Breaking Not So Bad

University of Virginia political prognosticator Larry Sabato seems to be leaning towards a wash in the Senate this year, with the GOP picking up Montana and Missouri, but the Dems might be able to counter in Nevada.

Ah, the Senate. The battle for control fascinates us — and all election observers — because there are so many intriguing races and personalities. Yet, as we update our ratings today and move in a new direction on Congress’ upper chamber, it is worth stressing at the outset that no party will truly control the Senate come January 2013. There is no chance at all that Democrats or Republicans will hit the magic 60 seats required to break filibusters and thus run the Senate. Increasingly, it looks likely that the winning party will have a smaller majority than the Democrats do now (53 seats) — if there is a majority at all. The tiny margin for the winning party will enable the new Senate to do what Senates do best: a whole lot of nothing (discounting talk, of course).

So yes, it's entirely possible we could be looking at a 51-49 Senate or even 50-50 with the Vice President as the deciding vote.  That could make things...interesting.

Let’s assume that, at the dawn of the 113th Congress in 2013, all 67 sitting senators not up for reelection this year — 30 Democrats, 37 Republicans — return to serve next year (no departures for the Cabinet, the Court or the Great Beyond). Next, let’s also assume that the 16 races we currently favor Democrats to win go to the Blue column, and the nine races where Republicans are favored go to the Red column. (See our full chart below.) Note that we have long flipped Nebraska and North Dakota from Democratic control to Republican control; former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey’s return to Nebraska hasn’t moved us a bit. Note also, as we said above, we are assuming that Maine elects King, who in effect becomes an Independent Democrat akin to Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman or Vermont’s Bernie Sanders. Further, our analysis has Democrats holding seats that are actually or potentially competitive, such as Ohio, Michigan and Hawaii. Finally, we presume that Democrats don’t score surprising upsets in places like Arizona and Indiana.

With those assumptions in place, the Senate is tied exactly 46 to 46, with eight toss up races to decide whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) continues to lead the chamber, or whether Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) takes over. 

Those races are Montana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida and New Mexico.  If Sabato's right, the GOP could pick up 2 seats, but the Dems would pick up a seat in Nevada.  They could win in MA too, leading to the wash theory, 53-47 as it is now.  Six of those 8 tossup seats are defended by Democrats however.   All 8 changing hands would give the GOP the +4 seats they'd need to get it outright, 51-49.

We'll see.  I think the GOP will come up a seat or two short.  But it's going to be damn close.

Observing The Anniversary

As the Affordable Care Act turns two today, the Serious Village Types are contractually obligated to inform us that it was the worst piece of legislation ever conceived and that President Obama is the worst politician of all time for wasting time trying to get GOP votes for the bill, and then going it alone without them, assuring they would vow to destroy the law.

We are assured that everyone hates the bill, left, right, and center, despite the fact that elements of the bill are popular (particularly the parts involving coverage for pre-existing conditions and keeping kids on insurance plans to age 26.)  But at this point I think Republicans have vastly overplayed their hand on it for three reasons.

One is MetamorphoMitt.  The one thing from his past that he can't shake away is MassCare.  Two, the GOP really can't stop themselves from twirling their collective evil mustaches when doing things like voting to kill the Medicare cost review board while complaining that Medicare costs too much.  The other is the GOP assault on women's rights, which is seriously driving away voters of both sexes.

All of these are going to seriously put a dent in the amount of damage the Republicans can do in November.  And call me crazy, but I think the Supreme Court may punt on the law until 2014 because the mandate isn't in effect yet, and precisely because the GOP has done zero to replace the law should it be struck down, there's a fair argument that nuking the law would be a massive burden for the states and for individuals.  Indeed, the government's argument is that without a replacement set of laws, the entire health care system itself could be at risk if the mandate is severed.

Meanwhile, the parts of the law that are going into effect are working slowly and surely behind the scenes, and the law is rolling inexorably forward.  I think we're going to be okay here.

Shiny Chrome

For one day, Chrome overtook Internet Explorer as the most commonly used browser.  They've been hovering for a while, a nagging but persistent threat to the shrinking IE crowd.

It was on a weekend, which is also telling.  When people aren't using their employer's preferences, and they are on their personal devices, Chrome is the popular choice.  And when it isn't number one, it is still very much in the top running.

Number one isn't everything.  Chrome has shown it is a viable and quality browser, and is around to stay.  I've never looked back once I tried it for the first time (thank you, Wizarth!).

Microsoft Office has a free and incredibly competitive alternative, loosening their hold on businesses who are cutting back on costs.  Internet Explorer is losing its dominance over browsers and the chance to hawk Microsoft services.  I believe we can all agree that the Windows mobile phone market is a joke.  So remind me, just what do we need them for again?

One Little Mystery Of The Universe, Solved

It won't cure cancer or stop world hunger, but we now know one thing for absolute certain. Something I had always secretly thought, but never knew until now.

God loves cats.

BOSTON -- A veterinarian says acting like a flying squirrel may have saved a cat from serious injury in a 19-story plunge from a Boston high rise.

Sugar the cat had no broken bones or cuts, just some bruising on her lungs after the fall from a window owner Brittany Kirk had opened to enjoy the recent unseasonably warm weather.

The Animal Rescue League estimates Sugar fell between 150 and 200 feet.

I couldn't have asked for a better birthday present.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Yep, getting closer to the seminal Blazing Saddles moment in our national post-racial discourse involving President Obama.  Wonkette:

John Hood, president of the conservative North Carolina-based John Locke Foundation, has apologized for a very special graphic that one of his bloggers, “Hot Talk WRNN co-host Tara Servatius,” included in her post for the think tank’s blog this week. What is the controversy? All it did was show “President Obama in chains and drag with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.” What is the controversy? Everyone loves Kentucky Fried Chicken! And look, Tara Servatius says she “didn’t think about the racial implications of the picture when I posted it. I simply don’t think in those terms.” She’s a fun one.


In an exchange with Myrtle Beach’s The Sun News, Servatius explains that her graphic of President Obama in chains and drag eating a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken “was meant to illustrate Obama’s southern political strategy, nothing more.”

No.  Just no no no no no.  Hell no.  Between this and the ni-CLANG Pants, I really want to punch the organs out of the next person who says I need to get over race in 2012.

It's President Obama in leather fetish gear, eating a bucket of KFC.  If you don't think THAT'S offensive, you're lying.  You posted the damn thing on purpose.  Congratulations, you pissed people off.  You win.  You know what's going to piss you off even more?  Obama winning in November despite all your awful, sick, lousy efforts to troll the electorate.

Deal with that.

Taking Leave Of Their Senses

In a move with little fanfare, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that should definitely give supporters of health care reform pause, as well as women's groups.  In a 5-4 ruling on Tuesday, Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with the Roberts-Alito-Thomas-Scalia bloc in declaring that state employees cannot sue states over being denied personal leave under the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993.

The 5-4 decision is a setback for millions of employees of state agencies and state colleges, and it voided in part a provision in the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. Among other things the act said that employees had a right to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to recover from an illness or childbirth.

The rights of employees of private companies are unchanged by the ruling.

In this case, Daniel Coleman was fired from his job with the Maryland Court of Appeals after his request for sick leave was denied. He sued for $1.1 million in damages, alleging that his rights were violated under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.

And why was Coleman's case thrown out?

Kennedy, in the majority opinion, dismissed the suit and said that Congress could not subject states to suits over personal sick leave because it had nothing to do with remedying a pattern of sex discrimination.

Indeed, Kennedy's opinion went on to say that the states' rights to be immune from lawsuits overruled the individual's rights for recourse if they were fired for actually taking extended personal leave under the FMLA.  Because there is no discrimination at work here, states are immune from lawsuits on the matter.  Kennedy stated that Congress in the FMLA included the provision to sue for recourse in order to remedy discrimination against women for taking extended personal leaves for illnesses.  But Kennedy argues that there's no evidence states as employers were ever discriminating against women or anyone for that matter by denying strictly personal leave under the act.  No discrimination, no lawsuit as a recourse:

Without widespread evidence of sex discrimination or sex stereotyping in the administration of sick leave, it is apparent that the congressional purpose in enacting the self-care provision is unrelated to these supposed wrongs.

The legislative history of the self-care provision reveals a concern for the economic burdens on the employee and the employee’s family resulting from illness-related job loss and a concern for discrimination on the basis of illness, not sex.

But more importantly (and ominously), Kennedy made the broad argument that federal law in this case put an onerous legal and financial burden on the states and that the states could not be compelled by the federal government to have to accept such a burden.

In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg argued that gender neutral-based leave laws indeed were discriminatory against men, and specifically that society was more likely to deny personal leave to men precisely because men were seen as "the stronger sex", and that the recourse to sue was necessary precisely because of cases like this.

Requiring States to provide gender-neutral parental and family-care leave alone, Congress was warned, would promote precisely the type of workplace discrimination Congress sought to reduce. The “pervasive sex-role stereotype that caring for family members is women’s work,” id., at 731, Congress heard, led employers to regard required parental and family-care leave as a woman’s benefit.Carol Ball, speaking on behalf of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, testified that she did not think “there are going to be many men that take up . . . parental leave.”

Still, the Kennedy argument worries me somewhat. It's a big jump to say that being sued is the same level of onerous burden that health care exchanges or the individual mandate constitutes a "burden" on the states.

But that's exactly the argument that opponents of the mandate are making.  It's foreboding.  Let's be honest, this is all going to come down to Kennedy again.

StupidiNews!

• The Army Staff Sgt. allegedly at the center of an Afghan killing spree faces 17 counts of murder in connection with the March 11th rampage.
• New Zealand police have seized a "marijuana vending machine" in a raid in Auckland.
• A new US intelligence report issued by the State Department warns fresh water shortages will increasingly become an issue in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa.
• Portugal's local town governments face a collective $12 billion in debt and looming default unless the national government steps in.
• The FCC is working on a voluntary code of conduct for internet service providers to battle back against botnets.

Last Call

History is rewritten by the winners. Here's a serious question for the assemblage: If President Obama's record is so awful, why are the Republicans so eager to rewrite the history of what he's accomplished? Greg Sargent:

Keep an eye on this one, too, because it will also be central to GOP efforts to rewrite the history of the Obama presidency. In his big Wall Street Journal Op ed piece today attacking Obama’s campaign documentary and minimizing the magnitude of the economic crisis Obama inherited, Karl Rove also claims the killing of Osama Bin Laden was no big deal.

Yeah, stop for a sec. Rewind. Play back. The crisis was minimal, so it was really President Obama's unnecessary efforts at government intervention that "created" the financial crisis and ramped up unemployment. And as far as our late former Saudi ally is concerned, well Big Dog would have made that call too, Rove says. How can this President possibly take any credit for that?

 Rove goes on to say that the President has been lying about everything: the stimulus, health care reform and his mother's battle with insurance companies and cancer, Afghanistan, Iran, and of course the death of bin Laden. But hold on, I thought the President hadn't accomplished anything, that he sat on his hands all day and campaigned for re-election for the last several years. Basic stuff is now disappearing down the memory hole, like the lies that Mitt Romney regularly tells about the President's record.

 Now we're seeing a concerted effort to define the Obama administration as the source of the financial crisis. Romney of course said yesterday that it was President Bush and his SecTreas, Hank Paulson, who "prevented another Great Depression" while the FOX News crew keeps insisting that the bank bailout was all President Obama's idea, equating the stimulus to the bailout. They're not the same. The GOP wants it to be.

They want to rewrite history to say that the financial meltdown would have been fixed by Bush except Obama came in and screwed everything up and made it worse. The fact that Bush's policies helped create the crisis in the first place is irrelevant to this President's re-election. So yes, the race is now on to define the "crisis" as only existing from January 20, 2009 and on. Sargent himself adds this:

This comical level of dissembling and mendacity is to be expected from Rove. But it’s a bit surprising that the Journal’s editors either didn’t think to check such an obviously ridiculous representation of Clinton’s quote, or worse, that they just waved Rove’s dishonesty through in the full knowledge of what Clinton had actually said.

You haven't been paying much attention to how this works much, have you Greg? Spreading mendacious dishonesty is what Karl Rove does professionally.

I've Set 'Em Correct With The Effect Of The Gas Face

The Associated Press crunches the numbers on Drill Baby Drill over the last 36 years and finds there's no correlation whatsoever between increased domestic oil production and reductions in gas prices.

A statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production by The Associated Press shows no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.

If more domestic oil drilling worked as politicians say, you'd now be paying about $2 a gallon for gasoline. Instead, you're paying the highest prices ever for March.

Shocking, I know.  Instead, the opposite almost appears to be true.

Sometimes prices increase as American drilling ramps up. That's what has happened in the past three years. Since February 2009, U.S. oil production has increased 15 percent when seasonally adjusted. Prices in those three years went from $2.07 per gallon to $3.58. It was a case of drilling more and paying much more.

What about when US oil production decreases?

Seasonally adjusted U.S. oil production dropped steadily from February 1986 until three years ago. But starting in March 1986, inflation-adjusted gas prices fell below the $2-a-gallon mark and stayed there for most of the rest of the 1980s and 1990s. Production between 1986 and 1999 dropped by nearly one-third. If the drill-now theory were correct, prices should have soared. Instead they went down by nearly a dollar.

So what's the cause?

Unlike natural gas or electricity, the United States alone does not have the power to change the supply-and-demand equation in the world oil market, said Christopher Knittel, a professor of energy economics at MIT. American oil production is about 11 percent of the world's output, so even if the U.S. were to increase its oil production by 50 percent — that is more than drilling in the Arctic, increased public-lands and offshore drilling, and the Canadian pipeline would provide — it would at most cut gas prices by 10 percent.

"There are not many markets where the United States can't impose its will on market outcomes," Knittel said. "This is one we can't, and it's hard for the average American to understand that and it's easy for politicians to feed off that."

So yes, Newt is lying.  Sarah Palin is lying.  Drilling won't matter a damn bit.  Now, another financial crisis, well...

Can-O-Whoopass

The White House is apparently tired of the Ryan Plan and is not taking the Serious Centrist bait.  At all.  WH spokeman Jay Carney on Wednesday:

Among the many serious problems with the Ryan budget, Republican budget proposal, is its dramatic cuts in some of the absolutely essential programs that we need to sustain and the investments that we need to make to secure America's economic future.  Education, Pell grants is one; investments in clean energy is another.

I mean, again, it is -- you have to be aggressively and deliberately ignorant of the world economy not to know and understand that clean energy technologies are going to play a huge role in the 21st century.  You have to have severely diminished capacity to understand what drives economic growth in industrialized countries in this century if you do not understand that education is the key that unlocks the door to prosperity.  The budget proposed by Chairman Ryan and supported overwhelmingly already by Republicans suggests that those problems exist in the minds of the supporters of that plan.

Yeah.  You can take your Ryan Plan, and you can suck it.  This is the proper response to a budget that is a work of Randian fantasy fan fiction and should be dismissed out of hand as a cruel joke perpetrated on the American public.

Glad to see the White House make a smoking crater of this.  More, please.

Well Now, That's Just Spiffy Part 2

Finnish mobile phone developer Nokia has filed for a patent on a magnetic, vibrating tattoo or badge that alerts users when their phones are ringing.

According to the official patent filing, the apparatus would be able to detect a magnetic field and transfer a "perceivable stimulus" to users. The device could notify people about an incoming call, text or dead battery.

That's just cool, and a small step away from one that you plant behind your ear that is sensitive enough to play and capture your voice.

And another reason for a tattoo. Win-win-win.

Well Now, That's Just Spiffy

Imagine a military surveillance robot that looks and moves like a jellyfish and can ply the seas indefinitely by powering itself with ocean water.

A team of researchers at Virginia Tech, the University of Texas, and several other schools are working to develop just such a device.

In a paper published yesterday in the journal Smart Materials and Structures, team members outlined their recent progress on the "Robojelly" project, which is being funded by the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research.

Made of a combination of silicone and various high-tech materials, the Robojelly uses oxygen and hydrogen gases in seawater to trigger a chemical reaction that causes its artificial muscles to contract. The muscular motion copies that of the moon jellyfish, which allows water into its "bell" and then closes the bell to push the water out and create a jet that moves the creature along.

I wonder why they went straight to military surveillance. I suppose it would work in a limited capacity, but my thoughts were it could help us map the ocean, scout for wrecks and history, gather tiny samples, perhaps. Unlock some of the mysteries that cover two-thirds of our planet.

But yeah, I guess there are military applications as well. It's just depressing that it is the first place they went.

Governor Etch-A-Sketch Gets Scorched

As JM Ashby notes over at Bob Cesca's place, Slick Rick has wasted zero time going after Mitt Romney's latest gaffe and he's swinging hard.

As ThinkProgress first noted this morning, Mitt Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said Romney can “restart” in the general election, should he win the GOP nomination — “almost like an Etch A Sketch.” Challenger Rick Santorum, who has sought to portray Romney as inconsistent, pounced on the statement. His campaign sent an email to reporters, calling the comments “shocking” and saying it shows Romney “will change positions.” Later, Santorum himself took up the attack, telling a crowd in Louisiana that the comment shows Romney will “say what he needs to say to win the election that is before him, and if he has to say something different, because it’s a different election and a different group of voters, he’s willing to say that too.”

And this is Romney's braintrust basically admitting that anything Mitt Romney says before he's nominated is null and void.  You don't get more cynical and jaded than that, and Santorum knows it.

Of course Mitt Romney will "change positions" after the nomination.  If he doesn't, he'll lose by even more than Santorum would as the nominee.  There's a word when you change positions and then completely deny the fact that you changed positions:  Lie.

Rachel Maddow rips into Mittens over everything Etch-A-Sketch and calls him out on those lies.



And yes, she outright calls Mitt Romney a liar.  Point blank.  Several, several times.  Because Mitt Romney is a liar who lies.  Constantly.

In the general election, he figures you're too stupid to recall he's a liar, or that the Village will give him "President Obama is just as bad!" cover.  He's counting on both.  Maddow here at least calls him on the act.  More of this, please.

William The Bloody Has A Sad

Bill Kristol is feeling blue about the red states' chances of taking over in 2012.

Watching Mitt Romney's victory speech in Illinois didn't reassure me about his chances against President Obama. (Watch it yourself to see if I'm being unfair.) Romney's remarks consisted basically of the claim that the business of America is business, that he's a businessman who understands business, and that we need "economic freedom" not for the sake of freedom but to allow business to fuel the economy. It's true that Romney will have plenty of time to improve for the general election, if, as seems likely (but still not inevitable!), he wins the nomination. But if he sticks with this core message, we'd better hope Republicans and independents are really determined to get rid of Barack Obama. 

Republicans are, frankly.  Beat Obama is all that matters to them.  But actual swing voters and independents?  They're siding with the President in increasing numbers.

Imagine that.  Bill Kristol being wrong about something.

StupidiNews!

• Rebel soldiers in the African nation of Mali say they have taken control of the government there in response to President Amadou Toumani Toure's failure to put down insurgents in the country's north.
• The Dallas Federal Reserve bank reports that just five banks combined now hold a total of more than half of all banking industry assets.
• McClatchy News CEO Gary Pruitt is leaving the company to take the top job at the Associated Press.
• British Exchequer George Osborne's new UK budget slashes the top tax rate at the same time as budget officials plan on going after pensions.
• File website The Pirate Bay plans to use linked Raspberry Pi mini-computers to create aerial server drones to make it harder for law enforcement to shut down services.