StupidiNews, Memorial Day Edition!

• A US sailor from California became the 3,000th coalition troop death in Afghanistan as he died from complications from wounds.
• The Associate Press reports 45% of the 1.6 million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are seeking or have sought disability compensation from the Pentagon, twice the rate of the first Gulf War.
• Some 8 Afghan civilians, reportedly 6 of them children, were killed by an NATO airstrike in Paktia province.
• After falling last week to seven-month lows, oil prices have rebounded under fresh concerns in Europe and Iran.
• The FCC has approved part of the frequency spectrum for use in wireless sensors for hospital and medical use in patients.

Last Call

BooMan asks:

Why Pick on Chief Justice Roberts?

Indeed, that's what George Will seems to be doing in his WaPo column this weekend.

Justice Anthony Kennedy is generally considered today’s swing vote, but his acerbic first question to the administration’s lawyer during the second day of oral argument changed assumptions: “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”

Concluding that Kennedy might be disposed to overturn the mandate, some Obamacare defenders decided that Roberts’s vote will be decisive. They hope to secure it by causing Roberts to worry about his reputation and that of his institution.

BooMan goes on to comment on Will's premise:

I feel like the two most likely results are a 6-3 decision to uphold, with Thomas, Scalia, and Alito dissenting, or a 5-4 decision to strike down the mandate, with all the liberals dissenting. I don't see a scenario where Kennedy votes to strike the mandate but Roberts saves it.

That's why I think George Will's premise is stupid. But maybe he doesn't want the embarrassment of losing this case by more than a 5-4 split. 

There's more to it then that.  Recall Karl Rove's law:  If conservatives are accusing liberals of doing something, conservatives are the ones actually doing it and it's projection.  Period.  From that we can assume that the pressure here is being put by conservatives on Justice Roberts.  But why?  BooMan has a point that it's Kennedy they should be pressuring, not Roberts.

I can think of at least two reasons.  One, they are going after Roberts to convince Kennedy.  Two, they are setting up a scenario where a 5-4 decision where Kennedy upholds the law and mandate and Roberts doesn't as illegitimate because Roberts is Chief Justice.

Pretty sobering thought.  But yes, Will is clearly scared that the law will be upheld here and that conservtives will miss their "chance to rewire the entire country" regardless of who ends up President in January.

Keep an eye on this line of attack from the Village.

Luke, Alex Pareene Is Your Father Now

Salon's Alex Pareene is probably not going to become Luke Russert's friend anytime soon as he rightly gives the Village's poster boy for useless nepotism a sound spanking (not to mention snark worthy of myself.)

On the basis of his impressive reporting and ease in front of the camera still being named Russert, Luke was promoted, after the election, to congressional correspondent. That’s the contempt with which NBC News views the occupation of journalism. To make Luke Russert a congressional reporter is to say, “We believe that this job requires no particular knowledge, training or skills. If a German shepard could be trained to speak, it could perform this work.” (That’s true of most cable news work, granted, but it really doesn’t have to be.) Proper reporting on the House of Representatives is actually difficult and largely thankless work, generally done by very hardworking and underpaid reporters. The assignment was transparently NBC’s attempt to help Russert develop chops, and what it has yielded thus far is the time Charlie Rangel called Luke dumb, which MSNBC turned into a two-day story.

NBC seems to be keeping Russert employed in the hopes that he’ll eventually develop an ability to simulate gravitas. Hopefully “Meet the Press” will still be on the air by the time Luke has mastered his serious face.

His Twitter feed presents a perfectly dull person with perfectly banal thoughts. When he drifts into attempted solemnity it’s usually more amusing than his actual attempts at humor. (More quality insight, right here.) It’s precisely what you would imagine the result would be if the elite Beltway press somehow collectively raised a child from birth — which is, in effect, what actually happened. He subscribes to every shibboleth of Washington conventional wisdom and shows fealty to all the proper institutions.

And yes, Luke Russert is precisely everything wrong with the DC press rolled into one obnoxiously banal little package.  When I think of all the correspondents and reporters who should have Luke Russert's job as NBC's Capitol Hill correspondent it makes me scream.

And make no mistake, there's a lot wrong with our media other than Russert.  He's a symptom, not a cause.  The cause is corporate ownership, period.

You think if NBC was worried about journalistic integrity that Russert would be anything more than an intern?

A Ballsy Tale

Mao Sugiyama, a self-described "asexual" from Tokyo, cooked up, seasoned and served his own genitalia to five diners at a swanky banquet in Japan last month, Calorie Lab reported.

Sugiyama sparked a firestorm of interest on April 8 with one tweet:

"[Please retweet] I am offering my male genitals (full penis, testes, scrotum) as a meal for 100,000 yen …Will prepare and cook as the buyer requests, at his chosen location."

To show you just how naive I am, I never thought anyone would pay for the privilege, so when I read the headline (come on, I knew even then I was going to write about this) my initial expectation was that this was a trick pulled on unknowing victims.

Nope.  He served them with  mushrooms and parsley.  I mean hey, if you're going to eat that, a little fungus should be a-okay, right?

I'll have the crocodile, thanks.

Zombie Invasion

This is a completely legit news article, but OMG zombies was all I could think while reading it.

(AP) MIAMI - Miami police say that an officer has fatally shot a naked man who was chewing on the face of another man on a downtown expressway off-ramp.

The Miami Herald reports that gunshots were heard at about 2 p.m. Saturday on the MacArthur Causeway off-ramp, which is near the newspaper's offices. Witnesses said that a woman saw two men fighting and flagged down a police officer, who observed a naked man mauling the other man. The newspaper quoted witnesses as saying that the officer ordered the naked man to back away, and when he ignored repeated demands, shot him multiple times, killing him.

If that guy gets up and starts walking, I'm going to the middle of a desert with a lot of ammo.  You're welcome to join me, but know I'll shoot anyone who is bitten.

The Pain In Spain Continues

The decay is starting to accelerate now in Spain's continued banking mess, with Bankia, Spain's biggest mortgage lender, now saying it needs almost 20 billion euros to stay afloat.

The government is trying to head off a collapse of the bank, which could threaten the Spanish banking industry and reverberate through the financial centers of Europe and beyond. The fear is that it will not have the money to save its banks, and their $1.25 trillion in deposits, and will need a rescue by the rest of Europe — even as political and financial leaders struggle to resolve Greece’s debt debacle. 

Bankia’s announcement came as Standard & Poor’s, the credit ratings agency, downgraded Bankia and two other banks, Banco Popular and Bankinter, to junk status and lowered the ratings of two other Spanish banks also staggered by mounting bad loans. A junk rating could make it even harder for Bankia to borrow its way out of trouble. 

The rising fear now is that the recent steady outflow of deposits from Spain’s banks, which are suffering from the bursting of Spain’s real estate bubble, to institutions outside the country could eventually turn into the sort of bank run that almost brought the financial world to its knees after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. 

Spain’s debt crisis is also playing out on another front. As its banks shudder, heavily indebted regional governments are also running out of money. On Friday, the government of the Catalonia region warned that it might no longer be able to finance its debts and called on the central government for help. While other regions have also sounded budget alarms, Catalonia is the biggest so far; it represents nearly one-fifth of Spain’s economy. 

The acceleration is beginning again, and it's starting to look like another bailout of Spanish banks will be needed just like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal got.   We'll see where it goes, but my guess is things will come to a head pretty soon in Europe.

Last Call

It seems our old friend GOP Rep. (and Presidential candidate mega-failure) Thad "Guitar Hero" McCotter of Michigan may have just even more epically failed himself right out of Congress.

Throwing his congressional race into turmoil, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter said Friday evening that he may not have turned in enough valid signatures to qualify for the Aug. 7 Republican primary in his suburban Detroit district.

In a statement, McCotter said the Michigan Secretary of State's Office notified him about the apparent problem.

"Fully respecting the accuracy and integrity of the Secretary of State's Office, we will thoroughly review our petition signatures for their sufficiency or insufficiency," the Livonia Republican said in his statement. "Out of respect for Memorial Day, an announcement of our findings will be made public on Tuesday."

According to the Secretary of State's website, McCotter had turned in 2,000 signatures, the maximum allowable. Congressional candidates must turn in at least 1,000 and no more than 2,000 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The Secretary of State didn't say how many signatures McCotter could be short by, but spokeswoman Gisgie Gendreau said Friday night that duplicate signatures were among the problems with McCotter's petitions. When duplicates are found, both signatures are bounced from the petitions.

"He can make his case to the Board of Canvassers," Gendreau said. "They still have to vote to certify the signatures."

The board is expected to meet the first week of June, though a firm date hasn't been set.

Yeah, whoever's running McCotter's campaign?  You're an idiot.  Also, thanks for keeping this meathead off the the ballot, possibly.   Let's remember McCotter's platform as a GOP hopeful:

He lives in Livonia, Mich., and he represents a suburban district outside Detroit. His seat on the House Financial Services Committee is credited for helping restructure General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group, rescuing both companies from bankruptcy through government loans.

“If you believe American needs manufacturing and farming, that is going to be a message you will hear,” he told the Detroit News Friday.

McCotter says he supported the federal government’s hand in helping both companies recover and adds that their restructuring can be used as an example of what can be done to Social Security and the banking system.

“If you continue to raise taxes, if you continue to massively increase government, you are crushing the chances of a recovery.... The White House should finally get the message that we are not going to make this recession worse, we’re not going to make it harder for people to recover, we want to fix and restructure government starting with the debt ceiling,” he told Huckabee on his show last weekend. 

GM bailout good, bank bailout bad.  Also spending bad.  Also taxes bad...but not if bailouts, taxes, and government spending are used to SAVE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF JOBS IN HIS DISTRICT.   No wonder he didn't last more than a month.

Not sad at all to see this particular hypocrite lose his seat for not following the damn rules.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Maha over at Mahablog tries to make sense of the latest insane right wing whatever outrage story that's motivating them towards all but calling for a second American revolution (where they wipe the Cheetos Hot Fries dust off the gun cabinet and wipe the motor oil stains off their tricorner hat and...I guess do something, maybe) but it's incoherent blather even for the winger blogs as they are all going to ragequit the country or something over Brett Kimberlin:

If you’ve been monitoring the rightie blogs today, you’d notice they’re all raging about some guy named Brett Kimberlin. Some of them have been going on about Brett Kimberlin for the past few days, and for the life of me I couldn’t make out why they were so enraged about Brett Kimberlin. One blog post after another was just a weird word salad mingling George Soros, Barbara Streisand, Bill Ayers, Mumia Abu-Jamal, world Marxism, various progressive organizations, and the left generally, to this guy Brett Kimberlin.

In other words, it's the usual crap.  Person X is the New Liberal Satan, and all liberals must be purged.  Only...this time they seem to be a bit angrier than normal.

But the weird thing is that rightie blogger after rightie blogger isn’t discussing what Kimberlin allegedly did to Patterico or McCain. They are calling for jihad on the entire Left. Everyone who has expressed even a mildly progressive opinion over the past 150 years is behind the Vast Conspiracy to silence the Right through intimidation (which, of course, bears no resemblance to what Breitbart and others were trying to do to Justice Through Music. [/sarcasm].) And so post after post rants hysterically about George Soros, Barbara Streisand, Bill Ayers, Mumia Abu-Jamal, world Marxism, various progressive organizations, and the left generally. Oh, and Brett Kimberlin.

Steve M too has noticed this time seems vastly different in tone rather than Standard Wingnut Poutrage of the Week.  One of them said this:

Read all of the incredible, sick-making story — which includes some perfectly typical and disgusting bile spewed by some of the violence-supporting left-wing animals who think things like this are just peachy — and gird your loins. Because it’s going to come down to shooting with these vermin eventually, if we’re to retain any rights at all. Patterico wouldn’t like me saying that, I’m sure; I don’t much like having to say it myself. But it’s a mere acknowledgment of current reality: we are in a cold war with neo-Marxists who are trying to steal our country, have already done enormous and probably permanent damage to it, and will stop at nothing –absolutely nothing — to see to it that our voices are silenced. That war must inevitably go hot, unless we’re willing to surrender to them.

Yeah, these guys aren't talking about protests and rallies.  They're talking about putting bullets in people over political disagreements now because they feel "our voices are silenced".  You know, because FOX News and Rush and righty blogs will be shut down any second under the Obama Regime.

These guys are all deeply disturbed.  And yet this is exactly the outcome I've been warning of for the the last several years on this blog.

It's scary to start seeing it come to pass.

The Federalist (Single) Payers

Mitt Romney and the Tenth Amendment-loving Republicans want states to be able to craft their own health-care solutions?  Washington State Democrat Jim McDermott will take you up on your offer now.

Universal coverage, Medicare for all, single payer — call it what you will. It's clear that conservative forces are determined to prevent such a system from ever being introduced at the national level. So it's up to the states.

The catch is that to make universal coverage work at the state level, you'd need some way to channel Medicare, Medicaid and other federal healthcare funds into the system. At the moment, that's difficult if not impossible.

But legislation quietly being drafted by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) would change that. It would create a mechanism for states to request federal funds after establishing their own health insurance programs.

If passed into law — admittedly a long shot with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives — McDermott's State-Based Universal Healthcare Act would represent a game changer for medical coverage in the United States.

It would, for the first time, create a system under which a Medicare-for-all program could be rolled out on a state-by-state basis. In California's case, it would make coverage available to the roughly 7 million people now lacking health insurance.

"This is a huge deal," said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica advocacy group. "This is a lifeline for people who want to create a Medicare system at the state level."

So yes, block grants.  Block grants for single-payer.  Naturally, Republicans will immediately rescind all of their arguments that given a chance, states can do a more efficient job of administering health care if you just give them the money.  Giving them the money to develop single payer would of course put private insurance companies more interested in profits than saving people lives, out of business.

We can't have that, of course.

Death panels for all the girls and boys.

Three Abandoned Kids Safe Now

(CNN) -- Police said Friday that they tracked down the mother of three children -- all apparently 3 years old or younger -- who were found alone the previous morning in a vacant building in Portland, Oregon.

Police released a brief statement about noon Friday, saying, "The mother of the missing children has been located, and we thank everyone who helped with information. We do not need need any additional tips."

Authorities did not offer more details, including whether charges will be filed in the case.

Whenever something like this happens, we have to know that it happens a dozen times elsewhere and isn't caught. It's unlikely this is the first time those kids have been abandoned.  Whether this was a short-term mistake or a final exit is not known.  The kids were identified and are safe, and I will follow up on the mom whenever details are released.

Way To Pick An Example, Your Honor

A judge admittedly chose a particular girl to use as an example.  He sentenced a seventeen-year-old girl to a night in jail, and a $100 fine she can ill afford. She is an honor student, but has excessive truancy.

A couple of facts the judge was aware of: their parents left her to raise her younger sister.  She maintains excellent grades, works both a full-time and part-time job, and takes care of her sister.  Attendance is important, but so are individual circumstances.  The judge could have used other means to enforce the point and be less destructive, but he chose to use this girl to make a point about truancy.  What an idiot.

"If you let one run loose, what are you gonna' do with the rest of 'em?," said Judge Lanny Moriarty. "Let them go too? A little stay in the jail for one night is not a death sentence."

He's too dumb to differentiate between a girl doing the best she can and a mall rat skipping chemistry to smoke dope.  Tell me again why this man belongs on the bench.

Diane Tran is a young hero who has taken on more than many adults would.  She deserves compassion and understanding, and instead she got a lesson in what it's like to be kicked when you're already down.

Mitt Romney, Keynesian?

Chuck Pierce points out the huge news in Mitt Romney's nerf bat interview with Mark Halperin earlier this week:

Halperin: Why not in the first year, if you're elected — why not in 2013, go all the way and propose the kind of budget with spending restraints, that you'd like to see after four years in office? Why not do it more quickly?

Romney: Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I'm not going to do that, of course. 

Paul Ryan just had a stroke, because that's basically exactly what his planned budget does.  It cuts hundreds of billions in government spending right off the bat.   Mitt Romney is admitting that massive government spending cuts will put us in a recession.  Republicans want to make massive government spending cuts.  You see the problem here?  Mittens just took a steaming dump in the Tea Party punchbowl, right?

Wrong.  Working as intended.

Romney's playing centrist etch-a-sketch again.  "Sure, we're going to have to make cuts folks, but under me they won't be so bad.  The Republicans in Congress will listen to me and we'll do this in an orderly fashion.  If the other guy is in the White House, well, who do you think will lose in the end?  I'm the only guy who can control the Tea Party."

And there are millions of voters, some of the Democrats, who will vote for Mitt Romney for exactly that reason.  There's a method to his seeming madness.  And just like Orange Julius, he'll shrug and go "Oh well" when the Tea Party puts their budget on his desk and sign it.

Best part is when the economy plummets headfirst into the ground for the exact reasons Romney mentioned, it'll be Obama's fault, and we'll have to cut more spending.  See how this works?

Of course as I keep saying you can prevent that in November.

Enablers Of Destruction

Brad DeLong just absolutely hits this out of the park with the notion that the problem isn't just insane Republicans on verge of reducing the country to warring red state Christian fiefdoms versus the Union, but the "moderates" who enable these nutjobs though sins of omission as he takes on Norm Ornstein and Tom Carr about their new book bemoaning the wingnuts in their party.

Look. You two are expecting normal politics to rein in a Republican Party gone bonkers extreme. But it will not work. The press corps will continue to say "he said, she said, yadda yadda yadda" either because they are gutless cowards or because they are bought. In a world of low-information voters, the bonkers extremism and sheer total meanness of the Republican Party will not get through. The only way it could get through would be if moderate Republican barons were to announce that they had had enough and were crossing t'he aisle, and if they did so in a way that they brought their affinities with them. But I don't see Brent Scowcroft doing that, I don't see Colin Powell doing that, I don't see Greg Mankiw doing that, I don't see Marty Feldstein doing that, I don't see Gail Wilensky doing that, I don't see Bob Dole doing that, I don't see Jack Danforth doing that, I don't see Richard Lugar doing that--and I don't see you doing that, Mr. Ornstein. I don't see you calling for the defeat of every single Republican candidate this fall and every fall until the party comes back to reality.

And since all of you moderate Republicans are unwilling to take the only step that might fix the situation on your side, we have to take the only step open to us: We have to stop bringing a set of policy proposals and briefing papers to what the Republican Party has made a thermonuclear exchange. We have to oppose their noise, slime, and lie machine with a noise, disinfectant, and truth machine of our own--and at the same intensity.

That means you moderates need to pick a side and fasten your seat belts, rather than wringing your hands about how the Republicans are being so mean, and you wish they would be less so.

Any questions?

It's the guys in the middle who should know better, who should be revolting, who should be standing up for the Republican Party.  But they're too far gone, and anyone who does stand up gets their career destroyed by these thugs and replaced with another Tea Party clone.

It's sad, really.  But it's nobody fault more than guys like Ornstein and Carr.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• The suspect in the murder of six-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 faces arraignment after his confession to NYPD officials.
• The FBI is now involved in the investigation of several break-ins and arson attempts at several Georgia women's health clinics this month.
• With Egyptian elections headed for a bitter runoff, US officials are bracing for the new President's almost certain anti-American stance.
• New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin has successfully trademarked "Linsanity" ending a multi-month battle over the claim.
• Game developer 38 Studios has laid off all of its staff after a disastrous deal gone wrong involving baseball great Curt Schilling.

Last Call

Hopefully another step in the permanent Last Call for DOMA:

Last night, U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken in California ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional in a case called Dragovich v. U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Clinton-appointed federal judge found that DOMA violates the Constitution’s equal protections clause due to the fact that, along with a provision of the state’s tax law, it limits same-sex couples and domestic partners from fully participating in the California Public Employees Retirement System. This marks the first federal court decision on DOMA since President Obama announced his endorsement of same-sex marriage on May 9. Two other judges and a bankruptcy court have similarly ruled DOMA unconstitutional.

Indeed, the equal protection violation clause is a powerful argument that has been used before to attack DOMA.  It's a law which codifies discrimination, plain and simple.   What will SCOTUS decide on this?  Who knows.

All the more reason to keep Mitt Romney out of the White House, if you ask me.