Grimm Fandango, Con't

Remember New York GOP Rep. Michael Grimm?  The guy who threatened to break a reporter in half "like a boy" and got himself deep into tax evasion charges?  Well, he won re-election in 2014. And he may not have that seat much longer.

Representative Michael G. Grimm, a Republican from Staten Island who was elected to a second term in November despite having been indicted on federal fraud charges, has agreed to plead guilty to a single felony charge of tax evasion, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. 

Mr. Grimm, a former Marine and agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who first ran for office as a law-and-order corruption fighter, is scheduled to appear in federal court in Brooklyn at 1 p.m. on Tuesday for a plea hearing, according to the docket sheet in his case, which provides no further detail. 

He has said he would immediately resign if he were convicted. A guilty plea would almost certainly put him under tremendous pressure to do so.

Hey, let's not forget how long former Florida GOP Rep. Trey Radel held out before he was forced to resign over cocaine use (and he was replaced by the even dumber Curt Clawson.)  Mikey Suits might stick around for a while, convicted felon or not.

But it's Staten Island, and I'm thinking that Grimm's eventual replacement will still be a Republican colostomy bag of an individual.  We'll see how Cuomo handles it should Grimm be out.

Good News Out Of Kentucky

Over in Louisville, the City Council and Mayor Greg Fischer have worked out a deal to raise the city's minimum wage to $9 a hour in 2017.

The lawmakers’ agreement resulted from a series of debates prior to the Louisville Metro Council meeting on Thursday night. All 16 Democrats favored raising the minimum wage, and the nine Republicans voted against it.

Previously, Mayor Greg Fischer had said he would veto the Metro Council’s original proposal to increase the wage to $10.10 an hour over a three-year period. But after the decision on Thursday, he said he agreed to support the increase to $9 during the same time span because “it is a balanced compromised solution.”

“I’m pleased with the Council’s vote, appreciate their hard work on this important issue, and look forward to signing the ordinance into law,” Fischer, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter.

But not everyone is happy with the change as business groups are considering taking the city ordinance to court, claiming the city doesn't have the authority.

Passage of a "compromise" ordinance to eventually raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour in Jefferson County has not diminished concerns of opponents, and a lawsuit over the Metro Council action is possible but not a certainty, business leaders said Friday. 

"We never said we would definitely sue, but our legal concerns remain and our attorneys have drafted papers" with a lawsuit ready to go, if officials decide to pursue that route, said Sarah Davasher-Wisdom, vice president of public policy for Greater Louisville Inc., the metro chamber of commerce.

Where this goes from here is anyone's guess.  Louisville would be the first city in the South to enact a minimum wage law, but whether or not that law ever goes into effect?  I have my doubts.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama has issued pardons for eight drug-related offenders, leaving prison reform advocates wanting more.
• Attorney General Eric Holder says that the Justice Department will open a civil rights investigation into the death of Dontre Hamilton, shot 14 times by a Minneapolis police officer.
• NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is calling for protesters to suspend demonstrations until after the funerals of two slain NYPD cops killed over the weekend.
• New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says Sony Pictures "folded" by pulling the Christmas Day release of "The Interview" over hacking concerns.
• Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is looking to spend his golden years Down Under, as his status as a "distinguished person" has granted him permanent resident status there.

Last Call For No Longer Whistling Past Dixie

Looks like the GOP's southern state base wants the deciding word on who will be the Republican nominee in 2016, and they're changing the primary game in order to do it.

Officials in five Southern states — Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas — are coordinating to hold their primary on March 1, 2016. Texas and Florida are considering also holding a primary the same day but may wait until later in the month. Either way, March 1 would be a Southern Super Tuesday, voting en masse on the heels of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

The joint primary, which appears increasingly likely to happen, would present a crucial early test for Republican White House hopefuls among the party’s most conservative voters. It could, in theory, boost a conservative alternative to a Republican who has emerged as the establishment favorite from the four states that kick off the nominating process. But one risk is that the deep-red complexion of the Southern states’ primary electorates would empower a candidate who can’t win in general election battlegrounds like Ohio and Colorado. 

Republicans from the South say their states make up the heart of the GOP and that it’s only fitting the region should have commensurate say over whom the party puts forward to compete for the White House. Proponents are already dubbing March 1 the “SEC primary,” after the NCAA’s powerhouse Southeastern Conference.

Especially if Texas and Florida join this little party, it's entirely possible that the GOP will have a presumptive nominee by St. Patrick's Day in 2016.  That makes me think more than ever that we'll get a far-right Tea Party nutter out of the GOP in sixteen months, although it could mean Jeb Bush's Florida and Texas connections could vault him into the lead.

Either way, it looks like the Republicans aren't going to repeat their mistake of too many debates and late primaries.  They want a nominee early so they can stop fighting amongst themselves and start attacking Hillary.

Time For Torture Trials

The NY Times on Sunday called for the investigation and if necessary, prosecution of former Vice President Dick Cheney and his crew of merry inquisitors over the CIA's torture program.

The question everyone will want answered, of course, is: Who should be held accountable? That will depend on what an investigation finds, and as hard as it is to imagine Mr. Obama having the political courage to order a new investigation, it is harder to imagine a criminal probe of the actions of a former president.

But any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised the torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees who carried out that regimen.

One would expect Republicans who have gone hoarse braying about Mr. Obama’s executive overreach to be the first to demand accountability, but with one notable exception, Senator John McCain, they have either fallen silent or actively defended the indefensible. They cannot even point to any results: Contrary to repeated claims by the C.I.A., the report concluded that “at no time” did any of these techniques yield intelligence that averted a terror attack. And at least 26 detainees were later determined to have been “wrongfully held.”

Starting a criminal investigation is not about payback; it is about ensuring that this never happens again and regaining the moral credibility to rebuke torture by other governments. Because of the Senate’s report, we now know the distance officials in the executive branch went to rationalize, and conceal, the crimes they wanted to commit. The question is whether the nation will stand by and allow the perpetrators of torture to have perpetual immunity for their actions.

Sadly, the American people are perfectly fine with torture and see it as an American value.  Hell, a majority of Americans say the torture report should have never seen the light of day.  And no, nobody will ever be held accountable for this.  As long as the CIA can bleat "We saved American lives" then we don't care and we don't want to know what Cheney and his ghouls did in order to "get actionable intelligence".

The Times is shouting into a hurricane.

Like A Kansas Tornado, Con't

Meanwhile, the noxious dumpster fire that is the Kansas economy continues to burn with no end in sight as GOP Gov. Sam Brownback's awesome austerity plan is now killing thousands of jobs a month.

The new Kansas jobs numbers were released Friday morning, bringing horrible news to state taxpayers and Gov. Sam Brownback.

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the total number of nonfarm jobs in Kansas fell by 4,100 in November.

Kansas’ disturbing experience was at odds with how much of the rest of the country did. A total of 37 other states gained in employment in November, while only 13 others, including Kansas, dropped.

Missouri boosted employment by 4,500 in November, for instance, while Oklahoma gained 3,400 jobs. Two other neighbors, Nebraska and Colorado, were among the job losers, though not close to the number shredded in Kansas.

What’s this all mean?

The figures show it’s going to be even tougher for Brownback — after pushing through excessive income tax cuts — to make up for the hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenues from those reductions. They took effect in 2013.

Brownback has promised 2,000 new private sector jobs a month.  So far in 2014 he's at less than half that, and things are only getting worse.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/yael-t-abouhalkah/article4668108.html#storylink=cpy

By the way, Kentucky gained 5,300 jobs last month and 37,700 jobs in the last 12 months, a 2.1% gain for the year.  You know, job-killing Obamacare and stuff.  Go figure.

StupidiNews!

• As oil prices continue to fall, Saudi officials say despite rumors to the contrary that the OPEC nation has no plans to cut oil production anytime soon.
• President Obama is expected to name US Attorney Sally Yates as Deputy Attorney General, replacing the outgoing James Cole.
• The hack against Sony Pictures is being treated as "an act of cyber-vandalism" by the White House as President Obama is quickly tamping down any talk of war over the incident.
• China says it's in the country's interest to help Russia contain the falling ruble and is offering help to Moscow through an increased bilateral currency swap deal.
• A detailed study of the Windy City's red light cameras by the Chicago Tribune finds the number of traffic accidents at intersections where the cameras are have actually increased by 5%.

Last Call For A Firing Offense

Just a reminder that racism is still a problem in America, racism among young people is a problem (in case you subscribed to the theory that old racists will just die off or something, it wasn't true 50 years ago, it's not true now) and that racism among cops is a problem.  This from Cleveland:

Aaron McNamara is a young auxiliary officer at the Fairview Park police department [Update: "was" an auxiliary officer with Fairview police; he resigned less than an hour after this story was posted], climbing up the law enforcement ladder as he finishes his college degree this semester with dreams of becoming a federal agent, he says. On social media, he says he's gone through training with the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and this June he tweeted he was "Officially sworn in with the Fairview Park Police Department. Wow, this feels good. #DreamChasing."

He also has many thoughts about African Americans.

Over the past two years, McNamara has been commenting on YouTube videos — mostly about black people and law enforcement — regularly dropping racial and gay slurs, unambiguously expressing hatred towards minorities and anyone who dare not comply with what police say. He calls black people in videos "jungle monkeys," "spooks," and worse. He commented on a video of a young black child swearing, saying "This is how cop killers are raised my friends." He's also a fan of when police officers shoot and rough up non-compliant civilians.

Among Aaron McNamara's pearls of wisdom?

"Abolishing slavery was the worst thing we could have done. These people should be exterminated.. Unbelievable."

Reminder, this guy is in college (so educated enough to finish high school and pursue a degree), he wasn't in the South (Cleveland), is a Millennial in his twenties (so not from the 1950's or anything) and of course training to become a cop.

A cop who believes people like me should be "exterminated".

Raise your hand if you believe he is alone in meeting this criteria in America as we head into 2015.

Sunday Long Read: As Good As It Gets For Liberals

American Interest curmudgeon Walter Russell Mead makes the case that liberals in the US have no idea how good they had it under Obama, because the near-permanent rightward shift of America is imminent.

Shell-shocked liberals are beginning to grasp some inconvenient truths. No gun massacre is horrible enough to change Americans’ ideas about gun control. No UN Climate Report will get a climate treaty through the U.S. Senate. No combination of anecdotal and statistical evidence will persuade Americans to end their longtime practice of giving police officers extremely wide discretion in the use of force. No “name and shame” report, however graphic, from the Senate Intelligence Committee staff will change the minds of the consistent majority of Americans who tell pollsters that they believe that torture is justifiable under at least some circumstances. No feminist campaign will convince enough voters that the presumption of innocence should not apply to those accused of rape.

These are not the only issues in which, from a left Democratic point of view, the country is overrun with zombies and vampires: policy ideas that Democrats thought had been killed but still restlessly roam the earth. The finale of the George W. Bush presidency was, for many Democrats, conclusive evidence that conservative ideas just don’t work. The post 9/11 Bush foreign policy led to two long and unhappy wars. America had lost the trust of its allies without defeating its enemies. At home, the Bush tax cuts led to an exploding deficit, and the orgy of deregulation (admittedly, much of it dating from the Clinton years) led to the greatest financial crash since World War II and the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression.

“Could a set of political ideas be more discredited?” liberals ask. The foreign policy failures of the Bush years, they believe, should have killed conservative ideology about America’s role in the world, and the financial crisis, they are certain, should have driven a stake through the heart of conservative economic doctrine. Yet: Here we are, six years into the Age of Obama, and the Tea Party is alive and Occupy is dead. The Republicans swept the midterm elections both nationally and at the state level—and Hillary Clinton appears more interested in conciliating Wall Street than in fighting it, and more interested in building bridges to conservative foreign policy thinkers than in continuing the Obama foreign policy. (And with even Jimmy Carter lambasting Obama’s Middle East policy as too weak, and the President committing to new troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s not clear that even President Obama wants to stay the course.)

Mead goes on to say that it's over for the left for good, that the Right will dominate, and if you thought Obama wasn't good enough, Hillary will be worse.

So just jump off a cliff now, libtards, right?

Not so fast.  The problem with the right is that you can always count on them overplaying their position and destroying themselves (and the country) in the process.  So yes, I think we are going to make a major shift to the right, and it's going to wreck the country again.  People have bet on the "permanent Republican majority" before and lost.

Maybe when the smoke clears next time, we'll have learned something.

The Morning After Brooklyn

The aftermath of last night's shooting of two NYPD beat cops is a grisly affair, with Republicans blaming Mayor de Blasio, AG Eric Holder, and of course, President Obama by proxy.  Former GOP Gov George Pataki made an ass of himself.

Pataki cast disdain at the mayor and the attorney general in a post on Twitter.

"Sickened by these barbaric acts, which sadly are a predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric of Eric Holder and Mayor de Blasio," he tweeted.

He was referring to de Blasio's and Holder's support for peaceful protesters decrying alleged police brutality after the killing of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, two unarmed black men who died in confrontations with officers this year.

Protesters have taken to streets nationwide to demand an end to killings of unarmed people by police officers.

Hours before Saturday's attack, Brinsley appeared to make statements on social media implying he planned to kill officers and expressing outrage over the deaths of Garner and Brown.

Pat Lynch, the head of New York's Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, has vehemently attacked the mayor before and did so again the day of the shooting.

"There's blood on many hands tonight," Lynch said before making reference to the mayor's office.

De Blasio did not respond to the denunciations against him, but he condemned the killing of the officers as an "assassination" while Holder described it as a "cowardly attack."

And of course, it's all the fault of those people.

Not to be outdone, social media users joined the fray. Others objected to the finger pointing.

Some turned to hashtags #BlackLivesMatter for Garner and Brown -- and #BlueLivesMatter for police officers -- to share their opinions.

"Everyone who turned Michael Brown into a saint, the assassination of those cops is on you," username @mattcale52 tweeted.

This is an awful tragedy, but let's be real here.  It's going to get a lot uglier.  You couldn't pay me to be in NYC right now.

Last Call For New York's Finest

Not a good day for America.

Two New York City police officers were shot and killed ambush-style Saturday as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn, according to two law enforcement sources. 

Both officers were shot in the head, one of the sources said. Few other details were available. 

They had been rushed to a hospital in critical condition, said police spokesman Sgt. Lee Jones. 

The families of the fallen officers arrived at Woodhull Medical Center on Saturday afternoon, as dozens of police officers gathered in a show of support. 

The alleged shooter was found dead in a nearby subway station from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to a law enforcement official. 

The shooting occurred near Myrtle and Tompkins avenues in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

As I said on Twitter today, no, those NYPD cops didn't deserve to die. Neither did Eric Garner or Tamir Rice. It's 100% possible to have this view.  But none of that will matter now.  Two dead cops in NYC killed by a black man is all people will see.

The Foul Fix In Ferguson, Con't

So it turns out that St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch knew his witnesses were lying, and had them testify in the Darren Wilson grand jury proceeding anyway.

McCulloch: Well, early on, I decided that anyone who claimed to have witnessed anything was going to be presented to the grand jury.

And I knew that no matter how I handled it, there would be criticism of it. So if I didn’t put those witnesses on, then we’d be discussing now why I didn’t put those witnesses on. Even though their statements were not accurate.

So my determination was to put everybody on and let the grand jurors assess their credibility, which they did. This grand jury poured their hearts and souls into this. It was a very emotional few months for them. It took a lot of them.

I wanted to put everything on there.

I thought it was much more important to present everything and everybody, and some that, yes, clearly were not telling the truth. No question about it.

Bonus points:  He can't charge these witnesses with false statements because he just admitted publicly that he knew they were lying and if he does, he perjures himself in the process.

McCulloch: That issue has been raised, and it’s a legitimate issue. But, in the situation again, in the manner in which we did it, we’re not going to file perjury charges against anyone.

There were people who came in and, yes, absolutely lied under oath.Some lied to the FBI. Even though they’re not under oath, that’s another potential offense — a federal offense.

 So yes, this is obscene.  The witnesses lied to the grand jury, and because of that, the jury proceedings are bogus at best and an outright attempt to swing the jury's verdict under false pretenses at worst.

But Darren Wilson continues to go free.

The fix was always in.

A Couple Of Cuban Hams

Seems Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio are no longer buddies, as they are now on opposite sides of Obama's Cuba normalization policy heading into 2015, and it's starting to get...personal.

The disagreement between Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rand Paul (R-KY) over America's changing relationship with Cuba is escalating quickly.

Rubio was among the loudest opponents to President Barack Obama's announcement that the United States would begin normalizing relations with its Caribbean neighbor. After Paul said he supported the change, Rubio lashed out, saying Paul "has no idea what he's talking about."

Rand's response?

Senator @marcorubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat. I reject this isolationism.
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) December 19, 2014

Rand Paul accusing somebody of being an isolationist.  Rand Paul.  And being correct about it.

The clown car slapfights are starting to get amusing.

Last Call For Last Man Out, Turn Off The Lights

President Obama's end-of-year press conference for 2014 was one for the ages.

President Obama did something remarkable on Friday. He held his last press conference of the year, and the only people in the entire press corps who were called on to ask questions were women. Yes, this was on purpose; it had to be.

It was amazing.

The first woman ever to cover a president was the late Helen Thomas and she had been a fixture in the first row of the briefing room and at presidential news conferences for decades beginning with John F. Kennedy's presidency. 

And, for the record, here are the eight reporters -- all of them print reporters, it should be noted -- who got called on. 

• Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico
• Cheryl Bolen, Bloomberg
• Julie Pace, Associated Press
• Lesley Clark, McClatchy
• Roberta Rampton, Reuters
• Colleen M. Nelson, Wall Street Journal
• Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
• April Ryan, American Urban Radio 

The eighth was a bonus question. As is custom, when reporters thought Obama was heading for the exits, they shouted one last question at him. A male reporter asked Obama about his New Year's resolution. 

Obama ignored it and called on Ryan instead.

I'm still chuckling over this.  Obama Trolling level: Pallas Athena.

Credit Where Credit Is Blatantly Appropriated

Over at Bloomberg News, Josh Rogin has apparently gotten into the special egg nog a little early.

Although President Barack Obama is taking the credit for Wednesday’s historic deal to reverse decades of U.S. policy toward Cuba, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she was the main architect of the new policy and pushed far harder for a deal than the Obama White House. 

From 2009 until her departure in early 2013, Clinton and her top aides took the lead on the sometimes public, often private interactions with the Cuban government. According to current and former White House and State Department officials and several Cuba policy experts who were involved in the discussions, Clinton was also the top advocate inside the government for ending travel and trade restrictions on Cuba and reversing 50 years of U.S. policy to isolate the Communist island nation. Repeatedly, she pressed the White House to move faster and faced opposition from cautious high-ranking White House officials. 

After Obama announced the deal Wednesday, which included the release of aid contractor Alan Gross, Clinton issued a supportive statement distributed by the National Security Council press team. “As Secretary of State, I pushed for his release, stayed in touch with Alan’s wife Judy and their daughters, and called for a new direction in Cuba," she said. "Despite good intentions, our decades-long policy of isolation has only strengthened the Castro regime's grip on power.” 

Yet Clinton played down her own role in the issue, which will surely become important if she decides to run for president. Top prospective Republican candidates, including Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have all come out against the president’s policy shift. 

Clinton’s advocacy on behalf of opening a new relationship with Cuba began almost as soon as she came into office. Obama had campaigned on a promise to engage enemies, but the White House initially was slow to make good on that pledge, and on the Cuba front enacted only a modest relaxation of travel rules. From the start, Clinton pushed to hold Obama to his promise with regard to Cuba. 

“Hillary Clinton played a very large role,” said Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who advocated for changes to U.S.-Cuba policy. “The president, when he ran for office and when he came in, thought that doing something on Cuba front would be smart. But as soon as he got into office, though, every other priority hit him.”

If there was any doubt that President Obama's move on Cuba is a massive foreign policy legacy point for the history books that will stand the test of time, please note the blinding speed at which the credit for the deal is being given to someone else.

Also, if there was ever any doubt that Hillary Clinton was not going to have trouble earning the trust of Obama 2008 primary voters, well, please note the same goddamn thing. The false modesty angle actually made me laugh aloud while reading it, as if this wasn't the perfect example of That Awesome Co-Worker Taking Credit.

It's one thing to say "Secretary Clinton had a role in this" and another thing completely to say she was the "main architect" of a diplomatic coup that happened 2 years after she left Foggy Bottom. Maybe I'd be a little less angry if this was the first time people were trying to "Aww shucks" their way into giving her credit for something President Obama accomplished, and again I'm sure she did play a part.

But in the end, a Secretary of State is implementing the foreign policy of a President. Period. Deal with it.