Last Call For The Cantor Buried Tales

Remember when Eric Cantor was the obvious Tea Party successor to Orange Julius's post as Speaker of the House?  Not so much anymore.

Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican.

They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor’s choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea party and establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP.

Former lieutenant governor Bill Bolling, pushed out of last year’s governor’s race by a similar party schism, said he was “extremely disappointed” by the results of the vote, in which longtime Cantor loyalist and incumbent Linwood Cobb was unseated by tea party favorite Fred Gruber.

“Clearly, there is a battle taking place for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” Bolling said in a statement. “While the voice of every Republican should be heard, our challenge is to figure out how to be a conservative party, without allowing the most extreme voices of the day to control our party and determine its future direction.”

The tea party faction trumpeted the election results as a victory for core conservative principles of limited government, low taxes and a free-market economy.

“There’s been an ongoing battle for years between conservatives and establishment, and it’s a sweet victory when you win but you also win on the front porch of Eric Cantor,” said Jamie Radtke, a leader in the state tea party movement and former U.S. Senate candidate.

Cantor has become a "Washington insider" now, someone who is standing as an impediment to the unleashing the full crazy of the Tea Party.  Someone who has failed to repeal Obamacare, who has failed to impeach the President, who has failed to take the country back to 1860.  Eric Cantor is now the enemy.

Of course, Cantor will win his primary and re-election easily.  And he'll still be part of the GOP "leadership" because the notion that the Tea Party is somehow separate from the Republican mainstream is idiotic.  They're all the same.  In the end, Republicans will come around, united by their desire to lynch President Obama.

The rest is merely semantics.

Dear America

"Only the unenlightened fascist thugs of the left would have the science editor at the New York Times fired for publishing a book on the genetic inferiority of those people when it's the settled, scientific truth.  Besides, none of them could possibly be smart as I am, anyway."

--Vox Day, Vox Popoli

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

The Left is more than uncomfortable with both science and the conclusions that logically follow from it. It is now openly and avowedly anti-science. What is fascinating is that most clueless Leftists still feverishly insist that they, and not the Right, are pro-science even as they reject it in favor of various nonexistent ideals. As I have repeatedly pointed out since last August, the time for tolerating the Left has passed. Your only choice now is to submit to them or to shatter them.

Remember kids, climate change, massive hoax perpetrated by thousands of scientists.  Black people are genetically inferior to white people, settled scientific because you guys Vox Day is really, really smart and he listens to this guy who says so.

But the left is "openly and avowedly anti-science".

Bring Back Our Daughters

National Review columnist Mark Steyn really distinguishes himself on Mother's Day with this column slagging the First Lady and the missing Nigerian girls:

It is hard not to have total contempt for a political culture that thinks the picture at right is a useful contribution to rescuing 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist savages in Nigeria. Yet some pajama boy at the White House evidently felt getting the First Lady to pose with this week's Hashtag of Western Impotence would reflect well upon the Administration. The horrible thing is they may be right: Michelle showed she cared - on social media! - and that's all that matters, isn't it? 

Just as the last floppo hashtag, #WeStandWithUkraine, didn't actually involve standing with Ukraine, so #BringBackOurGirls doesn't require bringing back our girls. There are only a half-dozen special forces around the planet capable of doing that without getting most or all of the hostages killed: the British, the French, the Americans, Israelis, Germans, Aussies, maybe a couple of others. So, unless something of that nature is being lined up, those schoolgirls are headed into slavery, and the wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama's hashtag is just a form of moral preening.

To recap, the First Lady showing that she does care, that she too is a mother and is worried, that Nigeria's government has turned down US assistance and President Goodluck Jonathan continues to shuffle his feet on the issue, all that is only worthy of "total contempt" because she is Michelle Obama.

Because she used a hashtag, hashtags are now contemptible and not only is hashtag activism now utterly worthless dirty hippie twaddle, the entirely of Twitter is dead and gone and was always useless in the first place.

It's odd then that when African girls are missing, and an African-American first lady gets involved, and a large number of black folk worldwide get involved, that suddenly, Twitter becomes useless, impotent, "wretched pleading passivity", even contemptible "moral preening".

So very, very odd.

Last Call For The New Titans

Pity the junior banksters fresh out of school, who according to Bloomberg News aren't sticking around for the abuse of 90 hour work weeks and $300,000 salaries, when they can make real money in Silicon Valley.

Hamilton Colwell started as a junior banker at JPMorgan’s structured-foreign-exchange desk in 2006, when he was 27. His specialty was helping clients manage risk through interest-rate derivatives. His skills were in high demand both before and during the crisis. In 2008 and early 2009, Colwell often worked day and night, he says, returning home only to shower and change.

In dealing with friends and family, “I learned quickly not to make promises I couldn’t keep,” Colwell says. He had a girlfriend. “Weekends away and dinners out with her were always sacrificed,” he says. “It quickly became normal.” The two eventually broke up.

After Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, the crush of work made Colwell, now 36, realize he couldn’t stay in banking. Even after the markets calmed, Colwell was still working 13 hours a day during the week and often on weekends. He says for a while it was invigorating. That faded.

“I saw the light and realized that I needed to do something more meaningful,” he says.

They've gone from the dudebros of Wall Street to the Dudebros of  Infinite Loop.

After leaving JPMorgan in 2010, Colwell used the money he earned but never had time to spend to start a company called Healthy Mom LLC, which produces Maia Yogurt. A foodie in his meager spare time, he made the first batch on the stove of his Manhattan apartment after his cousin bet him that he couldn’t make a tasty yogurt that would also be good for her during her pregnancy.

The company manufactures its products at a dairy plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It now sells 100,000 cups a week of the low-sugar, low-fat yogurt, which is enhanced with probiotics, to supermarkets including Whole Foods Market Inc., Safeway Inc., Giant Food Stores LLC and Stop & Shop Supermarket Co.

Roger Wu, who was an intern at Goldman Sachs in 1999, also decided that the banker’s life was not for him. He remembers being angry and frustrated when clients made unreasonable demands, such as requesting at the end of the day a presentation for the following morning.

“So guess who’s staying up all night?” Wu asks. “You are, because the client gives you this thing at 6 o’clock, and they need it on their desk by 9 a.m.”

Wu, 37, recalls that even when he wasn’t actually working, his life was not his own.

“A lot of what you’re doing is twiddling your fingers,” he says. Leaving the office, while sometimes encouraged, isn’t really a viable option because the work flow isn’t predictable.

“If you go to a museum or the movies, your BlackBerry goes off and you’ve got to get back to the office,” Wu says.

He turned down a job offer from Goldman to join a technology company that converted organic waste into fossil fuels. He currently helps run Cooperatize Inc., a business-to-business advertising platform he co-founded with a friend.

Hooray!  Yogurt and poop!

You know, I have little sympathy for investment bankers, and even less for investment bankers who go off to work for Silly Valley.  It's like going from the group that destroyed our economy to the group that's trying to destroy our economy yet again.

It takes a special kind of person to be that much of an arrogant douchewad, and frankly I don't want to know about it.

The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play

Spoilers for a 30-year old Matthew Broderick/Ally Sheedy movie:  In the end, the AI running the Pentagon's nuclear missile program realizes that 80's era nuclear war is bad with the above title quote.  Fast forward to Washington DC today and Democrats have again hit upon this same quote as the correct response to the GOP's ludicrous Benghazi idiocy.

Although the GOP bill creating the select committee passed the House on Thursday, the offices of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are in talks to define rules that will govern the panel in the face of Democratic allegations that Republicans simply want to embarrass the White House ahead of this year's elections.

With that in mind, Republicans proposed several overtures on Friday, which were soundly rejected by the Democrats.

"I consider it a slap in the face," Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said after a closed-door meeting with Democratic leaders in Pelosi's office in the Capitol. "It is actually worse than the current situation that we have in Oversight and Government Reform [Committee]. It's a step backwards."

In a Friday letter to Boehner, Pelosi echoed that message.

"Regrettably, the proposal does not prevent the unacceptable and repeated abuses committed by [Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)] in any meaningful way, and we find it fundamentally unfair," Pelosi wrote.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said, "The ball is in their court."

Hopefully Democrats will continue to remember this lesson.  For the GOP to get any traction on this mess, they require willing participation from the Democrats to give the circus any sort of legitimacy.  All the Democrats have to do is refuse to oblige them.

And We're Back To Dinosaur Steve Again

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear has made me proud on several occasions with his vocal defense of Obamacare and our state's exchange, Kynect, continues to serve as an example to the rest of the nation.  Kentucky has reduced its uninsured by almost 40% under the program, by any measure an astonishing success.

But don't ask him any questions about same-sex marriage, because then he turns into a bigoted old Southern white guy.

In February, a federal judge ruled that Kentucky must recognize same-sex couples’ marriages from other states, a decision that was stayed pending appeal. Gov. Steve Beshear (D), who hired outside counsel because of Attorney General Jack Conway’s (D) unwillingness to defend the state’s ban, has filed his first brief in the appeal, presenting a novel economic argument against recognizing same-sex marriage.

Beshear’s argument to the Sixth Circuit echoes claims made by many other states defending marriage bans. Notably, because same-sex couples cannot “naturally procreate,” they are “not similarly situated to man-woman couples” and thus do not deserve the same benefits of marriage. Same-sex marriage, the brief argues, is a “new right,” so the state’s ban does not violate same-sex couples’ equal protection when it comes to marriage. But Beshear applies these assumptions in a new way: because same-sex couples do not contribute to the birth rate, it’s not economically beneficial for Kentucky to recognize their marriages.

“Though there is a cost to Kentucky by granting tax and other benefits to man-woman couples, a stable or growing birth rate offsets the cost,” the brief argues. “Only man-woman relationships can naturally procreate, and only those relationships, therefore, are afforded the state sponsored benefit.”

Which may be the most moronic statement I've ever read the man make, given all the time I'm lived here.  How many childless couples are married in Kentucky?  I'd like to know the percentage, because under Beshear's excruciatingly stupid logic, they don't deserve the benefits of marriage either.  What about infertile couples?  Are we now going to take marriage benefits away from them?

Is this clown serious?

I expect this kind of rank idiocy from Republicans, but not from Steve Beshear.  If there's any part of his record that is abysmal, it's his stance on LGBTQ folks in the Bluegrass State. Steve seems to think they don't exist.

Thankfully, Jack Conway has filed to run to succeed Dinosaur Steve as Governor in 2015, and I'm hoping that he can pull it off.

By the way, add Arkansas to the list of states where a federal judge has struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage as a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, his first visit to the region since it was annexed by Russian forces.
• South Sudan's President Salva Kiir has signed a cease fire with rebel forces on Friday to stop five months of bloodshed in the country.
• An Arkansas judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit brought by shareholders against Wal-Mart over losses incurred when the company's Mexican division came under bribery scrutiny in 2012.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit another record high on Friday as broader markets fell for the week.
• AT&T once again is telling the FCC not to reclassify broadband internet as a telecommunications service with common carrier rules, but critics are saying it's necessary to save net neutrality.

Last Call For The People's Republic Of Bundystan

The FBI is finally looking into the de facto state of citizen martial law that exists near the Bundy Ranch in Nevada.  Yes, those "sovereign citizen" domestic terrorist types are still there and Bundy as his supporters are still trying to do everything they can to precipitate a deadly showdown with law enforcement.  From Las Vegas CBS affiliate KLAS-TV:

The I-Team has confirmed that FBI agents have launched a formal investigation into alleged death threats, intimidation and possible weapons violations that culminated with a dangerous showdown on April 12, and the first people to be interviewed by FBI agents are Metro Police, starting with Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillispie.

Federal employees suspended their roundup of Cliven Bundy's cattle, following a confrontation outside the BLM compound near Bunkerville. At the urging of Metro Police, Bundy's cattle were released, but BLM's new director announced the matter wasn't over and would be resolved, one way or another.

Last week, the I-Team talked with Metro officers who intervened to protect the lives of federal employees from the 400 or so Bundy supporters and armed militia members. Officers told the I-Team they feared for their lives that day because of the assembled firepower, and because many in the crowd had pointed weapons at officers, taunted them, told them they should be ready to die.

Assistant Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who was left in charge of the Metro contingent by Sheriff Doug Gillespie, told the I-Team that such alleged behavior would be the subject of a criminal investigation.

"The federal authorities are conducting an investigation and I am pretty confident it is going to go into the future," Lombardo said.

He added there would be consequences for someone caught on videotape pointing a gun at a Metro office or federal ranger.

"Yes, there is definitely going to be consequences, definitely. That is unacceptable behavior. If we let it go, it would continue into the future," Lombardo said.

The I-Team has learned that Lombardo was interviewed by FBI agents earlier this week. The first person to be questioned by the FBI team was Lombardo's boss, Sheriff Gillespie.

OK, so the investigation is coming at least.  That's good, I just hope nobody gets hurt in the process.  These guys really, really do want to kill some feds and frankly I'm surprised nobody's been hurt yet.  We'll see.

Mr. 47 Percent Meets The Minimum Wage

Mittens has decided that the unwashed masses who do that "work" thing might deserve a few extra of those "dollars" on the low end of things, just to make it up to them for the awful drudgery of their lives.

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Friday that he believes the Republican Party ought to get on board with raising the minimum wage.

"I part company with many of the conservatives in my party on the issue of the minimum wage. I think we ought to raise it," Romney said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "Because frankly our party is all about more jobs and better pay, and I think communicating that is important to us."

The former Massachusetts governor had waffled on the issue during the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election. He first expressing support for indexing the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation before asserting there was no need to raise it. Romney didn't say on "Morning Joe" how much of a minimum wage increase he would support.

Romney also argued that income inequality has grown during the Obama administration, hitting black and Hispanic families particularly hard. That gives the GOP an opportunity to court those minority communities, he said.

"Key for our party is to be able to convince the people who are in the working population, particularly the Hispanic community, that our party will help them get better jobs and better wages," he said.

Why of course those people will be thanking Mitt and the GOP for raising the minimum wage and wouldn't credit President Obama and the Democrats at all.  Why, that's just the sharp thinking that got Mitt Romney elected as President in 2012, by gum.

Of course, Mitt's just opened up a huge can of worms for the rest of the GOP field of hopefuls, who now have to come up with a stance on the minimum wage (or flip flop on it like Mitt did).

Romney responded by noting that as governor, he had vetoed a bill to raise the minimum wage in Massachusetts. 

“I vetoed it and I said, look, the way to deal with minimum wage is this: On a regular basis, I said in the proposal I made, every two years, we should look at the minimum wage, we should see what’s happened to inflation, we should also look at the jobs level throughout the country, unemployment rate, competitive rates in other states or, in this case, other nations,” he said.

Now it's okay I guess.

Dear America:

"Benghazi is THE END of Obama, do you hear me?  THE END of Obama and THE END of the Democrat Party and THE END of liberalism and it will all come crashing down around and THEN WHAT, LIBTARDS?  THEN WHAT?!?!

Facts?  Umm...BENGHAZI! I WIN!"

--Ron Christie, Daily Beast

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

The Obama administration has misled, dissembled, and otherwise given the finger to the families of those who lost their lives that night in service to their country. I’m willing to believe that the personnel on the ground in Benghazi were terrified, confused, and hoping the cavalry was on its way to save them from terrorists seeking to kill them. We need a Special Select Committee on Benghazi to ascertain these facts and ensure that such a disaster never occurs again. We need truth, not bullsh*t, from the president and his administration, but so far, that’s all they’ve been shoveling.

I'm willing to believe that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans were terrified, confused, and hoping the cavalry was on its way too during the Bush administration, but we were too busy murdering them for being brown..  But it sure is fun to pretend that there's some grand cover-up that resulted in four dead bodies when Bush's incompetence cost us a couple thousand times that.

I'm sure this will somehow cause real problems for President Obama's re-election campaign.

StupidiNews!

• Vermont Democrat Gov. Peter Shumlin has signed into law the nation's first measure to require labeling of genetically modified foods.
• The FEC has given the go-ahead for political donations of up to $100 in Bitcoins for political action committees.
• The $35 billion merger between US advertising giant Omnicom and French rival group Publicis has been scrapped as the companies have not been able to resolve issues with the deal.
• Apple is close to a deal to buy music streaming service provider and headphone maker Beats for $3.2 billion as the tech giant considers moving into the arena with Spotify and Pandora.
• A surveillance camera in Milwaukee has vindicated a woman arrested for drunk driving as the footage showed the arresting officer actually ran a stop sign and hit the woman's car.

Last Call For The Hagan Defense

Hey look, a Democrat who's smart enough to read the polls!

In a flipping of the proverbial script, a Senate Democrat facing a tough re-election race used a confirmation hearing of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services, to advocate forcefully in favor of Obamacare. 

While Republican senators mostly went through the motions with their anti-Obamacare talking points or outright endorsed Burwell as Kathleen Sebelius's replacement, Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) used her time to trumpet the benefits of Medicaid expansion -- and emphasize the downside of not expanding. 

Left unsaid, but strongly implied, was that her opponent, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, who locked up the GOP nomination earlier this week, had been instrumental in stopping the state from expanding Medicaid under the law.

"Last year in North Carolina, our state legislature and governor decided against expanding the state's Medicaid program," Hagan said as she started her questioning, "and as a result, about 500,000 people who would have qualified for coverage through Medicaid are not now able to do so." 

"These are some of the most vulnerable in our society," she said, "who will continue to seek care in emergency rooms and then will leave chronic conditions unmanaged, which we know is detrimental to their health and the economy."

Thom Tillis cost 500,000 North Carolinians health insurance, but somehow Kay Hagan is going to lose by 20 points.  Okay, sure.  That makes sense.  You go with that, Republicans.

Time, Thom, And Toddlers

Meet Thom Tillis, former GOP Speaker of the NC House, who survived his US Senate primary and reached 45%, enough to stave off any runoff nonsense.  He's going after Sen. Kay Hagan's seat, and his first interview after winning the primary Tuesday was with Chuck Todd(ler).  The latest polls had Hagan up by 2 in a prospective race with Tillis.

Didn't go so well for Thom, as Chuck played a clip of Tillis's more ridiculous statements from 2011.



In fact, it went very poorly for him.

The newly-minted Republican contender in what could be one of November’s key Senate races says he regrets using the words “divide and conquer” in a 2011 speech while describing those who are dependent on government assistance.

“Yeah, I do,” North Carolina GOP candidate Thom Tillis said Wednesday on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown when asked by host Chuck Todd if he regrets the use of the word “conquer.”

But Tillis, who secured the GOP nomination in last night’s primary election, also said he was referring to the abuse of public assistance funds by those who do not “desperately need the safety net” – a position he believes is backed by voters in North Carolina.

Tillis's actual words are pretty typical of his Tea Party platform.

The GOP contender is under fire for comments he made in an unearthed 2011 video. “What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance,” he said at the time. “We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice, in her condition, that needs help and that we should help. And we need to get those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government and say at some point, ‘You’re on your own. We may end up taking care of those babies, but we’re not going to take care of you.’”

Democrats have compared the comments to Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks.

Let them eat cake, he says.  Oh but his pure contempt for the working class got much worse as you can see in the clip when the topic turned to the minimum wage.

On Wednesday, Tillis, who is the state House Speaker of North Carolina, also declined repeatedly to say whether he supports raising the minimum wage in the state.

Asked if he supports a federal hike, he responded that “minimum wage decisions need to be made by the state.”

But he would not say how his home state should address it, calling it “a decision that the legislature needs to make with businesses.”

“We’ve got a president and Kay Hagan that want to create a minimum wage economy,” he said. “What I want to do is create jobs that make minimum wage irrelevant."

That's the most stupid argument against raising the minimum wage I think I've ever heard, mainly because he's choosing to do nothing for the people working minimum wage jobs now.  Wanting to create jobs that pay more than the minimum wage is great, but how does that help the folks earning that today?

Secondly, as speaker of the NC House, Tillis had the ability to introduce and bring up for a vote legislation to create jobs or raise the minimum wage.  He chose instead to implement the most draconian unemployment insurance cuts in the nation, cuts so ridiculous that the state no longer qualifies for any federal unemployment assistance because if you lose your job in the state, your maximum benefit is $350 a week.

Below the poverty line, or about $8.75 a hour.  That'll feed a family, right?

Tillis fumbled for a good two minutes on if raising the minimum wage was something he could support.  And just like that, Tillis is now looking for the bunker to hide in.

Benghazi Forever And Ever, Amen

GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, the newly installed Park Ranger at Orange Julius's Benghazi Land Fun-Time World, gives away that the game is to keep Benghazi-ing all the way through November 2016.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said the special committee he'll lead on Benghazi could continue into the 2016 campaign, when Hillary Clinton might be running for the White House. 

Asked about that possibility Wednesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Gowdy said the length of his work would depend on the administration’s level of cooperation.

“It would be shame on us if we intentionally dragged this out for political expediency,” said Gowdy, the special committee's chairman. “On the other hand, if an administration is slow-walking document production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.” 

Clinton is a core figure in the Benghazi story, since she was the secretary of State when terrorists attacked the U.S. diplomatic annex in Benghazi, Libya. The attack left four Americans dead, including Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

Some Democrats suspect Republicans want to keep Benghazi in the news to try to hurt Clinton if she runs for the White House in 2016, as expected.

Gowdy said a memo that came to light last week, in which deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes set out “goals” for the administration’s response, but which was not turned over by the administration earlier, was evidence of a cover-up.

Demand concrete evidence of cover-up from the Obama administration, and when it magically fails to appear because there's no cover-up, state that the lack of evidence is in fact proof the cover-up exists and demand concrete evidence of the cover-up. Repeat infinitely!  Sell tickets.

This is the GOP plan for the next 30 months, so get used to it.  Don't want to get used to it?  Vote the assholes out.  Real simple.

Oh, and this is the cover-up Congress should be investigating: Okahoma GOP Gov. Mary Fallin's role in last week's botched, bungled, cruel, unusual, immoral and unconstitutional execution of Clayton Lockett.

StupidiNews!

• House Republicans voted 231-187 to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress, setting up a possible lengthy court battle over her prosecution by he Department of Justice.
• Scientists have successfully bred a bacteria that can carry artificial, man-made DNA sequences that function as a third set of DNA base pairs.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a postponement of any independence referendums in eastern Ukraine in a clear sign that Moscow is looking to de-escalate tensions.
• Meanwhile, tensions are rising in the South China Sea as the Philippines and Vietnam are pushing back against China's efforts to take over disputed maritime areas.
• London's police force will be testing 500 cameras to be worn by officers as they interact with citizens, something civil rights advocates is sorely needed to help prevent police brutality.