StupidiNews!

• Congressional leader from both parties say they've worked out an agreement to keep the government open through September 30th.
• Newly sworn-in Virginia Gov. Terry McAullife's first day on the job included an executive order protecting LGBT state employees from discrimination.
• In an effort to win back consumers after a massive credit card security breach over the holidays, retailer Target is turning to a new public relations campaign and security overhaul.
• Japanese distillery giant Suntory is looking to by Jim Beam Brands in order to get its hand on Maker's Mark and the US bourbon market in a reported $16 billion deal.
• Codenamed "Threshhold", Microsoft's Windows 9 could be hitting store shelves as early as April 2015 as the software maker zeroes in on Google and Apple.

Last Call To Sink The GOP

Alex Sink, that is.  And Florida's special election for the vacant seat of the late Republican Rep. Bill Young could very well go to the Democrats in March.

More than a dozen operatives and officials from both parties interviewed by POLITICO were almost unanimous that Democrat Alex Sink, her party’s 2010 nominee for Florida governor, has emerged as the unambiguous favorite in the race. The primary, in which Sink has run unopposed as a group of Republicans have slugged it out, is on Tuesday. The general election is on March 11. 

Democrats need to gain 17 seats to win the House majority in November. An early win in Florida would give the party ammunition to argue they‘re in for a better year than political handicappers expect. A loss, on the other hand, would be widely seen as a serious blow: On Thursday, political analyst Stu Rothenberg penned a piece in Roll Call titled, “The Race Democrats Can’t Afford to Lose.” 

Republicans admit they are increasingly alarmed about the prospect of losing the St. Petersburg-area district. Democrats, after enduring a heartbreaking loss in a 2013 South Carolina special election they thought was theirs, are carefully managing expectations but can smell victory.

We need all the D's who can win that we can get, and this is a seat we can win.

Among Republicans there is unhappiness with the candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primary and disappointment that many of the party’s best and brightest who long had been thought of as successors to Young didn’t run. 

David Jolly, who’s seen as the favorite to get the GOP nod, is a Washington lobbyist — a profession that leaves him vulnerable to being portrayed as a hired gun and insider. State Rep. Kathleen Peters began the race with plenty of promise, winning endorsements from a group of House GOP women eager to expand their ranks. But some Republicans believe her campaign has fizzled, with the candidate scoring low in recent polls. Mark Bircher, a little-known Iraq War veteran, has struggled to raise money.

Or maybe the problem is the GOP brand has been so tarnished by extremist nutcases like Allen West and Rick Scott that Florida is tired of electing them.  Go figure.

We'll keep an eye on this race in March.

The Villagers' Role In The Boss Fantasy

Expanding more on my last post, the entire GOP fantasy involving Chris Christie centers around the fact his dishonest and mean behavior as Governor of New Jersey made him "authentic" and "a strong leader".  Now that the wheels are coming off the Christie bandwagon, we get pieces like this from WIN THE MORNING Magazine: "15 Chris Christie Controversies You Missed"

Democrats in New Jersey have been celebrating what you might call Chris Christiemas this week. When documents were released strongly suggesting that senior members of Governor Christie’s staff were behind the George Washington Bridge lane closures in Fort Lee, the Gov’s ideological opponents breathed a sigh of relief. Christie’s unrivaled political skill and, as Matt Katz outlined here in November, ability to drive a narrative of his choosing, have meant that until now, The Story of Chris Christie As Told By The National Media is one that Christie has largely written himself. As one New Jersey Democratic strategist told me, “the press had basically inaugurated him already.” But Christie’s political career has been riddled with controversies big and small, most of which have been paid little attention by those outside the Garden State. And while perhaps none of these kerfuffles placed anyone in imminent danger quite like Bridgegate did, at least a few of them might have spelled the end of another, less media savvy politician’s career.

And yet Politico was one of those very "national media" outlets that the Democrats in New Jersey are rightfully complaining about, pretending they had no idea why anyone would find fault in the Villagers' love of the man.

Their mendacious lack of awareness (bordering on being a three-year-old with chocolate stains on his face who is asked what happened to the chocolate chip cookies on the table, responds "I don't know!") is equaled only by the mendacity of the same level in the Christie camp's response to the bridge scandal.

Keep in mind Christie never had a chance in 2016, anyway.  There's a reason why Romney passed him over.

The Bridge Over Troubled Christie Is Now On Fire

After years of propping the him up as "authentic" and "bipartisan" suddenly the Villagers are asking questions about why GOP NJ Gov. Chris Christie may not be so honest.

Just days after dismissing two top advisers for their roles in the George Washington Bridge scandal, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is facing questions over the use of Superstorm Sandy relief funds. 

CNN has learned that federal officials are investigating whether Christie improperly used those relief funds to produce tourism ads that starred him and his family. 

The news couldn't come at a worse time for the scandal-plagued Republican, who is facing two probes into whether his staff tied up traffic near the country's busiest bridge to punish a Democratic mayor who refused to endorse his successful re-election bid. 

If the Sandy inquiry finds any wrongdoing, it could prove even more damaging to Christie's national ambitions. His performance during and after the superstorm has been widely praised and is a fundamental part of his straight-shooting political brand. 

In the new probe, federal auditors will examine New Jersey's use of $25 million in Sandy relief funds for a marketing campaign to promote tourism at the Jersey Shore after Sandy decimated the state's coastline in late 2012, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone told CNN.

All the local shenanigans that supporters dismissed about the guy as "non-issues" are suddenly real problems in his now "scandal-plagued" administration.  It's funny now that Christie's brand is permanently damaged how all of a sudden this stuff demands closer inspection.  People are shocked that Christie would do anything to turn his response to Hurricane Sandy into political gold, even possibly break the law?

Now why would Christie risk his image like that?  Oh yes, a year ago, he was THE BOSS.  Now he's just in trouble.

Lots of trouble.

StupidiNews!

• France's first lady, Valerie Trierwieler, has been been hospitalized following allegations French President Francois Hollande has been having an affair.
• A federal judge has ruled that a flea market painting that turned out to be a stolen Renoir artwork has to be returned to the Baltimore Museum of Art, where it was taken from 60 years ago.
• The US State Department has issued a travel warning for the Sochi Olympics, advising Americans to be careful of possible terror attacks.
• Defense contractor Honeywell is under investigation for producing avionics parts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in China before moving production to the US.
• A year after the suicide of internet activist Aaron Swartz, hacker group Anonymous hit the website of Swartz's former university, MIT.

Iran Into A Heck Of A Deal

Looks like the tentative deal with the P5+1 nations (The five permanent members of the UN security Council, the US, Russia, France, the UK and China, plus Germany) and Iran announced last November is now going forward as a real framework for peace starting January 20th.

Iran and six world powers have agreed on how to put in place an accord that would temporarily freeze much of Iran’s nuclear program, American and Iranian officials said on Sunday. 

That accord would go into effect on Jan. 20. 

International negotiators worked out an agreement in November to constrain much of Iran’s program for six months so that diplomats would have time to pursue a more comprehensive follow-up accord. 

But before the temporary agreement could take effect, negotiators had to work out the technical procedures for carrying it out and resolve some of its ambiguities in concert with the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

Under the interim agreement, Iran would stop enriching uranium beyond 5 percent, a level that would be sufficient for energy production but that would require further enrichment for making bombs. 

Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 percent would be diluted or converted to oxide so that it could not be readily used for military purposes.

So the interim deal is in place and is moving forward.  Now, the real work of a lasting deal with Iran will begin.

Republicans of course are already screaming bloody murder.

Long Time Coming For Leading Ladies

As Buzzfeed writer Adam Vary points out, The Hunger Games sequel, Catching Fire, became the #1 box office movie of 2013 finally surpassing Iron Man 3.  I enjoyed the film myself and thought it was a stronger movie than the first, and Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen is simply amazing.

There's another more notable reason for the film's box office take:

Remarkable stat: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is the first movie with a solo female lead to be the year's #1 film since The Exorcist.
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) January 10, 2014

To be fair, since The Exorcist opened in 1973, there have been films featuring women in arguably lead roles that have topped the domestic box office for the year: 2011’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone both starred Emma Watson; 2009’s Avatar starred Zoe Saldana; 1997’s Titanic starred Kate Winslet; and 1978’s Grease starred Olivia Newton-John. But all of those movies also featured a male actor either as a co-lead or the film’s main protagonist (respectively, Daniel Radcliffe, Sam Worthington, Leonardo DiCaprio, and John Travolta). 

Jennifer Lawrence, by contrast, is inarguably the sole protagonist of Catching Fire. Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, and Sam Claflin fill in the main supporting roles, but we do not track their emotional story in the movie. We only track Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen. 

In truth, The Exorcist just barely qualifies as a film with a solo female protagonist. The Oscar-winning horror film starts off following Chris MacNeil’s (Ellen Burstyn) terror at the deteriorating health of her young daughter Regan (Linda Blair). But the second half of the film essentially drops Burstyn’s role as two priests played by Max von Sydow and Jason Miller perform the titular exorcism on Regan. 

If you want to find a No. 1 movie with a woman as the clear, unambiguous lead, you’ve got to go back to 1968’s Funny Girl, starring Barbra Streisand as groundbreaking comedienne Fanny Brice. (Omar Sharif plays Brice’s first husband Nicky Arnstein, and though the film tracks the arc of their relationship, it does so from Brice’s point of view.)

So it's been 40 (or 45, depending on your view) years since a #1 box office movie in the US had a solo female lead as the star.

That's a devastating indictment of Hollywood, frankly.  And more power to Jennifer Lawrence with her upcoming films.

More Breaches Of Trust

Meanwhile, the credit card information breach announced by Target earlier this month is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to compromised credit info during the holidays last year.

Target Corp and Neiman Marcus are not the only U.S. retailers whose networks were breached over the holiday shopping season last year, according to sources familiar with attacks on other merchants that have yet to be publicly disclosed. 

Smaller breaches on at least three other well-known U.S. retailers took place and were conducted using similar techniques as the one on Target, according to the people familiar with the attacks. Those breaches have yet to come to light. Also, similar breaches may have occurred earlier last year. 

The sources said that they involved retailers with outlets in malls, but declined to elaborate. They also said that while they suspect the perpetrators may be the same as those who launched the Target attack, they cannot be sure because they are still trying to find the culprits behind all of the security breaches. 

Law enforcement sources have said they suspect the ring leaders are from Eastern Europe, which is where most big cyber crime cases have been hatched over the past decade.

This is the kind of thing that worries me most about information security and privacy.  Having been a victim of identity theft in the past and all I had to go through in order to get my information back in proper order, I'm far more worried about sloppy corporate abuses and data thieves actively making my life miserable than I am the federal government in theory.

You also have to wonder about Republicans yelling that we don't need anything like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau either because government is baaaaaaaaad.

It's not government that's screwing up here, folks.

The Kroog Talks Kentucky

Paul Krugman talks about Owsley County, Kentucky to be precise.

National Review has an actually interesting report by Kevin Williamson on the state of Appalachia, providing a valuable portrait of the region’s woes — plus an account of how people turn food stamps fungible by converting them into soda. But the piece also has a moral: the big problem, it argues, is the way government aid creates dependency. It’s the Paul Ryan notion of the safety net as a “hammock” that makes life too easy for the poor.
But do the facts about Appalachia actually support this view? No, they don’t. Indeed, even the facts presented in the article don’t support it. 

Williamson dismisses suggestions that economic factors might be driving social collapse:

If you go looking for the catastrophe that laid this area low, you’ll eventually discover a terrifying story: Nothing happened. 

But he almost immediately contradicts himself, noting that employment in eastern Kentucky has fallen with the decline of coal and what little manufacturing the area once had. True, there was no sudden moment when the town’s main employer closed up shop; it was a gradual process. But so what? The underlying story of Appalachia is in fact one of declining opportunity. Here’s the unemployment rate for Owsley county:

Is it any surprise that people have turned to food stamps?

Reminder:  the vast majority of Americans who recieve SNAP benefits and unemployment benefits, like nearly all forms of social assistance, are white.  It's folks in places like Owsley County who are poor, not just "inner city Detroit" and whatnot.

But hey, FOX News convinces folks to vote against this stuff, then blame "those people" when things keep getting worse.

Jumping Off That Bridge Too Far

New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie is toast.

He told everyone at his long, bizarre, rambling press conference on Thursday that he hadn't heard anything about the Fort Lee bridge closures until that day.

He lied.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie complained in a phone call with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that a Port Authority official has been wading too deeply into controversial and potentially politically explosive lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, according to a report Thursday. 

The issue involves bridge toll lanes in Fort Lee, N.J., that were cut from three to one in September, causing a massive traffic backups.

That article was from December 12 of last year, a month ago.

So why would he need to talk to Gov. Cuomo about this if there was nothing wrong, and nothing to cover up when the Port Authority was investigating why the closures happened?

Toast.

Stupidinews, Weekend Edition!

• New Jersey legislators released some 2,000 pages of documents related to GOP Gov. Chris Christie's staff and the closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge for possible political reasons.
• Diplomatic ties between India and the US are strained after the arrest of an Indian diplomat and Indian retaliation by asking the US to remove an individual from the embassy at New Delhi.
• The first permanent detainee case to come before President Obama's new parole review board at Guantanamo has been cleared for prisoner transfer out of the facility.
• A New Jersey man has been arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle F35 Joint Strike fighter plane plans to Iran.
• A new UK startup is offering "vault storage" of Bitcoins, backed by Llloyd's of London, as a new service to Bitcoin holders.

Last Call For High-Way Robbery

Nothing I can say can improve on this tweet.

People kept stealing the 420 mile marker in Colorado. This was CDOT's solution. pic.twitter.com/xDsZkTe0Fv
— StuffJournalistsLike (@JournalistsLike) January 10, 2014

Never change, Colorado.

For The One Percent, By The One Percent

If you're wondering why Congress just doesn't understand what it's like to be an average American, it's because we've finally reached the point where the majority of Congress's 534 members are worth at least $1 million.

For the first time in history, most members of Congress are millionaires, according to a new analysis of personal financial disclosure data by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Of 534 current members of Congress, at least 268 had an average net worth of $1 million or more in 2012, according to disclosures filed last year by all members of Congress and candidates. The median net worth for the 530 current lawmakers who were in Congress as of the May filing deadline was $1,008,767 -- an increase from last year when it was $966,000. In addition, at least one of the members elected since then, Rep. Katherine Clark(D-Mass.), is a millionaire, according to forms she filed as a candidate. (There is currently one vacancy in Congress.) 

Last year only 257 members, or about 48 percent of lawmakers, had a median net worth of at least $1 million.

Members of Congress have long been far wealthier than the typical American, but the fact that now a majority of members -- albeit just a hair over 50 percent -- are millionaires represents a watershed moment at a time when lawmakers are debating issues like unemployment benefits, food stamps and the minimum wage, which affect people with far fewer resources, as well as considering an overhaul of the tax code.

"Despite the fact that polls show how dissatisfied Americans are with Congress overall, there's been no change in our appetite to elect affluent politicians to represent our concerns in Washington, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center. "Of course, it's undeniable that in our electoral system, candidates need access to wealth to run financially viable campaigns, and the most successful fundraisers are politicians who swim in those circles to begin with."

When only the rich can get elected, and money buys influence, they represent only the rich. The rest of us get screwed.

But campaign finance reform is unconstitutional.

Think about that.

Wild, Dangerous West Virginia

Some 300,000 West Virginians are without safe drinking water this morning as a coal company spill has contaminated the Elk River.

Residents of nine counties in West Virginia have been told not to use or drink their water after a chemical used by the coal industry spilled into the Elk River on Thursday. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency as more than 100,000 customers, or 300,000 people, are without safe drinking water. 

“Don’t make baby formula,” said West Virginia American Water Company president Jeff McIntyre. “Don’t brush your teeth. Don’t shower. Toilet flushing only.”

King Coal has his price, folks.  Always.

The chemical, 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol (MCHM), is used to wash coal of impurities and spilled from a tank at Freedom Industries into the river. While the amount of MCHM that spilled wasn’t immediately known, West Virginia American Water has been conducting water quality testing every hour. According to Laura Jordan, a spokesperson with the water company, they believe the chemical is leaking at ground level and “there is a possibility this leak has been going on for sometime before it was discovered Thursday,” WSAZ reported.

But I'm sure that's Obama's fault, because War on Coal, right?

Yes, the people of West Virginia deserve good-paying jobs that can support their families.  All Americans do.  But maybe somebody ought to be keeping a closer eye on these energy companies and their chemical spills, you think?

StupidiNews!

• The unemployment rate in the US dropped to 6.7% in December, but the percentage of people in the labor forced dropped to 62.8%, the lowest since 1978.
• A suppressed Holocaust documentary created by Alfred Hitchcock in 1945 has been restored by Britain's Imperial War Museum and will be shown in its complete format.
• On Monday, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments from a number of US Senators in a case involving President Obama's power to make recess appointments.
• Retail chain Target says in addition to some 40 million credit card numbers exposed to hackers in December, some 70 million names, addresses, and emails may also have been stolen.
• The plan to bring municipal broadband to Seattle is officially DOA as startup Gigabit Squared owes the city nearly $50,000 in unpaid bills.