StupidiNews!

• A series of avalanches in the western US this week have killed six across Utah, Colorado, and Oregon.
• Washington State police say a man caught on a grocery store security tape trying to fondle an 11-year old girl is also a wanted fugitive who bombed several abortion clinics decades ago.
• Virtual currency Bitcoin is under attack from hackers who are disrupting transactions and exchange operations with "mutating" code.
• Two Hong Kong trading firms have agreed to $11 million in SEC fines for improperly trading news of a Chinese venture capital group buying a Canadian energy company.
• The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for reports of people using high-intensity laser pointers at commercial aircraft as incidents have increased tenfold since 2005.

Last Call For The War Of The Oranges

And John Boehner and the House GOP lose yet another debt ceiling battle, this time with a complete victory for the White House.

The House passed a yearlong suspension of the Treasury’s debt limit Tuesday in a vote that left Republicans once again ceding control to Democrats, following a collapse in support for an earlier proposal advanced by GOP leaders.

In a narrow vote, 221-201, 28 Republicans voted with 193 Democrats to approve a “clean” extension of the federal government’s borrowing authority — one without strings attached — sending the legislation to the Senate for a posssible final vote later this week. Two Democrats and 199 Republicans voted no.

The vote came two weeks before the Feb. 27 debt-limit deadline set by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and once again underscored the House leadership’s inability to corral Republicans behind a debt-ceiling plan. “The natural reluctance is obvious,” said Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), the chief deputy whip. 

The Tea Party is not happy about this, you know, complete and utter defeat thing.

Conservative advocacy groups reacted negatively to Boehner’s plan to bring the clean bill to a vote, with spokesmen for Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth urging members to vote “no” and including the vote on their scorecards, which serve as guides for their supporters. “When we heard that House leadership was scheduling a clean debt-ceiling increase, we thought it was a joke,” said Barney Keller, a Club for Growth adviser. “But it’s not. Something is very wrong with House leadership, or with the Republican Party.”

The Senate Conservatives Fund, an outspoken tea-party group, blasted Boehner for his eleventh-hour decision in an e-mail, saying “Boehner must be replaced.” They also launched a petition seeking to encourage at least 15 House Republicans to refuse to support Boehner for speaker -- a move that would deprive him of a majority of the House.

Robert Costa, now at the Washington Post, recounts Boehner telling the Tea Party to go to hell:

The scene happened Tuesday morning at the Capitol Hill Club, where House Republicans had gathered for a private breakfast.

After listening to a handful of colleagues flatly discuss fundraising strategy for 30 minutes, Boehner stood up, walked past dozens of sleepy, coffee-sipping Republicans and tersely woke up the room with an update.

“Listen – we’re going to move forward,” Boehner said. Instead of bringing up the leadership’s plan, which would link a restoration of recently cut military benefits to a debt-ceiling extension, he would push a “clean” bill, averting default more than two weeks before the Treasury Department’s debt-limit deadline.

“We’re going to get this done,” Boehner continued, according to several people present for his remarks. No strings attached, he added. He said he was going stop reaching for votes on the plan, an effort that had stalled on Monday. And he wasn’t going to even think of floating another proposal. He was going to do what he thought was best for the GOP, in spite of the widespread angst.

So now we're at the point where the Tea Party either must replace Boehner, or admit they have no power.  Make your move, boys.  I'll bring the popcorn.

The GOP internal civil war is now truly on.

My Frenemy Claire

Missouri Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill isn't beating around the bush when asked if she would be seen with President Obama this year if she had to run in this election cycle:  her answer is of course, "Probably not."

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said Tuesday that she wouldn't roll out the welcome mat for President Obama if she were seeking re-election in Missouri this year.

McCaskill was asked during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" if she would campaign alongside Obama if she were running in red states like Louisiana, North Carolina or Arkansas.

"Probably not," McCaskill said. "I mean, I try to be really candid and honest on this show. The President's numbers are not strong in my state or in Arkansas or Louisiana or North Carolina. He did not win those states when he ran for re-election in 2012."

But McCaskill said the Democratic incumbents running for re-election in the aforementioned states — Mark Pryor (AR), Mary Landrieu (LA) and Kay Hagan (NC) — can still win, and she dismissed the notion that avoiding Obama on the campaign trail matters to voters.

"I think this issue of whether or not you have Obama come to your state is something we like to focus on in Washington, but probably is not that important when you get out to these states," McCaskill said.

Yeah, right. Somebody tell Alison Lundergan Grimes that.  Barack who?

Barriers Have To Be Broken For A Reason

Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that NFL draft hopeful and SEC Defensive Player of the Year Michael Sam of Missouri, who announced this week that he is gay, is going to have to force change upon the NFL and its culture because otherwise, they will never be "ready" for an openly gay player.

In that sense he will be challenging  a deep and discrepant mythology of who is capable of inflicting violence and who isn't. Last week, Jonathan Vilma speculated about how he might feel if a gay teammate saw him naked:

Imagine if he's the guy next to me and, you know, I get dressed, naked, taking a shower, the whole nine, and it just so happens he looks at me. How am I supposed to respond?

What undergirds this logic is a fear of being made into a woman, which is to say a fear of being regarded sexually by someone who is as strong as, or stronger than, you. Implicit to the fear is the gay player's ability to do violence. It exists right alongside a belief that the gay player is a "sissy." ("Grown men should not have female tendencies. Period," Vilma once tweeted.) The logic is kin to the old Confederate belief that Southern slaves were so loyal and cowardly yet they must never be given guns.

The mythology Jonathan Vilma endorses will not fade through vague endorsements of "tolerance," lectures on "acceptance," nor any other species of heartfelt magic. The question which we so often have been offered—is the NFL ready for a gay player?—is backwards. Powerful interests are rarely "ready" for change, so much as they are assaulted by it. We refer to barriers being "broken" for a reason. The reason is not because great powers generally like to unbar the gates and hold a picnic in the honor of the previously excluded. The NFL has no moral right to be "ready" for a gay player, which is to say it has no right to discriminate against gay men at its leisure which anyone is bound to respect.

So yes, it's as much about race as it is his sexual orientation, and this battle is going to be pretty ugly.  But Nancy Goldstein makes the argument that the biggest problem for Sam won't be players like Jonathan Vilma, but the NFL front offices and teams.

If public response thus far is any indication, Sam’s problem won’t be the other players in the NFL. It’s going to be, as former Minnesota Viking Chris Kluwe tweeted, the folks in the front office. While congratulations from Sam’s teammates, other athletes, and well-wishers flooded Twitter (his account drew 18,000 new followers less than an hour after the news broke), the eight NFL executives and coaches who spoke with Sports Illustrated on condition of anonymity were decidedly less optimistic.

"I don't think football is ready for [an openly gay player] just yet," said an NFL player personnel assistant, adding, “It'd chemically imbalance an NFL locker room and meeting room.” An NFL assistant coach called Sam's decision "not a smart move,” saying that it "legitimately affects [his] potential earnings." A former general manager alleged that his concerns were rooted in avoiding a possible media circus that might distract attention from the game: “Every Tom, Dick and Harry in the media is going to show up, from Good Housekeeping to the Today show. A general manager is going to ask, 'Why are we going to do that to ourselves?'" Every single one of them agreed that Sam’s announcement would cause him to drop in this May’s draft, and today’s news that Sam fell 70 points on CBS’s draft prospect board overnight indicate an early negative response to his announcement. 

Collectively, this is a sad prophecy. But if it comes true, it’ll be a self-fulfilling one set in motion by the homophobia of the NFL’s front office.

What this says to me is that very few people in the NFL want to be the person fired by the owner when Michael Sam "ruins" their team's season.  Anything less than a Super Bowl victory is going to be blamed on Sam and his "negative effect on the locker room".

They're cowards, of course.  But in the end, the cowards always lose.

StupidiNews!

• Shirley Temple Black, former child movie star of the 30's and US Ambassador to Ghana in the 1970's, has died at the age of 85.
• One person is dead and another injured when a package delivered to a Tennessee home in Lebanon exploded when opened, police continue to investigate.
• Relations between China and Taiwan continue to improve as the two will set up trade representative offices after historic talks earlier this year.
• Businesses with less than 100 employees won't face penalties from the Affordable Care Act this year as the Obama administration has delayed part of the employer mandate until 2015.
• Planetary scientists now believe that, like Tatooine in Star Wars, that planets orbiting binary star systems actually exist.

Last Call For The Banana Splits

I got nothin'.

KBMT

A Beaumont man was cited by police after riling up motorists by standing at an intersection carrying an AK-47 while dressed as a banana. 

Derek Poe, owner of Golden Triangle Tactical gun shop, said the stunt was part of the store's grand opening after moving locations. 

Poe said the man in the banana suit was holding an AK-47 across his back with the barrel pointing down and holding a sign with an arrow pointing toward the store. 

He said this idea was to attract customers to the store. 

A Beaumont police spokesperson said officers temporarily detained the 18-year-old and found he had the rifle with a drum magazine attached with at least a 50-round capacity. 

The spokesperson said the teen was cited for violating a city ordinance that prohibits soliciting in and alongside roadways.

Nope.  Nothin'.  Not a gorram thing.

Scott Walker Screws Up Again

Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker apparently has a bit of an issue with the truth, which should be no surprise to anyone at this point considering he's most likely under federal investigation at this point for campaign issues related to the recall vote two years ago.

In August 2012, Milwaukee County prosecutors filed a petition seeking to launch the John Doe investigation into the recall races prompted by Gov. Scott Walker's legislation to curb the power of state employee unions.

From the outset, the probe focused on possible "illegal campaign coordination between (name redacted), a campaign committee, and certain special interest groups," according to a filing signed by the five district attorneys in the case.

The campaign committee under the microscope?

Almost certainly it's the Friends of Scott Walker, the governor's campaign committee.

"Good guess," said one source familiar with the probe. "That's it."

Now it seems Walker can't even tell the truth about something as simple as voting for Ronald Reagan for President.

It appears Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has stepped in it a bit in a recent boast that his conservative bona fides dated back to a vote he cast for Ronald Reagan for president. As James Rowan of the Wisconsin-based blog The Political Environment quickly noted, Walker was 13 years old in 1980 and 17 in 1984. Thus, concludes Zach Wisniewski of Blogging Blue, it seems Walker is “either lying about having voted for Ronald Reagan or he voted illegally.”

Oops.   Walker's name has been kicked around as the new Chris Christie.  Looks like he really is the new Chris Christie...and may be in as much legal trouble as well.

Hail To Not The Washington NFL Team

Congress is apparently getting serious about Washington DC changing the name of its storied NFL franchise to something other than what it is now, and they're playing smashmouth.

Two members of Congress plan to send a strongly worded letter to the commissioner of the National Football League on Monday urging him to support changing the name of the Washington Redskins because it offends Native Americans and others, with one lawmaker saying she might reconsider the league’s tax-exempt status if it does not comply. 

Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington State and chairwoman of the Indian Affairs Committee, said in an interview on Sunday that lawmakers would “definitely” examine the N.F.L.’s tax-exempt status and other ways to pressure the league. 

“You’re getting a tax break for educational purposes, but you’re still embracing a name that people see as a slur and encouraging it,” Ms. Cantwell said. 

In a copy of the letter released on Sunday, Ms. Cantwell and Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma and a member of the Native American Caucus, chided the N.F.L. commissioner, Roger Goodell, for his recent remark that the name of the team, based near Washington, D.C., “honored” Native Americans. 

“The N.F.L. can no longer ignore this and perpetuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a racial slur,” they said.

That tax-exempt status is the major reason why NFL owners are rich, rich, rich.  They don't have to pay taxes on these billion dollar franchises.  If Congress is going to reconsider that for the entire league, then this is going to hit them in the wallet.  Big time.

Personally I think all sports leagues should be stripped of tax exempt status.  They're billion dollar businesses and they need to be taxed like them.  Regardless, Washington needs to change the name.

StupidiNews!

• Former Missouri Tigers football star Michael Sam has publicly announced that he is gay as he heads into this year's NFL Draft.
• Russian authorities have banned the trading of internet currency Bitcoin in the country, saying it could be a way to finance terrorism.
• The US and South Korea will proceed with planned joint military exercises despite warnings from North Korea.
• Swiss officials are preparing to deal with the aftermath of a successful weekend ballot measure to impose strict immigration quotas, drawing harsh criticism from the EU.
• California lawmakers are looking to pass legislation that would require smartphones to have a "kill switch" to render a phone useless if stolen, which could become a new national standard.

Last Call For Meanwhile, In Iran...

Yep, looks like Smart Power and engagement with Tehran keeps on working.

The U.N. nuclear agency said on Sunday that Iran had agreed to start addressing suspicions that it may have worked on designing an atomic weapon, a potential breakthrough in a long-stalled investigation into Tehran's atomic activities.

The development - although limited for now - marked a step forward in an international push to settle a decade-old dispute over Iran's nuclear program. Tehran says this is peaceful, while the West fears that Iran wants to develop atomic arms. 

The deal could also send a positive signal to separate, high-stakes negotiations between Iran and six world powers which are due to start on February 18 in Vienna, aimed at reaching a broader diplomatic settlement with the Islamic state.

Iran is moving.  Slowly.  But it is moving forward.  Letting UN nuclear inspectors take a look at what Iran is really up to is a big deal, and it's one that's necessary.  Here's hoping there's more to it, as well.

Remember, if the GOP was in charge, we'd already be at war with them.

The Randian Ideal On Immigration

Sen. Rand Paul went to Houston to speak at a fundraiser for the Harris County GOP, and they didn't exactly like what he had to say about immigration.

Sen. Rand Paul on Saturday predicted that Texas would turn blue within a decade if the Republican Party doesn’t become more inclusive.

“What I do believe is Texas is going to be a Democrat state within 10 years if we don’t change,” Paul (R-Ky.), who grew up in Texas, said at a dinner held by the Harris County GOP. “That means we evolve, it doesn’t mean we give up on what we believe in, but it means we have to be a welcoming party.”

What's this?  Rand Paul pitching a pro-immigration message in Texas?  I bet that went over well.

“We won’t all agree on it,” he said. “But I’ll tell you, what I will say and what I’ll continue to say, and it’s not an exact policy prescription … but if you want to work and you want a job and you want to be part of America, we’ll find a place for you.”

There was some quiet applause in the massive hotel ballroom, in which hundreds of Republicans — a mix of high-dollar donors, activists and state officials — were gathered. But Paul remarked that the response was “kind of tepid.”

You don't say.  So if you're wonder what the change of heart is it's simple:  Randian free-market utopias need ditch diggers too after the minimum wage is gone, right?

I bet he just made a major enemy of Malkinvania.  Time for popcorn!

Eric Holder Comes Through Again

Eric Holder and the Department of Justice look like they're ready to make the next step in forcing LGBTQ equality at the federal level:

The federal government will soon treat married same-sex couples the same as heterosexual couples when they file for bankruptcy, testify in court or visit family in prison. 

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was preparing to issue policies aimed at eliminating the distinction between same-sex and opposite-sex married couples in the federal criminal justice system, according to excerpts from a speech prepared for a Saturday event organized by a prominent gay-rights group. 

“In every courthouse, in every proceeding and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stands on behalf of the United States, they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections and rights as opposite-sex marriages,” Mr. Holder’s prepared remarks said, according to the excerpts circulated by the Justice Department.

This is great news.  The response by some advocates, not so much.

Gay-rights advocates welcomed the changes but had hoped Mr. Holder would use his address before the Human Rights Campaign to announce that the president would sign an order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating based on sexual orientation. 

“That would be big,” said Gary Buseck, legal director for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders.

It would be big.  I'm betting it'll happen.  There's infinitely more chance of that happening than under any Republican President, just so you know...and any Republican in the White House would be under tremendous pressure to reverse all of this, and probably would.

Matt Bevin? Who's That, And Who Cares?

The Daily Beast bravely pretends that Matt Bevin has a shot in the Kentucky GOP primary against Mitch The Turtle.

Most Southern towns of any size have something like the Lexington Club, where behind a nondescript door with a keypad lies a warmly decorated clubhouse, complete with a fire in the fireplace, thick cigar smoke in the air, and portraits of both Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee on the wall. 

The presence of both portraits signify the state’s complicated past. But the present is not much less complex: The Bevin-McConnell race is the biggest battle yet in a Republican civil war that’s been raging since 2010. 

And Bevin’s reinforcements have begun to arrive in Kentucky. 

The SCF kicked in half of the $900,000 Bevin raised in the last quarter of 2014. The Madison Project is opening five Get Out the Vote offices in areas in which McConnell has traditionally done well. FreedomWorks recently endorsed Bevin, but they too had trouble with his name. 

“If you have not heard, FreedomWorks has recently endorsed Matt Blevins for U.S. Senate and we are now looking to employ Field Staffers for Kentucky,” said one email.

Reinforcements!  The underdog is going to fight back!  Senate minority leader defeated in a primary! 

Hogwash.

Perhaps the equally irrelevant Daily Beast might have tried to get this article out before Friday's poll showing Bevin down 26 points with only 14 weeks to go.  And McConnell has more than five times Bevin's money.

As much as I'd love to see a Tea Party puke like Bevin get stomped in November by Alison Grimes, his message that government is evil in a state that's 92% white and where one in six households has food insecurity isn't going to cut it.  Republicans know Mitch brought home the pork and they'll vote for him over Bevin.  Remember too this is a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by half a million.  Only 38% of the state's registered voters are Republican, and we have closed primaries here.

So the people Bevin needs to reach are the "hands off my government programs!" folks in some of the poorest, least diverse counties in America.  That's working about as well as expected, and he's down 26 points as a result.

I want to see McConnell lose.  But he won't be beaten by Matt Bevin.

Austerity Republicans Keep Cutting Government Jobs

Kevin Drum explains why we're a couple of million jobs short of where we need to be right now, and why Republicans keep complaining that this is a jobless recovery:  Austerity Republicans have cut millions of government jobs, period.

January's job numbers were fairly dismal, but the bad cheer wasn't equally spread. Private sector employment, as usual, increased—by 142,000 jobs last month. At the same time, public sector employment declined. Government employment at all levels was down 29,000 in January. 

Aside from the brief census blip in early 2010, this has been the usual state of affairs for the past four years, ever since the recession officially ended. The chart below shows public and private sector employment indexed to 100 at the end of the recession. Private sector employment is up 6.8 percent. Public sector employment is down 3.4 percent. And that's during a period when population grew 2.3 percent. On a per capita basis, government employment has declined more than 5 percent since 2009, and it's still declining.

All in all we've lost millions of local, state, and federal government jobs thanks to Republicans who have demanded that we cut millions of government jobs.  Now these same Republicans are wondering where the jobs are.

We're doing exactly what the GOP said we should do:  cut millions of government jobs and they would be replaced by "higher paying private sector jobs."  Gosh, that hasn't happened.  I wonder why?

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Virginia State Police have arrested 5 and have charged them in connection with the presumed death of State Police Captain Kenneth Quick.
• Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev apparently was caught on tape taking a nap in the audience during yesterday's Sochi Winter Games opening ceremony.
• The US takes the first gold medal of the Sochi Games with snowboarder Sage Kotsenberg's win in the Olympic debut of the Snowboarding Slopestyle event.
• January's job numbers were weaker than expected, with only 113,000 new jobs for the month, but the unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a point to 6.6%
• NASA's Martian Reconnaissance Orbiter project got a good glimpse this week of a new crater on Mars, as the red planet suffered an asteroid impact some time between mid-2010 and mid-2012.