StupidiNews!

• American missionary Kenneth Bae, captured by North Korea and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, has been hospitalized, according to his sister.
• Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce a major new initiative to change federal prosecutions of non-violent drug offenders to eliminate mandatory prison sentences.
• The State Department has reopened embassies closed last week due to terror threats, but embassies in Pakistan and Yemen remained closed.
• Economists are cautiously expecting slight growth in the Eurozone economy for 2Q 2013, after six straight quarters of recession.
• Apple's next iPhone reveal is expected September 10th, according to sources, with a completely revamped iOS7.

Last Call For The Cruz Revolution

You really do have to wonder about the wisdom of a politician calling on his supporters to rise up against America over affordable health care, but Ted Cruz will play this con game for as long as he can.

Sen. Ted Cruz on Saturday continued his call for cutting off funding for President Barack Obama's health care law and told conservative Christians that congressional lawmakers can't be counted on to do it.

The Texas Republican, a tea-party favorite and a possible presidential candidate in 2016, drew a standing ovation at the Family Leadership Summit with his denouncement of the health care initiative labeled "Obamacare" by its critics.

"That reaction right there shows how we win this fight," Cruz said. "If I was sitting in the Senate cloakroom, the reaction would be fundamentally different. If we have to depend on Washington, it will never be done."

As he has in remarks to other conservatives, Cruz asserted that a grassroots effort would be needed. "The only way we win this fight is if the American people rise up and hold our elected officials accountable," he said.

So here's Cruz, saying "We need to shut down the government over Obamacare" and admitting that will never happen, but they are cheering him on anyway.  Of course, if you're wondering why the logical disconnect, remember these are "Christians" whose idea of "Christianity" is "making people suffer on purpose".

They just want those people to be hurt, that's all.  Cruz will be able to ride that train for the rest of his career, and he'll never have to deliver.

Another Honey Badger Moment

Winger blogs are screaming this morning that Sen. Harry Reid has "finally given us the truth about fascist Obamacare" or something.  The news?  Reid mentioned in a panel discussion Fiday on a Las Vegas PBS show that Obamacare is a step towards single payer health care.

Reid said he thinks the country has to “work our way past” insurance-based health care during a Friday night appearance on Vegas PBS’ program “Nevada Week in Review.”

“What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,” Reid said.

When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

The idea of introducing a single-payer national health care system to the United States, or even just a public option, sent lawmakers into a tizzy back in 2009, when Reid was negotiating the health care bill.

“We had a real good run at the public option … don’t think we didn’t have a tremendous number of people who wanted a single-payer system,” Reid said on the PBS program, recalling how then-Sen. Joe Lieberman’s opposition to the idea of a public option made them abandon the notion and start from scratch.

Eventually, Reid decided the public option was unworkable.

“We had to get a majority of votes,” Reid said. “In fact, we had to get a little extra in the Senate, we have to get 60.”

Reid cited the post-WWII auto industry labor negotiations that made employer-backed health insurance the norm, remarking that “we’ve never been able to work our way out of that” before predicting that Congress would someday end the insurance-based health care system.

Only if you haven't paid any attention whatsoever to the debate over Obamacare on the left is this actually news in the sense that it is a new development.  Again, the public option and single payer debate came up in 2009 and early 2010.  Oh, but look who we're talking about suffering from epistemic closure?

And yes, these idiots are calling it fascism.  How horrible to have health care coverage from your government.

Republican Muscleheads

Since conservatives have gotten rid of voter suppression for us and we no longer need the Voting Rights Act, and that everyone gets health care in America so we don't need to expand Medicaid, it's also comforting to know that they've gotten rid of poor people and hunger in America, so we don't need SNAP benefits and food programs.

At a town hall in Welch, OK on Thursday, Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) called for the outright elimination of aid programs for low-income Americans, claiming that he has witnessed food stamp fraud firsthand. Mullin said he would like to “do away with a lot of these programs” because they allow people to slack off.

“The food programs are designed to take care of people who can’t work, not won’t work. And we all know those people that won’t work, right?” he asked the audience. “They’re abusing the program, and we’ve got to get them off of it.”

Of course, 618,000 Oklahomans are on SNAP which comes out to one in six, and due to the expiration of the SNAP boost from the 2009 Recovery Act, SNAP benefits are already due for a substantial cut across the board in November.  But of course, none of the people in that town hall meeting could possibly be one of those people.  (PS, Welch, OK is in Craig County, where about 20% of residents are on SNAP benefits as of 2011.  I'm sure those numbers are higher now.  But they're all frauds, right?)

"So I’m in Crystal City and I’m buying my groceries…and I noticed everybody was giving that card. They had these huge baskets, and I realized it was the first of the month. But then I’m looking over, and there’s a couple beside me. This guy was built like a brick house. I mean he had muscles all over him. He was in a little tank top and pair of shorts and really nice Nike shoes. And she was standing there, and she was all in shape and she looked like she had just come from a fitness program. She was in the spandex, and you know, they were both physically fit. And they go up in front of me and they pay with that card. Fraud. Absolute 100% all it is is fraud…it’s all over the place. And there you go, to the fact that we shouldn’t be supporting those who won’t work. They’re spending their money someplace."

So there you go, America.  Republicans have already established as "fact" that people who are fat can't possibly need food stamps, and now we know people who are fit can't possibly need food stamps, so really nobody needs them.

Here's the truth:

Meanwhile, many of those who receive SNAP benefits (from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps) work: More than 40 percent of recipients live in a household with earnings. Those who don’t work are likely to be under 18 or over 60. In fact, strict eligibility requirements for the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program have disqualified one in four food insecure households for being too high-income, and are allowing at least 50 million people to go hungry. Regardless, House Republicans are gunning for more cuts that would kick millions more families off the vital program.

And Republicans like Rep. Mullin here want to trash the program completely.  Because our real problem is we spend too much money on poor people. Starve them all, let God and religious charites decide who's worthy, right?

You know, not those people.

Last Call For Ezra Klein's Credibility

I like Ezra Klein.  He's intelligent, he brings facts and debate to his discussions, and he's good at picking out the wheat from the chaff, unlike most pundits.

But he has one massive blind spot in that regard, and just like his friend Chris Hayes (who Klein covered for this week on All In) that blind spot is anything to do with the Dudebro Defector.  Klein on President Obama's press conference Friday:

Obama began the news conference by announcing a series of reforms meant to increase the transparency of, and the constraints on, the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. They included reforms to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which enables the collection of telephone metadata; changes to the powerful surveillance courts to ensure ”that the government’s position is challenged by an adversary”; declassification of key NSA documents; and the formation of “a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies.”

“What makes us different from other countries is not simply our ability to secure our nation,” Obama said. “It’s the way we do it, with open debate and democratic process.”

OK, now, since this is what everyone has been asking the President to do, you would think that would be at least a point in his favor.  But what immediately follows is some very familiar goalpost-moving behavior we expect to see from the hard right:

If that’s so, then Edward Snowden should be hailed as a hero. There’s simply no doubt that his leaks led to more open debate and more democratic process than would’ve existed otherwise.

Obama reluctantly admitted as much. “There’s no doubt that Mr. Snowden’s leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than would have been the case if I had simply appointed this review board,” he said, though he also argued that absent Snowden, “we would have gotten to the same place, and we would have done so without putting at risk our national security and some very vital ways that we are able to get intelligence that we need to secure the country.”

As Tim Lee writes, this is dubious at best. Prior to Snowden’s remarks, there was little public debate — in part because the federal government was preventing it.

So, zero credit for Obama, the guy who defected to Russia (a country that just passed laws making it illegal to have an opinion supporting LGBTQ people) with tons of juicy NSA info on methods and means is a hero, and Klein, who is a journalist and print and TV media figure, is complaining about the stifling of debate.  Awesome.

I always enjoy pundits talking about the stifling of debate, as if pundits talking about things wasn't debate, and that President Obama had a gun to their heads.  It's disingenuous enough when right-wing hacks do it, but Ezra Klein knows better, and he's gone right off the cliff.  I didn't think I'd be putting him in the Village Stupidity category anytime soon, but if he really was going to have a serious debate about the US, Russia, and the NSA, this is nowhere close.

The Death Of Immigration Reform Isn't So Simple

I've given Greg Sargent grief before on his premise that the GOP's relationship with immigration reform is somehow more complicated than demographics, racism, and Obama Derangement Syndrome, but Sargent attempted a defense of his case on Thursday morning.

The chances that comprehensive immigration reform will ever pass the House  are very slim. However, the easy conventional wisdom about what’s happening now — which holds that the conservative base controls the outcome completely, that the death of reform is preordained, and that House Republicans are only looking for a way to kill reform blamelessly — is overly simplistic and is increasingly looking like it’s just wrong.

To understand what’s really happening, the key question to ask is: Are House Republicans just playing for time, or are they actually grappling with the issue of immigration reform and what to do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants?

My answer to that question is the former.  Time and again, Republicans have shown that they aren't interested in governance, merely bomb-throwing rhetoric and obstruction.  If they can't completely control every aspect of legislation, they'll exact whatever price they can and burn the rest down.  It's been this way since 2006, and it will continue.  So what's Greg's theory that this time is different?

In a story that deserves a bit of play today, the Daily Pilot reports that California Rep. Kevin McCarthy — who as the GOP whip is a member of the House leadership team — addressed immigration reform in a meeting of constituents. In some ways, what he said wasn’t surprising: He repeated that the borders must be secure first, and stopped short of supporting citizenship.

But McCarthy came out for legal status, crucially putting it this way: “What you then have to address is the 11 million that are here considered illegal.” This comes after GOP Reps. Aaron Schock and Daniel Webster also embraced varying but significant levels of reform earlier this month.

OK, I can see why a California Republican would see immigration reform in particular as important.  But that means McCarthy is the exception to the rule.  Remember, we have multiple Republicans who have openly said that if the leadership brings the Senate bill up for a vote, Orange Julius will be replaced.

ABC News gets it right today: “Republicans may be changing minds on reform.” Is this all a big ruse designed to make Republicans look serious about the issue before killing reform outright? Maybe. But maybe not. As Simon Rosenberg suggests, we should treat all of this seriously, acknowledging Republicans have been entrenched in an anti-amnesty position for years and that it is at least possible that House Republicans (perhaps for purely political reasons, but that would be movement nonetheless) will grapple with how to move from there to support for reform.

Those who glibly say reform is definitely dead no matter what will read the above as optimism. It isn’t optimism at all: far and away the most likely outcome remains that reform will die. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t describe what’s happening now accurately. And the conventional wisdom has it wrong.

OK, so granted, there's a slim chance it'll pass instead of no chance.  That is significant from a journalism and political viewpoint, yes.  From a practical viewpoint, no.

But Sargent is correct on the technical issues.  Not that it's going to help.  For instance, if this claim by Dem Luis Gutierrez is true, then there's a direct danger to allowing the Senate bill to come up in the House:  it would pass easily.

Forty to 50 House Republicans will support immigration reform, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) predicted Thursday.

Gutierrez said many of the Republicans supportive of immigration reform don’t want to be identified, but he insisted they would support comprehensive immigration reform.

“If they ask me today, go find those 40 to 50 Republicans, I’ll tell them I found them. I know where they’re at,” Gutierrez said in an interview with Ed O’Keefe at the Washington Post.

End game, right there.  So no, the Senate bill will never get a vote, and the House GOP will play out the clock.

Meanwhile, In The Echo Chamber Of Rand Paul's Mind...

Rand Paul's interview with Bloomberg Businessweek's Joshua Green is something to behold, folks.  And by "something to behold" I mean "another in a long line of idiotic positions that immediately disqualify him from the White House."

What is your plan to refashion the GOP to draw more minority and younger voters?

All voters, but particularly young people, and often young people who are African American or Hispanic, I think they have a sense of justice, and they sometimes mistrust government with achieving justice. So one of the big issues that I’ve fought here is getting rid of the provision called indefinite detention. This is the idea that an American citizen could be accused of a crime, held indefinitely without charge, and actually sent from America to Guantánamo Bay and kept forever.

I think there is something in that message of justice and a right to a trial by jury and a right to a lawyer that resonate beyond the traditional Republican Party and will help us to grow the Republican Party with the youth. Defending the Internet’s privacy, these are all things that broaden the appeal of Republicans.

Sure, because when I think about how minorities are mistreated by the American justice system, I first think of indefinite detention in Gitmo.  That's going to resonate more than stop and frisk, Trayvon Martin, gun murders, the Voting Rights Act being destroyed, etc.  Awesome.

A recent article in the New Republic said your budget would eviscerate the departments of Energy, State, Commerce, EPA, FDA, Education, and many others. Would Americans support that?

My budget is similar to the Penny Plan, which cuts 1 percent a year for five or six years and balances the budget. Many Americans who have suffered during a recession have had to cut their spending 1 percent, and they didn’t like doing it, but they were able to do it to get their family’s finances back in order. I see no reason why government can’t cut 1 percent of its spending.

And when Americans figure out all those pennies are coming from only Energy, the EPA, the FDA, Education, and not the Pentagon, they might protest.

But the end takes the cake:

Who would your ideal Fed chairman be?
Hayek would be good, but he’s deceased.

Nondead Fed chairman.
Friedman would probably be pretty good, too, and he’s not an Austrian, but he would be better than what we have.

Dead, too.
Yeah. Let’s just go with dead, because then you probably really wouldn’t have much of a functioning Federal Reserve.

Can we stop pretending that Rand Paul is anything other than a massive embarrassment my state is stuck with until 2017?

Last Call For The Odious Patrick McHenry

Ahh yes, the Congressman of the Zandarparents, good ol' The Odious Patrick McHenry.  Of course he was going to have a town hall meeting bashing Obamacare in blood-red NC-10.

Only, the best laid plans of mice and men...

In Washington, D.C., Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) issues countless press releases boasting about his votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, insisting that his constituents in North Carolina are clamoring for relief from the law. But during a town hall in Swannanoa on Wednesday, voters confronted the five-term Congressman with an entirely different sentiment: they demanded to know why Republicans would take away the law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions without offering any credible other alternative for reforming the health care system. One grieving mother, who spoke to reporters before the event, said that her son was denied insurance because of a pre-existing health condition and eventually died of colon cancer. 

Oops.  You know Patrick, there are real people out there in towns like Mooresville, Lincolnton, Swannanoa and Hickory.  The area where I grew up got the crap kicked out of them in the 80's when textiles went under, in the 90's when NAFTA shipped industrial manufacturing jobs to Mexico, and in the Oughts when the dot-com bust took out the fiber optic cable plants, and it got crapped on again by the financial crisis here in the 2010's.  So yeah, you might want to remember that.

McHenry did offer a prescription for insuring individuals with pre-existing conditions, suggesting that sicker people who are cherry picked out of coverage on the individual market, should enroll in high-risk pools. The comment elicited boos from the crowd, as the plans, which are only open to sick people, are usually “unaffordable, unavailable or ineffective for many of those who most need health insurance.” The Affordable Care Act included a temporary program that failed to attract enough applicants and several states have experimented with similar initiatives. 

Sorry, Pat.  Here in the Unifour, people know what it's like to be out of work and to struggle with health care and insurance costs.  We happen to think the individual benefits of Obamacare are pretty damn necessary, even when we hate calling it Obamacare.

And if there's hope for health care reform even in fire-engine red NC-10, the rest of the country is asking what the Republicans plan to do after a repeal of Obamacare, too.

The Turtle Gets Shelled (By Friendly Fire)

The only thing better than Mitch McConnell getting panned by his opponents is Mitch McConnell getting panned by his own campaign director.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) campaign manager said he's begrudgingly working in his current capacity to help the presidential prospects of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), according to an explosive phone recording that surfaced Thursday.

In the recording, obtained by Economic Policy Journal, Jesse Benton — who ran Paul's successful 2010 campaign before joining McConnell's team — told conservative activist Dennis Fusaro that he has an ulterior motive in working the GOP leader's 2014 campaign.

"Between you an me, I'm sorta holding my nose for two years," Benton said in the recording, "'cause what we're doing here is gonna be a big benefit to Rand in '16."

Oh my.  Damage control teams to the bridge!

Benton pushed back forcefully, issuing a statement to denounce the recording and reiterate his commitment to McConnell's campaign.

"It is truly sick that someone would record a private phone conversation I had out of kindness and use it to try to hurt me," he said in the statement. "I believe in Senator McConnell and am 100 percent committed to his re-election. Being selected to lead his campaign is one of the great honors of my life and I look forward to victory in November of 2014."

Needless to say, Tea Party challenger Matt Bevin's crew wasted zero time in jumping all over this one.

Even Mitch McConnell's campaign manager thinks Sen. McConnell isn't conservative and is holding his nose for 2 years #kysen...
— Matt Bevin (@MattBevin) August 8, 2013

And of course, Kentucky is the national laughing stock of political shenanigans once again.

YES! RT @darth: ok evan http://t.co/ZZ2QhiNcO3
— E McMorris-Santoro (@EvanMcSan) August 8, 2013

But you know, it's worth it to be reminded there's 15 more months of high-larious EPIC FAIL ahead.

Giving Them The Business

Jazz Shaw over at Hot Air is usually a reasonable moderate (he regularly embraces the title of RINO) but every now and again he reminds us of what a "reasonable, moderate Republican" really thinks.  Jazz takes issue with the notion that paying a bit more for a Big Mac will help fast food workers earn a living wage.

Finally, the wages they pay follow the same laws as the prices they charge. They pay their workers the least they can, either by law or because paying less would not attract the number of employees they require for operations. Just like every other business in the country. One point which seems to confuse the social justice battalion is this idea they seem to be stuck on that there is some sort of obligation or social contract which states that industry is obligated or intended to create jobs, and good paying ones at that. The fact is, job creation was never one of the driving factors in the evolution of industry. It was only a happy side effect. Business sees employees as expensive, problematic components in the corporate machine. (Sorry to be so harsh.) They get sick, they complain, they want raises, they make mistakes… robots are far preferable. But robots can’t do everything. One of the goals of any modern business model, I’m sad to say, is to reduce the number of employees to the minimum possible. All of these things render the McPoverty calculator pretty much irrelevant.

And that's how a whole hell of a lot of business owners (and Republicans in general) think.  Employees are a detriment, a cost, a problem.  They are a negative to be pared from a company's bottom line.

That social contract Jazz talks about used to exist in America.  Unions made that possible on a large scale for millions of American workers.  Then, somewhere along the line, employees became a business's greatest minus instead of the source of its growth and vitality.  "Get away with as few workers and with as low pay as possible" became the rule in American business, and without unions to fight back, that became the new normal.

Henry Blodget strongly disagrees with that new normal.

This view, unfortunately, is not just selfish and demeaning. It's also economically stupid. Those "costs" you are minimizing (employees) are also current and prospective customers for your company and other companies. And the less money they have, the fewer products and services they are going to buy.

Obviously, the folks who own and run America's big corporations want to do as well as they can for themselves. But the key point is this:

It is not a law that they pay their employees as little as possible.

It is a choice.

It is a choice made by senior managers and owners who want to keep the highest possible percentage of a company's wealth for themselves.

It is, in other words, a selfish choice.

It is a choice that reveals that, regardless of what they say about how much they value their employees, regardless of what euphemism they use to describe their employees ("associate," "partner," "representative," "team-member"), they, in fact, don't give a damn about their employees.

I don't believe every business in the country operates like that, but nearly all of them do.  Maybe we should be asking ourselves about why that is.

StupidiNews!

• Scientists at the National Institutes of Health say a new malaria vaccine has shown 100% effectiveness in early human trials.
• A Florida man has turned himself into police after admitting to killing his girlfriend and posting a picture of her body on Facebook.
• Washington DC park officials are turning to goats to clean an overgrown parcel of land inside the Congressional Cemetery.
• Electric car maker Tesla Motors beat quarterly expectations handily, boosting company stock prices and founder Elon Musk's bottom line by more than half a billion dollars.
• A Brooklyn member of a credit card theft ring which stole over 95,000 card numbers was sentenced to 22 to 44 years in prison.

Last Call For Fannie And Freddie

In a speech on fixing our broken housing market given in Phoenix on Tuesday, President Obama called for the end of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which pretty much ensures he's the Worst Socialist Ever(tm).  He had this to say about making the housing market stable again:

That begins with winding down the companies known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. For too long, these companies were allowed to make big profits buying mortgages, knowing that if their bets went bad, taxpayers would be left holding the bag. It was “heads we win, tails you lose.” And it was wrong.

The good news is that there’s a bipartisan group of Senators working to end Fannie and Freddie as we know them. I support these kinds of efforts, and today I want to lay out four core principles for what I believe this reform should look like.

First, private capital should take a bigger role in the mortgage market. I know that must sound confusing to the folks who call me a raging socialist every day. But just like the health care law that set clear rules for insurance companies to protect consumers and make it more affordable for millions to buy coverage on the private market, I believe that while our housing system must have a limited government role, private lending should be the backbone of the housing market, including community-based lenders who view their borrowers not as a number, but as a neighbor.

Second, no more leaving taxpayers on the hook for irresponsibility or bad decisions. We encourage the pursuit of profit – but the era of expecting a bailout after your pursuit of profit puts the whole country at risk is over.

Third, we should preserve access to safe and simple mortgage products like the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage. That’s something families should be able to rely on when they make the most important purchase of their lives.

Fourth, we have to keep housing affordable for first-time homebuyers and families working to climb into the middle class. We need to strengthen the FHA so it gives today’s families the same kind of chance it gave my grandparents, and preserves that rung on the ladder of opportunity. And we need to support affordable rental housing and keep up our fight against homelessness. Since I took office we’ve helped bring one in four homeless veterans off the streets. Here in Phoenix, thanks to the hard work of everyone from Mayor Stanton to the local United Way to US Airways, you’re on track to end chronic homelessness for veterans by 2014. But we have to keep going, because nobody in America, and certainly no veteran, should be left to live on the street.

Naturally, Republicans have already thought of this whole "wait a minute what if Obama calls our bluff on wanting to unwind Fannie and Freddie?  We should pass a bill that does that, only it's crazy."

A Republican-sponsored bill that would liquidate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and dramatically reduce the U.S. government backstop in the mortgage market was approved by a House of Representatives committee on Wednesday.

The House Financial Services Committee voted 30-27 largely along party lines to approve the bill. The split reflects a deep divide between Republicans and Democrats over how to remake the U.S. mortgage finance system, after the housing bubble burst and plunged the country into a severe credit crisis.

The House bill would abolish government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac within five years and replace them with a non-profit, utility-like platform that investors would use to securitize mortgages. Unlike mortgage securities offered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the new securities would be issued without a government guarantee.

It also makes massive cuts to FHA loans and would basically eliminate 30-year mortgages overnight, leaving home ownership virtually unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans, but hey.  It gets rid of Fannie and Freddie!

Republicans are on it, folks.

Turns Out It's Good For You, Moose Lady

The latest data from the CDC suggests the First Lady's "Let's Move" initiative to reduce childhood obesity is having a significant impact on making kids healthier.  Zerlina Maxwell notes the programs success over at The Grio:

According to the report, the obesity rates for low income preschoolers has gone down in 19 states between 2008 and 2011. That news will be music to the ears of Let’s Move supporters who were tasked with the specific goal of fighting childhood obesity.

And of course the biggest critic of Michelle Obama over this?  Moose Lady.

The first lady was attacked incessantly by conservatives, including Sarah Palin, who were up in arms at Michelle Obama’s suggestion that American children exercise and eat vegetables.

Palin suggested in 2010, that it was the First Lady’s worldview that would give her the nerve to suggest that “parents [cannot] make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat.”

Palin also implied that it was a “God-given right” for children to be overweight, saying “[i]nstead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician’s wife’s priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track,” to conservative radio host Laura Ingraham.

Palin might want to read up on adult obesity rates before commenting on the latest news. Before this decline, obesity rates for all age groups had been going up consistently for everyone for nearly 30 years straight. It’s quite possible that the high-profile focus on the issue has lead to this recent decline, since raising awareness is a key component to any campaign with the goal of serving the public’s welfare.

Ouch.

Hey folks, childhood obesity in the US has rocketed upwards since the Reagan years.  This is the first time anything has remotely gone down in decades.  You would think Sarah Palin, herself an avid runner and sportswoman, would appreciate what the First Lady is doing.

You won't get an apology out of this sour-ass moose though.

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.