Last Call For Rise Of The Planet Of The Morons

How to be a Republican, by NY state Senate candidate Jim Coughlan:

1) Go after MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry with an obvious racial slur like "damned dirty ape" on Twitter.

2) Plead ignorance to the fact that Melissa Harris-Perry is black, state that you've never seen her show, and basically say you've never heard of her when you get called out on it.

3) Wonder what the big deal is when you were just quoting Charlton Heston from a movie.

4) Wonder why are liberals so obsessed with race all the time.

5) Ignore the fact that you got in trouble for retweeting insulting, racist, and misogynist tweets three weeks earlier and that you deleted your Twitter account because of it.

6) Accuse intolerant, politically correct liberals of trying to drive you out of politics and claim your aggrieved white guy status.

7) Repeat as necessary until you win your election, or end up getting a lucrative job offer from the Right-Wing Outrage Machine.

It's that easy!

Time To Thai One Off

I've noted the ongoing crisis in Thailand in StupidiNews involving the corruption charges against Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra and the months of sometimes violent protests there.  All that got taken to a new level today as Thailand's highest court has now found her guilty on those corruption charges, and has immediately ordered her to step aside.

A Thai court ordered Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to step down on Wednesday after finding her guilty of abusing her power, prolonging a political crisis that has led to violent protests and brought the economy close to recession.

The decision is bound to anger supporters of Yingluck, but the court did allow ministers not implicated in the case against her to stay in office, a decision that could take some of the sting out of any backlash on the streets.

After the ruling, the cabinet said Commerce Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongphaisan, who is also a deputy prime minister, would replace Yingluck, and the caretaker government would press ahead with plans for a July 20 election.

"The caretaker government's responsibility now is to organize an election as soon as possible," said Niwatthamrong, a former executive in a company owned by Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck's brother and himself a former prime minister who was ousted by the military in 2006.

"I hope the political situation will not heat up after this," Niwatthamrong said of the court ruling.

If all this seems very chummy and weird, that's because it is. Thailand desperately needs election and governmental reforms, but graft and favors are a way of life here (not that the legalized lobbyist version of this is any better here in America.)   But Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck's brother, has basically been running the country in exile since 2001.  Forcing Yingluck out is certainly a step in the right direction, but the country has a long way to go.

She Blinded Science With Me

Sam Stein notes the latest effort by anti-science Republicans to strip funding from federal agencies that might actually conduct science rather than bow to the GOP corporate masters.  The bill is called the FIRST Act, and it would subject all projects for federal funding for the National Science Foundation to be reviewed by politicians, and not the scientific community for merit.

Titled the “Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology (FIRST) Act of 2014," the bill would put a variety of new restrictions on how funds are doled out by the National Science Foundation. The goal, per its Republican supporters on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, would be to weed out projects whose cost can't be justified or whose sociological purpose is not apparent.

For Democrats and advocates, however, the FIRST Act represents a dangerous injection of politics into science and a direct assault on the much-cherished peer-review process by which grants are awarded.

"We have a system of peer-review science that has served as a model for not only research in this country but in others," said Bill Andresen, the associate vice president of Federal Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania. "The question is, does Congress really think it has the better ability to determine the scientific merit of grant applications or should it be left up to the scientists and their peers?"

In recent weeks, the Obama administration and science agencies have -- in less-than-subtle terms -- offered up similar criticisms of the FIRST Act. At an American Association for the Advancement of Science forum on Thursday, presidential science adviser John Holdren said he was "concerned with a number of aspects" of the bill.

"It appears aimed at narrowing the focus of NSF-funded research to domains that are applied to various national interests other than simply advancing the progress of science," Holdren said.

And of course this bill designed to "combat waste and fraud" in federal science projects would really exist to allow Republicans to shut down things they don't like:  climate change research, green energy projects, and research into the social costs of things like firearms, pharmaceuticals, our food supply and anything else the GOP's corporate masters might be opposed to.  Republican politicians would be running America's science research.  If that sentence doesn't terrify you, nothing will.

Another part of the bill stipulates that if an investigator receives more than five years of funding from the NSF, he or she can only get additional funding by contributing "original creative, and transformative research under the grant." Ensuring that the government doesn't plow resources into stalled projects may be laudable. But scientists shudder at the idea that they, let alone politicians, can definitively tell whether research will pay dividends after half a decade.

These quips merely feed a larger problem that Democrats and the White House have with the bill. Rather than offering a single budget level for the NSF, the FIRST Actauthorizes levels for individual directorates, or sub-agencies, within the foundation. The big winners in this equation are the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering and the Directorate for Engineering. The loser is the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate, which is poised to get a 22 percent budget cut from fiscal year 2014 levels.

So yes, the bill is designed to crush long-term projects like climate science, social science, and green energy and instead empower the stuff corporations can use to make big money fast.  That's what "science" means to Republicans.

StupidiNews!

• Under heavy criticism, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan continues to defend his country's response to the mass kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls by Islamist group Boko Haram.
• New Orleans FOX affiliate WVUE is apologizing to viewers for a "technical glitch" that interrupted Sunday's "Cosmos" episode explaining climate change and evolution.
• Chinese search engine giant Alibaba is set for a US stock market IPO that could surpass Facebook's $16 billion initial haul.
• In the first reported human case of H5N6 bird flu, a Chinese man in Sichuan province has died from the disease but officials say the risk of spreading the virus remains low.
• A House panel is expected to vote today on ending the NSA's phone metadata collection program and forcing the government to get information directly from telco providers under court order instead.

Last Call For The Left Sinking Another Obama Nominee

David Barron's nomination for the First Circuit is about to get derailed by "I stand with Rand" Democrats, who as usual have no problem backing my quasi-racist troll of a Senator over their own party and president.

President Obama’s choice for a powerful appeals court appointment is in peril from both the left and the right, highlighting how the fraught politics of an election year are threatening the president’s agenda even among his allies on Capitol Hill. 

The nomination of David Barron, who was a Justice Department lawyer at the start of the administration and is now a Harvard Law School professor, is mired in a maw of contentious issues. Republicans object to what they say are his radically liberal views on the Constitution. Democrats in conservative-leaning states, especially those who are up for re-election, are wary that a vote for him might backfire with voters at home. And members of both parties say they are disturbed by Mr. Barron’s authorship of legal memos that justified the United States’ killing of an American citizen overseas with a drone. 

The American Civil Liberties Union wrote to all 100 senators on Monday urging them to put off a vote on Mr. Barron’s confirmation until the White House allowed them to read all of his writings on the drone program.

Barron would only need 51 votes, which means Republicans are completely powerless to stop him from being approved.  Only Democrats can kill this nomination, and that's exactly what these cowards are planning to do, because DROOOOOOOOOONES.

Mr. Barron, chosen by the president last year for a vacancy on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, needs 51 votes, meaning only a handful of Democrats, who control 55 seats, could defect. The majority leader, Harry Reid, has not decided whether he will proceed with a vote given the uncertainty, a spokesman said Monday.

The A.C.L.U.’s objections, along with the announcement by Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, that he would use his power to slow down the confirmation unless the administration released one of the legal memos written by Mr. Barron, raised fresh questions on Capitol Hill on Monday about whether the nomination would survive.

So yes, pathetic cowards are running from Obama again, as if Republicans will magically go easier on them in November just because they say "Hey, I stood up to that one"  and that Democratic voters will be more likely to vote for them after slagging the President.

Keep right on going, kids.  We don't forget.

Fly By Night, Rob By Day

US corporate profits hit a fifth straight record year in 2013 and that includes the airline industry, which is now flying high at the expense of workers, passengers, and taxpayers.

The nation's airlines continue to rebound from the recession and the 9/11 terrorist attacks with a report Monday of $12.7 billion in net profits last year, up from $98 million in 2012.

The profits come on $199.7 billion in operating revenues for the nation's top 26 airlines, compared with $156 billion for 2012, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics. 

For 2013, the airlines collected $120.6 billion from fares, $3.3 billion in baggage fees and $2.8 billion from reservation change fees. Fees for food, WiFi service and other onboard extras are not reported separately to the bureau. 

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the industry lost a cumulative $55 billion before the nation's airlines started a rebound in 2008 by consolidating carriers, adopting bag fees and cutting less-profitable routes. 

"We have every fee known to man," said Rick Seaney, chief executive of the travel site Farecompare.com. "That tells you why there are profits now." 

Airlines also increased profits by filling more available seats on bigger, newer, more fuel-efficient planes. 

In 2013, the number of flights from the top 26 airlines dropped to 9.1 million, down from 9.3 million in the previous year, according to the Department of Transportation. 

At the same time, the number of passengers grew from 734 million in 2012 to 741 million, according to the federal agency.

So the airlines are specifically gunning now to give us worse service, fewer flights, and less competition. Revenues jumped by nearly a third, fares and fees jumped especially at smaller airports.  In fact, airlines are rewarded for giving us as awful service as possible.  There's no profit motive in good service for the industry anymore.

But of course we can't regulate the airlines, because taxes and regulatory burdens are too awful.  So awful in fact the airlines are making record profits...

Privileged Little Liars

In a development that should shock nobody, turns out Tal Fortgang, the obnoxious rich white privileged Princeton freshman who "refuses to apologize for his white privilege" in a rant published all over the conservative press (and in beltway outlets like TIME Magazine) is working for the Right-Wing Noise Machine, Collegiate Division.

Fortgang wrote his rant for the Princeton Tory, an independent campus publication that's just one of about 80 bankrolled by the Collegiate Network and its parent group, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. According to its website, ISI was founded in the McCarthy era as a "fifty-year plan" to advance conservative political causes "by implanting the idea in the minds of the coming generations." 

Today, ISI is a "nonpartisan" non-profit with a $10 million annual budget that astroturfs scores of conservative campus publications across the country, funding them and grooming their staffs to become TV pundits, politicians, and political moneymen. Praised by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Antonin Scalia, it started humbly in 1953 with nothing but an idea and a president: a recent graduate of Yale named William F. Buckley. 

The ISI and Collegiate Network have raked in millions of dollars from major conservative financiers over the years, most of it from the coffers of Richard Mellon Scaife, a banking tycoon (yes, those Mellons) who's most famous for bankrolling the conservative witch-hunt against Bill Clinton that led to Whitewater and Monicagate. Scaife's money also helps keep the lights on at the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, ALEC, and just about every other conservative money-and-opinion laundromat you can name.

And the ISI/Collegiate Network is also responsible for some of the most infamous names in wingnut welfare: the ghoulish Ann Coulter, indicted propagandist Dinesh D'Souza, National Review editor Rich Lowry, and Washington Free Beacon editor Matthew Continetti.  It seems Tal here will fit right in to this crowd when he graduates.

Let's be honest here:  Fortgang produced a product for consumption, and that product is outrage.  Unless you believe in America that white men are the aggrieved party, his theories are so much whining of a petulant child, the Princeton freshman version of Veruca Salt screaming how she wants everything now.  There's a market for that product, and ISI and the Collegiate Network produces and nurtures those producers the way a baseball team's farm system brings up major league talent.

This was an audition for the big leagues of faux outrage, and Fortgang passed with flying colors.  It's all that "conservative intellectualism" has these days.

StupidiNews!

• In the wake of reports that veterans have died in the VA system waiting for care, the American Legion is calling for the resignation of Secretary of Veterans Affaris Eric Shinseki.
• Wildfires in Oklahoma have killed one so far and forced hundreds to evacuate the town of Guthrie, 30 miles north of Oklahoma City.
• Target Corp. has ousted CEO Gregg Steinhafel after December's massive data breach left millions of Target customers vulnerable to possible identity theft.
• Anti-terrorist operations by the Ukranian government continue in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine as 20 people were killed and dozens more injured in fighting near Slovyansk.
• Internet backbone operator Level 3 is claiming that six broadband internet companies have deliberately failed to upgrade their connections in order to force payments from content providers.

Last Call For Church And State Of Insanity

In a 5-4 ruling today, the Supreme Court all but blew a hole in the remaining barriers between religion and local government as the conservative justices and Justice Kennedy agreed that having a "Chaplain of the Month" giving invocations at open council meetings did not violate the First Amendment.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that divided the court’s more conservative members from its liberal ones, said the prayers were merely ceremonial. They were neither unduly sectarian nor likely to make members of other faiths feel unwelcome.

“Ceremonial prayer,” he wrote, “is but a recognition that, since this nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond that authority of government to alter or define.”

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the town’s practices could not be reconciled “with the First Amendment’s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share of her government.”

Town officials in Greece, N.Y., near Rochester, said that members of all faiths, and atheists, were welcome to give the opening prayer. In practice, however, almost all of the chaplains were Christian. Some of their prayers were explicitly sectarian, with references, for instance, to “the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.”

But that didn't matter, as five justices found that expression of religion is not only protected under the First Amendment's religion clause, but doubly so as it is protected, free speech.  So is there anything that can actually violate the notion that the government cannot officially sanction a state religion?  Kennedy replied a very narrow window for that:

Justice Kennedy did suggest that some prayers may be unacceptable if offered consistently over time, including ones that “denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation or preach conversion.”

Justices Thomas and Scalia went even further, suggesting that only outright threats of civil reprisals based on belief or non-belief would constitute a violation.

You might then be excused for thinking that conservative jurists seem to believe that we already have a state-sanctioned religion in WASP Christianity.

In comments earlier this year only now coming to light, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court asserted that the First Amendment only applies to Christianity since neither Buddha nor Mohammed created man.

"Everybody, to include the United States Supreme Court, has been deceived as to one little word in the First Amendment called religion. They can’t define it," chief justice Roy Moore said in January, according to video published Friday by Raw Story.

“Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures. They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship,” he continued. “Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”

But Christianity is under threat in America, right?

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

The Wall Street Journal is the kind of place where you can find long diatribes on why those wimpy "doctors" are pushing the silly hoax that saturated fats can cause heart disease, and why those evil climate "alarmists" are happy to see Africans dying in poverty for lack of electricity from polluting power plants but the science is 100% rock solid on why black people are genetically inferior to whites.

But liberal media, so go figure.

Generation Dudebro

Maybe this is statistical noise, and maybe it's not, but the crew at the Monkey Cage cite new evidence suggests that while Millennials in their 20's are reliably Democratic having come of age during the Bush years, voters 18-20 have grown up with a lot more Obama bashing from both the left and right and are nearly evenly split on party affiliation:

Below is the party identification of millennials broken down by age group. (I thank Esten Perez and John Della Volpe of Harvard for providing me these data.)



The graph captures the percent who identify with or lean toward the Democratic or Republican parties. The remainder identify as independents and do not lean toward either party. Older groups of millennials are decidedly Democrats. For example, the Democratic advantage is +18 (48%-30%) among 27-29-year-olds.

But among younger millennials, that advantage shrinks. In fact, Democrats and Republicans are essentially tied among 18-20 year olds: 41 percent Democratic and 38 percent Republican.

As I noted in my first post — and as Dan Hopkins recently described in more detail — the explanation is straightforward: the partisan complexion of each new generation reflects underlying economic and political fundamentals, like how well the economy is doing and how popular the president is.

Thus, it’s hardly any surprise that the youngest millennials are not as Democratic as older millennials. The youngest millennials came of age politically under a Democratic president whose popularity is below average and who has presided over a sluggish economy. Older millennials came of age politically under a Republican incumbent who became even less popular while presiding over a controversial war and a catastrophic recession. There is no reason that the two groups should be political twins.

I hit my college age years during the Clinton administration, only to run into the buzzsaw of the dot-com collapse, 9/11 and the recession, and Bush's wars.  You couldn't pay me to vote Republican.  But for today's college freshmen, the issues important to them: jobs, college loans, and digital privacy, the Democrats haven't delivered (even though most of that is the GOP's fault.)  I don't really blame them for that, then again I've got the benefit of 18 more years of experience.

Pretty striking difference however.  It's not like the youngest Millennials were responsible for 2010.

They may however be responsible for 2014.

StupidiNews, Cinco de Mayo Edition!

• The estranged wife of LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling approves of the NBA's plan to name a new CEO for day-to-day operations of the team.
• In Panama, conservative opposition candidate and former VP Juan Carlos Varela has been declared the country's new President, succeeding his former running mate Ricardo Martinelli.
• Pro-Russian militants led a strike on an Odessa police station, freeing 67 fellow activists as the Ukrainian government declared the local police force to be corrupt and in collusion.
• Nokia is the latest tech company to partner with Google to build "intelligent" and internet-connected vehicles of the future.
• A high school senior in Miami has been charged with accessing his grades online and changing grades for him and at least four other students.

Last Call For The Webs We Weave

Got a chance to see Amazing Spider-Man 2 this afternoon, and I have to say that it's definitely better than the first Andrew Garfield outing as Peter Parker.



Having said that, it's still nowhere near as good as 2004's Spider-Man 2 with Tobey Maguire as the web-slinger and Alfred Molina as his most awesome nemesis, Doc Ock.  It's a lot to live up to, but ASM2 does give it a shot (and it's still better than 2007's Spider-Man 3 to boot.)

Garfield reprises his role as Peter Parker, still somehow dating Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone, reprising her role) and living with his Aunt May (still the excellent Sally Field).  Graduating with Gwen, she's trying to get into Oxford, he's trying to juggle all this with his responsibilities as Spider-Man, defending New York City from bad guys big and small.  Things are going pretty well for Spidey, less well for Peter, but he's managing his promise to keep Gwen safe at the cost of his relationship with her.

All that goes to hell when an old friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), shows up back in Peter's life, wanting to know why his father Norman (Chris Cooper), the head of tech giant Oscorp Industries, was so interested in Peter's dad and the research he was working on.  Peter too has a lot of questions concerning his missing parents and what kind of research his father was doing for Oscorp at the time. Each of the two digging into their respective father's past eventually leads to a collision.

That collision plays out in the life of Max Dillion (Jamie Foxx), a nerdy Oscorp electrical engineer and Spidey fanboy who ends up in a freak accident involving, of all things, electric eel powered bio-batteries, turning him into the lightning-powered villain Electro.  A big theme in any Spider-man story is the web-slinger taking on bad guys way above his weight class, and Electro is no exception. When Harry starts to figure out that his old buddy Peter may be the man behind Spidey's mask and that he may be the key to curing the genetic disease that affected both father and son, he eventually takes matters into his own hands as the Green Goblin, giving Spidey seemingly well more than he can handle.

If "With great power comes great responsibility" was the theme of the first ASM, the sequel is "With great decisions come great consequences", a far more applicable lesson to the rest of us not able to swing from webs and crawl up walls.  It seems like everyone in the film has made some sort of momentous choice, and have to now live with the consequences of that choice, both good and bad. Seeing all this play out on the screen does get a little stale in the movie's 2:21 running time, but the action and special effects (particularly with Foxx's Electro) help move the film along to a conclusion that Spider-Man fans should expect, knowing Gwen Stacy's role in Spidey's universe.

Not as good as last month's Captain America: the Winter Soldier, but still a good matinee comic book popcorn flick.  Your next Sony Marvel flick:  X-Men: Days of Future Past in three weeks (stick around for the ASM2 end credits stinger for more on that one!)

Make Mine Marvel, as they say...

Dear America

"As a white male college freshman at Princeton, your assumption that my race or gender provides me with any advantages is the racist and misandrist proof that I'm really at a massive disadvantage compared to women and minorities.  Also I'm Jewish, so that must mean you're anti-Semitic as well.  But I don't apologize for being a rich white Jewish kid because I need that leg up in order to balance out how awful it is being a white man on a college campus in 2014, so the rest of you need to get over your jealousy already and maybe someday you'll be as awesome as I am.  YOLO, you sad bitches. YOLO."

-- Tal Fortgang, TIME Magazine

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color. My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting. While I haven’t done everything for myself up to this point in my life, someone sacrificed themselves so that I can lead a better life. But that is a legacy I am proud of.

I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing.

I got mine.  Screw the rest of you.  Right, Tal?

Everyone's A Constitutional Law Expert These Days

Take WaPo columnist George Will for instance.  He's boldly predicting Obamacare is doomed as doomed can be and that it will be struck down any day now over the "origination clause" in the Constitution that states a bill must originate in the House:

In October 2009, the House passed a bill that would have modified a tax credit for members of the armed forces and some other federal employees who were first-time home buyers — a bill that had nothing to do with health care. Two months later the Senate “amended” this bill by obliterating it. The Senate renamed it and completely erased its contents, replacing them with the ACA’s contents.

Case law establishes that for a Senate action to qualify as a genuine “amendment” to a House-passed revenue bill, it must be “germane to the subject matter of the [House] bill.” The Senate’s shell game — gutting and replacing the House bill — created the ACA from scratch. The ACA obviously flunks the germaneness test, without which the House’s constitutional power of originating revenue bills would be nullified.

Case law establishes that the origination clause does not apply to two kinds of bills. One creates “a particular governmental program and . . . raises revenue to support only that program.” The second creates taxes that are “analogous to fines” in that they are designed to enforce compliance with a statute passed under one of the Constitution’s enumerated powers of Congress other than the taxing power. The ACA’s tax, which the Supreme Court repeatedly said is not an enforcement penalty, and hence is not analogous to a fine, fits neither exception to the origination clause.

The ACA’s defenders say its tax is somehow not quite a tax because it is not primarily for raising revenue but for encouraging certain behavior (buying insurance). But the origination clause, a judicially enforceable limit on the taxing power, would be effectively erased from the Constitution if any tax with any regulatory — behavior-changing — purpose or effect were exempt from the clause.

Will argues that the individual mandate being a tax violates this principle and that there's no way the ACA can survive the Supreme Court.  At least one challenge to the law on this was waived by the DC Circuit court back in March.  But the lower courts have ruled in favor of the ACA.

Senate rules don't trump the Constitution, obviously; the bottom line is what the Constitution means when it says the Senate has the power to "propose or concur with amendments" on House revenue bills "as on other bills." If the Senate's power to amend revenue bills is no different from its power to amend any other bill, where does the germaneness requirement for tax measures come from? Because you won't find it in the text of the Constitution.

The lower court disagreed with the foundation's reasoning, ruling against Sissel in June. It held that the Affordable Care Act didn't violate the origination clause because that provision applied only to measures whose purpose was to raise revenue. And even if the origination clause applied, the court held, the Affordable Care Act satisfied it because HR 3590 started in the House.

So the question is will the Supreme Court eventually kill the ACA on a technicality some five or six years after the law was passed?  Having already survived at least one Supreme Court challenge, I would have to think that the answer would be another 5-4 ruling in the ACA's favor.

But that's well down the road.