Pretending The House Is Competitive

Gallup's midterm poll finds congressional approval at new lows, to the surprise of nobody.

The election environment for congressional incumbents in 2014 will be challenging, with several key public opinion indicators as negative or nearly as negative as they have been in any recent midterm election year. This includes congressional job approval, which, at 16%, is on pace to be the lowest in a midterm election year since Gallup first measured it in 1974. 

 

In years when congressional job approval is low, there tends to be greater turnover in House membership. The prior low job approval rating in a midterm election year was 21% in 2010, a year in which 15% of House incumbents seeking re-election were defeated. In 1994, when 22% approved of Congress, 10% of incumbents lost. By comparison, just 4% of incumbents lost in 2002, when Congress enjoyed a 50% approval rating. 

The potential vulnerability of congressional incumbents was clear last week, when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor suffered a stunning defeat in his primary election in Virginia, losing to an underfunded GOP "outsider."

If anything, Cantor's loss is the exception that proves the rule.  The difference between now and 1994 is that House districts are gerrymandered in just about as many states as possible.  There's no bigger example than in Ohio, a state that President Obama won by 3 points and nearly 200,000 votes, and yet 12 of 16 Ohio House Representatives are Republican, along with the GOP having 60 of 99 state House seats and 23 of 33 state Senate seats.  Ohio is by that measure one of the reddest states in the country.

If you think that somehow the House is in play, you're nuts.  In 2012 only 5% or so of House seats were competitive.  The number may actually be less this year.

The days of one side or another picking up 60+ seats like even four years ago are ancient history now that Republicans have gerrymandered the country to within an inch of its life, and the Supreme Court is too busy calling that free speech.

Parental Guidance Strongly Suggested

Some people make great parents, they raise and love their kids and teach them to be caring, intelligent people who want to make a difference.

And then there's Megan Everett of Florida, who is precisely none of those things.

Last April, Broward Circuit Judge Steven Feren granted dual custody of Lilly Everett to Megan Everett and Robert Baumann. On May 6, Baumann dropped his daughter off at her mother’s house for a week-long visit, but when he returned to the home, Everett was not there.

Baumann did find a note, however, that read “You are a great dad” — with the word “great” underlined multiple times — but “if I let them take her and vaccinate her and brainwash her, I wouldn’t be doing what’s right. I cannot let a judge tell me how my daughter should be raised. We will miss you. But I had to leave.”

On May 19, Broward Circuit Judge Michele Towbin Singer issued a warrant for Everett’s arrest on charges of custodial kidnapping, interference with court-ordered custody, and concealing a minor contrary to a court order. Federal authorities became involved on Friday when it became evident that Everett had crossed state lines in order to avoid prosecution on the state charges.

It gets worse.

Baumann told The Orlando Sentinel that he had planned to have his daughter Lilly vaccinated so she could enroll in preschool, but that Everett objected to that plan.

“She found this new idea that vaccines are horrible,” Baumann said. “I think she wanted to keep her from being vaccinated because that would keep her out of day care.”

And worse.

“One of the issues we had was, she wanted to home-school my daughter,” he added. “I didn’t want that to happen. She didn’t want Lilly to learn about black history. She just wanted her to learn about the Confederacy.”

Court documents suggest that the reason Everett didn’t want her daughter studying black history is that she had become involved with a man named Carlos Lesters, who is described as “a Confederate-flag-waving gun enthusiast” with family in Georgia and Kentucky. When authorities contacted Lesters, he informed them that she was gone “and not coming back.”

Racist is bad enough, anti-vaxxer is bad enough, but both?  That's just horrifically stupid.   Everett remains at large as federal officials look for her and her daughter and I hope they are found safely soon.

StupidiNews!

• US officials are mulling over direct talks with Iran in order to come up with a solution to stop militants in Iraq that have taken several northern and western cities.
• University of Texas astronomers have discovered a possible "sister" to Earth's sun, 110 light-years away, that formed from the same giant cloud of space gas and dust 4.5 billion years ago.
• The San Antonio Spurs won Game 5 of the NBA Finals 104-87 last night to clinch their 5th NBA championship in 16 seasons.
• US medical device maker Medtronic will buy Dublin-based rival Covidien for $42.9 billion as the merger is expected to create over 1,000 jobs in Medtronic's home of Minnesota.
• A former Microsoft employee accused of stealing Windows 8 trade secrets has been sentenced to three months in jail by a Washington State judge.

Last Call For Berk To Berk Wins

Saw How To Train Your Dragon 2 this afternoon, and if you enjoyed the first movie from Dreamworks Animation Studios featuring Hiccup, Astrid, Toothless and the rest of the viking residents of the island village of Berk, the sequel is actually as good if not better.




Dreamworks Animation is pretty hit and miss, and while the Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar franchises have done very well over the 20 year history of the studio, recent outings like Rise of the Guardians, The Croods, Turbo and Mr. Peabody And Sherman were mixed outings at best.  Going back to Berk was the best idea the studio has had in a while.

As the movie opens we find Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) five years older, now twenty and more confident in his skill as a dragon rider, eager to explore the world with Toothless, his dragon companion.  Berk's the home to a dragon riding academy that's cranking out one solid air force, and he's still dating Astrid (America Ferrera) and hanging out with his friends.  The loss of his right foot in the climactic battle of the first movie hasn't slowed him down a step (thanks to a well-designed replacement as Hiccup is still a pretty sly engineer) and his father, village chief Stoick (Gerard Butler), wants to groom him for taking over as his successor.

All that runs into cold reality when the crew happens upon Eren, (Kit Harrington) a dragon trapper who wants to bag Toothless and the rest for his boss, Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou) who has also figured out how to control dragons and would very much like Hiccup and the dragons of Berk to join him...or else.  Drago knows an awful lot about dragons and Hiccup and his friends have their hands full this time.

Further complicating issues is the appearance of Valka (Cate Blanchett, yay!) another mysterious dragon rider who warns our young hero about Drago (she has a connection to Hiccup that you'll probably guess pretty early on) and she sets up a pivotal point in the film where Hiccup has to make some hard choices about what kind of man he'll become.  Hiccup's got commitment issues and doesn't want to be tied down to his dad because he feels he's not good enough to fill his shoes.

It's up to Hiccup and Toothless to figure out how to save Berk once again, and the movie has a number of pretty heartwarming and exciting moments.  The film itself is impressively pretty, with awesome flight sequences and plenty of action and laughs.

I enjoyed it, it's worth a matinee at least, so give it a test flight.

Tony Blair Uses The Shaggy Defense

Former British PM Tony Blair wants you to know that when it comes to Iraq's current meltdown, the joint US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 had nothing to do with it.  It wasn't me!

Tony Blair has strongly rejected claims that the 2003 US-UK invasion ofIraq was to blame for the current crisis gripping the country, pointing the finger instead firmly at the Maliki government and the war in Syria. 

In a passionate essay published on his website, the former prime minister said it was a "bizarre" reading of the situation to argue that the US-British invasion of Iraq had allowed the growth of Sunni jihadist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis), whose fighters have swept through towns and cities north and west of Baghdad over the past week. 

"We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven't. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not: and whether action or inaction is the best policy. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it. 

"We have to put aside the differences of the past and act now to save the future," says Blair, adding that force may be necessary. "Where the extremists are fighting, they have to be countered hard, with force."

Behold the unrepentant war criminal, who has learned precisely nothing from the last 12 years.

In a defence of his actions in Iraq, Blair attacked as "extraordinary" any notion the country would be stable if Saddam Hussein had stayed in power. 

"The civil war in Syria with its attendant disintegration is having its predictable and malign effect. Iraq is now in mortal danger. The whole of the Middle East is under threat. 

He said it was inevitable that events across Iraq had raised the arguments over the 2003 war. While admitting that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, he said: "What we now know from Syria is that Assad, without any detection from the west, was manufacturing chemical weapons. We only discovered this when he used them. We also know, from the final weapons inspectors' reports, that though it is true that Saddam got rid of the physical weapons, he retained the expertise and capability to manufacture them. 

"Is it likely, knowing what we now know about Assad, that Saddam, who had used chemical weapons both against the Iranians in the 1980s war – that resulted in over a million casualties – and against his own people, would have refrained from returning to his old ways? Surely it is at least as likely that he would have gone back to them?"

To recap, Syria's civil war in 2011 justified the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and justifies going back into Iraq in 2014.

There really isn't anything these ghouls wouldn't say or do in order to send us back into Iraq, guns blazing.

Denying The Deniers

President Obama gave the commencement speech at UC-Irvine on Saturday, and he lit into climate change deniers in Congress yet again.

President Barack Obama renewed his campaign to curb carbon emissions Saturday, saying the debate over climate change is over.

Obama, who made the battle against climate change a core promise of his 2008 election campaign, has been stymied at the federal level by opposition from lawmakers.

Congress "is full of folks who stubbornly and automatically reject the scientific evidence," Obama told a crowd of more than 30,641 people, including thousands of graduates at the University of California, Irvine.

"They'll tell you climate change is a hoax, or a fad. One says the world might actually be cooling."

And yet people keep electing these same Republicans to Congress.  Luckily, here in reality, President Obama is encouraging solutions and not ignorance.

The president used his speech to the university graduates to present a $1-billion competition for funds to help communities hit by natural disasters linked to climate change.

"Climate change is no longer a distant threat," the president emphasized.

"In some parts of the country, weather-related disasters like droughts, fires, storms and floods are going to get harsher and costlier."

He stressed that climate change remains "one of the most significant long-term challenges" to the United States and the world.

It is, but that would require governance to deal with it, and Republicans haven't been interested in governance in decades.

"The climate change deniers suggest there's still a debate over the science. There's not," Obama said.

"I've got to admit, though, it's pretty rare that you'll encounter someone who says the problem you're trying to solve doesn't even exist."

When president John F. Kennedy set the United States on a course for the moon, Obama added, "I don't remember anyone saying the moon wasn't real, or that it was made of cheese."

Ouch.  And yet, climate change deniers are just as ridiculous and silly.  Sadly, they're also elected to power.

Perhaps we should do something about that in November.

Last Call For That Second Civil War Thing Again

What happens when you put professional clown Alex Jones in the same room with professional gun nut Larry Pratt, who thinks the NRA is too liberal?  Why, Obama is trying to kill us, of course.

Jones asked Pratt about a Washington Times report about a 2010 Pentagon directive — an update to a series of similar directives crafted under previous administrations — outlining how and when the military can use force to quell domestic unrest “in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the president is impossible.”

Jones, of course, read this to mean that it is “official and has been confirmed” that the military is “training with tanks, armored vehicles, drones” to “take on the American people, mainly the Tea Party."

“Well, he’s certainly not thinking that Muslims are a threat,” responded Pratt, “so he’s turning to his political opponents, declaring that they’re the enemy and ignoring the fact that Muslims from time to time have a tendency to go ‘boom.’”

Pratt then cited the 2009 DHS report to claim that the Obama administration has “fingered veterans as potential terrorists, people who believe in the Second Amendment, who are pro-life, who want to work for limited government.”

“I guess the idea of limited government really would terrorize a socialist,” he said, adding, “The enemy is freedom and they really are doing what they can to extinguish it.”

The paranoia has to always be fed in order to create cop-killing lunatics like Jerad and Amanda Miller, so no surprise there.  Of course these idiots are going to claim martyrdom when someone questions their right to murder people because of the Second Amendment.

Eggs, broken, omelets, and by eggs, apparently these guys mean "cops".

No, It's Not Both Sides

Last week's Pew Research Center poll on American political partisanship is full of very interesting bits, but to me here's the most powerful finding:



The more liberal you are, the more you want compromise in order to reach a win-win situation politically.  The more conservative you are, the less you want to compromise at all, for any reason.

That defines the last 15 years perfectly in American politics, and why we're in the rotten situation we're in now with Republicans happily willing to punish their own constituents, neighbors, and communities rather than reach an accord with Democrats.

And it's why they're doomed, long-term.

Deal With The Devils

The awful deal last week by Virginia Democrat and state Sen. Phil Puckett to abandon his party in order to earn a cushy appointed post and a judgeship for his daughter in exchange for giving control of the state Senate to the GOP has resulted in what the Republicans were after all along:  passing a state budget that would refuse to fund the Affordable Care Act in the state.

The Virginia General Assembly adopted a long-delayed state budget late Thursday, acting after an hours-long debate among newly ascendant Senate Republicans who fought among themselves over whether the plan threw up sufficient barriers to Medicaid expansion.

The Republicans, who gained control of the Senate Monday when a Democrat resigned from what had been an evenly split chamber, approved a spending deal hashed out by a bipartisan group of House and Senate negotiators.

But they first amended it in a way intended to make it harder to expand the federal-state healthcare program for the poor under the federal Affordable Care Act — Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s top legislative priority.

As midnight approached, the plan moved over for consideration by the House of Delegates, where it quickly passed. It was expected to then head to McAuliffe’s desk, but with no certainty that he would approve it and avert a government shutdown before July 1.

McAuliffe quickly issued a statement after the House vote: “When this budget reaches my desk I will evaluate it carefully and take the actions that I deem necessary, but this fight is far from over. This is the right thing to do for Virginia, and I will not rest until we get it done.”

A government shutdown in Virginia, home to the most government employees in the country per capita, would be lethal to McAuliffe. And the bill is designed specifically so that the governor cannot authorize Medicaid expansion without the approval of the General Assembly.  And Republicans like State Sen. Richard Black are thrilled:

“This was a stunning victory for the Republicans. We passed a budget in a single night and we have effectively blocked Medicaid expansion.”

Denying health care to hundreds of thousands of Virginians is what Republicans consider to be "a stunning victory."

Let that sink in for a minute.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• President Obama has ruled out sending troops into Iraq, but he is considering a "range of other military and diplomatic options" according to the White House.
• Boston, LA, San Francisco, and Washington, DC remain in the running for the 2024 Summer Games, the winner being announced in 2017.
• The federal judge who struck down Wisconsin's ban on same-sex marriage has put those weddings on hold as the state plans to appeal the ruling.
• The Netherlands crushed defending World Cup champions Spain 5-1 with two goals from Robin van Persie as Chile and Mexico also got wins in Brazil on Friday.
• Restaurant chain PF Chang's China Bistro is breaking the manual credit card machines out of storage as the company investigates where a digital credit card breach originated from.

Last Call For Doing The RIght Thing Yet Again

Good call from the White House for making a difference in the lives of trans* federal employees.

The federal government is telling insurers Friday that they can now provide transgender people with coverage for transition-related care — including sex-reassignment surgery — in federal employee health care plans, BuzzFeed has learned.

Two sources informed of the decision told BuzzFeed the longtime exclusion of transition-related care under the Federal Employees Health Benefits program is coming to an end on Friday in the form of a letter being sent to the insurance providers. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) officials would neither confirm nor provide comment to BuzzFeed about the decision.

The move comes two weeks after Medicare made a similar move. In the Medicare case, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Departmental Appeals Board issued a ruling that ended a ban on Medicare even considering the coverage of sex-reassignment surgery and related care because a fear of “serious complications” resulting from the “experimental” surgery.

The OPM change does not mean that federal employee health insurers must cover transition-related care, the sources said, but the change does permit the insurers to do so.

The move by OPM has been long sought by LGBT advocates and appears to be part of action taken by OPM to “update various nondiscrimination provisions … to provide greater consistency and reflect current law.”

Like any Republican executive branch would do this.  Well done, Mr. President.

Seriously, this is a great and long overdue change, and I hope more is coming.

Meet The New Monster, Same As The Old Monster

Republicans and the Village are screaming for President Obama to DO SOMETHING!!!11!! about ISIS in Iraq.  Because what we really need to do in order to solve our failed, unnecessary, and multi-trillion dollar war in Iraq from 12 years ago is to send another 200,000 troops right back in. The Washington Post:

The first thing you hear is the music. It lilts and sways. Then you see the Islamist militants. They’re knocking at a policeman’s door. It’s the middle of the night, but the cop soon answers. He’s blindfolded and cuffed. They take him to the bedroom. And then, reports say, they decapitate him with a knife.

Another video captures militants with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) herding hundreds of boys and Iraqi soldiers down a highway to an unknown fate. “Repent,” ISIS told inhabitants of its newly conquered territory on Thursday. “But anyone who insists upon apostasy faces death.” 

Death was everywhere in the sacked the city of Mosul, a strategically vital oil hub and Iraq’s largest northern city. One reporter said an Iraqi woman in Mosul claimed to have seen a “row of decapitated soldiers and policemen” on the street. Other reports spoke of “mass beheadings,” though The Washington Post was not able to confirm the tales. 

But the United Nations Human Rights chief, Navi Pillay, said the summary executions “may run into the hundreds” and that she was “extremely alarmed.”

Well, we can't confirm this story that will be used to justify military action in Iraq.  But we're printing it anyway, because military action in Iraq. Of course the man leading that charge is Johnny Volcano.

Sen. John McCain said Thursday that President Barack Obama’s entire national security team should resign over the resurgence of Islamic militants in Iraq. 

“Everybody in his national security team, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ought to be replaced,” the Arizona Republican told reporters ahead of a classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the deteriorating situation in Iraq. “It’s a colossal failure of American security policy.”

Because the Iraq War itself was somehow not a colossal failure of American policy.   Jesus.  We'd be at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and South Sudan and Ukraine right now if McCain were president. Obama has kept us out of another bloody mess.

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Going Back To The Rez

President Obama will become only the fourth sitting US president to visit Indian Country as he plans to travel today to Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the Dakotas.

Obama is set to become just the fourth sitting American president to visit an Indian reservation. Calvin Coolidge traveled to South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation in 1927, three years after he signed the Indian Citizenship Act that granted some Indians American citizenship. Franklin Roosevelt visited North Carolina’s Cherokee Nation in 1936. And in 1999, Bill Clinton also visited Pine Ridge, a little more than a century after U.S. soldiers massacred hundreds of Lakota men, women and children there at Wounded Knee.

The White House says Obama’s return trip to Indian Country will include meeting with young people, and that the president will focus his speech to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on job creation, education and his administration’s commitment to “upholding our strong and crucial nation-to-nation relationship.”

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama also plan on attending the reservation’s annual Cannon Ball Flag Day Celebration, which honors Native American veterans.

For some on Standing Rock, the president’s trip is a source of excitement and long overdue acknowledgement.

The last time Obama visited Indian country, as a candidate in 2008, he was welcomed with pounding drums and cheers. “Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans – the first Americans,” Obama told the crowd that day, vowing to improve the health care and educational opportunities of American Indians. The Crow adopted Obama into the nation and into the Black Eagle family, giving him the name Awe Kooda Bilaxpak Kuuxshish or “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land.”

“It’s just encouraging as heck to have a visit like this,” said David Archambault Sr., a longtime educator from the Standing Rock reservation and father of the tribe’s chairman. “What the president has done is like night and day. Our history shows that it’s as if no one has any compassion for us. We are here and we have resources and throughout history people have wanted to take them from us. And for the first time we have someone looking out for us.”

Frankly the way reservations are treated and have been treated in the US is pretty terrible, but at least the last two Democratic presidents have tried to improve conditions. 

And yes, apparently Sen. Heidi Heitkamp will be on hand to meet the President. 

Heitkamp said she hopes the president’s visit will highlight the rich culture and history of the Lakota Sioux people, but also the tribe’s often invisible suffering.

“Native Americans were not given citizenship until the 20th Century and were only allowed to be able to vote if they renounced their tribal citizenship,” said Heitkamp. “That doesn’t get talked about a lot. For so many years they weren’t even considered American citizens and they’ve been invisible.”

For the better part of three decades since Heitkamp served as the state’s attorney general, she said she has worked as an advocate for Native Americans. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2013 and her first bill was aimed at creating a Commission on Native Children to study the issues disproportionately facing native children, including high rates of poverty, child abuse and suicide. Last month, the bill was passed unanimously in the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and moved one step closer to going before the Senate for a vote. She also introduced legislation to help preserve Native American languages and culture.

I hope she has the grace to keep her damn mouth shut about how many problems are on the reservations, especially involving ludicrous rates of domestic violence, after she voted with Republicans to kill President Obama's gun safety legislation in the Senate and again with Republicans to block President Obama's nominee to run the DoJ's civil rights division.  Maybe somebody can include her Senate votes as factors in that study as to why things are so bad on reservations for kids.

StupidiNews!

• Former Taliban POW Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is back in the US where he continues to receive medical care and will be reunited with his family.
• GOP Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas has given up his bid to replace outgoing House majority leader Eric Cantor, leaving California Republican Kevin McCarthy as the sole candidate for the job.
• ISIS militants continue to take territory in northern Iraq, while Iraqi Kurds are using the uprising to secure the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as President Obama weighs air strike options.
• After Croatia took a stunning lead 11 minutes into the opening World Cup match against Brazil with an own goal by Marcelo, striker Neymar led his team to a 3-1 victory with 2 goals.
• A new malware program in Japan is using Windows's own security protocols to block anti-virus programs from removing it.

Last Call For Bobby Jindal's War On Women

And as expected, Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed into law an abortion clinic bill so awful, it will probably close the state's remaining clinics in both Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Gov. Bobby Jindal signed legislation Thursday that is all but guaranteed to close the only abortion clinics in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

His office issued a release after the bill signing ceremony Thursday (June 12) at the First Baptist Church in West Monroe, where the governor signed two pieces of "pro-life legislation." Sponsors of the bills are from Monroe and West Monroe.

House Bill 388, sponsored by Rep. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, proposes a new law adding requirements of abortion doctors that clinic administrators say will force them out of business because of the unlikeliness they will be able to comply. Supporters have dubbed it the Unsafe Abortion Protection Act.

House Bill 305, sponsored by Rep. Frank Hoffman, R-West Monroe, would prohibit abortion providers or their affiliates, including Planned Parenthood, to instruct or distribute information on health related issues, such as sex eduction, at public or charter schools.

"I am proud to sign these bills because they will help us continue to protect women and the life of the unborn in our state," Jindal said in a statement issued after the signing. "These new laws will give women the health and safety protections they deserve and continue to make Louisiana a state that values individual human life."

A lawyer for the clinics has indicated administrators will likely file a joint suit challenging the new law after House Bill 388. It's unclear if the court would grant the clinics an injunction, allowing them to keep their doors open, while litigation pends.

The bill would leave a grand total of one abortion clinic in the entire state, if that much, for 4.6 million people.  But remember, there's no war on women, Republicans aren't trying to eliminate clinics through regulations designed to close them, and women without resources totally aren't going to turn to unsafe abortion methods as a result, risk their lives.

And we certainly wouldn't see a national version of this law the minute Republicans controil Congress and the White House again, so you should probably stay home and not vote because Obama disappointed you personally.