Last Call For The Late Great Planet Earth

The UN's big report on climate change is out, and it's basically a devastating, last-ditch warning to the planet that at this point without a global climate change plan, "irreversible" damage to our ecosystems will occur putting hundreds of millions of people at risk of climate-related disasters.

The gathering risks of climate change are so profound they could stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and hunger if greenhouse emissions continue at a runaway pace, according to a major new United Nations report.

Despite rising efforts in many countries to tackle the problem, the overall global situation is growing more acute as developing countries join the West in burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said here on Sunday.

Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.

“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the report declared.

In the starkest language it has ever used, the expert panel made clear how far society remains from having any serious policy to limit global warming.

Doing so would require finding a way to leave the vast majority of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels in the ground, or alternatively, developing methods to capture and bury the emissions resulting from their use, the group said.

If governments are to meet their own stated goal of limiting the warming of the planet to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level, they must restrict emissions from additional fossil-fuel burning to about 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, the panel said.

At current growth rates, that budget is likely to be exhausted in something like 30 years. Yet energy companies have already booked coal and petroleum reserves equal to several times that amount, and they are spending some $600 billion a year to find more. Utilities and oil companies are still building coal-fired power plants and refineries, and governments are spending another $600 billion directly subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels.

Bottom line:

• We're screwed.
• No, seriously, we're screwed big time.
• Fossil fuels have to be replaced.
• The multibillion dollar energy giants will never allow that to happen
• See point 1.

Anyone born after the year 2000 will probably be around to see just how awful this is going to get, and they will remember our response to this call.

And they will hate us for what we did to them.

That Didn't Last Long, Did It Mitch?

As I said earlier this week, Mitch McConnell isn't going to be able to get away with having both "Kynect is just a website" and "Repeal Obamacare root and branch" as his positions on the Affordable Care Act, and the Tea Party that really runs the GOP has made it clear that he's not getting off the hook that easily.

After McConnell downplayed the prospect of a GOP Senate fully repealing Obamacare on Tuesday, his office told the conservative Washington Examiner on Thursday that he would be willing to use a procedural option known as reconciliation to slice off parts of Obamacare with a simple majority of senators. 

"Leader McConnell is and has always been committed to the full repeal of Obamacare, and he'll continue to lead efforts to repeal and replace it with patient-centered reforms that enable greater choice at lower costs. He knows it won't be easy, but he also believes that if Republicans are fortunate enough to take back the majority we'll owe it to the American people to try through votes on full repeal, the bill’s most onerous provisions, and reconciliation,” McConnell spokesman Brian McGuire told the paper. 

There's a catch: reconciliation is only usable for changes to law which affect the budget.
"Reconciliation can only be used for tax/spending items. So yes, FULL repeal (to include items not subject to a reconciliation bill) would require 60. That has always been the case and always been on the table," Don Stewart, McConnell's deputy chief of staff, told TPM in an email. 

The process is tricky, but it's doable. The Senate would first have to pass a budget resolution, which also requires 51 votes, and include reconciliation instructions.

It would still get vetoed by the President, but clearly the Republicans believe after Democrats get destroyed Tuesday that they'll completely surrender and cave in on getting veto-proof margins on these votes, forcing a repeal.  If that happens, nobody will be able to save the Dems in 2016 from the base not showing up.

Maybe Mitch knows that.

Your Sunday Long Read: The Purge

A very depressing article from Al Jazeera America on the Interstate Crosscheck Program, a cooperative effort by 27 states to disenfranchise seven million mostly minority voters in this election and in 2016.

Until now, state elections officials have refused to turn over their Crosscheck lists, some on grounds that these voters are subject to criminal investigation. Now, for the first time, three states — Georgia, Virginia and Washington — have released their lists to Al Jazeera America, providing a total of just over 2 million names. 

The Crosscheck list of suspected double voters has been compiled by matching names from roughly 110 million voter records from participating states. Interstate Crosscheck is the pet project of Kansas’ controversial Republican secretary of state, Kris Kobach, known for his crusade against voter fraud. 

The three states’ lists are heavily weighted with names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel and Kim — ones common among minorities, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, fully 1 in 7 African-Americans in those 27 states, plus the state of Washington (which enrolled in Crosscheck but has decided not to utilize the results), are listed as under suspicion of having voted twice. This also applies to 1 in 8 Asian-Americans and 1 in 8 Hispanic voters. White voters too — 1 in 11 — are at risk of having their names scrubbed from the voter rolls, though not as vulnerable as minorities. 

If even a fraction of those names are blocked from voting or purged from voter rolls, it could alter the outcome of next week’s electoral battle for control of the U.S. Senate — and perhaps prove decisive in the 2016 presidential vote count. 

“It’s Jim Crow all over again,” says the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King, Jr. Lowery, now 93, says he recognizes in the list of threatened voters a sophisticated new form of an old and tired tactic. “I think [the Republicans] would use anything they can find. Their desperation is rising.”

Which is easier to believe, that millions of black, Asian, and Latino voters are criss-crossing the country to vote multiple times in different states, or that Republicans are trying to eliminate millions of Democratic votes in order to win?

Considering a variation of my name is on these lists, and under Interstate Crosscheck my voter registration could be terminated and I could lose my right to vote if challenged?  I'm going with option B there.

If Kobach is right, then there are literally millions of double voting felons that need to be imprisoned. If skeptics are right, then millions of innocent people could to lose the right to vote.  People who just happen to be minorities that favor Democrats.

Do read the entire story to see how much of a complete joke Insterstate Crosscheck is.  Basically, you can lose your right to vote if your name comes close to matching that of a person in another state who has moved.

Think about it.

Then vote.  While you still can.  And don't ever tell me that "there's no difference between the two parties."

Last Call For Judicial Overreach

And in about 30 seconds, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Judith French makes the best case I have ever seen about why judges should not be elected by partisan ballot.

An Ohio Supreme Court justice says she was talking judicial philosophy — not politics — when she addressed a Republican crowd about the court serving as a “backstop” for decisions made by GOP officeholders. 

Justice Judith L. French, an appointed Republican seeking to retain her seat in the Nov. 4 election, said her remarks at a GOP rally in Powell did not cross the ethical line that counsels judges to be cautious about partisan remarks. 

At a Saturday event at which she introduced Republican Gov. John Kasich, French said, “I am a Republican and you should vote for me. You’re going to hear from your elected officials, and I see a lot of them in the crowd. 

“Let me tell you something: The Ohio Supreme Court is the backstop for all those other votes you are going to cast. 

“Whatever the governor does, whatever your state representative, your state senator does, whatever they do, we are the ones that will decide whether it is constitutional; we decide whether it’s lawful. We decide what it means, and we decide how to implement it in a given case. 

“So, forget all those other votes if you don’t keep the Ohio Supreme Court conservative,” French said.

That's nice.

 

French explained her remarks yesterday, saying, “The policy decisions stay with the legislators, the policy makers. . . . I’m not going to support Republican legislation; I’m not going to support Democratic legislation. It’s not my role.

Except she just said that it was her role, and the most important role  In the end, they decide.

Of course, in the end, the US Supreme Court decides.  And those positions are filled by Presidents and approved by the Senate.

So in the end, yes, who controls the Senate does absolutely matter.

The Case Against Kasich

By all accounts, Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich should be losing by double digits to Democrat Ed FitzGerald.  Kasich has refused to participate in any debates, signed one of the nation's worst abortion laws that may soon close all abortion clinics in southwest Ohio for starters, passed a restrictive voter ID laws into effect disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of minority voters and worked to cut back early voting, fracked the state into an environmental mess, attacked Ohio's unions, and basically ran uncontested as a Tea Party nutjob.

But somehow, he's going to win re-election.  And this may be part of the reason why.

The editorial board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper, hosted a meeting recently with the state’s gubernatorial candidates: incumbent Republican Gov. John Kasich, Democrat Ed FitzGerald, and Green Party Candidate Anita Rios. The discussion got a little … odd. 

FitzGerald, behind in the polls, not surprisingly stayed on the offensive, and noted the Kasich approved a law that restricts what rape-crisis counselors can tell victims. “Why was it important to have a piece of legislation that literally imposed a gag rule on rape crisis counselors?” the challenger asked. 

The governor, slumped in his chair and visibly annoyed, decided to pretend that FitzGerald wasn’t in the room.

This isn't hyperbole, this is literally what happened.

One of the editors prompts him: “Would you like to answer that, governor?” 

“Do you have a question?” Kasich responds. The editor then tries to explain the question FitzGerald just asked. As much as the editor understands the question, anyway. 

“I assume that it had to do with, uh, there were limits on what they could say about having abortions,” the editor says. 

Kasich still says nothing, possibly because the reporter made the mistake of mentioning FitzGerald’s name while summarizing the question. Once more, Kasich spreads his hands and asks, “I mean, did you have a…?”   At which point FitzGerald jumps in and explains to the clueless reporter, “He’s trying to pretend he didn’t hear me say it, so you need to repeat it.”

Kasich apparently so does not care that he dismissed his opponent while in the room, while talking to the editorial board of the largest paper in the state.

The paper's response?

Keep in mind, Kasich refused to participate in any debates this year, so this editorial-board meeting was literally the only opportunity for Ohio voters to see their gubernatorial candidates talk about their ideas. It made the discussion, hosted by the Plain Dealer’s editors, arguably one of the more important political events in Ohio this campaign season. 

And initially, the newspaper did publish the video of the gathering online. But then the paper pulled the clip, posted an audio-only version, and threatened legal action against an Ohio-based news site that offered readers a YouTube version of the discussion. 

That site being our friends at Plunderbund, who apparently were the only people to realize the import of this chain of idiocy.  Kasich, by the way, still hasn't answered the question about why he signed into law a rule that literally forbids rape crisis counselors from mentioning abortion.  His answer, that he's "pro-life", makes it self-evident in Kasich's eyes.

Oh, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer endorsed Kasich despite that exchange.

So apparently, you don't need to do any debates if your Governor in Ohio anymore, and you don't have to answer questions from newspaper editorial boards either.  You get endorsed because the corporate masters at the news tell the paper to endorse the Republican and that's that.  Kasich could not give a damn about this, you're just wasting time until his corporate funded reelection is in place.

That's Ohio for you.  And four more years of red state lunacy may finally finish the state off.

That Personhood Amendment Again

Oh Colorado anti-choicers, you'll never give up trying to criminalize miscarriages and abortions through stupid, unconstitutional personhood amendments, will you?  Here we have Amendment 67, yet another attempt to give full legal rights to cells.  The ploy this time: making a poster child of Heather Surovik, a woman who tragically lost her unborn child in a car accident to a drunk driver.

Warning: FOX News link, only being used because of the admission of actual truth in FOX News story.

This time in Colorado, though, supporters have tied the measure to a tragic accident in July 2012. Heather Surovik was eight months pregnant and on her way back from a prenatal visit when her car was struck by a drunk driver.

"When she woke up in the hospital, she was told that her baby had not survived," Amendment 67 backer Jennifer Mason recalled. "But not only that, there would be no charges filed in relation to his death because under Colorado law, he was not considered a person."

Heather Surovik said, "They can't tell me that's not a baby. He was eight pounds, two ounces. Brady was the second victim, and nobody recognized it."

Yes, tragic, but Amendment 67 is not the solution, and backers of it know what it's really for.

Fofi Mendez, campaign manager of "Vote NO 67," sympathizes with Heather Surovik's loss but warns that redefining the words "person" and "child" to include the unborn would have the effect of banning all abortions, and even some forms of birth control.

"You end up giving legal and constitutional rights to a woman's fertilized egg and when you apply that definition to the criminal code and the wrongful death statute, you end up making criminals out of women and their doctors," Mendez said.

Which is the point of the amendment, to criminalize women for choosing not to carry a baby to full term.  Colorado state law would be amended to allow abortions to be literal murder under the law and/or miscarriages to be manslaughter.

Important point here, where the fundie nutjob admits it:

This is not something Mason denies. "Well, they could be [considered criminals]. If an unborn child is a person and we recognize that they are a person, should we say that some children should be protected and some shouldn't?" Mason said.

Lunacy.  Absolute lunacy.

Opponents also point out that in 2013, legislation inspired by Surovik's case was signed into law that criminalized the unlawful termination of a pregnancy. If the same accident happened today, the drunk driver who crashed into Surovik's car would be charged for the loss of her unborn child.

Oh, so there's no reason for Amendment 67 then.

Unless you're criminalizing abortions and miscarriages.

PS: GOP Senate candidate Joni Ernst in Iowa supports a national Personhood law/Constitutional Amendment too.  David Corn explains how Ernst is the future of the GOP.

If elected, Ernst would almost certainly be among the most conservative senators in the country. Yet she owes her rise to prominence not to the tea party, but to the Rotary Club types—the GOP establishment, which urged her to run and bet that her biography and folksy political charm would matter far more than her extreme policy positions. She is somehow both the handpicked champion of the mainline business-minded wing of the Republican Party and a hard-right conservative reactionary—the logical end-result of the ongoing merger of the tea party and the rest of the GOP. And if she wins on Tuesday, she'll set an example that Republican candidates will emulate for years to come.

That future includes criminalizing abortions with a smiling face and heartfelt stories of anguish over the unborn, but it'll also take rights away from tens of millions of women.

Or you know, you could just sit home and complain about how Obama failed you.

Your choice.  For now.  Soon you won't have a choice because it'll be gone.

Last Call For Halloween's Strange Fruit

Good thing racism is over here in Kentucky.

A Halloween display depicting what appears to be a black family hanging from a tree outside of a Kentucky residence has been taken down after people complained about it. The house is located on the military base in Fort Campbell. 

Clarksville.com reports that one of its readers sent in a photo of four figures hanging in the home's front yard. The child has a knife in its back and one of the figures is holding a sign that is hard to read in the photo.

Brendalyn Carpenter with Fort Campbell Public Affairs said her department received a report of a Halloween display that was “offensive in nature” and asked that it be investigated. The woman who had put up the display agreed to take it down after learning of the concerns voiced by some in her community. 

“Displays of an offensive nature are not reflective of Army values and the family-friendly environment provided for employees and residents of the Fort Campbell community,” Carpenter said. 

The woman, who hasn’t been identified, said she didn’t mean to offend anyone and apologized. It's unclear how long the display was hanging before it was removed, but it is odd that someone could think such a display wouldn’t be perceived as being offensive.

Nope.  Couldn't see why hanging a black family from a tree would offend anyone, you know.  She's probably sorry that you were offended by it, gosh, what's the big deal?

Heritage, not hate right?

Have a great Halloween, folks.  Stay safe tonight.  Seriously.

Throttle It Back, Guys

Looks like the Federal Trade Commission thinks that when AT&T offers "unlimited" data plans on mobile devices, that it can't just allow 3 GB of data in a month and then throttle download speeds to the point of not being useful.  It's suing the mobile carrier over the plans, and millions of AT&T customers -- including myself -- want what we paid for.

The U.S. government filed a lawsuit against AT&T Inc on Tuesday, alleging the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier sold consumers unlimited data plans but would slow their Internet down once they used a certain amount of data. 

The Federal Trade Commission, which filed the lawsuit, said that this "throttling" of Internet feeds was deceptive and said that in some cases the data speeds were slowed by nearly 90 percent. 

AT&T did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

More than 3.5 million customers had their Internet speeds slowed more than 25 million times because of AT&T's practice, which began in October 2011, the FTC said. 

AT&T says on its support website that people who have legacy unlimited data plans can experience data slowdowns once they exceed certain limits. Customers with a 3G smartphone will experience slowdowns after using 3 gigabytes of data in a month while those with 4G LTE smartphones can use 5 gigabytes before hitting potential slowdowns. 

Those who dislike the slower internet once they hit their limit are told that they can use Wi-Fi or switch to a different AT&T plan, AT&T says on its web site.

AT&T can't just stop providing data plans to iPhone users like myself who bought and kept the original unlimited data plans from when AT&T was first offering the devices six years ago, especially since it made everyone buy a separate data plan -- with a separate additional charge -- to even activate an iPhone in the first place.  That's always been true.

So when customers like myself kept the plans and AT&T grandfathered them, they realized they made a huge mistake and then needed to make the plans all but unusable.  If you're wondering why AT&T is trying to screw its unlimited data plan users into canceling their contract or changing their plan, this might have something to do with it:

And these are "value pricing" data plans.  Do you see now why AT&T has to get rid of me, and is doing everything they can to get rid of millions of customers like me?  We're immune to their massive scheme where even a handful of gigabytes a month in data is hundreds of dollars.

Of course the real problem is the fact that America has the most overpriced internet on Earth. European, Asian, and even African internet rates are a fraction or what we pay, and we're getting screwed massively by companies like AT&T.

Who I'm sticking with, if only to enjoy getting my money's worth at a little more than the 2 GB going rate.

Both Sides Do It, Millennial Edition

Election Day is Tuesday, and the bottom line is Millennial voters don't give a good god damn and think both sides are responsible for the terrible state of politics in America.

A new poll released Wednesday by Harvard's Institute of Politics suggests Democrats are failing miserably on that front when it comes to Millennials, the generation that helped Barack Obama make history in 2008. The survey of just over 2,000 18-29-year-olds broadly indicated a shift away from Democrats in 2014, leading the pollsters to declare Millennials "up for grabs" in the midterms.

But the most stunning finding came from the question of which party young voters wanted to see control Congress next year. Among all respondents, 50 percent chose the Democrats and 43 percent picked Republicans. But among the much smaller subset of respondents who said they would "definitely" vote this fall, the GOP won, 51 percent to 47 percent.

It gets worse.

That Millennials have become disenchanted with the current state of affairs in Washington seems obvious. Asked who they blame for the "political gridlock" in the capital, a clear majority–56 percent– replied, "All of them." Nearly the same percentage said they would recall or replace the entire Congress if they could.

Millennials, particularly younger Millennials, want real change, but they don't believe either party can provide it, so they don't vote.  The result is that the GOP-heavy Boomers will continue to control politics in this country for another decade or so.

The relentless whining that "Obama has failed us, he's worse than Bush!" coming from the Professional Left has definitely had its desired effect.

If you don't vote, nothing will ever change.  I just don't comprehend when given the people who died for the right to vote, why tens of millions of Americans throw that right away because "both parties are the same".

If Millennials turned out like they did in 2008 or 2012 for 2014, Republicans would be pissing themselves in fear.  But hey, Obama is worse than Bush, so who cares, right?

Not you, apparently.

 

StupidiNews!

• Alleged cop killer and fugitive Eric Frein has been captured by law enforcement after evading police for nearly seven weeks in the woods of northeastern Pennsylvania.
• The US Department of Education is planning new regulations to monitor for-profit colleges and universities to make sure they are helping students or risk losing federal aid.
• The Bank of Japan has chosen to extend and accelerate bond purchases in order to boost the sagging Japanese economy, taking markets by surprise.
• Burkina Faso's military has taken control of the West African country, deposing President Blaise Compaore's 27-year reign and planning to restore constitutional rule within a year.
• Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg sees consumers as many as 100 million Oculus Rift VR units in the coming decade as the next "major computing platform".

Last Call For Huckleberry's Hard Truth

Once again the mask slips, and Republicans accidentally tell the truth.  Sen. Lindsey Graham meant it as a joke, of course.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) joked in a private meeting this month that white men would "do great" under his presidency, according to audio obtained by CNN.

The South Carolina Republican confirmed to the news outlet that he made the comment at a meeting of the Hibernian Society of Charleston, a charity organization that he said encourages speakers "to be earthy, to make fun of yourself, to make fun of them."

"If I get to be president, white men who are in male-only clubs are going to do great in my presidency," Graham says in one audio snippet as the audience laughs.

Ha-haaaaaaaa! It's a joke, see.

And the joke's on us.

The Screaming Abyss Is Seated At The Table By The Bar, Dr. Ablow

I know I like to allude that the crazier elements of the Tea Party have much in common with comic book super villains, but it's rare that one of them actually writes a column worthy of being included in a manifesto for an enemy of Captain America or Batman, between bouts of megalomaniacal laughter. Jon Chait on FOX News contributor(?) Dr. Keith Ablow, who apparently has a doctorate in Being Evil:

The Obama era has seen a resurgence of conservative constitutional fetishism — the belief that the Constitution not only requires the Republican domestic agenda, but is figuratively or even literally divine. Fox News columnist and television personality Dr. Keith Ablow has taken this premise and applied it toward American foreign policy. The result is a remarkable column calling for what he calls “American Jihad.” 

Ablow’s argument, at least conceptually, is extremely simple. The United States, like Al Qaeda, has a sacred document: “Our Constitution is a sacred document that better defines and preserves the liberty and autonomy of human beings than the charter of any other nation on earth.” 

Therefore, every person on Earth should enjoy its blessings: “An American jihad would embrace the correct belief that if every nation on earth were governed by freely elected leaders and by our Constitution, the world would be a far better place.” 

Note that Ablow is not merely endorsing a civilizational war between the West and radical Islam, as extreme hawks are wont to do. He is endorsing a campaign of conquest aimed at literally every other country on Earth. Ablow is not satisfied with bringing democracy to those who don’t enjoy it. He proposes to bring the American Constitution to every country, even democratic ones. Because there may be other democratic forms of government, but Ablow thinks they all pale before ours.

This guy is a few crock pots short of a company chili cook-off.  Usually "let's invade all the other nations and make them just as awesome as America, because America!" is rightfully classified as reductio ad absurdum snark, not an actual foreign policy talking point, but this is actually what Ablow is proposing here.

Bonus verbatim stupid:

We would urge our leaders, after their service in the U.S. Senate and Congress, to seek dual citizenship in other nations, like France and Italy and Sweden and Argentina and Brazil and Germany, and work to influence those nations to adopt laws very much like our own. We might even fund our leaders' campaigns for office in these other nations.

Oh sure, that's clearly the solution to the world's problems: we need to export more US politicians writing more awesome laws like the USA PATRIOT Act.

Chait ends his piece thusly:

It’s not terrorism if God is telling you to do it.

God is apparently mildly disturbed.  Explains a lot, actually.

The American Red (Double) Cross

The argument we hear from conservatives is that government has no business in the disaster relief department, that's what charities are for, and government agencies are terribly mismanaged and screw things up (the VA comes to mind.)  The problem is that charities can be mismanaged too, and when they are, it's the government that ends up backstopping disaster relief efforts.  Barry Ritholz talks about the American Red Cross's massive Hurricane Sandy failures as a prime example:

The details of how it botched the relief efforts are laid out in Red Cross documents and are simply stunning: 

• Despite plenty of advance warning of Sandy, the Red Cross lacked basics such as food, blankets and batteries to distribute to victims after the storm. 

• Red Cross workers weren't provided with the usual GPS devices. Many got lost driving around the New York area and were unable to deliver aid and supplies. 

• As many as half of the emergency meals prepared for Sandy victims were wasted or never delivered. 

• The Red Cross failed to deliver food, water, shelter, cleaning supplies, blankets to survivors of Sandy until weeks after the storm. Mormon and Amish volunteers, on the other hand, were delivering supplies just three days after the storm. 

• Red Cross supervisors ordered dozens of empty trucks to be driven around, “just to be seen,” in lieu of delivering relief supplies. 

• Emergency response vehicles and other assets were also diverted from disaster aid to be seen as backdrops at news conferences for PR purposes; the Red Cross did this after other storms too, including Hurricane Isaac. 

Perhaps most damning is evidence that the Red Cross fabricated claims of how many people were actually served by the charity. The Red Cross said that “17 million meals and snacks were delivered, there were 74,000 overnight stays in shelters, more than 7 million relief items like blankets and flashlights.” Internal documents cast doubt on those numbers, saying the charity’s ability to actually count what was delivered was “crippled.”

Now we know why the Red Cross hired the law firm Gibson Dunn to fight public disclosures of how Sandy money was spent. Gibson Dunn distinguished itself by making the absurd claim that Sandy activities were a “trade secret.” Eventually, the Red Cross backed away from that stance.

This is turning into an ugly story of incompetence where a charity failed, but government was able to step in.  And note I mean the federal government and FEMA, and not the equally incompetent response from Gov. Chris Christie, part of which turned into quite the nice new construction slush fund for rewarding donors.

FEMA was the hero during Sandy, not the Red Cross, and not New Jersey's government.

StupidiNews!

• Star San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner earned MVP as he held off the Kansas City Royals in Game 7 of the World Series to win 3-2.
• Local Italian citizens are angry that the US military has quarantined soldiers returning from Liberia at a base in Italy, prompting political protests and calls for all US troops to leave the country.
• Talks between Ukraine and Russia over natural gas deliveries have stalled as Moscow is demanding payment up front from European Union countries to cover Kiev's coming winter bill.
• The US Supreme Court will decide tomorrow on whether or not to hear the Republican appeal on Obamacare exchanges, which could lead to a decision ending federal exchange subsidies to 36 states.
• Microsoft is jumping into the fitness wearable tech market with Band, a wrist sensor that displays health info and connects to your phone via Bluetooth.

Last Call To Follow The Money

Our corporate masters are weighing in on who they believe should win the Senate.  Guess which party they're backing?

"In a significant shift, business groups gave more money to Republican candidates than to Democrats in seven of the most competitive Senate races in recent months, in some cases taking the unusual step of betting against sitting senators," the Wall Street Journal reports. 

"Shifts in business donations have foreshadowed the outcome of several recent elections. Business PACs began shifting toward Democrats late in the 2006 midterm cycle, ahead of a political wave in which Democrats regained control of both the House and Senate. Business contributions swung again early in 2010, ahead of a wave that year that gave Republicans a House majority and gains in the Senate."

So yes, big business backed the Dems when it looked like unpopular Bush was going to cost the GOP in 2006 (and did).  They figure the same will happen for Obama costing the Democrats now.  But what if they're wrong and the Dems hold on?

Well, they always have more money to give, right?  Even here in Kentucky, one powerful  Karl Rove crony is trying to buy the Senate election for the GOP.  The shadowy "Kentucky Opportunity Coalition" has bought 12,000 ads for Mitch McConnell, and it's the biggest PAC player in the state.

No other group has had a larger footprint in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race. In fact, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition has aired about twice as many TV ads than the next most prolific player in the contest, a pro-Grimes super PAC called Senate Majority PAC, run by allies of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). And the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition has aired more spots than all other pro-McConnell groups combined. 

Despite having effectively no physical presence, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition now ranks among the largest social-welfare nonprofits in Kentucky—bringing in more money, according to Internal Revenue Service records, than some of Kentucky’s more high-profile nonprofits, such as the Kentucky School Boards Association and the Kentucky Derby Festival, the group behind two weeks’ worth of events surrounding the Kentucky Derby. 

Thank, in part, the loosened rules on corporate electioneering following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision for Kentucky Opportunity Coalition’s unexpected rise. Certain types of donor-shielding nonprofit corporations may now raise unlimited funds to advocate for and against federal political candidates, not only in Kentucky, but in any race. 

More acutely, though, thank a development akin to a corporate takeover for the group’s sudden prominence—the addition, last year, of a former top McConnell aide who previously worked in the White House with Republican strategist Karl Rove. Until then, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition didn’t do much of anything. 

That man: Scott Jennings.

And Jennings is a piece of work, a former Dubya staffer and McConnell reelection consultant, and a guy who has greased the skids to allow millions in dark money from anonymous donors to buy thousands of ads here in the state.

And we know nothing about who's buying those ads.  Or who's buying my senator.