Last Call For Jeb's Dead Ringer

Like, zoiks, Scoob! Jeb Bush is talking about d-d-d-d-death panels!

Jeb Bush, defending his efforts to keep alive Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman, when he was governor of Florida, suggested on Friday that patients on Medicare should be required to sign advance directives dictating their care if they become incapacitated. 

A similar proposal by President Obama — that doctors should be paid to advise patients on end-of-life decisions — became a political firestorm in 2009, when Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate, claimed that the legislation would give bureaucrats the power to decide if some frail or disabled people were deserving of medical care. The assertion was shown to be false. 

In 2010, Medicare tried to add a regulation that would permit “voluntary advance care planning” during yearly checkups. But after an uproar, President Obama’s administration pushed to drop that provision. 

Mr. Bush’s suggestion that advance directives be required under Medicare showed how much public opinion has shifted on the subject since.

Oh it has, huh. Or maybe, Maggie Haberman, IOKIYAR.

So death panels are now a totally cool thing called “Medicare end-of-life directives.” I’m sure this won’t be the last thing that President Obama proposed and was destroyed by media pissing and moaning that Jebya here will be able to get away with.

Wonder why that is.

Boot Strapped For Cash

While the good news is graduation rates for high school students are increasing, particularly for black and Latino students, those who are dropping out are increasingly doing so to get jobs in order to help their families.

Using data from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey, researchers at the Urban Institute found that nearly a third of the 563,000 teenage dropouts left school to work. These 16- to 18-year-olds were disproportionately male and Hispanic, and ended their education either at the beginning of high school or nearing the end. Roughly 75 percent of them are native-born Americans, the new study said. 

Granted, high school graduation rates among Hispanic students has climbed in recent years, with 75 percent receiving a diploma in 2013 compared to 71 percent two years earlier, according to the latest data from the Education Department. Still, young Hispanic men are at high risk of leaving school to work, the Urban Institute study found. 

Six out of 10 of the teenagers identified in the study earned less than $10,000 a year working in restaurants, on construction sites, cleaning buildings, among other things. A third of the kids contribute more than 20 percent of the total annual income of their households, a tenth contributed more than 50 percent, the study said.

It's pretty awful that with Republicans doing everything they can to limit help to the working poor, that we've gotten to the point where a third of high school dropouts are doing so in order to earn money to support their families.  Kids are giving up high school education just to help keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.  We're forcing kids to do that now in the name of "smaller government".

It's shameful, but then again an uneducated workforce is exactly what Republicans want.

Sing A Song Of Slick Pence, Pocket Full Of Lies

Indiana is reportedly looking to spend millions in taxpayer money on rehabilitating its battered image after the disaster that was the Republican-backed "religious freedom" law, and it looks like GOP Gov. Mike Pence could badly use some image consultants himself as his approval ratings have dropped like a rock since the bill's passage.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) has seen a significant drop in his approval rating since signing a widely criticized "religious freedom" law, with one longtime political observer in the state saying the fall is historic for a governor. 

"I've been covering Indiana politics for three decades, and I don't recall a sitting governor experiencing that kind of decline over this short period of time like we've seen here," said Brian Howey, publisher of the widely respected site Howey Politics Indiana. 

A new HPI poll by pollster Christine Matthews of Bellwether Research shows Pence's favorable rating at just 35 percent, and his unfavorable rating at 38 percent. 

In 2013, an HPI poll found Pence faring much better than he is now. Then, he was at a 52 percent favorable rating and a 20 percent unfavorable rating. 

Fifty-nine percent of respondents in the new poll said the "religious freedom" law was unnecessary, compared to just 30 percent who thought it was needed. Another 50 percent said the controversy surrounding the law will have a "negative impact on the economy" even after it "isn't front page news." 

"In the 20 years that HPI has been publishing, and in the polling HPI has conducted since 2008, an Indiana governor has never experienced this kind of survey decline in this short time frame," Howey wrote in his newsletter Thursday.

In other words, Pence is rapidly becoming the Chris Christie of the Midwest (and without the charisma.)  Pence, should he run for re-election, would face a November 2016 vote.  Somehow I'm thinking Indiana Democrats might want to try to get together somebody to oppose him.

How about it, guys?

StupidiNews!

• New figures from human rights groups in Syria find the death toll in that country's civil war has doubled from last year, putting estimates at over 310,000 killed.
• Support for the death penalty in the US has dropped to a 40-year-low according to the latest Pew Research Center survey, down to 56%.
• Chinese journalist Gao Yu has been sentenced to seven years in prison for leaking state secrets to a book publisher in 2014.
• German and Greek officials are beginning to consider what would happen to the eurozone if Greece really did exit the euro currency.
• New Zealand internet mogul Kim Dotcom is in trouble with the law again and could face deportation, this time for driving 150kph in a 50kph zone.

Last Call For Operation Lynch Pinned

Why no, Senate Republicans are not going to allow a vote on Loretta Lynch as Attorney General, nor will they suffer any consequences for continuing to refuse to allow it. Why do you think they keep moving the goalposts?

Republican leaders have tied a vote on Lynch to the passage of an unrelated bill targeting sex trafficking. That bill, which normally would be bipartisan, has stalled for weeks because Republicans tucked an anti-abortion provision into it that Democrats won’t support. As long as the bill doesn’t move, neither does Lynch. 

“The Senate should pass this bipartisan bill right away,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said Tuesday. “And as soon as that happens, we’ll turn to the Loretta Lynch nomination.” 

But it’s not that simple, and there’s no end in sight to the abortion fight. The Senate is voting Thursday to take up an amendment that Republicans say is a way forward on the impasse, but Democrats call it a gimmick and vow to oppose it. 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the bill’s author, will offer to tweak the bill’s language relating to the Hyde Amendment, the federal provision that bans the use of public funds for abortions except in cases of rape or incest. But the tweak doesn’t address Democrats’ core concern that the bill, for the first time, would expand the Hyde Amendment to apply to non-taxpayer funds. The bill would allow fees collected from human traffickers to be funneled into a new public fund for victims, to which the Hyde Amendment would be applied. 

Democrats say any expansion of the Hyde Amendment is a non-starter for them.
“Senate Republicans are trying to restrict the health choices of women and girls who have been sold into sex slavery,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). “The latest proposal from Senator Cornyn does nothing to change that fact. He is still attaching Hyde to non-taxpayer, offender dollars.”

So no, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have made it clear that until the Democrats fold on expanding Hyde to victims of human trafficking, Lynch will never get a vote. For now anyway the Dems are hanging in there, but Loretta Lynch is the one paying the price, and nobody seems to give a damn (certainly not the Villagers.)

But this is the extent that our “smaller government” friends on the other side of the aisle will go to in order to control women’s bodies. Not only do we have to further shame victims of modern slavery, we have to bring them in for judgment from a bunch of wrinkled old white guys too just to try to flip off President Mandingo Reallyfromkenya from even appointing people to his own cabinet.

Compassion, thy name is the Republican Party.

Republican Loyalty Israeli Up For Debate

If you want to know where years of Obama Derangement Syndrome has gotten us, then the latest Bloomberg Politics poll on Israel is a real eye-opener and more than a bit disturbing.

Israel has become a deeply partisan issue for ordinary Americans as well as for politicians in Washington, a shift that may represent a watershed moment in foreign policy and carry implications for domestic politics after decades of general bipartisan consensus.

Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the U.S. should support Israel even when its stances diverge with American interests, a new Bloomberg Politics poll finds. Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the U.S. must pursue its own interests over Israel's.

Further illustrating how sharply partisan the debate has become, Republicans say they feel more sympathetic to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than to their own president, 67 percent to 16 percent, while Democrats are more sympathetic to President Barack Obama than to Israel's prime minister, 76 percent to 9 percent.

The latter I can understand, with FOX News and talk radio training Americans to openly hate their president on a daily basis.  But the former means two-thirds of Republicans are willing to commit nothing short of treason, and the notion (often repeated by these same Republicans) that we have to "take our country back" means something entirely more sinister in light of this information.

When your Obama Derangement Syndrome manifests in a desire to help a foreign ally undermine the United States government, you have a problem.  Republicans will tell you it's okay because hey, they don't recognize President Obama anyway (and hell they think he's actually the Antichrist.)

Gotta love modern GOP "patriotism".  Towards Israel, over America, because screw Obama.

Bibbidy Bobbidy Bible Belt

Looks like quite the First Amendment battle in Oklahoma as the state's Republican Attorney General is vowing to defend bibles in public schools from those mean ol' nasty separation of church and state people.

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has sent a letter to public school superintendents across the state vowing to defend religious freedom amid “veiled legal threats” over the distribution of Bibles on campus. 

“Few things are as sacred and as fundamental to Oklahomans as the constitutional rights of free speech and the free exercise of religion,” Pruitt wrote Tuesday. “It is a challenging time in our country for those who believe in religious liberty. Our religious freedoms are under constant attack from a variety of groups who seek to undermine our constitutional rights and threaten our founding principles.” 

Aaron Cooper, a spokesman, said Pruitt’s office is trying to determine the extent of contact between the Freedom From Religion Foundation and similar groups and Oklahoma school districts. From that information, legal training on the topic of religious freedom will be developed for public school officials, he said. 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, or FFRF, responded Wednesday, sending Pruitt a letter saying they were "concerned about this misleading if not irresponsible advice." 

"It is obviously far easier for an Oklahoma student to get a bible than literature criticizing the bible, which FFRF will seek to pass out in every public school forum that is opened under your offer. If the goal of the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office is to allow public schools to be used to distribute atheist messages, then this is a brilliant idea," wrote foundation attorney Andrew Seidel. "FFRF prefers that public schools focus on education rather than serve as a venue for divisive religious debates. 

"Your letter was either grossly misinformed on both the facts and law—indeed recklessly misinformed given that school districts might heed your advice and open themselves up to serious legal and financial liability—or it was a transparent attempt to pander to people’s religious sensibilities for political gain."

The funny thing about the First Amendment's freedom to worship clause is that whole Establishment Clause thing.  The government cannot interfere in private worship, but neither can it advocate one religion over another.  That's why the whole "American is a Christian country" is nonsense, because the Constitution spells out the fact that we're not.  We have Christians, sure.  But there's no official state religion, nor should there be in a representative democracy.

The state Attorney General wanting to distribute bibles on school campuses and using the power of the state of Oklahoma to do so is unconstitutional on its face.

I welcome this fight, frankly.  Not even Scalia will tolerate this one.

StupidiNews!

• The British government is confirming that a WW II era shipwreck containing millions in silver was recovered in September 2013 and kept secret until now.
• Texas has executed its sixth death row inmate of the year after replenishing its supply of lethal injection drugs.
• Russia is again blaming the United States for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine's Crimea region, saying NATO overtures to Kiev "forced" Russia's hand in the matter.
• China is cracking down on illegal offshore accounts as the country attempts to rein in corruption and embezzlement.
• Los Angeles Unified School Distrtict want Apple to refund it millions in the district's now-failed plan to get iPads into every student's hands.

Last Call For A Game Of Cops And Copters

Well, this is certainly one way to get attention to campaign finance reform: get a one-man gyrocopter and land it on the US Capitol west lawn.

Doug Hughes' close friend and co-worker, Mike Shanahan, said today that the Ruskin mailman is not a terrorist and did not mean any harm with his protest. 

And just hours before Hughes landed in Washington, Hughes' friend said he called a Secret Service agent to notify him of the possibility of the gyrocopter flight. 

"He's not a suicide bomber, he's a patriot," said Shanahan, 65, of Apollo Beach. The whole stunt centers around Hughes' effort to change campaign finance laws, "or the lack thereof," according to Shanahan. 

About a year ago, Shanahan said, Hughes told him of the idea to deliver letters to legislators by gyrocopter. Not long after, they were both questioned by a Secret Service official in Florida, he said. Wednesday morning, Shanahan said, Hughes called his friend and said he was in Washington, ready to take off. 

He passed along the website on which he would livestream his flight, but Shanahan, not adept with computers, could not find it. 

So, he said, he pulled out the phone number he had saved from the Secret Service agent he spoke to months ago. He dialed. No answer, but he said he left a message. No call back. He still was not certain if the protest was actually going to happen. 

"I didn't want to get all of D.C. in an uproar and it turn out he was just practicing or something or he was just pulling my leg," Shanahan said. 

Though Hughes was arrested, Shanahan said he was relieved his friend was alive. 

"I was scared to death they were going to kill him," Shanahan said. "My thanks goes out to whomever it was who decided not to pull the trigger."

The Capitol Police were there waiting for Hughes when he landed, arrested him without too much trouble, and took him and his gyrocopter into custody.

Your quote of the day from the Tampa Bay Times:

Richard Burns, 27, who said he works for a marijuana lobby group in Washington, stood in wonder and solidarity. 

"I don't know whatever it was he was doing but I support him."

Cops and 'copters.

National Ridiculous Association

Hey Second Amendment enthusiasts, your greatest advocacy group has a minor problem with its Islamophobia showing at the annual NRA convention:

Author Steve Tarani said during a presentation in Nashville on Sunday that he has witnessed the alleged “no-go zones” — areas where police cannot enter — while shadowing a friend who serves on the Detroit Metro SWAT Police on a drive in Dearborn, MI. He described pulling up to one of the alleged Muslim-controlled areas:

The street signs suddenly went from English to Arabic. There wasn’t a single English word on any shop or any street sign. And in fact, these little yellow signs were posted all along the edges. Jeremy said to me, ‘this is it. We don’t go past this line.’ And I said to Jeremy, ‘what do you mean? You guys are Detroit Metro. You’re the SWAT team. You can go anywhere you want. What if you get a call over there?’ He said ‘this is it, it’s hazardous for our team if we go past this line.’ 

I have seen it with my own eyes, witnessed it in the backseat of a car and it is for real. No-go zones exist in the United States. 

Dearborn, Michigan is not the only place that these settlements exist. They are spread out over the country in various cities. There’s an estimate of over 5,000 known terrorist cells in the United States. However our most persistent and significant threat, right now, to us here today this morning, is the homegrown violent extremists. 

Only one problem.  Tarani's a liar and a lunatic.

There is no factual basis to allegations that parts of the U.S. have turned into no-go zones that Muslim extremists had supposedly conquered — a myth that was spread by Fox News reports earlier this year.

Tarani’s comments were part of an hour-long seminar in which he discussed what he claims are the threats Americans face on a daily basis. The frequency and intensity of “mass murders, beheadings and suicide bombings” are increasing, he said. After detailing the events of a number of mass shootings and terrorist plots by an “endless supply” of militant groups around the world, Tarani told the audience they should be prepared to respond to all kinds of threats.

Threats.  You know, like people worshiping the wrong deity.  But that paranoia sells guns and ammo and books, yes?

Iran Right Over President Obama

When the freight train of Senate bull is barreling towards you and you can't stop it, you can either throw yourself in front of it or you can jump off the tracks and hope you land safely.

The White House relented on Tuesday and said President Obama would sign a compromise bill giving Congress a voice on the proposed nuclear accord with Iran as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in rare unanimous agreement, moved the legislation to the full Senate for a vote.

An unusual alliance of Republican opponents of the nuclear deal and some of President Obama’s strongest Democratic supporters demanded a congressional role as international negotiators work to turn this month’s nuclear framework into a final deal by June 30. White House officials insisted they extracted crucial last-minute concessions. Republicans — and many Democrats — said the president simply got overrun.

“We’re involved here. We have to be involved here,” said Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, the committee’s ranking Democrat, who served as a bridge between the White House and Republicans as they negotiated changes in the days before the committee’s vote on Tuesday. “Only Congress can change or permanently modify the sanctions regime.”

The essence of the legislation is that Congress will have a chance to vote on whatever deal emerges with Iran — if one is reached by June 30 — but in a way that would be extremely difficult for Mr. Obama to lose, allowing Secretary of State John Kerry to tell his Iranian counterpart that the risk that an agreement would be upended on Capitol Hill is limited.

As Congress considers any accord on a very short timetable, it would essentially be able to vote on an eventual end to sanctions, and then later take up the issue depending on whether Iran has met its own obligations. But if it rejected the agreement, Mr. Obama could veto that legislation — and it would take only 34 senators to sustain the veto, meaning that Mr. Obama could lose upward of a dozen Democratic senators and still prevail.

In other words, this is a deal that presumes there are at least 34 Senate Democrats with a spine.  He also doesn't have a choice as there are enough Democrats willing to throw him in front of said speeding train.

Considering that 19-0 committee vote, the odds of this getting 80 or more votes in the full Senate is a extremely high. President Obama will apparently choose to fight another day on this, and for now the Iran deal is still alive.

But basically at any point if there are enough Democrats willing to screw him over, the Iran deal comes crashing down.

And people wonder why Dems lose in races other than President.

StupidiNews!

• Iraqi officials say Ramadi , west of Baghdad, is in danger of falling into the hands of ISIS rebels as Iraqi PM Haider Al-Abadi met with President Obama this week asking for reinforcements.
• More than 30 protesters were arrested in New York City Tuesday after blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge in order to demonstrate against police brutality against people of color.
• Guam will allow same-sex marriages based on a federal court of appeals ruling, but Governor Eddie Calvo says the issue must be put to a referendum.
• Finnish wireless firm Nokia will buy French networking company Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6 billion in a deal that will create the world's largest mobile device networking equipment company.
• Texas Republicans are scrapping proposed legislation that would make it illegal to record police within 25 feet, citing responses to recent incidents of police brutality caught on film.

Last Call For The Mask Slips Again

The mask slips, and Republicans accidentally tell the truth about how they feel about people who look like me.  Today's contestant: GOP Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, up for re-election in 2016.

In a little-noticed interview last week, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) described African-American neighborhoods as areas that people in his state try to avoid. 

The comment, with its racial undertones, came during a sit-down interview with the Peoria Journal Star and followed a question about how to encourage business development in Kirk's home state. 

“I want to make sure we have elected people constantly looking at helping the African-American community,” Kirk said. “With this state and all of its resources, we could sponsor a whole new class of potential innovators like George Washington Carver and eventually have a class of African-American billionaires. That would really adjust income differentials and make the diversity and outcome of the state much better so that the black community is not the one we drive faster through." [emphasis added.] 

Wait, what?  So Sen. Kirk, you normally find yourself driving faster through black communities? Exactly why is that, especially since you represent a state with nearly 1.9 million African-American constituents?  Is it out of fear? Disgust? Anger?

"We" would like to know.

The notion that people hit the gas when driving through black neighborhoods is a common racial stereotype about urbanization and criminal behavior among African-Americans. The fact that an elected senator from a state with a sizable black population would make such a comment was deemed unfortunate by at least one African-American leader in Illinois. 

"I think what he was trying to say is, he was trying to relate that to crime. But boy, it was a poor choice of phraseology," said George Mitchell, president of the NAACP's Illinois State Conference.

No, Sen. Kirk was being honest about how he views the 15% of the state that is black.  He's afraid of them.

Perhaps he's afraid he'll be voted out of office in 2016.  I can't imagine his Tea Party antics are going over well back in Peoria, especially now that he has to go up against Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth.

Maybe Obamacare Has Something To Do With It?

Don't look now, but the percentage of American adults without health insurance just fell another full percentage point from last year.

The uninsured rate among U.S. adults declined to 11.9% for the first quarter of 2015 -- down one percentage point from the previous quarter and 5.2 points since the end of 2013, just before the Affordable Care Act went into effect. The uninsured rate is the lowest since Gallup and Healthways began tracking it in 2008.


The percentage of uninsured Americans climbed from the 14% range in early 2008 to over 17% in 2011, and peaked at 18.0% in the third quarter of 2013. The uninsured rate has dropped sharply since the most significant change to the U.S. healthcare system in the Affordable Care Act -- the provision requiring most Americans to carry health insurance -- took effect at the beginning of 2014. An improving economy and a falling unemployment rate may also have accelerated the steep drop in the percentage of uninsured over the past year. However, the uninsured rate is significantly lower than it was in early 2008, before the depths of the economic recession, suggesting that the recent decline is due to more than just an improving economy.

Republicans can scream all they want to, but barring a complete disaster of a SCOTUS ruling in June (still possible, mind you) the Affordable Care Act is here to stay.  The percentage of uninsured adults in the US has dropped by a third, from 18% to under 12%, in just 18 months.  It will drop even more when red state voters finally get sick of picking up the tab for completely uninsured Americans and force Republicans to expand Medicaid in all 50 states

And I don't think that day will be that far off..

Other Side: Stopped Clock Is Right Alert

Today's Stopped Clock is pointing to Hot Air's Allahpundit, who sums up the Clinton campaign thusly (and is pretty much spot on).

Why would Hillary Clinton want to align herself with a guy whose average job approval rating hasn’t been above water in nearly two years? Lots of reasons. For one, the media’s going to wet itself every time she breaks with one of O’s policies. The juicy drama of Team Barack and Team Hillary feuding behind the scenes will be irresistible, notwithstanding the press’s rooting interest in her candidacy. The more stories there are like that, the more time Hillary will spend smoothing Democratic feathers instead of attacking the GOP. Not optimal. Relatedly, the big mystery of her campaign is whether she can turn out Obama’s base in the same numbers O himself did. Philip Klein has a nice piece about that today noting that, when it comes to black voters and young voters especially, Obama has set the bar awfully high. Every high-profile disagreement between him and her on policy raises the risk that O’s base will stay home, forcing Clinton to scramble to make up those votes elsewhere. I think she can do it: It won’t surprise anyone if the First! Woman! President! does better with women than even Obama did, and Bill has always done well with working-class whites and Latinos. Losing the “Obama coalition” doesn’t mean Hillary will lose, but it’ll make the race tougher for her. Better for her to hug O as much as possible and keep a stiff upper lip while the GOP accuses her of running for Obama’s third term, which they’re going to do regardless, than to run away from him and alienate Obama fans on her own side. 

Most importantly, though, embracing Obama’s record won’t hurt her as much as it would an average candidate running for a third consecutive term for his or her party in the White House. If, say, Martin O’Malley were the Democratic nominee, he’d be such an unknown quantity that his candidacy would end up as a referendum on four more years of Obama. If Joe Biden were the nominee, he’d be so closely identified with O already that he couldn’t distinguish himself if he tried. That too would be a de facto referendum on another term for the current president. The novelty of Hillary is that not only can she plausibly turn to Bill Clinton’s record instead of O’s as needed, but she herself is such a well known quantity to voters that she already enjoys quasi-presidential notoriety herself. This election won’t be a referendum on Obama, no matter how closely she hews to his agenda. If it ends up as a referendum, it’ll be a referendum on Hillary. And since she has no signature accomplishments as senator or secretary of state to tout, since her deepest political beliefs are largely a mystery to this day, any referendum on Hillary the politician inevitably becomes a referendum on Hillary the person. Viewed that way, endorsing Obama’s agenda is actually a shrewd and efficient way for her to check the box on having a policy platform. She’ll borrow a bunch from O, some from Bill, and of course some from Elizabeth Warren to make sure that the hard left doesn’t stay home next November. But the policies are largely beside the point: Anyone voting for Hillary will know that she’s to the left of the Republican nominee and probably a bit to the right of Obama on foreign policy. For most of the country that’ll be all they need to know and then they can proceed to the more important question of whether “it’s time” for a woman president and whether electing Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would, as Team Hillary will insist, mean that birth control will disappear from American convenience stores overnight.

I have to admit this is the by far the most level-headed assessment of Team Hillary and the challenges that are before her that I've seen from the right.  It's brutally pragmatic and it's the advice I'd give her if asked (which thankfully I will never be, and should that ever happen I would be far more worried about the people running her show).

In fact, brutal pragmatism is exactly what I expect out of the Clinton campaign and a Hillary Clinton presidency.  Will anyone produce a better alternative?  Not on the GOP side.  The real question is whether any Democrats will.

StupidiNews!

• Tokyo Electric Power Company officials are abandoning attempts to recover a robotic probe stranded inside one of the damaged Fukushima reactors that melted down four years ago.
• A US federal judge has sentenced four former Blackwater guards to lengthy prison sentences for their roles in the 2007 civilian massacre in Baghdad's Nisour Square.
• President Obama will meet today with new Iraqi PM Haidar al-Abadi at the White House to discuss aid, the Islamic State, Iran, and other issues.
• UK PM David Cameron is turning to a Margaret Thatcher-era policy of selling homes owned by local councils to prospective homeowners at a large discount ahead of next month's general elections.
• With the FCC officially publishing its rules for net neutrality on Monday, internet providers have immediately filed suit against the FCC and are demanding a permanent injunction stopping them.

Last Call For Solving Rubio's Cube

As Ed Kilgore points out, GOP Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is taking something of a chance running for the White House, as he can't run for Senate at the same time (and unlike Kentucky, the state GOP isn't going to change the rules for him.)  However, it may still work out for the guy.

The reason it might not be as risky as one might imagine is buried in an otherwise insufferably puffy Grunwald/Caputo piece at Politico: 

Rubio and his team do not like to talk about strategy, but in any case, the political calculus of giving up a Senate seat to seek the brass ring was not as painful as it sounds. Even if Rubio doesn’t win the nomination, he could well end up on the Republican ticket. Even if he ends up unemployed in 2017, he can run for governor in 2018 with a Republican-friendly mid-term electorate. 

So why not get the requisite training-wheels run for the top spot out of the way? If his campaign never really takes off, it will be attributed to Bush’s strength rather than Rubio’s weakness. And for a dark horse, he’s very well positioned, with surprisingly strong approval/disapproval ratios in the early states—a sign the “base” is ready to accept his backtracking on immigration reform—and the possibility of replacing either Bush—whose own numbers remain questionable—or Scott Walker—one big gaffe or indictment away from Palookaville—in the first tier of candidates.

On top of all that, he’s the candidate Republican Establishment elites are almost certain to drool over if Jebbie blows up or fades. He’s the symbol of change in the GOP, without really making many concessions that strain conservative orthodoxy. A relatively young guy with a Latino background who is (it appears) the closest thing to a Reformicon champion (though again, what Reform Conservatives offer is more an add-on to conservative fiscal policy making it even more fiscally irresponsible than any sea change), and also a favorite of Neocons, is going to get massive positive media attention if and when he becomes more viable.

In other words, should Jeb Bush crash and burn, Rubio is the establishment GOP's plan B.  That's not really a great fallback plan given Rubio's dismal polling numbers, but worst-case scenario Rubio succeeds Batboy as governor in the next midterm election, he figures.

Could be worse for him.  Marco will land on his feet after he lands on his face.

The Man Without Fear, The Show Without Peer

Absolutely devoured Marvel's Daredevil series on Netflix over the weekend, and I cannot recommend it enough as a complete redemption of the Ben Affleck/Jon Favreau 2003 film that all but wrecked the character and put Marvel in the dumpster in early 2003 (before X2 2 months later and Spider-Man 2 the next summer started the company's revival).  Is it any good?

Short answer: it's the best super hero show on TV right now, DC or Marvel (Sorry Agents of SHIELD, Arrow, and The Flash...) and it's worth a month of Netflix just to watch this.

Long answer, after the jump (mild spoilers ahead.)

The Running Woman

"Hillary Clinton running for president" is the least surprising headline of 2015 so far, but at least her announcement video is pretty well done and contains a couple of nice messages.




So a couple of same-sex couples in the video, and Hillary pledging to "get out there and earn your vote".  A far cry from 2008, and differences that move her campaign in the right direction.

Because earning my vote in the primaries is what she has to do.  If she is the nominee then I'll support her certainly.  The DNC convention in Cleveland is 14 months off however.  A lot could happen between now and then, and a lot needs to happen before I mark her square here in the primary.

We'll see.  As for now, she's in.

StupidiNews!

• 21-year-old golf phenom Jordan Spieth has finally claimed his green jacket from The Masters, setting new 36- and 54-hole record scores on the way to another record 28 birdies.
• Republican presidential candidates wasted no time in attacking Hillary Clinton within minutes of announcing her own candidacy for president on Sunday afternoon.
• Iran is calling for a new government in Yemen and implying it can assist in setting one up as Saudi airstrikes against Houthi rebels continues.
• A new Virginia Commonwealth University study finds that the higher your income, the healthier you are overall as incidences of diseases are less in those of incomes above $100,000.
• At least one of California's public utilities commissioners says that the Comcast/Time-Warner merger should be scrapped due to monopoly concerns in the state.