Last Call For The Republican Legal Rump

A new USA TODAY poll shows that most Americans believe that June's Supreme Court decisions have put an end to the Obamacare and marriage equality fights.

Well, I take that back.  Republicans are going to fight for bigotry and being uninsured forever.

By 52%-36%, those polled say officials who oppose the Affordable Care Act should take steps to improve the law but end efforts to repeal it, given the high court's decision rejecting its most serious legal challenge. But Republicans by more than 2-1, 63%-27%, say the campaign to overturn the law should continue. 

On same-sex marriage, Americans by 51%-33% say local and state officials now should allow gay couples to wed in their jurisdictions even if they oppose gay marriage. On that, Republicans also tend to disagree: 49% say officials who oppose same-sex unions should take steps to resist the court's ruling and block them while 38% say they should allow them to take place. 

The issue of gay marriage in particular seems to have lost some of its potential to affect next year's presidential election. Four in 10 say the issue will have no impact on their vote.

So yeah, half of Republicans want to show their "civil disobedience" bigoted intolerance towards same-sex marriage, and two-thirds want to take health insurance away from millions of people.

Please make overturning marriage equality and Obamacare the central theme of the GOP in 2016, guys.  Democrats are begging you to try that. Please remaind everyone how mean-spirited and awful Republicans really are, and do it as often as possible between now and November 2016.

Just begging you.

Tragedy In Chattanooga

A pretty horrific event in Chattanooga, Tennessee this afternoon as a gunman opened fire on a series of military recruitment centers in the city.  The gunman is dead, as are four Marines, and a police officer has also been injured.

Four people plus a gunman were killed in shootings at multiple military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the city's mayor announced at a Thursday afternoon press conference.

A police officer who was shot in the leg remained in stable condition at a local hospital, according to NBC’s Chattanooga affiliate WRBC. 

The attacks took place at the Naval and Marine Reserve Center on Amnicola highway and the Army Recruiting Center on Lee highway. 

Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke announced earlier today that there had been a “horrific incident in our community."

The fact that the gunman went to multiple recruitment centers for different branches of the US military doesn't really leave any room for doubt that these recruitment centers, and the personnel inside them, were being targeted deliberately.  Somebody had a definite problem with our men and women in uniform, enough to open fire on multiple recruitment centers over it.  This was a planned, domestic terrorist attack in my eyes, and the FBI is treating it as such until they otherwise have reason not to do so, according to the news conference.

JUST IN: Chattanooga, TN shooting suspect identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, law enforcement sources tell @CBSNews.

— CBSN (@CBSNLive) July 16, 2015

More on this as it comes in.

Bobbying For Crapples

So on Tuesday, a heavily edited hit video was posted to YouTube, purported to show a Planned Parenthood employee discuss using late-term abortions to harvest baby parts.  Which is kind of odd, since 1) Planned Parenthood doesn't do late-term abortions (only 4 clinics in the US do period) and 2) the video is a screaming fake from the James O'Keefe School Of Complete Horsecrap.

But that's not stopping Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal from using the fake video as an excuse to harass Planned Parenthood and score cheap points.

Gov. Bobby Jindal on Tuesday announced he's directed the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to investigate Planned Parenthood activities in the state after a video surfaced that claims the organization is selling fetal body parts. 

The video, which was posted to YouTube by the Center for Medical Progress, shows a woman discussing the harvest of fetal organs and body parts from partial-birth abortions. The Center for Medical Progress identifies the woman as Dr. Deborah Nucatola, who is Planned Parenthood Federation of America's national medical director. 

There was no indication that the video or the activities described in it had ties to Louisiana. But Jindal said he was ordering an investigation in part because Planned Parenthood is planning to open a clinic in New Orleans.

But here's the kicker (and the real reason why Jindal is pretending to believe this nonsense):

The investigation means the $4 million clinic planned for New Orleans will not be able to open because Jindal's order includes suspending the issuance of new licenses by DHH.

So yes, Jindal is a manipulative slimy bastard.  Oh, and where is he getting the money to investigate Planned Parenthood when the state is running a $1.6 billion deficit under his budget?

And he's running for President!?!?

My guess is he won't be for much longer when this blows up in his face.

StupidiNews!

• Swiss officials say that they will extradite a FIFA official to the US, the unnamed official of soccer's governing body is cooperating with law enforcement and agreed to be extradited.
• Congressional Democrats are coming out in support of the Iranian nuclear deal as Republicans continue to vow to destroy the accord.
• Former President George HW Bush is in stable condition after fracturing a bone in his neck in a fall, he is expected to recover and be in a neck brace for some time.
• Greek lawmakers have voted to accept the EU bailout deal imposing harsh austerity measures, the first 7 billion euro installment to be announced today.
• Netflix says it will support the proposed Charter/Time Warner Cable merger after the cable giants offered the streaming movie service a free network connection to its customers.

Last Call For One If By Land, Two If By Crazy

Operation Jade Helm '15 is here! Protect your precious bodily fluids from the government!

Just in time for the Wednesday kickoff of "Jade Helm 15," a YouTube user under the handle Get Right America posted an amazing parody of the breathless, Humvee-tracking conspiracy theorists who are suspicious of the U.S. military training exercise.

The videographer filmed himself driving around the parking lot of a Sam's Club in San Angelo, Texas in a nod to one of the wilder "Jade Helm 15" conspiracy theories about its parent company, Wal-Mart. There, he found a potential hiding spot for "ninjas that can take our guns" and trucks that obviously must belong to the Knights Templar.

It's hysterical stuff.



And yes, this is what the Jade Helm "truthers" sound like to the rest of us: complete nutjobs.

The Freedom To Hate

I figure one of the first things the Supreme Court will have to deal in a couple of years (with a new President in the White House) is a case defining whether or not "religious freedom" allows you to nullify anti-discrimination laws. It might even be this case.

A Christian engineer who was fired for violating Ford Motor Company’s policy against harassment based on sexual orientation is suing the company, claiming his religious rights were violated. 

In a federal lawsuit obtained by The Huffington Post, Thomas Banks explains that he was fired after posting a comment in response to an internal Ford intranet article that celebrated the 20th anniversary of the LGBT workers rights group GLOBE. 

“For this the Ford Motor should be thoroughly ashamed,” Banks wrote. “Endorsing and promoting sodomy is of benefit to no one. This topic is disruptive to the workplace and is an assault on Christians and morality, as well as antithetical to our design and our survival.” 

“Immoral sexual conduct should not be a topic for an automotive manufacturer to endorse or promote,” he continued. “And yes — this is historic — but not in a good way. Never in the history of mankind has a culture survived that promotes sodomy. Heterosexual behavior creates life — homosexual behavior leads to death.” 

Banks was fired two weeks later on the grounds that he violated the company’s policy against harassment. 

“I was stunned to realize that I was fired over expressing my faith in a single comment,” a statement from Banks said. 

The lawsuit alleges that Ford Motor Company and Rapid Global Business Solutions “acted intentionally out of malice or reckless disregard of Banks’ federally protected rights.”

So, can you claim anti-harassment policies and laws are impinging on your freedom of religion? We've already seen the Supreme Court say that your employer's religious freedom trumps federal health care law in the Hobby Lobby case.  Where does the Supreme Court draw the line, if at all?

I'm pretty sure we're going to get an answer from SCOTUS on this, so one would hope that the next President nominating justices would be a Democrat.

If not, well...

I Think He's Taking This Rather Well, Yes?

In non-breaking non-news that will not come as a shock to anyone, Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu is not a fan of the new Iran deal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday after world powers reached a historic nuclear deal with Iran that Israel was not bound by it and signalled he remained ready to order military action. 

Netanyahu’s harsh criticism of the agreement came after he warned for months that the deal being negotiated would not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. 

While analysts say unilateral military action by Israel seems unlikely for now, Netanyahu and other officials have kept the option on the table. 

“Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran, and Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran because Iran continues to seek our destruction,” Netanyahu told reporters before a meeting of his security cabinet. 

“We will always defend ourselves.”

Not without US weapons and billions in US taxpayer dollars, you won't.  Might want to keep that in mind.

Netanyahu called the nuclear deal a “historic mistake”, and the accord drew strong criticism from across the Israeli political spectrum. 

“We did commit to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and this commitment still stands,” Netanyahu said earlier on Tuesday, even before the agreement was officially announced. 

He has taken his campaign to the US Congress and the UN General Assembly, but ultimately failed to block the agreement.

Once again, in order to accept Netanyahu's bluster as truth, you have to believe that only Israel correct, and that the entire UN Security Council is colluding on Israel's destruction, including the five permanent members of the US, France, the UK, China and Russia.

It's ridiculous theater, and he knows it.  Israel doesn't have a friend in the world on this.

Wait, I take that back.  They have the Republican Party here in the US.

That should tell you everything.

StupidiNews!

• A stampede at a Hindu river festival in the Indian city of Rajahmundry has killed at least 27 as crowds surged to wash in the sacred Godavari river.
• President Obama will hold a press conference today answering questions about yesterday's announced Iran nuclear deal before heading to Oklahoma for a Choctaw Nation event.
• A scheduled vote today by Greek lawmakers on a new bailout is facing stiff opposition from PM Alexis Tsipras's own Syriza party, a failed vote could collapse his government coalition.
• A new International Monetary Fund report blasts the Greek deal, saying that Europe will have to consider far more debt relief in order to prevent Greek debt from piling up for decades.
• One thing that wasn't at last night's AL 6-3 win at the All-Star Game here in Cincinnati: recreational drones, which the league told fans to leave at home.

Last Call For GOP Minority Outreach, Con't

Oklahoma Republicans are leading the way for the rest of the party in Big Tent theory.

The Oklahoma Republican Party compared Americans receiving food stamp benefits to park animals feed by the public in a Facebook post Monday evening. 

In the since-deleted post, the Oklahoma GOP offered a so-called “lesson in irony” by comparing the distribution of food stamps to 46 million Americans to a policy of the National Park Service to discourage the public from feeding animals “because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves” 

Party Chairman Randy Brogdon offered a sort-of apology in another Facebook post today: “I offer my apologies for those who were offended – that was not my intention”: 

This post was supposed to be an analogy that compared two situations illustrating the cycle of government dependency in America, not humans as animals. However I do think that it’s important to have conversations about government welfare programs since our dependency on government is at its highest level ever.

Yep, that explanation (I'm sorry you people aren't so bright and clearly misunderstood us when we compared poor people to zoo animals) will make the perception of Republicans as mean-spirited dog-whistle racist assholes vanish completely by November 2016.

Please, promote Mr. Brogdon to the RNC. Give him the keys to your social media presence, immediately. Put him on TV as much as possible. Give him a white, conical hood to keep cool under those hot lights, too.

That'll help. Trust me.

Hoosier Gonna Teach Your Kids?

Next door in Indiana, Mike Pence's massive cuts to education has had a nasty secondary effect: since Republicans have demonized schoolteachers as greedy, evil union thugs for years now, the Hoosier State can't find enough qualified applicants to fill needed teaching positions.

School districts across Indiana are having trouble finding people to fill open teaching positions as the number of first-time teacher licenses issued by the state has dropped by 63 percent in recent years. 

The Indiana Department of Education reports the state issued 16,578 licenses to first-time teachers, including teachers with licenses in multiple subject areas, in the 2009-2010 school year. That number dropped to 6,174 for the 2013-14 school year, the most recent for which data were available, the Greensburg Daily News reported. 

The dwindling pool of educators is raising alarm in some school districts as they struggle to fill open positions, especially in math, science and foreign languages.

And of course these shortages are going to continue for some time as people don't want to go to college in order to be teachers anymore.  Can you blame them after the way Republicans treat education?

“It has become a real struggle,” Decatur County Community Schools Superintendent Johnny Budd told the Greensburg Daily News. “The pool of applicants is definitely dried up.” 

School leaders say state funding constraints, testing pressures and a blame-the-teachers mentality have steered people away from education as a career. 

Many education programs have seen their enrollments drop in recent years. 

Enrollment in Ball State University’s elementary and kindergarten teacher-preparation programs has fallen 45 percent in the last decade. Other schools are reporting similar declines. 

Denise Collins, associate dean with the College of Education at Indiana State University, said enrollment there has fallen 7 percent, and the number of students completing an education degree has dropped 13 percent.

Demand for qualified teachers is higher than ever, and yet across the country we're seeing school districts in red states slashing salaries, removing tenure protections, and driving teachers into retirement.  Now there aren't enough teachers to fill those teaching jobs.

What did you think was going to happen, red state America?

The Walkering Dead

I'm not sure why GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker bothered to join the GOP 2016 circus this week, because after signing a brutal austerity budget for the Badger State into law over the weekend, he's got zero chance of winning. WaPo's Valerie Strauss:

If anybody was holding out any hope that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker would see even a modicum of reason and refuse to savage public education in his state, they can now let it go. A day before jumping into the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Walker on Sunday signed a new state budget that, among other things: 

* slashes $250 million from the University of Wisconsin, one of the country’s great public institutions of higher education, and ensures that most K-12 school districts will get less funding than they did last year; 

* removes from state law tenure protections for University of Wisconsin professors, a move that educators say will seriously harm the school’s ability to retain and attract talented faculty; 

* expands the state’s voucher program that uses public funds to pay for tuition at private schools, including religious schools — even though there is no evidence the program has helped improve student achievement in the past — and creates a new “special needs” voucher law that cuts into protections for special needs students. 

The Associated Press reported that Walker said in a statement that the budget he signs “brings real reform to Wisconsin and allows everyone more opportunity for a brighter future. ” Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, a Democrat, said in a statement that the budget “throws the people of Wisconsin under Governor Walker’s campaign bus.”

Walker's record in Wisconsin has been awful, but he gives really good speeches or something, so that makes him a "Republican front-runner" or something.

And actually, Walker's austerity economics and massive cuts to education is exactly what Republicans want to do to our nation's public colleges and universities and public schools anyway: trash them to the point of breaking and sell off the pieces to for-profit outfits.

Of course he's going to do well in the GOP primaries.

Not so much in the general, I'm thinking.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama will announce this morning that a landmark nuclear deal with Iran has been reached in Vienna, but the deal faces stiff opposition from Republicans and Israel.
• New York City has reached a $5.9 million settlement with the family of Eric Garner, the black man who was put in a chokehold by a white NYPD officer and later died.
• After nearly ten years of flying through space, NASA's New Horizons probe finally arrives at Pluto today to send back the most detailed pictures yet of the planetary body.
• Greek PM Alexis Tsipras will face his country's parliament today with only days left in order to sell a new austerity plan to angry lawmakers and voters.
• Automaker Audi has been testing its autonomous driving system, codenamed "Robby", in the California desert, using systems that soon could be integrated into production vehicles.

Last Call For The Bernie Coalition

If you listen closely, Bernie Sanders is telling us exactly who he is, and which Obama voters he cares about...and which ones he wants to be rid of in this conversation with NYT Upshot's Nate Cohn.

But Mr. Sanders, who has surged in the polls against Hillary Clinton, called to advance a different theory of the race. “I look at these things more from a class perspective,” he said.

“I’m not a liberal. Never have been. I’m a progressive who mostly focuses on the working and middle class.”

The difference between a liberal and a progressive focused on workers might seem slim, but it nonetheless shapes how he envisions the potential of the political coalition he hopes to assemble. He believes he can mobilize a working-class coalition spanning ideological divides.

“Ordinary people are profoundly disgusted with the state of the economy and the fact that the middle class is being destroyed and income going to the top 1 percent.”

Many of these people “may not be liberal” or may not “agree with me on gay marriage,” but “they want a fighter,” he said in the cordial conversation.

The issues that could potentially rally disaffected lower- and- middle-class voters “cross traditional liberal-conservative lines,” Mr. Sanders argued. He is in a good position to raise these issues, he said, citing his positions on trade, issues affecting older Americans and the minimum wage.

If Bernie's own words are raising alarm bells in your head right now, there's a reason for that, if you look at Cohn's analysis.

If Mr. Sanders did build a coalition of working-class voters, it would look a lot different from the coalitions assembled by recent liberal Democratic primary candidates. It would be positioned to do far better among Hispanic, black and less educated white voters than recent anti-establishment Democratic challengers, like Barack Obama, Howard Dean, Bill Bradley and Jerry Brown.

Far better among black and Latino voters than Obama?  Obama got 93% of the black vote with record black turnout in 2012 and 71% of the Latino vote, for a combined 23% of the entire 2012 electorate.  Exactly how does Sanders do "far better" than that?

In fairness to Mr. Sanders, few, if any, recent Democratic candidates represented the economic, populist left. The anti-establishment candidate of the last four competitive primaries all featured challenges from intellectual, professional-class liberals. Mr. Brown, Mr. Bradley, Mr. Dean and Mr. Obama — each educated at some point at an Ivy League university — all fared well in Marin County, Calif., and Greenwich, Conn.; none appealed much to voters in the Appalachians or along the Rio Grande.

And there we have it (despite the fact that Obama in fact did very well among voters in the Texas border area.)  It's always back to the white West Pennsatucky vote, and this is where Bernie thinks he can do better, while keeping black and Latino voters.

The problem is Bernie's idea of appealing to us isn't working real well.

When asked why his campaign was struggling to attract the working-class, less liberal voters he thought he might be reaching, Mr. Sanders acknowledged the challenges facing his campaign. “I’m not well known in the African-American community, despite a lifelong record,” he said, acknowledging one of the most consistent critiques of his chances. “That’s a real issue, and I have to deal with it.”

Maybe your support of gun manufacturers and your slagging of Obama has something to do with it, Bern.  Just saying.  When you try to broaden your appeal to voters in the Appalachians at the expense of voters in black neighborhoods, you're going to lose and keep losing.

Or, you could just go the Jim Webb route and be statistical noise and a giant joke.  Your call.

An Early Sighting Of Haley's Comment

GOP South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley knows that whatever bloody massacre happened in the state where she is in charge, the fact Dylann Roof bought a gun when the law said he shouldn't have been able to is anyone but her fault.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said on Sunday that she did not support increasing waiting periods to allow federal officials ample time to conduct background checks even though flaws in the current law allowed Charleston shooter Dylann Roof to purchase a gun.

Not her problem, not her fault, not her job to fix it.  Leadership!

“Do you think the background check should be expanded, instead of a three day period, maybe longer?” NBC host Chuck Todd asked Haley during an interview on Sunday.

Haley insisted that she was “literally sick” to her stomach when she received the news that Roof was able to purchase a firearm because of a failed background check.

“When the feds say they are going to do something, we take them at their word that it’s going to get done,” the South Carolina Republican opined. “And the fact that it didn’t get done is terrible. And it’s one more thing that these families are going to have to go through that they don’t deserve to have to go through.”

“I think we need to look at the fact that it’s not about time,” she continued. “It’s about technology. You know, this is something, when someone has a charge filed against them, it should go into a database and it should be shown immediately to anyone that’s looking at it.”

“So, I would be more interested in what went wrong. What sort of — why are they dealing with paperwork and not dealing with technology that they wouldn’t have had this.”

Oh, so perhaps Congress should allot more money to improve the nation's background check system and pass legislation requiring states and the federal government to work together on these checks.

Except that's exactly the opposite of what the Republicans who control Congress actually did: since they took power in January they've made background checks more difficult, federal databases harder to access, and cut budget money to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.  Republicans also filibustered a national background check bill in the Senate in 2013.

Perhaps Governor Haley should be speaking with Speaker Boehner and majority leader McConnell instead of wasting time with Chuck Todd whining how nothing that happens in South Carolina is actually her fault.

Senate Democrats on the other hand want to make background checks work. They will be blocked again by Republicans for sure.  And Nikki Haley will continue to blame everyone but herself.

Demography May Be Destiny, But Not Anytime Soon

I disagree strongly with former NY Times editor Howell Raines on the Democrats taking over the South.

Even more dramatic changes in voter attitudes will shift the region’s party balance, to the detriment of the Republicans. This won’t come about because current Republican voters and their elected officials now in office will somehow be converted, but because they will be overwhelmed by new voters in the burgeoning Hispanic and Asian communities, who will join the black minority. Over half of the nation’s 40 million blacks live in the South.

For the time being, however, a traveler through the South can’t help but notice that its affluent, suburban whites remain myopic about the obvious signs, like the multiracial families to be seen among Walmart shoppers on any given day in any shopping mall.

Houston and Dallas are among the 11 American cities with the largest Hispanic populations. Vibrant Vietnamese communities are all along the Gulf Coast. Major cities have Spanish-language advertising, and have or soon will have sleek Latino-oriented shopping centers, like the new one on the fashionable southern side of Birmingham. The Asian presence in the medical, academic and business communities is substantial and growing, perhaps most notably in Baton Rouge, where Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana and presidential candidate (who is Asian-American, like Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina), works.

Judging from the laws they are passing, Southern Republicans seem untroubled by Mitt Romney’s 17 percent of the minority vote in the last presidential election. It seems an overstatement to say that Southern Republicans are in outright denial about the fact that whites will be a minority in America around 2043. It does seem fair to say that the national Republican Party is underreacting, and Southern Republicans seem to be especially resistant to appealing to their minority neighbors.

Like their counterparts in the national G.O.P. and the current crop of about 15 me-too Republican presidential candidates, Southern legislators seem unwilling to make any change on social welfare, retirement, health care or women’s and gay rights that would attract Southerners not voting Republican at present.

A survey of demographic and polling data in what the Brookings Institution demographer William H. Frey calls a New Sunbelt, stretching across the Southern Rim from Miami to Los Angeles, makes an ironclad case for this huge recalibration in political and cultural attitudes. Yet, for example, in the Florida Panhandle the same whites who cheer the new Hispanic stars at high school soccer matches deliver a bloc vote for the most conservative-sounding candidates at local, state and national levels. Anecdotal evidence indicates that affluent Southern Republicans continue to believe that minority voters can be attracted with punitive polices based on the Paul Ryan model.

The statistical evidence shouts otherwise. “Demography is destiny” is the theme of Mr. Frey’s new book, “Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America,” and another recent book, “The Next America: Boomers, Millennials and the Looming Generational Showdown,” by Paul Taylor and his colleagues at the Pew Research Center.

Did anyone Howell cited in the article pay attention to the 2010 and 2014 elections, where Republicans gained 80+ seats in the House and turned a 60-seat Democratic majority into a 54-seat Senate control, and gained governor's mansions in deep blue states like Illinois and Maryland, or did I miss that?  Did anyone pay attention to Chief Justice John Roberts gutting the Voting Rights Act and assuring the GOP will control the South for another 30+ years at the very minimum?

Yet Howell craps out this pipe dream:

In presidential politics, the transition will most likely be seen first in red states like Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, all states that could be in play next year and could become purple, if not yet blue, as early as 2020.

All three of those states will be red states for the rest of my lifetime.  Demography doesn't equal destiny when Republicans suppress the minority vote and stir white resentment politics to the max.