StupidiNews!

• Chinese officials are saying that the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that rocked Sichuan province on Saturday has killed at least 186 people and injured hundreds more.
• Paraguay voted Sunday on a replacement for now impeached ex-President Fernando Lugo, most likely resulting in the return to power of the country's conservative Colorado Party.
• Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel arrived in Israel Monday to begin his week-long tour of the Middle East, where he's expected to deliver new air power for America's allies in the region.
• The latest media mega-merger may be Time-Warner and CBS, creating an $85 billion company in the wake of Comcast's recent buyout of NBC Universal.
• Boston Police say surveillance cameras, crowd photos, and eyewitness accounts helped pinpoint bombing suspects, but facial recognition software came up noticeably short.

More Republican Second Amedment Remedies

Shorter Benton County, Arkansas Republican Party:  "It's a shame that some Republican state lawmakers betrayed us and voted to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.  It's an equal shame that we can't shoot these lawmakers, either."

Republicans in Benton County, Arkansas are not happy that their state legislators have agreed to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. In this month’s newsletter, columnist Chris Nogy encouraged his fellow Republicans to utilize their 2nd Amendment rights to make sure that lawmakers — particularly Republicans who vote with Democrats — are held accountable.

Here's Nogy's column, in part:

We need to let those who will come in the future to represent us that we are serious.  The 2nd amendment means nothing unless those in power believe you would have no problem simply walking up and shooting them if they got too far out of line and stopped responding as representatives. It seems that we are unable to muster that belief in any of our representatives on a state or federal level, but we have to have something, something costly, something that they will fear that we will use if they step out of line. If we can’t shoot them, we have to at least be firm in our threat to take immediate action against them politically, socially, and civically if they screw up on something this big. Personally, I think a gun is quicker and more merciful, but hey, we can’t.

That's nice.  It's a shame we can't murder people we disagree with politically because it would be more "merciful" than what they deserve, but oh well.  Hey, isn't there a legal term for threatening to bring bodily harm to a group of people over purely political reasons?  I can't think of the word...hold on...

Such heated rhetoric from the Arkansas GOP is not new. Last week, state Rep. Neal Bell (R) tweeted that he bet the “cowering liberals” in Boston were “wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine.” Arkansas House Speaker Davy Carter (R) issued a public apology to Boston on behalf of Bell’s insensitive remark, and Bell ultimately offered his own apology.

But New Black Panther Party, so both sides do it.

She's Completely Dowd Of Her Mind

MoDo The Red cannot blame President Obama quickly enough for the failure of gun violence legislation, in a pretty solid candidate for worst NY Times op-ed of 2013.

President Obama has watched the blood-dimmed tide drowning the ceremony of innocence, as Yeats wrote, and he has learned how to emotionally connect with Americans in searing moments, as he did from the White House late Friday night after the second bombing suspect was apprehended in Boston. 

Unfortunately, he still has not learned how to govern. 

How is it that the president won the argument on gun safety with the public and lost the vote in the Senate? It’s because he doesn’t know how to work the system. And it’s clear now that he doesn’t want to learn, or to even hire some clever people who can tell him how to do it or do it for him. 

It’s unbelievable that with 90 percent of Americans on his side, he could get only 54 votes in the Senate. It was a glaring example of his weakness in using leverage to get what he wants. No one on Capitol Hill is scared of him. 

Even House Republicans who had no intention of voting for the gun bill marveled privately that the president could not muster 60 votes in a Senate that his party controls. 

Dowd's staggering ignorance of how Washington works betrays her own insecurities and inabilities to pin the problem on the real culprit:  the 41 Republican senators who blocked Manchin-Toomey.  These folks blocked the measure because they hate Obama and want to destroy him, not because they "fear" him.  They blocked the measure because screaming Village airheads like Dowd serve as useful idiots who blame Obama regardless of the actual culpability of a party dedicated to the destruction of anything the President decides to do.  

Any thinking observer would notice immediately that the Republicans in the Senate never had any intention of approaching gun violence legislation in good faith.  If anything, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Republicans took advantage of the situation, got the President and Senate Democrats to commit to Manchin-Toomey by stringing along the notion that hope was alive, and then burned them all for political advantage.

It's easy to say that "What Republicans fear is the NRA" but it's more than that.  What they fear is being replaced by people even more recalcitrant and more hateful than they are themselves toward not just the President, but more vitriolic towards the very idea that federal governance is even possible.  Dowd bemoans the President's supposed inability to govern and his ability to learn how to.  She should be going after the people making it impossible to govern at all.

We're trapped in a hell of our own making, where the only possible movement of one party is toward more nihilist extremism, not away from the brink of chaos, and Maureen Dowd is spouting empty nonsense about how good government is found in a Michael Douglas movie.  If she hasn't figured out by now that she's part of the problem with the government she complains about not working by disgorging this pile of fever-bright crap allowing the real culprits to escape blame, all while raging impotently at the only guy who can possibly fix the problem, she never will.

At this point, Maureen Dowd has to be considered part of the reason why Washington remains ungovernable.  At the very least, she remains part of the reason it is considered by those outside the Beltway as pathetic.

[UPDATE]  Walter Russell Mead absolutely levels Dowd in his column today.

Column writing is dangerous work and long success in the game can lead to the stifling of that Editor Within who keeps you from looking too stupid in print. A rich self esteem, fortified by decades of op-ed tenure and dinner party table talk dominance, has apparently given Ms. Dowd the confidence to believe that she is a maestro of political infighting, a Clausewitz of strategic insight and a Machiavelli of political cunning rolled up into one stylish and elegant piece of work. From the heights of insight on which she dwells, it is easy to see what that poor schmuck Barry Obama can’t: those 60 votes on gun control were his for the taking, if he was only as shrewd a politician as Maureen Dowd.

Do read the rest.  Dowd is the prototypical emoprog, whose only real defining trait is that they believe they know everything better than President Obama, manifesting itself in a blind hatred for the man that rivals the worst Republican lunatics.

Last Call

And the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto completely loses it in an epic tinfoil screed blaming the Boston Marathon bombing and basically everything wrong in the last century on the "thuggish majoritarianism of the Obama-era left".

The left's and the media's reflexive search for right-wing perpetrators is not unique to this attack. Indeed, it's not even unique among attacks this week. On Tuesday the office of Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, received a letter containing ricin, a toxin derived from the castor oil plant. United Press International reported that the Anti-Defamation League "said ricin . . . is popular with domestic extremists. . . . Many ricin incidents have been attributed to homegrown extremists, particularly right-wing groups such as anti-government extremists and white supremacists. Other ricin incidents have been unrelated to any specific ideology, the ADL said."

A suspect, Paul Curtis, was quickly caught. On Wednesday the Jackson Clarion Ledger published a photo of him, posing with a bumper sticker that reads "Christian and a Democrat."

It is true, of course, that some terrorist attacks are committed by white supremacists, antiabortion extremists or others on what is called "the extreme right." It was not unreasonable to consider that as a possibility when Boston was bombed.

What is unreasonable is the impulse to blame mainstream conservatives, including the Tea Party, a diffuse mass movement that has never been linked to any violence. Never forget that after the Tucson massacre of 2011, the New York Times editorialized that "it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible"--even though it was already known that the killer had no political motive.

What the hope-they're-white crowd really wishes for is a reason to treat their domestic political adversaries as enemies of the state.

Where do I begin with dismantling this textbook case of projection?  Should I start with Taranto complaining about his voicelessness against the "media" when he's penning the day's top op-ed in the Wall Street Journal?  How about his rage over the Tea Party and conservatives being unfairly painted with broad strokes while in the same article he is indicting all liberals, all of the "media", all Muslims, all Democrats, and all Obama supporters as "thugs" and "fascists"?  His blithe dismissal of criticism of a Tea Party movement that has "never been linked to any violence" when even a cursory search pulls up dozens of incidents and his own article references abortion clinic bombers and white supremacists?  His utter contempt for the 90% of Americans who supported background checks for firearms as having "no organic reality" that is a "sign of weakness, not strength"?

It amazes me that a national newspaper would be employing Taranto at all at this point, considering how completely bonkers he has become.   Instead, like Jennifer Rubin's daily disgraceful slop at the Washington Post, he gets a platform to spew nonsense that should rightfully be laughed out of the room.

The problem of course is that tens of thousands of people read both of them daily and millions agree with them.

More Texas-Sized Hyprocrisy, Disaster Edition

Meanwhile in Texas, it turns out the fertilizer plant that exploded and killed at least a dozen people and decimated everything in half a mile of the detonation should have been inspected not just by OSHA, but by Homeland Security.  You know, if the plant's owners had bothered to tell anyone they had explosive material that Homeland Security needed to know about.

The fertilizer plant that exploded on Wednesday, obliterating part of a small Texas town and killing at least 14 people, had last year been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Yet a person familiar with DHS operations said the company that owns the plant, West Fertilizer, did not tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer as it is required to do, leaving one of the principal regulators of ammonium nitrate - which can also be used in bomb making - unaware of any danger there.

Fertilizer plants and depots must report to the DHS when they hold 400 lb (180 kg) or more of the substance. Filings this year with the Texas Department of State Health Services, which weren't shared with DHS, show the plant had 270 tons of it on hand last year.

To recap then, Texas knew literally that the plant was explosive and dangerous.  They ignored telling the DHS.  The company ignored telling the DHS. They had 1350 times the required amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the facility and said "No, that's not a problem."

And now at least 12 people are dead.  Democrats at least see this "self-regulation" as a problem.

A U.S. congressman and several safety experts called into question on Friday whether incomplete disclosure or regulatory gridlock may have contributed to the disaster.

"It seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid," Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-MS), ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement. "This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up."

So no,  these guys broke the law.  They broke the law and people died because of it.  But Republicans will almost certainly come out and say that "oversight failed" and that OSHA should be cut or eliminated since it "obviously cannot stop" workplace related accidents like this.

Government designed to fail by those who want it to fail are surprised it ends up failing.  Amazing.

We Don't Have A Department Of Precrime, People

So everyone asking "Why didn't we arrest and deport Tamerlan Tsarnaev two years ago?" needs to understand at that point he hadn't committed any crimes, and you need to just sit down and shut the hell up.

The FBI admitted Friday they interviewed the now-deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev two years ago and failed to find any incriminating information about him.

As first reported by CBS News correspondent Bob Orr, the FBI interviewed Tsarnaev, the elder brother of at-large bombing suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, at the request of a foreign government to see if he had any extremist ties, but failed to find any linkage.

Both Tsarnaev brothers were legal permanent residents of the U.S. There is no evidence so far that either brother received any tactical training.

CBS News correspondent John Miller reports it is likely Russia asked to have the elder Tsarnaev vetted because of suspected ties to Chechen extremists.

The FBI is likely to have run a background check, running his name through all the relevant databases, including those of other agencies, checking on his communications and all of his overseas travel. Miller reports that culminated in a sit-down interview where they probably asked him a lot of questions about his life, his contacts, his surroundings. All of this was then written in a report and sent it to the requesting government.

The guy was clean then.  If it turns out later that more evidence is out there to the contrary, then we'll take a look at it then.  But in 2011 this guy got paid a visit.  What happened between then and now, I can't tell you.

Rampant speculation on the other hand, without the fact?  Zero percent of that helping anyone.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

In non-Boston related news...

• The Boy Scouts of America are considering a plan that would allow gay scouts to join the organization, but would still ban gay and lesbian scoutmasters and den mothers.
• A North Dakota judge has issued a permanent injunction invalidating a two-year old state law that eliminates medication-induced abortions in the first trimester. 
• As Saturday is 4/20, Colorado has mixed feelings about the state's new marijuana tourism after legalization.
• The FAA has okayed the revisions to the battery systems in Boeing's glitch-plagued 787 Dreamliner, clearing the way for the planes to resume flying.
• Google wants to buy more green power for its hungry data centers, and it wants power companies to offer more of it.

Last Call: They Got Him

They got him.

Authorities have successfully apprehended what appears to be 19-year-old Dzhokar Tsarnaev, according to Boston police. The second Boston marathon bombing suspect is alive and in custody after a standoff with officials in the suburbs of the city. Tsarnaev was believed to be hiding in a parked boat. 

So yeah, best 4/20 ever coming up tomorrow.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Explosions kill three in Boston, followed by two shootouts and a carjacking, and a city and a million people get locked down for a day.  No expense is spared to find the suspects.

We say "Never again will we allow deaths like this to happen."

Fertilizer plant explosion kills at least 12 in Texas, flattens an apartment complex and middle school, we shrug and say it's just too expensive to inspect plants for safety.

We say "What can you do about deaths like this?"

Guns kill thousands, we stop any effort to do anything to prevent more deaths and vote down laws that would be small steps towards containing these preventable deaths.

We say "We will not let you do anything about these deaths, accept them."

Then we wonder why our country is so messed up.

Buckeye Ladies, Have A Seat

Ohio Republican lawmakers in the State House just told Ohio women that their health needs are literally the last thing the state is worried about funding.

A sweeping state budget that would give residents an income tax cut while scrapping an expansion of Medicaid passed the Republican-controlled House on Thursday after lawmakers agreed to continue discussing health coverage for the poor.

The $61.5 billion, two-year budget rewrites Republican Gov. John Kasich's proposals for overhauling the state tax code and drops his plans to extend Medicaid health coverage to thousands more low-income residents.

The House voted 61-35 on the spending blueprint, which would begin July 1. The plan, with the support of one Democratic lawmaker, now goes to the GOP-dominated Senate, where more changes and hearings are expected.

So it's looking like no Medicaid for Ohio's poor because, well, screw them, they're poor.  Why should Ohio Republicans give a damn, right?  Oh, but it gets better for the ladies in particular:

Democrats were unsuccessful in their attempts to boost money for local governments and delete a provision that sends Planned Parenthood to the back of the line for public family planning money.

Yep.  Ohio is about to become the latest state to defund Planned Parenthood.  The state's about to learn what happens when you put Republicans in charge:  they go after women.

Have a seat, ladies.  The GOP War on Women just came home.

StupidiNews!

• A bomb at a popular Baghdad coffee shop killed 27 and wounded 51 in Iraq on Thursday night.
• Secretary of State John Kerry called North Korea's demands to remove all UN sanctions before any diplomacy can proceed "unacceptable."
• In a speech at the memorial service for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, President Obama assured America that "we will finish the race".
• Reduced vaccination rates in the UK after a debunked 1998 study linking autism and vaccinations has resulted in "major" risk for measles outbreak, warn officials.
• The Man of Steel turns 75 this week and Superman remains a cultural icon across the planet.

Last Call

If there's any news outlet that deserves to get sued out of business right now in the wake of wild, ridiculous speculation over the identity of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect(s), it's the New York Post, as Deadspin's Barry Petchesky reports.

On Monday, the New York Post doggedly stuck to its claim that 12 were killed in the Boston Marathon bombings. On Tuesday, CNN (among others) reported that a suspect had been arrested, before walking that all the way back. Today, the Post wrests back the "what the fuck are you doing?" crown by putting two "potential suspects" on the cover of the newspaper. They are most assuredly innocent.

The pair show up in multiple photos of the finish line. They carry large bags. They are dark-skinned. This was enough for internet sleuths to peg them as suspicious. (They show up here, in Gawker's rundown of "suspects" identified by crowdsourcing on Reddit and 4chan.) And that was apparently enough for the Post to run with its front-page story today, claiming investigators are circulating photos of the two. (The photo on the paper's cover is a cropped and zoomed-in version of the one taken by Ben Levine, which appeared on Deadspin on Tuesday.)

But maybe there was a reason for them to be at the marathon, wearing track jackets and carrying bags: they're runners.

The kid in the blue jacket is a middle-distance runner at Revere High School.

The kid's name also happens to be Salah Barhoum, which should tell you everything you need to know about why the kid was pegged by the Post (which is now 0-3 in its idiocy and now almost certainly faces a big fat lawsuit.  CNN isn't innocent in this either, it ran with the Saudi suspect story on Monday and Tuesday as well.)  Of course, the FBI got around to releasing the pictures of the actual suspects:  two not-so-dusky looking guys:

And this guy:

Funny how that works, huh.

Texas-Sized Hyprocrisy: Disaster Edition

Suddenly, Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry isn't so interested in secession and denying people federal aid after yesterday's deadly fertilizer plant explosion.

Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday declared McLennan County - home to West, the small community rocked by the deadly fertilizer plant explosion - a disaster area and announced that he's asking President Barack Obama for a federal emergency declaration as well.

The declarations will help free up funding to help those in the community impacted by the explosion with the massive recovery and rebuilding effort they face.

Huh.  As Kos points out, West's congressman, Republican Bill Flores, voted against Sandy aid.

"It was too large," Flores said about the latest bill Wednesday. “It does more than meet the immediate needs of Sandy victims."

Flores, whose district includes Waco, said he could have supported an earlier version of the bill with $17 billion in aid if it had been offset by federal spending reductions.

Flores isn't asking for spending reductions now, is he.  Neither are both Texas Senators who voted against Sandy aid, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.

Now that Texas needs aid, all these Republicans are demanding it as soon as possible for the victims.

Hmm.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/04/18/4785746/perry-urges-all-americans-to-keep.html#storylink=cpy

Ricins Of The Father

The suspect in the recent ricin letters sent to the Senate and President Obama?  White guy.

The Corinth man and Elvis impersonator arrested and accused of sending poison-laced envelopes to President Barack Obama, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and a local justice court judge seems to have had different personas.

Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, was arrested by the FBI and Lee County authorities Wednesday at his home after an investigation by multiple local, state and federal officials. With Curtis in police custody, different versions of his life continue to unfold, some wacky and entertaining and others conspiratorial, threatening and violent.

Several Tupelo residents who did not want to be identified told the Daily Journal of experiences of erratic and even threatening behavior with Curtis through the years.

Locally he has been known for his passion for Elvis and hatred for North Mississippi Medical Center expressed in online message boards.

Some people know Curtis through his passion as an Elvis impersonator, including a snarl and long sideburns.

In a 1999 interview with the Daily Journal, Curtis said “I used to say, ‘I’m going to grow up and be just like Elvis and buy my mom a mansion. That was my goal from age 6.”

Again, dude looks like this:

And because dude looks like this, this story will go away and he will be dismissed as a crazy lone wolf who needs professional mental health assistance from a system that failed him, and most likely we'll see within a few days op-eds on how this means Obamacare has failed, should be repealed, and that the President should resign or something.

If this dude was not white, the outcome of this story would be very, very different.

StupidiNews!

• Police have arrested a Mississippi man in connection with letters testing positive for ricin sent to Sen. Roger Wicker and President Obama.
• The third fatality from Monday's Boston Marathon bombing has been identified as Chinese citizen and 23 year old Boston U grad student Lu Lingzi.
• The FBI confirms no arrests have been made in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing despite a erroneous report from CNN earlier on Wednesday.
• Margaret Thatcher's funeral was held in London Wednesday with nearly 2,000 mourners and delegations from countries around the world.
• The test launch of the Antares rocket has been delayed due to an umbilical cable malfunction, pushing back the launch of Orbital Space Science's rocket until Friday.