Last Call For An Historic Mountain Of Trouble

President Obama is doing the right thing here, and the GOP is sure to show their true colors over him backing Alaska's bid to finally rename Mt. McKinley to Denali.

President Obama on Monday will announce a plan to rename Alaska’s Mount McKinley to Denali, the name that nearby natives have long used.By taking action to officially name the 20,000-foot peak Denali, Obama will take the Alaskan Natives side in a dispute that has stretched on for more than a century.

“Generally believed to be central to the Athabascan creation story, Denali is a site of significant cultural importance to many Alaska Natives,” the White House said in a Sunday fact sheet. “The name ‘Denali’ has been used for many years and is widely used across the state today.”

Alaska first formally requested the change in 1975.

It has often been a bipartisan legislative priority among Alaska’s congressional delegation to rename the mountain. Lisa Murkowski (R), the state’s senior senator and chairwoman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is responsible for the matter, has sponsored legislation in every session of Congress to do so since taking her seat.

At a hearing about the Denali bill in June, Murkowski said renaming the mountain “seems a fitting gesture and an appropriate way to honor the culture and history of Alaska Natives.”

“There is no need for this name confusion and controversy to continue,” she said.

He has the backing of both GOP senators in Alaska.  And again, this is something that the state of Alaska has been trying to get done for 40 years now, it's nothing new.

But Republicans in Ohio, where President McKinley was from, aren't going to stand for this of course.

"There is a reason President McKinley's name has served atop the highest peak in North America for more than 100 years, and that is because it is a testament to his great legacy," Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement issued Sunday night.

"I'm deeply disappointed in this decision," Boehner said after noting that McKinley served in the Army during the Civil War before representing Ohio in Congress and as governor. 

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said in a statement posted to social media that he was similarly "disappointed" in the decision to rename the mountain long named after "a proud Ohioan." 

"The naming of the mountain has been a topic of discussion in Congress for many years. This decision by the Administration is yet another example of the President going around Congress," Portman said. 

"I now urge the Administration to work with me to find alternative ways to preserve McKinley's legacy somewhere else in the national park that once bore his name," Portman added. 

"This political stunt is insulting to all Ohioans, and I will be working with the House Committee on Natural Resources to determine what can be done to prevent this action," Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio)said in a statement.

But it's going to be a fight, and we all know the GOP can't resist picking a fight with the President.  Dayton Rep. Mike Turner is ready to lead the charge.

"The Ohio delegation certainly didn't hear about this from the president," he said. "I’m certain he didn’t notify President McKinley’s descendants, who find this outrageous. Clearly this is a president who is not concerned with the deliberative process."

Turner would correct that by any means necessary. "William McKinley was assassinated in September 1901," he said. "We have an anniversary coming up when Congress returns from the recess. At that time I plan to go to the House floor to commemorate our assassinated president, and to begin part of the congressional effort for legislative action."

That could take many forms. Turner was ready to craft a 'sense of Congress' resolution, to write a standalone bill, to attach the un-re-naming of Denali to must-pass legislation. Asked if he would ask the House to pursue legal action over the president's move, he did not say no.

"There are a number of avenues, all of which can be pursued," he said. "The question is whether the president even has the authority to do this."

There is also the little matter of the fact that Alaska's native peoples have been asking for this for four decades, and until now, nobody's really paid attention other than President Obama.  Ohio has more electoral votes than Alaska, you see, and is far more important politically.

But as I said earlier, President Obama did the right thing here.  With Denali being in a national park, and the Secretary of the Interior having pretty clear jurisdiction over geographical names by federal law, I'm pretty sure there's nothing Orange Julius and his crew can do.

Well, short of the next Republican president naming it back.  Go for it, Ohio Republicans.

All Demagogues Matter

Glenn Beck reportedly drew 20,000 for his "All Lives Matter" rally in Alabama on Sunday, proving once again that whenever the black community says something, we have to be corrected by a "concerned" white guy.

Led by conservative activist and talk show host Glenn Beck, more than 20,000 people chanting "All Lives Matter" marched the historic civil rights route from Kelly Ingram Park to Birmingham City Hall this morning.

"It's about taking our church out in the streets," Beck said. He said marchers came from as far away as China, Dubai and the Netherlands.

Actor Chuck Norris, a conservative activist known for his martial arts, action movies and TV show "Walker, Texas Ranger," marched about two rows behind Beck. Alveda King, a niece of civil rights activist the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., marched in the front row. Bishop Jim Lowe, pastor of the predominantly black Guiding Light Church in Birmingham, co-organized the march with Beck and marched with him at the front. As a child, Lowe attended Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where the march started, a headquarters church for the civil rights movement in Birmingham. Lowe and his sisters were in the church when a KKK bomb blew up the church and killed four little girls on Sept. 15, 1963.

"Love is the answer," Lowe said as he marched. "God is the answer."

Some Birmingham police officers said the crowd could have been as large as 25,000 to 30,000. It may have been the largest march in Birmingham since the civil rights marches of 1963.

It's a march for white people to tell black people what they are doing wrong, which is apparently not trusting white people enough.  By the way, Glenn Beck really cares about the black community.

The march was part of Beck's "Never Again is Now" campaign to raise awareness and funds to aid persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

Not so much us black people being killed in the US.  They're Christian too, but hey, why would Beck raise funds and awareness for us?

Wearing a Yankees cap, Steve Titus of Chicago, 63, and his wife, Terri, 62, wore red, white and blue clothing.

"As chaotic as our country is right now, the history of this city will help us to unify, racially and spiritually," Titus said. "It's really in the spirit and words of Martin Luther King Jr."

"The United States has really become divided," Terri Titus said. "We want life for everybody. How does it feel to have a movement start in your town? It's happened again."

Yay white people co-opting the black civil rights struggle for their own purposes, with Beck replacing King.  I'll tell you what, this is some prime BS right here.

And it's only going to get worse.

A Tale Of Two Cincies

The Urban League of Southwestern Ohio's latest "State of Black Cincinnati" report is out today, and the numbers are very grim.  Twenty years after the Urban League first looked at it, The Queen City remains one of the most shockingly unequal places in the US to live if you're black and economically things have only gotten worse.

The numbers speak for themselves. 

In 1995, 15.8 percent of blacks living in Greater Cincinnati were unemployed. That number is now around 17.1 percent. 

The poverty rate for blacks has also headed in the wrong direction – 34 percent to 35.7 percent today. 

When it comes to median household income in the region, blacks earned 49 cents for every dollar white households earned in 1995. Today that figure is worse: just 42 cents for every dollar. 

To underscore the impact on the local economy, consider this: If incomes for blacks had just kept pace with inflation, an additional $200 million in earnings would be available for families, an Enquirer analysis shows. If incomes doubled compared to 20 years ago, local black families would have nearly $2 billion in additional income. 

That “missing” money could have been invested or used to buy homes. It could have been spent at stores to support local jobs. It could have helped build the region’s tax base. 

And that’s just looking at one issue covered in a new report that paints a picture of stunning disparities in Greater Cincinnati from outcomes in the criminal justice system to child poverty. 

The Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio’s 164-page report, to be released Monday, echoes a State of Black Cincinnati report that the Avondale-based nonprofit organization released 20 years ago. 

There have been two decades of discussions, well-intended programs and energy spent trying to fix the problems. Donna Jones Baker, president and CEO of the local Urban League, wonders “why are we still asking the same questions and why are we getting the same answers?”

The Clinton and Bush era economic booms passed Black Cincinnati by.  When the economy crapped out in 2008, it never recovered.  The figures are heartbreaking: three out of four black children under six live in a family below the poverty line.  Three out of four.  This, despite the fact that half of Cincinnati's population is black.  Life expectancy here a full ten years less for black men than white men.  Ten full years.

But of Greater Cincinnati's more than two million residents, only 12% are black.  I know I talk about the streetcar and Mayor Cranley and the recent Sam DuBose shooting case on this blog, but even I was unaware that things were actually considerably worse than 20 years ago, although it's not surprising.  But it sure seems like that Cincinnati's growth and success, part of the reason I moved here, passed a lot of people by.

That's got to change.

StupidiNews!

• Legendary film director Wes Craven has died at age 76 of brain cancer, he was best known for the "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream" film franchises.
• President Obama will become the first US president to visit the Arctic Circle as he makes a three-day trip to Alaska to address a climate change conference and meet with native Alaskans.
• Japan is shifting military defense resources away from its northern borders with Russia to islands in the south facing China as disagreements over uninhabited disputed islands continue.
• At least 56 people have been killed by Boko Haram militants in a remote Nigerian village, attacking on horseback and riding down fleeing victims. 
• Electric automaker Tesla has struck a deal with Mexico to mine lithium for the company's planned battery "gigafactory" in Nevada.

Last Call For Lies, Dirty Lies, And Cheney Lies

If there's one person who lacks any and all reliability and credibility on US foreign policy matters, it's former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is desperately trying to remain relevant by directly attacking President Obama's nuclear deal on Iran.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney launched a broad attack against President Barack Obama's foreign policy in an excerpt of a forthcoming book that was published in The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Both Cheneys accused Obama of lying about the Iran nuclear deal and said that the agreement would lead to the first use of a nuclear weapon since 1945.

"Nearly everything the president has told us about his Iranian agreement is false. He has said it will prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, but it will actually facilitate and legitimize an Iranian nuclear arsenal," they wrote. "The Obama agreement will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East and, more than likely, the first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

The Obama administration has aggressively defended the deal, saying that it cuts off all pathways to a nuclear bomb. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that a better deal simply does not exist.

The Cheneys also blamed the rise of terrorist groups like ISIS on the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011 -- a talking point that Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bushhas also used.

"He has abandoned Iraq, leaving a vacuum that is being tragically and ominously filled by our enemies. He is on course to forsake Afghanistan as well," the Cheneys wrote.

This would be laughable if this wasn't the same line of "mushroom cloud" garbage that was fed to the American people about Iraq, which caused us to invade and cost trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of civilian lives, and thousands of American soldiers.  Now he's saying the same thing about Iran.  The guy should be laughed out of the room.

Instead he's in the Wall Street Journal and on a book tour.

Amazing.  Even with the hindsight of the Iraq disaster, he's still out there pitching the same outright lies and of all things, accusing the President of misleading the American people.  This guy.

Why isn't he in prison?

I know, I know, Obama said we need to look forward.  But this is one time I wish the guy would have been vindictive as hell and put him and his boss in the slammer.

It's A Movement, Alright

Donald Trump is winning the Mad As Hell White Guy vote by pretty large margins.  Things went pretty well for middle-class white guys eight years ago, and an America where the rest of us are starting the catch up scares the hell out of them.

No wonder they're flocking to the GOP id.

Campaigning in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump on Saturday paid homage to his supporters — claiming they are a part of “a movement” and using colorful language to beg for their support.

“This is a movement,” said Trump, who often speaks about himself in campaign appearances. “I don’t want it to be about me. This is about common sense. It’s about doing the right thing.”

Trump also paid tribute to his setting, a country music hotbed and insisted there needed to be a greater emphasis on "law and order." And, as has become customary, he took shots at Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who is a rival for the Republican nomination.

Beyond the bragging, Trump’s appearance represented something more tangible: evidence of a campaign that has grown more tactically serious as it wears on.

His speech — full, as ever, with a mix of taunts and asides — was in front of the Presidential Presence Convention of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies. The group that describes itself as “a grassroots movement of Republicans that seeks to restore the conservative principles of the Goldwater / Reagan Republicans.”

And those tactics are as old as time.  Blame those people for everything.

Mixed in with Trump’s talk of a “silent majority” was a call for “law and order.” He decried the rioting that took place in Baltimore in April in response to the death of a young black man in police custody.

“The police were not allowed to protect people,” said Trump. “We have to be tough. We have to be smart … I know cities where police are afraid to even talk to people.”

Trump said he has seen policing-related incidents that are “disgusting” and “horrible,” an apparent reference to the deaths of unarmed black Americans at the hands of police officers that have received significant attention over the last year. 

But he said that “99.9 percent” of what police do is good. “The problem is the good work doesn’t get shown on television,” he said.

And blame the media for giving those people a voice.

No Trump campaign stop is complete without a few shots at the media. At one point, as Trump was criticizing CNN’s coverage of a fundraiser he held on Friday — “We had this incredible event and they destroyed it,” he said — a supporter got his attention by shouting about “the criminal media.”

Trump used it as an opportunity to again emphasize the importance of his supporters. He attributed his continued lead in Republican primary polls to the intelligence of his supporters.

“The reason is people in this country are smart. They don’t believe a lot of what they see in the media.”

Everybody's your enemy except for you and me friends, so what are you going to help me do to them in the elections, so we can put those people in their place?

Who do you trust?  Those people or the billionaire that you so desperately want to be?

He's the perfect Republican candidate for 2015 and his path to win is pretty clear.  Romney got 59% of the white vote in 2012 and lost.  At 61% he would have been a lot more competitive.  At 63% he would have won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. At 65% he would have been president, and that margin only was necessary because of record turnout among black voters.

The odds of Trump getting that percentage overall is extremely low.

But if he gets it, he wins.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Needs To Go

Yesterday I asked how Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz remained in charge of the DNC after making it pretty clear her loyalties were to Hillary Clinton and losing House seats stupidly.  Today I'm convinced more than ever that it's time for her to resign as chair of the DNC if this is true.

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz prevented consideration of a resolution at the party’s summer meeting here that praised President Obama and offered backing for the nuclear agreement with Iran, according to knowledgeable Democrats.

The resolution was drafted with the intention of putting the national committee on record in support of the agreement as Congress prepares to take up the issue when members return from their August recess.

As a fallback, James Zogby, the co-chair of the Resolutions Committee, led a move to prepare a letter of support for the president and the Iran agreement that eventually gained signatures from a sizable majority of the members of the national committee. Zogby said Saturday that, in the end, this produced a satisfactory outcome.

“We wanted to show support for the president,” he said. “We found that the best way to show support was a letter that members would sign on to, and the overwhelming majority of DNC members signed onto the letter. This is the President Obama we elected in 2008 who said, ‘I choose diplomacy over conflict,’ and he did it.”

A party spokeswoman and said procedural issues prevented the proposed resolution from being considered. She did not directly address Wasserman Schultz’s role in the decision-making. Other Democrats said that it was congresswoman’s direct opposition that blocked its consideration.

Schultz has been an unmitigated disaster as DNC chair, with the Democrats losing the House and Senate under her tenure and giving Republicans that largest margin in the House in three generations. Now she sandbags the President on Iran?

Unacceptable.  She's clearly more afraid of AIPAC than Democrats, and that alone is a serious problem.  But when that turns into direct action against the President of her own party and his signature foreign policy achievment, she can't be shown the door quickly enough.

I'm tired of her losing.  I'm tired of her running against Barack Obama and losing to Tea Party Republicans.  I'm tired of her idiocy.

She needs to go.

Sunday Long Read: Structured To Deceive

Just in case you still had belief in humanity, Washington Post reporter Terrence McCoy brings us this story of how the structured settlement industry has been ripping off inner-city Baltimore black families over lead poisoning insurance payments.

The letter arrived in April last year, a mishmash of strange numbers and words. This at first did not alarm Rose. Most letters are that way for her — frustrating puzzles she can’t solve. Rose, who can scarcely read or write, calls herself a “lead kid.” Her childhood home, where lead paint chips blanketed her bedsheets like snowflakes, “affected me really bad,” she says. “In everything I do.” 

She says she can’t work a professional job. She can’t live alone. And, she says, she surely couldn’t understand this letter. 

So on that April day, the 20-year-old says she asked her mom to give it a look. Her mother glanced at the words, then back at her daughter. “What does this mean all of your payments were sold to a third party?” her mother recalls saying. 

The distraught woman said the letter, written by her insurance company, referred to Rose’s lead checks. The family had settled a lead-paint lawsuit against one Baltimore slumlord in 2007, granting Rose a monthly check of nearly $1,000, with yearly increases. Those payments were guaranteed for 35 years. 

“It’s been sold?” Rose asked, memories soon flashing. 

She remembered a nice, white man. He had called her one day on the telephone months after she’d squeaked through high school with a “one-point something” grade-point average. His name was Brendan, though she said he never mentioned his last name. He told her she could make some fast money. He told her he worked for a local company named Access Funding. He talked to her as a friend. 

Rose, who court records say suffers from “irreversible brain damage,” didn’t have a lot of friends. She didn’t trust many people. Growing up off North Avenue in West Baltimore, she said she’s seen people killed. 

But Brendan was different. He bought her a fancy meal at Longhorn Steakhouse, she said, and guaranteed a vacation for the family. He seemed like a gentleman, someone she said she could trust . 

One day soon after, a notary arrived at her house and slid her a 12-page “purchase” agreement. Rose was alone. But she wasn’t worried. She said she spoke to a lawyer named Charles E. Smith on the phone about the contract. She felt confident in what it stated. She was selling some checks in the distant future for some quick money, right? 

The reality, however, was substantially different. Rose sold everything to Access Funding — 420 monthly lead checks between 2017 and 2052. They amounted to a total of nearly $574,000 and had a present value of roughly $338,000. 

In return, Access Funding paid her less than $63,000.

It's bad enough that a generation of poor black kids grew up in the Baltimore projects with lead paint and brain damage.  It's bad enough that these were the poorest parts of a city crushed by crime and poverty.  No, we have people whose job it is to talk people like Rose out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution in order to profit off of such horrendous misery, and the fact is it's all perfectly legal.

Because you can't be just poor and black and screwed for the rest of your life because of lead paint chips, you have to be preyed upon as well.

America is beyond awful sometimes.

Last Call For Bushwhacked On The Campaign Trail

Suddenly Jeb! is looking like he can't shake the Loser! albatross hanging around his neck.

There's another sign — if you needed one — that Jeb Bush is sucking wind in the Republican primary: Three top fundraisers from Bush's home base of Florida have left the campaign.

The particulars of the split are up for debate, according to Politico's Alex Isenstadt and Marc Caputo, who broke the news. But regardless of the proximate cause, it's a big deal because it suggests two larger issues for Bush's campaign: He's dug a big hole and there's concern in his own camp that he won't be able to dig his way out.

It also comes less than three months after Bush shook up his staff and installed Danny Diaz, a veteran Washington operative, as campaign manager.

In the last public national poll, conducted by Quinnipiac, Bush was tied for third place, behind Donald Trump and Ben Carson, at 7 percent. Ironically, fundraising prowess has been Bush's calling card in a campaign that was supposed to blow his rivals out of the water. Even Mitt Romney, who had to fend off a rotating set of ill-fated front-runners like Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain, enjoyed a pretty steady rise in polling. Not Bush.

The three fundraising aides left after clashing with national campaign staff, Politico reported, and it's not clear whether they will continue to have a role with Bush's Right to Rise super PAC. But what is clear is this: It's rare for three high-profile staffers to bolt a campaign they see as likely to land the candidate in the White House, and it's equally rare for a winning campaign to shed three high-profile aides.

Especially since Jeb!'s super power is superior fundraising and a war chest that dominates his foes, to see three fundraisers leave the campaign is a massive (one might even say "yooooge") admission that money isn't going to save him.

And if money can't save him, then he's got...what, exactly?

Trump continues to roll and roil over his opponents.  He's the monster unleashed and the normal rules simply don't apply anymore.

The person that hurts the most of course is Jebby.

I don't think Bush is going anywhere and will stay in the race, that's something his money does afford him.  But he's polling in single digits. like a giant loser.  And nobody likes a loser.

From The Delta To The DNC

Both Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley are furious at DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, accusing her of rigging the limited number of Democratic party primaries in order to give non-Clinton candidates as little national exposure as possible.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) believes the Democratic Party is using its limited primary debate schedule to rig the nomination process.

“I do,” Sanders reportedly responded when asked Friday whether he agrees with former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s assertion that the debate system is “rigged.”

The two Democratic presidential candidates were speaking at the summer meeting of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in Minneapolis on Friday.

“This sort of rigged process has never been attempted before,” O’Malley said in his speech earlier Friday.

The DNC has drawn criticism for scheduling only four debates before the early-primary states cast their votes, and six total throughout the election cycle.

DNC spokeswoman Holly Shulman defended the schedule, saying it will “give plenty of opportunity for the candidates to be seen side-by-side.”

“I’m sure there will be lots of other forums for the candidates to make their case to voters, and that they will make the most out of every opportunity,” Shulman said in a statement, according to The Washington Post.

On one hand, Sanders and O'Malley have a point.  The DNC is certainly doing everything it can to hold a grand coronation for Hillary.  On the other hand, Democrats have already started tuning out politics even more (2014 turnout, anyone?) and the infighting is already tiresome even 15 months before the election.

No real good answer here, frankly.  The Democrats do need a solid debate about issues and carrying on President Obama's legacy (the overwhelmingly positive parts, not so much the lousy ones) but I don't think "more debates" is automatically the answer.

We'll see.

PS, how the hell is DWS still in charge of the DNC?

Wild, Wasted West Virginia

A bit of a Sunday Long Read on Saturday, but an excellent story nonetheless from HuffPo's Mariah Blake on what DuPont has done to the town of Parkersburg, West Virginia, and it isn't a pretty sight. People like Joe and Darlene Kiger have been fighting the chemical plant giant for decades over health issues and birth defects that DuPont's factory in Parkersburg created, and despite winning a lawsuit against the company, the cleanup may never actually happen.

When I met Joe and Darlene Kiger this summer, Joe was carrying the bulging satchel of C8 papers that he refers to as his “Bible.” He takes it everywhere, even on family vacations. Because, despite winning a historic lawsuit against formidable odds, the fight is far from over. These days, Joe is pouring his energies into a new organization, Keep Your Promises, which aims to ensure that DuPont fulfills its obligations to the local community. It is proving to be a daunting mission.

Under the class-action settlement, DuPont was required to pay for a medical monitoring program to regularly screen locals for the conditions that the science panel linked to C8. The plaintiff’s attorneys wanted Brookmar to administer this program. Instead, DuPont maneuvered to have it run by Michael Rozen, then a partner at the New York law firm Feinberg Rozen, which administered the fund to settle claims arising from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Multiple Gulf Coast residents have sued Feinberg Rozen, accusing it of delaying payment for as long as possible and then offering financially desperate claimants a fraction of the money they were entitled to. 

Kiger and others believe that Rozen is deploying a similar strategy in his work for DuPont. Rozen kicked off the monitoring program with two town hall meetings at 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. on a Friday, when many people in this blue-collar community were working. Residents also say that enrollment packets are unnecessarily complicated, and that people who do manage to enroll are sometimes billed for testing that DuPont is supposed to cover. So far, few people have taken part. As of January 2015, DuPont had paid Feinberg Rozen about $9 million to administer the program, but only $50,000 had been spent on medical claims. 

Brooks believes DuPont wants the program to fail. “They poisoned the world,” he says. “A successful medical monitoring program would give us much better data on the links between this chemical and various diseases, and DuPont would have so much liability that it couldn’t possibly compensate everyone.” 

Rozen bristles at these allegations, and says that he has done his best to encourage participation. He also stresses that some of the plaintiffs have died or moved away in the decade since the settlement was reached. “The benefit that is being provided to the class is exactly what was prescribed and then some, by the parties themselves in their negotiated settlement,” he told me. 

Meanwhile, this past July, DuPont spun off its specialty chemicals division into a separate company called Chemours. The new enterprise will assume the liability for DuPont’s most polluted sites, including Washington Works—but it will only have one-quarter of DuPont’s revenue. Many people with cases pending against DuPont worry that it will use this arrangement to avoid paying damages or, at the very least, stall any resulting payouts. “I’m sure part of their theory is the longer they delay, the more people will die,” said Deitzler, the Parkersburg-based lawyer. “It’s already worked. Before we could even file cases, many of the people who’ve been affected passed on.”

And DuPont is basically going to get away with it.  Parkersburg is still a toxic mess.  And the people whose lives were ruined will almost certainly never see justice.

What Actual Judicial Activism Looks Like

Republicans have no problem with "judicial activism" when they go to federal court to try to block every Obama-era federal regulation that they don't like (which is all of them).  This week's injunction comes on the Clean Water Act.

A federal judge in North Dakota acted late Thursday to block the Obama administration’s controversial water pollution rule, hours before it was due to take effect. 

Judge Ralph Erickson of the District Court for the District of North Dakota found that the 13 states suing to block the rule met the conditions necessary for a preliminary injunction, including that they would likely be harmed if courts didn't act and that they are likely to succeed when their underlying lawsuit against the rule is decided.

The decision is a major roadblock for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers, who were planning Friday to begin enforcing the Waters of the United States rule, expanding federal jurisdiction over small waterways like streams and wetlands. 

But the Obama administration says it will largely enforce the regulation as planned, arguing that the Thursday decision only applies to the 13 states that requested the injunction. 

“Once the rule takes effect, the states will lose their sovereignty over intrastate waters that will then be subject to the scope of the Clean Water Act,” Erickson wrote in his order. 

“While the exact amount of land that would be subject to the increase is hotly disputed, the agencies admit to an increase in control over those traditional state-regulated waters of between 2.84 to 4.65 percent. Immediately upon the rule taking effect, the rule will irreparably diminish the states’ power over their waters,” he continued, calling the Obama administration's interpretation of its jurisdiction "exceptionally expansive." 

The states and the federal government argued over how to judge the likelihood opponents of the rule would win their case. But Erickson decided that the regulation is not “likely” to stand up to full court consideration. 

In a statement shortly after the ruling, the EPA was defiant and said that the injunction only applies in the thirteen states that filed for it: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Pretty easy to find at least one federal judge that hates Obama to block the rule from ever taking effect and run out the clock until the next administration.  They've done it before on ozone and power plant emissions and mercury emission regulations got all the way to the Supreme Court earlier this summer before those were struck down over cost benefit analysis, so yeah, it's no surprise that enforcing Clean Water Act rules are being blocked too.

This is what real "judicial activism" and "legislation from the bench" looks like:  Corporate controlled Republicans constantly using the courts to block executive branch enforcement of laws that Congress passed to give the executive branch the power to enforce.

But only against Obama.

Last Call For Brownie Points

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans (and the Bush administration) former Bush FEMA Director Michael "Heckuva Job Brownie" Brown is still trying to pin the blame for FEMA's ridiculous response to the storm on everyone but himself.

I’m often asked, as the person who was running FEMA when Hurricane Katrina hit, why I didn’t evacuate New Orleans. My response is simple—FEMA had no authority to do that under the Constitution, which clearly establishes a system of federalism in which state and local governments are autonomous governmental entities. We call first responders “first” for a reason. When you dial 9-1-1 your call isn’t answered by an operator at 500 C Street SW, Washington, D.C., 20472. Your call is answered by a local government entity that has first and primary responsibility for a disaster. 

Could FEMA have ordered the evacuation of New Orleans? Yes, had it waived posse comitatus and invoked the Insurrection Act, which Congress ultimately amended in 2006 to permit deployment of troops in response to natural disasters. That unprecedented action was actually contemplated days after landfall aboard Air Force One—and I advocated for it. After I advised the president to federalize the response, he sat with Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Air Force One and outlined his plan. We immediately started drafting the federalization documents for the president’s signature, but Governor Blanco requested time to think it over and the president acquiesced. While the governor considered her options, the city became more and more dysfunctional. Blanco ultimately rejected the president’s plan, and political considerations eventually pushed the idea aside.

So again, FEMA could have evacuated the Ninth Ward but didn't because The Decider passed the buck.  So it's really Bush's fault.  Or Kathleen Blanco's fault.  But there's more!

Prior to Katrina making landfall, I asked then-National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield to forcefully explain on a secure video conference call with Blanco and Nagin the catastrophe they were potentially facing if they failed to evacuate at least two or three days prior to landfall. When that didn’t work, I called President Bush at the ranch and implored him to call Mayor Nagin and encourage him to evacuate his city. The president called; the mayor dallied. 

Nagin finally asked people to evacuate on Sunday morning for a storm that hit his city sometime after midnight that night. By that point, Amtrak had left the city with rail cars sans passengers. Airlines had evacuated Louis Armstrong International Airport with planes sans travelers. And school buses sat in their lots, soon to be flooded and ruined. The mayor’s incompetence cost lives.

So now it's Max Mayfield's fault for not convincing Ray Nagin to evacuate when FEMA could have done it but chose not to.  Two more people to add to the blameless Brownie's list.

The press was now on the hunt. Who is Michael Brown? Why does he have a nickname? Why is the president so uninformed about what’s really going on in Louisiana? 

As the media scrutiny increased, I faced another problem—chain of command. FEMA was part of the alphabet soup of agencies folded into the new Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Tom Ridge. But under the Stafford Act, which created FEMA and governed federal responses to disasters, FEMA’s director is to act “on behalf of the President of the United States.”

So now it's the press's fault.  Or Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge's fault.  Brownie goes on and on for thousands of words in his screed, not taking a single ounce of responsibility for his massive screwup.  Of course, the real secret is everyone Brownie names is partially responsible for the deaths in New Orleans too: Bush, Nagin, Blanco, Mayfield, and more.

But Brown's attempt to absolve himself is comical to the point of being vulgar and repulsive.  He's just the man who was so utterly incompetent, he actually ended up being the one to take the blame.

Bitter Home Alabama

Republicans in Alabama are showing the rest of Red State America exactly how to go about keeping those undesirable black, Hispanic, poor, and elderly voters from ever being able to cast a ballot: simply pass one of the nation's toughest voter ID laws and require state-issued drivers licenses or ID cards to vote, and then close 90% of the state's drivers' license offices.

Alabama's chief law enforcement officer said Monday he will close all but the state's four largest drivers' license offices next year if state lawmakers don't provide more funding than they are proposing. 

Secretary of Law Enforcement Spencer Collier told a press conference in Scottsboro that budgets proposed in the Legislature's regular session are "unacceptable" and "unworkable." Lawmakers must do better in the upcoming second special session on the 2016 budget, he said. 

Collier heads the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), which was created in 2013 to merge the Department of Public Safety and 11 smaller policing agencies. His press conference was to rally support for Gov. Robert Bentley's proposed tax package as a second special session nears on Alabama's 2016 General Fund budget. State parks officials have scheduled their own press conference Tuesday near Joe Wheeler State Park. 

Collier said his agency received $55 million in state funding this year. Lawmakers have proposed $40 million for next year, and he wants level funding of $55 million. 

Without it, 33 part-time rural drivers' license offices will close Oct. 1, Collier said. More closures Jan. 1, 2016 will leave 12 offices statewide, and that number will drop to four on March 1 – one each in Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery and Mobile. 

That means an estimated 40,000 people a year will funnel to four offices for new drivers licenses and examinations, Alabama licenses for new residents moving from other states, and renewal of licenses after suspensions, department leaders said. 

Regular license renewal can now be done on line. Collier said that is one of several improvements the state has made to the process, including online examination scheduling, self-serve kiosks, and digital licenses for cell phones. But first licenses and examinations must be done in person, and properly licensing drivers who will be on Alabama roads is a public safety issue, he said. Public safety, he said, is the state's No. 1 responsibility.

Ahh, but let's recall that this means Alabama citizens who want to get a drivers' license or state issue ID ahead of the 2016 election will only be able to go to four offices in the entire state to get one starting in March.

And of course, this is the plan.  If you need a renewal, you can do it online.  But if you're new to the state or getting a voter ID, good luck.  These closings will end up disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters.

The Iran Deal Looks Like A Done Deal

It's looking more and more like President Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran and other global partners is a done deal, and that there are now enough Democratic votes to kill the Republican plan to scrap it, but will there be enough to prevent the President from having to veto it at all?

President Barack Obama’s almost certain to get the Iran nuclear deal through Congress — but whether he gets there by filibuster or sustained veto could make all the difference. 

A Democratic filibuster in the Senate would be a clear victory for the president, allowing Obama to say that for all the political noise there wasn’t enough actual opposition to the nuclear agreement with the Islamic republic to even get to a final vote. 

Having to save the deal with a veto (just the fifth of his presidency) and relying on liberals in the House and Senate to sustain it would be much more trouble: a procedural pull across the finish line that sows more doubts in a public already skeptical of the deal, leaves international partners worried about America’s long-term commitment and adds weeks of added time and tangles. 

The White House very much prefers option A. And even before he came out publicly for the deal on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had been in frequent contact with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough to try to make that happen.

The numbers are tight: They’ll need 12 of the remaining 15 undecided Senate Democrats to go Obama’s way, along with the 29 already there. 

Obama, White House aides and Senate minority whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — who’s been running the unofficial Iran vote-counting operation — have been scrambling to lock down the remaining votes to get 41 Democrats to stick with the president. 

“Those who are students of the process know that the president has the last word,” Durbin said. “I’d like to win it earlier.”

We'll see where undecided Democrats like Cory Booker, Barb Mikulski, Ben Cardin, Mark Warner and Chris Coons go with this.  Getting 12 of the 15 will be an issue, especially Warner, Cardin, and Coons.

We'll see where this goes, but considering the sheer number of times Senate Dems have screwed President Obama over, my money is on him having to take the veto option in the end.

StupidiNews!

• Three people have been arrested in connection with an abandoned truck with more than 70 bodies of Syrian refugees found near the Austrian-Hungarian border. 
• Prosecutors in Virgina will seek an indictment against the police officer who killed 18-year-old William Chapman outside a Wal-Mart in May.
• McDonald's and Tyson Foods have cut ties with a commercial farm in Tennessee after animal rights activists released a video showing farm workers stomping and clubbing chickens.
• Lower oil prices could cost energy companies nearly half a trillion in bond debt over the next ten years if prices remain at the $40 a barrel range.
• Apple has set September 9th for its next product event where the company is expected to unveil the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus along with iOS 9.

Last Call For Rand Lives Matter

Once again my senator has decided that as far as being a constituent of his is concerned, black Kentuckians don't really matter so much.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) criticized the Black Lives Matter movement on Wednesday, accusing it of “bullying people.” 

“I think they should change their name maybe, if they were ‘All Lives Matter’ or ‘Innocent Lives Matter,'” Paul told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I am about justice, and frankly I think a lot of poor people in our country, and many African-Americans, are trapped in this war on drugs and I want to change it. But commandeering the microphone and bullying people and pushing people out of the way I think really isn’t a way to get their message across.”

Really?  Because it sure seems like to me that if we don't go grabbing microphones, our elected officials like to pretend we don't exist, or that we should just shut up and sit down.

Members of the movement have often pointed out that using the phrase “all lives matter” is a means for opponents to downplay the number of black deaths as a result of excessive force by law enforcement officials. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley was booed when he used the phrase “every life matters” during the Netroots Nation progressive conference earlier this month. He later apologized for doing so. 

The protest at Netroots touched off a series of appearances by activists connected to the movement at events featuring O’Malley and fellow Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, as well as GOP candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Protesters also met with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after reportedly being blocked from attending one of her events. 

Both Paul and Hannity also talked up the Tea Party senator’s outreach efforts to black communities. 

“I’ve appeared with many members of the Congressional Black Caucus to talk about criminal justice,” the senator said. “I’ve been to Howard University, I’ve discussed it in Chicago and other cities, and so I’m more than willing to discuss it. But having people take the microphone — they need to go somewhere else and they need to rent their own microphone.”

How about going to Louisville or Lexington and talking to black communities there, Rand?  Do your own constituents matter, or are you too busy running for President or jetting off to Haiti for photo ops to give a damn?

Jackass.

Words Overheard

Quinnipiac University asked people as part of their most recent 2016 candidate poll to name one word that describes the candidate the best, and the results were very interesting judging from the top five answers.

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Hillary Clinton? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)

liar 178
dishonest 123
untrustworthy 93
experience 82
strong 59

Clinton still having serious issues on trustworthiness.  But she came off better than Donald Trump...

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)  

arrogant 58
blowhard 38
idiot 35
businessman 34
clown 34

Ouch.  "Arrogant blowhard idiot businessman clown" sums up The Donald quite well, I'd think.

But Jeb Bush came out with the most amusing bunch of descriptors:

What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Jeb Bush? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)  

Bush 136
family 70
honest 53
weak 45
brother 41 

Probably explains why Jeb has stopped pretending his brother doesn't exist and is now having Dubya help him fundraise.  He's in that much trouble that he's actually having the worst president in modern history stumping for him.

But if Hillary's in trouble, Donny and Jeb are deep underwater and sinking fast.

Bullseye On Your Back

I hear "At least Target isn't Wal-Mart" a lot, like you should somehow feel good about shopping there.  Frirst of all, that's an infinitesimally low bar.  Secondly,you might want to reconsider that position about it being "better", actually.

Target agreed to pay $2.8 million on Monday to settle a claim that the retailer disproportionately screened out applicants based on their race or gender. The complaint, filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), targeted certain hiring assessments used over the past decade. The sum represents one of the highest amounts paid in recent years to settle a claim of hiring discrimination; most are for less than $1 million. 

The EEOC said the tests were not sufficiently related to the actual jobs, which were for upper-level positions, and while on their face they were neutral, in practice they kept out particular groups, according to the agency’s statistical analysis. It also found that one of its assessments, by constituting a pre-employment medical exam, violated the Americans with Disabilities Act that bars such tests. 

The settlement money will be shared among more than 3,000 people who were adversely affected by the hiring assessments. The company also agreed to take steps to ensure the validity of its hiring process, including better data keeping, and it is no longer using the tests. 

A spokeswoman for the company noted that while the EEOC found the potential for adverse impact, it didn’t find any actual disparities in its hiring. “The EEOC has concluded that only a small fraction of the assessments administered during the relevant time period could have been problematic,” she said in an emailed statement. “We continue to firmly believe that no improper behavior occurred regarding these assessments.” 

So yes, over the last ten years, the hiring tests for Target's management positions systemically discriminated against minorities, women, and the disabled.  Sounds like yet another great American company to work for.

Ahh, but Target is far, far from alone.

The settlement is part of a larger effort by EEOC to root out systemic bias in company policies. Screening and recruitment processes, background checks, and tests can all be tailored to exclude certain groups of people.

And they have been for decades, if not longer.  There's a reason why the vast majority of managers in the US are white men and have been.  They're the ones deciding the criteria for management.

StupidiNews!

• Authorities are still trying to determine why former WDBJ-TV reporter Vester Flanagan killed reporter Alison Parker and her cameraman, Adam Ward live on the air near Roanoke, VA.
• President Obama will give a speech in New Orleans today marking the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, noting the city's recovery but that serious problems still remain.
• Louisiana Police have captured Harrison Wiley, who allegedly stabbed three women, including his wife, during a domestic dispute and then shot and killed a police officer who responded.
• Chinese government officials made a major intervention in the Shanghai stock markets today to break a massive losing streak and sending stocks up more than 5% in the final hour of trading.
• Microsoft says more than 75 million devices are now running Windows 10 after just one month of the upgrade being available.

Last Call For Smoke On The Lack Of Water

The 2015 wildfire season has been record-setting in more ways than one, and given that there's no end in sight to the brutal drought in the Western US right now, expect this scenario to get worse and worse as the years roll on.  In the short-term, firefighters battling these massive blazes are in desperate need of outside help and are getting it from as far away as Australia.

As of Monday morning, at least 13 large fires burned across the central and eastern portion of Washington, while 11 burned across Oregon. All told, 65 major wildfires are currently burning across seven Western states. According to the National Interagency Fire Center statistics, more than 27,000 firefighters are deployed across the country. To date, this years’ fire season has burned 7,487,737 total acres, more than any other season in the last 10 years. 

“Nationally, the system is pretty tapped,” Rob Allen, the deputy incident commander for the fires around the Cascade Mountain resort town of Chelan, told the Associated Press last Wednesday. “Everything is being used right now, so competition for resources is fierce.” 

Last week, for the first time since 2006, the National Interagency Fire Center mobilized 200 active-duty military troops to help control the fires that are spreading throughout the West. Along with active-duty soldiers, members of the National Guard and Air Force have already been called to help fight the fires. This weekend, dozens of firefighters from Australia and New Zealand were deployed to help fight blazes in Idaho, Washington, Montana, Oregon, and California. This isn’t the first time that firefighters have come from Australia to help fight U.S. fires — under an exchange program, Australian firefighters have come to the United States 11 times since 2000, according to the Strait Times. 

The military and foreign firefighters will provide crucial manpower for Western firefighting teams that have all but exhausted their local resources. Last week, the Los Angeles Times published a story about Rick Anderson, a fire chief in Stevens County, Washington who was forced to fight a fire with just 11 other firefighters and pickup trucks carrying 300-gallon water tanks. When Anderson called surrounding fire agencies to ask for reinforcements, he was told that none had extra manpower to spare — they were all busy fighting their own fires. 

Anderson’s story is just one example of a fire season that has pushed local and federal fire agencies to the brink. 

“It’s like the fire season gas pedal has been pushed to the floor in a really short period of time, and that’s stressed our resources,” Ken Frederick, a spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center, told the Associated Press. “And that’s got us relying on help from resources we don’t normally use.”

More wildfires, more firefighters needed to battle them.  The costs in money, property, and of course lives will only continue to increase as climate change and growing populations in Western US states makes droughts worse, taxes water and infrastructure resources, and leads to more incidents of accidents with fire and in some cases arson.

Welcome to the new normal.

Full-Blown Art Attack

Some days in life you trip and fall and just have to pick yourself up.  Other times, you trip and fall and put your hand through a million-and-a-half dollar painting.

A 12-year-old tripped at a museum in Taiwan this weekend; luckily a $1.5 million painting was there to break his fall. The kid is reportedly fine, the $1.5 million painting, not so much: according to reports, it now has a kid-sized hole in it.

And this is why art restoration experts exist.

According to the Telegraph, the boy was “nervous” he’d be held financially responsible—lol, duh—but by the grace of god, his family reportedly won’t have to pay any restoration costs for the 17th century Paolo Porpora oil painting, titled “Flowers.”

Life happens.  For everything else, there's insurance.

But you might want to fix those barriers, guys.

The Best Case For The Iran Nuclear Deal...

...is the fact that warmonger and generally awful supervillain prototype Dick Cheney is speaking out against any agreement with Iran and is trying to undermine this president once again,

Dick Cheney will speak out against the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran during a speech next month at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 

According to an AEI news release, the former vice president will share his concerns about the deal’s “consequences for the security and interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.”

In July, Cheney said on Fox News that the deal would make the use of nuclear weapons more likely. 

“What Obama has done has, in effect, sanctioned the acquisition by Iran of nuclear capability. And it can be a few years down the road. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s a matter of months until we’re going to see a situation where other people feel they have to defend themselves by acquiring their own capability,” he said. “And that will, in fact, I think put us closer to use — actual use of nuclear weapons than we’ve been at any time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.” 

Cheney will speak on Sept. 8 — just a week ahead of the Sept. 17 deadline for Congress to vote on the deal’s authorization.

The guy behind lying us into a war with Iraq wants us to go to war with Iran.

That's all I need to dispel any doubts I may have ever had about this Iran nuclear agreement and that it's a massive win for the US, the world, and President Obama.

What possible credibility on foreign policy issues does this madman have?  He should be giving this speech at a federal prison, not a think tank.  By all means, Dick, let's have you on America's teevee screens to remind us once again what another four years of insane Republican rule will bring in 2017: hundreds of thousands of US troops fighting and dying for another massive lie in yet another idiotic war in the Middle East.

Please proceed, Dick.

StupidiNews!

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Last Call For Fixing Ferguson

The Justice Department report on Ferguson, Missouri cited not only serious problems with the police, but massive issues with municipal courts using warrants and fines as the city's main source of revenue, preying on the town's black population for money.

This week, the process of repairing that breach of public trust began.

A new municipal judge in Ferguson, Missouri, on Monday ordered sweeping changes to court practices in response to a scathing Justice Department report following the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown a year ago. 

Municipal Court Judge Donald McCullin, appointed in June, ordered that all arrest warrants issued in the city before Dec. 31, 2014 be withdrawn. 

Defendants will receive new court dates along with options for disposing of their cases, such as payment plans or community service. Fines may be commuted for indigent people. 

The changes come five months after the U.S. Department of Justice strongly criticized city leaders in its report, saying the police force and court worked together to exploit people in order to raise revenue. 

The Justice Department specifically said Ferguson's municipal court practices caused significant harm to many people with cases pending as minor municipal code violations turned into multiple arrests, jail time, and payments that exceeded the cost of the original ticket many times over. 

McCullin, who is black, ordered instead that if an arrest warrant is issued for a minor traffic violation, the defendant will not be incarcerated, but will be released on their own recognizance and given another court date, the city said. 

"These changes should continue the process of restoring confidence in the Court... and giving many residents a fresh start," said McCullin in a statement.

He added that many people who have had drivers licenses suspended will be able to obtain them and start driving again. In the past, the city's director of revenue would suspend a defendant's driver's license solely for failing to appear in court or failing to pay a fine.

Things still have a long way to go in Ferguson and St. Louis County.  Decades of institutionalized racism in the police and municipal court systems have ravaged the place, but at least things are beginning to change for the better.

There's some small measure of hope, at least.

Getting Trumped By The States

What does it say about the utter chaos a political party is in when state party machines are actively conspiring to keep the party's national front-runner off the primary ballot?

Amid mounting concerns about Donald Trump’s candidacy from the GOP establishment, Republican leaders in at least two states have found a way to make life a lot harder for him. 

The Virginia and North Carolina parties are in discussions about implementing a new requirement for candidates to qualify for their primary ballots: that they pledge to support the Republican presidential nominee — and not run as a third-party candidate — in the general election. 

The procedural moves are clearly aimed at Trump, who pointedly refused to rule out a third-party run during the first GOP debate. 

They come amid Republican fears that the real estate mogul is gaining strength in the primary contest, and that his jeremiads against undocumented immigrants will alienate Hispanic voters. Despite coming under a hail of criticism in recent weeks, Trump has held steady atop state and national polls. 

John Whitbeck, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, said the proposal was among many that the organization was considering as it sketches out its ballot access requirements for the 2016 GOP primary. The ultimate decision, he said, would be made by the 84 members who make up the state party’s central committee, which is slated to meet on Sept. 19. The requirements must be submitted to the Republican National Committee by Oct. 1. 

If implemented, Whitbeck said, the provision would be similar to ones the party adopted for statewide races held in 2013 and 2014.

In other words, if Trump has any plans whatsoever to run as the ultimate GOP version of Ralph Nader and hand a massive win to the Democrats, he won't even get on the ballot in two key states.

Republicans at the national level are 100% terrified of Trump.  They know he'd lose in a landslide, but if they get rid of him this early, he'll just run as a third-party candidate and sink the party next November anyway. And worst of all, the Trump GOP faithful are going to do everything they can to bring his awful racism to the November 2016 ballot.

“Nothing disqualifies Trump.” 

That was the takeaway of Frank Luntz, the public opinion guru, after leading a focus group Monday night of supporters of Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign.
For two and a half hours, Luntz quizzed a group of current and past ardent Trump fans about their views on the businessman. He discussed the candidate’s past liberal stances and played past video of Trump saying provocative things about women. Yet when the focus group was over, not a single person who was planning to vote for him said they had changed their mind. 

“This is absolutely for real,” Luntz said of the intense and loyal support for Trump. “And he is not going away. And he is as strong as every survey shows. All those people who think he’s going to implode have not sat and talked to these voters the way that they should have.”

The focus group was made up of 29 people, six of whom said they no longer support Trump but did in the past. Asked to describe Trump in one word or phrase, the answers varied: “businessman,” “brave,” “successful,” “results,” “decisive,” “leader,” “guts,” “charismatic,” “bombastic,” “not a politician,” “not P.C.,” “true American,” “brash,” “decisive,” “kick ass and take names.” 

“When he talks, deep down somewhere, you’re going, ‘crap, somebody is thinking the same way I am,’” said one man.

It's nothing short of panic mode and we get to watch the long, slow train wreck for months.

Damned if you do, as they say.  Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of complete assholes, too.

Just Another Cop Killer

In Louisiana, a man shot and taunted a State Trooper at a traffic stop.  The officer later died.  It's a horrible story.

A Louisiana state trooper died Monday after authorities say he was shot in the head and then taunted when he stopped to provide aid to a man whose truck was stuck in a ditch. 

Col. Mike Edmonson, head of the State Police, said Kevin Daigle shot Senior Trooper Steven Vincent, then said, "You're lucky, you are going to die soon." 

Edmonson said Vincent, 43, drove up on Kevin Daigle near Bell City on Sunday afternoon and then determined that his pickup's plates matched the description of a previously reported "reckless vehicle." Edmonson said a recording from Vincent's cruiser shows Vincent was conversing with Daigle when he opened his door, pulled out a sawed-off shotgun and shot Vincent in the head. 

"I am very saddened to report that Senior Trooper Steven Vincent has passed away this morning from the gunshot wounds he suffered yesterday in conjunction with a traffic investigation," Edmonton said Monday. "As an organization, we are heartbroken over this senseless and tragic death. Our thoughts and prayers are with his surviving wife Katherine and his son Ethan as well as his entire extended family." 

Daigle, whose criminal history includes "numerous DWIs," will be charged with first degree murder of a police officer and aggravated battery, Edmonson said at a news conference. The investigation is ongoing, he said.

What made this evil fiend Kevin Daigle kill the brave Steven Vincent?  Was it the music he listened to?  Did his style of dress possibly indicate a gang affiliation?  Was he perpetuating criminal behavior because the culture he belonged to expected it of him?  He was a known criminal and obviously dangerous, and killing a cop surely meant he deserved what happened next, he was nothing more than a common thug who was put down like the animal he...

Kevin Daigle (Photo: Erik Stratton, AP)

Oh.

White guy.  Brought in alive.

Well, we shouldn't ask too many questions then.

Yes, a police officer is dead, killed in the line of duty, and that's a horrific tragedy.  But Kevin Daigle will face a court of law for his crime, unlike so many who are executed without due process.

StupidiNews

• Chinese stocks remain volatile today dropping more than 7%, but other markets are up as the world recovers from yesterday's 588-point Dow drop.
• Alzheimer's researchers warn that the number of elderly affected by dementia-related diseases will triple worldwide to nearly 150 million by 2050.
• The UN's nuclear watchdog agency is asking member states for more money to meet its expanded role under the Iranian nuclear deal.
• China has responded to stock market losses by cutting interest rates for the fifth time in 9 months, hoping to boost the country's economic fortunes.
• A federal court has ruled that the Federal Trade Commission can take action against companies that have poor IT security practices.

Last Call For Repeal And Misplace

So whatever happened to the 2016 GOP presidential candidates repealing Obamacare and replacing it with something super awesome?  Well, you see, that would mean taking away health insurance from millions of Republicans who don't want to admit that the law has helped them, and the 2016 clown car crew doesn't want to admit that either.

Just before Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal revealed his plan to replace ObamaCare last year, he sat down with 15 of Washington’s top conservative healthcare wonks to discuss it. They didn’t approve. 

“Near the end, they said, ‘You make a good point, but what you’ve put forward, we just don’t think it’s politically viable,’” Jindal’s long-time adviser Curt Anderson recalled in an interview this week. 

To his surprise, he said the group agreed the next GOP nominee couldn’t entirely roll back ObamaCare for fear of losing votes from millions already with coverage. In other words, even ObamaCare’s toughest critics say that parts of the law are here to stay. 

The 2016 election will mark the first time Republicans will be running against Obamacare since its biggest pieces have gone into effect, including billions of dollars of subsidies that have helped millions to gain coverage. 

Already, GOP strategists are getting heartburn about how to fight against ObamaCare without turning away those who are benefitting. 

“Obviously the biggest risk is being perceived as being the Grinch who stole someone’s healthcare,” said Josh Withrow, legislative affairs manager for the conservative group Freedom Works. 

“We should be focusing on the fact that healthcare is too expensive. I know it’s not as easy a message to sell as, ‘We’re going to make sure everyone has a plan, but it’s an attempt that has to be made,” he added. 

It’s a particularly tough test for a party that remains bitterly divided about how to replace the healthcare law even five years after its passage. 

Many in the GOP believe that healthcare offerings in 2016 need to offer specific sweeteners for voters already reaping rewards from ObamaCare. But others, led by Jindal, are outraged by anything that might resemble ObamaCare. 

“It’s like the Republican party is basically saying, ‘Well we lost on this, we’ll just come up with our own entitlement program and we’ll run it better.’ They think it’s too late,” Anderson said.

Hey idiots?

You actually did lose this battle.  You lost it four times now, in fact: once when the ACA was passed, once when President Obama was overwhelmingly re-elected, and twice more when you tried to kill the law in the Supreme Court.

But you lost every time.  And it's over.  Deal with it.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

The Atlantic's Molly Ball asks:

Can the Republican Party Survive Trump?

Dear Molly:

As long as Democrats refuse to vote in midterm and local elections, the Republican party can and will survive anything. Even Trump.

Here endeth the lesson.

Merry Chris Mess, Christie

Chris Christie's big re-election win in 2013 as a Republican governor in a blue state was, according to the Village Idiots, proof that he would be the man to beat in 2016.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the White House.

Chris Christie, the voluble New Jersey governor, is once again facing the possibility that he might be relegated to the junior varsity debate — and rival Republican campaigns and outside observers say his window to re-enter the top tier of presidential candidates is closing fast.

Wednesday night’s scene in New Hampshire showed the daunting challenge ahead of Christie. As CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC covered Trump’s first town hall live — breaking only to run clips of Jeb Bush attacking the real estate tycoon — Christie was gasping for air on C-SPAN. Because the governor’s dimly lit event — a town hall at a restaurant outside of Manchester — was outdoors, the few viewers watching saw the candidate gradually disappear into darkness. The next day’s headlines duly focused on the Jeb-Donald contretemps, ignoring Christie’s play for a state he has made central to his fading White House hopes.

“He’s just not getting the traction that I think he was expecting,” said Andy Seale, the former chairman of the Republican Party in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire.

Christie has become such an also-ran that the Associated Press and the New York Times recently reassigned reporters dedicated to covering Christie — Jill Colvin and Kate Zernike — to other beats.

Then there are the polls.

If current trends hold, the New Jersey governor will likely lose his spot in the primetime CNN/Reagan Library debate on Sept. 16, displaced by a surging Carly Fiorina. As of mid-day Thursday, Christie was in 11th place among GOP presidential contenders in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls — behind Trump, Bush, Ben Carson, Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, Fiorina, Sen. Rand Paul, Gov. John Kasich, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

On Tuesday, a new CNN/ORC poll found Christie in 11th place, with only 3 percent support among registered GOP voters. (A separate POLITICO analysis of the five most recent national polls that would factor into who would appear for the main debate finds Christie tied with Kasich for 10th place. For now.)

And with Trump owning the Straight Talk vote, said former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, there’s little Christie can do to claw his way back.

“We’re all living in Trump world,” said Kean. “And Trump world is something none of these political gurus or any of these guys conceived of when they [started] running their campaigns.”

It's easy to blame Hurricane PMURT for Christie's self-destruction, but nowhere in this Politico article do we see the word "bridge", as in Bridgegate, the scandal that basically killed the Christie campaign in 2014.

Hell, I've counted Christie out since 2013.  He's an awful candidate outside New Jersey.

And now, two years later, even Politico knows he's done.

StupidiNews!

• Oklahoma police say that the state's Labor Commissioner, Mark Costello, was fatally stabbed by his son Christian at a restaurant Sunday evening.
• Over 900 square miles of Washington State continue to burn as wildfires ravage the drought-stricken state, prompting President Obama to declare a federal disaster area.
• French President Francois Hollande bestowed the country's highest civilian honor on three US citizens and a Briton for helping to stop a suspected militant attack on a train Friday.
• China's Shanghai Composite Index plummeted almost 9 percent on Monday, prompting another global rout in stock prices and bringing commodity prices to 16-year lows.
• Apple is instituting a replacement program for faulty iPhone 6 Plus phone cameras sold at the model's 2014 launch, offering users free service from Apple-authorized providers.

Last Call For A Missed Birthday

Oops!




Zandar Versus The Stupid turned seven this month, and I kinda forgot about it.

Time does fly, I guess. Thanks for sticking with us, brave readers.

Almost Only Counts In Horseshoes And Hand Grenades

Israel being rocked this weekend by revelations from former Defense Minister Ehud Barak that yes, Israel came extremely close to attacking Iran several times during President Obama's first term in office. 

Mr. Barak, who also previously served as Israel’s prime minister, said that he and Mr. Netanyahu were ready to attack Iran each year but that in 2010, the military chief of staff said Israel lacked the “operational capability”; in 2011, two key ministers waffled at the last minute; and in 2012, the timing did not work out because of a joint United States-Israel military exercise and visit by the American defense secretary. He noted that the two ministers who balked in 2011, Moshe Yaalon and Yuval Steinitz, “are the most militant about attacking Iran” today.

The interview excerpts were aired by Israel’s Channel 2, which stressed that Mr. Barak had sought to prevent them from being broadcast, but that they had been approved by Israel’s military censor. Reached late Friday by telephone, Mr. Barak confirmed that the recordings were authentic but said he had provided the information on background to the authors, Ilan Kfir and Danny Dor, whose book, “Barak: The Wars of My Life,” came out this week in Hebrew.

“It was not supposed to be published,” Mr. Barak said. “I don’t want to comment on it. I tried to convince them not to broadcast it. But it’s true, it’s my voice. I don’t deny my voice, it can be recognized.”

Mr. Barak was known at the time to be a prime advocate for a unilateral Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear plants, something Washington strongly opposed.

In the weeks since the Obama administration and five other world powers signed a deal with Iran to restrict its nuclear program, Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Yaalon — now defense minister — and Mr. Steinitz have all stressed that Israel retains a military option to stop Iran from making a bomb. But most Israeli experts say a strike would be all but impossible now because of the continuing diplomatic process, and likely far more technically challenging than when it was most seriously considered, in 2012.

In the interviews broadcast Friday, Mr. Barak said “we’d planned to do it” that year. He recalled “demanding” of Leon E. Panetta, then the secretary of defense, to postpone the joint military exercise, and succeeding, but still being unable to find the right moment.

“You ask, you demand that America respect your sovereignty to make a decision that you want to do that, even if America is opposed to that and it is against its interests,” Mr. Barak said. “So you can’t, you yourself, in the opposite direction, try to force America — precisely when it is here carrying out an exercise that’s been scheduled in advance. That’s how it got tied up in 2012.”

In 2011, Mr. Barak said, Mr. Netanyahu told him and Avigdor Lieberman, then the foreign minister, that Mr. Yaalon and Mr. Steinitz were on board with a planned strike. But when military leaders briefed them as part of so-called Forum of Eight top ministers on how complex it would be, both demurred. “You can see, in front of our very eyes, them melting,” he recounted. “You see it in their reactions, their questions, their faces.”

“Had they not changed their minds, that would have created a majority,” Mr. Barak noted, “and then we might have convened the cabinet.”

Each time, cooler heads prevailed, but barely.

I'm not sure why Israel's military censor allowed these conversations to be published other than Israel's military really, really wants to show the world that the ministers running the show are pretty much bonkers, and that Israel's generals don't want anything to do with them.  This would be the equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff leaking Defense Department discussions during the Dubya years or something.  It's "save us before this happens."

Will Israel's voters do so? 

I have no reason to believe they will, not until 2017 at the earliest and Obama is gone.

It's one thing to not be surprised that Israel wanted to bomb Iran once Bibi was voted into office, but it's another thing entirely to have that stance confirmed multiple times.