Well Now Here's Your Problem

As a medical IT professional, it really does bother the hell out of me to read stories about the IT side of the Obamacare health insurance exchanges not being ready by October 1.  Then I remember that Republicans have been doing everything possible to sabotage that work, and the work of people in my field, deliberately.

And then I get angry.

The federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1.

The missed deadlines have pushed the government's decision on whether information technology security is up to snuff to exactly one day before that crucial date, the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general said in a report.

As a result, experts say, the exchanges might open with security flaws or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.

"They've removed their margin for error," said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. "There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint."

The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance.

This happens to be the kind of thing I'm paid to deal with on a daily basis.  And yes, protecting patient data is of paramount concern to everyone in this particular field.  We'd be unemployed, rightfully, otherwise.

I am also then reminded that Republicans want IT engineers like me to fail.  They want to make an example of people like myself for their own political gain.  So yes, I take the Republican sabotage of Obamacare personally, especially the sabotage of the health care exchanges and data security surrounding them.  This is serious stuff, and you would think Republicans would want to make sure their own constituents had the utmost in data security for patient information.

Sadly, they hate Obama more, and are willing to starve these exchanges of resources they need in order to try to make a breach more likely.  Think about that, and keep that in mind when you hear about stories like this.

StupidiNews!

• Three winning tickets have been sold in last night's $448 million Powerball drawing, one in Minnesota and two in New Jersey.
• Ron Paul's 2012 campaign allegedly offered money to an Iowa lawmaker for an endorsement in the state.
• President Obama will not be going to Moscow to meet privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as US/Russia relations continue to sour over Edward Snowden.
• JP Morgan Chase is facing criminal charges brought by the Justice Department over mortgage-backed securities.
• A federal judge has ruled that Bitcoin is a currency, and can be regulated under US law.

Last Call For Sour Obamagrapes

I've often said that the chief motivating factor of any winger doing anything is because they believe it will annoy a liberal, but you can always return the favor by reminding them that Barack Obama was reelected President, and that they waste an awful lot of time trying to change something they're powerless to change.  Here in NOBAMA Country in the NKY, that means laughing at these particular morons.

Standing behind oversized “Impeach Obama” signs and waving American flags, protesters took to overpasses in Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties on Tuesday to voice their displeasure with the current administration.

As part of the nation-wide “Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment” movement, the protestors manned overpasses over I-471 in Fort Thomas, and I-71/75 in Fort Wright and Florence, during the morning and afternoon rush hours, imploring motorists to show support by honking their horns.

They weren’t disappointed.

At the Kyles Lane overpass in Fort Wright, protesters could barely be heard over the sound of horns.

“It’s been great!,” said Vonda Pickens, the Independence mother who spearheaded the Northern Kentucky effort, an hour into the protest. “It was a little bit busier earlier, but the horns have been going on all morning. We’re pleased because, well, you never know.”

But NKY is tame compared to Arizona, it seems.  Hundreds of anti-Obama protesters showed up there for the President's speech on housing, and things got ugly, fast.

Racially-charged sentiment infused the protests and split the crowd both politically and physically. Obama supporters congregated on the west side of the road in front of the high school and his critics lined up across the street.

Obama foes at one point sang, "Bye Bye Black Sheep," a derogatory reference to the president's skin color, while protesters like Deanne Bartram raised a sign saying, "Impeach the Half-White Muslim!"

These folks seem nice.

Deanna Bartram, a 17-year-old University of Arizona student from Black Canyon City, lashed out at people who call her racist for not supporting Obama. She believes Obama supporters use the “race card” against her because they disagree with her political message.

“Obama is ruining American values. He is ruining the Constitution. He needs to go back to where he came from because obviously, he is a liar,” she said. “I am not racist. I am part Indian. Obama’s half Black, half White.”

“He’s 47 percent Negro,” shouted Ron Enderle, a 77-year-old Chandler resident who said that he and his son served as Marines and his grandson is currently serving in the Marines.

Enderle criticized the president mishandling security at the U.S. Benghazi Embassy.

“My grandson is third generation Marine, and it bothers me to have this man as our commander in chief. I’m ashamed,” Enderle said.

And of course, what better place to bring your kids so that they can join in this message of tolerance?

Judy Burris said that she blames Obama for racism in America reaching heights not seen since the 1960s Civil-Rights Era.

“We have gone back so many years,” she said. “He’s divided all the races. I hate him for that.”

She said that she brought her 12-year-old grandson Christian Cabrera to the protests because she thought it would be educational.

“He’s Mexican,” she said of her grandson.

Cabrera said he wanted to accompany his grandma “so I could protest about impeaching Obama.”

What I do know Obama is still President, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.  Please enjoy your impotent rage, knowing that you're reduced to publicity stunts and sweating in the August heat on smoggy overpasses, and remember, tomorrow your president will still a black man you didn't vote for, but the rest of the country did.

If only the President was white again, right?  On behalf of African-Americans everywhere, I apologize for ruining your effing country, assholes.

Have a nice day.  In America.  With your black President.

Welcome To Your GOP, Rookie

Freshman GOP Congressman Robert Pittenger of North Carolina is finding out the hard way just what level of absolute lunacy he's signed up to join with today's Republican party.  His town hall meeting in NC-9's blood red Charlotte suburbs devolved into a verbal beatdown when Pittenger mentioned that he wasn't going to vote to shut down the government over Obamacare.

The exchange was captured and posted by the tea party website ConstitutionalWar.org. A man off camera can be heard asking Pittenger about the defunding effort spearheaded by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).

"Do you want the thoughtful answer?" Pittenger asked.

"I want yes or no," the man said.

Pittenger then said "no," a clip that the tea party website re-played in slow-motion.

The lawmaker then had a back-and-forth with the man and a woman, who was also off camera.

"Do you think Harry Reid is going to pass that in the Senate?" Pittenger asked.

"It doesn't matter," the man fired back.

"We need to show the American people we stand for conservative values," the woman shouted, drawing a smattering of applause.

Because FREEDOM.   Hey, guess who most likely earned himself a primary challenger in a district that's been red for over 50 years?  This is where we are, folks.  Republicans don't want the "thoughtful answer".  They want rage, they want hatred, they want their way or it's game over.

Bus-ted In Beavercreek

Just your daily reminder that southwestern Ohio is literally half a mile over the river from rural Kentucky, and sometimes it's damn hard to tell the places apart.  I'm talking to you, Beavercreek, Ohio.

The showdown began in 2010 when the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority proposed adding three new bus stops in Beavercreek, a largely white suburb 15 minutes east of Dayton. These new stops would give Dayton bus-riders access to Beavercreek’s major shopping mall and nearby businesses, as well as a medical clinic and Wright State University.

Facing the prospect of buses coming in from Dayton, the Beavercreek City Council began enacting as many hurdles as they could to stop the new bus stops. Among the dozen roadblocks included mandating that bus shelters included heated and air conditioning as well as high-tech surveillance cameras, features that would be hugely expensive and are not common at other stops.

Many in the area argue that their opposition boils down to a simple reason: race. According to the 2010 census, 9 in 10 Beavercreek residents are white, but 73 percent of those who ride the Dayton RTA buses are minorities. “I can’t see anything else but it being a racial thing,” Sam Gresham, state chair of Common Cause Ohio, a public interest advocacy group, told ThinkProgress. “They don’t want African Americans going on a consistent basis to Beavercreek.”

So yeah, this mess with Dayton and Beavercreek has been going on for years, and somebody finally figured out this was actionable discrimination.

A civil rights group in the area, Leaders for Equality in Action in Dayton (LEAD), soon filed a discrimination lawsuit against Beavercreek under the Federal Highway Act. In June, the Federal Highway Administration ruled that Beavercreek’s actions were indeed discriminatory and ordered them to work with the Dayton Regional Transit Authority to get the bus stops approved without delay.

Beavercreek, though, isn’t particularly keen to do that. The city council voted most recently on Friday to put off consideration of the matter until later this month. They are weighing whether to appeal the federal ruling, or perhaps whether to just defy it altogether. Appealing the ruling could cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, according to a Washington D.C. lawyer the council hired. However, non-compliance with the ruling could cost Beavercreek tens of millions of dollars in federal highway funds.

So yeah, Beavercreek has about five weeks left to comply with the ruling, or the city's out millions.  And that's going to really piss off a lot of people, far more than just putting the damn bus stops in from Dayton.  It's silly as hell.

This isn't 1963.  Deal with it.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama discussed a number of topics with Tonight Show host Jay Leno on Tuesday, including embassy closings, Edward Snowden, and more.
• A group of Virginia activists will be flying a giant Confederate battle flag over I-95 near Richmond, having leased land to do so from the state.
• Former President George W. Bush is expected to be released from the hospital today after a routine physical on Monday prompted heart surgery to place a stent in a blocked artery.
• Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged full assistance to TEPCO officials in cleaning up radioactive water leaks from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
• Climate scientists say despite dwindling Himalayan glaciers, snow melt will continue to provide plenty of water to rivers like the Ganges and Yangtze.

Last Call For Marco Rubio, Moderate

Hey, bomb-throwing, fire-starting, completely irresponsible rhetoric works for Ted Cruz.  It seems Marco Rubio wants in on some of that Obama Derangement Syndrome too.  Greg Sargent:

Along these lines, a new Rubio quote is generating some chatter this morning, and it’s worth a look, because it says a lot about why we’re heading into another series of crises this fall. Asked to respond to Republicans who say the push to defund Obamacare is misguided, Rubio said:

“All I’m saying is that you cannot say you are against Obamacare if you are willing to vote for a law that funds it. If you’re willing to fund this thing, you can’t possibly say you’re against it.”

This comes after Rubio noted the other day that if the government ultimately gets shut down over the GOP drive to defund Obamacare, it will be the fault of the President for insisting that his law get funded.

Marco Rubio, moderate Republican and party savior.  Remember when he was going to get immigration reform through Congress and use that bi-partisan "uniter" cred to get into the White House in 2016?  If even Rubio believes there's nothing left to lose at this point from breaking the system, will the GOP do it and hope for a win?

The problem is that Republican leaders are under increasing pressure to approach this fall’s battles over funding the government with this as their guiding idea. Republican leaders appear to be trying to dissuade lawmakers from forcing a government shutdown over Obamacare funding, but they are approaching it so tentatively that there is now cause for genuine concern that a shutdown may come to pass. Meanwhile, there are no signs that GOP officials such as Rubio — and Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, and a sizable bloc of diehards in the House — intend to back off their efforts to rally the base behind the total destruction of Obamacare (which is never going to happen) as the only acceptable outcome in this fall’s epic confrontation.

So at this point, if it really is the end of Obamacare or a government shutdown, who wins?

I can tell you who loses:  all of us.

Ghost In The (Campaign) Machine

Mitch McConnell, call your office.  You've got a ghost problem.

Officials with a Kentucky super PAC supporting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blame a computer error for a $100,000 contribution that appeared more than a month after the donor died. Meanwhile, the Libertarian Party filed a federal lawsuit to lift limits on posthumous donations.

“This is pure free speech,” an attorney for the Libertarian party, Alan Gura told USA Today. “A dead person can’t corrupt someone.”

Oh this is just too much.

The donation was initially filed with the Federal Election Commission with a June 3 date, only Perry actually died on April 13. The group’s treasurer, Caleb Crosby, told the Louisville Courier-Journal on July 31 that the check for Perry’s contribution was actually received on April 12, and was subsequently corrected with federal officials.

But the donation was quickly questioned by an advisor for Alison Lundergan Grimes, McConnell’s Democratic challenger in his re-election bid.

“This raises a lot of questions that Kentucky voters deserve answers to,” Jonathan Hurst told the Courier-Journal. “The report appears to be as dishonest as their television ads.”

No kidding. Voting when you're dead, well that requires billions of dollars in new regulations and hoops for voters to jump through.  Regulating dead people donating money to Republican SuperPACs on the other hand, well why do you hate free speech, commie?

Who ya gonna call, Mitch?

Two All Vat-Grown Patties...

The first taste test of British lab-grown beef was...interesting.  From a clinical perspective, anyway.

The world's first laboratory-grown beef burger was flipped out of a petri dish and into a frying pan on Monday, with food tasters declaring it tasted "close to meat".

Grown in-vitro from cattle stem cells at a cost of 250,000 euros ($332,000), the burger was cooked and eaten in front of television cameras to gain the greatest media coverage for the culmination of a five-year science experiment.

Resembling a standard circular-shaped red meat patty, it was created by knitting together 20,000 strands of laboratory-grown protein, combined with other ingredients normally used in burgers, such as salt, breadcrumbs and egg powder. Red beet juice and saffron were added to give it color.

The two food tasters were reserved in their judgment, perhaps keen not to offend their host at the London event, noting the burger's "absence of fat".

Pressed for a more detailed description of the flavor, food writer Josh Schonwald said the cultured beef had an "animal protein cake" like quality to it, adding that he would like to try it with some of the extras often served with traditional burgers - salt, pepper, ketchup and jalapenos.

Even the scientist behind the burger's creation, vascular biologist Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, was relatively muted in his praise of its flavor.

"It's a very good start," he told the hundreds of reporters who had gathered to watch the meat being cooked and served.

At some point if we can just get the process down to, you know, not costing several hundred thousand dollars, maybe we can dispense with the whole "slaughtering of animals for their tasty, tasty meat" part and go straight to the good stuff.

But hey, even McDonald's had to start somewhere.  I'm betting in your lifetime we'll have commercially available grown meat (hopefully without the obscene amounts of anti-biotics, steroids, growth hormone, and small crates for animals.)

Thank the stars for rooster sauce and pickles, that'll work on anything.  Even lab meat.

StupidiNews!

• The court martial of Army Maj. Nadal Hasan, accused of killing 13 and injuring 32 in a shootout at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009, gets underway today with Hasan representing himself.
• The US State Department is evacuating non-essential personnel and advising Americans to specifically leave Yemen immediately due to the potential for an imminent terror attack.
• Texas Dem State Sen. Wendy Davis, whose filibuster over abortion six weeks ago brought her sudden national fame, says she is close to making a decision about running for governor.
• Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will be the new owner of the Washington Post, buying the newspaper for a quarter of a billion dollars.
• A class-action suit against Indian IT firm Infosys claims that the global company discriminates against "stupid Americans" when hiring.

Last Call For The GOP Unreality Show

Paul Krugman has had enough of this crap.

Last week House Republicans voted for the 40th time to repeal Obamacare. Like the previous 39 votes, this action will have no effect whatsoever. But it was a stand-in for what Republicans really want to do: repeal reality, and the laws of arithmetic in particular. The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy, unable to participate in actual governing. 

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about policy substance. I may believe that Republicans have their priorities all wrong, but that’s not the issue here. Instead, I’m talking about their apparent inability to accept very basic reality constraints, like the fact that you can’t cut overall spending without cutting spending on particular programs, or the fact that voting to repeal legislation doesn’t change the law when the other party controls the Senate and the White House.

Pretty much everything in this article is truth, and Krugman nails the clown car zeitgeist to the wall again.

When it comes to fiscal policy, then, Republicans have fallen victim to their own con game. And I would argue that something similar explains how the party lost its way, not just on fiscal policy, but on everything.  

This.

Jerry Brown Does The BART, Man

In California, Dem Gov. Jerry Brown stepped in late Sunday night to call time out on the threatened Bay Area Rapid Transit strike in San Francisco.

Hundreds of thousands of San Francisco Bay area commuters got at least a temporary reprieve from a massive transit strike when Gov. Jerry Brown ordered an inquiry into a labor contract dispute.

Sunday night’s eleventh hour order averted the walkout and left the morning commute to proceed normally, without the widespread travel congestion that a strike involving Bay Area Rapid Transit, the nation’s fifth largest rail line, would have created.

In the order, Brown named a board of investigators for a seven-day inquiry into the contract dispute that had labor unions poised to walk off the job at midnight Sunday.

The order Brown issued came under a law that allows the state’s intervention if a strike will significantly disrupt public transportation services and endanger public health.

“For the sake of the people of the Bay Area, I urge — in the strongest terms possible — the parties to meet quickly and as long as necessary to get this dispute resolved,” Brown said in the order.

So Jerry bought the Bay a week or so, but odds are real good we'll be back here next Monday talking about a major public transit strike, and with good reason.  A previous strike last month tied up traffic for four days, and all that did was get BART management to the table.  They haven't done squat since.  The real issue, as always, is pay and pensions.

Despite a state-brokered 30-day contract extension that ended the July walkout, the points of contention are largely unchanged from last month.

BART is offering smaller raises than the unions are seeking, and the transit agency wants workers to begin paying into their pension fund and contribute more toward health costs. Union leaders say the result for many workers would be a net pay cut after years without raises.

BART complains that workers have the best pubic transit worker package in the country.  Workers know that management's game is to change that, and stick them with thousands in health care and pension costs yearly.  We'll see where this goes, but if the workers and unions lose here, there's bascially nowhere left in America where they can win anymore.

That should worry all of us.

The Monster Turtle Of Fancy Farm

The annual political slugfest that is Fancy Farm in Kentucky ignited again over the weekend, and for those of you from out-of-state, Jonathan Miller of the Daily Beast has your primer.

For those uninitiated in Bluegrass State politics, the Fancy Farm picnic is neither fancy nor on a farm. The picnic, held annually on the first Saturday in August in a tiny, far-Western Kentucky hamlet called Fancy Farm (population 458: Salute!), is hosted by St. Jerome's Catholic Church, which bills the event as the "world's largest one-day BBQ." While the day's menu features bingo, 5k runs, and some of the world's most savory sandwiches (Try the mutton... seriously), the main event begins at 2:00 PM when the state's most powerful politicians (and occasionally a few national figures such as George Wallace and Al Gore) take the stage for five to ten minute riffs on the year's hottest campaigns.

But Fancy Farm went from a quiet Western Kentucky stop on any KY politico's statewide tour to the Bluegrass Bowl of mud-slinging because of one man:

Mitch The Turtle.

The Fancy Farm political speaking forum used to have a similar old-fashioned feel. Al Cross, the dean of Kentucky political journalists, remembers that Fancy Farm used to be a “traditional community gathering with the focus on the interests of Western Kentucky,” with a small-town, state-fair sort of ambiance.

But that all changed dramatically in the 1980s, when the picnic’s political forum devolved, according to Cross, into “a piece of political theater”: a hyper-partisan, name-calling screaming match, a microcosm of everything that Americans hate about politics.

The primary culprit? Cross points squarely at Mitch McConnell, and few would disagree. Al Smith, a retired journalist who's such a Kentucky legend that the state's major journalism award bears his name, argues that the Senator must assume significant responsibility for the precipitous decline in civility at Fancy Farm: "McConnell was the first with the idea to bus in hundreds of noisy supporters from the rest of the state, and maybe out-of-state as well...[and he] was the first to use the stage as political theater," cutting down his opponents with elaborately designed, choreographed productions, dressing up his staff to make fun of his opponents."

Mitch the Turtle did much the same again this year.

McConnell, who spoke first, avoided direct attacks on his opponent, instead speaking in broad strokes: “Over the next 15 months, we are going to decide what kind of America we want … Barack Obama’s vision for America or Kentucky’s.”

Alison Grimes wouldn't let Mitch go without a fight.

Grimes, who followed GOP Rep. Ed Whitfield on stage, took direct swipes at McConnell: “Sen. McConnell is the most unpopular senator among Democrats but Republicans, as well. … There’s a reason he’s so disliked. There is a disease of dysfunction in Washington, D.C., and after 30 years, Sen. McConnell is in the center of it. As long as he remains in D.C., D.C. will stand for dysfunctional capitol.”

And neither did Mitch's Tea Party primary challenger, Matt Bevin.

Bevin, an investment fund manager who has attracted support from tea party groups, spoke last out of the trio.

“Mitch McConnell has disappeared. … Where’s Mitch?” he asked the crowd, alluding to McConnell’s time spent in the Senate chamber. “The people of Kentucky have been wondering that for a while now.”

In a reference to his family’s bell-manufacturing business and above the sound of bell-ringing supporters, Bevin said: “Let me tell you something senator: Ask not for whom the bell tolls, senator; they toll for you. Because the people of Kentucky have had enough.”

Mitch the Turtle is looking at the very possible end of his political career, and he knows it.  The Fancy Farm Beast he created 25 years ago is now slobbering in his face, and this race is on, all 15 months of it (or should Mitch lose in May to Bevin, nine months.)

You thought Rand Paul/Jack Conway was an ugly race when I covered it three years ago?  Welcome to Kentucky.  More on this year's Fancy Farm here, here, and here.  Fancy Farm is a nationally known event now, thanks to Mitch...but there's all number of edges on that sword this year and next.

StupidiNews!

• State Department officials will keep 15 of the 22 consulates and embassies closed Sunday due to a terror threat, and have added four more in Africa for a total of 19 closed through Saturday.
• Scottish actor Peter Capaldi, most famous for his role in BBC's The Thick Of It, will play the 12th Doctor Who as announced Sunday.
• Groups of various pro-military, pro-Morsi, anti-government and Sunni and Shi'ite groups met in Cairo over the weekend to try to start a compromise process in Egypt.
• Ambulance service Rural/Metro, who operates ambulances and firefighting teams in 21 states, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
• The White House has overturned a FTC decision that could lead to bans on older iPhone and iPad models.

This All Has A Familiar Stink To It

Remember last month's massive Abu Ghraib prison break in Iraq that sprung dozens of major Al Qaeda figures?

Hundreds of convicts, including senior members of al Qaeda, broke out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail as comrades launched a military-style assault to free them, authorities said on Monday.

The deadly raid on the high-security jail happened as Sunni Muslim militants are re-gaining momentum in their insurgency against the Shiite-led government that came to power after the U.S. invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.

Suicide bombers drove cars packed with explosives to the gates of the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad on Sunday night and blasted their way into the compound, while gunmen attacked guards with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Other militants took up positions near the main road, fighting off security reinforcements sent from Baghdad as several militants wearing suicide vests entered the prison on foot to help free the inmates.

Ten policemen and four militants were killed in the ensuing clashes, which continued until Monday morning, when military helicopters arrived, helping to regain control.

By that time, hundreds of inmates had succeeded in fleeing Abu Ghraib, the prison made notorious a decade ago by photographs showing abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers.

Payback has apparently been organized rather quickly.

The al Qaeda threat that closed U.S. embassies in the Middle East on Sunday is the most serious in years and the "chatter" among suspected terrorists is reminiscent of what preceded the September 11 attacks, a U.S. lawmaker who is briefed on intelligence said.

The State Department closed 21 embassies and consulates and issued a worldwide travel alert warning Americans that al Qaeda may be planning attacks in August, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

"There is an awful lot of chatter out there," Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

He said the "chatter" - communications among terrorism suspects about the planning of a possible attack - was "very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11."

Pretty obvious the two are related.  The timing however is rotten.  Not even Bush went this far.  If after 12 years of fighting these guys there's a prison break and we're closing embassies, we were never winning in the first place, were we?

This all has a familiar stink to it, and I don't like it one bit.