Blinded By The Light: Revved Up Like A Douche...

Another runner in the night. They hate President Obama so much, they are willing to do anything to get rid of him, even if it guarantees voting against their own self-interest and handing over the country to people like Paul Ryan.  John Cole flags down yet another long-winded diatribe painting POTUS as the most evil, awful man who ever lived.

Hmm?  "Well that's not news, Zandar" you say?  Oh, I'm not talking about Republicans.  I'm talking about why we lost so badly in 2010 and why we could very well lose again in 2012:  Democrats sworn to bring down Barack Obama, specifically raging useful idiots like Matt Stoller.

But there is another narrative, a real narrative about Barack Obama and his administration.  Obama is the ultimate cynic, a dishonest, highly reactionary social and corporate ladder climbing con artist.  Obama is the guy who calls a female reporter “sweety”, who plays poker with the guys, and who thinks that his senior advisor’s decision to cash out after making a “modest” salary of $172,000 at the White House is just natural.  He’s the guy who used the rationale that he’s a father of two girls as to why he doesn’t want young women to have access to Plan B.  He was in favor of gay marriage in 1996, flip flopped for political reasons, and then pretended to change his mind as a matter of conscience.  He runs on populism with a worse record than George W. Bush on income inequality.  His narcissism, and the post-modern ironic sense of self-awareness of how his narrative is put together and tended, is his defining character trait.  It’s not just that he’s a liar.  Lyndon Johnson was a liar, but LBJ lied us into a war in Vietnam as well as a war on poverty.  FDR lied all the time, for good and ill.  Obama’s entire edifice is based on lying almost entirely to help sustain his image, with almost no interest in sound policy-making.  Obama understands the threat of climate change, but like the exceptional con artist he is, what happens to others he does not know, or what happens in the future, is irrelevant to him.  He understands banking, and war, and women’s issues, and corruption and Citizens United.  Like a great con artist, he has studied his mark, the American voter, and specifically the Democratic voter, and he understands which buttons to push.

And his rant goes on like this for paragraphs more, a man so utterly filled with hatred for Barack Obama (who apparently only got elected because he "tricked" stupid Americans like you and me), a man who in one text wall of a paragraph proves beyond any doubt he was never a Democrat, never a progressive, never a liberal, but a raging lunatic who has decided that only the purifying fires of total, unfettered Republican rule will scour the populace clean of sin and allow us to rise up against the One Percent.

This is going to be a long one, folks.  I've got a lot to get off my chest here.  Helpful jump break follows.

Brand New World

Republican Tea Party America has so gorram crushed our country through tax cuts for the rich, spending on stupid wars, and bankrupting our infrastructure that American cities are now forced to give away ad space on fire trucks, school buses, and even gorram fire hydrants just to try to keep basic services.

After Baltimore officials made the wrenching decision to close three fire companies later this summer, the City Council initially sought to avert the cuts with a new money-raising strategy: it passed a resolution this month urging the administration to explore selling ads on the city’s fire trucks. 

It is far from clear whether corporate logos will be painted on Baltimore’s fire engines any time soon. Officials in Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s administration have expressed doubts about whether the proposal would generate enough money to keep even one fire company open. 

But in exploring the option, Baltimore is joining dozens of other financially struggling cities, transit systems and school districts around the country that are trying to weather the economic downturn by selling advertisements, naming rights and sponsorships to raise money. 

We have so destroyed our urban centers economically that we're literally selling public services as endorsements just to keep fire departments open and people and cities from burning to death, like we're a friggin third world hellhole.

KFC became a pioneer in this kind of unconventional ad placement earlier in the downturn, when it temporarily plastered its logo on manhole covers and fire hydrants in several cities in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee after paying to fill potholes and replace hydrants. 

Pizza chains now advertise on some school buses, as a growing number of states consider allowing school districts to sell ads. The Baltimore City Council member who wrote the legislation urging the city to sell ads on fire trucks, William Welch, said he was simply trying to find a way to help the city meet its growing needs in a time of dwindling revenues and support. 

“As I’ve looked at budgets, they get bigger with less support from the federal and state governments,” Mr. Welch said. “And we can’t tax people out of existence. We’re trying, our mayor’s trying, to bring 10,000 more people back to Baltimore city. And if you have an increasing fee or tax structure, you’re not going to be able to do that. So you have to create alternatives.” 

We can't tax people at all, because taxation is now theft and it will get you killed politically.  We've become a nation of "screw your neighbor" where 99% of us, we all fight for crumbs from the table while the insanely rich laugh at us and buy more of our political system every day.  When you make basic services and infrastructure compete against each other in death matches, you have winners, and you have losers.

The funny part is in this rigged game, we're the losers for even playing.   Welcome to the United States of Hell.

Criminal Teacher Of The Week

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) - A Southern California high school teacher was arrested on suspicion of directing students to assault at least one other student in a classroom hazing incident, police said Sunday.

Emmanuel Delarosa, 27, along with four other students were arrested Saturday after a student who said he was a victim of the hazing contacted school police, Fontana police Sgt. Robert Morris said.

Investigators alleged that Delarosa, a summer school teacher at A.B. Miller High School, knew about the hazing - and in at least one instance directed some students to carry out the hazing to curb behavior problems in the classroom, Morris said.

Jail records show that an 18-year-old student arrested in the case faces charges of assault, child cruelty and attempted sodomy. Fernando Manuel Salgado was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Whatever it was, it can't be good when it involves the words arrested and sodomy.  Seriously, how do these people get jobs while good people starve?

Epic Fail: DEA Admin Bombs Questioning

Please, if you can, take five minutes to watch this.  This is our government at work.  This woman is supposed to answer questions about illegal drugs, and simple refuses to do so.  I cannot believe she is so stupid she doesn't realize what she is doing.  Therefore, I have to assume she is stubborn and incapable of rational discussion about illegal drugs.

Which is kind of important, considering her job.

This woman uses "believe" between nervous gulps.  She is so rattled you can tell she is scrambling to think of answers besides the obvious one, the truth.  You don't have to endorse marijuana to acknowledge that heroin and crack are more dangerous.  Numbers, facts and statistics do that for her, if she would answer honestly.  He didn't even ask the golden question, whether alcohol's numbers show it is more dangerous than marijuana.  I was waiting, but he ran out of time.  She stalled him out.  She simply refused to answer his questions until time ran out, and made an ass of herself and the DEA in the process.

For those who cannot watch, I'll give the rundown. But seriously, you're missing out. Here are some highlights:

Polis:  Is crack worse for a person than marijuana?
Leonhart: I believe all... (gulp) all illegal drugs are bad.

Polis: Is methamphetamine worse for someone's health than marijuana?
Leohart: Again, I don't think any illegal drug...

Polis: Is heroin  worse for someone's health than marijuana?
Leohart: All illegal drugs are... are bad.

This was their golden opportunity to make a valid argument.  There are some points worth considering, and she surely was armed with facts whether she chose to speak them or not.   Instead, she couldn't have made her side look worse.  She is a disgrace, by refusing to use her position and knowledge to answer questions in a simple discussion.

What I find refreshing is that the "believe" and "think" bullshittery that has worked for so long is starting to wear thin.  When this broad can't bring herself to say that methamphetamine is more dangerous than marijuana, you know she is lying through her teeth.  Here it's so obvious you cannot escape the refusal to answer honestly.  I almost feel sorry for her but then I watch her bring it on herself.  This man was not tricking her, he was asking straightforward and legitimate questions.

Facts speak for themselves.  Idiots speak for the DEA.

Here's an even more eloquent speech on drug use:

For The One Who Has It All...

Hey One Percenters!  Why not buy that special person in your life the gift of being able to get away from it all whenever you want?  Nothing beats your own artificial island!

An Austrian firm has come up what it hopes is the next big thing for the mega-rich: a man-made, floating “island” with a list price of 5.2 million euros ($6.5 million), the company’s founder told AFP Monday.

Measuring 20 by 37 metres (66 by 121 feet), the “Orsos Island” has no engine but can be anchored anywhere its owners choose and then towed to another location the other side of the world if they so wish, Hungarian-born Gabor Orsos said.

“The interest has been massive from all over the world, from Australia, China, the United States. We have already had the first pre-orders and we have some potential buyers coming from Australia next week,” the entrepreneur said.

The island is environmentally friendly and fully self-sufficient, with solar panels and wind generators providing power. It can sleep 12 people plus crew and offers 1,000 square metres of living space.

It's basically a glorified super houseboat with solar and wind generators.   I have to admit, if I ever won the lottery, this would be on the list.  And hey, it's green friendly with no carbon footprint.  Once you get it where it needs to be, that is.

Go figure.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

The mask slips, and Republicans tell the truth about their agenda, in this case Voter ID laws.  Meet Pennsylvania GOP House majority leader Mike Turzai.

“We are focused on making sure that we meet our obligations that we’ve talked about for years,” said Turzai in a speech to committee members Saturday. He mentioned the law among a laundry list of accomplishments made by the GOP-run legislature.

“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

Voter ID is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.   Not "Voter ID laws are going to protect the integrity of voting" or "Voter ID laws are going to prevent fraud" or "Voter ID laws will give the public confidence in the system" or even "Voter ID laws are a necessary function in today's digital age" but they are going to allow Mitt Romney to win Pennsylvania.

Any reader of ZVTS has witnessed my rants on voter suppression being the major issue of 2012's election, and how Voter ID laws will be used to take the right to vote away from groups that favor Democrats, plain and simple.  Republicans know it.  Democrats know it.  And yet we all pretend it's some noble cause to defend our liberty when it has always, always been a scam to strip the vote from poor urban minorities who pull the lever for Dems.

And here Mike Turzai happily admits that not only is the Voter ID law that Republicans passed going to help Mitt Romney win the state, but that helping Mitt Romney win the state was the entire point of passing the law at this juncture.

The same of course is true of every other Republican state that has passed Voter ID laws since President Obama won election in 2008, in order to prevent him from winning again in 2012 or to keep any other Democrat from winning elections.

All that matters to Republicans is winning.  They don't give a damn about voting integrity, or fraud, or any of that nonsense.  The law is designed to keep Democrats from voting so Republicans win.  Period.

And now we finally have a Republican admitting the truth about Voter ID laws.  They are targeted voter suppression of Democrats.   This is how Republicans plan to win from here on out.

So what do you plan to do about it?

StupidiNews!

• Tropical Storm Debby remains stalled out over northern Florida and could drop another foot of rain on top of yesterday's deluge, bringing storm totals to over 2 feet of rain in some areas.
• Paraguay's ousted President Fernando Lugo is appealing to other South American leaders for help as the military has had Lugo impeached.
• Businesses are freely admitting uncertainly over the "fiscal cliff" of Bush tax cuts and payroll tax cuts ending Dec. 31 is affecting hiring and actually causing them to cut jobs.
• Investment ratings agency Moody's has downgraded more than two dozen Spanish banks, including scrapping a dozen banks as junk bonds.
• The endangered California Condor faces a lead poisoning epidemic, not from being shot at by hunters but by eating animals shot by them, bullet fragments and all.

Last Call

Having had a while to chew on today's SCOTUS rulings, I have to say that the ruling on Arizona's immigration law was the most interesting.  The court made a 5-3 ruling (Kagan recused as she argued the case as Solicitor General) that Arizona went too far on a number of issues.  Chief Justice Roberts sided with the majority, but Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito basically argued that not only should Arizona should be able to take whatever measures it deemed necessary in order to defend its border, but that all states summarily should be able to, even non-border states.

If that sounds moderately insane, that's because it is.  Greg Sargent:

The court’s decision to strike down the first three provisions is welcome news to immigration advocates, and suggests the Obama administration was right to challenge the law. But advocates expected that those provisions wouldn’t survive the decision. The problem is that the court upheld the aspect of the law that is most worrisome — the part that requires police to check the status of a person if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person is here illegally.

“The real make or break was the show-me-your-papers provision,” Frank Sharry of America’s Voice tells me. “Basically they upheld it.”

There are several problems here. The first is that this could lead to racial profiling, says Marshall Fitz of the Center for American Progress. “It’s not a sweeping victory for the other side, but the provision we most worried about was the one giving cops the ability to stop people and ask for their papers,” Fitz says. “We think this will lead inevitably to racial profiling, based on the way they sound and the way they look.”

Second: The fact that the High Court has suggested that there are ways for states to implement and/or interpret this law could encourage other states to try their own versions of it, rather than dissuade them from doing so. Efforts to emulate the Arizona law are already underway in a handful of states.

“There are lots of Joe Arpaios out there,” Fitz says, in a reference to the Arizona sheriff. “States will say, `Look, they upheld this.’”

That's a problem.  How the entire law wasn't trashed 8-0 I don't know.  We basically came within a hair or two of this becoming the new standard:  that states should be able to take whatever action on immigration they deem fit because Republicans refuse to allow a national policy to pass that's anything short of mass roundups and deporting millions.

Having said all this, the parts of the law that were struck down are, as Eugene Robinson puts it at the Washington Post, a big win for the Obama administration.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, points out something that many who seek to participate in the immigration debate fail to understand: “As a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain present in the United States.”

That’s right. It’s not a crime for “illegal” immigrants to live and work here without the proper documents. By “here” I mean all 50 states. The United States is one country with one immigration policy, and the Supreme Court means to keep it this way.

That’s why analysts who see this as a split ruling with “something for both sides” are wrong. The Obama administration won across the board on its central contention, which is that Arizona was trying to usurp a federal prerogative. This has huge implications for the other states, such as South Carolina and Georgia, that are also trying to design their own immigration policies.

So yes, this fight is not over.  A case will come before SCOTUS that claims that Arizona's paper check provision is in violation of civil rights (which it is).  Yet another reson to make sure President Obama is the guy picking the justices in the future, yes?

Follow Up: Mother Who Tried To Sell Baby For $25 Gets Prison Time

(CBS/AP) SALINAS, Calif. - A California woman who tried to sell her baby outside a Walmart is going to prison for four years after she asked a judge to lock her up because she'd probably violate probation again.

Samantha Tomasini, of Salinas, was arrested in June 2010 after witnesses reported that she and her boyfriend Patrick Fousek were offering their 8-month-old daughter for $25.

I remember the first time I read this, and how upset I was.  I was out with my husband, and we had just paid for dinner.  It was right at $25.

The stupidity of trying to sell a kid is enough on its own, but imagine what might have happened if someone had accepted the offer.  No decent person would participate, and that kid's future could have been another headline in a few months, one just as sad as the original.

The child has since been adopted.

Another Brave Boy Survives Intruders

An eleven-year-old boy was sitting at home, waiting for his father to return with dinner.  He heard a window break, and men's voices as they tore through the house.  The boy grabbed a phone and hid himself and the family dog, and called 911.

If you hear his voice on the call (it's a very short video) it will break your heart.  He is scared and collected at the same time, and the relief when he hears police outside the window was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

The hero tag is both for his strength and for thinking of the dog, who most assuredly wouldn't have made a criminal blink if they thought to kill it.

Gummy Bears... High Adventure That's Beyond Compare

(CBS/AP) MENTOR, Ohio - Police near Cleveland arrested three New York men during a traffic stop after searching their vehicle and allegedly finding drug-laced gummy bears, CBS affiliate WNCX reports.

Mentor Police Sgt. Dustin Richards told WNCX that driver Eric Kenny and passengers Arkady Koroshihk and Michal Nemcok were arrested under suspicion of using drugs to make hallucinogenic candies.

Police reportedly spotted a car speeding early Tuesday morning, and pulled the vehicle over suspecting that Kenny was under the influence of alcohol. Upon searching the car, officers said they discovered drugs, drug paraphernalia and items used in the manufacturing of drugs.

Police said they also found a gummy bear mold along with ecstasy, bath salts, LSD, and prescription anxiety drugs in the car, according to The Associated Press.

It's as clever as it is terrifying.  That teenagers were able to figure out how to do this, and get the quality and amount of drugs involved is beyond upsetting.  I wouldn't know how to find LSD if my life depended on it.

Even scarier is being one of the innocent people in traffic who had no idea what was right next to them.

I also hate to see the good name of gummy bears drug through the dirt.  As sticky as they are, that will ruin them for sure.

Teenage Hero Saves Siblings From Intruders

Teenage and hero don't often collide in the same sentence.  This young man did everything right, and I hope his parents are proud of him.

PHOENIX — Police say a 14-year-old boy shot an intruder who broke into his Phoenix home and pulled a gun on him as he was watching his three younger siblings.

Police Officer James Holmes said Saturday that the teen and his brothers and sisters were at home alone when a woman rang the doorbell Friday. The teen didn't open the door because he didn't recognize her.

Soon after, the teen heard a bang on the door, rushed his siblings upstairs and got a handgun from his parent's bedroom. When he got to the top of the stairs, he saw a man breaking through the front door and point a gun at him.

If he had done anything differently, it's hard to say how it may have turned out.  But anyone who puts a gun on a boy that age wouldn't have spared them much.  Good for this kid.  

Supreme Superlatives, Part 3

James Fallows makes an interesting point here about the Supreme Court and the Affordable Care Act.

Normally I shy away from apocalyptic readings of the American predicament. We're a big, messy country; we've been through a lot -- perhaps even more than we thought, what with Abraham Lincoln and the vampires. We'll probably muddle through this and be very worried about something else ten years from now. But when you look at the sequence from Bush v. Gore, through Citizens United, to what seems to be coming on the health-care front; and you combine it with ongoing efforts in Florida and elsewhere to prevent voting from presumably Democratic blocs; and add that to the simply unprecedented abuse of the filibuster in the years since the Democrats won control of the Senate and then took the White House, you have what we'd identify as a kind of long-term coup if we saw it happening anywhere else.**

He expands on that last thought:

** You can try this at home. Pick a country and describe a sequence in which:

• First, the presidential election is decided by five people, who don't even try to explain their choice in normal legal terms.
• Then the beneficiary of that decision appoints the next two members of the court, who present themselves for consideration as restrained, humble figures who care only about law rather than ideology.
• Once on the bench, for life, those two actively second-guess and re-do existing law, to advance the interests of the party that appointed them.
• Meanwhile their party's representatives in the Senate abuse procedural rules to an extent never previously seen to block legislation -- and appointments, especially to the courts.
• And, when a major piece of legislation gets through, the party's majority on the Supreme Court prepares to negate it -- even though the details of the plan were originally Republican proposals and even though the party's presidential nominee endorsed these concepts only a few years ago.

How would you describe a democracy where power was being shifted that way? 

I'd reply with "A democracy where one party is playing to win and the other party has gotten the crap kicked out of them for the last twelve years...and let the first party continue to beat them senseless."

Republicans are on the edge of completing a long-term plan that will give them complete control of our government at the federal and control of the governments of a large majority of the states.  This control is judicial, legislative, and executive.  Fallows describes the steps in the plan perfectly.

So why did we do this?  Well, in the 1930s FDR did.  We got 50 years of growth out of it.  Then Reagan came along in 1980 and started the ball rolling the other direction.  It's been three decades of growing conservative rule, and now the Republicans are pretty much a couple months away from having permanent control of our country.

We can stop them, but every time we try we go "It's too hard!" and attack the people trying to make the change.  Meanwhile the other side has been gaining ground a little at a time over the last three decades because we're too busy destroying each other over not magically having a progressive country.

They've earned it.  We're blown it.  Now we face another milestone in our country's near permanent destruction, a milestone where a number of noted Supreme Court experts believe the ACA is legal, but openly say that this Supreme Court will strike the mandate down.  When that decision comes down, the ones on "our side" who blame President Obama?

They are the reason why we're in this mess.

Remember that.

[UPDATE]  No health care decision today, but most of Arizona’s immigration law has been invalidated (but not all of it).  Sections 3, 5, and 6 of the law go bye-bye.   Also, 5-4 decision that juveniles convicted of murder cannot be sentenced to life without parole.  Apparently Justice Alito had to rail against that reading his dissent.

[UPDATE 2]  the “papers, please” part of the law stays, 8-0, as there’s no reason apparently to overturn it on Supremacy Clause reasons.  However, the decision does say that the provision can still be challenged in the future on other grounds, like, say, counting as racial profiling.  Hint, hint.

Like A FOX In The Pope House

Papa Ratzi is having a few problems these days crafting his message to the world.  His last butler was a bit too close to the Italian media and tended to leak things...embarrassing things.

The Vatican has been scrambling to contain the damage after the leak of hundreds of Vatican documents exposed corruption, political infighting and power struggles at the highest level of the Catholic Church. The pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, is under arrest at the Vatican, accused of aggravated theft after the pope’s own documents were found in his Vatican City apartment.

One Holy See investigation into the links is a criminal one headed by Vatican gendarmes; there is also an internal probe led by a commission of three cardinals tasked with getting to the bottom of the scandal.

Last weekend Benedict met with the cardinal’s commission to learn details of some of the two dozen people they have questioned.

So when you're a conservative Pope and you need to craft a conservative message and spin a disaster away, who do you call?  What do you do, hot shot?

You hire the Vatican correspondent for FOX News as your new media guru, of course.

Greg Burke, 52, will leave Fox to become the senior communications adviser in the Vatican's secretariat of state, the Vatican and Burke told The Associated Press.

"I'm a bit nervous but very excited. Let's just say it's a challenge," Burke said in a phone interview.
He defined his job, which he said he had been offered twice before, as being along the lines of the White House senior communications adviser: "You're shaping the message, you're molding the message, and you're trying to make sure everyone remains on-message. And that's tough."

Burke, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, is a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement. Pope John Paul II's longtime spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, was also a member of Opus Dei and was known for the papal access he enjoyed and his ability to craft the messages John Paul wanted to get out.

After Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005, Navarro-Valls was replaced by the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Jesuit who had long headed Vatican Radio and still does, along with running the Vatican press office and Vatican television service.

Dr. Navarro-Valls has degrees in both medicine and journalism and speaks four languages.  Rev. Lombardi is a trained Jesuit priest who also speaks 4 languages and can read and understand two more.  Greg Burke's qualifications on the other hand is that he's a member of Opus Dei and works for FOX News.

You can't make this up, folks.  And he's apparently been offered the job a couple of times before.  We Issue Papal Bulls, You Decide.

StupidiNews!

• Former Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi has been elected as Egypt's new president, but his power is being limited by the ruling military council.
• Lonesome George, the last surviving member of the Pinta Island tortoise sub-species, has died in the Galapagos Islands.
• Turkey is now saying that its missing jet has been shot down by Syria over international waters and not over Syrian airspace as NATO officials meet to discuss a response.
• On July 1 a new Mississippi law will make it impossible for the state's only clinic performing abortions to operate, meaning the state could become the first without an elective abortion provider.
• It turns out that world leaders (and their surrogates) do use their Twitter accounts to talk to each other.