Last Call For Houseplant Slash Muscle

Need to lighten things up around here, so we leave you tonight with the new Guardians of the Galaxy trailer that premiered last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live.



Ahh, Peter Quill, forever stuck in the 80's.  John C. Reilly and Peter Serafinowicz in the Nova Corps, evil blue Karen Gilliam as Nebula, mostly evil green Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Djimon Hounsou as Korath The Pursuer (Marvel so does love to name their cosmic level badasses "X The Archetype") makes any movie better, and I get Rocket Raccoon and Groot shooting rooms full of things?  Definitely looking forward to this one in August, and looks totally faithful to the comic's bonkers style mix of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets Chronicles of Riddick on the set of a Billy Idol video.  You know, Farscape with less introspection and more 10 foot tall tree guys.

It's looking to be glorious fun.  Can't wait.

Kansas's Discrimination Bill Gets The Business

A week ago, state legislation that Kansas Republicans sponsored that would allow businesses and state employees to refuse goods and services to same-sex couples under the guise of "religious freedom" looked like a sure bet as it sailed through the Kansas House.

Denying services to same-sex couples may soon become legal in Kansas.

House Bill 2453 explicitly protects religious individuals, groups and businesses that refuse services to same-sex couples, particularly those looking to tie the knot.

It passed the state's Republican-dominated House on Wednesday with a vote of 72-49, and has gone to the Senate for a vote.

This week, it crashed and burned in the Kansas Senate.

A controversial religious freedom bill passed by the Kansas House will never make it to the Senate floor or even be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On Tuesday, Senate Vice President Jeff King, R-Independence, officially closed the door on House Bill 2453, which gained international attention and inspired a Twitter hash tag.

“We’re not going to work the bill,” he said. “House Bill 2453 is kaput.”

Why the change in heart?  Oh, Kansas Republicans are still gay-hating bigots, but Kansas businesses stepped in and told the GOP to knock it off because the legislation (and the impending boycotts and lawsuits it would produce) would affect their bottom lines.

One of Kansas' largest employers is joining a myriad of other companies in opposing a bill some say would discriminate against gay couples.

Sprint Corp., which employs 7,600 people locally and ranks third on the Kansas City Business Journal's Top Area Private-Sector Employers list, said Monday that it disagrees with the "protecting religious freedom" measure. If passed, House Bill 2453 would allow businesses and government entities to deny same-sex couples goods and services on the basis of religious freedom.

"At Sprint, we have a commitment to inclusion and having a workplace that is supportive of all employees," Sprint spokesman John Taylor wrote in an email. "Inclusion and diversity serve as guiding principles for our company. They help us create an atmosphere fostering creativity and effectiveness, providing employees, suppliers, customers and members of the community an opportunity to feel included and valued."

The Overland Park-based telecom company joins AT&T Inc. and other Kansas businesses in protesting the bill. Among the organizations are Kansas City Power & Light Co. and theWichita Independent Business Association.

Bottom line:  any big national or international corporation doing business in Kansas under this legislation would have a host of legal, public relations, and ethical nightmares to deal with, all thanks to the idiots in the Kansas GOP,  so they stepped in and reminded the Republicans exactly who they work for. When bigotry affects the quarterly earnings reports, the people who really run the GOP get that culture war nonsense sorted out in record time.

Discrimination against customers is bad for business?  Who knew?  The only color on the rainbow flag that matters to the corporate wing of the GOP is green.  Interfere with that, and suddenly the Tea Party gets miraculously handled.

Funny how that works.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2014/02/18/3297322/kansas-senate-kills-controversial.html#storylink=cpy

Rush (Holt): A Farewell To Kings (Of Science)

New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt, the party's point man on science and technology legislation and former research physicist, is leaving the House after twelve years.

Mr. Holt is perhaps most popularly known as the five-time “Jeopardy!” champion who later won a celebrity round against Watson, the IBM supercomputer. In and around Princeton, where he had been assistant director of the Plasma Physics Laboratory, bumper stickers on Priuses proudly proclaim “My Congressman IS a Rocket Scientist.”

He has consistently pushed for more money for scientific research, and better science education, securing $22 billion for research in the stimulus bill, and grants of $16,000 for students who prepare to teach math, science or foreign languages.

“I’m not sure we have anyone in the Congress with his level of deep understanding of what it is going to take for the American scientific enterprise to thrive in the future,” said Shirley M. Tilghman, a molecular biologist and former president of Princeton.

Among his other accomplishments, Mr. Holt said he was proudest of getting “tens of millions” of dollars for suicide prevention among members of the military, and for securing state matching programs for land and water conservation. He also helped arrange citizenship for the family of a Pakistani man killed in a hate crime in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Particularly as Tea Party Republicans challenged the science of climate change in recent years, Mr. Holt argued vociferously for the importance of what he called “evidence based” debates.

Democrats will keep the seat pretty easily, I would expect, and I didn't always agree with him.  But the country will miss his intelligence, and he was one of the few NY/NJ politicians to admit that Palestinians actually qualify as human beings.  Go figure.

StupidiNews!

• Bloody clashes between Ukrainian military and opposition protesters in Kiev turned deadly Tuesday as at least 21 people were killed and dozens injured.
• A new Congressional Budget Office report estimates that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 would cost around 500,000 jobs, but lift nearly a million out of poverty.
• Venezuelan security forces have arrested opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez in connection with this week's protests in the capital of Caracas.
• In Bangkok, Thai police and opposition protestors met, ending with 5 dead and 65 injured as post-election violence continues in protest of the government of PM Yingluck Shinawatra.
• Mathematicians at UCLA have discovered proteins that form what could be a new class of mathematical solids known as "Goldberg cages."

Last Call For The Most Unskewed Poll Ever

The DC Examiner is touting this YouGov poll, which apparently finds that well over half of Democrats now regret voting for President Obama in 2012.

Over seven in 10 Obama voters, and 55 percent of Democrats, regret voting for President Obama's reelection in 2012, according to a new Economist/YouGov.com poll.

Conducted to test the media hype about a comeback by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the new poll found voters still uninspired by Romney, but also deeply dissatisfied with Obama who has so far failed to capitalize on his victory over 15 months ago.

The poll asked those who voted for Obama's reelection a simple question: “Do you regret voting for Barack Obama?”

— Overall, 71 percent said yes, 26 percent no.

— 80 percent of whites said yes, 61 percent of blacks said no and 100 percent of Hispanics said yes.

— 84 percent of women said yes, and just 61 percent of men agreed.

— 55 percent of Democrats said yes, as did 71 percent of independents.

Still, given the choice of Obama versus Romney, Obama supporters said they would stick with their guy, 79 percent to 10 percent for Romney.

Do you really believe that 71% overall, 84% of women, and 100% of Latino voters of the 65 million total Americans who cast their vote for President Obama now "regret" that vote?  If that's true, he should have approval ratings lower than Bush 43 did at the bottom of his abyss.

In other words, he should be down in the single digits with the GOP in Congress.  Strangely, that's not the case.

It's almost like this poll is ridiculously suspect.

Battle Of The Billionaires

The GOP is so beholden now to ultra-wealthy billionaire donors in a post Citizens United America that the future of the party will apparently be determined by which faction of networks of super-rich donors can buy out the most Republican politicians:  the Koch Brothers Tea Party machine, Karl Rove's disgraced but still powerful Crossroads donor network, or the new dark money on the block, Wall Street mogul Paul Singer's pro-LGBTQ, pro-immigration group, the American Opportunity Alliance.

On its face, it in some ways resembles a much smaller-scale version of Charles and David Koch’s fabled network, which brings together hand-picked operatives and politicians twice a year at tony resorts to make presentations to dozens of rich conservatives. At the conclusion of the Koch seminars, as they’re called, donors commit massive sums into a pool of cash disseminated to various Koch-backed groups for seven- and eight-figure advertising and organizing campaigns that have made them a force in Republican politics rivaling the official party.

That doesn’t appear to be the goal of Singer and his donors. While many of them — including Singer himself — have attended the Koch seminars and also maintain their own independent spending groups, their approach with the American Opportunity Alliance is more donor-centric, focusing on comparing notes about one another’s political projects and funneling limited hard-money contributions effectively.

In other words, the AOA guys are all about coordinating donations for pet projects for the corporate wing of the GOP.  It's nothing personal, just business.  At our expense, of course.

Still, the list of big-name pols expected at the American Opportunity Alliance’s upcoming Colorado gathering highlights the influence that only a few big donors can command in the post-Citizens United era, when a small group of wealthy individuals can reorder elections with just a few huge checks. That new reality has shifted some of the power and control once maintained by the parties and their candidates to factions of major donors, like the libertarian-infused Koch network on the right or the Democracy Alliance club of major liberal donors on the left.

Of course, the Democracy Alliance has only a fraction of the money that the Kochs, the AOA, or Karl Rove's boys do.  So now there's three huge groups of GOP donors, throwing hundreds of millions at Republicans to buy out state and federal elections, and virtually no hope of stopping them, or even coming close to matching them in order to fight fire with fire.

2014 is not looking good for our side, folks.

Gotta Break A Few Eggs

Another tragic death of a black teenager, this time for the crime of being a passenger in the wrong car when a man decides he's going to stop people from egging his son's car by drawing and using his firearm.

An Arkansas man faces a murder charge for allegedly gunning down a car filled with teenagers who had wanted to play a prank on his son. One of the passengers, 15-year-old Adrian Broadway, died from a gunshot wound to the head on Saturday.

The teens said they were pranking Willie Noble’s son by covering his car with eggs and leaves, which is when Noble reportedly arrived with a shotgun. “Apparently Mr. Noble’s teenage son had done a prank on some of the kids that were inside the vehicle on Halloween Night,” Lieutenant Sidney Allen said. “As a result they were doing a retaliation prank and it ultimately had deadly results.” In addition to first degree murder, Noble has been charged with committing a terrorist act and five counts of aggravated assault.

“It was supposed to be a prank,” Kortazha Williams, who was in the car with Broadway, told KTHV. “We were supposed to get up right now, and we were supposed to laugh.”

Yes, because the correct response to "Dad, these kids are going to egg my car in payback for a prank I pulled on them last Halloween" is "OK son, lemme open fire on them."  Superior parenting skills there.

But firearms didn't contribute to this death, right to responsibly own a firearm is in the Bill of Rights, yadda yadda whatever you tell yourself when stuff like this happens, right gun advocates?

StupidiNews!

• Severe turbulence is being blamed for injuries to several passengers on a United flight from Denver to Billing, Montana on Monday evening.
• Tops on the agenda at this year's summit of North American leaders in Mexico: Canadian PM Steven Harper asking President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
• Multiple car bomb attacks are responsible for 24 deaths in Baghdad as violence against Shi'ites in the country is on the rise.
• A roof collapse at a South Korean resort has killed ten and injured dozens at a college party held in the complex's gym.
• The first casualty in the Comcast/Time Warner Cable proposed merger may be Nexflix's deal with TWC over providing the streaming service on settop boxes.

Last Call For Bunker Mentality

After last week's debt ceiling fold, the House GOP has hunkered down and turned out the lights on passing anything.  Robert Costa:

After a tumultuous week of party infighting and leadership stumbles, congressional Republicans are now focused on calming their divided ranks in the months ahead, mostly by touting proposals that have wide backing within the GOP and shelving any big-ticket legislation for the rest of the year.

Comprehensive immigration reform, tax reform, tweaks to the federal health-care law — bipartisan deals on each are probably dead in the water for the rest of this Congress.

“We don’t have 218 votes in the House for the big issues, so what else are we going to do?” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), an ally of House Speaker John A. Boehner. “We can do a few things on immigration and work on our principles, but in terms of real legislating, we’re unable to get in a good negotiating position.”

Added Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who works closely with party leaders: “It is an acknowledgment of where they stand, where nothing can happen in divided government so we may essentially have the status quo. Significant immigration reform and fundamental tax reform are probably not going to happen.”

Surprise!  Back to permanent obstruction and blaming Obama.  Sure worked in 2012, didn't it?

“It’s over, it’s finished after the debt ceiling,” Nunes said. “In the House, we’ve got 30 guys who don’t want to support anything, ever, unless it balances the budget next year.”

So you're going to vote for the guys that will do nothing for America in 2014.  OK.

Always The Victim

Everything you need to know about CNN's Chris Cuomo and his interview with Trayvon Martin killer George Zimmerman is summed up in this exchange:

Cuomo: What was the miscarriage of justice?

Zimmerman: The fact that two law enforcement entities stated that I had acted within the laws of our nation, in self defense.

Cuomo: You don't think it was about the law?

Zimmerman: I know it wasn’t, yes.

Cuomo: And what does that make you? How do you, how does that make you feel?

Zimmerman: Like a scapegoat.

Cuomo: A scapegoat for?

Zimmerman: The government, the President, the attorney general.

He will claim he is the victim until the end of time.  It's all Obama's fault.  It's all Eric Holder's fault.  They made him shoot and kill Trayvon Martin, you see.

It's always Obama's fault with these guys.

Karl Rove Is Still Wrong About Everything

Karl Rove is convinced that Democrats are afraid of Chris Christie.

Democrats are raising a fuss about the closure of the George Washington Bridge because they are afraid of Gov. Chris Christie's (R) chances in 2016, according to former President George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove.

“The reason the Democrats are doing this is because Gov. Christie is a strong potential candidate in 2016 and they’re going to try to smother every Republican presidential possibility they can,” Rove said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“They know that this race in 2016 is going to be difficult for the Democrats, hard to get a third term, particularly after the two terms of Obama.”

Meanwhile, Rand Paul and Mitt Romney keep going on teevee bringing up Monica Lewinsky.  You know, because the economy was so awful when Clinton was President, especially compared to the mess Bush made of it and that Obama's still trying to dig out of with no help from the GOP.

Seems like it's the GOP who is afraid if the best they have is stuff from 15 years ago on Big Dog.  They've got no plan for the economy, no plan for tackling climate change or immigration, no plan for anything other than "We hate Obama, so we'll hate Clinton too."

Scared kids.

StupidiNews!

• The co-pilot of an Ethiopian Airlines flight bound for Rome hijacked the plane and flew to Geneva seeking asylum, where he was arrested without further incident.
• UN investigators are referring North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the International Criminal Court for a possible war crimes tribunal.
• Ukrainian opposition leaders are pushing President Viktor Yanukovich to accept limits on powers in exchange for defusing the 3-month long series of protest that have the country at the brink.
• EU leaders will need more time to decide on carbon emissions targets for 2030 as a final decision next month is now expected to be postponed.
• Australian police are testing laser grid mapping at crime scenes in order to get more accurate analysis of locations, the type of laser measurements used at cultural monuments.

Last Call For The Painless Abyss

"Do these people sound like credible and competent standard bearers?"

--Jennifer Rubin, on the Rand Paul wing of the GOP, presumably just before her computer imploded into a black hole and tried to swallow Earth in order to spare humanity and reality.

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

"There is, to be frank, a clownish like quality to the far right’s antics. They seize upon flaky candidates to challenge mainstream Republican candidates, while ignoring Democratic incumbents whose presence allows Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to rule the Senate roost. They seem to have learned little from the shutdown debacle."

Sluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurp.  Pop.  And other black hole noises.

The Race For Justice

This weekend's verdict in the trial of Michael Dunn, the white Florida man who went to trial after he shot and killed 17 year old black teen Jordan Davis for playing his music too loudly in a nearby car, shows just how far we have to go in America in bending that arc towards moral justice.

After four days of deliberation, the jury in the trial of Michael Dunn, a Florida man who shot a teenager to death in a parking lot during a dispute over loud music, said it could not agree on whether Mr. Dunn had acted in self-defense or was guilty of murder.

The jurors did find Mr. Dunn guilty of three counts of second-degree attempted murder for getting out of his car and firing 10 times at the Dodge Durango sport utility vehicle in which Jordan Davis, 17, was killed. Three other teenagers, the subjects of the attempted murder charges, were in the car but were not struck. Mr. Dunn continued to fire at the car even as it pulled away. On the attempted murder convictions, he could be sentenced to 60 years in prison.

Judge Russell L. Healey declared a mistrial on the count of first-degree murder, which applied only in the death of Mr. Davis. The jury also failed to reach agreement on lesser charges that are automatically included in jury instructions. Those were second- and third-degree murder and manslaughter. Prosecutors are free to move ahead with a new trial on the murder charge, if they wish.

Now let's think about this.  At least one juror rejected all charges for Dunn for the killing of Jordan Davis: first, second, third degree murder, and manslaughter.  The attempted murder of the other three was apparently something they agreed upon, but the actual murder is what allowed Florida's "Stand your ground" laws to go into effect, and at least one juror agreed that the killing was self-defense because they were black teenagers in that car with loud music.

In other words, Michael Dunn's actual crime was failing to kill all four black boys.  If he had actually killed all of them, he would have walked under SYG.

Ta-Nehisi Coates responds:

I insist that the irrelevance of black life has been drilled into this country since its infancy, and shall not be extricated through the latest innovations in Negro Finishing School. I insist that racism is our heritage, that Thomas Jefferson's genius is no more important than his plundering of the body of Sally Hemmings, that George Washington's abdication is no more significant than his wild pursuit of Oney Judge, that the G.I Bill's accolades are somehow inseparable from its racist heritage. I will not respect the lie. I insist that racism must be properly understood as an Intelligence, as a sentience, as a default setting to which, likely until the end of our days, we unerringly return. 

And so it goes.  You can kill an unarmed black boy in Florida because he's black and then claim you felt your life was in danger.  All it takes is one juror of your peers to agree.

Sometimes You Come Up Snake Eyes

Snake-handling preachers are still a thing here in Kentucky and the Appalachians, the National Geographic series "Snake Salvation" is all about Kentucky snake handler pastors Jamie Coots and Andrew Hamblin and their families, and it seems Jamie Coots diced with the devil one time too many this weekend.

Paramedics were called to Coots’ church about 8:30 p.m. Saturday to check on a report someone had been bitten by a snake.

By the time they arrived, Coots had gone to his home nearby. The ambulance crew and firefighters went to his home, where they found him suffering from a snakebite on his right hand, according to a news release from Middlesboro police.

The emergency responders told Coots about the danger of not going to the hospital, but he refused to go, police said.

The emergency crews left the house at 9:10 p.m. Authorities received a call less than an hour later indicating Coots had died, according to police. Coots was pronounced dead at his home.

Apparently Coots had survived snake bites before.  This time he wasn't so lucky.  Kentucky's had laws on the books against snake-handling in church for decades, but they never get enforced because of religious freedom reasons.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/02/16/3092068/jamie-coots-well-known-snake-handling.html#storylink=cpy

Seems to me a just and kind deity wouldn't make you risk you life with poisonous snakes, nor would they then require you to not seek medical treatment and then die painfully.  But then again, people will do a lot of things for faith, the truly good, the truly bad, and the outright dangerous.