millions, on political campaign ads. Signing a recall petition is like saying you’re O.K with the government taking more of your money to spend on other special elections.”

Yes, sure would be a damn shame if something happened to your nice state here if you dared to have this recall election, Wisconsin.  We wouldn't want to have to cut teacher's salaries or health care for the poor or school funds in order to pay for your little dirty effing hippie populist tantrum, would we?  That would be awful if that happened, so if you would just keep your mouths shut, nobody gets hurt, capiche?

What a lovely little hustle there, bringing in Kleefisch to beg those awful extremist Democrats not to force Republicans to make more cuts to pay for the special recall elections, not to mention giving the Tea Party in that state an excuse to play the "Why do you hippies hate Wisconsin schools?" shame card, all while barely cloaked as an advocacy ad that's not officially a statement from her office but sure looks like one.

You couldn't ask for a better zero-sum extortion racket from the one percent. Keep your head down and nobody gets hurt, plebes...or we make more cuts that will hurt you, not us.

What are you going to do about it, Wisconsin?

This Week's WTH - Crotchless Edition

It started as a family trip to the mall.

"We went towards the play area, because we like to take our son over there," Erin French said.

Next to the play area was a new store called Kids N Teen.

"They have cuddly little backpacks, and pretty little princess dresses," French said.

She also saw underwear.

"Then we saw crotchless panties, and I was mortified. My first initial response was, 'Am I really seeing that?'" French said.

She was. The product has since been taken off the shelves after outraged parents complained to mall management. The store is geared to kids but state that because approximately 25% of their clientele are teens they thought this was okay.

Just... wow.

Truckin' Across The Square

Cincinnati's City Council has finally approved food trucks downtown.

Mobile food vendors will soon be able to do business near Fountain Square.

City Council approved the additional zones for the trucks and trailers Wednesday.

They'll be located along Vine and Fifth Streets.

Council Member Laure Quinlivan made the suggestion after 3CDC shut down food vendors operating in tents on the square.

The vending spaces should be ready in the next week or 2 and that will allow operators to set-up during the busy holiday season downtown. 

Vine and Fifth is the heart of downtown, and it's a good idea economically too.  Cincy's known for its diverse food, now we can finally get some food trucks into downtown and help showcase the city's wide variety of chow.

Interesting to see this happen after the election, and before the new council is seated in December.  Looks like somebody wanted to go out on a high note rather than sour grapes, as the food truck issue has been tied up for months before now.

Good on them for once.  Here's to good eating downtown soon.

Moving Forward At Your Own Perry-il, Part 12

This is not a bug in Governor Goodhair's Inconsequential America, but a guaranteed feature.

At a town hall event in New Hampshire Wednesday morning, reporters have indicated that they were asked if they were U.S. citizens. According to CNN, member of the press were posed this by an employee for Granite State Manufacturing, a defensive contractor hosting the town hall, in order to abide by NAFTA rules.

Associated Press reporter Steve Peoples tweeted, “At press check in for Rick Perry NH town hall, we’re asked if we’re U.S. citizens.”

He added that attendees were “told only citizens allowed because town hall host is a defensive contractor,” meaning “no foreigners allowed.”

NBC News’ Jo Ling Kent shared a similar tweet.

“At Perry press check in, I was asked if I am a U.S. citizen,” she wrote. “Only citizens allowed according to company, which is a defense contractor.” 

This was not an accident, folks.  The frequency Rick Perry is broadcasting on can only be heard if you're tuned into the message of "Y'all ferners git out na."   And he knows exactly who he's sending it out to, folks.  He wants back on the dance floor, and this is his admission.

StupidiNews!

• Occupy Wall Street is calling for a massive national "day of action" rally today to mark the two month anniversary of their first protest.
• Thousands of Kuwaitis stormed that country's parliament in protest, calling for reforms and the resignation of the Prime Minister.
• The Justice Department is leading a civil rights investigation into the Miami PD after seven African-American men were shot by officers in an eight-month period.
• Wells Fargo's VP of retirement accounts says Americans must save more and work longer before retiring, and "80 is the new 65".
• Solar and wind hybrid power generators are finally bringing electricity to rural homes on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico.

Last Call

At the NY Times, Tom Friedman asks where President Obama's opinion on the Super Committee's budget planning is and "what his preferred outcome is".  Nobody seems to know, Friedman argues.  Why isn't the President leading by example?  Why is there no budget proposal from the White H...wait, what do you mean it's been out for months and Friedman's too lazy to Google it?

Helpful Yggy is helpful!

The answer is probably that few Americans do know the precise details of President Obama’s proposals for achieving long-term budget balance. One reason is that most people don’t really care. Another reason is that many more-engaged Americans rely on major newspapers to convey this kind of information to them. But those of us familiar with the world-flattening capabilities of the Internet are able to find such documents as “Living Within Our Means And Investing In The Future: The President’s Plan for Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction” (PDF) published by the Office of Management and Budget in September. As you might gather from the title, it contains a plan, endorsed by the president, for economic growth and deficit reduction. The details on the tax side are spelled out starting on page 43, with other sections dealing with mandatory savings and health savings separately. There are a bunch of summary tables in the back, too. Unfortunately the tables are too wide to be reproduced on the blog in a way that preserves legibility. But interested parties can and should download the document! My guess is that if Friedman phones up the OMB press office someone there would be happy to walk him through it. Barring that, here’s a four page fact sheet (PDF) and here’s video of OMB Director Jack Lew.

Apparently Friedman is the Village's version of Schroedinger.  He doesn't know if the long-term deficit reduction proposal exists or not until he opens the box.  There's lazy journalism, and then there's Tom Friedman.

The GOP Plan Comes Into Clear View

Via ABLC comes this video of California Democrat Loretta Sanchez outright accusing her GOP colleagues in Congress of wanting to sabotage the economy for political gain.

Interviewer: You’ve heard them say that?

Sanchez: Yes. They have said that. They’ve said that! They’ve said that behind closed doors to me! They said, “Nothing is moving.” They said, “We want to make him look bad. We want to get rid of him. We want to get rid of the health care reform bill.” They only way they believe they can get rid of health care reform is to get rid of President Obama.

Interviewer: Who is saying that, Congresswoman?

Sanchez: Well, I’m not gonna … these are actual friends on the other side who have said, “This is what is happening in our conference”, in their groupings when they’re meeting.

She does stop short of naming names, but let's remember that my state's Senator, Mitch McConnell, has publicly gone on record as saying the most important goal for Republicans is not jobs, not fixing the economy, not helping the American people through the housing depression and economic crisis, but defeating President Obama. That is his stated top priority. All other concerns are incidental to Republicans and they fully understand that continuing to hamstring the economy is politically damaging to the President.

It's the worst kept secret in Washington DC that Obama Derangement Syndrome is so pervasive among the GOP that they will resort to any measures to defeat him, up to and including throwing us into another recession through legislative inertia.

Unlucky Number 14

Or so I hope.

For the fourteenth time, Charles "Tex" Watson is trying to get out on parole.  For those who don't remember, Watson was the "handsome cowboy" of the Manson family.  He is the earliest example I can think of when it comes to a mass murderer having mass female fans.  For those too young to really know the story of Charles Manson, Tex was their Michael Kelso.

Every time this comes around, family members come to remind us that their loved ones are gone, taken in a way that was horrifying and painful, at the whim of a group of killers.  I still wouldn't buy it, but some criminals have gotten free by using the peer pressure method, and that is what they are trying to claim here.  He was tricked, some would say.  He was a young guy and now he's an old man, this is all because he listened to a tricky psycho decades ago and was suckered in.

You know who isn't old?  Sharon Tate.  Or Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.  If you watch later documentaries, there could be as many as a dozen "family members" who decided to leave and were killed instead.  They were rumored to be buried around the desert, sometimes as a warning and sometimes to prevent them from speaking with outsiders.  Old Tex wasn't tricked into killing just once, but multiple times, and in grisly ways that required dedication.  This wasn't a panic shot or overly enthusiastic purse snatching.  This is brutal murder.  A pregnant woman begged for her baby's life that night.  Another woman fought so hard that even with a cord tied around her neck she held off the intruders until blood loss from a bayonet made her too weak to stand.  These people fought hard and met  merciless death.  And this man was part of that from beginning to end.

Watson's attorney, Cheryl Montgomery, did not return repeated telephone messages.
Watson married and divorced in prison and has four children from conjugal visits, but his family did not respond to a request for comment that was left through the website that promotes Watson's prison ministry, http://www.aboundinglove.org.

You know who doesn't get conjugal visits? The LaBiancas, who died knowing their spouse was also doomed. Sharon Tate died protecting her baby, she doesn't get to see them grow up. She was eight months pregnant when they killed her. They took special steps to kill her child, and made sure she knew it before they took her life.

He doesn't deserve prison, but it'll have to do. I don't believe he has a chance in hell, but I'm still grossed out and slightly worried because when you toss the dice you run the risk of the wrong outcome.

Missing The Point Epic Fail Style

CHICAGO  -- Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis apologized to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan Monday after a video of Lewis saying Duncan had a lisp was made public.

Lewis, who is also the vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, made the comments during a Northwest Teachers for Social Justice event in Seattle on Oct. 1. Video from the event was posted on YouTube by the conservative Education Action Group late last week.

"Now, you know [Duncan] went to private school 'cause if he had gone to public school he would have had that lisp fixed," Lewis said in the video.

So much for social justice, right? Who is so dense as to open a speech at a themed event by making fun of an adult for their lisp? Can anyone that clueless possibly have anything to offer? It's clear that she tried to be cool and came off as an ass, bringing the wrath of others who covered the event.

Conservative columnist and EAG CEO Kyle Olson slammed Lewis in a blog post about the Seattle speech.

"I thought we taught children not to mock or make fun of others. Apparently the teachers are exempt from such lessons," Olson wrote. "This is the best the Chicago school employees have to offer?"

In this instance, I agree.  This was supposed to be about education, social justice, and being better than the crowd.  Karen Lewis failed on all counts.

It's About Time Someone Stepped In (Privacy On The Web)

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released the first draft of a new web standard aimed at improving online privacy. The W3C’s new Standard for Online Privacy is a set of tools that will ultimately enable your browser to stop sites from tracking your every move on the web.

The first draft of the new privacy standard revolves around the “Do Not Track” (DNT) HTTP header originally introduced by Mozilla as a part of Firefox 4. The DNT header — a bit of code sent every time your browser talks to a web server — can be used to tell websites you don’t want to be tracked. The goal is to give you an easy way to opt out of often invasive tracking practices like behavioral advertising.

Behavior advertising refers to the increasingly common practice of tracking your online behavior and using it to tailor ads to your habits. Advertisers use cookies to follow you around the web, tracking which sites you visit, what you buy and even, in the case of mobile browsers, where you go.

Participation can be circumvented by advertisement companies, but peer pressure should encourage sites to use only "approved" advertisements in the future. The FCC has failed to set any guidelines or rankings for privacy and enforcement is nil right now. This is an important first step in the right direction, now it's up to us to explain to businesses that we demand privacy and the ability to control when and how we are tracked.

Super Committee Super Collider, Part 2

The Super Committee's deficit reduction plans seem to have hit a bit of a snag in the "additional revenue" department.

It’s hard to see how the Super Committee can possibly reach a consensus by this time next week after Republican co-chair Jeb Hensarling’s appearance on CNBC Tuesday night. The short version is that he left the ball in Democrats court, and hinted that if the committee fails, Congress will spend the next year or so trying to change the terms of an automatic penalty to make sure that hundreds of billions of cuts to defense programs never take effect.

Hensarling claimed that if the committee recommended even a dollar of new net tax revenue — the kind of revenue Dems are demanding — it would constitute a step in the wrong direction. He said a GOP plan put forward by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) — one which Republicans claim would raise revenues by nearly $300 billion over 10 years, but would also make the Bush tax cuts permanent — is as far as Republicans are willing to go on revenues. But that’s an offer Democrats flatly rejected as unserious. And unless one of the parties breaks cleanly with its publicly stated position, the committee will either fall well short of reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years as required by law, or will fail altogether.

The Super Committee was never going to reach a deal, and the cuts were never going to happen.  As long as Republicans can filibuster in the Senate and/or control the House (and right now they can do both) nothing substantive will get done legislatively.  Ever.  It's designed to fail, because the GOP assures it will.  That nine percent approval rating doesn't matter because 85%-90% of Congress will get re-elected even in a "wave election" year like 2008 and again in 2010.  It's the same thing.

It's depressing, but true.

Meanwhile, Jeb Hensarling is running around saying that the Democrats have to give him 100% of what he wants, and then he'll maybe decide what he and the GOP can deign to give back.  But as usual, their starting position is complete victory or else.

Same as it ever was.

Moving Forward At Your Own Perry-il, Part 11

With his campaign in shambles, Rick Perry returned to Iowa and went for broke with the full Tea Party rewrite of the Constitution, knowing that there's no point now in pretending he's a moderate in any way.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas on Tuesday announced a proposal to alter the federal government that ranks among the most radical plans offered by any major Republican presidential candidate this year — and one that legal analysts say will almost surely never happen: making Congress operate part-time with half pay and ending lifetime tenure for federal judges.

“I don’t believe that Washington needs a new coat of paint — I think the whole place needs to be overhauled,” Mr. Perry said, speaking to applause from more than 100 people on the floor of the Schebler manufacturing plant here. “I’m a true believer that we need to uproot, tear down and rebuild Washington, D.C., and our federal institutions.”

Mr. Perry, who is trying to reboot a campaign that is lagging in the polls, proposed cutting the pay of Congress in half (or by three-fourths, under one proposal he sketched out) and halving both its budget and the time members spend in Washington.

“We have a lot of well-intentioned members of Congress, but they have become creatures of Washington,” Mr. Perry said. “They get paid more than three times the average American family, and they have doubled their own budgets in the last decade.”

Mr. Perry also vowed to “reform” the federal judiciary. “Too many federal judges rule with impunity from the bench,” he said, “and those who legislate from the bench should not be entitled to lifetime abuse of their judicial authority.” He proposed 18-year terms, staggered every two years, for new Supreme Court justices, and suggested similar limits on federal appellate and district court judges.

Shorter Perry:  If I am elected as Rock in 2012, I promise to nerf Paper, and to nerf Scissors too for good measure.

It's telling that Perry's basically relying on the lunatic fringe to power what's left of his campaign at this point, promising to end the Departments of Everything on top of all this stuff, putting tens of thousands out of work, cutting off government services to pretty much everyone, and all while not having a chance in hell of actually enacting his plan.  But it doesn't matter, he's just reduced to being as crazy as he can possibly be right now in order to try to win back the increasingly insane GOP base.

They deserve each other, frankly.  But of course, all of us deserve better than them.