Last Call For Fast Track Back, Jack

Oh look, the Senate passed fast track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement anyhow.

The U.S. Senate advanced a measure allowing President Barack Obama to expedite approval of trade agreements, a bill with bipartisan support in that chamber that may run into strong opposition from House Democrats. 

The 65-33 vote Thursday followed separate votes sought by Democrats to pass proposals curbing currency manipulation and boosting imports from sub-Saharan Africa. The Senate plans to consider amendments to the fast-track trade proposal next week. 

A rebellion Tuesday among Senate Democrats seeking the currency provision previews what may be fiercer battle ahead between Democrats and House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican. 

“There’s a broad feeling we have to do something against China” on currency manipulation, New York Senator Charles Schumer, the chamber’s third-ranking Democrat, told reporters before the vote on advancing the trade bill. He called the currency measure “a shot across China’s bow that we’re not going to just sit there and do nothing.” 

The fast-track bill would allow Obama to submit trade agreements to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendments. He hopes to complete a 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership and send it for fast-track approval.

So after all the "name calling" and the fighting and the "Democrats in disarray" and the "Obama suffers stinging rebuke" fast track authority passed.  There will be amendments, and sure, the deal could still die in the House or in negotiations, especially with the currency manipulation provision, should it pass.

But 48 hours ago, it was "Senator Warren stops Obama's bad trade deal!"

No, she didn't.

President Obama wins, and nobody cares.

Funny how this works, huh?

Voice Of Iron, Feet Of Clay

Never forget that your heroes will always have very mortal flaws.

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the outspoken, populist Democrat who thunders against Wall Street fat cats,and used to to joke about Mitt Romney's low tax bill, incorporated a couple hedge funds in the Cayman Islands so investors could avoid taxes. 

Grayson Fund Ltd. and Grayson Master Fund were incorporated in 2011 in the Cayman Islands, a well known tax Haven that Romney used as well, records show.. That was the same year he wrote in the Huffington Post that the IRS should audit every Fortune 500 company because so many appear to be "evading taxes through transfer pricing and offshore tax havens." 

In a phone interview Wednesday, Grayson said the funds were incorporated in Grand Cayman at the advice of an attorney he declined to name. It was a vehicle for foreign investors to invest in his funds while limiting their tax liabilities, he said, but no money had been invested in them yet. 

"There are no investors in those funds or that fund as the case may be," said Grayson, who said he thought only one fund was incorporated in the Caymans. 

"When I set up my investment funds I set it up like everyone else," Grayson said, complaining about the Tampa Bay Times looking for "some stupid, bull---- story. ... You want to write sh-- about it, and you can't because not a single dollar of taxes has been avoided," he snapped. 

Grayson's financial disclosure statements indicate he has between $5-million and $25-million invested in the Grayson fund, and he lists no income from it.

Sure Alan.  Not a single dollar.

Problem Child

Jeb Bush will never be able to escape the sins of his older brother, as a college student in Nevada displayed for all the world to see.

She added: “Your brother created ISIS.” 

Mr. Bush interjected. “All right. Is that a question?” 

Ms. Ziedrich was not finished. “You don’t need to be pedantic to me, sir.” 

“Pedantic? Wow,” Mr. Bush replied. 

Then Ms. Ziedrich asked: “Why are you saying that ISIS was created by us not having a presence in the Middle East when it’s pointless wars where we send young American men to die for the idea of American exceptionalism? Why are you spouting nationalist rhetoric to get us involved in more wars?” 

Mr. Bush replied: “We respectfully disagree. We have a disagreement. When we left Iraq, security had been arranged, Al Qaeda had been taken out. There was a fragile system that could have been brought up to eliminate the sectarian violence.” 

He added: “And we had an agreement that the president could have signed that would have kept 10,000 troops, less than we have in Korea, could have created the stability that would have allowed for Iraq to progress. The result was the opposite occurred. Immediately, that void was filled.” 

He concluded: “Look, you can rewrite history all you want. But the simple fact is that we are in a much more unstable place because American pulled back.” 

Mr. Bush turned away. The conversation was over.

And so, I might add, are his prospects of winning in November 2016.

Then again, at least 60 million American voters will buy that fantasy and vote for whomever the GOP candidate is...

StupidiNews!

• A fire that engulfed a shoe factory in the Philippines has killed at least 72 people, most of the victims were found trapped on the second floor of the building.
• North Korea has fired dozens of artillery shells into the Yellow Sea near its maritime border with South Korea as the two countries continue to dispute naval boundaries.
• The NTSB says Tuesday's deadly train derailment was caused by the train going more than 100 mph into a 50 mph curve, and that lack of installed track safety measures contributed.
• House Republicans have passed a controversial measure that would ban nearly all abortions nationwide after 20 weeks, but the measure is not expected to pass the Senate.
• On the other hand, the House also voted overwhelmingly to end bulk metadata collection of phone calls. and that bill faces a far more uncertain Senate fate.

Last Call For A Higher State

I still have an enormous number of serious disagreements with the Catholic Church I was raised in, but the Pope is doing the right thing here when it comes to Palestinian recognition.

The Vatican has officially recognized the state of Palestine in a new treaty. 

The treaty, which was finalized Wednesday but still has to be signed, makes clear that the Holy See has switched its diplomatic relations from the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the state of Palestine. 

The Vatican had welcomed the decision by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012 to recognize a Palestinian state. But the treaty is the first legal document negotiated between the Holy See and the Palestinian state and constitutes an official recognition. 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is due to see Pope Francis on Saturday before the canonization of two new saints from the Holy Land a day later.

Recall that Pope Francis played a major role in helping to normalize the US/Cuba relationship, so he may know a thing or two about diplomacy.  But this is pretty huge, to have the Vatican recognize a full Palestinian state.  That will put a lot of pressure internationally on Israel, and Bibi's already reeling from his recent re-election close call with a less than fully stable coalition government.

The timing couldn't be better if you're Abbas, and I'm pretty sure President Obama isn't exactly upset over this either.

We'll see where this leads.

The Big Trade Off

Fast track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal was never, ever, ever in real trouble, but Senate Democrats got their win.

Senate Democrats handed President Obama a stinging rebuke on Tuesday, blocking consideration of legislation granting their own president accelerated power to complete a major trade accord with Asia. 

The Senate voted 52-45 on a procedural motion to begin debating the bill to give the president “trade promotion authority,” eight votes short of the 60 needed to proceed. Republicans and pro-trade Democrats said they would try to negotiate a trade package that could clear that threshold. 

But the vote Tuesday presented Mr. Obama what might be a no-win situation. He may have to accept trade enforcement provisions he does not want in order to propel the trade legislation through the Senate, but those same provisions might doom the Pacific trade negotiations that legislation is supposed to lift.

So now Senate Democrats can step in and force changes to the negotiations, and that was exactly the plan.

According to several Senate sources — whose accounts match up with what some reporters are spilling forth on the twitters — the deal between Senate Dems and Republicans looks something like this: 

1) The Senate would vote first on a package that includes a measure stiffening enforcement on foreign companies evading import duties and a measure that would force the administration to take action against countries manipulating currency to juice exports. Those were chiefly sought by Senators Ron Wyden and Chuck Schumer. There might also be a vote on a measure that would favor U.S. imports of some products from certain African countries. 

2) Then the Senate would proceed to a vote on whether to move forward with Fast Track, which would mandate that a final Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is subject only to an up-or-down Congressional vote, with no amendments or filibusters. The vote on Fast Track would also include Trade Adjustment Assistance, which helps workers hurt by trade policies. Presumably, if the first two above items sought by Dems pass, a group of around a dozen pro-trade Democrats — who helped block Fast Track yesterday — would then vote to move it forward. 

Previously, that group of pro-trade Democrats had joined the filibuster of the Fast Track vote because it only included assistance for workers displaced by trade, and not the currency manipulation or enforcement provisions.

And in the end, there may be no deal at all...or the rest of the world will simply make a deal and we will have no seat at the table for US workers at all.

It's funny.  This is basically the exact situation the Senate placed the President in when it came to the Iran negotiations: the insertion of a poison pill that would scrap the entire deal.  Senate Dems sure were pissed off when Republicans tried it, and the fate of an Iran nuclear deal remains up in the air as a result.

But putting in a poison pill measure doesn't seem to be a problem for Dems anymore.  That currency manipulation provision may be the straw that breaks the entire TPP.

Amazing how that works.

Losing Our Religion

The latest Pew Research poll on Americans and religion finds that those of us who are unaffiliated with a particular religion are now the second largest religious category, surpassing Catholics Mainline Protestants since 2007 and are now second only to Evangelical Christians.

The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among women as well as men.

To be sure, the United States remains home to more Christians than any other country in the world, and a large majority of Americans – roughly seven-in-ten – continue to identify with some branch of the Christian faith.1 But the major new survey of more than 35,000 Americans by the Pew Research Center finds that the percentage of adults (ages 18 and older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Over the same period, the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%. And the share of Americans who identify with non-Christian faiths also has inched up, rising 1.2 percentage points, from 4.7% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2014. Growth has been especially great among Muslims and Hindus, albeit from a very low base.

The drop in the Christian share of the population has been driven mainly by declines among mainline Protestants and Catholics. Each of those large religious traditions has shrunk by approximately three percentage points since 2007. The evangelical Protestant share of the U.S. population also has dipped, but at a slower rate, falling by about one percentage point since 2007.2 

Even as their numbers decline, American Christians – like the U.S. population as a whole – are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Non-Hispanic whites now account for smaller shares of evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics than they did seven years earlier, while Hispanics have grown as a share of all three religious groups. Racial and ethnic minorities now make up 41% of Catholics (up from 35% in 2007), 24% of evangelical Protestants (up from 19%) and 14% of mainline Protestants (up from 9%).

The big drop in religious Americans is most notable among Millennials.

More than a third of Millennials are unaffiliated with a religion, and barely more than half are Christian.  That's going to have a huge effect on America's social fabric going forward.  I'm betting the numbers for post-Millennials (those born after 2000) will be even more in the religiously unaffiliated given another ten years or so.  They may not even be majority Christian anymore. Among younger Millennials, the percentage of unaffiliated ties that of Protestants (36%). 

No wonder Evangelicals are freaking out on the whole WE'RE TAKING OUR COUNTRY BACK and AMERICA IS A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY crap.  Religion is definitely declining in the US, and very rapidly.

We won't be a "Christian country" much longer.  Give it another generation at this rate and we'll be unaffiliated as a plurality.

StupidiNews!

• At least five are dead and more than 130 injured in an Amtrak train derailment outside Philadelphia on the route to New York City, the route is closed for at least the rest of the week.
• Senate Democrats have successfully blocked fast track trade authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, leaving the deal's fate unknown going forward.
• A Milwaukee police officer who shot and killed a unarmed black teenager in March will face no charges as the DA viewed the case as one of self-defense by the officer.
• The biggest bond market slump in more than two years shaved nearly half a trillion off bond positions worldwide yesterday as investors analyze the damage today.
• Wireless carriers Verizon and Sprint will pay a combined $158 million in fines for billing customers millions in third party text message charges, a practice known as "cramming".

Last Call For Seeing Red

Meet South Carolina's Luis Lang, the latest victim of Obama Derangement Syndrome endemic to red states.

Lang is a self-employed handyman who works with banks and the federal government on maintaining foreclosed properties. He has done well enough that his wife, Mary, hasn’t had to work. They live in a 3,300-square-foot home in the Legacy Park subdivision valued at more than $300,000. 

But he has never bought insurance. Instead, he says, he prided himself on paying his own medical bills. 

That worked while he and his wife were relatively healthy. But after 10 days of an unrelenting headache, Lang went to the emergency room on Feb. 25. He says he was told he’d suffered several mini-strokes. He ran up $9,000 in bills and exhausted his savings. Meanwhile, his vision worsened and he can’t work, he says. 

That’s when he turned to the Affordable Care Act exchange. Lang learned two things: First, 2015 enrollment had closed earlier that month. And second, because his income has dried up, he earns too little to get a federal subsidy to buy a private policy. 

Lang, a Republican, says he knew the act required him to get coverage but he chose not to do so. But he thought help would be available in an emergency. He and his wife blame President Obama and Congressional Democrats for passing a complex and flawed bill. 

“(My husband) should be at the front of the line because he doesn’t work and because he has medical issues,” Mary Lang said last week. “We call it the Not Fair Health Care Act.”

So to recap, Lang refused to buy insurance because OBAMA TYRANNY, and when he needed to buy it, he couldn't because of the enrollment period issues, and when he then needed the safety net of Medicaid expansion, he lives in a red state where that OBAMA TYRANNY too is prohibited, so of course it's 100% Obama's fault he's about to lose his eyesight.

I do actually empathize with the man, but the fact of the matter is when you make the choice to do everything in your power to make sure the Affordable Care Act doesn't work, vote for people who will make sure the law doesn't work, and support other people making the choice to cripple the law so that it doesn't work, and then are furious when you discover that the law doesn't work, whose fault is that in the end?

There are a lot of people that Luis Lang could blame, but considering under the pre-Obamacare system that Lang never would have been able to get coverage for his eye surgery because every insurance company would have turned him down for diabetes as a pre-existing condition, maybe President Obama isn't the person he should be mad at.

Stopped Clock Is Right Alert

Today's contestant: Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, at a South Carolina barbecue.

“Something I want you all to think about is that the next president of the United States, whoever that individual may be, could choose up to three, maybe even four members of the Supreme Court,” he said. “Now this isn't about who's going to be the president of the United States for just the next four years. This could be about individuals who have an impact on you, your children, and even our grandchildren. That's the weight of what this election is really about.” 

“That, I will suggest to you, is the real question we need to be asking ourselves,” he continued. “What would those justices look like if, let's be theoretical here and say, if it were Hillary Clinton versus Rick Perry? And if that won't make you go work, if I do decide to get into the race, then I don't know what will.”

Yes.  Rick Perry was 100% right about something actually important.  Steve Benen explains:

To appreciate why, consider a chart.

 

If we assume that the current court does not change for the remainder of the Obama presidency – and really, no one can even say that for sure – three justices will be at least 80 by Inauguration Day 2017. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be 83. (In the chart, blue lines refer to justices appointed by Democratic presidents; red lines refer to justices appointed by Republican presidents.) 

The significance of these statistics is important: as the Bloomberg Politics piece added, “The average retirement age for a U.S. Supreme Court justice is 78.7, a 2006 study in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy found.”

Imagine what the Court would look like with Scalia and Kennedy replaced by Hillary Clinton picks.

Now imagine what the Court would look like with Ginsberg and Breyer replaced by Jeb Bush's nominees.

Still think there's no difference between the two parties, and no reason to vote for Hillary Clinton if she's the nominee?

Going Ben-nanas

You know, it's getting to the point where I could just run the blog for a week or six on Ben Carson's FOX News appearances alone, like this campaign stop back on Sunday.

GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson appeared on “Fox News Sunday” where he spoke with host Chris Wallace about some of his more far-out (read: bananas) policy proposals. The Tea Party’s golden boy is known for promoting a number of ill-considered stances, from the healthcare savings account to his fervent opposition of the legalization of same-sex marriage. The most offensively ignorant of these policies, however, is his support of a flat tax rate, in which every American pays the exact same tax rate.

“I like the idea of a proportional tax, that way you pay according to your ability, and I got that idea, quite frankly, from the Bible, tithing. You make $10 billion a year, you pay a billion; you make $10 a year, you pay one. You get the same rights. That’s pretty darn fair if you ask me.” Carson argued. “Now some people say [the flat tax is] not fair because, you know, the poor people can’t afford to pay that dollar. That’s very condescending. You know, I grew up very poor. I’ve experienced every economic level, and I can tell you that poor people have pride, too. And they don’t want to be just taken care of.”

Gotta punish those awful poor people.  If there's one thing all the GOP candidates have in common, it's that people making minimum wage have it too good in the US, and it's high time that we really squeezed the bastards.

“But Doctor, here is the problem with a flat tax in the real world,” Wallace pushed back. “According to the Tax Policy Center, to raise the same amount of revenue we do now, the tax rate would have to be in the low-to-mid 20 percent range.”

That means that low- and middle-income families would get an enormous tax hike while wealthier families would end up getting a tax cut. 

“I don’t agree with that assessment,” Carson said.

Of course he doesn't.  Flat tax means massive, massive spending cuts in order to stop those massive tax increases. Everyone knows that.

Especially Ben Carson.

StupidiNews!

• A second powerful earthquake, this one magnitude 7.3, has struck eastern Nepal and at least 4 are dead so far.
• The White House will allow limited arctic drilling for oil by energy giant Shell Oil, three years after the company's attempt to do so ended with two wrecked rigs.
• The NFL has suspended New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady for four regular season games and fined him $1 million for his role in "Deflategate" in last year's Patriots' Super Bowl victory.
• Lawyers for Sen. Robert Menendez want to move his bribery trial from New Jersey to Washington DC, saying the venue is more appropriate and that he can continue serving as Senator more easily.
• Illinois State Police will be using unmanned aircraft over the next two years to assist in analyzing highway crashes, traffic jams, and aerial crime scene photography.

Last Call For The Burden Of Proof

Over the weekend Seymour Hersh unloaded accusations of a massive cover-up by the Obama administration over the events of the death of Osama bin Laden. Fair warning: it's a hefty read. but let me save you a lot  of trouble: his conclusion is that Pakistani intelligence (ISI) knew exactly where bin Laden was, the US knew the ISI knew, and everyone lied about it.

And the story is complete bullcrap, too.  First, Hersh's side:

The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further. In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know]. And the idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’ 

This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

Hersh lays out his theory, and cites a number of former intelligence sources for his work, nearly all of them anonymous sources.

That's where the problem comes in, as CNN's Peter Bergen dismantles Hersh pretty cleanly.

Hersh's account of the bin Laden raid is a farrago of nonsense that is contravened by a multitude of eyewitness accounts, inconvenient facts and simple common sense. 

Let's start with the claim that the only shots fired at the Abbottabad compound were the ones that killed bin Laden. That ignores the fact that two SEALs on the mission, Matt Bissonnette, author of "No Easy Day," and Robert O'Neill have publicly said that there were a number of other people killed that night, including bin Laden's two bodyguards, one of his sons and one of the bodyguard's wives. Their account is supplemented by many other U.S. officials who have spoken on the record to myself or to other journalists. 

I was the only outsider to visit the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden lived before the Pakistani military demolished it. The compound was trashed, littered almost everywhere with broken glass and several areas of it were sprayed with bullet holes where the SEALS had fired at members of bin Laden's entourage and family, or in one case exchanged fire with one of his bodyguards. The evidence at the compound showed that many bullets were fired the night of bin Laden's death. 

Common sense would tell you that the idea that Saudi Arabia was paying for bin Laden's expenses while he was living in Abbottabad is simply risible. Bin Laden's principal goal was the overthrow of the Saudi royal family as a result of which his Saudi citizenship was revoked as far back as 1994. 

Why would the Saudis pay for the upkeep of their most mortal enemy? Indeed, why wouldn't they get their close allies, the Pakistanis, to look the other way as they sent their assassins into Pakistan to finish him off? 

Common sense would also tell you that if the Pakistanis were holding bin Laden and the U.S. government had found out this fact, the easiest path for both countries would not be to launch a U.S. military raid into Pakistan but would have been to hand bin Laden over quietly to the Americans. 

Indeed, the Pakistanis have done this on several occasions with a number of other al Qaeda leaders such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational commander of 9/11, who was handed over to U.S. custody after a raid in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi in 2003. So too was Abu Faraj al-Libi, another key al Qaeda leader who was similarly handed over by the Pakistanis to U.S. custody two years later.

Oh, and it gets much worse for Hersh's narrative.  Somebody fed Hersh the line he wanted, and he ran with it. Gergen makes much more sense.  This is a hit job on arguably President Obama's most powerful first-term foreign policy accomplishment, and it comes just as the 2016 campaign is picking up?

Max Fisher at Vox also has serious problems with Hersh's story.

Perhaps the most concerning problem with Hersh's story is not the sourcing but rather the internal contradictions in the narrative he constructs. 

Most blatant, Hersh's entire narrative turns on a secret deal, in which the US promised Pakistan increased military aid and a "freer hand in Afghanistan." In fact, the exact opposite of this occurred, with US military aid dropping and US-Pakistan cooperation in Afghanistan plummeting as both sides feuded bitterly for years after the raid. 

Hersh explains this seemingly fatal contradiction by suggesting the deal fell apart due to miscommunication between the Americans and Pakistanis. But it's strange to argue that the dozens of officials on both sides would be competent enough to secretly plan and execute a massive international ruse, and then to uphold their conspiracy for years after the fact, but would not be competent enough to get on the same page about aid delivery. 

And there are more contradictions. Why, for example, would the Pakistanis insist on a fake raid that would humiliate their country and the very military and intelligence leaders who supposedly instigated it? 

A simpler question: why would Pakistan bother with the ostentatious fake raid at all, when anyone can imagine a dozen simpler, lower-risk, lower-cost ways to do this?

Naah.  Sy Hersh can have a goddamn seat. Both Fisher and Bergen make mincemeat of him.

If You're Still Wondering Why I Left Home

Long-time readers will recall that I grew up in Hickory, NC, a nice little NASCAR factory town in the Appalachian foothills that made textiles and furniture, then transformers, then fiber-optic cable, now auto parts and abrasives.  It's also located in arguably the most conservative part of NC, a good hour or so from any of the Tarheel State's major cities, like Charlotte or the Triad area, and at least that far from more enlightened college towns like Asheville and Boone.

Catawba County is about as red as NC gets, and there's a reason why I no longer live there.  Hickory and the surrounding suburbs have been gerrymandered to be in 3 different districts, assuring NC-10 remains home to The Odious Patrick McHenry, NC-5 keeps electing Virginia Foxx, and NC-11, Mark Meadows.  The three are some of the worst Tea Party meatheads in Congress too.

Little wonder then that neighboring Lincoln County to the south brings us this national embarrassment.

Carrol Mitchem, chairman of the Lincoln County board of commissioners, said he does not want people from other faiths “changing rules on the way the United States was founded,”reported the Lincoln Times-News. 

“A Muslim? He comes in here to say a prayer, I’m going to tell him to leave,” Mitchem said. “I have no use for (those) people. They don’t need to be here praying to Allah or whoever the hell they pray to. I’m not going to listen to (a) Muslim pray.” 

A federal court judge ruled last week that nearby Rowan County had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by leading county commission meetings with prayers to “Jesus, the Savior.” 

Another county commissioner said Lincoln County said officials had not purposefully excluded other faiths, but pointed out that all 102 houses or worship in the county were Christian. 

“We have never said that we would limit it to one denomination or one religion,” said Alex Patton, county commissioner. “I just don’t know that there’s any Jewish pastors or anything like that in Lincoln County.” 

Patton said he disagrees with the Rowan County ruling, saying the courts had “gone overboard in catering to the small vocal minority.” 

“Atheists are 1 or 2 percent or whatever, but because they cry the loudest, people cater to them,” Patton said. “Judges cater to the freedom of religion. That freedom is for me as a Christian as well.” 

The Republican Mitchem agreed, saying that Christians should enjoy privileged status as the dominant religious group. 

“Other religions, or whatever, are in the minority,” he told WBTV-TV. “The U.S. was founded on Christianity. I don’t believe we need to be bowing to the minorities. The U.S. and the Constitution were founded on Christianity. This is what the majority of people believe in, and it’s what I’m standing up for.”

So no, I don't live there anymore.  I don't expect many of you would be happy there either, and yes, the Cincinnati- Northern Kentucky area actually looks pretty damned liberal compared to where I'm from.

Governor Cuomo Nails It

Even I have to admit that last week's NY Times expose on the horrid working conditions for nail technicians in New York City is 100% responsible for this lightning-fast response from Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Effective immediately, he said in a statement, a new, multiagency task force will conduct salon-by-salon investigations, institute new rules that salons must follow to protect manicurists from the potentially dangerous chemicals found in nail products, and begin a six-language education campaign to inform them of their rights. 

Nail salons that do not comply with orders to pay workers back wages, or are unlicensed, will be shut down. The new rules come in response to a New York Times investigation of nail salons — first published online last week — that detailed thewidespread exploitation of manicurists, many of whom have illnesses that some scientists and health advocates say are caused by the chemicals with which they work. 

“New York State has a long history of confronting wage theft and unfair labor practices head on, and today, with the formation of this new Enforcement Task Force, we are aggressively following in that tradition,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “We will not stand idly by as workers are deprived of their hard-earned wages and robbed of their most basic rights.”

It's a far more muscular response than I expected from Cuomo, that's for damn sure.  It throws into sharp contrast the whining about the need for government regulations in general over the weekend by Charles Murray, doesn't it?

Perhaps this would be a good time for Mr. Murray to publicly stand up for the rights of nail salons to treat employees as indentured servants, and to instruct owners to resist these "bad" regulations, hmm?