Last Call

Team Romney has decided to declare war on the Village and is only going to deal with the Drudge/Breitbart Axis Of Stupid from now on.  It's a win/win for them both:  Romney gets his own propaganda machine that the news organizations now have to kiss up to or be cut off, and the Breitbart kiddies get their legitimacy as Real Villagers.  It's a match made in Hell.  ROmney spokesman Lenny Alcivar explains the new media order:

When this election is over, one of the lessons that will be learned by the mainstream media is that they no longer have a toe-hold on how Americans receive their news. Never before – in a way that has taken Democrats off stride – have we seen the confluence of an aggressive online community, led by Breitbart, and an aggressive campaign team not willing to cede an inch of ground to Democrats. This combination has created a new political reality. We no longer allow the mainstream media to define the political realities in America. The rise of Breitbart, Drudge and others, combined with an aggressive Romney campaign is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the conservative movement.

…The governor will no longer allow the mainstream media to dictate the terms of this debate. This is just the beginning… We are witnessing the rise of the center right media.

Romney's made a deal with the Devil for his soul, and handed over his media operation to the Breitbart crew.  They are the new reality for Team Romney.   The message is clear to the rest of the Village:  suck up to the Birthers, the racists, the tinfoil lunatics and the nutjobs or be cut off as "in the tank for Obama" and become the enemy of tens of millions of slack-jawed drones.

Mitt's boys have decided the media no longer matters...they have Matt Drudge and the blogs.  I'd laugh, but our Stockholm Syndrome Villagers will go right along with this and America will suffer as these propaganda merchants will be running the campaign narrative for the rest of the year.

One side believes in a free and open press.  The other side believes in Drudge alerts.  Enjoy, Village.  You have outlived your usefulness to the Republican Party.

Will you defend yourselves or buckle under and be their patsies?

50% Accuracy Not Enough To Warrant Searches

The nose of a drug-sniffing police dog is not so sharp, but it's good enough to support cocaine charges against Herbert Green.

That was the opinion of federal Judge Glen Conrad, who denied a motion this week to suppress the drugs found in Green's sport utility vehicle with the help of a police dog named Bono.

Green's lawyer had argued that Bono's track record — drugs were found just 22 times out of 85 "alerts" by the dog — was so poor that police lacked probable cause to search Green's SUV.

They found a large amount of cocaine in the suspect's car.  But if you use a dog that turns out 63 false positives for every 22 successes, it seems that is unfairly stacking the odds against unreasonable search. It would make sense that dogs would have to perform to a certain percent of accuracy to be considered reason to trump our rights.

When explaining their reasons, the judge did himself no favors.

In some cases where nothing was found after an alert by Bono, police later determined that drugs had been in the vehicle earlier, likely leaving an odor the dog was trained to detect, Neese said.

Taking those cases into account, Conrad found that Bono's accuracy rate was at least 50 percent.

In determining whether police had probable cause, the judge wrote that he had to consider other factors beyond the dog's track record.

As a federal appeals court once put it, "the reliability of a drug-detection dog does not rise or fall on the basis of one sniff."

Just about every car has had trace amounts of drugs in it at some point, whether the owners knew it or not.  I'm not liking the lack of numbers that suddenly bring the dog up to at least 50%, but half is still not good enough.  If I did my job right only half the time, it wouldn't be my job much longer.

Meanwhile, police are letting this go unchecked, giving them access to people they may not normally.  And they wonder why people are naturally suspicious of law enforcement.

Local Stupidity: Jay Nixon's Silence Speaks Volumes

A letter to the editor in the Springfield News-Leader calls out Jay Nixon's utter silence on behalf of Missourians in need of health care.  He hasn't gone on record like Bobby Jindal has, refusing to implement in hopes it will be turned over.

Nixon gives the most neutral, useless response possible:

Gov. Jay Nixon today issued a statement at 10:30 a.m. 

“We’re just now beginning to review this ruling so that we can understand exactly what it means for Missouri.  This ruling has significant complexities and implications for families, health care providers and insurers in our state.  Here in Missouri, I'm committed to working collaboratively with citizens, businesses, medical providers and the legislature to move forward in a way that works best for families in our state.”

Kind of ambiguous, considering he thought it was best for Missouri to go without.  It may not be setting the stage for stalling and wading through the complexity of something he considers himself an expert in, but it sure sounds like it from here.  This was a token statement, something to put out there while he sits and plots his next move.

Mary Clemons gets right to the problem with this.

Now that the individual insurance mandate has been upheld by theUnited States Supreme Court, it is time for our governor to stand on the side of Missourians and be a voice of support for implementing the Affordable Care Act, the law of the land.

It is good for Missouri to have a health care law that provides subsidies to low- income citizens to purchase health insurance; a law that will create insurance exchanges making it possible for individuals and small businesses to purchase affordable insurance; a law that helps our seniors with prescription drug costs; a law that protects families from being denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions; a law that ends the gender gap and gives women equal access to health insurance; a law that allows everyone to receive preventive services with no co-pay; a law that keeps young adults on their parents’ policies until they reach 26; and a law that protects us from excessive insurance rate increases.

Several politicians have put their beliefs at odds with their sworn duties.  While some may play the martyr card (at the expense of the helpless) the reality is starting to show through the brave words and blind ignorance.  We have members of government failing to do their jobs because they are abusing their power.  Instead of following the people and the law, they believe themselves to be above it.  Jay Nixon has time to pull his head out of his arse and do the right thing.  I doubt he does, but he still has a chance.

Let's see if he takes it.

Coach Trips 13-Year-Old On Purpose

This is disgusting.  The coach claims the boy flipped him off at an earlier point in the game.  The headline says "do you think coach tripped this child?" but there is no question at all.  He raises his foot, hooks the boy, and drops him.  The boy broke his wrist, and I bet he has a hell of a headache from where his head struck the ice.

Jackass.

Did Millionaire Kill Himself In Court?

An Arizona millionaire who died minutes after he was convicted of arson appeared to have put something in his mouth while in the court room, sparking an investigation into whether the convicted arsonist had poisoned himself.

Michael Marin, 53, was convicted on Thursday of purposefully burning down his $2.55 million mansion in the tony Biltmore Estates neighborhood of Phoenix after he was unable to keep up with mortgage payments and a plan to raffle his house through a charity fundraiser failed. He faced up to 16 years in prison.

After the guilty verdict on one count of arson was read, a seemingly distraught Marin buried his face into his hands and appeared to place something in his mouth.

His face began to turn red. Minutes later, he took a sip of a liquid from a plastic sports bottle, turned to get a tissue, experienced convulsions and collapsed.

He was pronounced dead at the hospital, said Jeff Sprong, spokesperson for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which is investigating the death.

"As you watch the video it does look like he is putting something into his mouth. Unfortunately we didn't find any evidence he left behind," Sprong said. "We are steering toward the fact he did ingest something. However, we're going to have to wait for toxicology results in two to three weeks."

It's surely not the first time, but it's rare enough to be interesting.  It seems Marin was a man who lived on his own terms, having self-published writing, climbed a mountain and generally lived to the fullest.  A prison sentence would have been worse than death to him.  Yeah, kind of like Patrick Swayze in Point Break. The full article gives more information on Marin's background, which is interesting.  I'm just amazed that someone would do that.

Throwing The Book At Them

This is what America has come to five years after Republicans destroyed our economy:  local residents putting together mini-libraries because community and county libraries are vanishing from the country.

Little Free Library was the inspiration of Todd Bol, who in the fall of 2009 landed on a way to honor his late mother, a book-loving teacher. He built a miniature wooden one-room schoolhouse, mounted it outside his Hudson, Wis., home and stocked it with books. Even on rainy days, friends and neighbors would happen by to make selections, drop off books and remark on the library's cuteness.

Bol, an entrepreneur in international business development, enlisted Rick Brooks, a community outreach specialist in Madison, Wis., to help spread the word. In the last two years, nearly 1,800 library stewards, as Bol calls them, have registered cabinet-size athenaeums in about 45 states and dozens of countries, including Ghana, England and Germany.

Each owner pays $25 to the Little Free Library, a nonprofit organization, for a sign and a number. The group's website features a locater map and photos of people attending grand openings for libraries.

Bol anticipates nearly 3,000 registered libraries by the end of July.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/01/154587/binding-neighbors-together-with.html#storylink=cpy

Make no mistake, this is a great idea.  I'd love to see thousands more of these.  Because the fact is the way austerity and income inequality in this nation is going, the Little Free Libraries are going to be the only ones left.

God In The Machine

When a sitting United States Congressman like Paul Ryan of Wisconsin tells America with a straight face that laws do not matter, the Supreme Court does not matter, and that your rights come from not the Constitution but from God, as an American you should be absolutely horrified and frightened.

“We’re going to repeal the entire law and then we’re going to advance patient-centered reforms that address these kinds of issues,” the Wisconsin Republican said.

“I think this at the end of the day is a big philosophy difference,” he continued. “What Ms. Kennedy and others were saying is that this is a new government-granted right. We disagree with the notion that our rights come from government, that the government can now grant us and define our rights. Those are ours, they come from nature and God, according to the Declaration of Independence — a huge difference in philosophy.”

Your philosophy, sir, would be laughed at by Thomas Jefferson.  Our Constitution was designed to make the United States a nation of laws, not a nation of whose God is more powerful.  And Republicans like Ryan have no issue with using laws to take those rights from whomever they see fit to punish for not agreeing with them.

This arrogant buffoon needs to resign.  You sir, serve and answer to your constituents and the Constitution of the United States of America, not God.  We absolutely have to resist this idiocy or we will not have a country of laws and rights enshrined, but laws and rights granted by people who will tell you what God means.

People like Paul Ryan.  I think not.

StupidiNews!

• After a dozen years out of power, Mexico's PRI party appears to have won yesterday's elections, with presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto getting 38% of the vote.
• A federal judge has issued a last-minute reprieve to keep Mississippi's lone remaining abortion clinic open.
• A new deal with Russia and China is paving the way for the Assad regime in Syria to be replaced in a major shift in policy in Moscow and Beijing.
• After the country's World Cup football victory in 2010, Spain has silenced its critics with a 4-0 destruction of Italy in the Euro 2012 finals.
• This weekend's "leap second" correction in the world's atomic clock timekeeping has thrown off a number of major internet sites who are still scrambling to fix things.

Last Call

The Republicans have lost the ACA battle.  They know it, too.  My senator and GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell?  He's well aware the game is over now.

During an interview on Fox News, host Chris Wallace asked McConnell how Republicans who were promising to "repeal and replace" the law would make sure those 30 million Americans had access to health insurance.

"The single best thing we could do for the American health care system is to get rid of Obamacare," McConnell explained.

"You talk about repeal and replace, how would you provide universal coverage?" Wallace asked again.

"I'll get to it in a minute," McConnell chuckled. "We need to go step by step to replace it with more moderate reforms that will not be a 2,700-page Republican alternative."

"I just want to ask what specific steps are you going to do to provide universal coverage to the 30 million people who are uninsured?" Wallace pressed.

"That is not the issue," McConnell insisted.

"You don't think the 30 million people who are uninsured is an issue?" Wallace wondered.

"We're not going to turn the American health care system into a Western European system," the Kentucky Republican replied. "They want to have the federal government take over all of American health care."

No.  The only issue is getting rid of the black guy in the White House to Mitch.  If you're one of Kentucky's nearly 700,000 uninsured, you're not the issue to your senator.   You never were.  Mitch knows the game is over now.  And he's just admitted Kentucky's uninsured aren't the issue to him.  It's all about getting rid of Obama.  Greg Sargent points out just how massive this admission is.

It’s worth pointing out that this is basically Mitt Romney’s position, too. The Romney campaign has acknowledged that he would not replace Obamacare with across-the-board protections for people with preexisting conditions. And the New York Times recently took a look at the alternatives Romney has proposed, and concluded that they would deemphasize the goal of “reducing the ranks of the uninsured.”

So Kentucky uninsured (of which I was one of until six months ago):  why is this asshole still our senator?

Single Payer In 2009 Was Always Impossible

I've had my problems with Josh Marshall before, but he is 100% right about shooting down the nonsense that single payer health care had any hope of passing in 2009.  First, the delusional article that prompted his piece, from HuffPo's Dr. Marcia Angell:

On July 22, 2009, Obama said in a press conference, "Now, the truth is that unless you have what's called a single-payer system in which everybody is automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual." Bingo. Too bad he didn't hang on to that insight, and use his rhetorical skills to make the case strongly to the American public. If he had fought for single-payer health care at the beginning of his administration, while he had both houses of Congress, and mobilized public opinion behind it, he might have made it. After all, the only thing members of Congress need more than industry money is votes.

Doctor, heal thyself.  You're suffering from Firebagger's Disease: blame Obama for not achieving the impossible.  Josh Marshall calmly explains why single payer was never a viable option at the time.

But this is a good moment to pierce the liberal delusion that single payer was out there for the taking — even possibly out there for the taking — had President Obama or any other president simply set his mind to it. After the ‘public option’ hit the brick wall that it did, it’s difficult to believe that anyone could really believe that single payer was even remotely possible. It was virtually impossible — with massive majorities in both houses — to push through a bill that left the mammoth health insurance industry intact and forced no one with their current private care plan to give what they know in exchange for something they don’t. So surely it would have been possible to push through a reform which essentially abolished the health insurance industry and forced big change on the overwhelming majority of the population who already has private coverage. To believe that you have to be totally submerged in the lethal progressive/liberal purism of loving defeat.

It’s proved incredibly hard to lasso this horse. So … fuck it, I’m just going to lasso a unicorn instead.

But it’s more than just that. Single payer supporters do themselves a disservice by imagining that the only or even the main obstacle to single payer is the money power of the health insurance industry. That’s obviously a big obstacle. It was a huge issue in 2009. But the biggest is the simple fact that the overwhelming majority of people, especially most people who vote, have health insurance coverage. And even though most don’t like it and hate their insurance companies, in most cases, they’re easily scared off by being told they’re going to lose what they know, lose access to their doctor and get something new that they don’t know. This is a fact. Anyone who’s ever tried to run a political campaign tied to health care reform will tell you this. I’ve been shown various polls showing support for fairly self-serving descriptions of single payer that are totally divorced from how the rhetoric would actually play in the political wild.

This is what I've been trying to tell people for years now.  People were not going to stand for losing their insurance.  To blame "Obama's oration skills" for the existence of resistance from the American people and his own party is ludicrous. If all it took was explaining to people why single payer was better, we would have had it long ago.

So now we have a law that needs fixing on the way towards something approaching single payer, yes.  Under the circumstances it was the best option we could have gotten.  How sustainable is it?  Depends on who you ask.  Dr. Angell believes our health care system will unravel more slowly, but will still unravel as more and more people refuse to buy insurance and pay the penalty instead, causing premiums to rise, causing more people to refuse to pay the premiums in a feedback circle that will crash the entire market.  Eventually, every criticism of the ACA gets to "And then insurance premiums skyrocket".

I've also noticed how practically every criticism that the ACA is doomed, from both the left and the right. also gets to "And it's all Obama's fault."    Dr. Angell's criticism is just like the rest in that respect.  It's tiresome to see people who might have otherwise good arguments always use it as an excuse and a platform to pound on the President for what Congress and the American people decided to do.  Instead of focusing on what needs to be done for the ACA, we're focusing on what couldn't have been done in 2009, refighting that battle over and over again to no avail.

Change the future then.  You can't change the past. 

It's So Hot...

The crowd: HOW HOT IS IT?

It's so hot our city buses are giving free rides to designated cooling areas, and people without air conditioning are pouring into those places.  Our ice rink and YMCA are packed with people who simply cannot tolerate the heat any longer, and cannot afford air conditioning or perhaps just the luxury of using it.  We tied the June record for an all-time high temperature, and July looks to be even worse.

We have issued warnings to drivers to watch out for exploding pavement, which can cause tire damage or wrecks on the highway, just depending on when and where they strike.  Always guaranteed to make a travel holiday exciting.

Burn bans are in effect because it's already so dry that fire could spread faster than we can control, and a major firework holiday is here.  I already know I'm staying in, away from the sirens and the smoke.  Of course, it's so hot that you would likely pass out during the celebration, which may mean some disasters resolve themselves.

Folks, please be careful.  Be aware of the symptoms of heat stroke, and don't be a hero.  Watch the kids too, and check in on the elderly.  It could mean the difference between life and death.

The Fourth Rule Of Fight Club...

... is you keep it between adults.

In the video, titled "My nephew messed him up for picking on his home boy," two boys are seen kicking, punching and choking each other while an adult shooting the video eggs them on.

An adult voice in the video can be heard saying, "Get off the ground, Charlie." The video ends when a child breaks up the fight.

Classy, eh?  The adults are filming it and the other kid is the one with enough sense to stop things.  Epic fail.

Mandate Mania

Here's the truth about the insurance mandate folks.  If the entire ACA was in effect in 2011 (including the mandate), the percentage of Americans who would actually have faced the mandate penalty because

• they were uninsured,
• affordable insurance was available in their state,
• they had too much income to qualify for subsidies,
• they were under 65 and didn't qualify for Medicare,

...then the grand total of the percentage of Americans who would have to get insurance or face the mandate with no assistance from the government?

Two percent.

A recent study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research center that focuses on economic and social policy, found that if the law had been fully implemented last year, 93 percent of the population under age 65 wouldn’t have faced a penalty or had to buy insurance under the mandate.

In fact, only 6 percent of Americans, about 18 million people, would have to “newly purchase” insurance under the law, the study found. And of this group, roughly 11 million would be eligible for subsidies to help buy their coverage from new insurance marketplaces, or “exchanges,” created by the law.

The remaining 7 million, about 2 percent of the total population and 3 percent of all Americans under age 65, wouldn’t receive any financial help and could face penalties for lacking coverage, said Linda Blumberg, a health economist and senior fellow in the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center.

This relatively thin sliver of Americans who’d be required to pay for full coverage belies the dominant public perception that the mandate would be a financial strain for wide swaths of the population.

“That was one of the reasons we wanted to do this study, because we felt like the real impact was being blow out of proportion,” said Blumberg, who was the lead researcher on the study.

Email that to everyone you know, folks.  93% of Americans would have been exempt, another 2% would have qualified for Medicaid, another 3% would have gotten subsidies to pay for insurance. This is a good bill, folks.  There are way too many lies out there about it.

This is the truth.  Share it.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/06/29/154483/health-care-laws-mandate-unlikely.html#storylink=cpy

Last Call

And today's trifecta of GOP asshole governors wouldn't be complete without Florida's Rick "Lex Luthor" Scott.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott now says Florida will do nothing to comply with President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and will not expand its Medicaid program. The announcement is a marked changed after the governor recently said he would follow the law if it were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Florida is not going to implement Obamacare. We are not going to expand Medicaid and we're not going to implement exchanges," Scott's spokesman Lane Wright told The Associated Press on Saturday. Wright stressed that the governor would work to make sure the law is repealed.

Scott told Fox News the Medicaid expansion would cost Florida taxpayers $1.9 billion a year, but it's unclear how he arrived at that figure.

It's because he's lying.  Really is that simple. But it's enough to fool the "Get your Government hands off my Medicare" morons.  They vote too, Florida.

But the problem is Scott is bluffing.  He's a former hospital CEO.  He knows his former industry friends are going to demand the state enroll and do it ASAP.  All the red state governors know this game is over because the hospitals, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and the rest of the health care sector want in on this money.  The alternative is the industry continuing to eat the tens of billions yearly in the cost of the uninsured in hospital visits.  They're not going to put up with that.

Rick Scott knows it.  Legislature after legislature will sign on.  The industry will make them.  The uninsured will make them.  It's a done deal, folks.

Unless the Republicans are able to repeal the measure in 2013.  You get a say in that.

Power Plays In Ohio

If you recall back in March of this year, Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich had to be browbeaten into seeking federal emergency disaster aid when tornadoes touched down across the area, saying he was "thrilled that the state didn't need federal aid."  That lasted all of 48 hours before the public outcry across the country forced him into reversal.

Of course, when powerful storms and a record heat wave knock out power to tens of thousands in John Boehner's district north of Cincy, Kasich wastes zero time in applying for aid.

Gov. John Kasich declared a state of emergency this morning in Ohio after severe storms swept across the state, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands and causing at least one death.

Kasich cited widespread power losses, utility damages and excessive heat that could create crisis conditions for some Ohioans.

Meanwhile, Duke Energy said outages remaining from Friday’s storms could last several days. The utility has called in extra crews from Progress Energy and Alabama Power to help restore power.

This afternoon, there were still 67,959 outages, according to Duke Energy’s website. Hamilton County, with 24,457 outages, remains among the hardest hit areas in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Clermont County is next, with 14,370 users without power, and Warren and Butler counties also were among the hardest hit areas.

Butler County is the heart of Boehner country.  Of course Kasich was going to immediately apply for aid.  We're all Soshulists now.