StupidiNews!

• The Boy Scouts of America will decide today whether or not to end the organization's ban on openly gay members.
• A 3-year old boy in South Carolina was killed last week when he mistook his mother's loaded pink handgun for a toy.
• President Obama will visit Israel and the West Bank this Spring with speculation growing about reviving the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process in his second term.
• The Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to face fines of nearly $800 million for its role in manipulating the world's key currency rate, the Libor.
• A new largest prime number has been discovered, an extremely rare Mersenne Prime, by a volunteer researcher at the University of Central Missouri.

Last Call

For the Paranoid Patrol, the President's gun control agenda plus drone warfare equals mass assassination squads taking out "patriots" in 2013.  Stephanie Mencimer at MoJo:

Various tea party activists, libertarian websites and other conspiracy-minded Obama haters are claiming that Russian security forces have discovered that Obama is about to unleash "death squads" across America to assassinate defenders of the Second Amendment. According to Liberty.com, one of the sites perpetuating this latest story, Russian intelligence has outlined the whole nefarious plot in a memo for President Vladimir Putin, detailing the Obama's administration's dispatch of "VIPER teams...which is the acronym for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response Team, a programme run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and whose agents terrify millions of Americans with Nazi-like Gestapo tactics on a daily basis at airports and who report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)."

Liberty.com (run by a Florida tea party leader), which echoes the theory promoted by similar sites, maintains that these teams—800 of them, to be precise—are set to "disperse throughout his country in preparation for what Russian intelligence analysts are predicting to be a series of high-profile killings of dissident Americans set to begin as soon as February 22nd." Obama has apparently been emboldened to launch such an operation by the recent federal court ruling upholding his right to kill American citizens with drone strikes without explaining why.

Supposedly OBAMA DEATH SQUADS have already killed off a couple wingers and in a few weeks, America will be swarming with SOCOM guys and WOLVEREEEEEEENS.

Or here's another option: the conspiracy theorists and anti-Obama activists warning of impending death squads could have fallen for a pretty obvious hoax. They don't, after all, seem to have an actual copy of the alleged Russian security memo to Putin. And there's this: WhatDoesItMean.com was one of the earliest promoters of this "story," and it's an infamous conspiracy and "alternative news" site that is the source of hundreds of fictional doomsday reports. (It once published a story claiming that the earthquake in Haiti was caused by erroneous weapons testing by the US Navy.) Liberty.com and other sites have been quoting directly from WhatDoesItMean.com. So perhaps gun-rights activists should relax; they've got nothing more menacing to worry about than the pending legislation on Capitol Hill.

Imagine that.  You know, "President killing people" theories are delightfully old school Clinton playbook stuff, which is a nice change of pace from the usual racist twaddle we've been seeing since 2007, don't you think?

Eating Your Obamacare Broccoli

More and more GOP-controlled states are quietly taking advantage of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion programs, and it's really pissing off the Wall Street Journal's editorial board.  Shocking, huh.  Even GOP Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona thinks it's a good idea, and she's singled out for particular scorn.

Providers are especially powerful at the state and local level, and the goal now is to rush the Brewer-Obama condominium through the Phoenix legislature with little debate. A particular offender is the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, a trade group whose 2012 agenda includes "Oppose Taxpayer Bill of Rights-style legislative referendums or bills that arbitrarily limit state spending."

Ms. Brewer's other rationale is that everybody else is doing it, and that if Arizona opts out of a larger Medicaid then "Arizona's tax dollars would simply be passed to another state." Well, no, Washington would simply spend less money that it doesn't have. In any event Arizona is already a net tax beneficiary—pulling down $1.19 from the feds for every dollar it sends to D.C., according to the Tax Foundation.

Ten other GOP Governors have rejected Mr. Obama's Medicaid bribe, with another 20, Democrats and Republicans, undecided. Twenty are expanding, including Republicans Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota and even, on Monday, Ohio's John Kasich. Thus does modern government create the carrots and sticks of ever-larger government.

Those ten other states will come around.   Why?  Because Medicare expansion is the most cost effective way to deal with a growing population that has health care needs to be met.  Government is going to and should grow as America's population grows...but don't try telling the WSJ that.

Crossed Wires And Mixed Signals

My only question about this FCC plan to take part of the unused public broadcast spectrum and turn it in to national WiFi is how quickly the telecom giants will get Republicans to kill it...if it wasn't a load of nonsense in the first place.

The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month.

The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to reconsider the idea, analysts say. That has been countered by an equally intense campaign from Google, Microsoft and other tech giants who say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark an explosion of innovations and devices that would benefit most Americans, especially the poor.

The airwaves that FCC officials want to hand over to the public would be much more powerful than existing WiFi networks that have become common in households. They could penetrate thick concrete walls and travel over hills and around trees. If all goes as planned, free access to the Web would be available in just about every metropolitan area and in many rural areas.

The new WiFi networks would also have much farther reach, allowing for a driverless car to communicate with another vehicle a mile away or a patient’s heart monitor to connect to a hospital on the other side of town.

If approved by the FCC, the free networks would still take several years to set up. And, with no one actively managing them, con­nections could easily become jammed in major cities. But public WiFi could allow many consumers to make free calls from their mobile phones via the Internet. The frugal-minded could even use the service in their homes, allowing them to cut off expensive Internet bills.

“For a casual user of the Web, perhaps this could replace carrier service,” said Jeffrey Silva, an analyst at the Medley Global Advisors research firm. “Because it is more plentiful and there is no price tag, it could have a real appeal to some people.”

Sounds too good to be true?  It is.  This will die a quiet, lonely death.  Republicans will never allow this to exist.  They will block it until the telecoms can rally around a "grassroots" ad campaign that will show vast hordes of Those People using FREE OBAMA WIFI to watch porn, blow up churches, deal meth to preschoolers, get remote control abortion procedures, play violent video games and vote Democratic.

By the time the GOP is done with this nonsense, it'll be a near felony to have a social media account, and Republicans will be on TV screaming about how the real plan is to put America's phone companies out of business and destroy millions of jobs and will cost trillions of taxpayer dollars a month and how if you use his SOCIALIST ABOMINATION that Baby Jesus will die in your arms when the President's army of Twitter Cops track you down in real-time for insulting President Killwhitey McReparations so FREEDOM AND TREE OF LIBERTY AND DON'T TREAD ON ME.

On top of that as Jon Brodkin over ar Ars Technica reminds us, this FCC "White Spaces" plan has been sitting there for years and isn't going anywhere..and the above Washington Post story is mostly fantasy.

I saw the story this morning, read it, and was confused. Isn't this just the White Spaces proposal that's been around for a few years and has never once been pitched as "free Wi-Fi for all"? White Spaces may well be an important step toward expanding Internet access, but it isn't going to bring free Wi-Fi to every major US city.

It seemed no one was asking the most obvious question: who would build Wi-Fi everywhere and give it away for free? "It would cost money, so I don't see a path toward ubiquitous free Wi-Fi that is at an acceptable quality level," wireless engineer Steven Crowley told me in an e-mail today.

White Spaces takes the spectrum from empty TV channels and allows the airwaves to be used for Wi-Fi, or "Super Wi-Fi" as it's sometimes called. Using lower frequencies than traditional Wi-Fi, White Spaces signals would be better at penetrating obstacles and thus travel farther.

But the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) isn't going to build the network itself. The agency allocates spectrum for certain uses to spur private investment—someone else will have to find a reason to build it.

So why would wireless carriers build something that would put themselves out of business?

Above all, a national WiFi network would, you know, actually convinced tens of millions of people that the federal government can serve the greater good, and we can't have that.  Besides, people might actually look up science on the internet and learn how the Earth isn't 6,000 years old with fossils planted by THE DEVIL, and then that will lead to slow dancing and then end of the universe.  Even if it wasn't the overactive imagination of the Washington Post.

The story vastly overpromises what the FCC is planning, but don't worry, the same Republicans who insist President Obama gave away millions of government cell phones to buy votes will insist that taxpayer dollars will be used to give Those People free Super WiFi and this becomes the next Solyndra.

Count on it.

StupidiNews!

• After six days, an Alabama child is safe and the man who took him hostage in an underground bunker is dead after police made their move to save the child from "imminent danger".
• Leicester University researchers have confirmed through DNA evidence that the bones found under a British parking lot are indeed the remains of King Richard III.
• The Senate GOP led by Alaska's Lisa Murkowski has released an energy plan that calls for more drilling and eliminating a host of environmental regulations.
• Ratings agency Standard & Poors is being sued by the Justice Department for its role in evaluating subprime mortgages as risk-free.
• The White House has released a legal policy review that gives the President "broad authority" with the power to conduct "pre-emptive cyber warfare."

Last Call

The Great Conserva-schism I talked about over the weekend is now a war in earnest.  The corporate wing of the GOP has decided enough is enough with Tea Party anchors around the GOP's collective necks when it comes to trying to win back the Senate.  They've formed the Conservative Victory Project to push the Tea party loonies out the back door.  The problem is that the Tea Party isn't taking this lying down, and they have plenty of money backing them too.

Both the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund – two of the most prominent groups that have boosted candidates on the right – mocked the new initiative as yet another hapless establishment-side attempt to muzzle the GOP base.

Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, branded it the “Conservative Defeat Project.”

“The Conservative Defeat Project is yet another example of the Republican establishment’s hostility toward its conservative base. Rather than listening to the grassroots and working to advance their principles, the establishment has chosen to declare war on the party’s most loyal supporters,” Hoskins said. “If they keep this up, the party will remain in the wilderness for decades to come.”

Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller essentially responded by pointing to the scoreboard in recent primaries in which conservative insurgents have prevailed and emerged as influential GOP leaders.

“They are welcome to support the likes of Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist and David Dewhurst,” Keller said of the new Crossroads group. “We will continue to proudly support the likes of Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.”

Them's fightin' words, kids.  The war over the direction of the GOP is finally on.  Both sides are now drawing lines and taking up battle positions ahead of the 2014 primaries.  Each side is convinced the other will lead the GOP to total defeat and domination by the Democrats.

The funny part is this:  both of them are right.  The GOP is screwed either way.  They can't win national elections with the reactionary right, and they can't win primaries without them.  It's going to be awfully fun watching these guys rip each other to shreds to see who's left standing...

...because it'll be the Democrats, either way.

Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammu-Nation

The nation's largest semi-automatic rifle dealer (that would be your local Wal-Mart, by the way) is instituting a national limit on ammunition to three boxes a day as paranoia over "Obama's gun grab" ramps up towards a fever pitch.

"In order to take care of as many customers as possible, starting Thursday, January 24, all ammunition sales were limited to three boxes per customer, per day as supply is limited at this time," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Ashley Hardie Read said.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is the world's largest retailer and the United States' largest gun seller, a position that comes with a lot of responsibility. In the past, the company has said it tries to provide firearms and accessories in a responsible manner without interfering on the customers' right to own firearms, Christian Post reported.

According to data from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, nine of the top 10 days for firearms checks in the U.S. from Nov. 30, 1998 to Jan. 27 2013, occurred since the shooting at Newtown Elementary School, Dispatch noted. 

In other words, gun and ammo sales are at record highs since Newtown.  As I said earlier today, Wayne LaPierre and the NRA know exactly what they are doing.  Gun makers are suffering shortages in firearms and now ammunition because they believe armed fascist government agents are going to come and take their guns from them, and by God they will water that Tree Of Liberty if they have to.  The reality of that is nowhere near that, but the NRA isn't going to do a thing to moderate its rhetoric when the NRA's job is to lobby for the gun industry, and the gun industry has never had better sales.

At some point we're going to have something like Ruby Ridge on our hands.

Midnight In The Garden Of Dumb And Dumber

If the NRA's Wayne LaPierre can't go to FOX News Sunday to get a free platform for his paranoid fantasies without being called out by host Chris Wallace, where can he go?

Wallace asked his guest on "Fox News Sunday" if he regretted airing a controversial TV ad in which the NRA went after President Obama for providing armed security to his daughters but not supporting their proposal to put armed guards in all schools.

"They also face a threat that most children do not face," Wallace said of Obama's daughters.

"Tell that to the people in Newtown," LaPierre responded.

"You really think that the president's children are the same kind of target as every other school child in America?" Wallace said. "That's ridiculous and you know it, sir."

Of course he does.  That's the point.  He knows there's tens of millions of paranoid fellow-travelers out there.

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the NRA, accused the Obama administration of wanting to seek more restrictions on guns than they currently are saying, arguing that the White House was similarly deceptive on the president's healthcare law.

"I think what they'll do is they'll turn this universal [background] check on the law-abiding into a universal registry on law-abiding people," he said on "Fox News Sunday."

When pressed by host Chris Wallace on the fact that the White House has said nothing about a universal registry, LaPierre responded, "And 'ObamaCare' wasn't a tax until they needed it to be a tax. I don't think you can trust these people."

And Wallace didn't call him out and that one.  "Fair and balanced" is a much better slogan than "dangerous and paranoid", don't you think?  The NRA has been playing the "You can't trust them, you can only trust your guns and ammo" card for years now.  Eventually, someone's going to take them up on that offer.

StupidiNews!

• A 33-minute blackout in the Superdome, a record 109-yard touchdown return, and a Destiny's Child reunion highlighted a Baltimore Ravens win over the San Francisco 49ers, 34-31 in Super Bowl XLVII.
• In an interview aired by CBS before the game, President Obama confirmed that he would like to see the Boy Scouts of America end its ban on gays in the organization.
• Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villiaragosa is denying rumors he has been tapped as President Obama's new Transportation Secretary, saying he will stay on as mayor through his term ending June 30.
• California heiress Lynsi Torres is now America's youngest female billionaire, having inherited sole ownership of the west coast's In-N-Out Burger chain on her recent 30th birthday.
• After 20 years, Sony will make the last Minidisc in March, putting an end to the audio format that found a niche among journalists and music fans alike.

Last Call

My junior senator, folks.  Making hard-working Kentuckians proud by ripping them off.  Via The Political Carnival:

Sen. Rand Paul this week introduced the National Right to Work Act, S. 204, which seeks to preserve and protect the free choice of individual employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, or to refrain from such activities.

“Every American worker deserves the right to freedom of association – and I am concerned that the 26 states that allow forced union membership and dues infringes on these workers’ rights,” Sen. Paul said. “Right to work laws ensure that all Americans are given the choice to refrain from joining or paying dues to a union as a condition for employment. Nearly 80 percent of all Americans support the principles and so I have introduced a national Right to Work Act that will require all states to give their workers the freedom to choose.”

If you think the real problem with unemployment is that union workers are making too much money, and that there needs to be a national bill to destroy unions across the country, then Rand Paul's the senator for you, right?

This is exactly the opposite to everything we are taught to believe in the democratic process.  We can have all the debate we want but in the end, the majority rules.  Now they are taking the minority and placing them ahead of the majority.

This coming from the Senate GOP in the minority, always using the filibuster to prevent majority rule.   Hysterical.

A Bunch Of Split Ends

The Great Conserva-schism in the GOP continues as the money men in the corporate wing of the party have figured out that the teabagger wing cost them the Senate in 2012 (not to mention the presidential primary that pushed Mitt Romney so far to the right he lost.)  Now the billionaires are fighting back against the notion that the GOP doesn't have to moderate any of its positions, and they're planning on dragging the teabaggers kicking and screaming towards irrelevance with the mother of all super-PACs.

The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.

The group, the Conservative Victory Project, is intended to counter other organizations that have helped defeat establishment Republican candidates over the last two election cycles. It is the most robust attempt yet by Republicans to impose a new sense of discipline on the party, particularly in primary races. 

“There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” said Steven J. Law, the president of American Crossroads, the “super PAC” creating the new project. “We don’t view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.” 

The effort would put a new twist on the Republican-vs.-Republican warfare that has consumed the party’s primary races in recent years. In effect, the establishment is taking steps to fight back against Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations that have wielded significant influence in backing candidates who ultimately lost seats to Democrats in the general election. 

The GOP money guys figured they had bought the Senate fair and square thanks to Citizens United, and they only lost because they ran across candidates so awful, not even the billions they raised could get them the win.  The Democrats also had plenty of ammunition to make their big money count, too -- enough to actually gain seats in a Senate they should have lost.

But the race for the Senate in 2014 is already underway, and this time the money guys aren't going to let the Tea Party pick the candidates.  Tom Harkin's seat in Iowa presents the first opportunity for the CVP to play the "win at all costs" game:

As Republicans rebuild from losing the White House race and seats in the House and Senate last year, party leaders and strategists are placing a heightened focus on taking control of the Senate next year. Republicans must pick up six seats to win a majority. 

Representative Steve King, a six-term Iowa Republican, could be among the earliest targets of the Conservative Victory Project. He said he had not decided whether he would run for the Senate, but the leaders of the project in Washington are not waiting to try to steer him away from the race. 

The group’s plans, which were outlined for the first time last week in an interview with Mr. Law, call for hard-edge campaign tactics, including television advertising, against candidates whom party leaders see as unelectable and a drag on the efforts to win the Senate. Mr. Law cited Iowa as an example and said Republicans could no longer be squeamish about intervening in primary fights. 

“We’re concerned about Steve King’s Todd Akin problem,” Mr. Law said. “This is an example of candidate discipline and how it would play in a general election. All of the things he’s said are going to be hung around his neck.”

I've long been predicting open war in the GOP party structure.  The Conservative Victory Project versus the Tea Party means that war is happening in real time.  Pull up a chair, it's going to get interesting.

The Kroog Versus The Austerians

Paul Krugman once again brings up the fact that every country that has tried austerity to get out of the Great Recession is still back in recession six years later.

At one level this is kind of funny: austerity policies have been applied all across Europe, yet the best example of success the austerians can come up with is a nation with fewer inhabitants than, say, Brooklyn. Still, the International Monetary Fund recently issued two new reports on the Latvian economy, and they really help put this story into perspective. 

To be fair to the Latvians, they do have something to be proud of. After experiencing a Great-Depression-level slump, their economy has experienced two years of solid growth and falling unemployment. Despite that growth, however, they have only regained part of the lost ground in terms of either output or employment — and the unemployment rate is still 14 percent. If this is the austerians’ idea of an economic miracle, they truly are the children of a lesser god. 

Oh, and if we’re going to invoke the experience of small nations as evidence about what economic policies work, let’s not forget the true economic miracle that is Iceland — a nation that was at ground zero of the financial crisis, but which, thanks to its embrace of unorthodox policies, has almost fully recovered. 

So what do we learn from the rather pathetic search for austerity success stories? We learn that the doctrine that has dominated elite economic discourse for the past three years is wrong on all fronts. Not only have we been ruled by fear of nonexistent threats, we’ve been promised rewards that haven’t arrived and never will. It’s time to put the deficit obsession aside and get back to dealing with the real problem — namely, unacceptably high unemployment. 

But Republicans block every jobs bill that comes up, because we must cut everything or else we'll go bankrupt.  Republicans never cared about the bankrupt part, only the cutting.  That was the goal, to give an excuse to jettison the real "children of a lesser god"...those of us in the 99%.

Last Call

A very interesting story in Nebraska shaping up this weekend as the state's Republican lieutenant governor, Rick Sheehy, the hand-picked successor to the state's current GOP governor, has abruptly announced his resignation after the Omaha World-Herald discovered he was making inappropriate phone calls to women on his state cell phone.

Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy resigned his post abruptly Saturday after questions were raised by The World-Herald about improper cell phone calls to four women, other than his wife, during the past four years.

An investigation by The World-Herald discovered that Sheehy made about 2,000 late-night telephone calls to the women on his state-issued cell phone, many of them long conversations held in the wee hours of the night.

READ: Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy's resignation letter

Gov. Dave Heineman announced the resignation at a 10 a.m. press conference.

"I've got a knot in my stomach. I'm deeply disappointed. He's done a lot of good things for the state, but that trust was broken, and he's resigned," Heineman said.

He said he would begin the process of filling the post Monday.

Even better, Sheehy's wife Colleen filed for divorce in July after a 28-year marriage.   The Omaha World-Herald started asking questions, and bang: another GOP hypocrite gets taken down by his own stupidity.  But here's the thing: calling women who aren't your wife on the state cell phone isn't worth resigning over, and frankly being a Republican in Nebraska right now means he still would have won in 2014 after two years had passed on the story.

There's something more to this story.  Something big.  Stay tuned.

America's Newest Political Rorschach

The White House released this photo of the President shooting skeet at Camp David last year:

 

What you see here is of course, dependent on your point of view. Steve M:

I don't hunt. Why? Because I grew up in a large city (Boston) and live in another large city (New York). Barack Obama grew up mostly in Honolulu. He's lived since then in places such as New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Of course he doesn't spend a lot of time shooting.

Gun lovers want us to understand and respect their culture. Hey, why don't you guys try understanding and respecting ours? If you say we shouldn't have contempt for your enjoyment of hunting and target shooting, well, fine, I accept that -- but you need to drop the contempt for those of us who didn't grow up with those recreations, and never developed a fondness for them. It just wasn't part of our culture, and that's OK.

The contempt isn't for non-gun culture.  It's for this President specifically.  There is nothing this President could do to convince tens of millions of Americans that this picture is real, which is why the White House did this.  They are trolling the racist haters, they are trolling the Village, and I for one can't stop laughing at how utterly stupid both groups are.

What really, really, REALLY pisses them off is the fact this President outsmarted them yet again.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• This Groundhog's Day, Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog has not seen his shadow, predicting an early spring.
• Iranian state television has unveiled the country's newest jet fighter, the F-313, on the 34th anniversary of the 1979 revolution.
• President Obama awarded 23 scientists medals at a White House ceremony on Friday, honoring a good year for US researchers.
• The Dow Jones closed above the 14,000 mark for the first time in five years on better than expected jobs news.
• Twitter caught a massive hacking attempt that affected nearly a quarter of a million accounts, calling the attack "sophisticated".