Last Call For Season Six

David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire and several other shows, thinks America needs to stop being quite so damn paranoid over PRISM.

You would think that the government was listening in to the secrets of 200 million Americans from the reaction and the hyperbole being tossed about. And you would think that rather than a legal court order which is an inevitable consequence of legislation that we drafted and passed, something illegal had been discovered to the government’s shame.

Nope. Nothing of the kind. Though apparently, the U.K.’s Guardian, which broke this faux-scandal, is unrelenting in its desire to scale the heights of self-congratulatory hyperbole. Consider this from Glenn Greenwald, the author of the piece: “What this court order does that makes it so striking is that it’s not directed at any individual…it’s collecting the phone records of every single customer of Verizon business and finding out every single call they’ve made…it’s indiscriminate and it’s sweeping.”

Having labored as a police reporter in the days before the Patriot Act, I can assure all there has always been a stage before the wiretap, a preliminary process involving the capture, retention and analysis of raw data. It has been so for decades now in this country. The only thing new here, from a legal standpoint, is the scale on which the FBI and NSA are apparently attempting to cull anti-terrorism leads from that data. But the legal and moral principles? Same old stuff.

It's a pretty sobering column, and considering the speed at which national security minded Republicans are suddenly pretending deafness and blindness to the program in order to avoid any responsibility for it, I'm going to agree with Simon here. 

For his part, President Obama addressed PRISM today:

“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” Mr. Obama said, delivering a 14-minute answer to two questions about the surveillance programs at an event that was initially supposed to be devoted to the health care law. “That’s not what this program is about.” 

The president’s remarks, during a four-day trip to the West Coast, were his first since the revelations this week of programs to collect information about phone calls and Internet traffic. Mr. Obama said the programs help prevent terrorist attacks and they are kept in check by rigorous judicial and Congressional oversight. 

He acknowledged that the public may be uncomfortable with the broad reach of the formerly secret programs, but he said he believed the government had struck the right balance between the need to fight terrorism and the need to protect privacy. 

“You can’t have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” Mr. Obama said, repeatedly stressing that the lawmakers from both parties and federal judges were aware of the efforts. “You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.” 

And this is true because, as Josh Barro says, Congress and the American people demanded that Something Be Done To Keep Us Safe.

More Manchin On The Hill

West Virginia Dem Sen. Joe Manchin wants the NSA's PRISM program gone, and AG Eric Holder along with it.

President Barack Obama should end the broad surveillance of telephone calls and Internet usage, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said today.

“It bothers me, and I think it bothers you and every other American,” Manchin, of West Virginia, said in an interview on “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend on Bloomberg Television. “It should be stopped as far as the broad base that they’re doing. If there’s a profile and targeting that goes on, then fine.”

Manchin, 65, also indicated that Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been criticized for targeting news organizations, among other issues, should consider resigning.

“Whenever you feel that you have lost your effectiveness or may be losing your effectiveness to the detriment of the job that you do,” he said about Holder, “you have to evaluate that and make a decision. And I think we’re at the time now where decisions have to be made.”

Manchin of course, being a red state Dem, never misses a chance to attack Barack Obama in a state like West Virginia.  It doesn't matter of course that the program was going on since 2007, and Manchin, like the rest of Congress, was briefed about what was going on.  He's got NOBAMA points to score, especially after the failure of his gun bill.

So no surprise that the first Dem to officially turn on the President is the one from the state where Romney won by 37 points.

Our Crazy Goes To Eleven

Congratulations, Minnesota.  You don't have Michele Bachmann to kick around for much longer, so the Crazy Patrol has deemed fit to give you somebody even more insane to make you a national embarrassment: virulently homophobic jackass Tom Emmert, the guy who tried to get Minnesota to secede from the country.

Former Minnesota state Rep. Tom Emmer is making good on his promise. During the lengthy recount that followed his failed 2010 gubernatorial campaign, he vowed not to go away “regardless what happens.”

Emmer eventually conceded that race after weeks of legal wrangling, but he returned to politics Wednesday and announced his intention to run for the House seat Rep. Michele Bachmann is leaving behind. Loyal TPM readers will no doubt remember Emmer from his 2010 race, which even before it devolved into court cases and recounts, was a rather wild ride complete with talking dolls, coin-throwing attacks, and drinking drama.

Emmer is currently host of a talk radio show that features, among other things, musical parodies of pop hits like a version of Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night” that mocked Occupy Wall Street and a hilarious Carly Rae Jepsen spoof entitled “Call Me Bath Salts.” When he announced his bid for Bachmann’s seat, Emmer said he will be leaving his radio gig to focus on the race. According to MinnPost, though Emmer is expected to face opposition, he is “the front-runner” to win the Republican nomination.

So good luck with that.  Emmert is such a clown that Target had to take their money back from his 2010 campaign for Governor due to the massive boycott they were facing.  And remember this greatest hit?

Perhaps the greatest moment of Emmer’s gubernatorial crusade came when he declared war on waiters and waitresses by calling for Minnesota to lower their minimum wage. Emmer’s rationale for this proposal was that many waiters and waitresses earn six figures annually and, thus, should be more reliant on tips.

“With the tips that they get to take home, they are some people earning over $100,000 a year,” Emmer said.

Emmer’s plan sparked a massive backlash culminating in a protestor dumping a bag of pennies on Emmer during a town hall event.

“I have a tip for you too, Emmer!” they shouted. 

That's right, this moron is the "Waitresses make $100,000 a year, let's eliminate minimum wage!" guy.   Let that sink in.

StupidiNews, Job Numbers Edition!

• A dozen states are under flash flood watches as hurricane season brings Tropical Storm Andrea to the East Coast.
• Student loan rates for millions of Americans will double on July 1 after Senate Republicans filibustered Democratic efforts to fix the rate for another year.
• President Obama will meet today with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a high-level summit in California, aimed at trade talks and security issues.
• US payrolls increased by 175,000, with a slight uptick in the jobless rate to 7.6% in May.
• Apple will be teaming up with Brightstar Corporation for a deal to allow customers to trade in iPhones and iPads for cash.

Last Call For Red (State) Handed

Republicans do love bringing home the bacon no matter how much they complain in public about public dollars.  And man, do they ever love tasty, tasty Obamacare bacon for constituents.  Lee Fang catches Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman and others in flagrante deporko:

Now letters produced by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that many of these same anti-Obamacare Republicans have solicited grants from the very program they claim to despise. This is evidence not merely of shameless hypocrisy but of the fact that the ACA bestows tangible benefits that even Congress’s most extreme right-wing ideologues are hard-pressed to deny to their constituents.

As I reported here last September, Congressman Paul Ryan, who as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012 called for its repeal, sent a letter requesting ACA money for health clinics in his district two years earlier. The Nation has obtained documents revealing that at least twenty other Obamacare-bashing GOP lawmakers have similarly pleaded for ACA funds on behalf of constituents. Among them are Kristi Noem, a Republican lawmaker from South Dakota likely to run for the Senate next year, as well as Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who has been touted as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2016.

In one of two letters sent by Portman to the Department of Health and Human Services, the senator requested ACA funds to help a federal health center in Cleveland, where the money could help “an additional 8,966 uninsured individuals” to receive
”essential services,” in his words. In Noem’s case, the congresswoman requested ACA funds to construct a community health center in Rapid City to provide primary services to the uninsured. Both Noem and Portman won office in 2010 campaigning vigorously against the law and have since worked to repeal it.

Sound familiar?  It should.  Republicans pulled the same crap to get millions in stimulus money during President Obama's first term.  Now they're doing the same with Obamacare grants.

Texas Senator John Cornyn, the Republican whip, wrote to the Centers for Disease Control to recommend a grant for Houston and Harris County. Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican and the chair of the Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter praising the same grant request, calling the effort a “crucial initiative to achieve a healthier Houston/Harris County.” Senators Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Thad Cochran of Mississippi also recommended grant request approval for public health or health clinic funding.

House Republicans and the Senate Republican Policy Committee have trashed the ACA’s Community Transformation grants as an Obamacare “slush fund.” In the letters seeking these grants, however, GOP lawmakers have heaped praise on their potential. Cornyn writes in his letter that the grant would help “improve the health and quality of life of area residents.” Congressman Aaron Schock, a Republican from Illinois, congratulated a local nonprofit for winning a Community Transformation grant, noting that the program will give “people the tools to live healthier and longer lives.”

In public, it's "repeal Obamacare!"  In private, it's "Take the money and run."

The "We're Perfectly Okay With Death Penalty Racial Bias" State

And that would be my home state of North Carolina, where Republicans with complete control over the government have decided that a law that would allow somebody to do something about the overwhelming racial bias of the death penalty needs to go.

A law that allowed death-row inmates to challenge their sentences based on racial bias claims was repealed by the North Carolina legislature on Wednesday, paving the way for executions to resume in a state that has 152 people on death row. 

The law, the only one of its kind in the country, allowed inmates to use state and county statistics and other material to claim that race played a role in their sentencing. Since the law took effect in 2009, nearly everyone facing execution — not all of them black — has used it in hopes of reducing sentences to life in prison. 

In the weeks before the State House of Representatives took up the Racial Justice Act, most lawmakers acknowledged it was headed for repeal. Still, the legislative debate stretched over two days and was noteworthy for both its emotion and its ideology. 

Those who voted to rescind it recited the names of people whose killers were on death row and said the law had clogged the courts and denied justice to victims. 

It was also called a deeply flawed piece of legislation. 

“It tries to put a carte blanche solution on the problem,” said Representative Tim Moore, a Republican. “A white supremacist who murdered an African-American could argue he was a victim of racism if blacks were on the jury.” 

Sure, we can't this law, because it might help white supremacists.  Meanwhile, let's put people to death because we were able to railroad a case through a jury and sentence the felon to death because he's black.

Now the ultimate fate of the prisoners rests with a court system, where these same Republican "purveyors of justice" have slashed $80 million from state courtroom budgets and law enforcement forensics labs over the last four years.

And so it goes back home.  Republicans can't punish minorities fast enough.

Department Of The Obvious

Greg Sargent discovers that Sen. Marco Rubio might not be as honest and forthright about immigration reform as previously thought.

The fate of immigration reform comes down to this simple question: Can Republicans accept a pathway to citizenship that cannot be undermined by border security “triggers” that are deliberately designed for the very purpose of undercutting the prospects for real reform?

GOP Senator John Cornyn has been pushing a new immigration compromise that would dramatically strengthen the border security “triggers” that would have to be met to make a path to citizenship operative. The argument is that this is the only way enough Republicans can be enticed to support reform to enable it to pass the Senate in broad numbers. Senate Democratic aides are rejecting Cornyn’s proposal, arguing that it is deliberately designed to make the pathway to citizenship unattainable — in other words, to undermine the core of reform.

This has put Marco Rubio in a box, and it needs to be acknowledged that Cornyn’s move really does threaten the prospects for reform.

Or it could be, much more likely in fact, that Cornyn is working with him and is really giving Rubio the out he needs.  Now he can say that his own bill no longer meets his security criteria, and gosh, those nasty Dems are the ones who will force the bill to die.

Rubio gets to eat his cake and yours too.

It's almost like that was the plan all along.

StupidiNews!

• Government leaks indicate Verizon has handed over cell phone data to the NSA since April 19, the day that the Boston bombing suspect was arrested.
• Former Mexican President Enrique Fox is calling for full legalization of marijuana in order to reduce the power of Mexican drug cartels.
• The contractor hired to demolish a building in Philadelphia where six were killed in yesterday's collapse of a neighboring building has an insurance fraud conviction.
• SodaStream stock got a huge boost in Germany as rumors circulate that the at-home soda making machine manufacturer is in talks with PepsiCo over a possible buyout.
• A new Pew Research study finds for the first time over half of American adults own a smartphone, and over 90% own a cell phone.

Last Call For Nullification Nonsense

South Carolina could become the first state to openly pass a blatantly unconstitutional nullification law for Obamacare, wasting taxpayer money and forcing the US government to fight it in court.

A proposed bill, on special order in the state Senate, would allow the state attorney general to take businesses, including health insurers, to court if he “has reasonable cause to believe” they are harming people by implementing the law. The bill already has passed the House.

If it passes, the bill could push South Carolina to the forefront of Obamacare resistance, giving the state’s Republican leaders a national stage. It also could push South Carolina into yet another costly legal battle in the federal courts that, critics say, is unnecessary and avoidable.

“It is going to get us in court, as we all know. But ... it is worth the risk to see if we can protect our state from this far-reaching federal legislation,” state Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, one of the lawmakers pushing for the Senate to pass the bill this week before it adjourns for the year.

Many Senate Democrats, and some Republicans, dismiss the bill as nothing more than a symbolic political salvo meant to provide fodder for lawmakers’ legislative newsletters and campaign signs. But health-insurance companies are worried the bill could complicate further their efforts to navigate the regulatory landscape.

“We need to make sure that companies – health-care providers in South Carolina – aren’t faced with situation where the federal government says you must and the state government says you cannot,” said Bob Coble, an attorney for Nexsen Pruett who represents several hospitals.

Which is the point:  the same people who say the federal government is using the coercive power of the state to hurt citizens are the ones passing a law expressly giving the state AG the right to use the coercive power of the state to hurt citizens.  Awesome.

Also, the point is to elicit political change by subjecting businesses, insurers, providers, and citizens to harm over their political choices and letting them know that if they are caught disagreeing with the SC GOP, they face serious and harmful reprisal. 

There's a term for that, and it begins with the letter "T".

Let that sink in for a bit, what these assclowns are doing, then tell me again they're not virulently racist sacks of manure.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/06/03/2800482/obamacare-nullification-bill-on.html#storylink=cpy

Batter Up (To No Good)

If what ESPN's reporting Tuesday evening is true, then the sport of baseball's about to take another Steroid Era fastball to the junk with no cup, as a major provider of performance-enhancing drugs is ratting out his all-star clients.

Major League Baseball will seek to suspend about 20 players connected to the Miami-area clinic at the heart of an ongoing performance-enhancing drug scandal, including Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun, possibly within the next few weeks, "Outside the Lines" has learned. If the suspensions are upheld, the performance-enhancing drug scandal would be the largest in American sports history.


Tony Bosch, founder of the now-shuttered Biogenesis of America, reached an agreement this week to cooperate with MLB's investigation, two sources told "Outside the Lines," giving MLB the ammunition officials believe they need to suspend the players.

One source familiar with the case said the commissioner's office might seek 100-game suspensions for Rodriguez, Braun and other players, the penalty for a second doping offense. The argument, the source said, is that the players' connection to Bosch constitutes one offense, and previous statements to MLB officials denying any such connection or the use of PEDs constitute another. Bosch and his attorneys did not return several calls. MLB officials refused to comment when reached Tuesday.

Bosch is expected to begin meeting with officials -- and naming names -- within a week. The announcement of suspensions could follow within two weeks.

Gonna be a weird All-Star game with no actual all-stars playing, considering about a score of them are about to get dump trucks dropped on them from Bud Selig's office.  And A-Rod getting 100 games out?  That's pretty much lights out for his career.

Not that I'm all broken up about any Yankees getting the hook for a century or anything.

Going For The Throat

President Obama, having gotten Judge Sri Srinavasan appointed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals without any fuss whatsoever, now unveils the full majesty of his move:  appointing three more judges at the same time to fill the remaining three seats on the court's bench.

The president’s simultaneously nomination of the three judges for the D.C. Circuit, first reported by CQ Roll Call on May 10, sends a strong message that he intends to push for the nominees in a way that he has not lobbied for his other lower-court choices. Obama had never appeared alongside a judicial nominee other than for the Supreme Court, according to advocates.

The D.C. Circuit is widely considered the second-most-powerful court in the nation because of the important national security and administrative law cases it hears. It received its first new judge since 2006 last month when the Senate confirmed Sri Srinivasan, the former principal deputy solicitor general in the Justice Department, in a unanimous vote. Senate Republicans had twice filibustered Obama’s previous choice to the court, Caitlin J. Halligan, whose nomination was withdrawn earlier this year.

Obama nominated Patricia Ann Millett, an appellate attorney in Washington; Cornelia T.L. “Nina” Pillard, a law professor at Georgetown University; and Judge Robert L. Wilkins of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Senate confirmed Wilkins to his current post by a voice vote in December 2010.

Republicans are now stuck having to pass all three nominees and giving the President exactly what he wants, or filibustering the nominations and facing a bully pulpit call for the nuclear option to end judicial filibusters.

Either way, the President wins.  I love it.

StupidiNews!

• Flooding along the Mississippi River has forced evacuations north of St. Louis as a second levee breach in two days threatens thousands of residents.
• House Republicans are moving forward with legislation that would ban all abortions in America past 20 weeks.
• A federal bankruptcy judge has removed the last major obstacle to US Airways merging with American Airlines and becoming the world's largest air carrier.
• A new report finds fewer US families are dealing with medical bankruptcies, indicating health care costs are on the way down.
• A new ruling from the International Trade Commission in Samsung's favor could ban the sale of older Apple iPhone and iPad models in the US.

Last Call For Revenge

The Associated Press has decided it has the power to make things very uncomfortable for the Obama administration, and has decided to hit back.

Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the secretary for Health and Human Services, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

The AP asked for the addresses following last year’s disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged — but often happens anyway — due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.

The secret email accounts complicate an agency’s legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

The Associated Press has decided that it felt the Obama administration was abusing its power and trust.  Apparently, the AP has countered by doing much the same thing by putting these email addresses out there, certainly ones they've used to communicate with administration officials.  At best, that's just being a bunch of douchebags.  At worst, it's rank hypocrisy.

The AP story gives the impression that this is unprecedented, making no mention of the use of the multiple addresses by previous administrations.

U.S. Senators and Representatives also typically have non-published e-mail addresses, though Congress exempted itself from Freedom of Information laws. It seems obvious that political figures of both parties would need an unlisted e-mail address that cannot be easily guessed for communications with advisers and colleagues — just as cabinet secretaries private cell phone numbers would not be publicly available, though their main office number would be.

Despite Alexander’s concern, the release of this information shows that both the public and private email addresses are public record and that any legitimate FOIA request or subpoena for records would include those sent to and from both addresses.

People forget that at their heart, news organizations are intelligence-gathering agencies, and that intelligence can be misused for personal reasons. Somebody might want to refresh the AP's collective memory on that, and tell them to knock off this message pitch crap.

They Still Can't Stop Lying About Obamacare

As I pointed out on Saturday, Forbes.com hack Avik Roy is paid to lie quite professionally about things like Obamacare raising premiums 146% in California, and did a great job of it right up until the point it took Ezra Klein one paragraph to bury him.

Roy got his 146 percent by heading to eHealthInsurance.com, running a search for insurance plans in California and comparing the cost of the cheapest plans to the cost of the plans being offered in the exchanges. That’s not just comparing apples to oranges. It’s comparing apples to oranges that the fruit guy may not even let you buy.

Roy, caught red-handed, has decided to respond by simply move the goalposts and declaring victory.

To Ezra, it’s galling that three-fourths of his compatriots can pay $109 for health insurance, because 12 percent were not eligible for the plan, and another 14 percent had to pay somewhat more. This is why Obamacare is a great achievement, he says, because Health Net will have to serve all comers, regardless of prior health status.

And I appreciate Ezra’s perspective. I, too, am a supporter of universal coverage, so I understand Ezra’s passion for providing health insurance to the sick. But what we didn’t know last week—and we do now—is how much more the healthy will have to pay for that insurance, under Obamacare. In Orange County, where Irvine is located, the three-fourths of the 25-year-old population that is in good health will have their premiums jacked by 95 percent.

Same false argument, dressed up in different misleading numbers.  Now Roy has found a narrow, specific category where premiums will rise for people, but that's a far cry from his "everyone will see premiums go up 64%-146%" claim earlier, plus 25-year olds will be eligible for being on their parents plans, and if you're under 30, you can get catastrophic coverage still, which exactly addresses the point Roy was attacking (that Obamacare forces young people to buy expensive insurance). But he can't leave without declaring victory on all those intellectually bankrupt liberals...

But in the end, I’m glad that we’re finally having the intellectually honest argument about Obamacare that we should have been having all along. No, Obamacare won’t decrease the cost of your insurance by $2,500 a year. Indeed, it could raise it by that much. No, under Obamacare, you can’t keep your plan, if you like your plan. Instead, you’ll be forced to buy a costlier plan with add-ons that you neither need nor want.

If you’re a leftie, you likely think that’s a good thing. But you should have said so all along. The fact is that Obamacare was sold to the public under false pretenses, and the chickens are now coming home to roost.

So now Roy has completely knocked all the pieces off the board and has claimed victory because you lied first, liberals so I win!

Jonathan Cohn sinks this argument handily:

Roy is no dummy. He’s well aware of these facts. He could have acknowledged them, and went on to make the case that the benefits are not worth those costs—that it’s fundamentally unfair to ask young, healthy, affluent people to pay more, or that Obamacare’s whole scheme is just so inefficient as to make it worse than the alternative.¹ As Aaron Carroll wrote the other day, Obamacare involves real trade-offs: Higher-income people have to pay higher taxes, the health care industry has to endure lower payments from Medicare, and—yes—some young, healthy, affluent people have to pay more for private insurance. Those of us who support the law believe that's a worthwhile price to pay to help achieve universal coverage, given the lack of politically viable alternatives. Roy disagrees, I know, and he could have made that argument in a nuanced way last week.

But Roy didn’t do that. And while all of us are susceptible to hyperbole or selective interpretation from time to time, Roy's column was something else entirely. He plucked out two examples of people who would pay more in California, pretended they were emblematic of the system as a whole, then accused other writers of being irresponsible. His argument hasn't held up well to scrutiny, but it's part of the political conversation and, I'm sure, will remain so for a while.

.So the only logical explanation is that Avik Roy is lying professionally.  Like I said, paid to lie.

Hang Out In The Middle Of The Jersey Turnpike Long Enough...

...and the truck comes barreling right for you.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s death Monday morning sets up a complicated succession process that will have implications for two Garden State politicians widely believed to hold national ambitions: Gov. Chris Christie (R) and Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D).

With Lautenberg’s passing, it falls to Christie to appoint a temporary replacement and to decide when to schedule the election to replace Lautenberg, both while he faces his own re-election in November and tries to build his brand on the national stage. Booker, who all-but officially announced his decision to run for Lautenberg’s seat in December, may find himself simultaneously facing off against Christie’s chosen successor and confronting the consequences of the stormy relationship he had with Lautenberg prior to the senator’s death.

Chris Christie has tried to hang out in the middle of the New Jersey Turnpike for four years now, and this is now what he faces:



He's going to lose badly no matter what he does.  He can't choose a far-right Tea Party nutjob, because he's facing re-election in a blue state in less than six months.  He can't choose a moderate because the nutjobs running his party will bury him.  He can't punt and call a special election without nominating anyone because then he gets pegged as a wimp, and he can't wait until November to hold the election because it will bring out Democratic voters in a big way, and that could hurt his chances for re-election.  He can't resign, pass the buck to Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, and have her send him to the Senate because they'd both get killed in November by Democrats. Most of all, if he doesn't pick the New Jersey equivalent of Chuck Grassley, any ambitions beyond Jersey are over for him nationally.

Nate Silver actually does have some objective advice for Christie if his goal is increasing GOP power in the Garden State:

Mr. Christie might have decent choices from New Jersey’s list of current United States representatives. Six of the state’s 12 representatives are Republicans, and most of those Republicans are quite moderate.

In particular, Mr. Christie could appoint one of the two Republican representatives — Frank LoBiondo of the Second Congressional District and Jon Runyan of the Third — who won re-election last year in districts carried by President Obama. Mr. Runyan had the better fund-raising performance last year, bringing in $2.1 million for his campaign, compared with $1.6 million for Mr. LoBiondo.

Because of New Jersey’s strong Democratic lean, the appointee would still probably be the underdog against Mayor Cory Booker of Newark or whomever the Democrats nominated. But someone like Mr. Runyan would stand a fighting chance, whereas an underqualified nominee or a conservative Republican would most likely be added to the long list of Senate appointees who failed at the ballot box.

But there's no way he can do that without incurring the wrath of the teabaggers.  He's utterly screwed and he knows it. 

And it couldn't happen to a more deserving sack of crap.

StupidiNews!

• The US is sending Patriot missile batteries and F-16 fighter jets to Jordan to beef up defenses there as the US ally takes on an increasing number of refugees from neighboring war-torn Syria.
• One of Turkey's largest trade union groups is joining the growing protests against the Erdogan government and calling for a two-day national strike.
• President Obama's power to make recess appointments is expected to go before the Supreme Court later this year as Republicans want to sharply curtail the practice.
• NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's campaign against sugary sodas is now expanding to take on fruit drinks, teas, and energy drinks.
• Social media game maker Zynga is laying off 18 percent of its staff and concentrating on mobile platforms as the company's losses reached $200 million last year.

Last Call For The High Risk Pool Fools

House Republicans really do seem to be completely incapable of any sort of competent governance, because even when they try it, they fail miserably.  For example, House Republicans have gotten a lot of 100% deserved criticism that their plan to repeal Obamacare does nothing to help the tens of millions of Americans who would still be without affordable health insurance.  So what's Eric Cantor's answer?

Why, giving them crappy, unaffordable health insurance, or course!

The original bill, championed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), transferred $3.6 billion from Obamacare’s $10 billion prevention and public health fund to the law’s temporary high-risk pool aimed at covering sick people for the remainder of this year.

The altered version wipes out Obamacare’s prevention fund entirely and uses the money to fund state-based high-risk pools which have nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act.

“To address the concerns raised several weeks ago, an amended version of the bill has been drafted,” Cantor wrote Friday afternoon in a memo to House Republicans, which was provided to TPM. “The amendment does not utilize or fund the existing [Obamacare high-risk pool] program, which will expire at the end of the year. Instead, the amendment provides funding for state based high risk pools, the framework that represents the conservative policy answer to helping Americans with preexisting conditions.”

Now keep in mind that these high-risk state pools were temporary measures to provide some insurance to people who had none.  It didn't work out too well, but that's why it was a temporary measure.  The cogitators in the House GOP want to make this permanent and call it a solution.

State-based high risk pools, which already exist in many states, are a favorite GOP alternative to Obamacare. While they make some strides in covering people with pre-existing conditions, they are very expensive without younger and healthier people in the system as a counter-balance. (The temporary high-risk pool created under Obamacare quickly ran out of money, too.) States tend not to be able to afford — or want to spend the money — to adequately cover their residents under high risk pools.

So once again these clowns choose pretty much the worst way to govern.  Surprise!

Ride Of The Young Guns

The College Republican National Committee (yeah, who knew, right?) is blasting the GOP leadership over the increasing loss of America's young voters in a new report examining what went wrong with 2012 and voters under 35.

In the report, the young Republican activists acknowledge their party has suffered significant damage in recent years. A sampling of the critique on:

Gay marriage: “On the ‘open-minded’ issue … [w]e will face serious difficulty so long as the issue of gay marriage remains on the table.”

Hispanics: “Latino voters … tend to think the GOP couldn’t care less about them.”

Perception of the party’s economic stance: “We’ve become the party that will pat you on your back when you make it, but won’t offer you a hand to help you get there.”

Big reason for the image problem: The “outrageous statements made by errant Republican voices.”

Words that up-for-grabs voters associate with the GOP: “The responses were brutal: closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.”

“[The] Republican Party has won the youth vote before and can absolutely win it again,” the report says, pointing to presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush who were competitive with that demographic. “But this will not occur without significant work to repair the damage done to the Republican brand among this age group over the last decade.”

So in order to win over young voters, the GOP has to be...more like the Democrats.  Considering the Democrats have already staked out this territory, good luck with that, kids.  Republicans are a dead-end party that will not go gentle in that teabag night until the Tea Party cancer is ripped out and disposed of.  That's going to take getting rid of them at both the national and the state level, and the latter part of that isn't going to happen for another decade or so at the minimum.

Meanwhile, the country will try to survive the storm, I guess.  But if the future of the GOP has basically given up on the party as a going concern, and their big idea to save the party is "We need to pretend to be more like the Democrats on social stuff and still stick it to poor people" then I'm betting that when the rubble clears, the Democrats will have a long run ahead of them.

The issue of course is how much of the country gets reduced to that rubble in the meantime.

Thy Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

At least women always know where they stand with the GOP.  After repeated refusals to pass legislation to guarantee fair pay, a woman finally steps forward and explains that women don't want fair pay.  Republican congresswoman Marsha Blackburn says that women being recognized in the workplace is "more important" than equal pay for the same duties and responsibilities.

Thanks for clearing that up, doll.

During a roundtable discussion on NBC's Meet The Press, former White House advisor David Axelrod asked if she would support a law promoting workplace gender equality. Blackburn responded:

"I think that more important than that is making certain that women are recognized by those companies. You know, I’ve always said that I didn’t want to be given a job because I was a female, I wanted it because I was the most well-qualified person for the job. And making certain that companies are going to move forward in that vein, that is what women want. They don’t want the decisions made in Washington. They want to be able to have the power and the control and the ability to make those decisions for themselves."

Not only did she dodge the issue with some truly Palin-esque babble there, she manages to act a fool and contradict herself while insulting just about every woman everywhere.  She calls recognition more important, seemingly without understanding that most people work for money and that raises and bonuses are perfectly acceptable forms of recognition.  Apparently, if you don't accept a "good job" in lieu of being paid as much as the man sitting next to you, it's time to suck it up and be a team player.

Because there is no logical argument against promising to pay men and women fairly, she then clarifies that she is all about equality because she wants to earn her job by being the most qualified, not because she is a woman.  Dandy, but how about the most qualified also being paid the most competitive wage, even if the worker is a woman?  That makes sense to everyone but Republicans.  To speak on behalf of women and say that we don't want the decisions made in Washington is atrocious.  Women fought hard for fair pay and workplace equality, and were shot down by a unanimous GOP vote.  Then she pops a useless but empowering phrase about how women can make those decisions for themselves.  Just what decisions are we talking about?  Because unfair pay practices are legal, what choices do women have exactly?  I suppose we can choose whether we are underpaid by this guy or that guy.

It's hypocritical to believe that government shouldn't intervene to enforce fair treatment of women, and then turn around and use government to further take away their rights and freedoms.  It's way more hypocritical to sell out your gender to jockey for position in an organization determined to oppress them.  It's the height of hypocrisy to support unfairness while claiming to be giving women what they really want.  Funny, I haven't heard a single woman ever say she wanted a smaller paycheck, higher insurance costs, less access to screenings and lifesaving medical treatments and insurmountable odds.  I guess we're just lucky enough to find it everywhere we go.

StupidiNews!

• Last weekend's death toll from Midwest tornadoes is now 16, including the deaths of professional storm chaser and engineer Tim Samaras, his son Paul, and colleague Carl Young.
• Al-Qaeda in Yemen is hyping Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, claiming he got the recipe for the bombs from the group's online magazine.
• A devastating disease has ripped through the coffee plantations of Central America this spring, putting thousands out of work and threatening dramatic coffee price spikes.
• Tens of thousands continue to pour into Istanbul's streets to protest President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as political unrest grips Turkey's capital.
• Apple has reportedly reached a deal with Warner Music and Universal Music ahead of this week's big developer's conference, where rumors of an Apple streaming radio service abound.