Last Call For Marco Rubio, Moderate

Hey, bomb-throwing, fire-starting, completely irresponsible rhetoric works for Ted Cruz.  It seems Marco Rubio wants in on some of that Obama Derangement Syndrome too.  Greg Sargent:

Along these lines, a new Rubio quote is generating some chatter this morning, and it’s worth a look, because it says a lot about why we’re heading into another series of crises this fall. Asked to respond to Republicans who say the push to defund Obamacare is misguided, Rubio said:

“All I’m saying is that you cannot say you are against Obamacare if you are willing to vote for a law that funds it. If you’re willing to fund this thing, you can’t possibly say you’re against it.”

This comes after Rubio noted the other day that if the government ultimately gets shut down over the GOP drive to defund Obamacare, it will be the fault of the President for insisting that his law get funded.

Marco Rubio, moderate Republican and party savior.  Remember when he was going to get immigration reform through Congress and use that bi-partisan "uniter" cred to get into the White House in 2016?  If even Rubio believes there's nothing left to lose at this point from breaking the system, will the GOP do it and hope for a win?

The problem is that Republican leaders are under increasing pressure to approach this fall’s battles over funding the government with this as their guiding idea. Republican leaders appear to be trying to dissuade lawmakers from forcing a government shutdown over Obamacare funding, but they are approaching it so tentatively that there is now cause for genuine concern that a shutdown may come to pass. Meanwhile, there are no signs that GOP officials such as Rubio — and Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, and a sizable bloc of diehards in the House — intend to back off their efforts to rally the base behind the total destruction of Obamacare (which is never going to happen) as the only acceptable outcome in this fall’s epic confrontation.

So at this point, if it really is the end of Obamacare or a government shutdown, who wins?

I can tell you who loses:  all of us.

Ghost In The (Campaign) Machine

Mitch McConnell, call your office.  You've got a ghost problem.

Officials with a Kentucky super PAC supporting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blame a computer error for a $100,000 contribution that appeared more than a month after the donor died. Meanwhile, the Libertarian Party filed a federal lawsuit to lift limits on posthumous donations.

“This is pure free speech,” an attorney for the Libertarian party, Alan Gura told USA Today. “A dead person can’t corrupt someone.”

Oh this is just too much.

The donation was initially filed with the Federal Election Commission with a June 3 date, only Perry actually died on April 13. The group’s treasurer, Caleb Crosby, told the Louisville Courier-Journal on July 31 that the check for Perry’s contribution was actually received on April 12, and was subsequently corrected with federal officials.

But the donation was quickly questioned by an advisor for Alison Lundergan Grimes, McConnell’s Democratic challenger in his re-election bid.

“This raises a lot of questions that Kentucky voters deserve answers to,” Jonathan Hurst told the Courier-Journal. “The report appears to be as dishonest as their television ads.”

No kidding. Voting when you're dead, well that requires billions of dollars in new regulations and hoops for voters to jump through.  Regulating dead people donating money to Republican SuperPACs on the other hand, well why do you hate free speech, commie?

Who ya gonna call, Mitch?

Two All Vat-Grown Patties...

The first taste test of British lab-grown beef was...interesting.  From a clinical perspective, anyway.

The world's first laboratory-grown beef burger was flipped out of a petri dish and into a frying pan on Monday, with food tasters declaring it tasted "close to meat".

Grown in-vitro from cattle stem cells at a cost of 250,000 euros ($332,000), the burger was cooked and eaten in front of television cameras to gain the greatest media coverage for the culmination of a five-year science experiment.

Resembling a standard circular-shaped red meat patty, it was created by knitting together 20,000 strands of laboratory-grown protein, combined with other ingredients normally used in burgers, such as salt, breadcrumbs and egg powder. Red beet juice and saffron were added to give it color.

The two food tasters were reserved in their judgment, perhaps keen not to offend their host at the London event, noting the burger's "absence of fat".

Pressed for a more detailed description of the flavor, food writer Josh Schonwald said the cultured beef had an "animal protein cake" like quality to it, adding that he would like to try it with some of the extras often served with traditional burgers - salt, pepper, ketchup and jalapenos.

Even the scientist behind the burger's creation, vascular biologist Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, was relatively muted in his praise of its flavor.

"It's a very good start," he told the hundreds of reporters who had gathered to watch the meat being cooked and served.

At some point if we can just get the process down to, you know, not costing several hundred thousand dollars, maybe we can dispense with the whole "slaughtering of animals for their tasty, tasty meat" part and go straight to the good stuff.

But hey, even McDonald's had to start somewhere.  I'm betting in your lifetime we'll have commercially available grown meat (hopefully without the obscene amounts of anti-biotics, steroids, growth hormone, and small crates for animals.)

Thank the stars for rooster sauce and pickles, that'll work on anything.  Even lab meat.

StupidiNews!

• The court martial of Army Maj. Nadal Hasan, accused of killing 13 and injuring 32 in a shootout at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009, gets underway today with Hasan representing himself.
• The US State Department is evacuating non-essential personnel and advising Americans to specifically leave Yemen immediately due to the potential for an imminent terror attack.
• Texas Dem State Sen. Wendy Davis, whose filibuster over abortion six weeks ago brought her sudden national fame, says she is close to making a decision about running for governor.
• Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will be the new owner of the Washington Post, buying the newspaper for a quarter of a billion dollars.
• A class-action suit against Indian IT firm Infosys claims that the global company discriminates against "stupid Americans" when hiring.