Last Call

Matt Yglesias on sequestration:

Long story short, if you're a defense dove like me and have a nonutopian view of the domestic discretionary budget, then this looks like we're mostly talking about harmless spending cuts. It is very true that the current moment is not an optimal time to cut wasteful government spending. Given the high unemployment rate, the low and stable inflation rate, the low cost of federal borrowing, and the weird dynamics of "Evans Rule" monetary policy, I would say that 2013 is an excellent time for the federal government to waste some money on make-work military contracting gigs. But in the grand scheme of things, wasting resources on low-value programs is not a great idea, and there's more to life than timing.

Spoken like a man halfway to David Brooks' View From Nowhere.  Steve M. rips into Yggy and rightfully so:

Maybe there's more to life than timing for you, Matt, a fast-track journalist who's skipped effortlessly from excellent career-building job to excellent career-building job in the past decade, but for the ordinary schmucks who've waited years for a genuine ray of hope in their economy, the one that seems to have permanently high rates of unemployment, timing is everything -- as in, these people need a break now.

What Yglesias says in the lead-up to that statement is absolutely correct: we should be doing far more to put money in ordinary people's pockets. I don't care what it is: I'd take "make-work military contracting gigs" or a huge infrastructure repair program or any other way you could make it happen. Whatever will inspire people go to the mall next weekend. Whatever will flow money through the rest of the economy.

If military contractors are laying people off, retailers in regions where military items are made will suffer. If federal workers are experiencing one-day-a-week furloughs, their ability to spend drops 20%. And on and on. And, of course, this happens in an economy where most people barely have an economic cushion -- I bet Yglesias has one -- so how far will some of these people sink, even if the cuts are temporary?

Excellent point. Real people are going to get hurt here, and it's important to remember that.

The Massive Malay Melee

The kids over at WIN THE MORNING, JR. do some actual journalism for once, and have caught conservative bloggers and columnists behaving rather badly, taking a buck or three (or hundreds of thousands) writing stories about Malaysia...stories which are actually propaganda press releases from the country's government.  At the center: former Guardian columnist Josh Trevino.

The payments to conservative American opinion writers — whose work appeared in outlets from the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner to the Washington Times to National Review and RedState — emerged in a filing this week to the Department of Justice. The filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act outlines a campaign spanning May 2008 to April 2011 and led by Joshua Trevino, a conservative pundit, who received $389,724.70 under the contract and paid smaller sums to a series of conservative writers.

Trevino lost his column at the Guardian last year after allegations that his relationship with Malaysian business interests wasn't being disclosed in columns dealing with Malaysia. Trevino told Politico in 2011 that "I was never on any 'Malaysian entity's payroll,' and I resent your assumption that I was."
According to Trevino's belated federal filing, the interests paying Trevino were in fact the government of Malaysia, "its ruling party, or interests closely aligned with either." The Malaysian government has been accused of multiple human rights abuses and restricting the press and personal freedoms. Anwar, the opposition leader, has faced prosecution for sodomy, a prosecution widely denounced in the West which Trevino defended as more "nuanced" than American observers realized. The government for which Trevino worked also attacked Anwar for saying positive things about Israel; Trevino has argued that Anwar is not the pro-democracy figure he appears.

The federal filing specified that Trevino was engaged through the lobbying firm APCO Worldwide and the David All Group, an American online consulting firm. The contract also involved a firm called FBC (short for Fact-Based Communications), whose involvement in covert propaganda prompted a related scandal and forced an executive at The Atlantic to resign from its board.

The problem is that Trevino has run afoul of many sites for failure to disclose taking money from a foreign government along this lines...and he contracted these columns out to his wingnut welfare buddies.

Trevino's subcontractors included conservative writer Ben Domenech, who made $36,000 from the arrangement, and Rachel Ehrenfeld, the director of the American Center for Democracy, who made $30,000. Seth Mandel, an editor at Commentary, made $5,500 (his byline is attached to the National Review item linked to above). Brad Jackson, writing at the time for RedState, made $24,700. Overall, 10 writers were part of the arrangement. 

So yeah, HuffPo has already pulled all Trevino's pieces, and I'm expecting more will follow.

Oh, and didn't conservative columnists and bloggers make a huge stink about how unethical it was that Chuck Hagel reportedly took money from "Friends of Hamas" (which never existed) to speak their "propaganda"?

Funny how that works.

The Beginning Of The End Of Same-Sex Marriage Bans

The Obama Justice Department released a brief backing the end of California's Prop 8, which overturned the state's law allowing same-sex marriage.  The argument that the Justice Department makes here, backed by the President himself, is the end of same-sex marriage bans.

It goes something like this:

1. Hi, we're the Executive Branch.  Maybe you've heard of us.
2. California's Prop 8 basically allows taking rights away from a specific class of people.
3. We think that warrants "heightened scrutiny."
4. This means California has to have an ironclad, 100% bulletproof reason for doing this.
5. Here are the reasons California laid out for doing this.  We list them.
6. None of these reasons come anywhere close to the ironclad, 100% bulletproof level. 
7. That leaves discrimination for its own sake.  That's unconstitutional.
8. Junk Prop 8 and let people marry in any state with legalized same-sex marriage.
9. Oh, and by the way, the logical endpoint of our argument, hint hint...
10. ...Is for you guys to say "Hey, we can't come up with an ironclad, 100% bulletproof reason either...
11. ...And if you then hold all same-sex marriage bans in states to heightened scrutiny...
12. ...None of them would pass muster, period.  They'd have to go too."
13. Voila!  End of same-sex marriage bans.

Now, will SCOTUS actually get to 13 there?  Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSBlog says no, and argues the DoJ stops at 8, where 9-13 are simply implied.  That's true to a point, but the implication is strong.

In essence, the position of the federal government would simultaneously give some support to marriage equality while showing some respect for the rights of states to regulate that institution.  What the brief endorsed is what has been called the “eight-state solution” — that is, if a state already recognizes for same-sex couples all the privileges and benefits that married couples have (as in the eight states that do so through “civil unions”) those states must go the final step and allow those couples to get married.  The argument is that it violates the Constitution’s guarantee of legal equality when both same-sex and opposite-sex couples are entitled to the same marital benefits, but only the opposite-sex couples can get married.

“The Court can resolve this case,” the new brief said, “by focusing on the particular circumstances presented by California law and the recognition it gives to committed same-sex relationships, rather than addressing the equal protection issue under circumstances not present here.”   That final phrase was the brief’s strongest indication that the administration is not yet ready to take a firm position on whether the “fundamental right to marry” that the Court has recognized repeatedly is a right that should be open also to same-sex couples.

The eight states that apparently would be covered by the argument the Solicitor General has now made are California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, and Rhode Island.

Some believe the brief is woefully inadequate, mostly those who have always found the President lacking in some way.  Marcy Wheeler goes as far to call the President a liar and a coward:

Mr. Obama has consistently lied about his dedication to civil liberties, privacy and the Fourth Amendment, I guess it should not be shocking that he would lie about his dedication to civil rights for all, across all the states, in the form of marriage equality. And that is exactly what he has done. And as Denniston’s article makes clear, this decision bore the active participation and decision making of Obama personally. The cowardice is his to bear personally. Thanks for the fish Mr. Obama. 

Which is odd, because Allahpundit at Hotair suggests the President is a liar precisely because the brief effectively is the full-throated defense of the equal protection of same-sex marriage rights that Wheeler was looking for.

The news also isn’t that O’s revealing himself once again to have been a liar on this issue. When he ran in 2008, he pretended to be against gay marriage to parry Republican claims that he was a devout liberal rather than the centrist “post-partisan pragmatist” his campaign touted him as. He finally dropped the facade last year — it’s politically safe now to support gay marriage, even in the GOP (sort of) — but he’s continued to insist that this issue should be left to the states because … I’m not sure why. Literally no one believes he sincerely feels that way, and since he’d already taken the plunge by endorsing legal gay marriage, he had little to gain politically from his phony federalism. The best I can do by way of a theory is to guess that O, instinctively, likes to posture as a “moderate” even when he’s pushing reliably liberal positions. (E.g., “the balanced approach.”) It’s good for his brand as the “reasonable” adult in the room in Washington, a vestigial version of the pragmatic independence he feigned in summer ’08. Plus, I suppose he might have thought that posing as a federalist on SSM would cushion the blow for opponents once he revealed his support for legalization. It’s not as big of a deal to find out that the president thinks gays should be allowed to marry if he’s qualifying that by saying you should get decide to your home state’s rules. But that was nonsense, as the DOJ’s brief confirms, and anyone who didn’t see through it instantly is a fool.

But Greg Sargent believes the goal is step 13 there, and that the argument that the DoJ gives means 9-13 must be implied (and basically says "look, the time is right to do this.")  I agree with this analysis:

Because Supreme Court justices give weight to the opinion of solicitors general, this makes it more likely — though it certainly doesn’t assure this — that the Court will adopt an equally sweeping ruling. It sets forth a legal view that comports with Obama’s view that “the love we commit to one another” should be equal before the law. It sends a strong signal that the administration believes the culture is ready for full equality for gay and lesbian Americans. If the Court responds in kind, it will give gay advocates a powerful weapon to challenge other state laws around the country banning gay marriage, and they’d likely be toppled as unconstitutional — one by one. This could truly help put this persistent relic of legalized discrimination on the road to extinction.

Now the question is again, will SCOTUS get all the way to 13, or stop at 8?  If it does get to 13, then as Greg mentions, the precedent means that same-sex marriage bans will be struck down time and time again as states simply can't come up with any good legal reason to ban it.

That would leave a huge vacuum across the country, which you could then make the argument that the vacuum had to be filled with a national legalized same-sex marriage law.

We'll get there.  The question is how long it will take.

StupidiNews!

• With Congress effectively on vacation again without taking any action, the steep cuts known as sequestration will go into effect today. 
• Kansas Democrats were able to force an amendment to a bill that would test all lawmakers for drugs as well as all welfare recipients.
• Chrysler says it will add 1,250 jobs at its transmission manufacturing plants in Indiana, spending nearly $400 million to upgrade capacity.
• After losing more than $700 million over the last three years, Groupon has fired co-founder Andrew Mason as CEO.
• The FCC apparently disagrees with the government's decision to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent unlocking of cell phones to take to a different carrier.

Last Call

Sen. Tom Harkin will see President Obama's $9 a hour minimum wage, and do it one better.  Or in this case, do it one and ten cents better.

The White House is coming under pressure from liberal Democrats in the House and Senate to press for a minimum wage hike as high as $10.10.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) argues President Obama “missed the mark” in calling to raise the minimum wage to $9 in his State of the Union address, and his staff met with White House staff last week to argue for a higher number.

The veteran senator, who will retire at the end of this Congress, is working with Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) on legislation that would raise the minimum wage to $10.10 over three years and then index future increases to inflation.

“Well, we’re going to introduce our own bill on it,” Harkin told The Hill on Tuesday. “I’m going to be in discussions with them because I think they missed the mark, but people make mistakes.”

Besides Harkin and Miller — a confidant of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — Democrats backing a higher minimum wage hike include Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Rep. Charles Rangel (N.Y.).

Hey, can't wait to see Republicans shoot this down because the real problem is that "minimum wage workers are making too much" in our economy.

You can take that argument to the bank.  Cause, $20k a year is too much, right?

Doing The Right Thing By Force Of Outrage, Apparently

It's the only way to get Republicans to actually do anything that doesn't involve being privileged misogynist dipsticks.  As I noted yesterday, the House was likely going to pass the Senate's version of VAWA...because they didn't have the votes to pass their own version of it.  Today, they did just that.

On Thursday, by a vote of 286 to 138, the House passed the bipartisan Senate-approved version of the bill — one that includes added protections for LGBT, Native American, and undocumented victims of domestic violence.

A watered down Republican version of the bill, which was offered as a substitute amendment, failed to garner enough votes to slow the process. It was struck down by a vote of 257 to 166. Sixty Republicans voted against their own party’s replacement measure.

During the last session of Congress, the GOP-led House approved their watered-down VAWA, while the Senate included expanded provisions in the version it passed. The two were never reconciled, and Congress failed to renew the 18-year-old domestic violence law by the time it disbanded at the end of 2012. 

PS:  All 138 no votes?  Republicans.  What war on women, right?

The provisions included protections for Native American women, allowing them to seek justice with tribal courts when the assailant is non-Native, protections for LGBT Americans, and the provisions of the SAFER act, which will reduce the untested backlog of rape kits in America's police custody.  This is a solid win for Democrats, President Obama and all Americans here.

And it's about damn time.

We Come Not To Praise Progress Kentucky...

...but to bury them.  Joe Sonka has the epitaph after Tuesday's nasty little race-baiting incident involving Mitch the Turtle's wife, former Bush 43 Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

And this is why Democrats who want to defeat McConnell have a great sense of relief right now, because Progress Kentucky is effectively dead, and they’ll soon be replaced by a new group of seasoned professionals who know how to mess with a powerful political candidate on the ropes and know how to raise a hell of a lot of money to further that cause.

In fact, if I was McConnell, I’d seriously consider finding an obscenely wealthy supporter who is willing to write Progress Kentucky a ginormous check that could keep them operational, as Progress Kentucky has been the only thing helping McConnell’s re-election campaign over the past four months. His campaign and national Republican organizations were celebrating yesterday, but in four months they’ll be wishing Progress Kentucky was the independent expenditure group they were battling, and not the hardened pros who are bludgeoning McConnell with focused messaging that has loads of money behind it.

But until that time, Democrats in Kentucky and across the country – liberals, moderates and conservatives – have a loud and unified message for Progress Kentucky: Pack up your stuff and go away.

The fact is these guys managed to raise all of a couple thousand dollars in four months.  They're about as super a PAC as I am a professional jazz flautist, and getting these guys off the stage so that the Dems can really lay into McConnell for the depleted-uranium albatross of a record around his neck is a pretty good thing.

In other words, it's a damn good thing these guys crashed and burned early.  To take down Mitch McConnell is going to take a crapload of hard work, and the sooner we got these guys out of the way, the better off Kentucky Dems were going to be.

I'm glad I never got around to donating to these guys, either.

StupidiNews!

• After the loud and vocal battle over Chuck Hagel's nomination as Defense Secretary, the Senate has quietly confirmed Jack Lew as Treasury Secretary by a 71-27 vote.
• A British NHS study finds that a massive increase in the intake of processed sugar is responsible for the epidemic of type 2 diabetes in the UK.
• GOP leaders will meet with the White House on Friday to discuss the sequestration budget cuts, but at this point they can't even agree on exactly when the cuts would go into effect.
• Barclays Bank is taking the 450 million pound fine for its involvement in the Libor scandal directly out of banker bonuses for the year.
• France continues its tough "three strikes" policy on internet copyright violations, now saying that monitoring streaming sites like Youtube in real time is necessary.

Last Call

It looks like the House GOP has figured out that actively legislating discrimination about which women deserve protections under the Violence Against Women Act is not only unrelentingly awful, but political hemlock as well.

House Republican leaders signaled Tuesday night that they are ready to let their VAWA bill die and clear the way for a broader, bipartisan Senate bill. The Senate legislation includes new protections missing from the House bill for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), Native American and immigrant victims of domestic violence.

Here’s the House GOP plan procedurally, based on House Rules Committee actions Tuesday night: The House is expected to hold two VAWA votes on Thursday. The first will be to strip out the language of the Senate VAWA bill and replace it with the House GOP language. Since that isn’t expected to pass, lawmakers will then vote on the Senate VAWA bill itself. A GOP source involved in negotiations conceded that there is greater support for the Senate bill, and that the Senate version is likely the one to pass. That means VAWA could land on President Barack Obama’s desk by the end of this week — the version sought by the White House and Democrats.

Pretty much total surrender here on the issue as House Republicans have the approval ratings of somewhere between ebola in a nursery school and National Chewing On Tinfoil Month.

That House Republican leaders are allowing the Senate bill to get a floor vote is significant because they refused to let that happen in the last Congress, even though lawmakers in both parties believed it would pass. The move also signals that GOP leaders are ready to stop fighting over an issue that has damaged them politically. Congress failed to reauthorize VAWA in 2011 due in large part to House Republican resistance to the new protections in the Senate bill, and Democrats clobbered them over it throughout the 2012 election season.

People forget in what was supposed to be a big year for the GOP in 2012, not only did they lose Senate seats, but House seats as well.   Letting VAWA die for a year now looks like a fatal mistake for the GOP, one they’re now scrambling to correct after badmouthing the Senate version as recently as last week.  What’s behind the change in heart?  Perhaps correctly assuming he would personally shoulder the blame should the bill die, Eric Cantor has now relented.

It’s not a victory yet for the good guys, but things look a lot better than just last Friday, when the house version was passed.  Suddenly, this same House version doesn’t have the votes to survive the reconciliation process with the Senate bill. 

Funny how that works.

Re-Birther Of The Uncool, Part Eleventy Squared

Oh racist Republican jackass birthers, don’t ever stop reminding the American people just which party is full of bigots and crackpots whose awful views aren’t just tolerated but are openly welcomed.  Via Taegan Goddard:

Michigan state Sen. Tom Casperson (R) told a radio show he’s not sure where Obama was born, according to Deadline Detroit.

Said Casperson: “I don’t know because it seems like that issue was dropped immediately as far as the major media went. My gut tells me if it had been a different president, say George W. Bush, they’d have been digging into like there was no tomorrow and trying to get to the bottom of, which they never really tried to get to the bottom of.”

That’s because there’s nothing to get to the bottom of, you moron.  The President was born in Hawaii, period.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is a racist clown, point blank.  Stop it.  It’s the guy’s second term already.  If you’re still questioning his birthplace at this point after five years, there’s really nothing left but good ol’ racism to explain it.  End of line.

Ain’t nobody got time for this, as they say.

Why We Still Need Section 5

SCOTUS will hear arguments today in the case of Shelby County, Alabama versus the Voting Rights Act.  Section 5, which determines which counties and states (all with decades-long histories of discrimination against minority voters) are subject to Justice Department "pre-clearance" before changes in voting laws can take place.  Shelby County argues those laws are no longer necessary in 2013, and that holding Shelby County to Section 5 violates the Tenth Amendment.  As Sahil Kapur reports at TPM, the goal here is the end of the Voting Rights Act, and the end of voting equality in southern red states.

The lead plaintiff, Shelby County of Alabama, argues that although Section 5 was justified at the time to correct the evils of racism, it now lacks constitutional basis because the regions it singles out have experienced a dramatic rise in minority voter participation and because outright discriminatory laws like literacy tests are outlawed.

“Section 5 exacts a heavy, unprecedented federalism cost,” Shelby County wrote in its brief, “by forbidding the implementation of all voting changes in jurisdictions identified by Section 4(b) until federal officials are satisfied that the changes do not undermine minority voting rights.” Without more evidence that those parts of the country continue to systematically disenfranchise minority voters, “Section 5’s federalism cost is too great,” it said.

Congress begs to differ. In 2006, a Republican-led Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, including Section 5, after it determined that “vestiges of discrimination in voting continue to exist as demonstrated by second generation barriers constructed to prevent minority voters from fully participating in the electoral process.”

Defenders of the law argue that Section 5 remains an essential tool to proactively combat voter disenfranchisement. They point to various instances in recent years where the Justice Department has denied preclearance for voting changes to covered regions, and will contend that efforts at voter discrimination are more routine in those areas than in the rest of the country. They also note that Congress, not the courts, is tasked with enforcing the 15th Amendment.

Section 5 has been validated four times by the Supreme Court, in 1966, 1973, 1980 and 1999, noting that the 15th Amendment authorizes Congress to enforce the ban on discriminatory voting laws. But the ideological makeup of today’s Court means another victory will be a tough slog for defenders, as five justices have sympathized with the notion that Section 5 is unfair.

“Things have changed in the South,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in 2009.

And yet voter discrimination exists today, where a new class of more subtle Jim Crow laws put minority voters at a distinct disadvantage.  Let's not forget that just eight months ago, federal judges unanimously found that Texas Republicans blatantly violated Section 5 laws when the state's redistricting plan openly discriminated against Latino voters, and that in fact the plan was based on taking political power away from Latino voters.  Without Section 5 in place, that plan would have gone through.

A redistricting plan signed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) intentionally discriminated against Hispanic voters, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled Tuesday. The judges found that seats belonging to white incumbent members of Congress were protected under the plan while districts belonging to incumbent minorities were targeted for changes.

The court was “persuaded by the totality of the evidence that the plan was enacted with discriminatory intent,” according to the ruling. There was “sufficient evidence to conclude that the Congressional Plan was motivated, at least in part, by discriminatory intent,” the court found.

The three judges said they were overwhelmed with the amount of evidence showing the congressional redistricting plan was intentionally discriminatory, writing in a footnote that parties “have provided more evidence of discriminatory intent than we have space, or need, to address here.”

No, Chief Justice Roberts.  Things are not different in the South.  Not at all.

StupidiNews!

• Despite promised protests, several Republicans joined with Democrats in the Senate to break the filibuster against Chuck Hagel and confirm him as Defense Secretary.
• The Supreme Court will take up police collection of DNA as a violation of the Fourth Amendment's illegal search and seizure clause.
• Member of Congress on both sides of the aisle are expressing concern with the effects of the $11 billion US Airways/American merger on airport hubs and airfares.
• A revised UK 4th quarter figure still shows the European country is in recession, suffering a 0.3% contraction at the end of last year.
• New information on the Stuxnet worm used to attack Iranian nuclear centrifuges finds at least one version of the program was at one point designed for espionage as well as sabotage.

Last Call

Try harder, Republicans.  Bryan Preston at Bananas in Pajamas:

Progress Kentucky is angling to push GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell out of the Senate. The “progressive” group seems to have a problem with race, though, specifically the race of McConnell’s wife.

Recently, the group turned its attention to McConnell’s wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, with a focus on her race.

In a Feb. 14 Twitter message, Progress says: “This woman has the ear of (Sen. McConnell)—she’s his wife. May explain why your job moved to China!”

Chao, you see, is ethnically Chinese. She was born in Taiwan. To these “progressives,” she’s a yellow menace.

Now, Chao was Labor Secretary for Dubya for eight years, under which 2.3 million US jobs were lost to China.  Still, that was a bad choice of words for the tweet and it's minimum casting Chao as the "other" based on China, which means somebody is an asshole and deserves the crapstorm that's coming.  Public apologies to Chao are minimum acceptability here, which is what they have done this evening:

Progress Kentucky is dedicated to ensuring the people of KY have the kind of representation in the US Senate they deserve. In an effort to educate KY voters as to the varied interests of Sen. McConnell we provided information about connections between the senator and business and government interests in China. This information included an inappropriate comment on the ethnicity of the former Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, the senator’s wife. 

We apologize to the secretary for that unnecessary comment and have deleted the tweets in question. In addition, we have put a review process in place to ensure tweets and other social media communications from Progress KY are reviewed and approved prior to posting.

Which is lukewarm at best.  But, you notice this story broke nearly two weeks after the tweet was made, until Ashley Judd conveniently had to denounce something less than 24 hours after a story about her in the NY Times?  Even more so, let's remember Progress Kentucky is basically one guy on Twitter, Shawn Mark Reilly.  If it's a Democratic SuperPAC, I'm a world-famous archaeologist because I found an arrowhead once when I was in Boy Scouts.

Finally, let's not forget that Republicans sure enjoy making actual racist comments on purpose.  But what's uncalled for is this tirade by Preston:

Progress Kentucky’s racist tweet is far from the first time leftists have engaged in overt racism against Republicans who happen to be minorities. Bobby Jindal faced race-based attacks on his Indian heritage when he successfully ran for governor of Louisiana. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has faced racist and sexist attacks from the left. The Democrats opposed Miguel Estrada’s appointment to the federal judiciary during the Bush years explicitly because he is Hispanic. He was never even given a vote. The Democrats’ opposition to Clarence Thomas’ appointment to the US Supreme Court was fueled by Democrat racism.

The Democrats are and have always been the party of racism. From sparking the Civil War to defend slavery, through the “white primaries” in Texas to Jim Crow and now this attack on Elaine Chow, the left exploits race for power when they can and run racist attacks when they believe they can get away with it.

No, that's projection.  I'll tell you what,  when you decide to hold the GOP to the same standard on iffy tweets where the President and his wife are referred to as tarbabies, gorillas, and savages, let me know.

Wrestling With The Immigration Debate

Oliver Willis has a point here with the WWE's latest gimmick, where wrestler Jack Swagger and his Hannity-spouting manager Jeb Colter are the Gadsden Flag waving heels -- the bad guys being booed by crowds -- and "Mexican Millionaire" Alberto Del Rio is the face -- the good guy fighting to cheers.

On Monday’s edition of WWE Raw, Colter and Del Rio had a debate about immigration that really could have been ripped right out of cable news. Colter again complained that undocumented workers were taking American jobs and weren’t hard workers, while also whining about it being politically incorrect for him to refer to “illegals.”

He was booed. Loudly.

Del Rio responded by describing America as “the greatest country in the world,” which was the motivation for immigrants coming here to seek a better life for themselves.

This argument from Del Rio, coming from the Latino character in response to the right-wing xenophobe, was roundly applauded and prompted a “USA” chant in the arena.

In Texas.

(True to conservative form, Colter later complained that the moderator of his debate with Del Rio had shown… bias)

Sure, it’s a silly, goofy, over the top fake wrestling show – but it is also an entertainment vehicle that historically has had its finger on the pulse of its audience, changing itself to pander to the cultural zeitgeist of the moment.

WWE boss Vince McMahon, a modern day P.T. Barnum (and husband to a failed Republican Senatorial candidate), tends to give his audience the heroes and villains needed to attract eyeballs and open their wallets. McMahon and WWE have discovered that a pro-immigrant hero attracts applause and cheers, while an anti-immigrant villain is laughed at and booed.

The character who would be right at home between The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity is the bad guy.

Maybe somebody should tell the Republicans.

Oliver's right here, Vince McMahon knows what sells (his wife as a teabagger Senator in Connecticut, not so much.)  But it's a least a small sign that the times, they are a-changin'.  No matter what the GOP says, the rest of the country is having a huge laugh at the expense of the teabaggers, and if the fans of the WWE are booing the GOP line on "illegals" and cheering for a Latino hero living la vida loca (what's more "American Dream" than that?) then that's at least one more brick coming down in the wall.

Welcome to 2013, GOP.  Maybe someday you'll join us.

The Sequester Fester

As I mentioned this morning in Stupidinews, Republicans have decided to Do Something About The Sequester:  propose that the Obama Administration has to come up with the cuts, but leave the total amount of slashing the same, so that all the blame falls on the President.

In a last-minute bid to minimize the most painful impacts of federal spending cuts – and perhaps blame – Republicans will propose this week allowing the government to choose where to cut.

They plan to introduce proposals to allow flexibility while maintaining the overall level of cuts mandated by a 2011 law.

The proposal is in response to the Obama administration’s repeated complaint that the law doesn’t allow managers the flexibility to shift the reductions from such areas as teachers or programs to help female victims of violence. It’s also a move to shelter the GOP from blame should the cuts cause widespread pain. 

“As a leader, he should want as much flexibility as he can get from Congress,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association. “When did he ever go to his Cabinet secretaries, his agency heads and say, ‘What would be the least painful . . . way?’ ”

Democrats criticized the proposal, however, saying it would lock in the overall level of cuts – $85 billion for this fiscal year and $1.2 trillion over 10 years – which they argue would hurt the economy. They’ll propose smaller spending reductions supplemented by tax increases.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans want us to compromise before our neighbors, friends and family members get pink slips or notices that they can only work for a few days a week this month,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

So this is GOP 101, a move so stupidly partisan that even McClatchy is pointing out the obvious.  They're literally proposing a bill that absolves them of any responsibility for the sequester.  If the cuts are "miniscule" and helpful to the economy then why not own them?

Nobody seems to have the answer to that question, least of all the GOP.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/02/25/184131/gop-will-propose-sequester-changes.html#storylink=cpy