Existential Polling, You're Doing It Wrong

Nate Silver is rather brutal with his assessment of the Romney campaign's complicit effects in wrecking a number of key firms through their ludicrously incorrect internal polls.

Campaigns should foster organizational cultures in which their pollsters are enabled to provide the most value.

Campaigns might consider how pollsters are compensated; they could tie some of the pollster’s compensation to the accuracy of its final polls, for instance.

Some campaigns have had success with hiring more than one pollster and having them work relatively autonomously from one another. This can serve as a check against groupthink — and may increase the likelihood the different assumptions that the pollsters might introduce will be thought over and debated.

But most important, campaigns would be wise not to have their pollsters serve as public spokesmen or spin doctors for the campaign. Campaigns have other personnel who specialize in those tasks.

The role of the pollster should be just the opposite of this, in fact: to provide a reality check such that the campaign does not begin to believe its own spin.

Ouch.  And yes, he's talking to you, Gallup.

Tagg, You're It

And speaking of weird-ass kids, Mitt Romney's son Tagg had some interesting words for President Obama after Tuesday's debate, apparently.

Mitt Romney’s son Tagg said Wednesday that he wanted to punch President Barack Obama during the second presidential debate.

“I’m going to ask something I think a lot of people want to know, or at least I do. What is it like for you to hear the President of the United States call your dad a liar. How do you react to that?” Tagg was asked by radio host Bill Lumaye.

“Well — jump out of your seat and you want to rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him,” he replied. “But you know you can’t do that because, well, first there is a lot of Secret Service between you and him but also because this is the nature of the process, they’re going to do everything they can do to make my dad into someone he is not.”

Two things, Tagg.  One, forget the Secret Service, Michelle Obama would flatten you like a pancake.  Two, your dad is very much a liar, Tagg.  He told 31 whoppers by one count on Tuesday night.

Maybe you should ask your dad what his economic plan is there, Taggster.  Nobody else in America seems to be privy to it.

Including Mitt Romney himself.

Breaking Biden

Joe Biden couldn't have actually won the debate against Paul Ryan.  Joe must be insane or something.

No, really.  Joe Biden is insane, according to FOX.



Of course, that's ridiculous.  The notion that Biden's not fully in control of his mental faculties is, well, crazy.  You see, Joe Biden's really a coke fiend, according to FOX.



No, the notion that Joe Biden's high as an 80's Wall Street boiler room stock jockey is nuts.  He's really a Kenyan anti-colonialist.

Right?

Akin And Pains

So the bottom line is that Rep. Todd Akin has until 5 PM central this afternoon to drop out of the Missouri Senate race under the state law.  After that, things get much more complex.  Republicans are desperately trying to get Akin to drop out of the race, but not because they think what he said was wrong, but because they'll cost the GOP a Senate seat they'll basically have to have in order to take control of the upper chamber in January.   Many in the GOP are calling for Akin to leave the race.  Nobody in the GOP is calling for him to leave the House as well, which is why I call hypocrisy on basically the entire party.  If what he said was as "indefensible" as the lip service suggests, then he shouldn't be in Congress, period, right?

Anthony Weiner was driven out for less.

But it seems there are plenty of Missourians who really don't care if Akin is an awful human being.  Republicans will vote for him anyway.  Only winning matters to them, as the latest PPP poll shows:

Missouri voters strongly disagree with the comments Todd Akin made about abortion over the weekend, but it hasn't moved the numbers a whole lot in the Senate race. Akin leads Claire McCaskill by a single point, 44-43. That's basically identical to our last poll of the contest in late May, which found Akin ahead by a 45-44 spread.

It's not that Missouri voters are ok with or supportive of Akin's comments. 75% of voters, including even 64% of Republicans, say they were inappropriate to only 9% who consider them to have been appropriate. 79% of voters say they disagree with what Akin said, including 65% who express 'strong' disagreement with him. 51% of GOP voters say they strongly disagree with him.

All of that is taking a toll on Akin's image. Only 24% of voters have a favorable opinion of him to 58% with a negative one. He's pretty universally disliked by Democrats (3/85) and independents (21/61) and even with Republicans (43/34) he's on only narrowly positive ground.

But for all of that the overall numbers in the race have moved very little. When we polled in May McCaskill was getting only 8% of the Republican vote, and even with the controversy around Akin she's only pushed up to 10% of it. GOP voters dislike McCaskill so much they're not going to vote for her no matter what their nominee does. Independent voters haven't moved at all either. In May they supported Akin 45-41, and even though they don't like him on tonight's poll we still found him leading 45-41 with them.

There's your Republican Party, folks.  Even with such awful favorability numbers, even with these massively ignorant comments, even with his long record of being a far-right lunatic...there's a good chance that Missourians are going to vote the asshole into the Senate anyhow, effectively giving him a promotion.

What could Todd Akin do to lose support of Republicans in the state?  Act like a human being with a functioning soul, I guess.  Treat women, gays, and racial minorities with respect, that would lose him plenty of support among the troglodytes.

We'll see how the day unfolds.  My guess is Akin stays, and McCaskill remains in the toughest election battle of her career.  All that motivates Republicans in 2012 is hatred of Democrats.  Akin could eat a kitten on live TV and he'd still be within the margin of polling error because he doesn't have (D) after his name.

He'd get 27% of the vote if he clubbed a baby seal.  Minimum.

Evolving Into A Real State

Ahh Kentucky.  And people wonder why the state's aggregate IQ drops by a measurable amount when I cross the Ohio River to go to work in the mornings.  Stories like this just depress me.

Kentucky's Senate Republicans pushed successfully in 2009 to tie the state's testing program to national education standards, but three years later, they're questioning the results.

Several GOP lawmakers questioned new proposed student standards and tests that delve deeply into biological evolution during a Monday meeting of the Interim Joint Committee on Education.

In an exchange with officials from ACT, the company that prepares Kentucky's new state testing program, those lawmakers discussed whether evolution was a fact and whether the biblical account of creationism also should be taught in Kentucky classrooms.

"I would hope that creationism is presented as a theory in the classroom, in a science classroom, alongside evolution," Sen. David Givens, R-Greensburg, said Tuesday in an interview.

To recap:  Republicans insisted the state meet new national education testing guidelines to comply with NCLB.  The state hired a company to write the tests specifically to improve education to make the state's students better educated and more competitive in the global marketplace.  Three years later, Republicans are horrified to find out the tests teach evolution.

The GOP response is pathetic.

Givens said he and other legislators have been contacted by a number of educators with concerns about Kentucky's proposed new science standards, which are tied to ACT testing and are scheduled to be adopted this fall.

"I think we are very committed to being able to take Kentucky students and put them on a report card beside students across the nation," Givens said. "We're simply saying to the ACT people we don't want what is a theory to be taught as a fact in such a way it may damage students' ability to do critical thinking."

Yes, because if you don't also teach the "theory" that invisible beared floaty guy built the Earth on a giant Sims program 6,000 years ago, you're a close minded bigot.  I demand Catholic schools teach Islam, Daoism, Shintoism, Judaism, Pastafarianism, and Pagan studies in science class or they're close minded bigots too.  See how this works?

Last time I checked, biology was a science, not a comparative religion course.

 Oh, but it gets worse.

Another committee member, Rep. Ben Waide, R-Madisonville, said he had a problem with evolution being an important part of biology standards.

"The theory of evolution is a theory, and essentially the theory of evolution is not science — Darwin made it up," Waide said. "My objection is they should ensure whatever scientific material is being put forth as a standard should at least stand up to scientific method. Under the most rudimentary, basic scientific examination, the theory of evolution has never stood up to scientific scrutiny."

You sir are the dumbest mofo on Earth, and I am offended that you are an elected lawmaker in the Commonwealth.  Your ignorance is so astounding that I have to believe you actually don't exist, because nobody can be this stupid and survive without collapsing under the density of their own idiocy.

Seriously, evolution has "never stood up to scientific scrutiny"?  When you refuse to get involved in elections and local politics and the world around you, these are the people that get elected, Kentucky. My job is to fix that.  I have a lot of work, of course.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/08/14/2298914/gop-lawmakers-question-standards.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/08/14/2298914/gop-lawmakers-question-standards.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/08/14/2298914/gop-lawmakers-question-standards.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/08/14/2298914/gop-lawmakers-question-standards.html#storylink=cpy

Last Call

Megadeth rock icon Dave Mustaine:  Birther idiot.  Santorum supporter.  Oy.

Megadeth guitarist Dave Mustaine said in an interview with a Canadian television show “The Hour” that he “has a lot of questions about him [President Obama], but certainly not where he was born. I know he was born somewhere else than America.”

“Well, then you’re a birther,” said host George Stroumboulopoulos, who had asked Mustaine directly whether he was one.

“No I’m not calling a question to it, I just, you know, what’s the point?” Mustaine said, who then proceeded to say that Obama had been “invisible” until he became President.

Earlier in the interview, Mustaine had lamented the state of American politics, casting aspersions on nearly all the Republican candidates as well, except for former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. Mustaine previously said that he hoped Santorum would make it to the White House, and then said he hadn’t actually given his endorsement, essentially citing some semantics about what he meant.

In the new interview, Mustaine said that Santourm “…just looks like he could be a really cool president, kinda like a JFK type of guy.”

OK, sort of a birther idiot, sort of a Santorum supporter.  Sort of.   Still a douchebag.

Arguably The Biggest Dick Move Ever

Ladies and gentlmen, the National Rifle Association.

The National Rifle Association has a new item in its online store: hoodies, with a special pocket designed to conceal a handgun. Hooded sweatshirts have taken on new meaning in the last week as a symbol for Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed while wearing one last month. Last week, Geraldo Rivera speculated that it was Trayvon’s hoodie that was to blame for his death, sparking widespread criticism. “We want concealed carry to fit around your lifestyle — not the other way around. That’s why we developed the NRAstore exclusive Concealed Carry Hooded Sweatshirt,” reads the product description. If enough people buy them, Rivera may be right to assume some hoodies can be dangerous.

This is pretty much the most singularly repugnant and amorally insidious middle finger to the black community and human being with a conscience than I have seen in a very long time.  I am convinced that this has to be an Onion parody or the best hack Anonymous has ever pulled.

Since it's not, it's basically a giant eff you to everyone backing Trayvon Martin.  And a not-so-gentle reminder that the NRA thinks people who wear hoodies really are dangerous.

For liberals, that is.  Well played, NRA.  Well played indeed.

The Freedom To Get Canned Over An Orange Shirt

You know what "At-Will" employment or "Right-to-Work" employment means?  It means that you have zero protections in that state as an employee.  It means unless the reason is strictly prohibited by state law, you can be fired for any reason.  Any.  Reason.  At All.  Like, say, wearing an orange shirt.

They weren't wearing sagging pants or revealing clothing. But dressing in an orange shirt is apparently enough to get fired at one Florida law firm, where 14 workers were unceremoniously let go last Friday.

In an interview with the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, several of the fired workers say they wore the matching colors so they would be identified as a group when heading out for a happy hour event after work. They say the executive who fired them initially accused them of wearing the matching color as a form of protest against management.

Orange is widely considered to be one of the most visible colors to the human eye. Orange vests are worn by most hunters as a safety precaution and by school crossing guards. Most prisoners are required to wear orange jump suits.

The color orange is arguably Florida's defining color. The self-described "Sunshine State" is widely known for its orange juice exports.

The law offices of Elizabeth R. Wellborn, P.A. offered "no comment" to Sun-Sentinel reporter Doreen Hemlock, but four ex-employees tell the paper they were simply wearing their orange shirts to celebrate "pay day" and the upcoming Friday group happy hour.

Nope.  Fired.  All of them.  On the spot.  No redress of grievances possible, no recourse under the law, no anything.  Out the door and gone because they showed enough esprit de corps at the workplace to wear the same color shirt. And under Florida law, and laws just like it in 22 other states, too bad.  All of them gone, no questions asked.  It doesn't matter.

We are told this is "freedom" for employers, and that without this "freedom" then workers would surely suffer as job creators would go elsewhere, to other right-to-work states or to other countries.  Without the ability to summarily fire you for anything short of blatant discrimination codified into law (which is something that becomes 100% the burden of the employee to prove, in all 23 states), why you wouldn't have a job at all.

So consider yourself lucky if you live in any southern state, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, the Dakotas, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, Utah or Nevada and have a job.  It's only because your employer can fire you for your shirt color that the job creators are even bothering with you.

Back to work, peon.

The Nose Knows...No Decency

BooMan discovers our Liberal Media is on the case, in this case Final Arbiter Of All, WaPo fact checker Glenn Kessler, is making sure that President Obama's dead mother isn't able to pull a fast one on the Post's stalwart readership.

Your mother lies dying in the hospital, unable to work because of her Stage 3 uterine and ovarian cancer. While her medical procedures are largely covered by her health insurance plan, there is a large deductible and several hundred dollars of unpaid expenses each month. The insurance company is not honoring her disability insurance because a doctor had written in her medical file that she suspected uterine cancer a couple of months before she started her job. However, your mother claims that that information was not shared with her. And, in any case, it was only a suspicion. Your mother asks you to take over the job of fighting the insurance company. That is what happened to Barack Obama and his mother. And that is what just earned the president three pinocchios from the Washington Post.

Why has the president been lying about his mother's death? Well, according to the Washington Post he has been deliberately suggesting that his mother was denied funds for her medical care from her health insurance, not her disability insurance. This is supposedly a big distinction.

The president has a strong recollection of watching his mother fight with an insurance company about covering the cost of her health care because of her supposedly pre-existing condition. He thinks this is a terrible injustice and not a way to die with dignity. It inspires him to fight so that other people will not face the same or similar situations.

But it turns out to be insincere political posturing because his mother's "pre-existing condition" only prevented her from receiving the money she needed to pay her deductible and the fees not covered by her health insurance. That this is an example of an insurance company going to whatever lengths it can to deny payment is supposedly irrelevant or misleading. 

Misleading enough to earn a three pinnochio shaming from Headmaster Kessler for the naughty, naughty President.  Look, I understand Kessler's contempt for the President.  A fair amount of the Village has it because the first African-American president is a tabula rasa of extraordinary magnitude, a first among firsts.  Those who shape reality in Washington have long given up gently trying to create the Obama they want Obama to be and have moved to "application of 20-pound sledgehammer" mode, thus the absolutely silly prospect that the death of the President's late mother is a three-noser fib.

Awesome.  They despise him.  And when I say "they" I mean "progressives" too like Taylor Marsh, who openly compares the President's story of his mom to Mike Daisey, the man who lied about Apple's China labor problem.

A lot of people have never forgiven Barack Obama for the crime of being elected in 2008.  Not all of the people who want to convict him in 2012 are Republicans, either.

Last Call

Congratulations, America's climate scientists!  You can all quit your jobs and take up gardening and Words With Friends because we don't need you any more.  It turns out Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe has proven once and for all that climate change can't possibly hurt us.  His painstaking research has been published in America's most trusted scientific journal, The Holy Bible.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) appeared on Voice of Christian Youth America’s radio program Crosstalk with Vic Eliason yesterday to promote his new book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, where he repeated his frequent claim that human influenced climate change is impossible because “God’s still up there.” Inhofe cited Genesis 8:22 to claim that it is “outrageous” and arrogant for people to believe human beings are “able to change what He is doing in the climate.”

Well, glad that pesky controversy is over with.  SUV's for all the people!  God's got Her finger on the thermostat and the controls, so we can just launch blocks of carbon into volcanoes and everything will be just fine.

"My favorite is Genesis 8:22 which is ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ you know, God’s still up there. There’s another piece of Scripture I’ll mention which I should’ve mentioned, no one seems to remember this, the smartest thing the activists did in trying to put their program through is try to get the evangelicals on their side, so they hired a guy named Cizik, and he had his picture in front of Vanity magazine dressed like Jesus walking on water. He has been exposed since then to be the liberal that he is. I would say that the other Scripture that I use quite frequently on this subject is Romans 1:25, ‘They give up the truth about God for a lie and they worship God’s creation instead of God, who will be praised forever.’ In other words, they are trying to say we should worship the creation. We were reminded back in Romans that this was going to happen and sure enough it’s happening."

Oh well then.  Praise Jeebus and pass the emissions.  Aren't you glad this guy is making laws for all Americans?

Last Call

I hope they throw the book at Apple and these publishers over this.

Apple and five large book publishers could be hit with a lawsuit over allegedly teaming up to raise the price of e-books, according a report Thursday.

The U.S. Justice Department has warned Apple, along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group, Macmillan, and HarperCollins, that it plans to sue them for antitrust violations, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the inquiry.

The six companies allegedly colluded in 2010 to force Amazon to raise its discounted e-book prices.

Three of the book publishers -- HarperCollins, Hachette and Penguin -- declined to comment. Representatives for the Justice Department and the other companies named in the report did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

If these allegations are true, it completely justifies my decision to never again buy an iTunes or iBook from Apple.  If the cost of these publishers getting in the ground floor on Apple's iPad bookstore was having to screw over Amazon's Kindle users like myself, then we have a serious problem on our hands, and I hope that Kindle e-book buyers like myself get the difference back, plus interest.

This sucks, Apple.  Forget me buying any content from you in the future.

Last Call

Steve M. is right, of course.  Under no circumstances are liberals ever alowed to fight back, or it's all our fault.  Witness Michael Kinsley defend El Rushbo:

These umbrage episodes that have become the principal narrative line of our politics are orgies of insincerity. Pols declare that they are distraught, offended, outraged by some stray remark by a political opponent, or judicial nominee, or radio talk-show host. They demand apology, firing, crucifixion.

The target resists for a few days, then steps downs or apologizes. Occasionally they survive, as Limbaugh probably will, but wounded and more careful from now on.

More careful means less interesting. Limbaugh is under no obligation to stop saying offensive things just to keep me entertained. Still, it's a pity....

Rush is just "a radio talk-show host".  He's not important at all.  He's certainly not responsible one iota for the political climate we find ourselves in these days, of course.  You stupid liberals keep bringing this up.  It's all your fault.  Steve:

Give me a freaking break. Nobody with a conscience wants Rush Limbaugh to wallow in the pig-trough of his misogyny on the public airwaves for several days, directing his unbridled hate at a genuinely vulnerable target. (Well, nobody except Michael Kinsley, perhaps, or others who consider this sort of thing "interesting.") Wanting Limbaugh (or Murdoch) to get his comeuppance for beyond-the-pale behavior isn't the same as cheering the fact that that behavior happened in the first place.

Kinsley has set a standard whereby no one can call out an opponent's behavior without being accused of insincerity. If I opposed the Catholic Church on abortion or gay marriage or condom use and then felt it was justifiably disgraced in the priest sex-abuse scandal, was I delighted that boys got raped? Where's the limit? How do I escape Kinsley's la-di-da-everyone's-a-cynic infinite loop?  

You don't.  And our media never will, at least not in my lifetime.  It's always false equivalence.  "Because you guys compared Bush to Hitler" will forever justify any behavior by Rush and his friends.

Last Call

And with folks around here in the Ohio/Kentucky/Indiana tri-state area still cleaning up from Friday's tornadoes, Ron Paul tells each and every one of the victims to go to hell and rot.

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, stood by his libertarian beliefs on Sunday, saying that victims of the violent storms and tornadoes that have battered a band of states in the South and Midwest in recent days should not be given emergency financial aid from the federal government.

"There is no such thing as federal money," Paul said, on CNN’s State of the Union. "Federal money is just what they steal from the states and steal from you and me."

"The people who live in tornado alley, just as I live in hurricane alley, they should have insurance," Paul said.

Ron Paul isn't running to be President of the United States.  He's running to replace it with the Hunger Games.  Let the districts fight among themselves and may the odds ever be in your favor.  Isn't it nice to know that if a tornado rips through where you live, Ron Paul won't lift a finger because the other 305,000,000 of us shouldn't have to help?  It's your fault you happened to be where the tornado was, so screw you and your family and your neighborhood.  Move to a better state.

But you see, Ron Paul isn't the only one.  Gov. John Kasich feels the exact same way about his state.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said thanks but no thanks to immediate federal disaster relief Saturday, even as governors in Indiana and Kentucky welcomed the help.

Kasich did not rule out asking for assistance later, but his decision means tornado-ravaged towns in Ohio will not get federal aid now and are not eligible at this time for potentially millions of dollars in payments and loans.

The governor said Ohio can respond to the crisis without federal help and he would not ask federal authorities to declare the region a disaster area.

“I believe that we can handle this,” Kasich said while visiting a shelter for storm victims at New Richmond High School. “We’ll have down here all the assets of the state.”

Can anyone ever recall a governor turning down disaster aid for multiple tornadoes?  That would be a first.  Of course, there's another first in the White House right now, which most likely explains this first too.

Needless to say, donating to the Cincy Red Cross is much more necessary now.  Donate here.

The American way, indeed.

Andrew Breitbart Trolls America One Last Time

The rehabilitation of Andrew Breitbart is proceeding at the speed of 'net.

On a day where President Obama's late mother is said to be copulating with a dog in an awful joke spread by a Montana federal judge, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona is holding press conferences on national TV to announce the President's birth certificate is a "forgery" we have Andrew Breitbart's death, as covered earlier by ABL.

Here's my problem.  Andrew Breitbart did truly awful things.  But his rehabilitation into a great guy begins with crap like this from David Frum:

Because President Obama was black, and because Breitbart believed in using every and any weapon at hand, Breitbart’s politics did inevitably become racially coded. Breitbart’s memory will always be linked to his defamation of Shirley Sherrod and his attempt to make a national scandal out of back payments to black farmers: the story he always called “Pigford” with self-conscious resonance.

Yet it is wrong to see Breitbart as racially motivated. Had Breitbart decided he hated a politician whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower, Breitbart would have been just as delighted to attack that politicians with a different set of codes. The attack was everything, the details nothing.

No.  See, no.  This is equivocating, self-serving, puerile bullshit of the highest magnitude right here, and it's the major reason why the ruined wasteland of American journalism that Andrew Breitbart helped to create was allowed to happen because the people who clearly knew better gave him a pass anyway.


Frum is basically saying that Breitbart did racist things, used racist phrases, and played on racial fears and stereotypes, but he wasn't a racist because he was either playing a character or that he hated everyone equally.

To which I again cry "bullshit".   That is such astonishing white privilege as to be shocking, and it's all the more terrible because Frum clearly admits in his obituary piece that Andrew Breitbart did really unforgivable things, and still calls him a "loyal friend".   He wasn't a bad person, he just was playing the game that he helped to create, and it's really heart-rending that the discourse is in tatters right now, but hey, it's okay, he wasn't a racist, he hated women and Muslims and liberals and academics and environmentalists too, so it's all good.

Sorry Frum.  You don't get to dispense this particular plenary indulgence.  You don't get to posthumously absolve him of his sins.    You don't get to play the "loveable bastard" card.  He was a darkness on the American political media scene, and his death left behind a country where you think it's okay to treat people like animals, objects, or worse just because you feel you can just explain away the behavior as acceptable due to "you can't prove intent".

And so you give him a pass, and CNN gives him a pass, and Dave Weigel gives him a pass, and Arianna Huffington gives him a pass, and the GOP clown car crew gives him a pass, and before the election we're going to have at least one Republican running for office demand that the President be impeached for the "cover-up over Breitbart's death" and the emails will go flying around and everyone will have a good laugh at the ni-CLANG President and Frum will continue to lament why his party has become full of racist assholes and he'll shrug and say "The attack was everything, the details nothing" and racism and bigotry and hatred will become that much more acceptable in society because Oh Well What Can You Do, He Said As He Shook His Head.

Frum of course will never figure out that the only thing worse than a bigoted, racist jackass of a liar is the person who excuses that kind of behavior and enables it to happen.  And in that very real way, David Frum is a much worse problem with our ass-over-teakettle media than Andrew Breitbart ever, ever will have been.

To be fair to David Frum, he isn't the only one.  Breitbart and his ilk were getting passes from a number of sources.  Even more passes are being issued in the wake of Breitbart's death.  And so it goes as we spiral into hell with afterburners alight, we are reminded here that in the end, as it always is, the racist bigoted asshole is  the true victim for having to be forced to live in an America with a black President he never wanted thrust upon him.

For tomorrow, the fresh hell of the news cycle begins anew, and Breitbart's pervasive taint will be all over it and the many, many news cycles to come after.  The dead racist guy gets the last laugh in this America.  His replacement will invariably be worse.

That's how the game is played.  Hate the game, not the players?  I choose to call out the people who make the game possible.  That means you, David Frum.  You're a big, big reason why we're in this hellhole with your fellow travelers finding all kids of ways to justify Breitbart and those like him.  You have to in perpetuity, lest you see the abyss staring back at you with your own face.

Fire Walker Chronicles: Think Of The Kids!

And suddenly, after cutting millions to Wisconsin schools and social safety net programs, GOP Gov. Scott Walker wants voters to think of how this awful recall fight is hurting kids and old people.

MSNBC’s Willie Geist asked Walker: “You find yourself in the middle of this, mired in a recall election. The latest Marquette poll has you 47 approve, 47 percent disapproves, split right down the middle in the state of Wisconsin. This could be a long fight for you — a special election scheduled to take place in June, a primary in May. How distracted are you from doing the business of Wisconsin by trying to essentially win re-election in the middle of your term?” (Note: The May and June dates are not yet officially declared by state election officials, but are the likely outcome of the administrative process.)

“Well, we’re focused,” Walker responded, “but it’s a huge distraction, not just for me, for the legislature. I mean, it’s $9 million of taxpayers’ money just to run this. Think about the number of kids we could help, think of the number of seniors we could help in our state with $9 million that we didn’t have to waste on this — this frivolous recall election.

And after taking big money from the Koch Brothers to save his bacon, who have sworn to help Walker destroy the state's public unions,  he has this to say about outside money:

“But really, I mean, in the end, I think it’s amazing, after a year of being attacked by out of state special interests, the tens of millions of dollars that were poured in, the fact that we’re ahead of any of the Democrats in the race I think bodes well for the election."

Yes, because there's no outside money coming to help Walker.  Not a dime, right?  Hey, you know what?  That $9 million Walker's complaining about?  That's about what he's gotten from Koch to run ads in the state so far.  Funny how that works.

Mendacious ass.

Last Call

Via Tbogg, Mitt Romney once again commits the worst sin a politician can make:  lying badly enough to get caught red-handed.

Romney recalled he was “probably 4 or something like that” the day of the Golden Jubilee, when three-quarters of a million people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American automobile.

“My dad had a job being the grandmaster. They painted Woodward Ave. with gold paint,” Romney told a rapt Tea Party audience in the village of Milford Thursday night, reliving a moment of American industrial glory.

The Golden Jubilee described so vividly by Romney was indeed an epic moment in automotive lore.

The parade included one of the last public appearances by an elderly Henry Ford.

Only one problem with Romney's reminiscing...

And it took place June 1, 1946 — fully nine months before Romney was born. 

It's like Mitt's plan is to run the worst Presidential campaign in modern history so that the country ends up with Santorum in the White House, and he's doing a bang-up job of it.

Nullification And Void, The Return

I've discussed the legal aspect of nullification before, where the states decide the Tenth Amendment means they don't have to follow laws they don't want to.  South Carolina tried it 1832 and got smacked down by Andrew Jackson over it (literally, Congress passed legislation authorizing the use of force against SC over this and Columbia folded in 1833.)   The nullification effort by South Carolina was basically the first real shot fired in the Civil War, although the real bullets wouldn't fly until nearly three decades later. 

With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and even before the passage of it, red states like Arizona began beating the nullification drum again.  Arizona was just one of many states that passed nullification laws in protest to President Obama being elected.   It's meaningless of course because the of the Supremacy Clause in Article VI of the Constitution:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

Of course, that didn't stop South Carolina from trying to ignore it anyway based on the Tenth Amendment, and oh yeah, the Civil War, like I mentioned.

Over at PoliticusUSA, Rmuse finds Georgia Republicans have gone one big step further and want to basically opt out of the union altogether:

The Georgia legislators introduced the nullification bill that is summed up with the words, “In the event the General Assembly votes by a constitutional majority to nullify any federal statute, mandate, or executive order on the grounds of constitutionality, neither the state nor its citizens shall recognize or be obligated to live under such statute, mandate, or executive order.” The similarities to pre-Civil War sensibilities of Southern states is remarkable and reflect opposition to, among other things, the Affordable Care Act and the right of women to choose their own reproductive health. However, the impetus of nullification is rejection of Barack Obama as President of the United States and not any one particular law.

And of course this is all about having a black President in the White House.  It was obvious as to why this happened in 1832 and obvious now.

The unconstitutional idea that a state can nullify federal law was invoked during the 1830’s by slave owners in southern states nearly caused a civil war at the time, and was the motivation of secessionists who did start America’s bloodiest conflict. Except for segregated southern states using nullification to maintain Jim Crow laws, the concept has been the purview of “constitutional radicalism” until January 2009. Its resurgence during President Obama’s administration increased with conservatives who are inspired by a neo-Confederate hate-group founder, Thomas Woods, who authored a book, “Nullification,” that argues “states have the final say” on a variety of issues.  Woods once published an article declaring the Confederacy was “Christendom’s Last Stand,” and endorses the view that the Civil War was a “battle between atheists, socialists, and communists” on one side and “friends of order” on the other. His words are eerily similar to conservative accusations against President Obama.

There are several states that attempted to pass nullification laws since President Obama took office, and they are all states with Republican majorities and governors. Virginia governor Bob McDonnell signed an obviously unconstitutional law that purports to nullify portions of the Affordable Care Act, and several states have followed suit with many considering so-called “sovereignty resolutions” which claim states have the power to ignore federal laws that conservatives oppose. In New Hampshire in 2009, four state legislators introduced a resolution which would invalidate the entire Constitution if Congress passed any law conflicting with the right-wing view of federal power. There is only one connection between all of these nullification attempts and it is they all occurred during President Obama’s term with many coming before the ACA was passed and signed into law.

It's ridiculous, but we're right back to 1832 again as far as the Republicans go.  Obama Derangement Syndrome is a pretty awful thing to witness.  And millions of Americans are okay with this level of hatred.

Last Call

So, this happened.

Like I said, after this last election, the first order of business is pass a budget. Now, I believe that. I supported the Paul Ryan budget and sent it over to the Senate. Now I live with some Senators, I yell at them all the time, I grabbed one of them the other day and shook him and I’d love to get them to vote for it — boy I’d love that. You know but other than me going over there with a gun and holding it to their head and maybe killing a couple of them, I don’t think they’re going to listen unless they get beat.

That's GOP Rep. John Sullivan of Oklahoma at a town hall this week. He's apologizing, of course. You know, since he got caught saying he was going to give the Senate some good ol' Second Amendment remedies.

I mean it's not like members of Congress actually get shot in the head or anything.

Oh wait.

Up In The Rareified Airhead

Ross Douthat pretty much breaks my Douchebagometer with his Sunday column on abortion and statistics showing that rates of teenage pregnancy are higher in red states with abstinence-only education.  He explains that inconvenient truth away with the following:

Liberals love to cite these numbers as proof that social conservatism is a flop. But the liberal narrative has glaring problems as well. To begin with, a lack of contraceptive access simply doesn’t seem to be a significant factor in unplanned pregnancy in the United States. When the Alan Guttmacher Institute surveyed more than 10,000 women who had procured abortions in 2000 and 2001, it found that only 12 percent cited problems obtaining birth control as a reason for their pregnancies. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of teenage mothers found similar results: Only 13 percent of the teens reported having had trouble getting contraception. 

At the same time, if liberal social policies really led inexorably to fewer unplanned pregnancies and thus fewer abortions, you would expect “blue” regions of the country to have lower teen pregnancy rates and fewer abortions per capita than demographically similar “red” regions. 

But that isn’t what the data show. Instead, abortion rates are frequently higher in more liberal states, where access is often largely unrestricted, than in more conservative states, which are more likely to have parental consent laws, waiting periods, and so on. “Safe, legal and rare” is a nice slogan, but liberal policies don’t always seem to deliver the “rare” part. 

Which may be the most pedantically trite thing ever uttered by any man named Douthat in the history of Earth.  The number of abortions in blue states is an integer greater than zero, thus proving that liberals are the Anti-Life Equation.

Seriously.

He's discovered that where states contrive to legislate through completely artificial means to make the choice to have an abortion more difficult (by raising the cost of time and lost income through waiting periods, exacting a shameful emotional price through forcing physicians to talk women out of it, increasing the economic cost through ultrasound procedures and "crisis pregnancy counseling", and enforcing a scarcity cost through regulating available clinics that perform the procedure out of business to reduce if not eliminate their availability) for the sole reason of making that choice more difficult, then amazingly enough those states have fewer abortions.

The man is an unabashed genius, truly one of the greatest minds of our age.  For an encore, he'll explain how Arizona gets less yearly rainfall than Washington State and how that proves the GOP-controlled Grand Canyon State has fewer deaths caused by trees than the vile, overly liberal Evergreen State, so that there's a distinct advantage to clear-cutting the place (if only to feed all the trees to the forges at Isengard.  Job creation!) 

Soldier on, Mighty Ross. Just...watch out for those trees.

Last Call

Closeted but anti-gay GOP official outed, has to resign in shame?  I've heard this story before.

An Arizona sheriff building a national profile stepped down Saturday from a state leadership position with Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign after a newspaper published allegations that he threatened to deport a former boyfriend.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu denied the allegations during a press conference Saturday. He was co-chair of Romney’s campaign in Arizona and is a candidate for Congress in the state’s fourth district.

“I’m here to say that all of these accusations that are in one of these newspapers are absolutely false,” Babeu said outside his office, “except to the issues that refer to me as being gay.”

Babeu’s former boyfriend alleged in a Phoenix New Times report published Thursday that Babeu and his attorney threatened him with deportation if the man revealed their relationship. Babeu said Saturday he had no reason to believe that the man, identified in the news report only as Jose, was an illegal immigrant. The New Times reported the man is originally from central Mexico.

Somehow, I don't think Babeu's going to win in AZ-4.  Call it a hunch.  GOP Rep. Paul Gosar of AZ-1 will be running in AZ-4 anyway, since it was redistricted to become a super-safe GOP seat.  This would have been an interesting race, now Gosar will most likely win this in a cake walk.  Gosar's claim to fame? Calling for Eric Holder's resignation over Fast and Furious and basically voting against everything President Obama does.

As amusing as this story is, the Dems aren't going to be able to take advantage of it in AZ-4.  Not directly, anyway.  Gosar's vacated AZ-1 seat however may very well go back to the Democrat he replaced:  Ann Kirkpatrick.