By The Time I Get To Arizona (You'll Have Been Canned)

So, what happens when Arizona combined being a right-to-work state with its own version of the Blunt Amendment?  As ABL notes, this.

Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment.

“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the  Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.”

Lesko said this bill responds to a contraceptive mandate in the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law March 2010.

“My whole legislation is about our First Amendment rights and freedom of religion,” Lesko said. “All my bill does is that an employer can opt out of the mandate if they have any religious objections.”

Now here's the best part:  being a right-to-work state means you can be fired for anything that is not expressly protected or prohibited as discriminatory.  An earlier version of the bill did have this "protection" in it, as far as anything was being "protected" in his horrendous legislation:

“A religious employer shall not discriminate against an employee who independently chooses to obtain insurance coverage or prescriptions for contraceptives from another source.”

In other words, since taking retributive action against the employee for having insurance that covers birth control or getting it from a place other than the employer's insurance plan under that clause would count as discrimination (and therefore be illegal), even in a right-to-work state like Arizona, you couldn't be fired specifically for being on the pill.

That of course was before this protection was in fact removed from the bill.  Which means that yes, you can technically be fired for being on birth control because it offends your employer's religious sensibilities, specifically because the bill does not protect Arizona employees from employers seeking to do so as discriminatory.  Nice, huh?

Far worse an indictment of right-to-work laws, but this bill is also awful as it puts employers in charge of their employees' health coverage.  They can simply opt out of covering anything they want to.  So no, as an employer in Arizona, under this you could simply cut a whole buch of costs and say "No, your insurance doesn't cover it.  Not the policy from us."  Hey, who's going to stop them?

The Supreme Court?  Well, better hope there's not a Republican in the White House in 2013/2014 when this law, if passed, would get up there, eh?

The Devil Went Up To Toronto

Or in this case, the Nameless One chickened out from Toronto as he fears the protests from anyone outside Undisclosed Location country.

Former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney has cancelled an April appearance in Toronto citing concerns Canada is too dangerous.

“He felt that in Canada the risk of violent protest was simply too high,” said Ryan Ruppert, president of promotions company Spectre Live Corp., which had booked Mr. Cheney for an April 24 appearance at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. 

It's going to be amusing watching the Pretty Hate Machine demand apologies from the entire country for something they haven't done yet, but I'm sure PM Stephen Harper will use the excuse to crack down more on his citizens saying bad things about people.  You know how rowdy those Canadians can get.

Hillary Says It Perfectly

Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn't matter what country they're in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies.

Without pointing fingers or hurling accusations (see, it can be done!) Hillary Clinton gets to the root of the problem women face around the world.  Our clothing, actions, words and even medical choices are limited by men in power.

It may remain a mystery to her, but I can tell her why this is where they go... because it works.  Nowadays you're not supposed to judge someone based on race, age or marital status.  But if they have boobies it is totally fine to blame them for the ills of the world and set laws to keep those silly women from messing it all up.  It works, and as long as it works any group with a control fetish or need to throw their weight around have an easy target.

It's just that simple, folks.

Would You Like Fries With That Nap?

A Florida woman was found passed out on pain pills in her car while her son played inside a Deltona McDonald's, sheriff's deputies told the News-Journal.

Deputies were called to the fast-food chain location after two women found Jessica Jones, 28, allegedly slumped over the steering wheel of her car in the parking lot. Cops say they found oxycodone and the anti-anxiety drug alprazolam when they searched her.

Meanwhile, her 8-year-old son was in the restaurant's play area unattended. Witnesses told cops that they saw Jones go into the McDonald's and buy the boy a Happy Meal before retreating to her car.

When she awoke, Jones allegedly had slurred speech, and cops noticed a pill on her floorboard. She was charged with child neglect and two counts of prescription pill possession.

You know, sometimes commentary isn't necessary. I think this pretty much says it all, except that I hope the boy has been placed with competent care.

Bully Pulpit Bull

Ezra Klein argues in a New Yorker piece that the President's bully pulpit isn't the great tool it used to be in the age of assumed GOP Senate filibusters (and may actually hurt a President).

The annual State of the Union address offers the clearest example of the misconception. The best speechwriters are put on the task. The biggest policy announcements are saved for it. The speech is carried on all the major networks, and Americans have traditionally considered watching it to be something of a civic duty. And yet Gallup, after reviewing polls dating back to 1978, concluded that “these speeches rarely affect a president’s public standing in a meaningful way, despite the amount of attention they receive.” Obama’s 2012 address fit the pattern. His approval rating was forty-six per cent on the day of the speech, and forty-seven per cent a week later.

Presidents have plenty of pollsters on staff, and they give many speeches in the course of a year. So how do they so systematically overestimate the importance of those speeches? Edwards believes that by the time Presidents reach the White House their careers have taught them that they can persuade anyone of anything. “Think about how these guys become President,” he says. “The normal way is talking for two years. That’s all you do, and somehow you win. You must be a really persuasive fellow.”

But being President isn’t the same as running for President. When you’re running for President, giving a good speech helps you achieve your goals. When you are President, giving a good speech can prevent you from achieving them. 

It seems counter-intuitive, but Klein goes on to argue that an impassioned speech is red meat to the opposition in either party, and presents an immediate avenue for clashing with the White House.  Lawmakers make news when they conflict with the President, that's Village Sunday Talk Show 101 right there.  It also serves as the basis of talking points that the opposition can use to scuttle or confuse the issue, or become a rallying point.

Klein's argument is far more an indictment of our current incestuous Washington/The Village arrangement more than anything else.  The press immediately treats any SOTU-level speech as insincere blather, political posturing and worthless rhetoric.  No wonder then than this President's speeches are boiled down to "LOL TELEPROMPTER" all the time by his opponents.

The bully pulpit is bemoaned in the press as useless by the cynical Villagers who helped make it so.  Shocking, I know...

The Big GOP Primary Thread: Southbound And Down

The South is covered in a thin, nauseating layer of Santorum this morning as Slick Rick took Alabama by 6 points, 35% to 29% for both Gingrich and Romney, and Mississippi by 2 points, 33% to Newt's 31% and Mitt's 30%.

And yes, this means Romney came in third in both contests.  He did make up some ground by winning Hawaii with 45% of the vote to Santorum's 25%.  But the fact is, Romney can't close the deal with the most strident members of the base and he now has a serious problem on his hands.

That means, of course, that the GOP has a major problem on its hands. Yes, when Romney is finally nominated, Republicans will get behind him...but not all of them.  He got 30% or less in Alabama and Mississippi, and you can't tell me that there won't be Republican voters there will stay home and do nothing rather than vote for Romney.

The battle now moves on to open primaries in Puerto Rico this weekend and Illinois on Tuesday, Puerto Rico's contest is winner-take-all and Illinois's 69 delegates are a bigger haul than even Ohio, and a week from Saturday is Louisiana's contest and Missouri's convention caucus.   After that, we head into April, including New York and Pennsylvania on April 24.

It's looking more and more like Romney may not be able to wrap up the 1,144 delegates he'll need by the convention.  If that starts becoming clear, expect the pressure on Gingrich to really heat up.

StupidiNews, Pi Day Edition!

• Rick Santorum has won GOP primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, while Mitt Romney has won in Hawaii.
• Hacked security firm Stratfor's CEO says WikiLeaks publishing the firm's e-mails and speculation "makes war more likely".
• The Senate has rejected a highway bill amendment that would open up the Arctic National Wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil drilling.
• CitiGroup was the largest US bank that failed the latest round of bank stress tests as the Federal Reserve rejected it and several other banks' capital plans.
• Encyclopaedia Brittanica's 2010 print edition will be the publisher's last as after 244 years, the firm has fallen to the digital age.

Last Call

Kevin Drum writes an article entitled "Barack Obama's Had a Pretty Damn Good Presidency" and then proceeds to trash him for about 75% of the article, without a trace of irony.

As long as we're piling on, I'd add a few other items to that list. First,Obama seems to despise the progressive base. He and his associates have made that clear over and over again.Second, he allowed Congress to take the lead on most of his domestic agenda. Whether this was smart or not doesn't really matter. What matters is that it makes him seem almost like an observer of events over the past three years, not a commander-in-chief. Third, from a progressive point of view, his record on national security is pretty bad. No, we're not torturing prisoners anymore, but the NSA surveillance program is still in place, American citizens are being targeted for assassination, the Afghanistan war has been escalated, drone attacks have skyrocketed, the state secrets privilege is still being used with abandon, Guantánamo is still open, and Patriot Act abuse seems to be as robust as ever.

He then lists things the President has actually accomplished...despite being arrogant and subservient at the same time while remaining worse than Bush.  Then he goes back to trashing him and concludes he took the best road available of a number of bad choices.

Now, it's true that any serious accounting also has to include Obama's domestic failures—most notably his feckless housing policy and his inability to pass cap-and-trade—but both of those were very heavy political lifts. (On cap-and-trade in particular, I think in retrospect that it was just flatly never going to happen no matter what Obama did.) There's also his weak record on judicial appointments. So could Obama have done better? Was there a more effective way to deal with an unprecedentedly obstructive Republican Party? On reflection, I doubt it. During Obama's first two years, Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for only 14 weeks. This means that Obama needed two or three Republican votes for every bill, and if he had taken the blustering, partisan attitude that a lot of liberals wanted, he never would had gotten them. Republican obstructionism would have been even more hardened than it was with his more conciliatory attitude. So as annoying as Obama's "most reasonable man in the room" act was to the progressive base, it was probably his best strategy.

Such praise worthy of the ancient deities of yore, a mighty and resounding "meh" echoes through the halls of history.  And Kevin here actually wonders why the President has such a hard time getting across his accomplishments to the American people.

I can't possibly wonder why that would be the case, nor who could possibly be responsible for such a state of affairs.  Sully was right when he said if a Republican POTUS had accomplished what President Obama had done, we'd be carving his likeness into Mount Rushmore.  And yet, we're doing everything we can to hand the country back over to the Banana Splits.

People keep tripping over themselves to come up with explanations as why to President's Obama's most famous first has nothing to do with any of this, of course.  Those excuses, and the constant dogpiling on the President, are both wearing very thin, and we're starting to run out of plausible explanations as to why the liberal media is so invested in the "Is this milk spoiled?  Taste this for me!" theory of the President's accomplishments.

Iran, So Far Away, Part 15

Some 40% of Americans in a new poll believe President Obama will attack Iran before the end of the year.  I'm not one of them, but the numbers are depressing nonetheless.

A Poll Position survey shows that voters are almost evenly split over whether there will be a military conflict between the two countries over Tehran’s nuclear program: 40% said it is likely, 39% said it is unlikely. About 20% did not have an opinion.

The poll shows that opinion on whether there will be an attack breaks down along political lines with a majority of supporters of the Republican party – whose presidential contenders have been strongly critical of Barack Obama’s emphasis on diplomacy with Iran – saying there will be a conflict. A majority of Democrats disagree.

“Republicans see a conflict most possible with 57% saying one is likely, 25% said a conflict is unlikely,” said Poll Position. “Democrats differed with 54% seeing a U.S. military conflict with Iran unlikely, 22% believe a conflict is likely.”

Among age groups, younger Americans, those in the 18-29 year old age group, most believe a conflict is possible with 46% thinking it likely, 37% believe a conflict is unlikely.

It's somewhat depressing to see nearly half of America's young people believe we'll be in another decade-long war soon, but then again we've spent half the lives of your average 20-year-old in the sandbox in Afghanistan.  The US at war in the Middle East is all they've known, practically.  Why would they expect anything different?

If you wanted to depress the youth vote this November, spreading the fear that President Obama would get us into another lost decade of war is absolutely the best way to do it.  Ironically, a Republican president would make such a thing inevitable, which is what would happen if America's young voters stay home on election day.

A Bunch Of Dip Sticks

There's a lot of hue and cry going up about the latest ABC/Washington Post poll that proclaims that gas prices are now the only thing that matters to voters and that Obama is once again doomed.  Deaniac83 over at The People's View easily points out why "voters have turned on the President" over economic news:  they stacked their polls with Republicans.

From the last poll to this one, there is a net 7 point gain for GOP identified voters as opposed to Democratic ones, and there is a net 8 point loss in the President's approval rating. Hmm, looks like an awfully close correlation to me. If we assume that independents lean roughly the same way as the party ID numbers (really, very few voters are truly independent), GOP and GOP lean voters get a representation bump another 3 percentage points net, moving the GOP party ID vs. Democrats to a net +10 points as compared to the last poll. Given that about 80% of GOP and GOP-leaning voters oppose President Obama, the entire 8 point swing in the poll can be accounted for by the additional representation of Republican and Republican leaning voters.

But what are the real numbers on voter registration in this country? From the most current data from states that allow registration by party, Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 12 point margin, 43% to 31%, with independents coming in at 24%. Granted, only 29 states and DC allow registration by party, so take that data with that caveat, but I will note that the February poll had a much closer party ID difference (D +11) to the known actual national data (D +12). In this poll, that has dwindled down to a D +4, which is obviously a significant over-representation Republican and GOP-leaning voters, and an equally significant under-representation of Democratic voter registration advantage.

It is important to note here that the analysis above is not meant to show that ABC News and Washington Post pollsters somehow "cooked" the numbers. These variations - 3 points here and 4 points there, especially given the poll's margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points - are normal statistical anomalies. But it is intellectually dishonest to point to this poll and find a gas price related "dip" for the president's approval without looking at the very obvious factor of over-representation of GOP voters in the poll.

So yes, the poll oversampled Republicans.  Surprise!  Republicans hate the President.  So yes, we get a record 50% of Americans strongly disapprove of the President on the economy right now...when the economy has been improving significantly.

Either that, or the FOX news lies that the Department of Labor is lying to 310 million Americans and the world is so effective, there's really nothing the President can do.  I rather believe the former explanation.

Oh, Those Wild And Crazy Amish

First, the serious business.  Police in western New York state found several containers of alcohol... on board an Amish buggy.  One buggy pulled off some erratic moves, which actually led to it being hit by the police car.  Nobody was seriously injured.

A 20-year-old was also charged with providing alcohol to minors, as he was hosting the drinking party.  It sounds like a little normal youthful shenanigans going on, nothing more.  However, it did give me the line that made me laugh all morning long.

Deputies said other buggies fled the scene, The News reportws. [sic]

I did not realize until that moment I've always wondered what buggies fleeing the scene might look like.  Now, I'll never know.

Shocking Police Brutality

MOUNT STERLING, Ohio — A village police officer shocked a 9-year-old boy with a Taser this week, prompting a shutdown of the entire force.

Long-embattled Police Chief Mike McCoy has been suspended, and officers who were being used on a part-time basis are no longer working, Council President Lowell Anderson said.

McCoy didn’t tell village officials after the Tuesday incident, and that prompted the suspension, Anderson said.

Village Administrator Joe Johnson, in violation of state open-records laws, refused to release the report on what the village is calling “an incident involving use of force.” Mayor Charlie Neff said in a statement only that the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation has been asked to investigate.

A nine-year-old boy wouldn't go to school. Somehow, this escalated to the point that he was shocked with a Taser. Nine years old. No freaking way can any facts presented possibly excuse using that amount of force on a little boy. Stating he is large for his size changes nothing. I'm not even sure why that was brought up, it doesn't change the fact that he is only nine years old.

I'm glad they were shut down, mismanaged is a polite term used in the article to mean these guys are incompetent.

Presidential Bracketology

Leveraging the First Fan's NCAA bracket picks to help the President's re-election campaign?  Smart idea.  GOP hates it, of course.

With the “Obama Bracket Challenge” on the campaign’s website, supporters can electronically make their picks for the 2012 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments and see how they measure up against Obama.

The president has filled out a March Madness tournament bracket each of the past three years during an interview with ESPN’s Andy Katz.  He’s expected to do so again this year, and his campaign will post his selections online.

To participate, users must provide their full name, email address and ZIP code.  They’re also prompted to make a donation to the campaign after submitting their picks.

“We’ll publish a list of everyone who does better than the president here on BarackObama.com after the tournament is over,” the campaign says.

I like it. Mainly because the GOP goes berserk every year the President does it.  More power to him.  I think I'll try my hand at it and see how my bracket stacks up.

The South Shall Be Stupid Again

While we're waiting to see which reactionary douchebag will win today's primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, keep in mind Southerners have a proud, proud tradition of racist code word nonsense  (and I grew up in the reddest part of NC, so I know what I'm talking about.)  So when you see a poll asking Republican voters in those states if President Obama's a Christian, please be aware of what that really equates to.

PPP asks Republicans in Alabama, "Do you think Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim, or are you not sure?" Guess how many say Christian? 14%! Among the remaining 86%, "Muslim" slightly leads "not sure," 45%-41%. ("Not sure" may by the demographic Rick Santorum is reaching out to when he accuses Obama of peddling a "phony theology.")

But the Alabama Republicans are a thoroughly trusting lot in comparison with their Mississippi brethren. Among Mississippi Republicans, just 12% say Christian, 52% say Muslim, and 36% aren't sure.

In other words, more Mississippi and Alabama Republicans believe in UFOs, angels, Bigfoot, and 9/11 truther nonsense than are sure that the President is a Christian.  That's willful ignorance covering up racial hatred, period, when 85%+ of your party believes the President's not a Christian.  They know it.  We know it.  (Yet these two states are some of the biggest money sinks in the country, taking far more in federal aid than they pay in taxes.)

Go figure.  If these two lovely examples of Southern Culture On The Skids here want to leave the union, let em.  We're better off, frankly.

StupidiNews!

• The GOP presidential nomination contest moves to Alabama and Misssissippi today in what could be a tight three-way race.
• A Pennsylvania case could redefine the Defense of Marriage Act as applying to private companies as well.
• The 38-year old Army staff sergeant being held for the killings of 16 Afghan civilians in a rampage last weekend will be formally charged under military law.
• Record milk production is turning last year's hot commodity into this year's over-supplied bust for dairy farmers across the world.
• The European Union has expressed interest in joining the US's anti-trust case against Apple and e-book publishers over alleged price-fixing.