Even More Republican Sneak Attacks

The long, strange story of winger blogger Clayton Kelly, his scheme to try to damage Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran in June's primary in order to support Tea Party primary challenger state Sen Chris McDaniel, and the Cochran camp's bizarre two-week delay sitting on the story just got a whole lot more weird as more arrests have been made, including a top state Tea Party official.

Two more arrests have been made in connection with the photographing of U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-MS) wife, Rose, who is patient in a Madison County nursing home.

Mark Mayfield, a member of the board of directors for the Central Mississippi Tea Party, was arrested Thursday, according to the Clarion Ledger of Mississippi. The second suspect arrested has not been identified. 

Clayton Kelly was arrested Friday and faces felony charges of photographing or filming another without permission where there is expectation of privacy and exploitation of a vulnerable adult, which carries up to a 10-year sentence. Kelly wanted to use the photograph of Cochran's wife in an anti-Cochran video.

Kelly supports state Sen. Chris McDaniel, Cochran's tea party primary challenger. Mayfield appears to be a McDaniel supporter as well and, according to the Clarion Ledger's Sam Hall, contributed $500 to McDaniel and served as an active volunteer on his campaign. 

Authorities claim Kelly photographed Rose Cochran at St. Catherine's nursing home in Madison, where she is bedridden and suffering from progressive dementia. Kelly, a political blogger and McDaniel supporter, allegedly used the photo in a video he posted online.

Since of course McDaniel is a freedom-loving responsible adult and a stalwart conservative Republican, he's dumping the blame for all this on Cochran and the liberal media "victimizing" him.

Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R) is pushing an open letter he sent to Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) vowing not to engage either his campaign or the "liberal media in their absurd witch hunt." 

"No matter how many press releases your campaign puts out, I will simply not stoop to your level. Win or lose, I’d like to be able to wake up on June 4th and be proud of the primary campaign I ran on behalf of Mississippi," McDaniel wrote in the open letter to the incumbent senator, who McDaniel is challenging.

The letter, which the McDaniel campaign first released on Wednesday and has been sending out to supporters on Thursday, refers to criticism by the Cochran campaign toward McDaniel in response to pro-McDaniel blogger Clayton Thomas Kelly being arrested for photographing Cochran's bedridden wife at her nursing home for an anti-Cochran video. 

"Over the past several weeks, your campaign has resorted to shameful slander, even going so far as to call me a 'criminal' without a shred of evidence to back up these accusations," McDaniel also said in the open letter. 

"No doubt, many political campaigns resort to juvenile behavior when they are down in the polls, but this kind of slander goes beyond childish pranks. It is, frankly, an embarrassment to our great state. Mississippi deserves better than this."

It's all a plot by Thad Cochran working with Obama to smear me because ARGLE BARGLE CONSPIRACY TINFOIL I EAT MY OWN POO.

But odds are one of these clowns is going to end up a US senator in January.  Awesome.

Grimes Goes Goofy

Alison Lundergan Grimes remains infinitely preferable to Mitch The Turtle, but she's not acquitting herslef well when it comes to political moves.  Given Kentucky's healthcare exchange, Kynect, is arguably the best in the nation right now and easy to defend for that reason, she's ducking on the Affordable Care Act.

Asked two times whether she'd have voted for the 2010 overhaul, the Kentucky Democrat who is challenging Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told The Associated Press: "I, when we are in the United States Senate, will work to fix the Affordable Care Act." 

Grimes added: "I believe the politically motivated response you continue to see from Mitch McConnell in terms of repeal, root and branch, is not in reality or keeping ... with what the facts are here in Kentucky." 

The law Republicans call "Obamacare" presents a delicate issue for Grimes, who won the Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday. Kynect, Kentucky's state-run health insurance exchange made possible by the law, is wildly popular. More than 400,000 people have either signed up for an expanded Medicaid program or purchased private insurance plans with the help of government subsidies. But Obamacare remains unpopular in the state, mostly because President Barack Obama himself is unpopular here.

Real simple:  "Yes, because Kynect proves that the parts of the law that are working can make a difference in improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians.  We need to make sure every state has as good of an exchance as Kentucky does.  We're leading the way and we need to make the ACA better."

And then given the fact that her opponent filibustered a bill to fix the VA, she should have a fat, juicy fastball over the plate to smash past the fences.  Instead she fouls one off by going after VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

Kentucky's Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Alison Lundergan Grimes on Thursday called on Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign over the growing scandal involving the deaths of dozens of veterans while waiting for treatment.

Her campaign put out a brief statement titled, "Grimes Calls For Veterans Affairs Secretary Resignation" in which she says: "We owe a solemn obligation to our veterans, and our government defaulted on that contract. I don't see how that breach of trust with our veterans can be repaired if the current leadership stays in place."

Also real simple:  "Mitch McConnell and 40 other Republicans blocked a Senate bill in February that would have addressed the very problems we've seen for years in the VA system.  Instead, Mitch McConnell gladly authorized trillions to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he then told our veterans that we suddenly had no money to keep America's promises to them.  The real problem here is the GOP Senate caucus that Mitch McConnell leads and they should be ashamed.  When they had the opportunity to help fix this problem, they did nothing instead."

This is the Alison Grimes we need more of.



The brilliant person who gave this speech Tuesday night after she won?  This is the person I want as my next Senator.  The person who less than 24 hours later called on Shinseki to resign? 

Not so much.

StupidiNews!

• Protests continue in Salinas, California after the third incident of police fatally shooting a Latino man since March.
• The IRS will delay and rewrite new guidelines for tax-exempt social welfare groups, a move that has Republicans claiming victory.
• Thailand's army chief, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, is now governing the country after the military seized power from ousted PM Yingluck Shinawatra earlier this week.
• The House has passed legislation to curb the powers of the NSA, but the bill is opposed by tech giants who say the bill has major loopholes.
• NYC's Department of Health is following up on bad Yelp reviews to investigate restaurants that are violating health codes.

Last Call For Reparation Nation

In an Atlantic article that will be misinterpreted vilified, and unread by everyone who actually needs to read it, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case for American reparations to African-Americans and Rep. John Conyers's bill to study what would be necessary in order to make such a move, a bill that of course lies rotting in the GOP-controlled House and will do so for arguably the rest of my lifetime.

Scholars have long discussed methods by which America might make reparations to those on whose labor and exclusion the country was built. In the 1970s, the Yale Law professor Boris Bittker argued in The Case for Black Reparations that a rough price tag for reparations could be determined by multiplying the number of African Americans in the population by the difference in white and black per capita income. That number—$34 billion in 1973, when Bittker wrote his book—could be added to a reparations program each year for a decade or two. Today Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law School professor, argues for something broader: a program of job training and public works that takes racial justice as its mission but includes the poor of all races. 

To celebrate freedom and democracy while forgetting America’s origins in a slavery economy is patriotism à la carte. 

Perhaps no statistic better illustrates the enduring legacy of our country’s shameful history of treating black people as sub-citizens, sub-Americans, and sub-humans than the wealth gap. Reparations would seek to close this chasm. But as surely as the creation of the wealth gap required the cooperation of every aspect of the society, bridging it will require the same.

Perhaps after a serious discussion and debate—the kind that HR 40 proposes—we may find that the country can never fully repay African Americans. But we stand to discover much about ourselves in such a discussion—and that is perhaps what scares us. The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay. The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper—America’s heritage, history, and standing in the world.

This is a long and significant read, I've been poring over it for the better part of a day now, just to try to find an agreeable synopsis above.  Do yourself a favor and take the time to read the entire thing.

I'll have more on this over the weekend when I've had more time to digest it.

Time To Get Our Veterans' Affairs In Order

Reminder to all Republicans screaming about how the Obama administration failed our veterans with substandard care and waiting lists:  Republicans blocked a $27 billion bill in February that would have overhauled the VA system when they weren't allowed to play politics and add Iran sanctions to the legislation.

With Democrats pressing for passage this week, Senate Republicans, backed by their leader, Mitch McConnell, attempted to attach controversial legislation calling for possible new sanctions on Iran that President Barack Obama opposes.

"The issue of Iran sanctions ... has nothing to do with the needs of veterans," complained Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Bernard Sanders of Vermont, the main sponsor of the bill.

Republicans also raised budget concerns, forcing another key procedural vote that ended up killing the bill. By a vote of 56-41, the Senate failed to waive budget rules that would have allowed the bill to proceed. Sixty votes were needed and 41 of the chamber's 45 Republicans voted against the waiver.

Referring to recent budget deals that aim to bring down federal deficits, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama said: "This bill would spend more than we agreed to spend. The ink is hardly dry and here we have another bill to raise that spending again."

The legislation had the backing of most veterans' organizations, but was doomed by deep disagreements between Democrats and Republicans that have made this Congress one of the least productive in decades.

The sad state of the criminally underfunded, terribly understaffed VA rests wholly on the shoulders of Republicans who said it was too expensive to fix our broken VA system and voted to kill this legislation that would have overhauled it. Our vets, some who gave everything in defense of America, were told by 41 Republican senators who blocked this bill that they don't matter.

Republicans don't give a good god damn about our nation's veterans.  They are nothing but political toys for them to attack Democrats with.  And now these assholes have the temerity to complain that Democrats haven't spent enough caring for vets?

Go to hell, all of you.

See Like A Hawk

The Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks visited the White House on Wednesday and President Obama welcomed them with a few notable observations.

Obama highlighted quarterback Russell Wilson, the second African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl after Washington's Doug Williams. "The best part about" Wilson's achievement, Obama said, "is nobody commented on it, which tells you the progress that we've made, although we've got more progress to make."

Amen to that.

Once inside, the president said he took special note of running back Marshawn Lynch, who was fined by the NFL this season for refusing to speak to the media.

"I just wanted to say how much I admire his approach to the press," Obama said of Lynch, who did not join the team at the White House. "I wanted to get some tips from him."

Cornerback Richard Sherman did attend the ceremony, and Obama joked he had considered allowing the outspoken Stanford graduate to take the mic.

"I considered letting Sherman up here to the podium today, giving him the mic, but we've got to go in a little bit," Obama said.

Congrats again to the Seahawks and their fans, being a North Carolinian and only getting to watch a victory parade in our state when Cam Ward, Ron Brind'Amour and the Carolina Hurricanes won Game 7 and the Stanley Cup in 2006, I know it was a long wait for the Emerald City.

Sadly, it was the only time Dubya was happy to see a Hurricane in his White House career, but I digress.

StupidiNews!

• Several blasts in Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang province, have claimed at least 31 lives as a busy marketplace was attacked by SUVs plowing into crowds and hurling explosive devices.
• A Southern California woman kidnapped a decade ago has been found and her apparent captor arrested after the victim contacted authorities through Facebook.
• EBay is advising all customers to change their passwords after admitting that 145 million user accounts were compromised in the second largest data breach in US history.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin says that troops massed on the Ukrainian border will be pulled back by June 1 as a gesture of good faith towards this weekend's separatist national election.
• Google is expected to announce a deal to acquire video game streaming site Twitch in a roughly $1 billion deal, but critics say Google's content ID system will all but destroy Twitch's core service.

Last Call For Just Marriage

Gallup's latest numbers on marriage equality finds that in 2014, support has inched up to 55%, a huge jump from just five years ago and a massive jump from when this question was first asked by Gallup pollsters 18 years ago.

Two successive Gallup polls in 2012 saw support climb from 53% to 54%, indicating a steady but slight growth in acceptance of gay marriages over the past year after a more rapid increase between 2009 and 2011. In the latest May 8-11 poll, there is further evidence that support for gay marriage has solidified above the majority level. This comes on the heels of gay marriage proponents' 14th legal victory in a row.

When Gallup first asked Americans this question about same-sex marriage in 1996, 68% were opposed to recognizing marriage between two men or two women, with slightly more than a quarter supporting it (27%). Since then, support has steadily grown, reaching 42% by 2004 when Massachusetts became the first state to legalize it -- a milestone that reached its 10th anniversary this month.

In 2011, support for gay marriage vaulted over the 50% mark for the first time, and since 2012, support has remained above that level. In the last year, however, support has leveled off a bit. Currently, 17 states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage, while several states wait in legal limbo as they appeal judge rulings overturning state bans.

Among the most dramatic divisions in opinion on the issue are between age groups. As has been the case in the past, support for marriage equality is higher among younger Americans; the older an American is, the less likely he or she is to support marriage for same-sex couples. Currently, adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are nearly twice as likely to support marriage equality as adults aged of 65 and older.

And as usual, Republican remain on the wrong side of history...at least for now.

Opinions also differ dramatically along party lines. Democrats (74%) are far more likely to support gay marriage as Republicans are (30%), while independents (58%) are more in line with the national average. Though Republicans still lag behind in their support of same-sex marriage, they have nearly doubled their support for it since Gallup began polling on the question in 1996.

But even Republicans are staring to come around.  They don't have a choice, it seems.  We'll drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century by the short hairs if we have to.  

Naked (GOP) Lunch

Josh Marshall noticed this one, but it's concerning the House GOP's proposed agriculture budget bill.  To the surprise of absolutely nobody, House Republicans want to scrap a successful program that gives school lunches to kids in summer school and replace it with an identical program, except for one difference:

It would only provide summer school lunches for rural counties and districts.  Not a dime for urban schools.

And in a surprising twist, the bill language specifies that only rural areas are to benefit in the future from funding requested by the administration this year to continue a modest summer demonstration program to help children from low-income households — both urban and rural — during those months when school meals are not available.

Since 2010, the program has operated from an initial appropriation of $85 million, and the goal has been to test alternative approaches to distribute aid when schools are not in session. The White House asked for an additional $30 million to continue the effort, but the House bill provides $27 million for what’s described as an entirely new pilot program focused on rural areas only.

Democrats were surprised to see urban children were excluded. And the GOP had some trouble explaining the history itself. But a spokeswoman confirmed that the intent of the bill is a pilot project in “rural areas” only.

I can't imagine why anyone would call this twist surprising, considering how Republicans feel about "urban" kids, "urban" voters, and "urban" culture.   Cause those people don't deserve lunches, that would make them parasites.  But real American kids going to summer school to improve themselves out there in farm country, well, of course they do.

Keep up the minority outreach, guys.

More Republican Sneak Attacks

Well now, it seems that the ugly story about a right-wing blogger who snuck into the nursing home where Mississippi GOP Sen. Thad Cochran's wife was bedridden in order to try to create a scandal to favor Cochran's primary opponent, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, really did end up creating a real scandal.  Apparently, Cochran's people knew about the incident for two weeks before telling police.

Cochran’s campaign spokesman, Jordan Russell, told The Hill Monday that the campaign was made aware of a video allegedly taken by local political blogger Clayton Kelly of Cochran’s infirm wife on the day it was posted, April 26. He said the campaign conducted its own investigation of the video before alerting Cochran to it and deciding to bring it to an attorney.

Kelly, an apparent supporter of Cochran's GOP primary challenger state Sen. Chris McDaniel, was arrested Friday over the alleged taping, and the incident has roiled the bitter race two weeks from the election, as a new survey from a group backing McDaniel shows the race to be within the margin of error.

“We were made aware of [the video] that morning because people were emailing us saying, ‘Did you see this?’ ” Russell told The Hill. “We conducted our own review for a few days and then went to Sen. Cochran about it, and that was when the decision was made to turn it over to the attorneys.”

Russell said he wasn’t sure how long the campaign conducted its investigation, but the inquiry lasted anywhere from three days to a week before the campaign consulted Cochran’s attorney.

This smells as bad as the original story, if not worse, especially since Mississippi police are considering conspiracy charges against Clayton Kelly, the blogger in order to round up anyone who may have been part of this.

Kelly, who was arrested on Friday for breaking into the nursing home to photograph Rose Cochran, is being held in jail on a bond of $100,000 on charges related to the break-in, according to the Clarion-Ledger of Mississippi.

Officials for the Madison, Mississippi police department said they wanted to talk to other individuals who "who might have been part of a conspiracy" concerning the break-in, according to the Clarion-Ledger. Police, however, are refusing to comment any further on details of the investigation though.

Kelly, who supports Cochran primary challenger state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-MS), was arrested late Friday for the break-in. He has been charged with exploitation of a vulnerable adult after breaking into the St. Catherine's nursing home where Rose Cochran is located.

The McDaniel campaign, despite somewhat contradictory responses, has denied any direct connection to Kelly.

This entire thing smells like week-old fish.  Maybe Democrat Travis Childers has a shot in hell at this seat after all.

StupidiNews!

• With several Super Tuesday primaries finishing up last night, Kentucky Tea Party candidate Matt Bevin conceded defeat early to Sen. Mitch McConnell, who won by nearly 25 points.
• The growing investigation into treatment delays at multiple VA hospitals has now expanded to 26 facilities as Secretary Eric Shinseki is coming under increased pressure to resign.
• Consecutive explosions in the Nigerian city of Jos have killed at least 118 as bombs targeted the city's business district during rush hour.
• Thailand's army insists that this week's declaration of national martial law is not a coup, but an effort to force PM Yingluck Shinawatra to face August elections.
• California's DMV is officially finishing up rules for testing of autonomous cars in the state for 2015.

Last Call For Drowning Down Under

A right-wing government budget that plans to all but eliminate climate change research and renewable energy and dump that money into subsidies for Big Energy?  America isn't the only country with anti-science conservatives beholden to coal, oil, and natural gas.  Our friends in Australia have taken a sharp right turn since the government of PM Tony Abbott came to power, and now they're paying the price.

Tony Abbott is the true "inter-generational thief" for boosting fossil fuels at the expense of renewable energy, increasing the likelihood of Australians paying a big price from climate change, Greens leader Christine Milne said.

Both the Prime Minister and Treasurer Joe Hockey have based their budget sales pitch on the need to raise taxes and slash spending to rein-in future debt that had been projected to balloon above $600 billion without policy changes.

"We could not go on running up massive debts for our children and grandchildren to pay," Mr Abbott told ABC's Insiders on Sunday. "That would be a form of inter-generational theft."

Senator Milne, though, said the increases in subsidies for big miners – which rise by $720 million to almost $14 billion over the forward estimates – and efforts to promote more coal seam gas, coal mines and coal ports were the real form of "future theft".

"Not only is it bad for the environment but these will be stranded assets which the next generation will have to pay for," Senator Milne told media in Sydney. "Tony Abbott is the one selling-out future generations."

The budget is extremely unpopular, with nearly three-quarters of Australians saying they would be worse off, and it seems the voters may be ready to do something about Abbott.

The Greens would welcome a double dissolution election, if the Coalition called one. 

"I say bring that on," Senator Milne said. "The Australian community has been betrayed by the Prime Minister. Nobody signed up for this budget. Nobody knew who the PM was before the election. 

"People are well and truly ready to show him what a trust deficit looks like."

Will the Abbott government come apart over climate change denial?  If there's any country that is dealing with major effects of climate, it's Australia.  Stay tuned...

Dinesh D'Guilty

Noted conservative scold, budding propaganda filmmaker and human embodiment of "Well, actually..." nonsense Dinesh D'Souza, has plead guilty to campaign finance violations in order to head off his trial expected to start today in a Manhattan court.

D'Souza, known for his biting criticism of President Barack Obama, pleaded guilty to one criminal count of making illegal contributions in the names of others. A second count concerning the making of false statements is expected to be dismissed once he is sentenced.

The plea came four months after Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara charged D'Souza with using "straw donors" to give funds in 2012 to Republican Wendy Long's U.S. Senate campaign in New York. Long, who met D'Souza while they were students in the 1980s, lost to Democratic incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand.

"I knew that causing a campaign contribution to be made in the name of another was wrong and something the law forbids," D'Souza, 53, told U.S. District Judge Berman on Tuesday. "I deeply regret my conduct."

Prosecutors said D'Souza asked two friends and their spouses to contribute $10,000 each to Long's campaign and then reimbursed them. At the time, campaign finance regulations limited individual donations to a maximum of $5,000 during an election cycle.

One of the friends was Denise Joseph, who was engaged to D'Souza while he was still married to another woman. D'Souza resigned as president of King's College, a small Christian school in New York City, after the media revealed his relationship with Joseph in 2012.

This guy's a real champ.  Also, nice of him to cop a plea and avoid the truly nastier parts of our criminal justice system, but you can do that when you've got as much money as D'Souza does (enough to bankroll a 2012 anti-Obama campaign propaganda film and stuff).

It's not stopping GOP senators from coming to his defense, so you know he was never going to spend a day in jail.  But he is guilty, and it's hard to make the case that he's somehow being persecuted when he's pleading guilty to a crime.  Kinda funny if you think about it, as these senators insisted that Obama was personally going after D'Souza as part of a Nixonian "enemies list" and he of course was innocent of all wrongdoing.

Just because you publicly hate and want to destroy the President doesn't mean you can break the law, kids.  In the end, Republicans are really bad judges of character.

Oregon-na Get Hitched

In another win for equality advocates, Oregon has become the latest state where a federal judge has struck down the state's same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional, and for once it's a state where officials will not choose to contest the ruling, meaning same-sex couples can get married immediately.

Oregon cannot bar same-sex couples from marrying, a federal judge ruled Monday.

“Because Oregon’s marriage laws discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, the laws violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” U.S. District Court Judge Michael McShane wrote.

The ruling from McShane is the 12th federal trial court ruling since last summer’s Supreme Court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act to find a state ban on same-sex couples’ marriages and/or on recognition of such marriages to be unconstitutional.

Two federal appeals courts, those in Denver and Richmond, already have heard appeals of challenges from three states, Utah, Oklahoma, and Virginia.

Unlike most of the other challenges, however, none of the government officials in Oregon plan to appeal McShane’s ruling. In McShane’s order, issued moments after his opinion was released shortly after noon PT, he stated that the order stopping enforcement of the ban is effective immediately. Although Oregon law has a three-day waiting period for issuing marriage licenses, there are exceptions to that waiting period that mean couples could marry on Monday.

Add another state to the growing list where same-sex marriage is 100% legal.  It won't be long before that number is 50.

StupidiNews!

• Thailand's military has declared martial law to the apparent surprise of embattled PM Yingluck Shinawatra in what is being called a "half coup d'etat."
• Republicans in North Carolina are putting forth legislation that will criminalize revealing what chemicals energy companies are using in fracking processes.
• California's record drought could cost the state's agriculture business as many as 14,500 jobs as officials see no end to the three years of dry conditions.
• Russia is looking to seal a $400 billion natural gas deal with China to offset EU economic sanctions over Ukraine.
• Anti-identity theft service Lifelock has suspended its iOS and Android apps over concerns they may not adequately protect user data.