StupidiNews!

• Syrian opposition forces are claiming the al-Assad regime has committed yet another massacre, with 78 reportedly dead in the small village of Qubeir, at least half women and children.
• California officials are investigating anti-gay group National Organization for Marriage for allegedly hiding millions in donors from disclosure.
• Washington state conservative groups are confident that the ballot initiative they filed for this week to change the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriage in November will win easily.
• House Republicans have passed a measure reversing light-bulb efficiency laws, but the legislation is expected to die in the Senate and faces a certain White House veto.
• Advertisers have quickly stripped Microsoft's IE 10's "do-not-track" default setting by threatening to drop out of the company's web browser standard.

One Last Call Into The Universe

Ray Bradbury, the world will sorely miss you, sir.

Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, whose dystopian works served as cautionary tales about perilous futures and reflected the anxieties of post-war America, has died at the age of 91.

Bradbury’s publisher HarperCollins confirmed his death on Tuesday in Los Angeles after an unspecified “lengthy illness,” as tributes poured in from fans and family alike for a man seen as one of the genre’s greatest authors.

His most-remembered work, “Fahrenheit 451″ (1953), was a Cold War-era work about the evils of censorship and thought control in a totalitarian state and reached a worldwide audience as a film adaptation by Francois Truffaut in 1966.

“The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me,” Bradbury said in 2000.

“The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was 12,” he said on his 80th birthday.

In all, the award-winning writer penned nearly 600 short stories and 50 books, including “The Martian Chronicles” about human attempts to colonize Mars and the unintended consequences.

“In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury has inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create,” HarperCollins said in a statement.

He was the last of the big four science fiction masters to depart us for the unknown:  Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, and finally Ray Bradbury.   Some 4 dozen novels over seven decades.  Eat your heart out, Stephen King.

We'll miss you Ray.  Your books got me through many a late night growing up, because I couldn't put them down.

The Great Prop 8 Debate Update: Accelerate Fate!

As widely expected, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday turned down a full en banc review of the Prop 8 decision striking down the California same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional earlier this year, putting the case on a 90-day fast track to be taken up by the Supreme Court.

The 9th Circuit Court of appeals declined to take up the case of the constitutionality of California’s Proposition Eight Tuesday morning, suggesting that the same-sex marriage ban could possibly go to the Supreme Court.

The full court of the 9th Circuit refused to hear the case but did place a 90-day hold on its decision, meaning that same sex marriages cannot take place in California during the time period.

If the Supreme Court takes the case, the hearing likely will be held during the spring of 2013. 

So yes, arguments would be in the spring with a decision most likely by next summer.   Better hope that the man in the White House then isn't Mitt Romney, folks...or there's little hope for anything but permanent discrimination against marriage equality.

Greek Fire, Part 59

And now things are Getting Real(tm) in Europe.

Finance ministers and central bank governors from the world’s leading economies agreed to coordinate their response to Europe’s financial crisis on a conference call that dealt with Spain and Greece.

Group of Seven officials said they will work together to help both euro-area countries place their public finances on a sustainable footing, Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azumi told reporters in Tokyo following the call today. Azumi said he urged European leaders to do more to address investors’ concerns about the region’s finances.

European representatives “said they will speed up their efforts to resolve those problems, which was encouraging to us,” Azumi said. “Japan is ready to provide support if there is anything we can do.” The officials didn’t discuss a possible Greek exit from the euro, he said.

Less than two weeks before a Group of 20 summit in Mexico that will take place as Greece holds its second round of elections in as many months, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing increasing pressure from colleagues inside and outside the 17-nation euro area to apply Europe’s biggest economy to do more to stem the crisis. With the impact spilling over into the global economy, Spain for the first time today appealed for external funding for its banking system. 

Yeah.  Suddenly things have gone from nebulous to "coordinated G-7 response needed."  Merkel looks like she's in over her head.  Spain is now asking for money outright.  Greece?  Well, who knows.  But the fire is now burning in the Fatherland.

Buckle up, kids.

Teen On Bike Shoots, Kills Infant

A one-year-old boy is dead after being shot by a teenager on a bike.  He was outside with his father, and was shot in the torso.  He later died during emergency surgery.

Gang rivalry is suspected, but the murderer has not been caught.  The article is short and doesn't say if authorities have any leads or if this was so random that they may never unravel the truth.  This is the kind of crime that is so painful because it is so preventable.

I hope they catch him and that he has a long life in prison.  I'm going to go hug someone now.

School Blows The Call On Athletic Graduate

We have a story of a young man who plays football, and who has struggled in school and has set his sights for college.  Why in the hell would any high school withhold his diploma as punishment?

Apparently if too many people cheer for him.  I kid you not.

"Teachers, other students and other family members who weren't with us were also cheering for him also. He's well known," Traci said.

The excitement proved too much for the administration.

Instead of a diploma, Anthony got a letter from the principal, Marlon Styles, Jr. "I will be holding your diploma in the main office," the letter said, "due to the excessive cheering your guests displayed during the roll call."

"I did nothing wrong except walk across the stage," Anthony said. 

The school demands 20 hours of community service before he can graduate.

Those hours can be split between Anthony and his family, or the senior can perform them all himself. 

"I don't understand how he's being punished for something he has no control over," Traci said. "I just thought that was ludicrous... I have no clue where the logic comes in."

There is so much wrong with this I don't even know where to begin.  At best, this is a knee-jerk reaction by a school administration that believes it can order adults to perform community service for a little cheering.  Or a lot of cheering.  What the hell ever, since when is cheering education a bad thing?

I could not find mention of harm done to property.  No stadium stomps or crazy shenanigans.  Just cheering.

His mother called enough, and I back her and him a hundred percent.  This is insane.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal

You can only know where Mitt Romney's current political position is at any given moment, or the vector of him changing that position when asked by a reporter, but you can never know both his position and his direction at the same time.

When Mitt Romney left office as Massachusetts governor, his aides removed all emails from a server computer in the governor's office, and purchased and carted off hard drives from 17 state-owned personal computers, according to a current state official.

But a small cache of emails survived, including some that have never publicly surfaced surrounding Mr. Romney's efforts to pass his now-controversial health-care law. The emails show the Republican governor was closely engaged in negotiating details of the bill, working with top Democratic state leaders and drafting early copies of opinion articles backing it.

Mr. Romney and his aides, meanwhile, strongly defended the so-called individual mandate, a requirement that everyone in Massachusetts have or buy heath insurance. And they privately discussed ideas that might be anathema to today's GOP—including publicly shaming companies that didn't provide enough health insurance to employees.

Mr. Romney signed the bill April 12, 2006, and that night sent an email thanking a top aide, saying the law would help "hundreds of thousands of people…have healthier and happier lives."

At this point Mittens is praying that the Supreme Court has to completely strike down the Affordable Care Act, because if they don't, he's toast.   And yes, I'm well aware of the fact the article's from Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and that this is a fire break being set against a much larger wildfire in the wake of the SCOTUS decision on the ACA.

If all this came to light after the SCOTUS decision on the ACA, Romney loses no matter what he does.  If it comes out now, before the decision, then the ruling itself could obliterate this down the memory hole (but only if the law is totally vacated.)  If the law remains without the mandate, it's going to be ugly for both President Obama and Mitt Romney.  If the law remains untouched, same thing.  But if the law is struck down, both sides have to come up with a replacement plan, and that differentiation is the only thing saving Mitt from millions of Republicans yelling RINO and staying home in November.

So yes, this is coming out on purpose...so it can be turned into Mitt's latest etch-a-sketch later.

Fire Walker Chronicles, Part 10

The good news:  Turnout in Wisconsin was massive yesterday.  The bad news:  the election wasn't about Scott Walker at all, but whether or not recalls over policy were even appropriate...and Wisconsin said "no".

Republican Gov. Scott Walker has won the Wisconsin governor’s recall over Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, holding onto his job after his push to slash collective bargaining rights for public employees sparked intense statewide backlash.

Walker’s win caps a chaotic year in Wisconsin, marked by heated demonstrations, endless campaigning and a flood of outside money, all of which vaulted the state from ordinary battleground to Ground Zero of the national political debate — and elevated Walker to national superstardom among the Republican faithful.

Walker was favored from the outset, bolstered by an enormous cash advantage, and a firewall of support from national Republican figures.

And Walker went on to win by pretty much the 7 point margin all the polls were predicting, 53-46.   So what happened?  It's actually quite simple if you look at the exit polls.  The final question there was the key to the entire recall election.  When asked  "Do you think recall elections are appropriate"  some 60% of Wisconsin voters said "Only for official misconduct" and another 10% said "never".  And despite the allegations of Walker's shadowy dealings, the 60% who said that policy wasn't a reason to recall Walker voted 68-31% for Walker.

That was your ball game, right there.  Scott Walker's $30 million plus convinced voters that a recall over policy and allegations alone was unusual (it was) and unprecedented (also true given only 2 other sitting governors being recalled) and harmful to the democratic process (something I'd have to agree with).  Walker's massive cash advantage painted the recall process itself as the bad guy here, not Barrett and certainly not Walker himself.  All the down-ticket Republicans survived their recall as a result.  Some 18% of folks who favor Barack Obama in November voted not for Scott Walker, but against the recall process itself.

Anyone who tells you this has to do with unions, President Obama, the economy, jobs, Mitt Romney, same-sex marriage, the transit of Venus or the season finale of Mad Men is full of crap.  This recall election was about precisely one thing -- the recall election itself -- and it lost pretty resoundingly.  That's it.  That's the entire election.   Republicans spent a huge amount of cash convincing people to vote Walker as a protest against being able to exercise their rights to vote to be able to remove a sitting politician.   They used tens of millions to define the election on terms favorable to Walker and the GOP, and it worked as intended as all incumbent Republicans survived.

End of story.

Moving forward.

StupidiNews!

• Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker survived his recall effort comfortably, winning 53-46% over Milwaukee's Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett.
• As GOP senators blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act for the second time in three years, Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski called for "a new American revolution" by women.
• The US is claiming that a drone strike in Pakistan has taken out Al Qaeda #2 and propagandist Abu Yahya al Libi in a "major blow" to the terrorist group.
• Spain's health care system is in crisis as austerity cuts threaten to disrupt medicine, doctor visits, and long-term care.
• Microsoft is expanding its $99 Xbox offer with a 2-year Xbox Live on-line contract to retailers like Gamestop and Best Buy.

Last Call

Some delightful naivete from Rolling Stone's Chris Thompson on why the GOP's racial barricade strategy is "doomed to fail" needs to be tempered by some cold, harsh reality.  First, Thompson's premise:

Two decades of immigration and changing demographics have steadily eroded the Republican base in the Golden State. But rather than adapt to this new reality, the state party lurched deep into the far-right swamplands of American politics. As the state grew more socially liberal, the last of the Republicans doubled down on conservatism, and sank into irrelevancy.

But this is no local story. What happened in California is just beginning to happen all over the country. The GOP’s most reliable supporters are increasingly crammed into the South and the Midwest, energized by an ever more embattled sense of grievance and cultural alienation, while the rest of the country becomes younger, more multicultural, and more socially liberal. This trend is only going to accelerate, and unless Mitt Romney and his colleagues come to their senses and find a way to reverse it, the GOP is looking at a generation in the electoral wilderness.

And Republicans will have done it to themselves. Just like they did in California. 

That's the way it would work in the movies.  Here in reality, the Republicans realize they can't change demographics, so they are making it as impossible as as they can for those changing demographics to actually have that effect.  Here in reality, House incumbents win 85% of the time and Senate ones do even better.  Every ten years, districts are rebooted to remove competition and concentrate the competitive races into one or two districts per state at best.

Secondly, Thompson's own Rolling Stone colleague Jillian Rayfield in fact has an excellent piece on voter suppression in states like Florida, where the GOP there is simply going to change the rules and keep as many minorities and poor from voting, and count on the Supreme Court that gave us Citizens United to make the final call in their favor that the Voting Rights Act and National Voter Registration Act are antiquated and unnecessary in 2012.  I suggest he read it, because it's the road map to how changing demographics don't mean a damn thing, especially in the short term.

And finally, what the first two reasons have in common are the third reason why Thompson's scenario won't come to pass anytime soon:  more and more Republicans exercising local and state control to simply change the rules.  The GOP takeover of Texas and Florida and the resulting voter purges in both states (Yes, Texas is doing it too, some 300,000 eligible voters could be kicked off the rolls) are working as intended:  the fewer people that are allowed to vote, the better the Republicans do.

In California, the state may be blue, but the Republicans have managed to make it all but impossible for the state to ever raise taxes thanks to a 2/3rds majority or a statewide referendum necessary to do so, assuring that the bluest state in the nation has to make exactly the kind of draconian cuts that Republicans would make if they were in charge.  Witness Gov. Jerry Brown all but beg taxpayers to approve the latest tax measures or face billions more in cuts in schools, Medicare, state services and employee layoffs.  Republicans are winning here by a scorched Earth default, and if anything they want to copy the success of California in the other states.

If other populous blue states are reduced to the state California is in right now, then yes, Republicans will take that as a win, and if red states like Texas can remain blood red through voter suppression, well they'll take that too.  The real problem is the GOP takeover in state after state, systematic and devastating, in district after district, county after county.  They have the funding and the networking and the outrage necessary to make it so that even if the state goes blue, it will be in such a financial catastrophe when the Democrats get control that voters will simply consider giving it back to the Republicans just to make the nightmare stop.

One party is playing by the rules.  The other one is playing to destroy them.  Guess who's winning in the long run if things keep us as is?  If California, Illinois, New York and New England are the only blue states left because the GOP has made it impossible for Dems to win or even to vote, who's coming out on top?

Here's a hint:  it's not the Donks.  Wake up and smell the ashes, man.

We've got a hell of a lot of work to do.

I've Seen This Movie Before

And topping our list of stupid things to do in the Gunshine State of Florida?  Pretend you're a zombie for a viral video project just to see how people react.  How people react is they try to shoot your undead zombie ass, that's how.

Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, who says he came to the United States in 2004 to become an actor, posted a video of himself over the weekend in a zombie costume chasing various younger people in streets, parking lots and parks in Miami.

At about the 2 minute mark in the video, one young man fleeing the zombie attack can be seen pointing a gun at the prankster.

“Very Dangerous Prank!” Zdorovetskiy wrote on his YouTube page. “Almost Got Shot at 2:00! DO NOT TRY IT!”

Americans.  Trained to shoot zombies, man.  Trained.

Schooled In The Bayou

While the country's been focusing on the Presidential election, and the euro crisis, Bobby Jindal and Louisiana Republicans are about to execute their plan to privatize the state's public schools in a massive mess that will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions.  The real crime is that the "schools" that will profit tremendously from this little scheme are...surprise!...religious-based:

Far more openings are available at smaller, less prestigious religious schools, including some that are just a few years old and others that have struggled to attract tuition-paying students.

The school willing to accept the most voucher students -- 314 -- is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

The Upperroom Bible Church Academy in New Orleans, a bunker-like building with no windows or playground, also has plenty of slots open. It seeks to bring in 214 voucher students, worth up to $1.8 million in state funding.

At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains "what God made" on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.

"We try to stay away from all those things that might confuse our children," Carrier said.

Other schools approved for state-funded vouchers use social studies texts warning that liberals threaten global prosperity; Bible-based math books that don't cover modern concepts such as set theory; and biology texts built around refuting evolution.

And Louisiana tax dollars are going to this.  It's insanity...and yet, Republicans now dominate the state.  This is the "future" of American education that will make us "competitive" in math and science with Europe and Asia.  Awesome.

Meanwhile, the students left in Louisiana public schools lose more and more funding for every student that takes advantage of this "more efficient approach to education", necessitating more vouchers as students and parents flee a doomed system that eventually goes under a critical mass point and collapses.  Lotteries determine who gets into the posh schools, and who gets into the windowless cubicles with the textbooks where evolution doesn't exist.  It's a grift that would make the best cons grin from ear to ear and everyone's lining up to open a school to get in on the action.

Everything about this is a complete disaster waiting to happen that will almost certainly collapse the state's schools where major private charter outfits will have to step in and "save" the state of education in Louisiana.  And the GOP will gladly hand that control over to for-profit outfits.

Which of course is the point.  The rich get the goods, the rubes get fleeced, and the poor get screwed.  Nothing's more American than that, folks.  There's plenty of damage unlimited GOP control at the state level can accomplish, as Louisiana is about to find out.

I guar-ron-tee it.

Hard Up For Help

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A bus driver has sued a Connecticut hospital, saying staff at an affiliated facility failed to promptly and properly treat his painful erection and watched a baseball game on television while he waited.

Daren Scott of Brockton, Mass., is seeking $2 million in his federal lawsuit against Yale-New Haven Hospital. The lawsuit says Scott was diagnosed before the incident with recurrent priapism, a persistent painful erection unrelated to sexual stimulation.

Scott was driving customers from Boston to New York on April 17, 2009, when he suffered a persistent and disabling erection. After dropping off the customers, Scott said he checked into an emergency medical facility affiliated with the hospital but was told he had to move his bus because he had parked it in the wrong place.

Scott suffered more pain as a result of moving the bus, and when he explained he was in great pain was told to wait, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in March.

While waiting, Scott said he noticed that the facility's staff, including physicians on duty, was watching the game on TV. Scott says his pain worsened and he told a nurse.

Another issue we need to take care of in our ever-ailing healthcare system is the utter lack of caring we see.  Bill gouging, terrible collection practices and slow-witted counter people are a given.  Hospitals have become a dreaded place where even the lowest expectations aren't met.  This would be comical except that the pain must have been dreadful.  It is one of thousands of stories from everywhere that illustrate what injured and sick people deal with regularly.

Three Minutes Of Awesome

You can watch the history of video games told in three minutes.  It's pretty cool (though I have to point out that my beloved Lara Croft is missing).  Still, there were a lot of games out there that I had forgotten, and the Sonic footage was fun.

A Bad, Bad Breakup

Insufferable NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd's on-again, off-again love affair with President Barack Obama is firmly in the off mode this week as she gets into the ouzo and sends in her November campaign epitaph she already has worked up while in a drunken stupor at 3 AM or something.

Once glowing, his press is now burning. “To a very real degree, 2008’s candidate of hope stands poised to become 2012’s candidate of fear,” John Heilemann wrote in New York magazine, noting that because Obama feels he can’t run on his record, his campaign will resort to nuking Romney. 

In his new book, “A Nation of Wusses,” the Democrat Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, wonders how “the best communicator in campaign history” lost his touch. 

The legendary speaker who drew campaign crowds in the tens of thousands and inspired a dispirited nation ended up nonchalantly delegating to a pork-happy Congress, disdaining the bully pulpit, neglecting to do any L.B.J.-style grunt work with Congress and the American public, and ceding control of his narrative. 

As president, Obama has never felt the need to explain or sell his signature pieces of legislation — the stimulus and health care bills — or stanch the flow of false information from the other side. 

“The administration lost the communications war with disastrous consequences that played out on Election Day 2010,” Rendell writes, and Obama never got credit for the two pieces of legislation where he reached for greatness. 

The president had lofty dreams of playing the great convener and conciliator. But at a fund-raiser in Minneapolis, he admitted he’s just another combatant in a capital full of Hatfields and McCoys. No compromises, just nihilism. 

And so we add MoDo the Red to the growing list of wealthy Villagers who are resigned to Mitt Romney's easy victory.   After all, they'll probably fare better financially, being the one percenters.  They're okay with a Romney win.  The blood is in the water now, and it's time to flense the President.

Going to be a long, hot summer.  Oh, and as TPM's Benjy Sarlin pointed out on Twitter on Monday, Maureen Dowd has had an axe to grind over Barack Obama for five, going on six years now.

He poses for the cover of Men’s Vogue and then gets huffy when people don’t treat him as Hannah Arendt.

For some of us, it’s hard to fathom being upset at getting accused of looking great in a bathing suit. But his friends say it played into this Harvard grad’s fear of being seen as “a dumb blond.” He has been known to privately mock “pretty boys” (read John Edwards, the Breck Girl of 2004).

He doesn’t lack confidence, but he’s so hung up on being seen as thoughtful that he sometimes comes across as too emotionally detached and cerebral with crowds yearning for an electric, visceral connection. J.F.K. mixed cool with fire.

At best, she's only dismissed him as a vapid lightweight.   She's always been disappointed with him, frankly.