Last Call For Eric Cantor

GOP House majority leader and conservative pain in the ass Eric Cantor just lost his primary in Virginia to Tea Party upstart David Brat.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) lost to tea party primary challenger David Brat in the Republican primary on Tuesday.

The race was called at about 8:05 p.m. Cantor lost to primary challenger David Brat.

Who is Brat? He is an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College. Brat was regarded as a long shot candidate but Cantor's campaign still spent over $1 million on advertising to stress that the top House Republican is a "strong conservative."

Cantor's campaign also sent out mailers arguing that he's largely responsible for blocking immigration reform, signs, perhaps, that Brat seemed like more of a threat than he appeared publicly.

Cantor and his advisers gave dual messages going into Tuesday's primary night.

"I'm just not worried," Cantor adviser Ray Allen told The Hill.

Well Eric, you should have been, because you lost 56-44.  The good news?  Cantor is toast.  The bad news?  David Brat is a lunatic.

Mr. Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., had support from radio host Laura Ingraham, who hosted a rally with him in a Richmond suburb last week that centered upon Mr. Brat’s opposition to immigration reform.

Mr. Brat appeared more interested in campaigning to make a point than in winning. The Washington Post reported last month that he no-showed meetings with key conservative activists in the capital. His excuse: He had final exams to grade.

There are clues to Mr. Brat’s ideology in his academic CV. His current book project is titled “Ethics as Leading Economic Indicator? What went Wrong? Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition and Human Reason.”

His other published works include the titles “God and Advanced Mammon – Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?” and “An Analysis of the Moral Foundations in Ayn Rand.”

The worst news?  Unless Cantor pulls a Lisa Murkowski and runs as an independent, it's over for him and Brat could win big.

If there is a saving grace, Republicans will now get pulled so far to the right that the Dems may end up keeping the Senate.

And how are Democrats taking this?

Guess.

Wake me when movement progs unseat our own leadership. Mock the tea partiers all you want. They get it done. We don't.
— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) June 11, 2014

See A Need, Fill A Need

All that FREEDOM and stuff we have when it comes to guns being everywhere in America has a price, but don't worry, we can raise our kids safely in schools where there will have to be guns (because that's what the Founding Fathers wanted, schools full of people with guns) by giving little Johnny and Susie training with bulletproof cover blankets.

School shootings are a tragic reality. While much discussion has centered around prevention, ProTecht, a protective and safety products company in Oklahoma, has created a product it hopes kids will use in case such a tragedy strikes their schools. The Bodyguard Blanket is designed to offer a temporary shelter during dangerous situations, particularly school shootings.

While the Bodyguard is also built to help protect children from falling debris during natural disasters like tornadoes, much of the marketing around the product concerns the potential for school shootings. It's the reason the blanket was created in the first place.

Technically, the Bodyguard is bullet-resistant. It's made from the same materials used in military and law enforcement body armor. Instead of having kids put on a flak vest, though, it puts the material in a form that can be folded up and then unfolded to create a body shelter. It has straps that help hold it in place like a backpack. ProTecht posted a video of the blanket undergoing a ballistics test, if you're curious about how it behaves under fire.

English, math, science (well, not so much science if it's Oklahoma) and "duck and cover in case of school shooter".  Boy, classes sure are tough for kids today.

Bullet-resistant materials aren't cheap. The Bodyguard comes with a price tag just shy of $1,000, though ProTecht hopes to partner with schools and nonprofits to make it more affordable to buy in bulk. Even with a substantial discount, it will likely be out of reach for many school districts.

OK, so nice schools will have protection from rampaging shooters.  The poor schools where those kids are at, not so much.

Why try to prevent school shootings when you can design a protect to profit from their inevitability?  If that's not the American way, I don't know what is.

The Privilege Of Being A Sexual Assault Victim

Conservatives really, really think women are all faking sexual assault for the "social benefits" of victimhood or something.  The latest proponent of "those bitches is clearly lying" is George F. Will.

In a column for the Washington Post, Will argues that universities are basing their definition of sexual assault on a "Washington" education, which is leading to inflated statistics.

“They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous ('micro-aggressions,' often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate," he wrote.

Will offers an anecdote from a student at Swarthmore College, in which a woman reported a rape after a former sexual partner wouldn't take no for an answer. Will implies that because the incident occurred "with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months," she wasn't sexually assaulted.

"I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep," the woman wrote about the encounter.

"Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped," Will wrote about the Swarthmore student. "Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of 'sexual assault' victims. It vows to excavate equities from the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults."

So, it's not sexual assault because the dirty, skanky whore said yes to the guy earlier.  Just because she said no this time, well, whore.  So it doesn't matter, the privileged bitch.  She'll get hers, right fellas?

The conservative columnist then disputed certain aspects of the definition of sexual assault.

"Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching. Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape," he wrote. "Then comes costly litigation against institutions that have denied due process to males they accuse of what society considers serious felonies."

Will then links sexual assault to other attempts to "create victim-free campuses."

"Meanwhile, the newest campus idea for preventing victimizations — an idea certain to multiply claims of them — is 'trigger warnings.' They would be placed on assigned readings or announced before lectures. Otherwise, traumas could be triggered in students whose tender sensibilities would be lacerated by unexpected encounters with racism, sexism, violence (dammit, Hamlet, put down that sword!) or any other facet of reality that might violate a student’s entitlement to serenity," he wrote. "This entitlement has already bred campus speech codes that punish unpopular speech."

Because as we all know, the real victims here are bros who shouldn't have to put up with all this whining about rape while they're busy doing keg stands and trying to bang sorority sluts.  You know, guys like Elliot Rodger.

We've come around to conservatives declaring that trying to protect people from sexual assault on college campuses violates the free speech rights of people who are busy assaulting people on college campuses. 

This is what you get for voting Democrat ladies, or something.  Jesus, Conservatives are broken, broken bastards.

StupidiNews!

• Five US service members were mistakenly killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan when the position they were holding was accidentally bombed by a coalition jet.
• The murder trial for 15 South Korean ferry crew members involved in April's deadly capsize that killed nearly 300 begins this week near Seoul. 
• General Motors has fired 15 so far in connection with faulty ignition switches that led to 13 deaths and recalls of tens of millions of vehicles.
• Senate hearings on high-frequency computerized stock trading will be in the spotlight next week as Wall Street comes before Capitol Hill for answers on possible conflicts of interest.
• A US cyber-security firm has identified a hacker group called "Putter Panda" that specifically targeted US space and satellite companies for the Chinese military.

Last Call For Mission Accomplished

Republicans and the Right Wing Noise Machine have managed to make freeing a POW into a crime prosecutable by the court of public opinion.

Public opposition to the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for captive Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has less to do with Bergdahl himself and more with how President Obama handled the transfer, according to a new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center poll.

The poll shows 43% of Americans say it was wrong for Obama to make the deal, compared with 34% who say it was the right thing to do.

Thirty percent of those surveyed have a strong opinion of Bergdahl, whose decision to leave his post in 2009 and subsequent capture by the Taliban is under investigation by the Army. Half of respondents say they were sympathetic, and half say they are angry with Bergdahl.

The 128 veterans included in the poll are much more harsh in their assessment of the 28-year-old sergeant. Only 6% of veterans who responded say they sympathized with him, while 33% say they were angry. By 68%-16%, veterans say Obama made the wrong decision.

"If he was a captured prisoner of war, we wouldn't be having this discussion," says Joe Davis, the director of public affairs for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "He put his teammates in jeopardy, and you absolutely don't do that in a combat zone."

Veterans are worried about the precedent set by the transfer, Davis says. "We have a long history in this country of not negotiating with terrorists," he says. "And we just did."

So a week of smearing Bergdahl and his family in order to attack President Obama has generated some quality poutrage for the right.   But it was fine when Bush released hundreds more prisoner for Guantanamo.  Not a peep from the VFW, no national shame campaign from the GOP, no hatred from the "liberal" media.  Obama does it, it's criminal.

We deserve the country we've allowed the GOP to shape for us, because we're not smart enough to know better.

Virginia's State Senate Flips Out

Just another day in state politics, folks.  Go about your business.

The Washington Post reports that Virginia state Sen. Phillip P. Puckett, a Democrat, “will announce his resignation Monday, effective immediately, paving the way to appoint his daughter to a judgeship and Puckett to the job of deputy director of the state tobacco commission.” Currently, the Virginia senate is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, with Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam holding the balance of power. If Puckett resigns, Republicans will gain control of the body for at least as long as it takes to elect a replacement.

The full details of this arrangement, including whether or not Puckett was explicitly offered the position as deputy director of the tobacco commission in return for his agreement to resign his senate seat, are not yet known. Although the executive director of the commission is appointed by the governor — who is currently Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe — the deputy director is appointed by the commission itself. Both the chair and the vice chair of the commission are Republicans.

Sure, that seems totally ethical and moral to bribe a politician.  It's what we do here in America.  Of course, the only thing that matters is if it's legal or not, but by the time that question gets answered, the damage to Virginia will be done.

In any event, the circumstances of this anticipated resignation — in which a Democratic senator throws control of the state legislature to the GOP, and then immediately receives a job from a commission controlled by a Republican chair and vice-chair — is suspicious. It also could have very serious consequences for Virginia’s least fortunate residents.

Gov. McAuliffe is currently embroiled in a fight with Republicans, who control the state house, over whether Virginia should accept Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. If Republicans take the state senate, even briefly, they can use their control over the entire legislature to pass a budget that does not include the Medicaid expansion. Though McAuliffe could veto the budget, Republicans could use that veto to try to blame him for an ensuing government shutdown.

So yes, this is how Republicans win the Virginia state Senate with the express goal of blocking health care for the state's poor people.  Either they die or go to another state, either way, problem solved, the GOP way!

Virginia's government is rapidly veering toward a shutdown if neither side budges from its Medicaid position before July 1. McAuliffe says an expansion must be part of the new budget, while Republicans have so far resisted his calls.

Virginia is one of 24 states that has not expanded the Medicaid program under the law known as Obamacare. McAuliffe campaigned on a promise to change that.

The state's Medicaid office estimates that as many as 400,000 Virginians would be eligible for Medicaid coverage under a possible expansion. According to a study from The Commonwealth Institute, a supporter of the expansion, more than 20,000 of those people could come from Puckett's district alone.

Oh well, not his problem anymore, he's resigning.  Oh, and by doing so, that clears the way for Puckett's daughter to get a cushy new judgeship.

Puckett’s daughter, Martha Puckett Ketron, is already on the bench in Southwest Virginia, serving as a Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court judge. Circuit Court judges in that region gave her a temporary appointment last year while the General Assembly was not in session. The House approved her appointment to a six-year term when it reconvened early this year, but the Senate declined to confirm her. The Senate has a policy against appointing the relatives of active legislators to the bench.

After the legislature concluded its regular session in February, the judges reappointed Ketron to serve until the legislature reconvenes. If Puckett resigns, the legislature plans to appoint her to a full six-year term. “It should pave the way for his daughter,” Kilgore said of Puckett’s resignation. “She’s a good judge. . . . I would say that he wanted to make sure his daughter kept her judgeship. A father’s going do that.”

So Puckett and his daughter get theirs, and all it will cost is health care for 400,000 poor Virginians.  What a great deal.

There Appears To Be An Awful Lot Of Treading Going On

Please continue to ignore America's pesky right-wing white supremacist domestic terrorist problem in favor of whatever outrage President Obama did this news cycle for the much more serious crime of being President while not a Republican.

Two Las Vegas police officers were killed Sunday in what appears to be a politically motivated ambush in a pizza restaurant that spilled over to a nearby Wal-Mart, where the two shooters committed suicide after killing a woman in the store.

Details are sketchy, but Metropolitan Police Department sources close to the investigation say the shooters shouted that “this is the start of a revolution” before opening fire on the officers, and draped their bodies with cloth showing a Revolutionary War-era flag. Investigators have also found paraphernalia associated with white supremacists.

I know, I know, it's really a complex and frightening false flag operation cleverly designed to lead us toward martial law under the Kenyan Usurper and totally not about a bunch of homegrown extremists trying to bring down our government.

The shooters then stripped the officers of their weapons and ammunition and badges, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. They then covered the officers with something that featured the Gadsden flag, a yellow banner with a coiled snake above the words, “Don’t tread on Me.”

The flag is named for Christopher Gadsden a Revolutionary War general who designed it. It has recently come back in vogue as an adopted symbol of the American tea party movement.

Proof that it's clearly a liberal false flag operation as there is no white supremacist militant terrorist problem in the United States, because Chief John Roberts has assured us racism is over, Q.E.D. and stuff. Perhaps more guns would have prevented this.

One unconfirmed report is that the two exchanged gunfire with a citizen who was carrying a concealed weapon, and that one of the shooters was injured.

Well, even more guns then.  Freedom.

Anyway, please go about your business because tens of thousands of black thugs kill each other like animals in our inner cities every day, so stuff like tea party sovereign citizens murdering cops doesn't prove anything other than black people are thugs who kill each other like animals in our inner cities every day, and cops too, so shut up libtards, how much blood is on your hands, yadda yadda DON'T TREAD ON ME.

StupidiNews!

• More than 20 college students in India were swept away when a dam in Himachal Pradesh state opened its floodgates without warning and flooded a river.
• At least 27 are dead after Taliban militants attacked Jinnah international airport in Karachi, Pakistan, pretending to be security forces and storming the airport's gates.
• Embattled LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling's lawsuit against the NBA is the only thing holding up sale of the team, according to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
• FIFA corporate sponsors Sony and Adidas are pressing the world football body to investigate allegations of bribery and corruption in awarding Qatar the 2022 World Cup.
• A supercomputer named Eugene revealed at the Royal Society of London may be the first artificial intelligence to pass the Turing Test.

Last Call For Tiny, Tiny Violins

GOP Rep. Mike Rogers can't understand why (after six years of Republicans calling President Obama everything from Kenyan Usurper to Antichrist to Nazi Sympathizer to Brutal Dictator and more) President Obama might not want to include Republicans in his decision-making processes.

Rogers argued that the White House had other options besides releasing five Guantanamo Bay detainees in exchange for the American prisoner of war, and that the administration acted without notifying Congress because they knew there would be dissenters.

"There are other options. And this was what so angered for those of us who have followed this for years," he said on ABC's "This Week." "The administration has this theory that you're either with them or you're for thermonuclear war and there's not in between. That's just wrong." 

"And so the reason they avoided Congress, this isn't about we didn't get invited to the party, so we shouldn't have our feelings hurt. It is because we can empower all of the people -- diplomats -- who disagreed with this decision, intelligence folks who disagreed with this decision, military folks," he continued.

Poor, poor baby.  President Obama didn't extend Mike Rogers an engraved invitation to his decision on Bergdahl.  I doubt President Bush did either, all the times he released Gitmo detainees too.  But we only choose to criminalize things Obama does.

Always Angry, All The Time

Kevin Drum notes that the defining quality of American politics and President Obama is constant and unending rage, and tries (in the usual Kevin Drum way) to pin it on both sides.

The White House, says the LA Times for the third straight day, is facing "growing fury" over L'Affaire Bergdahl. How many times have I read a headline like this over the past few years. Dozens? Hundreds?

Hard to say. But it sure seems to be the defining quality of American politics these days. We just bounce from one outrage to the next, mostly ginned up by the right, but sometimes by the left too. It's a wonder that America hasn't dropped dead of a collective heart attack yet.

Has it always been this way? Maybe. It's not as if we lacked for partisan outrages in the 50s and 60s. But I'd sure like to hear from folks who have a good memory for those years. Was the procession of outrages really as nonstop as it is today? Did we at least take a break between outrages back then? Or has nothing changed except our exposure to this stuff thanks to Twitter and 24-hour cable news?

News flash, K-Drum.  "The left" isn't calling for the overthrow of the American government or backing a Second American Revolution with armed domestic terrorists encouraged to take out a few government bureaucrats with "Second Amendment remedies."

That's solely the proposition of the right, who moves to criminalize, demonize, and exterminate dissent at every turn.

It's not MSNBC openly calling for impeachment, that would be Fox News.  Repeatedly, by the way.

There is no "sometimes the left" on this dangerous idiocy, Kevin.  Knock it off.

The Godwin Party Strikes Again

And people wonder why Richard Mourdock lost his Senate race in 2012 to Joe Donnelly?  Maybe it has to do with Mourdock being a stark raving lunatic.

Reaction ranged from anger to shock to befuddlement after Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock compared the nation's direction to Hitler's Nazi Germany during a farewell speech at the Indiana Republican Convention on Saturday.

"The people of Germany in a free election selected the Nazi Party because they made great promises that appealed to them because they were desperate and destitute. And why is that? Because Germany was bankrupt," he said.

Mourdock, who has stoked outrage with incendiary comments in the past, then alluded to the 70th anniversary last week of the D-Day invasion during World War II, saying, "The truth is, 70 years later, we are drifting on the tides toward another beachhead and it is the bankruptcy of the United States of America."

See, because Democrats are just like Nazis because government spending.  Jesus.  Oh, here's the best part:

The speech received a standing ovation from the nearly 1,700 delegates from across the state.

Because this is what passes for big, new ideas in the Indiana GOP.

But by the end of the day, even the party's state chairman was distancing himself from the treasurer's comments.

His references Saturday to the Nazi regime drew sharp objections from Democrats, members of the Jewish community and even some Republicans.

Indiana Democratic Chairman John Zody said Mourdock's words were "ugly" and should be denounced by Republican leaders.

Shelby Anderson, president of the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council, said comparing the rise of Hitler and the heinous acts of the Nazis in comparison to America's national debt is "highly offensive and trivialize both the suffering and memory of the six million Jews and millions of others who perished under the Nazi regime."

Stephen Klapper, vice president of the council, called it "deplorable to suggest that a nation in debt is somehow one step away from perpetrating crimes reminiscent of Nazi Germany. And it's outrageous to equate our nation's legitimate public policy challenges, and the way we choose to address these issues – ideally through civil discourse and rigorous debate – with the way Hitler and his Nazi regime propagated one of civilization's most reprehensible atrocities through lies, terror, and ultimately genocide."

But that's what Republicans think of those who disagree with them.  Those who dissent have to be Nazis, because they clearly can't be Americans who should have the right to vote.  Hell, they're just pure evil, they're not even human, so if we have to break a few eggs taking the country back from them, well that's just gonna have to happen, right?

Last Call For Sovereign Stupidity

Another day, another reminder that America continues to have a right-wing domestic terrorist problem.

Authorities shot and killed a sovereign citizen Friday morning outside a Georgia courthouse after he brought weapons and explosives in an attempt to take over the building.

Investigators said Dennis Marx arrived at the Forsyth County Administration Building with an assault rifle, bulletproof vest, smoke grenades, and a gas mask.

Marx also brought water and other supplies, ammunition, zip-tie restraints, and buckets of homemade explosives to the courthouse, said Sheriff Duane Piper.

“He came here with the purpose of occupying the courthouse,” Piper said.

He deployed stop sticks at the courthouse entrance to prevent other vehicles from driving closer and opened fire from his vehicle.

Marx was met outside the courthouse by a deputy – who distracted and then fatally shot him through the windshield of the man’s SUV.

The deputy, a 30-year veteran, was shot in the knee during the confrontation but was expected to recover.

“It would be a guess to think how many lives he saved had he not engaged him right there,” Piper said. “Mr. Marx’s intention was to get inside that front door and to take hostages.”

You probably didn't hear about this because the suspect wasn't named Dennis Mohammed or Daunte Marx.  But a white guy armed to the teeth with the clear, premeditated intent of taking hostages in a courthouse?  We should probably ignore it.

Contractual Obligations

It's good to see this Cincinnati story about the Archdiocese forcing all Catholic school employees to sign a morality clause that censors their opinions finally going national, mainly because in Ohio, taxpayer vouchers can be used to pay for Catholic schools, and yet the Archdiocese remains exempt from basic workplace protections.

First-grade teacher Molly Shumate and high school English teacher Robert Hague are among the veteran teachers choosing to leave the diocese over a ‘morality clause’ included in the new contracts. The clause reportedly prohibits teachers, whether Catholic or not, from having sex or living with a partner outside of marriage, using in-vitro fertilization, leading a gay “lifestyle,” or publicly supporting any of the above.

Steve Benen sums this up:

That last part is of particular interest. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese wrote the “morality clause” in such a way as to apply not just to employees’ actions, but also their stated opinions.

In other words, if you work at a Catholic school in Cincinnati, you can’t be gay or try to have children through IVF treatments, and at the same time, you also can’t say you support gay rights or endorse IVF treatments in general.

And yet Ohio, like a number of other states, allows taxpayer money to go to private religious schools while they remain exempt from state employment laws.

One of those two things has to change.  Oh, and by the way, this is the real First Amendment issue with religious institutions.

Traders and Traitors

And my state's junior US senator manages once again to prove to the country and the world just how much of a jagoff he is.

Sen. Rand Paul on Friday likened Democrats to the recently released Taliban detainees at Guantánamo Bay in a speech here at the Texas GOP convention.

“Mr. President, you love to trade people,” the Kentucky Republican and likely 2016 contender said to laughs, a reference to the deal made for the return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. 

“Why don’t we set up a trade? But this time, instead of five Taliban, how about five Democrats? I’m thinking John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, couldn’t we send them to Mexico?”

Hurr, because they're Democrats, not Americans, so it's okay.  Hell, they're not even human, am I right?

Paul’s suggestion came after he criticized the deal struck to bring back Bergdahl, who had been held captive by the Taliban for five years and was freed in exchange for the five prisoners.

“I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve been a little bit annoyed with the president,” Paul said. “Releasing five Taliban senior officials is not only against the law, it’s illegal and wrong and he should never have done it.”

So you must have really hated Bush when he released 500 plus Gitmo detainees.  What's that?  Not a peep?  Now why is that?

Asked about his comments in a news conference after the speech, Paul replied, “It was a joke. Except for Nancy Pelosi, I was serious about her.”

Misogyny is always funnier in Texas.

As far as I'm concerned, Rand Paul should stay there and not come back.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Another federal judge has struck down a state ban on same-sex marriage under equal protection grounds, this time in Wisconsin.
• The Texas state Republican convention this weekend apparently featured a Davy Crockett impersonator who called for the overthrow of President Obama and the federal government.
• European mobile phone giant Vodafone says six countries used its networks to wiretap and record customer calls, prompting anger across Europe and Asia.
• Transport company Uber has managed to set a record for start-up funding, hitting $17 billion on a new round of funding this week.
• The CIA is now on Twitter, officially, and its first tweet was "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet."