Last Call

Meanwhile, Orange Julius's position on the fiscal cliff slope is crumbling more and more on a now daily basis.

President Barack Obama is not ready to accept a new offer from the Republican leader of the U.S. the House of Representatives to raise taxes on top earners in exchange for major cuts in entitlement programs, a source said late Saturday.

The shape and details of Boehner's offer were uncertain Saturday night, as was the exact reason the president was prepared to reject it.

The source said Obama sees the offer made on Friday by U.S. House Speaker John Boehner as a sign of progress, but simply believes it is not enough and there is much more to be worked out before Obama can reciprocate.

Boehner has cracked on raising tax rates now.  The question is now "on whom?"

Republicans have privately spoken of coming back at Obama with a threshold of $1 million. Obama has previously called that unacceptable because it would not raise enough money on its own to cut the deficit significantly or provide enough money to avert across-the-board spending cuts.

It's the Republicans who are being forced to move, because President Obama knew exactly what he was doing when he walked the GOP into this last year...a deal the GOP could never win, but took anyway.   The President has outsmarted the GOP again, period.

And there's nothing the GOP can do but lose, gracefully or in their case, otherwise.

Hidden (And Still In Hiding) Agendas

This should tell you everything about the NRA lobby in the Senate:

The Sunday morning news shows were dominated by discussion of what can be done after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, which claimed 28 lives on Friday. Several strong gun control advocates, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) appeared on the morning shows to push for tighter restrictions and a new assault weapons ban. Their counterparts on the pro-gun side of the aisle, however, categorically refused to appear on MSNBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ to discuss the shooting.

BTW, we reached out to ALL 31 pro-gun rights Sens in the new Congress to invite them to share their views on @meetthepress - NO takers.
— Betsy Fischer Martin (@BetsyMTP) December 16, 2012

Not a one of them felt like defending the "rights" of a citizen to have a Bushmaster AR-15 .223 caliber rifle on the teevee this weekend.  Not one Senator.  Not even John McCain.

Sen. Feinstein on the other hand was glad to announce plans to introduce a new assault weapons ban on the first day of the new Congress.

“I’m going to introduce in the Senate and the same bill will be introduced in the House, a bill to ban assault weapons. It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession. Not retroactively but prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets. So there will be a bill. We’ve been working on it now for a year,” Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” during a discussion about guns following Friday’s deadly mass shooting as a Connecticut school.

Think there's something the Senate fears more than the gun lobby?  I do.

Stuns Of Anarchy

My last takedown of Power Line blogger John Hinderaker was pretty detailed, so this time around I'll spare you guys my usual bloviation and just say that "John Hinderaker may actually be the stupidest mofo alive."

Within the realm of constitutional options, the most practical remedy I can think of would be to require that a certain number of teachers or administrators in each school be trained in the use of firearms and armed at all times. That would probably deter most school shooters. It is curious, but true, that even those killers who do not intend to survive their crimes never seem to open fire in the presence of another armed person. No one tries to shoot up a biker bar.

Except for, as Charles Johnson points out, all the deadly shootouts at biker bars.

Remember, this is a man who believes union members are all thugs who want blood and thinks teachers unions are the sole cause of failed schools.

He is now calling on those selfsame union thug teachers to be forced to carry loaded firearms and be trained in how to use them as part of their jobs.

He really is insane.  Completely, mentally, totally insane.

Last Call

Jake Tappity Tap Tapper:

Sources tell ABC News that President Obama has decided that he will nominate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to be secretary of state.

For a variety of reasons including the finalization of the process, other pending Cabinet decisions, and — more immediately — the national reaction to the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the news will not be announced in the next few days.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is recovering from an illness and a concussion she suffered upon fainting because of that illness, is set to retire in the next few weeks.

We'll see where this goes.  Republicans have to be incredibly careful not to look like insensitive assho...wait a minute, Republicans will attack Kerry anyhow.

And so it goes.

Not An Auspicious Start

With Friday's deadline for state exchanges now in the books, two thirds of US states have rejected forming state health care exchanges, and the federal government now must pick up the tab to get the exchanges ready to enroll people by October.

The Obama administration said Friday that more than half the states had rejected its pleas to set up their own health insurance exchanges, dealing a setback to President Obama’s hopes that Republicans would join a White House campaign to provide health insurance to all Americans.

Friday was the deadline for states to notify the federal government of their plans, and administration officials had been hoping that Mr. Obama’s re-election would overcome resistance to the new health care law. 

Federal officials said they knew of 17 states that intended to run their own exchanges, as Congress intended. 

Instead, the President's re-election just pissed off the rest of the GOP.  Republican governor after Republican governor (and more than a few Democrats, like Missouri's Jay Nixon) refused to participate, and Idaho GOP Gov. Butch Otter actually had his state joined the exchange because he hates the plan, wants the law completely repealed, and the last thing he wanted was the Feds coming in to set up the exchange for him by God.

So in the new year, HHS has 33 exchanges to set up.  Ironically, here in Kentucky, Gov. Dinosaur Steve was perfectly happy with the idea that we expand Medicaid and set up exchanges, because nobody's going to buy the excuse that Kentucky's poor aren't mostly all white people who get a crapload of government assistance anyway.

Go figure.

Newtown-ian Physics

So what happens now in the wake of Friday's mind-numbing tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut?

A heavily armed gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children from 5 to 10 years old, in a rampage at a Connecticut elementary school on Friday, one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

The gunman - who according to a media report carried four weapons and wore a bulletproof vest - was dead inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, state police Lieutenant Paul Vance told a news conference.

Vance said authorities found 18 children and seven adults, including the gunman, dead at the school, and two children were pronounced dead later after being take to a hospital. Another adult was found dead at a related crime scene in Newtown, he said, bringing the toll to 28.

President Obama's response to a wounded nation was excellent:

A visibly emotional President Obama offered his condolences to the victims and families of an elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn. at the White House on Friday.

"We’ve endured too many of these tragedies these past few years," Obama said, appearing to wipe away tears from his eyes.

"We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," he added.

So what can be done?  As Dave von Ebers reminds us in the wake of two vitally important SCOTUS cases decided in the last few years,  any new gun control legislation will be difficult to create, much less pass a GOP-led House.

For what it’s worth, I’d like to see a comprehensive federal gun control statute that encompasses all those principles, too, although the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, popularly referred to as the “Brady Bill,” contains some of those provisions.

But, of course, as my fellow liberals should know (and if you don’t know … why don’t you know?!), the Supreme Court has made that difficult to accomplish. In two recent cases – District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290 (June 26, 2008), and McDonald v. City of Chicago, No. 08-1521 (June 28, 2010) – Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution creates an individual right to keep and bear arms, which, although not unlimited, prevents both the federal government (Heller), and state and municipal governments (McDonald), from imposing the most direct (and perhaps draconian) form of gun control: Outright bans on handgun ownership.

Indeed, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down earlier this month Oak Park, Illinois' anti concealed carry gun control law as a direct violation of the precedent set by Heller.

“The Supreme Court has decided that the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside,” Judge Richard Posner wrote in the court’s majority opinion. “The theoretical and empirical evidence (which overall is inconclusive) is consistent with concluding that a right to carry firearms in public may promote self-defense.” 

So, given that the Executive cannot simply mandate gun control, the Legislative will not pass gun control, and  the Judicial has said gun control violates the Second Amendment, exactly what should Obama do to magically fix this problem?

I'm all ears.  If you want to stop guns, go after the manufacturers and the lobbyists.  Period.  Guns are a product, sold in the US.  They have arguably the most powerful product lobby on Earth.  You're going to need to start with them.

That time has come.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• In Newtown, Connecticut 20 schoolchildren and 6 educators were gunned down by a heavily armed 20-year old before he turned the gun on himself.
• Several news outlets are battling with the Romney campaign over the cost of hundreds of thousands in meals and expenses.
• Egyptian voters will scramble to take to the polls today to vote on President Morsi's constitutional referendum.
• Japan's Shinzo Abe is expected to gain considerable power in Sunday's lower parliamentary elections in Japan, earning enough seats to displace current PM Yoshihiko Noda.
• Google has hired Silicon Valley stalwart and futurist Ray Kurzweil as its Director of Engineering.

Last Call

Republicans are once again trying to jump off a cliff that has a fiscal component, and that's House wingnuts on the Appropriations Committee indicating they will block the President's proposed $60 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package for the Northeast unless Democrats make $60 billion in budget cuts elsewhere.

The White House last week requested $60 billion in federal disaster relief to rebuild the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, but some Republicans are again threatening to hold disaster relief funding hostage unless it is offset by other budget cuts.

A day after Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) called disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy “wasteful spending,” Reps. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Steve King (R-IA), Raul Labrador (R-ID), and Jeff Landry (R-LA), all from the more conservative wing of the House GOP, told The Hill that they will demand offsets for disaster spending:

Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who sits on the Appropriations Committee, said she will need to see offsets on Wednesday as did Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho).

“We have these emergencies every year and we should prepare for that in our budget,” Labrador said.

“No pun intended, we should have a rainy day fund,” Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) said.

Midwestern House nutjobs telling the East Coast to go to hell.  Seems like something totally moderate and not at all political.  I'm sure this is President Obama's fault too.

And let's remember that Republicans love to watch disaster areas and the people in them suffer.

House Republicans also cut disaster relief funding in a 2011 spending measure and cut it this year to preserve military spending. The GOP also reneged on a deal it struck with Democrats to make emergency disaster relief funding easier in the future.

Of course they did.  Disaster relief might make people grateful for federal government or something, and we can't have that.  Time to make sure that when disaster strikes, Americans know that government helping out their fellow citizens is a zero-sum game where helping people must be punished by taking things from the rest of us.

Jindal, Reconfigured

Louisiana wingnut Gov. Bobby Jindal continues to try to pretend he's a "moderate" with this week's op-ed on birth control in the WSJ.

Let’s ask the question: Why do women have to go see a doctor before they buy birth control? There are two answers. First, because big government says they should, even though requiring a doctor visit to get a drug that research shows is safe helps drive up health-care costs. Second, because big pharmaceutical companies benefit from it. They know that prices would be driven down if the companies had to compete in the marketplace once their contraceptives were sold over the counter.

So at present we have an odd situation. Thanks to President Obama and the pro-choice lobby, women can buy the morning-after pill over the counter without a prescription, but women cannot buy oral contraceptives over the counter unless they have a prescription. Contraception is a personal matter—the government shouldn’t be in the business of banning it or requiring a woman’s employer to keep tabs on her use of it. If an insurance company or those purchasing insurance want to cover birth control, they should be free to do so. If a consumer wants to buy birth control on her own, she should be free to do so.

Now, this is where it sounds like Jindal makes no small amount of sense, making the fiscal conservative argument that making contraception as widely available as possible is one of the best preventative health care cost reduction measures you can take.  (Kids?  Expensive.) But as Irin Carmon explains, Jindal has no clue what he's talking about because his facts are all garbage.

At first glance, this seems like giving bipartisan credit where it’s due, until you realize that many on Jindal’s side erroneously equate with abortion the high dose of hormonal birth control pills taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. To those attuned to this particular dog-whistle, Jindal is implying President Obama and “the pro-choice lobby” are conspiring to make it easier for women to “abort” (by which they mean blocking an hours-old fertilized egg from implantation, which the morning after pill has never been shown to do) than to prevent. To most everyone else, it just seems like a twist of ridiculous government bureaucracy, and Jindal gets to have it both ways without conceding that the main opposition to emergency contraception access comes from his own camp.

And Jindal conveniently doesn’t mention the fact that young people under 17 are unable to access emergency contraception without a prescription, despite the fact that the sooner you take it, the more effective it is. This was first due to a politicized handling of medicine under Bush, and more recently a politicized handling of medicine under Obama, both of them acquiescing to the hysteria of social conservatives like Jindal. Which brings us to another pressing issue that Jindal addresses only indirectly: Minors’ access to contraception. He writes, “Parents who believe, as I do, that their teenage children shouldn’t be involved in sex at all do not deserve ridicule.” That’s true, but do they deserve the ability to deny their “teenage children” access to birth control if they’re going to have sex anyway? He says these over-the-counter rules should apply to women over 18, despite the fact that the ACOG recommendations didn’t say that at all.

My question is how long Jindal's "moderate position" lasts (and it's really just more wingnut code speak anyway).  My guess is "until the next time he gets dinged by the forced birth crowd" for not being misogynist enough.  Let's remember, that while Jindal isn't a complete Neanderthal on contraception, he is very much so on education, cutting libraries to the bone across the state and trying to funnel taxpayer money to religious zealots in school.

Don't be fooled by the guy.  Jindal is just Romney without the millions (of dollars, he still has the millions of policy positions).

Michigan's War On Women

While nearly all of the attention on the Great Lakes State involves the right-to-screw-unions legislation passed by the GOP last week, the Republican-controlled legislature this week is working on passing a couple of anti-choice, anti-woman bills that GOP Gov. Rick Snyder is expected to sign, making getting abortion in the state one of the toughest and most obnoxious roads in the country.

One bill passed the Senate, 27-10, and calls for more stringent licensing of abortion clinics; the other, passed out of the House insurance committee into the full House, would allow health care providers to refuse service based on moral objections, religious reasons or matters of conscience. 

That's awesome.  Docs can say "no, I refuse to treat you because you're a slut" for example.  There's your hypocritical Hippocratic Oath.

The bill that regulates clinic operations would:
• Require abortion clinics to be licensed and adhere to the same standards and regulations as free-standing surgical clinics. Most in Michigan are not licensed that way now.
• Prohibit a doctor from performing an abortion until determining that a woman hasn’t been coerced into the procedure.
• Dictate how to dispose of fetal remains. 

And of course the goal here is to make it impossible for the clinics to ever be able to meet the requirements, thus putting them out of  business.

2010's backlash against Obama and the Democrats who "failed" continues to have long lasting effects.  Will any lessons be learned for 2014?

StupidiNews!

• Some 22 Chinese schoolchildren in Henan Province were injured in a knife attack by a 36-year old village man, according to China's official news agency.
• The EU's Human Rights Court has ruled that the CIA tortured a wrongfully detained German man in 2004 while Macedonian police did nothing to stop the violent interrogation.
• A North Carolina judge has commuted the sentenced of three black death row inmates to life in prison after finding racial bias resulted in a death penalty sentence.
• Swiss banking giant UBS is facing more than $1 billion in fines for its role in manipulating the Libor interest rate over several years.
• Google Maps is back on the iPhone with a new app finally giving iOS 6 users a choice over the much maligned Apple Maps utility.

Last Call

And Johnny Volcano and Team Volcano score a win, finally forcing Ambassador Susan Rice to withdraw her nomination.  President Obama's remarks:

Today, I spoke to Ambassador Susan Rice, and accepted her decision to remove her name from consideration for Secretary of State. For two decades, Susan has proven to be an extraordinarily capable, patriotic, and passionate public servant. As my Ambassador to the United Nations, she plays an indispensable role in advancing America’s interests. Already, she has secured international support for sanctions against Iran and North Korea, worked to protect the people of Libya, helped achieve an independent South Sudan, stood up for Israel’s security and legitimacy, and served as an advocate for UN reform and the human rights of all people. I am grateful that Susan will continue to serve as our Ambassador at the United Nations and a key member of my cabinet and national security team, carrying her work forward on all of these and other issues. I have every confidence that Susan has limitless capability to serve our country now and in the years to come, and know that I will continue to rely on her as an advisor and friend. While I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice in recent weeks, her decision demonstrates the strength of her character, and an admirable commitment to rise above the politics of the moment to put our national interests first. The American people can be proud to have a public servant of her caliber and character representing our country.

Translation:  you win this round, McCain.  I'm still President.

The plan to force the President to nominate John Kerry in order to force a special election to get Scott Brown into office continues apace. I guarantee you only Kerry will be allowed through the gauntlet now.

So much fail.  And to be certain, putting "that one" in his place must feel really good to old, bitter, awful McCain.

Rice's explanation is here:

This was the right call, for four reasons.

First, my commitment to public service is rooted in the belief that our nation’s interests must be put ahead of individual ones. I’ve devoted my life to serving the United States and trying to mend our imperfect world. That’s where I want to focus my efforts, not on defending myself against baseless political attacks.

Second, I deeply respect Congress’s role in our system of government. After the despicable terrorist attacks that took the lives of four colleagues in Benghazi, our government must work through serious questions and bring the perpetrators to justice. We must strengthen security at our diplomatic posts and improve our intelligence in a volatile Middle East. Accomplishing these goals is far more important than political fights or personal attacks.

Third, the American people expect us to come together to keep our nation safe. U.S. leadership abroad is and always has been strengthened when we transcend partisan differences on matters of national security. America is seriously weakened when politics come first. If any good can come out of the experience of the past few months, I hope that it will be a renewed focus on the business of the American people — and a renewed insistence that the process of selecting potential candidates for high national security office be treated in the best bipartisan traditions of our country.

Finally, I have a great job. It’s been my highest honor to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. I’m proud that President Obama has restored our global stature, refocused on the greatest threats to our security and advanced our values around the world.

And so I fully support her decision. 

Meanwhile, John McCain's legacy now consists entirely of convincing the world that Sarah Palin was one of the most qualified women on Earth, and that Susan Rice wasn't.

Please proceed, GOP senators.

State Of Embarrassment

South Carolina continues to be the state that just quite hasn't figured out we're all laughing at you, not with you.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Thursday responded to Stephen Colbert's interest in filling outgoing Sen. Jim DeMint's seat. Haley's Facebook page posted: "Mr. Colbert, clearly a whole lot of people felt you needed a second look for U.S. Senate, and because I believe in doing my full due diligence ... this is what our vetting process came back with."

Oh, this is a good use of taxpayer money should be fun, right?

Stephen Colbert

I thought the Official SC State Amphibian was Lindsey Graham in a wet suit.  Go figure.

If It's Thursday, It Must Be Time To Cut Taxes On The Rich

The Wall Street Journal is complaining that taxes are just too darn high, and if President Obama doesn't lower them on the super-rich and especially on corporations, why we'll just have to cut all your hours to part-time status, peons.

High tax rates—on both labor income and consumption—reduce the incentive to work by making consumption more expensive relative to leisure, for example. The incentive to produce goods for the market is particularly depressed when tax revenue is returned to households either as government transfers or transfers-in-kind—such as public schooling, police and fire protection, food stamps, and health care—that substitute for private consumption.

In the 1950s, when European tax rates were low, many Western Europeans, including the French and the Germans, worked more hours per capita than did Americans. Over time, tax rates that affect earnings and consumption rose substantially in much of Western Europe. Over the decades, these have accounted for much of the nearly 30% decline in work hours in several European countries—to 1,000 hours per adult per year today from around 1,400 in the 1950s.

Changes in tax rates are also important in accounting for the increase in the number of hours worked in the Netherlands in the late 1980s, following the enactment of lower marginal income-tax rates.
In Japan, the tax rate on earnings and consumption is about the same as it is in the U.S., and the average Japanese worker in 2007 (the last nonrecession year) worked 1,363 hours—or about the same as the 1,336 worked by the average American.

All this has major implications for the U.S. Consider California, which just enacted higher rates of income and sales tax. The top California income-tax rate will be 13.3%, and the top sales-tax rate in some areas may rise as high as 10%. Combine these state taxes with a top combined federal rate of 44%, plus federal excise taxes, and the combined marginal tax rate for the highest California earners is likely to be around 60%—as high as in France, Germany and Italy. 

Except it's not, because of loopholes and deductions (and the lie about the top rate being 44% when effectively loopholes make it half that) and we're not living in socialist anything.

It's the same tired dogma of the Norquist age:  we can never raise taxes ever on anyone for any reason, because if we did, we'd have revenue enough to actually make government work.  Under no circumstances can that be allowed to happen on the GOP's watch.

It's like the last two presidential elections and the financial crisis of 2008 never happened.

StupidiNews!

• Japan scrambled fighter jets to patrol a group of disputed islands as Chinese aircraft were spotted overhead, escalating the international disagreement between the two countries.
• The US Air Force's new robotic space vehicle, the X-37B, is apparently on a nine-month mission orbiting the Earth before it will land in September.
• Just hours after the US formally recognized a coalition of Syrian rebels as the rightful government in the war-torn country, the group criticized the US for naming part of the coalition as terrorists.
• Bank repossessions of foreclosed homes are on the rise as lenders are now working through the backlog of paperwork and new regulations.
• The FBI has arrested ten in connection with an $850 million computer virus scheme spread through Facebook links.