StupidiNews!

• Secretary of State John Kerry says that negotiations with Pakistan are ongoing and that the United States hopes to end all drone strikes in the area "very soon".
• A French court has overturned the country's ban on Monsanto's genetically modified corn, ruling that under EU law France has failed to show the crops are harmful.
• Senate Democrats want additional oversight on secret FISA surveillance court rulings in the form of legislation reforming the court's process.
• Keystone XL pipeline company TransCanada is considering a new pipeline across 2,000 miles of Canadian wilderness from Alberta to Saint John, New Brunswick.
• Microsoft reports the number of Windows 8 machines has finally surpassed Windows Vista PCs, but has a long way to go to beat Win XP.

Last Call For Tinfoil Louie

As pathetically funny as Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert is, we are reminded from time to time that people of TX-1 (East Texas, specifically Lufkin and points north along the border with northwestern Louisiana) have elected this clown show five times now, and he's never gotten less than 61% of the vote.  He will continue to be elected, he will continue to be a national embarrassment, and the people of TX-1 will continue not to give a damn and do it anyway.

And he will continue to spout idiocy like this as he compares the battle to civil rights for minorities to the rights for endangered species.  Because apparently, both annoy him.  Referring to Democrats Steve Cohen and John Conyers:

GOHMERT: There is nobody in this chamber who is more appreciative than I am for the gentleman from Tennessee and my friend from Michigan standing up for the rights of race, religion, national religion of the Delta Smelt, the snail darter, various lizards, the lesser prairie chicken, the greater sage grouts and so many other insects who would want someone standing for their religion, their race, their national origin and I think that’s wonderful.

And yes, thanks to the magic of gerrymandering, he'll be able to say stuff like this for at least the rest of this decade and most likely the next.  Awesome prospect, right?

Because Of His Sagging Pants, Right?

Hey folks, can we finally admit that NYPD’s ridiculously awful and patently unconstitutional “Stop & Frisk” program is not just racial profiling, but racist profiling when an off-duty black police chief gets harassed by a couple of white cops?

Chief Douglas Zeigler, 60, head of the Community Affairs Bureau, was in his NYPD-issued vehicle near a fire hydrant when two plainclothes cops approached on May 2, sources said.

One officer walked up on each side of the SUV at 57th Ave. and Xenia St. in Corona about 7 p.m. and told the driver to roll down the heavily tinted windows, sources said.
What happened next is in dispute.

In his briefing to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Zeigler said the two cops, who are white, had no legitimate reason to approach his SUV, ranking sources said.

After they ordered him to get out, one officer did not believe the NYPD identification Zeigler gave him.

To recap, Zeigler is a three-star police chief, one of the highest ranking officers in the NYPD. His mistake was that he was off-duty and black. When he showed his identification badge, the cops who ordered him out of his SUV didn’t believe who he was. The defense of the two white plainclothes officers who approached Zeigler was that they saw a gun in the SUV and only then ordered Zeigler out of his vehicle at gunpoint.  Apparently one of the cops then got into an argument over Zeigler’s ID badge.

The cop in question has currently been suspended, but the larger issue of course is “If a three-star NYPD chief is subject to stop and frisk, any person of color is pretty much screwed.” If the two plainclothes cops really did draw on Zeigler, he’s lucky he’s not dead, extremely lucky. What about Zeigler’s demeanor made him a suspect? The two plainclothes cops swear it was a gun in the SUV, ostensibly Zeigler’s sidearm, but nothing in my experience as a black male makes me think that’s the truth.

Because to me, this looks like two white cops harassing a black man in an SUV. Was it his sagging pants? Was he wearing a hoodie? Maybe it was his assumed lack of parentage. Surely a black man in an SUV has to be suspicious of some illegal activity, it’s not like we end up three-star police chiefs in the NYPD or anything completely bonkers like that. And of course when he produced the ID, the cop didn’t believe him. This guy’s an off-duty three-star chief? But he’s black.

Now maybe I’m just being totally optimistic here, but maybe this incident will be the final catalyst necessary to get Bloomberg and his clown show of a police department to drop this nonsense before somebody gets the idea that Chief Zeigler might have a federal civil rights complaint on his hands. Maybe the ridiculousness of having one of their own bagged by the program (and this happened in early May 2008, we’re just now hearing about it some five years later) will embarrass the NYPD enough that they start to reconsider this odious practice.

Or maybe I’m just an optimist. I sure as hell don’t feel like visiting the Big Apple anytime soon, even though my parents grew up there and I’ve been there several times. It just isn’t worth the risk. If anyone short of President Obama is going to find a pair of NYPD’s Finest all up in their faces in 2013 NYC, fahgeddaboutit.

President Obama Has Finally Had Enough

It appears this time (unlike the other 14,817 times he's mentioned doing this) that President Obama will finally take bold executive action to go around Republicans in Congress, and apparently this time the difference is that Democrats on Capitol Hill are scared enough about midterm elections to actually back the President instead of running away.  WIN THE MORNING:

“I have to figure out what I can do outside of Congress through executive actions,” Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus earlier this month, according to Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.).

“He’s very ready to use his executive powers whenever possible,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) who heard Obama discuss the new approach at a meeting of the Congressional Asian Pacific Caucus to the White House last week.

With the clock running on Obama’s time in office — he’s even started marking the number of days left in public speeches — the president is done caring about congressional Republicans calling him a dictator. Or calling him at all.

Obama can’t ignore Republicans forever. There’s no way for the president to avoid negotiations to get continuing resolutions to avoid a government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling — and depending how things go, rebuff GOP efforts to defund Obamacare and possibly a compromise on immigration reform. Chief of staff Denis McDonough’s functioning as an almost one-man legislative affairs office can’t do it all.

And he’s used the executive authority tactic before, including last summer’s controversial move to cut deportations for younger illegal immigrants and the mental health focus he announced as part of his gun control agenda after the Newtown massacre.

But administration officials and advisers say what’s ahead will be more extensive and frequent than previous efforts, and the White House is on the hunt for anything that can move without congressional approval, including encouraging efforts like Attorney General Eric Holder’s lawsuits to find new avenues of enforcement in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act last month.

So yes, screaming, spittle-flecked invective on watering the Tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants for the next forever, which differs from the last five years, well, not at all.  But hey, at least Democrats have finally figured out Republicans are going to say this crap anyway, so press on.

More of this, please.  The difference too is that the Village is figuring this out as well, and maybe they don't like what they're seeing, either.  Kinda hard to blame Democrats for immigration reform with 68 Senate votes, including 100% of Democrats in the Senate, ya know?

Things should get interesting.

StupidiNews!

• A last-second deal with Senate Republican Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins paved the way for the confirmation of ATF Director B. Todd Jones, the first confirmed director since 2006.
• Britain's Department of Transport plans to ban drivers from using Google Glass even before the product gets an official release sometime next year.
• A deal pegging student loan rates to the ten-year treasury bond rate has passed the Senate and is heading for President Obama's signature.
• Parents say they plan to spend nearly 8% less this year on back-to-school shopping than last year as Americans tighten their belts across the board.
• Google and Motorola's long-awaited Moto X phone gets the spotlight today as the tech giant pushes forward, but stiff competition among Android phones could be problematic.

Last Call For Republicans Terrified Of Obamacare

How scared are Republicans of Obamacare working?  Here in Ohio, SuperPACs are taking out ads in order to convince people to not sign up for Obamacare at all.  Steve Benen catches this story from the Dayton Daily News:

With time running out, opponents of the Affordable Care Act have taken to the airwaves in Ohio and elsewhere with ad campaigns not only attacking the bill's merits but also actively encouraging uninsured Americans not to sign up for coverage under the health care law.

The Obama administration has acknowledged the success of the law, commonly referred to as Obamacare, depends in large part on broad-based participation in federal and state-run health exchanges that will begin selling government-subsidized health plans to the uninsured on Oct. 1.

The anti-enrollment campaigns reflect the resignation and desperation of many Obamacare opponents who have given up hope of a government repeal or court-ordered injunction to stop full implementation of the law beginning next year.

Nice of them.

To recap, Republicans hate President Obama getting credit for Obamacare so much that they're spending SuperPAC money in order to con people into staying without health care in Ohio's exchange, in order to try to make Ohio's exchange not work.

This is the Republican solution to affordable health care, spending money on telling people to not get health care.  That's how much they fear Obamacare.  Benen summarizes:

To reiterate what we discussed last week, I hope folks will pause to let this sink in for a moment. Unlike every other industrialized democracy on the planet, the United States -- easily the wealthiest nation on earth -- has tolerated a significant chunk of its population going without basic health care coverage. These Americans and their families can't afford to see a doctor and are one serious illness from financial ruin. Many have died because they live in a country that allows people to go without access to basic care.

After nearly a century of politicians talking about the problem, President Obama actually signed the Affordable Care Act into law three years ago, giving working families a level of health-care security they've never had before, and throwing a life preserver to the uninsured. Now, Republicans aren't just actively trying to sabotage the law, they're telling struggling Americans it's better to drown than accept the life preserver.

Republicans want you to suffer, to risk your family's health and access to affordable care and hey, maybe even their lives, for the political gain of getting to "prove" that government can't be the solution.

That is your Republican party, folks.  At this point, they are actively trying to kill people to win.

If You Wonder Why People Hate Congress

Let's start with House Republicans spending the final week or so before their next five week vacation approving bills that have zero chance of passing, rather than doing anything about jobs, the economy, or any other actual problems we have.

Among 10 bills headed for a floor vote this week are measures that would add new restrictions on federal agencies charged with crafting rules. Another bill would give Congress more power to block the costliest regulations.

The votes are part of the GOP’s “Stop Government Abuse Week,” a moniker that is drawing fire from public interest groups that argue the government has a responsibility to protect public health and safety.

“Apparently, they’re trying to equate the functions of various federal agencies with abuse, and I don’t think that resonates well,” said Rachel Weintraub, legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America.

The centerpiece of the GOP push is the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, which would require Congress to approve any federal rule that carries an annual price tag of $100 million or more.

The legislation would create a new hurdle that regulations would have to clear before taking effect. It has been introduced in the last three Congresses, and the latest incarnation, offered by Rep. Todd Young (R-Ind.), has attracted 164 co-sponsors.

But with companion legislation in the Democratic-controlled Senate likely going nowhere, Weintraub dismissed the vote as political theater.

“I think it’s a show. They want to do something they can point to, going into the recess,” she said. “This fits into their anti-regulatory narrative.” 

To recap, the guys in government that say the federal government has too much power, want more power over the federal government.  To a Republican, the fact that Democrats exist is "government abuse". And yet after these clowns pass this legislation, they're on vacation all summer until after Labor Day.  Nice work if you can get it.

Or in this case, no work.  By the way,under the REINS Act, the House GOP could then veto basically every executive branch rule on the books by saying its impact on the economy was more than $100 million.  Republicans could then shut down every executive branch agency and cabinet department at will.  They know it won't pass, and they'd never hand that kind of power to Democrats with a GOP president.  But they'll waste time passing it anyway, because that's what they do.

Like I said, clowns.

We Don't Want To Be The Party Of Bigots, But...

Apparently the Young Republican National Federation is kind of bummed that the party is being run by racist, misogynist, bigoted homophobes and such, and they really wish party leaders and Republicans in Congress would be, you know, less embarrassing, according to newly elected federation chairman, Jason Weingartner.

Weingartner said House Republicans, who won’t pass the Democratic-led Senate’s version of an immigration overhaul, should pass their own version that at least “streamlines and expands” legal slots for foreign students and workers.

For now, he said, that would sidestep Republicans who demand border security and Democrats who demand a citizenship path for immigrants already in the country illegally.

On health care, Weingartner said that besides regularly voting to repeal Obama’s law, the GOP should emphasize its own ideas such as buying insurance across state lines, while better explaining the Affordable Care Act’s cost shift onto younger, healthy individuals.

On same-sex marriage and abortion, young GOP leaders say Republicans should tolerate a range of views, even while maintaining a socially conservative identity. Some of these activists say their party must tread lightly after the Supreme Court recently threw out the most powerful part of the Voting Rights Act, the law that became a major turning point in black Americans’ struggle for equal rights and political power.

“We don’t have to lose our principles,” said Angel Garcia, who leads the Young Republicans in Chicago, Obama’s hometown. “But we have to have a conversation on all these issues so we don’t leave Democrats to say we’re just old white men and racist, bigoted homophobes.”

I got news for you, YRNF.  Your party already abandoned its principles, and only cares now about causing as much damage to the American people as possible in order to convince them it's Obama's fault.  They don't have new ideas or any alternatives to fix the problems we face because they don't want those problems fixed.  They don't have any intention of tolerating anyone they don't agree with.  I'm glad you recognize the fact, but the grim reality is there's no "saving" this Republican party, because they oppose government itself.

That conversation you long for has already happened in the minds of tens of millions of Americans, and you guys lost.  And you're going to have to do a hell of a lot more than just mope about a conference to get anyone to listen to what you have to say, Democrat or Republican.

StupidiNews!

• Having avoided a life sentence on charges of aiding the enemy, Bradley Manning still faces the possibility of more than a century in prison time in the sentencing phase of his trial.
• In keeping with their deal with Democrats in the Senate, Republicans allowed an up-or-down vote on National Labor Relations Board members, with all five being approved for the first time in a decade.
• The Obama administration is threatening to take $10 million in Race to the Top education grants from Georgia over the state reneging on its 2010 promise to implement teacher merit pay.
• Even before President Obama's speech Tuesday on a corporate tax code reform deal, Republicans already dismissed the notion because they want more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
• Happy 55th birthday to NASA, as the space agency celebrates the milestone this week from its humble beginnings in 1958.

Last Call For Hoosier School Grades

Just in case you still thought Republicans gave a damn about fixing schools rather than destroying them and privatizing the ashes or something, meet current Florida state school superintendent Tony Bennett, who recently joined Gov. Skeletor McBatBoy from Indiana, where Mr. Bennett still has a few pieces of embarrassing business to deal with back Indianapolis way.

Former Indiana and current Florida schools chief Tony Bennett built his national star by promising to hold "failing" schools accountable. But when it appeared an Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might receive a poor grade, Bennett's education team frantically overhauled his signature "A-F" school grading system to improve the school's marks.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press show Bennett and his staff scrambled last fall to ensure influential donor Christel DeHaan's school received an "A," despite poor test scores in algebra that initially earned it a "C."

If you're shocked an appalled by this, you really haven't been paying attention to what Republicans are doing to public schools at the state level, have you?  GOP fat cat donor with a shiny charter school wasn't going to get a C grade from the state, no sir.  You buy those politicians, they stay bought.

Though Indiana had had a school ranking system since 1999, Bennett switched to the A-F system and made it a signature item of his education agenda, raising the stakes for schools statewide.

Bennett consistently cited Christel House as a top-performing school as he secured support for the measure from business groups and lawmakers, including House Speaker Brian Bosma and Senate President Pro Tem David Long.

But trouble loomed when Indiana's then-grading director, Jon Gubera, first alerted Bennett on Sept. 12 that the Christel House Academy had scored less than an A.

"This will be a HUGE problem for us," Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12, 2012 email to Neal.
Neal fired back a few minutes later, "Oh, crap. We cannot release until this is resolved."

By Sept. 13, Gubera unveiled it was a 2.9, or a "C."

So Bennett and his GOP buddies retooled the entire state school grading scale just to give a multimillionaire donor's school an A.  Because that, ladies and gentlemen, is how "accountability" works when you're a Republican.  You buy it, then you tell everyone how awesome charter schools are, and how miserable public schools are, and then you have justification to take money from public schools and give it to charter ones, and all the right people make fat stacks of cash.

Meanwhile, let's keep telling ourselves the problem with schools are teachers and poor minority kids and not for-profit raiders like Tony Bennett.

Stuck In The Past, Romney-Style

It's nice to know that if America had elected Mitt Romney, he'd still be arguing over whether or not he made that famous 47 percent quote.  You know, the one on tape.  Apparently, he thinks we forget or something (or that Google disintegrates after 200 days.)  David Corn:

Poor Mitt Romney. He seems unable to come to terms with one of the most significant episodes in his public life: the 47 percent video that undercut his chance of becoming president of the United States.

Sunday's Washington Post featured an article adapted from reporter Dan Balz's new 2012 campaign book, Collision 2012, and the excerpt focused on Romney's take on why he entered the race and why he lost. Toward the end of the article, which was based on a series of interviews Balz conducted with Romney, the twice-failed Republican presidential candidate was forced to confront his 47-percent remarks, and he just couldn't do so forthrightly.

There's a shocker.

[Romney] was in California and said at first he couldn’t get a look at the video. His advisers were pushing him to respond as quickly as he could. "As I understood it, and as they described it to me, not having heard it, it was saying, 'Look, the Democrats have 47 percent, we’ve got 45 percent, my job is to get the people in the middle, and I’ve got to get the people in the middle,'" he said. "And I thought, 'Well, that’s a reasonable thing.'... It's not a topic I talk about in public, but there's nothing wrong with it. They've got a bloc of voters, we've got a bloc of voters, I've got to get the ones in the middle. And I thought that that would be how it would be perceived—as a candidate talking about the process of focusing on the people in the middle who can either vote Republican or Democrat. As it turned out, down the road, it became perceived as being something very different."

In other words, he tried to pull one over on Dan Balz.  What Romney actually said of course, was:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax..."[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

David Corn should know, he was the guy that got the tape and broke the story...and most likely ended Mitt Romney's 2012 run cold.  But he's outright lying to the DC press, because they figure they still won't hold him accountable for his own actions.  They figured we forgot.  We did...we just didn't forget why he lost.

Pope Francis Hits A Home Run

It's things like this that make reading news so rewarding.  With absolutely no warning (it was never on my radar whatsoever) Pope Francis has not only broadly opened up the door to acceptance for gay people, but demonstrates a genuine respect for people in general.  In other words, he just showed something we haven't seen from the religious front in a while.

ABOARD THE PAPAL AIRCRAFT (AP) -- Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn't judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip.

"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Francis asked.

Even a jaded old broad like me can appreciate the Pope taking such a stance, and not forcing a cat and mouse game where the answers are carefully extricated, pulled through layers of political spin and carefully placed vagueness.  A question was asked, and he answered it.  Directly, openly, completely and awesomely.  

We may have a Pope who is full of surprises, and some of the compassion and humility that a true leader needs to show for those who look to him for answers.  If nothing else, we can know from this that he is not a puppet, repeating the tried and true responses that deflect nosy reporters.  And for that reason, I have a newfound respect for Pope Francis.  He blasted this one out of the park.

[Zandar's note:  It's good to see Bon back and hopefully you'll be seeing more of her soon.  On the other hand, I trust Pope Francis about as far as he can throw me.]

StupidiNews!

• Seven propane tank plant employees have been hospitalized, as tens of thousands of 20-pound propane tanks detonated as the result of a plant-wide fire.
• NC GOP Gov. Pat McCrory has signed the state's deeply unpopular Republican-crafted anti-choice bill into law, despite campaign promises not to limit abortion access.
• A national FBI child prostitution sweep dubbed Operation Cross Country netted 150 suspects and saved 105 children in several states.
• A "merger of equals" between French advertising giant Publicis and US giant Omnicom would create the world's largest advertising group, worth $23 billion and 20% of the global ad market.
• Time Warner is raising monthly cable modem rates to $5.99, which could generate an extra $150 million yearly from customers for equipment they already have in their homes.

Last Call For City Employee Healthcare

As far as major American cities with employee medical costs are concerned, a bunch of them are looking at putting employees on Obamacare in order to save local taxpayers millions, starting with of course Detroit:

As Detroit enters the federal bankruptcy process, the city is proposing a controversial plan for paring some of the $5.7 billion it owes in retiree health costs: pushing many of those too young to qualify for Medicare out of city-run coverage and into the new insurance markets that will soon be operating under the Obama health care law. 

Officials say the plan would be part of a broader effort to save Detroit tens of millions of dollars in health costs each year, a major element in a restructuring package that must be approved by a bankruptcy judge. It is being watched closely by municipal leaders around the nation, many of whom complain of mounting, unsustainable prices for the health care promised to retired city workers. 

Similar proposals that could shift public sector retirees into the new insurance markets, called exchanges, are already being planned or contemplated in places like Chicago; Sheboygan County, Wis.; and Stockton, Calif. While large employers that eliminate health benefits for full-time workers can be penalized under the health care law, retirees are a different matter. 

That's probably the best way forward for Detroit, frankly.  I don't like it, but it's better than the alternative:  no health care.  And once again, the more people making a success out of exchanges, the more people will use them.  Eventually, we'll be getting to a single-payer model.  But for now, Obamacare's exchanges are going to be where health care is going to go over the next several years.

Picasso Baby Blues

I had a very interesting and enlightening discussion with a good friend over the weekend about Jay Z's new project, Picasso Baby.  Rolling Stone:

Earlier this month, Jay Z gave a impressively Herculean performance in New York City, rapping the Magna Carta Holy Grail track "Picasso Baby" over and over again for six hours straight at the Pace Gallery.

The performance was filmed, and HBO just announced that it will be airing the resulting work, Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film. The special will debut on Friday, August 2nd at 11 p.m. Eastern time, immediately after the rapper's appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher. In the trailer for the film, Jay Z can be seen interacting with Alan Cumming, Judd Apatow, and the artist Marina Abramovic, who were all spotted at the gallery during the performance. 

My friend's argument was that Jay Z was guilty of massive appropriation of culture here, and that the art community was furious with him for doing the full nouveau riche on it.  She's somebody with a couple of art degrees and on the subject she's far more qualified than myself to speak, so I listened.  The inclusion of Marina Abramovic was really deep into shark-jumping territory, she argued, and in his quest for artistic legitimacy, Jay Z has simply blundered into the world of performance art and taken over through his money, not his talent.  She didn't think Jay Z had any methodology in the piece, either, no root in art of the body, no paradigm, just "kids playing dressup."

My counter-argument was that if Jay Z was anyone else but Jay Z, it would be considered a major boost to the world of performance art, and that the guy was far from the only putative art snob dropping ridiculous amounts of money to buy art (in this case, he basically bought himself an HBO special) in order to get the access and power its exclusivity and legitimacy provides.  Why shouldn't a black man who has legitimately made it not push the boundaries of culture?  Jay Z didn't need the art world to become famous, maybe it needs someone like like him to expand it.

But, she rebutted, that's what makes the project so brazenly and transparently shallow.  Everyone can clearly see Jay Z is doing this not for the love of art, but for the sake of that exclusivity, that attention, and that power he's thirsting to receive.  It's culture appropriation in an attempt to become something he's not, and that it's not really that much different from other examples of appropriation, say, if Marina Abramovic went on her next world tour as a performance artist and chose rap as her medium.

My rebuttal was that the judgment of Jay Z has been pretty harsh, especially since the project hasn't aired, and that if say, a white musical artist like Bono or Sting were combining their music with performance art in a gallery, it would be applauded.  We both then agreed to at least watch the special Friday night to see what Jay Z is at least capable of.

What say the rest of you?  Any interest in Picasso Baby?  Is Jay Z and Beyonce's "life as performance art" mode over the last couple of years, meticulously documented and packaged, presented, and dissected really art?  Is it buying legitimacy, or earned?  Is it belittling the world of art, or is it strengthening it?  What role does race play in all of this?

I think it's fascinating, but I want to hear from you guys.