The Real Immigration Villain Remains The GOP

It's important to remember the above post title when reading this:

President Obama will delay taking executive action on immigration until after the midterm elections, bowing to pressure from fellow Democrats who feared that acting now could doom his party’s chances this fall, White House officials said on Saturday.

The decision is a reversal of Mr. Obama’s vow to issue broad directives to overhaul the immigration system soon after summer’s end, and sparked swift anger from immigration advocates. The president made the promise on June 30, standing in the Rose Garden, where he angrily denounced Republican obstruction and said he would use the power of his office to protect immigrant families from the threat of deportation.

So, two things:  First, Republicans have successfully politicized immigration to the point where immigration activists are now ready to destroy President Obama, and second, Senate Democrats are going to find out that there's zero advantage to stabbing the President in the back here.

Cristina Jimenez, the managing director for United We Dream, an immigration advocacy group, accused Mr. Obama of “playing politics” with the lives of immigrant families and said “the president’s latest broken promise is another slap to the face of the Latino and immigrant community.”

If Jiminez was honest, she'd be going after John Boehner for refusing to hold a vote on the Senate immigration bill that already passed.  But it's easier to attack President Obama, because kicking him in the face will certainly bring about the immigration reform she wants, right?

Of course, reform isn't the issue.  Fundraising and attention are.  And attacking President Obama from the left is a tried and true method for getting both.  I don't blame her, she knows how this game works as much as Obama does.

And no, if Senate Democrats come up to President Obama and say "We will not support your executive action and we will side with the GOP to stop you" then his hands are tied.

On the other side, Republicans voted to immediately deport every single undocumented immigrant in the US.  But you're going to go after Obama.

And the GOP wins again.  Great job.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• A charter plane from Dubai carrying military contractors, some American, was allowed to complete its flight after being forced to land in Iran due to an out of date flight plan.
• NASA scientists are looking to the skies this weekend for a house-sized asteroid passing within 25,000 miles of Earth.
• Pentagon officials confirmed the death of al Shabaab terrorist leader Ahmed Abdi Godane in a US airstrike in Somalia earlier this week.
• The US economy added 142,000 jobs in August as the unemployment rate dropped to 6.1%, with Fed chair Janet Yellen noting continued "underutilization" of workers in the market.
• Chinese internet commerce giant Alibaba will seek to raise more than $24 billion in a record IPO offering at $66 a share, or a total company value of $163 billion.

Last Call For Growth In The Death Business

Reuters lets us know that in addition to territory in Iraq and Syria, Islamic State is now getting a foothold in Egypt as well.

Islamic State, fighting to redraw the map of the Middle East, has been coaching Egypt's most dangerous militant group, complicating efforts to stabilize the biggest Arab nation.

Confirmation that Islamic Sate, currently the most successful of the region's jihadi groups, is extending its influence to Egypt will sound alarm bells in Cairo, where the authorities are already facing a security challenge from home-grown militants.

A senior commander from the Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which has killed hundreds of members of the Egyptian security forces over the last year, said Islamic State has provided instructions on how to operate more effectively.

"They teach us how to carry out operations. We communicate through the internet," the commander, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters.

"They don't give us weapons or fighters. But they teach us how to create secret cells, consisting of five people. Only one person has contact with other cells."

I'm not sure how much of the word of an anonymous Egyptian militant group commander we can trust, but you have to admit, Egypt is a pretty good breeding ground for the kind of conditions favorable to groups like Islamic State.  The government is neither stable, nor popular.  When combined with an outfit like IS, that captures and then governs areas in order to win over recruits and take resources, the recipe is for what would amount to an ugly third front in this conflict.

Hopefully this is just boasting.  I don't believe it is.

The Angus King Special In Kansas

Two years ago retiring Maine GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe was replaced by Independent former Gov. Angus King after Democrat Cynthia Dill was all but driven out of a race that she couldn't win by her own party.  The logic was that since Dill didn't have a chance, the Democratic party backed King.  It paid off, he won and joined Harry Reid's caucus.

This week it looks like the same play is happening in Kansas.  This time, however, the Democrat is dropping out of the race entirely.  Nate Silver crunches the numbers:

Kansas, however, had become an under-the-radar opportunity for Democrats. The Republican incumbent there, Pat Roberts, barely survived his primary and has extremely low approval ratings. Several recent polls had put the race in single digits between Roberts and his Democratic opponent, Chad Taylor, with the independent candidate Greg Orman getting about 20 percent of the vote. As of Wednesday, the FiveThirtyEight forecast gave Roberts an 80 percent chance of winning. That’s not bad, but it’s not any better than McConnell, who also has about an 80 percent chance of holding on in a race that has gotten far more attention.

Late Wednesday afternoon, however, Taylor announced his withdrawal from the race, setting up a contest between Orman and Roberts. (There is also a Libertarian candidate, Randall Baston, on the ballot.)

Why would Taylor leave the race right when polls showed it tightening?

Perhaps because he and Orman share a lot in common philosophically. Based on the ideological ratings we track (more background on those here), both Taylor and Orman rate as the equivalent of moderate Democrats. Orman, in fact, ran as a Democratic candidate for the Senate in 2008, although he withdrew from the race during the primary.

But Orman had raised more money than Taylor — about $625,000 in individual contributions to Taylor’s $120,000 as of July 13 — and probably had more momentum, having recently received endorsements from a bipartisan group of legislators.

There was also a recent survey, from Public Policy Polling (PPP), which showed Orman ahead of Roberts 43-33 in a potential two-way race. The same poll had shown Taylor trailing Roberts by 4 percentage points in the event Orman dropped out.

If the PPP survey is accurate, this is a huge problem for Republicans. Suddenly, they’re behind in a race against a former Democrat who might caucus with the Democratic Party should he make it to the Senate.

Republicans meanwhile are scrambling to try to keep Roberts in the race, and they figure they can do it if they force ballots to still have Chad Taylor's name on them, confusing voters.  Because that's how Republicans win, you know.

But, if Kansas is now in play, control of the Senate may hinge on which side Orman and Angus King in Maine side with as independents.   The answer may not automatically be "siding with the Democrats" in either case.

Either way, we'll keep an eye on Kansas.

Everybody Do The Flop

Over at the Daily Banter, Bob Cesca details Sen. Rand Paul's epic flip-flop from "principled anti-war conservative" to "standard GOP warmonger" when it comes to dealing with Islamic State goons.

We’re all familiar with his attempt to outflank Hillary Clinton to her left by characterizing her as a hawk, both on Meet the Press, August 24, and in The Wall Street Journal, August 28. 

Back in June, Rand Paul had serious reservations about air-strikes against ISIS forces in Iraq. 

What would airstrikes accomplish? We know that Iran is aiding the Iraqi government against ISIS. Do we want to, in effect, become Iran’s air force? What’s in this for Iran? Why should we choose a side, and if we do, who are we really helping? 

But on Tuesday, after news broke about a second beheading of an American journalist by ISIS terrorists, Rand Paul said:

In an emailed comment… Paul elaborated by saying: “If I were President, I would call a joint session of Congress. I would lay out the reasoning of why ISIS is a threat to our national security and seek congressional authorization to destroy ISIS militarily.”  

That brings us to Wednesday when Paul said this to Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel:

“So I also think that Turks really should be enjoined in this. And I do think that there can be a role for America. But I would rather see the president come to a joint session of Congress, [ask] for permission, and if he gets it, I still would like to see the ground troops and the battles being fought by those who live there. We can give both technological as well as air support. That could be the decisive factor in this.” 

Okay, sure, it’s not a complete reversal from Tuesday, but it’s a significant backpedal from seeking authorization for the U.S. to “destroy ISIS militarily.” Instead of doing all the destroying, Rand Paul would essentially hang back and let Iraq and Turkey do most of the ground fighting. That said, it’s a massive reversal from his opposition to air-strikes back in June. (I hasten to note that my criticism of Paul is based solely on his total lack of core values and increasingly hilarious roster of flip-flops. The U.S. strategy on ISIS is a separate conversation.)

Of course Cesca is correct on this, there's really no other way to characterize Paul's Superman-level leaps from the "hands off" camp to the "I could talk Iran into doing it for us!" camp.  It's also a deeply silly position to all of a sudden start pushing Iran as the solution to the Islamic State problem when Republicans screamed bloody murder at even using diplomacy with Iran in regards to enriching uranium.  Now all of a sudden Republicans want to trust Iran's military to bail us out so that we don't have to send in ground troops?  That's the big plan?

Who does he think he's fooling with this?  Republican primary voters who will flay him leading up to 2016? General election voters who will laugh him out of the room?  He knows he's in trouble, so he took to TIME Magazine Thursday to "clarify" his position.

This administration’s dereliction of duty has both sins of action and inaction, which is what happens when you are flailing around wildly, without careful strategic thinking. 

And while my predisposition is to less intervention, I do support intervention when our vital interests are threatened. 

If I had been in President Obama’s shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS. I would have called Congress back into session—even during recess. 

This is what President Obama should have done. He should have been prepared with a strategic vision, a plan for victory and extricating ourselves. He should have asked for authorization for military action and would have, no doubt, received it.

So no, liberals who think Rand Paul is somehow "anti-war".  He's just another GOP warmonger.  And if you notice above, it means he's flip-flopped again just this week.

It would be hysterical if it weren't so frightening to consider him as President.

StupidiNews!

• EU nations are considering yet another round of economic sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, but are waiting to see what Friday's ceasefire agreements in Minsk bring.
• Amazon and the US Postal Service will team up to bring groceries to San Francisco under the "AmazonFresh" service.
• A federal judge has found oil giant BP to be grossly negligent in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and oil spill off the Gulf Coast, which could cost the company up to $18 billion.
• New Zealand environmentalists are worried that PM John Key's plan to increase oil and dairy exports will come at the cost of the country's green brand.
• The total cost to Nevada taxpayers for the deal needed to attract the new Tesla Motors battery "gigafactory": $1.2 billion in tax abatement for the company over 20 years.

Last Call For The Painful Turtle

The Lexington Herald-Leader editorial board is not happy with Sen. Mitch McConnell pledging allegiance to the Koch brothers and not to Kentuckians in need, and they unleashed a blistering editorial this week against the incumbent GOP Senate majority leader.

The Republican leader assured the Kochs and their friends that he would use budget riders to stymie protections for consumers and the economy enacted to avoid a repeat of the financial meltdown. And he expressed contempt for policies that would help the middle class regain its economic footing, such as a minimum-wage increase, extended unemployment benefits and relief from student-loan debt. 

"We're not going to be debating all these gosh-darn proposals," McConnell promised if Republicans gain control of the Senate and he becomes its leader. 

The recession ended five years ago. Wall Street is setting record highs, yet too many people say they are economically insecure. 

Kentucky needs an additional 80,800 jobs to make up for losses in the recession and keep up with the state's 4 percent population growth, according to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. 

A branch of the Kochs' political organization, Americans for Prosperity, recently opened in Kentucky, with the spouse of a McConnell field rep as its director. 

On the recently disclosed tape, McConnell is heard thanking the Koch brothers "for the important work you're doing. I don't know where we'd be without you." 

What Kentucky voters should think about is where we'd be with them pulling the strings of the U.S. Senate.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/09/02/3408649_mcconnell-promising-pain-serving.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Ouch.

The pundits still have McConnell easily rolling to re-election in November.  I simply don't think that's the case anymore.  The Koch tape and the sudden resignation of McConnell's campaign director over a bribery scandal is going to start having an effect on the polls.

McConnell knows this.

When StupidiNews Breaks...

...Zandar fixes it.

All kinds of breaking news right now:

1) The jury has come back in the Bob McDonnell corruption trial, and the verdict is in:  Bob McDonnell guilty on 11 corruption charges, his wife Maureen guilty on 9 charges, some of which she shared with her husband. Sentencing January 6.  They're going away for a long, long time, kids.

And another corrupt Republican goes down in flames.

2) The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has found Indiana and Wisconsin's respective state bans on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional.  That's three appellate courts now that have reached the same conclusion. Little doubt in my mind now that SCOTUS will move on this sooner rather than later.

3) Legendary actress and comedienne Joan Rivers has passed at age 81.   Her daughter Melissa, a CNN anchor, announced the news to the world this afternoon.  Here's to you Joan, you were fearlessly funny.

Hell of a news day for Thursday, yes?

BREAKING: A Halbig Friggin Deal

Think Progress is reporting that the DC Circuit Court of Appeals decision where two of three judges found that Obamacare subsidies were illegal in states that had federal exchanges has been withdrawn pending a full DC Circuit Court review.  Ian Millhiser explains what this means:

The reason why this matters is because the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, known as Halbig v. Burwell, are hustling to try to convince the GOP-dominated Supreme Court to hear this case, where they no doubt believe that they have a greater chance of succeeding than in the DC Circuit, as a majority of the active judges in the DC Circuit are Democrats. The Supreme Court takes only a tiny fraction of the cases brought to their attention by parties who lost in a lower court — a study of the Court’s 2005 term, for example, found that the justices granted a full argument to only 78 of the 8,517 petitions seeking the high Court’s review that term. The justices, however, are particularly likely to hear cases where two federal appeals courts disagree about the same question of law. 

Two hours after the divided DC Circuit panel released its opinion attempted to defund Obamacare, a unanimous panel of the Fourth Circuit upheld the health subsidies that are at issue in Halbig. Thus, so long as both decisions remained in effect, Supreme Court review was very likely. Now that the full DC Circuit has vacated the two Republican judges’ July judgement, Supreme Court review is much less likely.

In other words, if the full DC Circuit Court rules in favor of the government as expected, there's nothing that the Supreme Court needs to decide, and by choosing to not take the case up, the decisions will stand to allow the Affordable Care Act to work as intended.

We'll see.

GOP Minority Outreach, Rafael Cruz Edition

Don't tell me Ted Cruz's father Rafael doesn't speak for the Republican Party, because that's exactly what he's going around the country doing.  His latest stop was in Williamson County, Texas, where he spoke to Republicans about "the blacks".

The father of Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said black people “need to be educated” about Democrats, so that they will vote Republican. Cruz, who made the comments at the Western Williamson Republican Club August meeting, added “the average black does not” understand that the minimum wage is bad.

The Aug. 21 meeting advertised that Cruz would “speak passionately on what can be done to return our nation to the principles that made America exceptional.” During the speech, Cruz spoke at length about a recent conversation he said he had with a black pastor in Bakersfield, California.

“I said, as a matter of fact, ‘Did you know that Civil Rights legislation was passed by Republicans? It was passed by a Republican Senate under the threat of a filibuster by the Democrats,’” Cruz said. “‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ And then I said, ‘Did you know that every member of the Ku Klux Klan were Democrats from the South?’ ‘Oh I didn’t know that.’ You know, they need to be educated.”

It's funny, because the civil rights legislation that "Republicans" passed is no longer necessary according to Republicans of today, because racism doesn't exist.  Certainly not racism like Rafael Cruz throws it around, am I right?

Cruz cited a book Please Stop Helping Us by Jason Riley, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

“I am going to try to encourage everybody I can to buy a book written by a black journalist. His name is Jason Riley. He wrote a book called Please Stop Helping Us, talking about how all the handouts to blacks have kept blacks in the poorhouse. And I’ll tell you what, I am going to make it my task to buy 15 to 20 copies of that book and hand it out to some black leaders to read.”

“Jason Riley said in an interview, Did you know before we had minimum wage laws black unemployment and white unemployment were the same? If we increase the minimum wage, black unemployment will skyrocket. See, he understands it, but the average black does not.”

Did you know that before minimum wage laws, blacks were slaves?  It's amazing his slective reading of history.  And frankly, Cruz wants to get rid of minimum wage so he can effective reinstate slavery.  The magical notion that corporations will magically hire more Americans and pay them more without a government mandated minimum wage is ridiculous.  After all, we'd have zero unemployment if wages were zero, right?

And finally, nothing says "I want to improve the Republican Party's standing with African-American voters" quite like "black people are too goddamn stupid to realize Democrats are using them."

StupidiNews!

• The Department of Justice will open a civil rights investigation into the entire Ferguson, Missouri police department after the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by police.
• A federal judge in Louisiana has ruled to uphold the state's same-sex marriage ban, the first such ruling since last year's historic Windsor decision.
• President Obama and other NATO leaders will meet today in Wales to discuss the group's response to Russian aggression in Ukraine and Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria.
• Al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri has announced the formation of a new wing of the terrorist organization in the Indian subcontinent.
• Mobile carrier Verizon will pay a record $7.4 million fine for violating the privacy rights of customers over the last seven years.

Last Call For A Broadside With All Batteries

CNBC is reporting that Tesla Motors's fabled electric car battery "gigafactory" will become a reality in the state of Nevada.

Tesla has finally decided that it will build its battery "gigafactory" in Nevada, sources say.

"That's a go, but they are still negotiating the specifics of the contract," a source within the Nevada's governor's office told CNBC Wednesday afternoon. The source noted that it could be a week before the deal is official.

Nevada is planning a press conference Thursday in Carson City, according to a Dow Jones report.

The Reno area has long been the front runner for the site. As always, the devil is in the details.  So what is Tesla getting for what could be the most important auto manufacturing plant since  the heyday of Detroit Motor City?  Arizona lawmakers recently coughed up $400 million in taxpayer dollars to get the $5 billion plant.  Senate majority leader Harry Reid recently tried to poo-poo the deal as a negotiating tactic.  But it looks like Nevada had what Tesla was looking for: a whole bunch of land relatively close to its California HQ and low taxes.

• Few taxes: No personal income tax, franchise tax, estate tax, inheritance or gift tax, and no taxes on corporate shares. No corporate income tax, although voters will decide in November whether to implement one to finance education — a move U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., said could undermine efforts to attract Tesla 

• Other tax credits or breaks: Up to a 50 percent abatement on personal property taxes for up to 10 years; a partial abatement on sales and use taxes on capital equipment purchases; and a deferral of sales and use taxes on capital equipment. 

• Worker training subsidies: Up to $1,000 per employee for job training if the company provides a 25 percent match, makes a five-year business commitment and pays at least hourly minimum wages. 

• Other advantages: Proximity to the assembly plant in Fremont, California, where Tesla makes its cars; significant deposit of lithium, which is essential to making the batteries.

And all indications are this is a done deal as Nevada has it in the bag.  However, one has to wonder just how good Tesla workers will have it:  Nevada is a right-to-work state.  Will Tesla's 6,500 employees unionize? It's great that one of the hardest-hit states from the Great Recession (Nevada's unemployment was 13.9% this time four years ago and 7.7% now) is getting some badly needed jobs, but will they pay well?

We'll see.  Dreams of an affordable, mass-produced electric car three years from now is one thing, but if it comes at the expense of turning Reno into Silicon Valley with its massive income inequality and obscenly broken housing market, then Tesla's plant needs to be unplugged.

Jury's still out on you, Elon Musk.

The Office, Boxed, In Summer

2014 was, quite frankly, a great summer for some breakthrough films (Guardians of the Galaxy, Maleficent, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) but for the industry as a whole, a number of high-profile sequel bombs and World Cup action effectively killed the summer box office.  2014 was the worst summer for tickets since 1997.

The film industry had its worst summer in North America, still the world’s No. 1 movie market, since at least 1997, after adjusting for inflation. Between the first weekend in May through the end of August, ticket sales in the United States and Canada are expected to total roughly $3.9 billion, a 15 percent decline from the same stretch last year, according to Rentrak, a box office data company. 

Analysts in the spring had predicted an 11 percent drop, citing viewing distractions like the World Cup and scuttled release plans for films like “Fast and Furious 6” and Pixar’s “Good Dinosaur,” which both had production problems. But the decline was worse than expected, and the reason, analysts and studio executives said, may have been a nasty case of déjà vu. 

Tom Cruise’s futuristic “Edge of Tomorrow,” for instance, looked like a hit — and that was exactly its problem. The title was too similar to “The Day After Tomorrow,” released in summer 2004. The barren landscape too closely resembled Mr. Cruise’s 2013 film “Oblivion.” Characters walking around in robot exoskeletons? Been there (“Pacific Rim”), done that (“Real Steel”). 

Despite stellar reviews, “Edge of Tomorrow” took in $99.9 million at North American theaters, a major disappointment for Warner Bros., which spent at least $250 million on production and domestic marketing. 

“Hercules,” which arrived seven months after “The Legend of Hercules,” turned out to be a box office weakling. “Sex Tape” was heavily marketed on Cameron Diaz’s legs, but moviegoers shrugged: Sorry, we’ve seen them. “Both ‘Sex Tape’ and ‘A Million Ways to Die in the West’ failed to stand out among the other R-rated comedies,” said Phil Contrino, the chief analyst at BoxOffice.com. 

Sameness sells tickets, no doubt about it. The Top 10 movies of the summer all came from familiar brands (Marvel, DreamWorks Animation), featured familiar characters (“Godzilla”) or turned on familiar stories (the raunchy college comedy). Still, only a few of those films truly popped, Mr. Contrino noted, adding that the ones that did “each gave fans something that was unique, fresh and surprising.”

Or maybe for everything awesome like GotG, there's ten crapass movies like Transformers 4: Optimus Prime On A Dinosaur.  I enjoyed Godzilla for instance, but you could have gone the entire summer and just seen Angelina Jolie with wings and Rocket and Groot kicking ass, and you would have been fine.

On the other hand, ticket sales aren't everything, Lucy was terrible, it still made $115 million. Go figure.

Let me know when November rolls around.  Big Hero 6, Interstellar, Dumb and Dumber To, Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, and Penguins of Madagascar all look like good times.

The Cantor Buried Tales: Epilogue

Recently ousted former GOP House Majority leader Eric Cantor certainly landed on his feet after his quasi-shocking primary loss to David Brat in June.  As expected, the welcoming door on Wall Street is wide open to somebody with his "credentials".

Late Monday night it was reported that former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor would take a job at investment bank Moelis. 

The news has already prompted the predictable eye-rolling about the "revolving door." And to the Tea Partiers who ousted Cantor in a primary earlier this year, the news that he is going to Wall Street is vindication that he was never a populist like them. 

But anyway, Moelis has put in a filing with the SEC, detailing his pay package (Via Erik Schatzker). 

Tell him what he's won, Johnny!

Group LP has agreed to pay Mr. Cantor an annual base salary of $400,000. Group LP has also agreed to pay Mr. Cantor an initial cash amount of $400,000 and grant Mr. Cantor $1,000,000 in initial restricted stock units (“RSUs”), based on the average closing price of the Company’s common stock on the five trading days prior to his start date. The initial RSUs will generally vest in equal installments on each of the third, fourth and fifth anniversaries of his start date. For calendar year 2015, Group LP has agreed to pay Mr. Cantor minimum incentive compensation of $1,200,000 in cash and $400,000 in incentive RSUs, payable in equal quarterly installments. The incentive RSUs will generally have the same vesting schedule as incentive RSUs granted to Group LP’s other Managing Directors.

That adds up to a grand prize package worth $3.4 million, kids.  Not bad for somebody who worked 120 days out of the year, huh?  Plenty of scratch to tide him over should he be thinking about breaking back into politics.  And let's face it, Cantor, like 99% of Republicans (and 80% of Democrats for that matter) is already employed by Wall Street, this just makes it official.

You didn't think he wasn't going to get a multi-million dollar lobbying job, did you?  Much more on this from Esquire's Ben Collins:

One month ago, Eric Cantor was the highest ranking member of the House of Representatives. Now, Eric Cantor is one of those senior executives he railed against, who "created this mess" that is our broken economy and corrupt congress. 

The only political entities Moelis & Company founder Ken Moelis has donated to in 2013 or 2014 are the National Republican Congressional Committee, Eric Cantor, or Eric Cantor’s creatively named PAC, ERICPAC. 

Cantor is now out of office, but he was the highest ranking Republican in the House up until one month and one day ago. This is the rule, not the exception. There is nothing stopping it from happening again, as it is surely happening right this second.

And now he's literally working for one of his biggest campaign donors.

Stop and let that sink in for a second.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama has authorized deployment of 350 more troops to secure embassies in Iraq in response to the latest Islamic State video showing the beheading of a second US journalist.
• A third American health worker has been infected with the Ebola virus after treating patients in West Africa's outbreak.
• Ukrainian officials are saying progress has been made towards a cease fire between Ukrainian army forces and Russian-backed rebels, but Moscow is denying any truce deal.
• Japanese PM Shinzo Abe unveils his new cabinet appointments this week, hoping that the reshuffle of ministers will help reform Japan's struggling economy.
• The latest major US retailer dealing with possible credit card hacks is Home Depot in a breach that could have affected all of the company's 2,200 stores.

Last Call For The Johnny Volcano And Huckleberry Graham Show

Reminder:  if John McCain were President, we'd be at war with Libya, Egypt, Syria, Somalia, probably Pakistan and Iran and still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now we'd be at war with ISIS in Iraq and Syria too.

It is a truism to say there is no military solution to ISIS. Any strategy must, of course, be comprehensive. It must squeeze ISIS’ finances. It requires an inclusive government in Baghdad that shares power and wealth with Iraqi Sunnis, rather than pushing them toward ISIS. It requires an end to the conflict in Syria, and a political transition there, because the regime of President Bashar al-Assad will never be a reliable partner against ISIS; in fact, it has abetted the rise of ISIS, just as it facilitated the terrorism of ISIS’ predecessor, Al Qaeda in Iraq. A strategy to counter ISIS also requires a regional approach to mobilize America’s partners in a coordinated, multilateral effort. 

But ultimately, ISIS is a military force, and it must be confronted militarily. Mr. Obama has begun to take military actions against ISIS in Iraq, but they have been tactical and reactive half-measures. Continuing to confront ISIS in Iraq, but not in Syria, would be fighting with one hand tied behind our back. We need a military plan to defeat ISIS, wherever it is.

So basically McCain and Graham want another war, and expect President Obama to be the one to explain to America why we're going to blow another couple trillion dollars and send in hundreds of thousands of troops to fight this year's model of Al Qaeda.  Because that worked so well over the last decade.

There's no military solution to ISIS, but we need military force to stop ISIS.  Jesus.  We dodged a hurricane's worth of anvils in 2008, and you will never convince me otherwise.

GamerGate Goes Gaga

The issue of women in video gaming doesn't get addressed nearly as much as it should, despite 48% of gamers being women and 36% are women over 18.  Women who point out that the industry is terribly unkind to the image of women as a whole are not treated well, and in fact recently such treatment has erupted into a full-blown rift in the gaming industry press.

Some good background on this story comes from The Escapist, but it boils down to this:  gaming critic Anita Sarkeesian, who has made a series of YouTube videos pointing out the ridiculously sexist tropes in gaming over the last two years, released her latest video late last month in the center of a controversy over game designer Zoe Quinn, who was accused of sleeping with a game reviewer in order to secure a favorable review for her game.  The reaction from a bunch of snot-nosed frat boy Dudebros with computer skills was precisely what you'd expect:  Sarkeesian was harassed and her life threatened to the point where she no longer felt safe in her own home.  Adi Robertson at The Verge:

This is an unusual low in the Anita Sarkeesian saga, but death threats in general are more or less par for the course for many women (and men) online. They can easily cross the line from bluster to menace — UK journalist Laurie Penny, for instance, contacted police in 2013 after being sent a very specific bomb threat. In this case, the vitriol might have been compounded by the support her latest video received from popular developers and media figures. Joss Whedon and William Gibson, among others, mentioned it, and Tim Schafer of Double Fine — known for Psychonauts and the Kickstarter-funded Broken Age — spent several hours fielding responses after urging everyone in game development to watch it "from start to finish."

It's also coming on the heels of another woman-focused gaming community tempest regardingDepression Quest developer Zoe Quinn, who internet denizens have accused of starting an affair with a games journalist (who never reviewed her game and, as far as I can tell, mentioned her in precisely one piece, which was written before they're supposed to have started dating) in order to secure favorable press for her non-traditional text game. The "corruption" allegations Quinn's critics put forward have started a discussion about how to handle friendships and crowdfunding support within a relatively small community of writers and developers. Our sister site Polygon updated its guidelines and now asks reporters to state if they have given crowdfunded support to developers through the Patreon service, and Kotaku banned such contributions outright. Intriguingly, the harassment and threats sent as part of this anti-corruption campaign seem to have focused mostly on Quinn herself, not the male journalist whose integrity would actually have been compromised by said corruption.

I would have sided with Quinn and Sarkeesian beforehand, because they both have been treated like inhuman trash despite the fact that they have dared to point out the industry caters to and is built on the fantasies of horny dudebros, despite basically half of people who buy and play games being women, but then the jackasses over at Bretbart decided this was something they had to weigh in on.

So this is where the state of the industry is:  somehow, demanding that women aren't treated like walking bags of endless sex and delicious candy makes you a "politically correct lying bully".  If the dudebro signal on this has gone up to the point where Team Dead Guy has gotten on board, it's bad.  Extremely bad.

And the people who said "Hey, we should have never let it get this bad to begin with" are being victimized the most.  This is wrong, dead wrong, and what voice I have I'm using to say it's wrong.

Getting the industry to change starts with admitting that.

Welcome To The Gun Show

As part of the sanctions against Russia over the slow, careful invasion of Ukraine, the United States has stopped certain Russian imports.  Apparently those prohibited Russian imports include a particular model of Russian rifle, the "Avtomat Kalashnikova", originally made in 1947 and still in use today, worldwide.

It's better know as the AK-47.

You can imagine exactly what happens next.

Thirty-six hours after the Obama administration banned importation of the classic brand of AK-47 assault rifles as part of sanctions against Russia, a Maryland dealer specializing in the weapon took stock of its inventory.

There was nothing left.

Laboring almost nonstop, workers at Atlantic Firearms in Bishopville, a Worcester County community on the Eastern Shore, had shipped hundreds of Russian-made AK-47s — an assault rifle prized by both consumers and despots — as buyers wiped out gun dealers’ inventories around the country. The frenzy was brought on, in part, by a suspicion among some gun ownersthat the Russia-Ukraine conflict was a backdoor excuse to ban guns many Democrats don’t like. Some customers bought eight to 10 rifles for nearly $1,000 each or more, stockpiling them as investments.

“The gun community moved very, very quickly,” said Blaine Bunting, president of Atlantic Firearms. “I don’t see this ban going away.”

It's almost like they were ready for it.  But what happens when you can no longer legally get the most popular rifle on Earth in the US?

While gun control advocates fret about the secondary market sales, gun stores and dealers are beginning to worry about the long-term implications of these buying frenzies. Seeing sales go up 200 percent in an instant is a nice jolt to the bottom line, but if it’s a sign that the pro-gun community might be losing the longer war, that’s not so good.

“Yes, Obama is the world’s best gun salesman,” said Tyler Whidby, the owner of TW Firearms in Leesburg , Va., which still has some ­Russian-made AK-47s on its shelves. “Every two to four months, somebody says something about gun control, and people turn around to get a gun.”

Another Democrat in the White House, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, would “financially benefit us in the short term,” Whidby said. But in the long term, “it might put us out of business.”

So how much pressure will the NRA start putting on Congress to lift sanctions against Russia?  We're about to find out.

StupidiNews!

• US military forces conducted a raid against Somalia's Al-Shabaab militant group late Monday as part of assisting African Union troops in retaking several villages.
• Ukrainian officials are warning of a "Great War" in Europe as Russian-backed rebels gain ground while EU-sponsored talks continue in Belarus.
• Polls show Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is facing a tough challenge from environmentalist challenger Marina Silva in October's national elections.
• Pakistan's parliament will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday as two weeks of protests against the government of PM Nawaz Sharif have turned violent.
• Apple in investigating how its iCloud data service was breached as dozens of celebrities had racy photos leaked over the internet at the same time.

Last Call For NATO On The Move

It finally looks like Europe has reached the point where a military response to Russia's annexation of the Crimea and other parts of the Ukraine is not only possible, but virtually assured under the banner of NATO.

NATO members meeting this week in Wales are expected to create "a very high-readiness force" to deal with Russian aggression in Ukraine and other international conflicts, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday.

In a speech on the NATO website, Rasmussen said the fighting force will be part of an overall Readiness Action Plan that "responds to Russia's aggressive behavior -- but it equips the alliance to respond to all security challenges, wherever they may arise."

He said this "spearhead" force would be able to "travel light, but strike hard if needed."

NATO will look at possible upgrades to infrastructure that could include airfields and ports, he said.

New bases will be set up and equipment pre-positioned at bases, a NATO diplomatic source said.

"We are also facing crises to the southeast and south," said a senior NATO official. The plan "needs to be able to deal with all crises that we might be facing in the future from wherever they might come."

Rasmussen said President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine will attend the summit and NATO will "make clear our support for Ukraine."

Also on Monday, UK Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament that the presence of Russian soldiers on Ukraine soil is completely unjustified and unacceptable.

"Russia appears to be trying to force to Ukraine to abandon its democratic choices through the barrel of a gun," he said.

Cameron said new sanctions measures will be drawn up by the EU within a week.

If NATO and Europe are finally getting serious about a unified effort to oppose Russian aggression, then I'm all for it.  It's not the US's job to police the world unilaterally, but that's what a treaty group like NATO is supposed to be used for.

Maybe this will finally get Russia's attention.