Last Call For Alabama Shakes(peare)

Happy New Year, as the Cotton State takes an early January lead in the Worst State in America 2016 race, thanks to our old friend Alabama State Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Chief Justice Roy Moore issued an order today saying that a ruling issued last March by the Alabama Supreme Court remains in effect and that probate judges "have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary" to Alabama's law and constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. 

In a four-page administrative order, Moore said the conflict between the state court ruling and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June has caused "confusion and uncertainty" among probate judges. 

Moore said he issued the order today in his role as administrative head of the state court system. He quoted a state law that says the chief justice is empowered to "take affirmative and appropriate action to correct or alleviate any condition or situation adversely affecting the administration of justice within the state." 

Moore wrote that since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that many Alabama probate judges are issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, while others are issuing licenses only to opposite-sex couples or not issuing licenses at all. 

"This disparity affects the administration of justice in this state," he wrote.

So apparently Alabama's just not going to participate in the United States anymore and isn't actually bound by the SCOTUS rulings.  Interesting.

Then again, this type of obnoxious legal foot-dragging is nothing new in American history, not by a long shot. Particularly in states like, well, Alabama.

Still, same-sex marriage just landed on top of the 2016 presidential race social issue heap, and in a big way. Ted Cruz has gone on record numerous times saying that the Supreme Court has no actual authority to enforce anything, and as President, he implied heavily that he would allow states to simply refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.  Santorum, Huckabee, and Rubio too have expressed similar opinions.

Trump on the other hand, well this is going to get pretty interesting, isn't it?

Such drama from the kids who have lost.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Kevin Drum asks:

Are Liberals Responsible for the Rise of Donald Trump?

And in classic K-Drum style, answers his own question with "well, let me build a terrible case why that could be right but isn't."

This is hardly a new critique. Conservatives have been complaining about "being silenced" forever. The only difference between Trump and the rest of the GOP field is that Trump's complaints are a little earthier than Rubio's or Bush's. 

Still, even if I think Nichols is overstating things, it's not as if he doesn't have a point. Even those of us on the left feel the wrath of the leftier-than-thou brigade from time to time. I don't generally have a hard time avoiding objectionable language myself because (a) I'm liberal, (b) I'm good with words, and (c) I write rather than talk, which gives me time to get my act together. But even at that, sometimes I cross an invisible line and get trounced for it. 

But for someone without my advantages, I can easily see how it might feel almost impossible to express an unpopular opinion without tying yourself in knots. And let's be honest: we liberals do tend to yell racism a little more often than we should. And we do tend to suggest that anyone who like guns or Jesus is a rube. And the whole "privilege" thing sure does get tiresome sometimes. And we do get a little pedantic in our insistence that no conversation about anything is complete unless it specifically acknowledges the special problems of marginalized groups. It can be pretty suffocating at times. 

For the most part, I don't mind this stuff—and conservatives do themselves no favors by harping on supposed PC idiocy like the "war on Christmas." But that's largely because I can navigate it reasonably well and I mostly agree with the aims of the PC police anyway. People who can't obviously feel a lot more constrained. So while I don't really buy Nichols' argument—conservatives built the monster named Trump, not liberals—I do think he has a germ of a point. Donald Trump is basically telling ordinary people that ordinary language is OK, and since that's the only language they know, it means they feel like they can finally talk again.

In the classic words of Tonto, "What do you mean 'we', white man?"

Seriously, it's like terrible liberals exist solely to give cover to right-wing jagoffs like, well, Tom Nichols, and while I agreed with Nichols earlier today, he's wrong here, and this would be the point where Drum should say "Nichols is wrong and the baggage he's trying to project on liberals is complete straw man nonsense, since nobody is actually trying to silence white men."

But Drum is pretty bad at this, so he knowingly picks up Nichols's point and kicks the straw football through a new set of goalposts which he just moved.

Amazing stuff here when you argument is "Trump is awful and terrible, but he has a point about you people."

Oh, and should you think Drum is somehow alone in this, Washington Post writers Karen Tumulty and Jenna Johnson cover the same ground this week.

In the 2016 Republican presidential primary, “political correctness” has become the all-purpose enemy. The candidates have suggested it is the explanation for seemingly every threat that confronts the country — terrorism, immigration, an economic recovery that is leaving many behind, to name just a few. 

Others argue that growing antipathy to the notion of political correctness has become an all-purpose excuse for the inexcusable. They say it has emboldened too many to express racism, sexism and intolerance, which endure even as the country grows more diverse. 

“Driving powerful sentiments underground is not the same as expunging them,” said William A. Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar who was an adviser to former president Bill Clinton. “What we’re learning from Trump is that a lot of people have been biting their lips, but not changing their minds.”

The point of this is to again turn Trump into something of a mainstream figure, just in case he wins the nomination.

Let's keep that in mind.

A Bang-Up Job

President Obama's executive actions on gun control focus mainly on tightening gun seller loopholes, and while that's something, it's not much.

The gun industry has enjoyed a significant upper hand for decades, while mass shooting after mass shooting has failed to yield any meaningful gun control. A Bush-era law rendered the gun industry largely immune to legal challenges, which makes it hard to hold shady dealers accountable for illegal sales. Online sales, now a fixture of the firearms marketplace, are exempt from most laws governing dealers. And enforcement of current laws governing gun dealers is weak. 

The meat of the executive action will try to address these problems, notably by requiring all gun sellers to get a license and conduct background checks no matter where they’re selling them. That means online dealers and gun show vendors, many of whom are unlicensed go-tos for people looking to avoid background checks, will have to get approval from federal law enforcement. But the order doesn’t specify how many guns someone will need to sell in order to be considered a dealer. 

The orders will also clarify rules about who in a gun business is responsible for reporting stolen or lost guns. In addition, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will get new funding to hire more people for background checks and to centralize illegal gun tracking. 

The action will also require background checks for people who buy weapons through trusts or corporations, an increasingly common way to avoid detection when buying serious firearms like machine guns. For instance, former Los Angeles police officer Chris Dorner said he used one such trust to buy silencers and a short-barreled rifle without a background check before going on a multi-day shooting rampage. The White House notes that gun purchases through trust and corporations has risen from fewer than 900 applications to 90,000 applications in 14 years.

It's tinkering around the edges, but necessary tinkering.  If the goal is to reduce the number of firearms in the country, well...that's not going to happen.  Ever.

StupidiNews!

• Several countries remain skeptical over North Korea's claim that it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb last night, the UN Security Council is meeting to discuss sanctions.
• A new Pew report finds that despite what Republican presidential candidates are saying about America's southern border, more Mexican immigrants are leaving the US than entering.
• ISIS is threatening to destroy Saudi Arabian prisons and free hundreds of prisoners in response to Riyadh's execution of 43 convicted Al Qaeda militants.
• Wal-Mart stores in Texas are asking those taking advantage of the state's new open carry handgun law to see their carry licenses before entering the store.
• Online "brain-training" site Lumosity will pay $2 million to settle FTC claims of deceptive advertising over its games staving off everything from dementia to Alzheimer's.

Last Call For Petulant Children

One Texas House Republican is so mad at President Obama that he's promising to defund the entire Department of Justice if the White House moves ahead with any executive measures on gun control.

No, really, not an Onion article.

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department, warned against enforcing the new gun restrictions.

"The next twelve months will be an especially dangerous time for Americans who treasure our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms,” Culberson said."I have formally notified Attorney General Lynch that I will aggressively protect our Second Amendment rights using Congress' power of the purse,” he added. "I notified the attorney general that if the Department of Justice attempted to create new restrictions on our Constitutional rights that I would use every tool at my disposal to immediately restrict their access to federal funding.”

Culberson appears to be the first Republican to call to block the DOJ's funding over the executive action on guns.

In future budget agreements, House appropriators could specifically prohibit the Justice Department from enforcing the gun restrictions without defunding the entire agency.

Culberson warned Lynch not to “create new law” in his letter.

“The House Appropriations Committee will not provide resources to your department for the development or implementation of unlawful limitations on the unambiguous Second Amendment rights of Americans,” Culberson wrote.

This might actually carry the impact of threat if Republicans hadn't spent the last several years vowing to defund everything from Obamacare to the Department of Education to the White House itself and not following through on anything.

Petulant little kids that they are.

Here We Go Again, Day 3

As I pointed out in this morning's StupidiNews, suddenly Team Bundy seems to be reconsidering this whole "armed takeover of federal land" considering they can't seem to find anyone else who actually thinks this is a good idea.

A county sheriff and judge on Monday demanded that self-styled militiamen occupying a remote U.S. wildlife center in Oregon peacefully end their 3-day-old anti-government siege, telling the protesters: "It's time for you to leave our community." 

And in fact a lot of people seem to think this is a terrible idea, including other militia seditionist types.

Self-styled militia members who seized federal property in rural Oregon in an effort to galvanize opposition to the U.S. government appear to have made a tactical error - potential allies say they picked the wrong battle. 

As armed anti-government activists occupied a snowy wildlife refuge for a third day to call attention to a land-use dispute, militia leaders from similar groups across the country criticized the seizure of federal land and a building. 

The protesters have said they aim "to restore and defend the Constitution" to protect the rights of ranchers and ignite a national debate about states' rights and federal land-use policy they hope could ultimately force the federal government to release tracts of Western land. 

Their occupation of the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge comes as the number of paramilitary groups is on the rise in the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group that tracks their numbers. 

But the latest call to arms appears to have failed to resonate with like-minded groups whose support would be crucial for creating a coalition of armed militia members substantial enough to thwart a law enforcement operation.

"There's a better way to go about things," said Brandon Curtiss, president of Three Percent of Idaho, a militia group that has been involved in the dispute. "If you want to make a change like that, you need to get the county citizens behind you to go through the proper channels."

When you're getting "Well, actually'd..." by armed militia groups that want to overthrow the federal government, you've lost on all possible fronts. In fact, the Bundys may be considering cutting their losses and taking the out provided to them.

Late Monday, the apparent leader of the armed occupiers, Ryan Bundy, told OPB reporters that the group — which has branded itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom — would respect the wishes of the local community.

"This is their county – we can't be here and force this on them," Bundy told OPB Monday. "If they don't want to retrieve their rights, and if the county people tell us to leave, we'll leave." 

Bundy tells OPB that he hopes to have a community meeting organized within the next day.

So amazingly enough, what I though was going to be a protracted standoff that was sure to end in Ruby Ridge-style bloodshed may in fact turn into a bunch of losers giving up and slinking home. Sensing an opportunity here to put a peaceful end to this, the Feds are going to cut off power to the refuge.

Federal authorities are planning to cut off the power of the wildlife refuge in Oregon that has been taken over by militia, exposing the armed occupiers to sub-zero temperatures in an effort to flush them out. 

Armed militants will begin their third day at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a remote federal outpost in eastern Oregon, on Tuesday, and have vowed to remain for months in protest over the treatment of two local cattle ranchers.

A federal government official told the Guardian that authorities were planning on Monday to cut the power at the refuge. 

“It’s in the middle of nowhere,” said the official, who is based in Washington, DC, and has knowledge of the planned response to the militia. “And it’s flat-ass cold up there.” 

The official, who asked not to be named, said they were not privy to the FBI’s plan of action. However, they said the US Park Service, which is leading the crisis management reaction to the occupation in liaison with the FBI, planned to cut the power to the building where the militiamen are spending their nights.

We'll see where this goes.  Hopefully this will all be over soon.

Stopped Clock Is Right Alert

Every now and again conservatives remind me that they are capable of putting together logical arguments and do so, and believe me, nobody's more shocked than I am to find such an argument involving our little seditious Bundy Ranch friends in Oregon between Tom Nichols and Kurt Schlicter in of all places, The Federalist..

Tom Nichols: Kurt, most of the time, you and I are on the same side of a lot of issues important to conservatives. We tend to disagree on strategy, but conservatives (no matter what leftists think) are not monolithic. As you often say, we just take different roads to the same bar.

I’m kind of shocked, however, that we seem to have a real disagreement of principle on the Bundy takeover of a public building in Oregon. I despise these guys, not only because I think they’re dangerous, but because I think they’re hypocrites. These are people whose beefs with the government seem pretty much to be a matter of whether they get their way in disputes over money, not freedom.

But here’s my bigger issue: I don’t care if they have a legitimate grievance over Dwight and Steven Hammond going to jail. While there might be a legal issue here (although the Supreme Court didn’t think so), when you pick up a weapon and occupy a building, your grievances go out the window.

My question is: why aren’t you, as a good conservative, as outraged as I am about this kind of lawless thuggery? I agree that the cops should just wait these guys out and then charge them with criminal trespass or disorderly conduct or, for all I care, Aggravated Mopery With Intent To Gawk. But you and I both know that what they’re really doing is nothing less than armed sedition, encouraging others to take up arms against law enforcement and the U.S. government itself.

When did conservatives stop being the law and order party? One of the great virtues of conservatism is consistency—even if we don’t like the results—and if this were a group of Black Lives Matter activists in there with guns and waving around little pocket Constitutions, we’d both be calling for throwing them all in the pokey. I would, anyway. Why aren’t you joining me in that same call now?

I mean, I disagree with Tom Nichols on a great number of things (and certainly with 99% of the things advocated in Sean Davis's Glibertarian Online Horsecrap Extravaganza) but this is exactly the argument conservatives should be making about Ammon Bundy's takeover of a federal building in Oregon here.

It's armed sedition, period.  If you believe in rule of law, even if you don't like the people charged with executing that rule of law, you should be against this nonsense.

Kurt Schlichter's response on the other hand is where I think most conservatives are right now.

Kurt Schlichter: I need to be clear that I am not happy about this or supportive of this particular action. But I am disgusted with the way our government has disregarded law, norms, and processes to impose its will on people the elitists at the helm in on the coasts think unworthy of consideration. When did conservatives get less fussy about observing the social contract? When liberals breached it.

But this is a terrible situation. I served in Kosovo and saw up close the chaos and destruction that comes when the rule of law goes. Some on social media accused me of “rationalizing” what’s happening in Oregon; no, I am trying to explain it, because until we understand why it is happening we can’t do what we need to do to stop it.

You are correct that my response to this situation is different from other, superficially analogous movements in recent years. We need to distinguish these Oregon people from the left-wing groups, like Occupy and Black Lives Matter. These guys are marching with American flags, not burning them. Many are apparently vets. The leftist groups are seeking to take more money from people who actually worked for it, and to stop the police from effectively controlling crime.

They are not looting. They are not rioting. They are trespassing, albeit armed. To lump them together with the leftists is a false analogy and not helpful to addressing the problem.

You don’t care about their grievances, so that doesn’t leave you with many options. You either treat their concerns seriously and make it so they don’t feel this is their only outlet, or you use force to suppress them.

We are both coastal, but we know flyover Americans well enough to know they won’t just shrug and submit. The answer, I think we both know, is not force—in fact, insurgents (and make no mistake, this is a pre-insurgency with terrifying potential to expand) need the government to overreact in order to win support.

Right now, most citizens would probably prefer that these guys just go away. But if the feds kill some of them, then many people will see them as the victims, and it will further prove many of what today seem wild claims of oppression.

The wisest thing the Obama administration ever did was walk away from the Bundy ranch. That’s step one here. The next step is to address some of their grievances. We need to show that our political and legal processes can work fairly. If not, this will only continue—and get worse.

Schlichter's ridiculous projection aside, he's right that these seditionists want to martyr themselves and ignite a much larger, most more dangerous, and much bloodier revolution against the federal government.

They want to die so that the country rises up against Obama.  Giving them what they want is stupid and accomplishes nothing.

I hate to say it, loathe it in fact.  But both Nichols and Schlichter are correct on that front.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama will announce a number of executive actions on gun control today, including subjecting online sales to background checks, and calling for more mental health care funds.
• The world's governing body on chemistry has approved the addition of four new elements to the periodic table, bringing the total to 118.
• The county sheriff in Oregon where several armed seditionists have taken of a federal wildlife refuge is asking the armed men to leave peacefully.
• China is once again intervening in its stock markets in response to a 7% drop in values Monday, banning major stockholders from selling off in order to prevent another massive rout.
• The Justice Department is formally suing Volkswagen over cheating to bypass EPA clean emissions rules, and is asking for a halt to all sales of cars with the cheating devices installed.

Last Call For Trump's 50-State Southern Strategy

Greg Sargent finally comes out and says it: Donald Trump's new ads in Iowa and New Hampshire are absolutely about driving the white backlash vote into Trump's fold.

As the final, frenzied push towards the first presidential voting begins, Donald Trump has unveiled a riveting new television ad that perfectly sums up Trumpism in all its xenophobic glory — and also perfectly captures the problem Trumpism has created for the Republican Party. 

The ad, which is set to run extensively in Iowa and New Hampshire, has it all. It reiterates his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, and links this directly to the need to combat “radical Islamic terrorism.” It also again vows to “stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.” All of this leads up to the grand conclusion, in which Trump himself vows to “make America great again.” 

But here’s something notable: Trump’s spot looks very much like the heavily-immigration-themed ads run by California Governor Pete Wilson in the 1990s. Wilson helped secure passage of the infamous “Proposition 187,” which sought to bar illegal immigrants from a range of state services and is widely believed to have driven Latinos away from the California GOP and set it on a path into the demographic wilderness.

There's a reason for that, and of course we know that Pete Wilson's anti-Latino ads were the beginning of the end of the California GOP.

So where is Trump and the national GOP, 20 years later?

Now, it remains unlikely that Trump will actually win the nomination. But even if he doesn’t, the question then becomes: Whither the forces Trump has unleashed inside the GOP? Trump’s candidacy — and to a somewhat lesser extent, that of Ted Cruz — is framed around the idea that the way to win the White House is by unleashing the power of white backlash. This is plainly obvious in Trump’s case, but Cruz, too, has repeatedly suggested a GOP victory must be powered by evangelicals and “Reagan Democrats,” i.e., culturally conservative blue collar whites. Cruz has engaged in more sophisticated demagoguery about Muslims and has flatly ruled out any form of legalization for undocumented immigrants.

By contrast, Marco Rubio’s long-term strategy seems to be framed broadly (though he has diverted from it at times) around the idea that the way to win is to make peace with diversifying, culturally evolving America, in hopes of cutting into Dem voter groups. (Demographics expert Ruy Teixeira’s hard look at the numbers suggests this may be the better course.) Which will GOP voters choose? We’ll soon find out. And if it’s the latter, and Rubio wins the nomination, how far he has to go in pandering to the forces Trump and Cruz are unleashing in order to get there will also bear watching.

With four weeks until the Iowa caucuses and five until the New Hampshire primaries, it's looking more and more like a two-man race between Trump and Cruz.  The March 1 "Super South" primary could give either one of these goofballs a commanding lead as well.  The smart money still seems to be on Rubio as the great Latino moderate savior of the GOP, but there's no way Rubio can win the nomination without playing to the same bigots that are powering Trump and Cruz, and currently the folks backing those two represent the majority of GOP primary voters, not just "some fringe elements".

Still, history reminds us that a large national lead in January means absolutely nothing.

At this point in -- 2004: Dean +15 2008 (D): H. Clinton +21.2 (R): Giuliani +2.8 2012: Gingrich +2.4 https://t.co/8pTnsrf0Ds

— Past Frontrunners (@pastfrontrunner) January 3, 2016

So we'll see where all this goes.

Everything Old Is New Again

Good thing the Republicans in Congress are working to pass real legislation in 2016 and not waste taxpayer time on meaningless gestures that have no chance of...oh who am I kidding.

Another year, another effort to repeal Obamacare.

House Republicans are starting off 2016 with a renewed legislative push to roll back the president's landmark health care legislation, with proposals to defund Planned Parenthood tacked onto the bill.

"As Congress returns next week, in one of our first acts of the new year, the House will vote on a bill that would eliminate key parts of Obamacare and stop taxpayer funding for abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood," Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Missouri, said in a video released Saturday. "If this bill becomes law, patients will be able to choose a health insurance plan that works for them -- without Washington getting in the way."

The Missouri Republican, who sits on the House Budget Committee, points to rising health insurance costs as a reason to target the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Obamacare "forces people to buy insurance that's much more expensive than what they need," Hartzler said. "And when you force millions of people to buy expensive and unaffordable insurance, it's not that surprising to see premiums going up. Deductibles are going up too -- all while people's choices are disappearing."

Hartzler promised that the bill, which would eliminate the individual mandate as well as the employer mandate to offer insurance, would be sent directly to the president's desk via the reconciliation process, avoiding the chance of congressional Democrats filibustering the legislation.

The bill also takes aim at federal funding for Planned Parenthood -- a fight Republicans have renewed with vigor since last summer, when an anti-abortion group released undercover videos of Planned Parenthood employees discussing controversial procedures like fetal tissue transfers.

According to Hartzler, the legislation places a "moratorium on taxpayer funding to abortion providers" for one year and uses some of that money to fund other community health centers.

"We have taken many votes to preserve health care choices and protect precious tax dollars in the House," she said. "If the president didn't hear the people's voices earlier, hopefully, he will through this bill."

And yet 95 percent plus of these idiots will be re-elected in November.  Awesome.

Can't wait for the veto.

Here We Go Again: Day 2

America's right-wing domestic terrorism problem continues as Oregonian reporter Les Zaitz is covering the standoff in Harney County, Oregon. Armed militia seditionists continue their standoff with the FBI after seizing the Malheur Lake federal bird sanctuary over the weekend, and plan to stay "years" if need be.

Here's a summary of key elements of this unfolding story:

The backdrop: Militiamen from several states came to Burns to protest the impending imprisonment of two Harney County ranchers. They participated in several community meetings and organized a rally and protest march that occurred without controversy on Saturday. The march lasted about an hour and involved about 300 people – a mix of militia and local residents. At the county sheriff's office, marchers threw pennies -- meant to symbolize citizens buying back their government.

The occupation: Some time after the rally, key militia leaders broke off and drove across the high desert basin south of Burns to the wildlife refuge. They said they took over the refuge headquarters, which was unoccupied for the holiday weekend. They also have blocked the access road. Indications are that this has been planned for some time. Accounts of how many militia are at the refuge range from their own claims of up to 150 to accounts from reporters at the scene that there may be no more than 15.

The refuge: Established in 1908, the refuge is one of the premier migratory bird habitats in the U.S., featuring Malheur Lake. Operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the refuge headquarters includes the main office, a museum, and homes. No workers were on duty when the occupiers arrived.

Who's involved: Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, is acting as the leader, conducting a steady stream of media interviews. Other key militia leaders have joined him, including Ryan Payne, an Army veteran from Montana involved in last year's armed standoff in Nevada with federal agents; Blaine Cooper, an Arizona militiaman who also participated in the Nevada standoff, and Jon Ritzheimer, who made headlines last year for anti-Muslim rhetoric. Days before the refuge takeover, Ritzheimer posted what struck some as a farewell video to his family.

What they want: Ammon Bundy has said in several interviews that the occupiers want federal land returned to Harney County ranchers and loggers. They say the federal government has oppressed local people with its ownership and control of land. Payne and others have insisted that under the Constitution, the federal government has no legal right to Harney County land.

Law enforcement response: During Saturday's rally, not a police officer was visible. And so far law enforcement agencies have not approached the refuge or blocked access to the territory. The FBI is in charge because the refuge is federal property. The Harney County Sheriff's Office and the Oregon State Police are engaged as well.

So yes, this is a direct follow-up to April 2014's Bundy ranch standoff, where armed seditionists faced off against law enforcement agents over Cliven Bundy refusing to pay the feds for grazing his cattle on federal land for 20 years, are now at it again.

They've planned this for a long time, I suspect.  The BLM backed off and the Bundys remained free.  They've struck again.

The question is: now what?

StupidiNews!

• Heavy flooding in the Midwest continues along the Mississippi River from Illinois into Louisiana as flood crests may not be reached in Southern states for another two weeks.
• Two are dead in a 6.7 magnitude earthquake in India's Manipur state along the country's border with Bangladesh with dozens injured.
• Saudi Arabia has cut all diplomatic ties with Iran after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was stormed over the weekend in response to the Saudi execution of a leading Shi'ite cleric.
• President Obama may journey to Cuba in an historic trip to mark normalization of relations between Washington and Havana, but further diplomatic steps need to be taken first.
• Apple will pay as much as $350 million to Italy in back taxes after a 2013 investigation found the tech giant moving revenue through its Irish affiliate to avoid payments.

Last Call For Anger Mismanagement

What pisses America off, 2016 Edition:

Nearly half of Americans are angry, and no groups are angrier than whites and Republicans, according to a new NBC News/Survey Monkey/Esquire online poll about outrage in the country.

Overall, 49 percent of Americans said they find themselves feeling angrier now about current events than they were one year ago. Whites are the angriest, with 54 percent saying they have grown more outraged over the past year. That's more than Latinos (43 percent) and African-Americans (33 percent).

Seventy-three percent of whites said they get angry at least once per day, compared with 66 percent of Hispanics and 56 percent of blacks.

The poll also found Republicans are angrier than Democrats. Sixty-one percent of Republicans say current events irk them more today than a year ago, compared to 42 percent of Democrats.

Republicans rank Congressional dysfunction and consumer fraud as the issues they get angriest about. Democrats rank police shooting unarmed black men as the issue that makes them most mad.

Poor angry white Republicans do things like "vote Trump".  Angry black Democrats do things like ask why police murder black people.

Making His Case To The People

The White House is planning a live town hall style discussion on gun violence later this week as President Obama finalizes executive actions on gun control.

The hourlong event, which will be held at George Mason University outside of Washington, will be televised on CNN beginning at 8 p.m. It will come just days after Mr. Obama meets with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch on Monday to discuss what executive actions the president can take to curb gun violence.

In the wake of the terror attacks in Paris that killed 130 people on Nov. 13, and the shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., that killed 14 more on Dec. 2, Mr. Obama’s initial response emphasized the need for gun restrictions. The administration soon realized, however, that this message was failing to reassure many Americans that the president was focused enough on the Islamic State, the extremist group that inspired the attacks. Sales of guns surged in the aftermath of the San Bernardino attack as some Americans sought protection against the threat from Islamic extremism.

So, through much of December, Mr. Obama engaged in a series of public events to convince the country that his administration was doing everything it could to battle the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

This week, he will once again try to press for more gun restrictions.

“It would be better for our security if it was harder for terrorists to purchase very powerful weapons,” Ben Rhodes, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said in a briefing for reporters in Hawaii on Saturday. “At a certain point, violence begets more violence.”

You know, like in Oregon.

Sunday Long Read: The War Of The Yellow Elder

Two billionaire neighbors in the most exclusive gated community in the Bahamas have waged an eight-year war on each other over the driveway road they share, and if there really is a God, a hurricane will come along and solve everyone's problems.

Peter Nygard is a hard-partying retail tycoon, whose estate is fit for a Mayan emperor. Louis Bacon is a buttoned-up hedge-fund king, whose passion is conservation. Both are locked in an eight-year legal war with each other that has turned each man’s paradise into hell.

The whole thing began over a puddle in a driveway.

The two men are next-door neighbors in Lyford Cay, a gated community on New Providence, an island in the Bahamas, and for years it had been a peaceful adjacency. Because both of them happen to be billionaires, it is a picturesque driveway, lined by casuarina trees and triple Alexander palms, 200 feet north of a stunning body of water known as Clifton Bay and 100 feet south of an even more stunning vista upon the Atlantic Ocean.

It is less a driveway than a road—but also a portion of road that is shared by both neighbors and nobody else, owing to how it cuts right through one man’s property and ends at the other man’s, which occupies the westernmost tip of the island. And we’re talking about a land of eight-figure beachfront properties, where the houses are very close to each other—where one man’s dining room is only about 200 feet from the other’s revolving acrylic discotheque floor and the glass walls that enclose it with a steady cascade of water.

An “easement” is what the driveway’s creator, the developer E. P. Taylor, a Canadian brewing tycoon, termed this shared passage when he established Lyford Cay in 1955. (The road itself he saw fit to name E. P. Taylor Drive.) But just as one man’s driveway is another man’s easement, one neighbor’s cocktail party is another’s sleepless night due to the fact that there are 2,000 Bahamians—plus a lot of young women from islands throughout the Atlantic, not to mention Europe—whooping it up at the topless bacchanal next door. And one man’s overflow of parked cars along the driveway on that sleepless neighbor’s side of the property line is another man’s reason to have the section of the driveway that cuts through his property re-graded and rebuilt, adding a dip and tall flagstone walls on either side, leaving no shoulder space for anybody to ever conceivably think of parking there, while also screening the driveway from view.

The dip created a drainage problem when it rained: the puddling. “It was smelly. And it had mosquitoes. And in order to come to our place you had to go and wear rubber boots to come and knock on our door,” says Peter Nygard, a Canadian manufacturer of women’s wear and the neighbor at the end of the road who threw the parties. In a court filing, he referred to it as “a toilet drain.”

“Nygard likes the idea that people think they’re going to a separate island when they go to his place,” says Louis Bacon, a titan of New York finance and the neighbor who constructed the strategic no-parking zone. “Now it kind of looks like what the English call a ha-ha: the road drops and it feels more private. It’s a better entrance for his guests and better for me too.”

But that was then, and this is now. And somehow, what began in 2007 with a bit of irritation over runoff has escalated to a battle royal encompassing no fewer than 16 legal actions between Nygard and Bacon and their associates, in which both sides are claiming damages in the tens of millions of dollars and lobbing allegations of activities that include vandalism, bribery, insider trading, arson, murder, destruction of the fragile seabed, and having a close association with the Ku Klux Klan.

It has reached a point where neither man, though each used to consider Lyford Cay his rightful home, spends much time there anymore. Nygard, unable to obtain government permits to rebuild his six-acre, Mayan-inspired compound after an electrical fire in 2009 demolished most of the structures—including the 32,000-square-foot “grand hall,” with its 100,000-pound glass ceiling—has been left to live out of his study when he does visit, and has stopped throwing parties altogether. He blames the man next door for all of it, citing a string of environmental-degradation suits that Bacon has filed against him in court.

Bacon hasn’t set foot in the Bahamas in more than a year, claiming it would put his personal safety at risk. In January 2015, he leveled a $100 million defamation complaint against Nygard in New York, where both men’s businesses are headquartered. Nygard, the suit alleges, has been the “ringleader” behind a vast multi-media smear campaign—TV and radio ads purchased, Web sites created, videos doctored, T-shirts printed, and even “hate rallies” staged with parades through Nassau—all in the name of labeling Bacon a racist, a thief, and a “terrorist,” and bearing messages such as BACON GO HOME.

Nygard filed a counterclaim and tells anybody who will listen that Bacon is trying to destroy him out of a simple desire to take over his property, claiming that some years ago—Nygard can’t recall when—a real-estate agent came to his house on Bacon’s behalf and offered $100 million for the place. When he turned him down, the agent replied that Bacon would get the property “one way or another,” Nygard claims, adding that he doesn’t know the man’s name and can’t remember where he worked, “because it was such a joke to me.” Even so, he says, he took it as a threat. (Bacon has said he made no such offer and was never interested in acquiring Nygard’s land.)

Nygard vows he will never sell and says that he has never met anybody “that smart, that competitive, in my life. He reminds me of Hitler.”

“Peter Pinocchio,” Bacon calls Nygard in an open letter he published in the Bahamas Tribune, noting his habit of “playing footsie with the truth.”

And so on.

Money can't buy happiness, and it certainly can't buy common sense, decency or a conscience.  Meanwhile, these two clods have managed to destroy a nice chunk of Lyford Cay, and you would think somebody would do something about it.

Alas, the super wealthy in the new Gilded Age wage wars over puddles.

Meh, the rest of us aren't much better, we just have significantly fewer resources, you know.

Here We Go Again

I wake up this morning to see that 2016 is starting off where 2015 left off: the armed Gunmerica crowd and our old friend the Bundy Ranch crew are using force to accomplish goals.  You know, domestic terrorism by armed traitors.

The Bundy family of Nevada joined with hard-core militiamen Saturday to take over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, vowing to occupy the remote federal outpost 30 miles southeast of Burns for years.

The occupation came shortly after an estimated 300 marchers — militia and local citizens both — paraded through Burns to protest the prosecution of two Harney County ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, who are to report to prison on Monday.

Among the occupiers is Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, and two of his brothers. Militia members at the refuge claimed they had as many as 100 supporters with them. The refuge, federal property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was closed and unoccupied for the holiday weekend.

In phone interviews from inside the occupied building Saturday night, Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan Bundy, said they are not looking to hurt anyone. But they would not rule out violence if police tried to remove them, they said.

"The facility has been the tool to do all the tyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds," Ammon Bundy said.

"We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," he added. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."

This ended badly 23 years ago in Waco.  How will it end this time?

Neither man would say how many people are in the building or whether they are armed. Ryan Bundy said there were no hostages, but the group is demanding that the Hammonds be released and the federal government relinquish control of the Malheur National Forest.

He said many would be willing to fight — and die, if necessary — to defend what they see as constitutionally protected rights for states, counties and individuals to manage local lands.

"The best possible outcome is that the ranchers that have been kicked out of the area, then they will come back and reclaim their land, and the wildlife refuge will be shut down forever and the federal government will relinquish such control," he said. "What we're doing is not rebellious. What we're doing is in accordance with the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land."

So how is this not a terrorist attack on US soil versus the US government?  Oh yeah, these guys are white, so that makes them "armed protesters" or something, right?  With guns.  Who have taken over a federal building and are demanding the government give up land?

C'mon.  Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter protesters who are unarmed get rounded up and tear gassed by cops in SWAT and military gear.  In Oregon?  "Well, gosh, maybe we should leave them alone."

Amazing.

Everyone Was Wrong In 2015

Was there a worse year for the Village punditry in recent memory than 2015?  They were wrong about virtually everything in politics last year, as Politico reminds us.

Forecasting political trends is almost an American pastime. So is getting those forecasts woefully wrong. Politico Magazine has published an annual worst political predictions list twice before, but we’ve never had quite the fodder that we did this year. In the 2016 presidential race, one presumed front-runner after another fell to the bottom of the polls; a reality TV star is currently as admired as the pope; and a socialist and a retired neurosurgeon gained massive followings. In Washington, a man who once wanted to give his “undivided attention” to the Ways and Means Committee is now speaker of the House; and a president about to enter his final year and facing a hostile Congress reached deals on climate change, Iran’s nuclear program and international trade. Of course, we can’t blame political pundits for being wrong in a year so full of surprises; but that won’t stop us from having some fun calling them out. Herewith, the political predictions gone wrong in 2015.

Among the stinkers: That Joe Biden, Liz Warren, and Mitt Romney would join the 2016 race, and that Trump would drop out, and that Scott Walker was going to win the nomination.  These were major predictions that pretty much all the big names in politics got wrong in 2015.

These same voices are telling us now that the GOP will come down to a Cruz-Rubio fight, and the victor will easily beat Hillary.

Oh, and let's not forget the dismal state of political polling in general in 2015, too.  The pollsters were so badly wrong here in Kentucky about Jack Conway's five point lead (that was only wrong by 14 points!) that they fired the polling outfit...the same one that predicted the 2014 Mitch McConnell-Alison Grimes race would be close instead of a 16-point blowout.

The one thing that remains constant is how terribly wrong the Beltway types are, and yet people continue to listen to them.

He's Got A Cannon For An Arm

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott's response to President Obama's meager suggestion that people who sell guns as a business actually be subject to existing gun dealer rules?

Obama wants to impose more gun control. My response.#? COME & TAKE IT @NRA #tcot #PJNET https://t.co/RUPbcev5jY pic.twitter.com/8VNwisj966

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) January 1, 2016

"Durr hurr whatcha gonna do stoopid libturd?"

After all, Texas is now the among the gun-friendliest states in the nation.

Texas is so gun-friendly that it is easier to get into the Capitol in Austin with a firearm than without one — licensed, gun-carrying lawmakers and members of the public have their own no-wait security lane, and the unarmed masses have to stand in line and slog through the metal detectors.

But on Friday, gun rights throughout the state expanded still more, as a new law took effect that allows certain Texans to wear their handguns in holsters on their hips — or in shoulder holsters, Dirty Harry-style — openly displaying the fact that they are armed as they work, shop, dine and go about their day.

The so-called open-carry law has set off a long-simmering debate over the limits of the Texas gun culture and has given gun rights advocates a hard-fought victory after they pushed for the expansion for years. Members of the pro-gun group Open Carry Texas were to gather at noon Friday on the south steps of the Capitol for a gun-on-their-hips celebration before walking down Congress Avenue. Other groups plan to display their weaponry at events in Houston, Dallas and other cities.

“I think most people can expect Friday to be just like Thursday,” said C. J. Grisham, 41, a retired Army sergeant who formed Open Carry Texas in 2013. He says he plans to carry two semiautomatic pistols at the Capitol rally, and gave his 13-year-old daughter a pink .22-caliber rifle for her 12th birthday. “I think everybody is overreacting.”

 Right now that's 4% of Texas's population with open carry privileges.  No doubt the goal is more.

Well, more of certain people, anyway.

Open-carry supporters say more public weapons will help deter would-be criminals. Opponents say that police officers will have a hard time separating the good guys from the bad, and that there is no evidence that open-carry states are safer.

The change directly affects only a small fraction of Texans — 925,000 men and women with active state-issued licenses to carry a concealed firearm, close to 4 percent of the state’s 27.4 million residents. Only those with a concealed-handgun permit are allowed to open carry, and all of them must submit their fingerprints and pass a criminal background check.

Texans do not need a state license to buy a handgun but must meet the federal qualifications. If Texas gun owners want to carry their handguns outside their home, they must apply for a license through the Texas Department of Public Safety, be at least 21 and complete training courses and a written examination.

Cops may be concerned, but Texas makes 45 states with open handgun carry.  And yet for some reason that doesn't include large numbers of African-American or Latino folks.

Twenty years after the Brady Bill passed, America is awash in more guns than people.

That's all you need to know about the state of gun control in America.

Both Sides Do It, 2016 Version

Boy, that didn't take long, did it?  NY Times econ writer Neil Irwin:

Suppose it is dinnertime, and the phone rings. It is a polite survey taker with a simple question for you: How is the economy doing? 

You might answer the question based upon the news stories you’ve seen recently about the latest unemployment rate, or perhaps based on anecdotal observations, such as whether your long-jobless cousin has had any luck finding work. 

But a wide range of academic work suggests a different factor that is likely to shape your answer: whether the current occupant of the White House is of your preferred political party.

With you so far.

Did unemployment get better or worse during Ronald Reagan’s presidency? In a 1988 survey, some 80 percent of dedicated Republicans accurately said it had improved, compared with 30 percent of loyal Democrats. In the 1990s, the pattern reversed on a range of factual questions about economic and fiscal issues. In a 1997 survey, for example, Republicans were far less likely than Democrats to acknowledge that the budget deficit had declined during the Bill Clinton administration.

OK, sure, "facts don't matter" has been with us for some time now.

As an economics writer, I see the same thing anecdotally. When I wrote articles recently about the unemployment rate’s dip to 5 percent, I received vehement responses from conservatives convinced that the Obama administration was cooking the numbers. They were not so different from responses I received from liberals when the jobless rate was at that level in 2005, during the George W. Bush administration.

I see.

So the part where we discovered that the Bush administration and Alan Greenspan really were cooking the books on that 5% unemployment, the economy collapsed, and Obama inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression never happened, because Both Sides Do It.

We're actively comparing a near global economic collapse of the Bush economy to the recovery of the Obama years, hamstrung as it was by Republicans who wanted the economy to stay bad so they could win the White House back.

OK, sure Neil.  Both sides, right?

The Next One Out Of The Clown Car-son

With Pataki (who?) gone, looks like the next Republican voted off the island will be Dr. Godwin as his campaign is coming apart at the seams.

Ben Carson’s top aides have resigned, casting the retired neurosurgeon’s campaign into chaos just a month before the Iowa caucuses.


Carson’s campaign manager Barry Bennett and communications director Doug Watts announced Thursday they will leave the team.

In an exit interview with The Hill, Bennett blamed Carson’s close friend and adviser Armstrong Williams for a handful of political missteps and accused him of railroading the retired neurosurgeon’s White House bid.“I called Ben this morning…and explained to him the root of the problem is that you told me Armstrong is not involved in the campaign but he clearly is,” Bennett said. “My frustration level is boiling over so I told him I think it’s best that I leave."

Bennett said he believes “a lot more” staffers will follow him out the door and predicted the campaign team will be “decimated.”

Williams does not have an official role with the campaign, but he’s a longtime friend of Carson’s and has his ear on everything from politics to business deals to life.

Williams, who often sets up media interviews for Carson without the campaign’s knowledge, and the top advisers have been on a collision course for some time.

Things came to a head last week when Williams arranged for several media outlets to interview Carson at his Maryland home, and Carson openly mused about a staff shake-up.

The interviews caught the campaign off guard and infuriated Carson’s top aides.

“I’ve been in politics 30 years and don’t know anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to have your candidate go on national TV and announce they’re taking charge of the campaign,” said Bennett. “That’s the most obscure idea I've ever heard.”

No, the most obscure idea would be "The Pyramids of Giza were built to store grain".

Anyhow, with Carson self-destructing in the polls, on the airwaves and on the ground, 2016 looks to be starting off with a "meh" for Team Ben.

Happy 2016, doc.  Now go back to hawking your crappy book, please.