Last Call For Minding The Gap

It wasn't lost on Democrats that today is Equal Pay Day, the day the average woman has to work to in 2014 on top of working all through 2013 in order to earn equal pay to the average man who worked in 2013.  While Republicans keep trying to disprove the 77 cents on the dollar pay gap, President Obama signed measures today to actually do something to erase it.

President Obama on Tuesday signed two executive measures intended to help close longstanding pay disparities between men and women as Democrats seek to capitalize on their gender-gap advantage at the ballot box in a midterm election year.

Mr. Obama, standing in front of a platform of women in a picture-ready ceremony in the East Room of the White House, said his actions would make it easier for women to learn whether they had been cheated by employers. He called on Congress to pass legislation that would take more significant steps.

Remember, President Obama's first legislative priority when he took office was the Lily Ledbetter Paycheck Fairness Act, which was blocked by Senate Republicans in 2010 and then again in 2012.  Another vote on the act will come tomorrow, where it is expected to be blocked a third time.  Real change will take Congress, but the President can do some things, and he chose to do them today.

Neither of the actions Mr. Obama took on Tuesday would affect the broad American work force. The executive order he signed bars federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss their salaries and an executive memorandum he issued instructs the Labor Department to collect statistics on pay for men and women from such contractors.

But the White House staged a ceremony with the sort of profile usually reserved for a major bill signing. Aides arranged for Mr. Obama to be introduced by Lilly M. Ledbetter, who has become a symbol of the pay gap issue since the Supreme Court ruled that her discrimination case had been filed after the expiration of a statute of limitations. Congress passed a measure named for her changing the deadlines for filing such suits and Mr. Obama made it the first bill he signed after taking office.

Ms. Ledbetter said the executive order signed by Mr. Obama would have made a difference in her case. “I didn’t know I was being paid unfairly and I had no way to find out. I was told in no uncertain terms that Goodyear, then and still a government contractor, fired employees who shared their salary information. It was against company policy.”

Meanwhile, Republicans will all vote against this tomorrow and then tell women that they are stupid and being fooled by evil Democrats.

The Unkindest Cuts Reversed

The Obama Administration has quickly decided to reverse February's decision to make cuts to Medicare Advantage plans as Republicans have spent the last six weeks running ads in states like Florida saying how Democrats are the ones really cutting Medicare (pay no attention to Paul Ryan scrapping the program and replacing it with subsidies.)

In a move with big election-year implications, the Obama administration announced Monday that it would reverse a proposed cut to private Medicare Advantage plans. The decision undercuts one of the GOP's favorite lines of attack on Obamacare and on Democrats in general.

The change announced by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services transformed what was a projected 1.9 percent payment cut in 2015 that had been proposed in February into a projected 0.4 percent payment increase.
Medicare Advantage plans are alternatives to Medicare offered by private insurers where recipients share some of the cost of the generally more generous plans. Insurance companies, alongside congressional members from both parties, had urged a stop to the proposed cuts. In total, Obamacare is supposed to cut $150 million from the program over 10 years.

America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's top lobbying group, called its blitz to stop the cuts its "largest-ever mobilization." Monday's announcement is a big win for the industry -- though it means more red ink for the federal budget. Independent analysts said insurers could still face cuts, though they should be smaller than originally expected.

For Republicans, though, it might be unwelcome news. Attacking the cuts, authorized under Obamacare, had become a favorite criticism of the health care reform law -- especially as other critiques dwindled. And they quickly sought to portray Monday's change as political opportunism by the Democrats.

Which is funny, coming from Republicans over the last 20 years.  Meanwhile, it seems the Obama administration is willing to make compromises to satisfy both seniors and the insurance companies that provide gap coverage for them (and that my friends is a big, big business.)

The Return Of The Entusiasm Gap

Republicans are motivated more than ever to vote in order to "punish" President Obama, Democrats, and the people who voted for them over six years of perceived slights (and Obamacare working).  Democrats, not so much...

There's a number in the new Associated Press-GFK national poll that should put a scare into Democrats on the ballot this November.

The number is 14. That's the percentage point difference between those who say they favor a Republican-controlled Congress (51 percent) and those who want Democratic-controlled one, among people who say they are strongly interested in politics. (Among the broader electorate, the Republican lead is far less consequential on this so-called "generic ballot" question with 37 percent choosing a GOP-controlled Congress while 36 percent opt for a Democratic one.) According to AP's Jennifer Agiesta "in January, this group was about evenly split, with 42 percent preferring Democrats and 45 percent the Republicans."

Guess who votes in midterms -- and particularly the second midterm of a president's tenure? Yup -- people who are "strongly interested" in politics. And therein lies the Democrats' problem.

And, it's not just the AP-GFK poll that shows a disparity of intensity between Democrats and Republicans. A GW Battleground poll showed that 64 percent of Republicans are "extremely likely" to vote while 57 percent of Democrats said the same. In a CBS News-New York Times poll 81 percent of Republican registered voters said they would "definitely" vote in November versus 68 percent of Democrats.

If this remains true in November, then there's going to be serious problems for us.  Unless you think the solution to whatever problem you have with President Obama and the Democrats is "more Republicans in Congress" then we need to vote in November.

And yes, I'm going to keep harping on this for the next 7 months.

StupidiNews!

• Seventh seeded Connecticut has knocked off Kentucky 60-54 to become the lowest seeded NCAA men's basketball tournament winner since #8 Villanova in 1985.
• Louisiana House Republican Vance McAllister has apparently been caught on tape making out with one of his campaign staffers.
• An auto watchdog group is asking the Obama administration to consider more recalls on embattled automaker General Motors' Chevy Impalas, citing possible airbag defects.
• A Louisiana jury has ordered Japanese drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical and its US partner Eli Lilly & Co. to pay $9 billion in combined damages over hiding the cancer risks in the diabetes drug, Actos.
• 50 years ago this week, IBM introduced the world to System/360, the mainframe family that NASA used to send the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

Last Call For The End Of The Bridge

And the other shoe drops:  if you want to know why Chris Christie is facing a grand jury over Bridgegate and why US attorneys are moving forward, it's because the aide behind the Port Authority scandal is now talking to the Feds.

The former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive who orchestrated the George Washington Bridge lane closures is cooperating with federal prosecutors investigating the scandal, Esquire reported on Monday.

According to Esquire's Scott Raab, sources close to the investigation say that David Wildstein has been cooperating with Paul Fishman, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey. Raab also reported that Fishman has increased the number of investigators working the case, and has been presenting evidence and witnesses to a grand jury. (On Friday, ABC News reported that Michael Drewniak, press secretary to Gov. Chris Christie (R), testified before the grand jury.)

Esquire isn't the only outlet to get word of Wildstein's interactions with prosecutors. On Sunday night, the website Main Justice reported that Wildstein “was camped at the U.S. Attorney’s office” in Newark last week meeting with prosecutors. In January, Wildstein's attorney, Alan Zegas, said that his client would talk if given "immunity from the relevant entities."

Main Justice also reported that Charlie McKenna, former chief counsel to Christie, met with federal investigators in mid-January. Christie announced on Dec. 19 that McKenna was leaving the chief counsel position to become CEO of the New Jersey Schools Development Authority (SDA), a position he was officially elected to by the SDA board of directors on Jan. 2. McKenna could not immediately be reached for comment by TPM on Monday.

So at this point multiple people are cooperating with the Feds to build a case to bring Christie down.  This has gone beyond the theoretical exercise of "what if" for 2016 and its associated punditry and into criminal proceedings against a sitting governor.

Chris Christie is in serious trouble, and he knows it.

The Sum Of All Derp

The Telegraph columnist Charles Moore declares "the game is up for climate change believers" as he reviews a new book trashing climate science as the sum of all eeeeeevil liberalism.

Most of us pay some attention to the weather forecast. If it says it will rain in your area tomorrow, it probably will. But if it says the same for a month, let alone a year, later, it is much less likely to be right. There are too many imponderables.

The theory of global warming is a gigantic weather forecast for a century or more. However interesting the scientific inquiries involved, therefore, it can have almost no value as a prediction. Yet it is as a prediction that global warming (or, as we are now ordered to call it in the face of a stubbornly parky 21st century, “global weirding”) has captured the political and bureaucratic elites. All the action plans, taxes, green levies, protocols and carbon-emitting flights to massive summit meetings, after all, are not because of what its supporters call “The Science”. Proper science studies what is – which is, in principle, knowable – and is consequently very cautious about the future – which isn’t. No, they are the result of a belief that something big and bad is going to hit us one of these days.

We can't even get the weather forecast for next week right, so climate science is really a cult.  A LIBERAL CULT OF WARMISM.

The origins of warmism lie in a cocktail of ideas which includes anti-industrial nature worship, post-colonial guilt, a post-Enlightenment belief in scientists as a new priesthood of the truth, a hatred of population growth, a revulsion against the widespread increase in wealth and a belief in world government. It involves a fondness for predicting that energy supplies won’t last much longer (as early as 1909, the US National Conservation Commission reported to Congress that America’s natural gas would be gone in 25 years and its oil by the middle of the century), protest movements which involve dressing up and disappearing into woods (the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, the Mosleyite Blackshirts who believed in reafforestation) and a dislike of the human race (The Club of Rome’s work Mankind at the Turning-Point said: “The world has cancer and the cancer is man.”).

If anything, both the book and the column explain the seething hatred wingers have for the notion that climate change even exists.  To them, it's the sum of everything they believe liberalism is, a vast conspiracy of "low-information" dunces who worship scientists as rock stars, grubby parasites who dare to bite the hand of the wealthy who own the businesses and pay the taxes to sustain the programs that feed and clothe them.  The argument is that by throwing off the shackles and becoming "educated" about this, you'll at least be rooting for the team that's going to win in the end.

Thus the gigantic effort to prove climate change as a myth, and reinforcing the notion that it's a myth by saying things like "Well if it really was as bad as you say, why aren't governments acting?" while ignoring that the multinationals own the world governments.

Amazing stuff really, but if you ever wondered why the wingers despise climate change so much, apparently if they disprove it, they disprove liberalism forever and we can all live in harmony as serfs with SUVs we can't afford because 'Murica.

Jeb Bush Will Never Be President

Mainly because Jeb Bush will never survive a GOP primary.  Not after consecutive losses by McCain and Romney, and certainly not with his record on immigration.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush said Sunday that many who illegally come to the United States do so out of an "act of love" for their families and should be treated differently than people who illegally cross U.S. borders or overstay visas.

This right here has ended his 2016 prospects before they ever began.

Asked about immigration, Bush started by saying that a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate last year made "a good effort" at proposing ways to ensure that people overstaying visas leave the country.

"A great country ought to know where those folks are and politely ask them to leave," he said, adding later that properly targeting people who overstay visas "would restore people's confidence" in the nation's immigration system.

"There are means by which we can control our border better than we have. And there should be penalties for breaking the law," he added. "But the way I look at this -- and I'm going to say this, and it'll be on tape and so be it. The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally, they come to our country because their families -- the dad who loved their children -- was worried that their children didn’t have food on the table. And they wanted to make sure their family was intact, and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime that there should be a price paid, but it shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families."

Let me explain this another way:  Chris Christie has a better shot now at 2016 than Jeb Bush does.  The Wingers will never accept his position on immigration.  They will savage him and they will nominate Rand Paul or Marco Rubio and lose in a landslide anyway.

It'll be glorious.

Well, it would be if we still have a country after 2014.  Better vote then first.

StupidiNews!

• US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel says that the US Navy will send two additional missile defense destroyers to the Sea of Japan in 2017 to protect against North Korean threats.
• Nigeria has passed South Africa to become the continent's largest economy at $453 billion, making it the 26th largest economy in the world.
• Pro-Russian protestors have stormed and captured state buildings in at least three eastern Ukrainian cities over the weekend, with the government in Kiev blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• Humans are taking over for robots in Toyota's Japanese plants as the company looks to efficiency over growth.
• Microsoft has gotten permission from New Mexico state officials to dig up the infamous burial site of millions of unsold 80's-era Atari 2600 console games as part of a documentary.

Last Call For The Space Cadets At FOX

While you're watching Cosmos tonight (or the premiere of season 4 of Game of Thrones!) here's Saturday Night Live's version of Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining science on "FOX and Friends", in what may actually be the first truly funny skit I've seen in a while.



Because 7.1 million is nowhere near 7 million.  Not even close.

The Turnout Game

2014 is very simple:  If Seniors, who jumped ship from the Democrats in 2010 to the FOX News machine and the GOP show up to vote in November (and they will) and black, Latino, working-class and young voters don't show up, or are discouraged through voter ID laws, the Republicans will not only win back the Senate easily, but they could get a margin in the House that will make it impossible to win it back this generation.

Seniors are the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc in midterm years, turning out in higher numbers than Democratic base voters. And a recent Gallup poll showed seniors have become even more Republican over the last two decades, and in 2013 48 percent considered themselves Republican.

That spells trouble for Democrats, who are already facing a difficult midterm climate. Doug Thornell, a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman, said it’s imperative to close the gap they faced in the last midterm cycle.

“Democrats have to perform better with seniors than they did in 2010. They got shellacked with seniors in 2010. I don’t think the goal here is to win, but I definitely think the goal is to narrow the gap,” he said.

In other words, if we don't show up to vote, and Republicans pick up 30 or 40 seats in the House and 10 or 12 in the Senate, they will basically be able to force President Obama to sign their awful laws or shut down the government and hurt people again.  They might even be able to get a veto-proof majorities on legislation if the bloodbath is big enough and enough cowardly remaining Dems start siding against the President.

What about the last four years makes anyone think congressional Dems won't sell him out if 2014 goes to hell?

So why do we put ourselves and him through that hell?  Let's show up and vote in November, people.

The Beginning Of The End Of Chris Christie

It seems New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie's investigation into Chris Christie that cleared Chris Christie of any wrongdoing (as long as you're asking Chris Christie) has not satisfied federal prosecutors, who have now pushed Bridgegate into the grand jury phase.

The U.S. Attorney in New Jersey has convened a grand jury to investigate the involvement of Governor Chris Christie’s office in the George Washington Bridge scandal, ABC News has learned.

Twenty-three jurors convened in a federal courthouse in Newark today to hear testimony from a key staff member, Christie press secretary Mike Drewniak, whose lawyer, Anthony Iacullo, said Drewniak was not a target of the investigation.

"We're here to answer questions and that's what Michael did today," Iacullo said.

The convening of the grand jury is evidence that the U.S. Attorney’s investigation has progressed beyond an inquiry and moved to the criminal phase.

Reminder:  Chris Christie is a former US Attorney, and knows exactly what it means for the US Attorney's office to empanel a grand jury when it involves a sitting governor.

It means Chris Christie is in serious trouble, because the Government is building a case against him.  It also means his 2016 prospects are 100% over, and he's done.  At the bare minimum, this grand jury is going to be going on well into next year, meaning he's going to be deep into legal trouble just in time for the 2016 race if he's indicted, and too far out of the money if he's exonerated.

He's done, folks.  Find a fork and insert.

Last Call For The Roaring 20's

New wealth numbers show that for the first time since the Gilded Age of the late 1920's, the concentration of America's total wealth in the hands of the wealthiest one percent is now above one-fifth.





As you can see, in 1975 that number was about 7%.  It's 21% now, meaning the share of wealth gained by the super-rich has tripled in the last 40 years or so.  Half of that total increase (from 14% to 21%) came since 2001, just 12 years.

And this will only get worse.  The rich get richer, and the poor must suffer because only the rich are worthy or even moral.

The Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. With A Shield

Readers know I'm a sucker for a Marvel Studios film, so this weekend's premiere of Captain America: The Winter Soldier definitely found me in line for a show.



Chris Evans reprises his role as WWII era super soldier Steve Rogers from 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger and 2012's monster hit The Avengers) and as with the other "Phase 2" post Avengers Marvel films (2013's Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World) our hero is having trouble adjusting to his new role as not only America's protector, but as the leader of the planet's last line of defense.

Cap is still working for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and S.H.I.E.L.D. along with his fellow Avenger Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and his new friend from the VA, aerial ace Sam Wilson, (Anthony Mackie) but he's having trouble accepting the world in 2014 and its differences from when he was frozen stopping Red Skull and HYDRA's nuclear plot back in 1944.  Just about everyone he knows from then is gone (or is pushing 90) and he's having adjustment issues to say the very least.  Black Widow sees him as a good friend if not brother and is helping him out, but Cap misses his girlfriend from 70 years ago, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and he still visits her, when she remembers who he is.

Back in the 40's, Cap knew who the bad guys were and it was pretty clear that America was the champion of freedom.  These days, not so much as World Security Council Secretary Alexander Pierce (played brilliantly by Robert Redford) must struggle to keep Earth safe at any cost against mounting evidence that the agency itself may have been compromised by traitors. (If you've been keeping up with the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. show on ABC, Agent Coulson and his crew connect the aftermath of Thor: The Dark World to this movie's events rather niftily.)

And things get even more complicated when the titular Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) shows up, complete with bionic arm and a past that forces Cap to make some hard and complex decisions about who the good guys are, if there are still any.  As with the rest of the "Phase 2" Marvel movies, this is a much darker film with pretty intense action scenes.  We know Cap is a good guy, but we're really not sure about anybody else, and that line between hero and good soldier following necessary orders gets a shield flung through it on more than one occasion.

In the end, I thought the first Captain America film was under-appreciated and very well done, and this film follows in its footsteps and then some, it's as good as Iron Man 3 if not better.  As always, stick around for the end credit scenes and look for Marvel comic creator Stan Lee in a cameo.

Up next, Guardians of the Galaxy in August...

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

As Steve M points out, charity is no longer a Christian virtue.  It's enabling the unworthy sinner.  Rep. Paul Ryan made that clear today that there will be no GOP replacement for Obamcare should it be repealed.

"If you look at these kinds of reforms, where they've been tried before -- say the state of Kentucky, for example -- you basically make it impossible to underwrite insurance," Ryan said, according to an advance transcript. "You dramatically crank up the cost. And you make it hard for people to get affordable health care."

You can have good healthcare, or you can have affordable healthcare.  You don't get both in the Ryan budget.  Tea Party Express head Howard Kaloogian:

I think it's clear that God has a position on many of the things we deem political today, from life to theft to the doctrine of covetousness, which by the way seems to be the promotion of the left. You know, they talk about 'income inequality,' well what is that but covetousness? So how could somebody support that cause if they're biblical believing Christians?

 Your tax money is being given to those people.  And that will have to be stopped...

 In the end, Republicans care about rich people.  The rest of you are screwed.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology has unveiled their newest atomic clock, accurate enough to only lose a second over 300 million years.
• US officials have granted aerospace giant Boeing license to sell airliner parts to Iran for the first time since the Iranian revolution in 1979.
• McDonald's has closed its restaurants in Crimea fearing an anti-Western backlash after a Russian politician called for all US chains to be ousted from Russia.
• The March employment numbers are in with the US economy adding 192,000 jobs as the unemployment rate held steady at 6.7%.
• Credit agency Experian is facing investigations by multiple states' attorneys general over the possible breach of as many as 200 million social security numbers.