Last Call For The Racoon And The Tree

Saw Guardians of the Galaxy this afternoon, and brother, this movie certainly does not disappoint.



Based on the Marvel comics series, the movie opens in 1988 with young Peter Quill visiting his sick mother in the hospital and realizing he has to say goodbye, as her cancer is terminal and she doesn't have long.  After the inevitable happens, he runs out into the night only to have the hand of fate scoop him up and put him squarely on the path to destiny among the stars.

Cut to 2014, and grown-up (physically, but surely not emotionally) Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is a space-hopping thief and con man whose latest score brings the promise of untold riches, not to mention a very big bounty on his head.  Galactic-level bad guy Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) wants the artifact Quill has stolen, and it becomes a mad dash for the cash when bounty hunters Rocket (voiced brilliantly by Bradley Cooper) and his partner Groot (Vin Diesel in full emotive Iron Giant mode) give chase, and Ronan sends his own trump card Gamora (a verdant Zoe Saldana) to grab the loot.

Only Quill isn't as stupid as he seems, and the four of them get rounded up by Nova Corps, the galactic equivalent of Interpol (headed by Glenn Close, no less!) and tossed in the nearest space prison, where they meet Drax the Destroyer (who knew WWE wrestler Dave Bautista could act?) The five of them escape from Ronan and his sidekick Nebula (Karen Gilliam) and the adventure truly begins as the real villain pulling Ronan's strings is the same person responsible for that pesky invasion of Earth in The Avengers: Thanos, the Mad Titan (Josh Brolin), who has his own plans for the artifact.  It's up to Quill and his new "partners" to stop him and save the galaxy.

I personally had a blast at this film.  Cooper and Bautista provide some laugh out loud moments, and Pratt's charm is evident as he smirks his way from one disastrous situation to the next.  The film is well-written and doesn't get bogged down, and like The Avengers you're definitely pulling for this team of ragtag destruction by the end of the film. The movie is well-written and doesn't get bogged down with too much exposition, and Marvel aficionados will see a lot to like here as we get our first real taste of Marvel's cosmic-level players.

I highly recommend this film.  But don't take my word for it, odds are you've probably seen it this weekend as the movie blew up with the highest August weekend opening ever.

Republicans Keep Talking Impeachment

Ross Douthat:

Over the last month, the Obama political apparatus — a close aide to the president, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the “independent” voices at MSNBC — has been talking nonstop about an alleged Republican plan to impeach the president. John Boehner’s symbolic lawsuit against the White House has been dubbed “impeachment lite,” Sarah Palin’s pleas for attention have been creatively reinterpreted as G.O.P. marching orders, and an entire apocalyptic fund-raising campaign has been built around the specter of a House impeachment vote.

Anyone paying attention knows that no such impeachment plan is currently afoot. So taken on its own, the impeachment chatter would simply be an unseemly, un-presidential attempt to raise money and get out the 2014 vote.

But it isn’t happening in a vacuum, because even as his team plays the impeachment card with gusto, the president is contemplating — indeed, all but promising — an extraordinary abuse of office: the granting of temporary legal status, by executive fiat, to up to half the country’s population of illegal immigrants.

We're up to the point where we're not talking about impeaching the President for something he did, but for something he might do, and could, legally.

Rep. Steve King:

Host Chris Wallace asked King what he would do if Obama decides to delay deportations, and Rep. King answered, “None of us want to do the thing that’s left for us as an alternative, but if the president has decided that he is simply not going to enforce any immigration law, or at least not against anybody except the felons, which essentially he has done already this is a broader group of people. I think Congress has to sit down and have a serious look at the rest of this Constitution, and that includes that i-word that we don’t want to say, and I only say now on this program, because I want to encourage the president, please don’t put America into a constitutional crisis, please don’t do that. There’s too much at stake in this country to be deciding that you can take over the Constitution and write it at will.”

Wallace asked if he was saying that impeachment was on the table. King answered, “I think that we have to sit down and take a look at that. Where we would we draw the line otherwise? If that’s not enough to bring that about, then I don’t know what would be.”

So now we have Republicans openly threatening the President with impeachment if he acts.  But it's all a Democratic party ploy, right?   Steve King is blatant:  if you act on immigration, we will impeach.

But yes, it's all Democrats talking it up.

What The Frack Is Going On In Toledo

Remember, Republicans like those in Gov. John Kasich's party want to do away with the Environmental Protection Agency.  I can't see why that would be an issue at all.

A toxin discovered in a northwestern Ohio treatment plant left 500,000 people without drinkable tap water for a second day Sunday.

Toledo Mayor D. Michael Collins said the level of toxins in the water has decreased, but that more tests are needed to ensure that the city's water is safe to drink.

"This is not over yet," Collins said Sunday.

Residents of Toledo, its suburbs and small areas of southeastern Michigan began lining up for water Saturday after news of the contamination surfaced. Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared a state of emergency for Lucas, Wood and Fulton counties and deployed the National Guard to get water and meals ready to eat, or MREs, to the area.

"What's more important than water? Water's about life," Kasich said. "We know it's difficult. We know it's frustrating."

In a news release, the city of Toledo said the toxins likely came from harmful algae blooms in nearby Lake Erie.

"These organisms are capable of producing a number of toxins that may pose a risk to human and animal health," the release said.

Samples of water were flown to the federal and state Environmental Protection Agency offices in Cincinnati and Columbus and a university in Michigan for testing, officials said.

Toxic algae in Lake Erie?  Can't imagine where that could have come from.   Maybe, I dunno, Kasich's fracking program?  Now thousands in Toledo can't drink the water, but let's trash the EPA and expand drilling in the Great Lakes.  Remember, Kasich said the Great Lakes would be protected.

What could go wrong?

Fancy Farm Fracas

If it's the first Saturday in August, it's time for the St. Jerome Catholic Church picnic, aka Fancy Farm, Kentucky's premier "eat a crapload of BBQ and heckle your political opponent" event.  This year's headliner bout was no exception, as Alison Grimes took on Sen. Mitch McConnell, exchanging some brutal blows.

"Thirty-five is my age - that's also Senator McConnell's approval rating," Grimes quipped.

Polling from earlier this year indicated McConnell's approval rating was in the low 30s.

And Grimes gave McConnell grief for serving in Washington for so long, saying he'd forgotten about the people of Kentucky.

"After three decades in Washington, you've just given up. You don't care about us any more. Thanks to you, D.C. stands for 'Doesn't Care," Grimes said.

But McConnell had something to say about how important his experience is while highlighting Grimes' inexperience, drawing parallels between Grimes, who's two years in as Kentucky's secretary of state, and the relative inexperience of President Barack Obama before taking office.

"He was only two years into his first big job when he started campaigning for the next one. Sound familiar?" McConnell said.

And of course, Rand Paul crashed the party.

"There once was a woman from Kentucky, who thought in politics she'd be lucky. So she flew to LA for a Hollywood bash. She came home in a flash, with buckets of cash," Paul said.

While the race has clear national implications and is one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, Grimes said she wants the focus to be on Kentuckians.

"This race is between me, you and the people of Kentucky," Grimes said to McConnell, seated just a short distance away.

Polls show the race is nearly tied just three months away from the election.

The big prognostication sites, 538, Upshot, Cook Political Report, etc continue to give Grimes almost no chance of winning this race.  Mitch is too entrenched in the state, too politically savvy, too rich to lose down the stretch and he'll pull away and win by 8-10 points.  I think Mitch will get the fight of his political life.

We'll see.

Classic George Will Concern Trolling

George Will makes the obnoxious argument that if Democrats were serious about winning in 2016, they'd nominate Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown over Hillary Clinton, but they won't because he's a white guy, and Democrats hate white guys.

If Ohio’s senior senator were named Sharon Brown instead of Sherrod Brown, progressives would have a plausible political pin-up and a serious alternative to the tawdry boredom of Hillary Clinton’s joyless plod toward her party’s presidential nomination. Drop one of Brown’s consonants and change another and a vowel, and we might be spared the infatuation of what Howard Dean called “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” for Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Sherrod Brown won’t be considered because the Democratic Party’s activist core is incurably devoted to identity politics — the proposition that people are whatever their gender is (or their race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or whatever seems stupendously important at the moment). And the party’s base seems determined to nominate and elect a woman, thereby proving that what has occurred in Britain, Germany, Israel, India, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and other nations can happen here. Feel the excitement.

This is classic projection here, as George Will assumes Democrats have the same thought processes as Republicans would in the same situation.  Of course Republicans would nominate the white guy, and of course Hillary Clinton and Liz Warren are only being considered because they are women.

Will proceeds to rattle off Brown's pretty decent record as a progressive, and then ends with this:

Are progressives so preoccupied with gender that they prefer Clinton’s risk-averse careerism, or Warren’s astonished tantrums about the obvious dynamics of big government, to Brown’s authentic progressivism? Yes.

See, if Democrats don't nominate the clearly more qualified white guy, it's because of affirmative action or something.  It's almost like Will knows nothing about the party, or politics, or anything.

Napoleon, Blown-Apart

Martin Longman argues that given the CIA's not-so-hilarious hijinks in snooping in Senate computers (and that's just the last straw), it's finally time for President Obama to toss CIA Director John Brennan out on his ass.

The administration defends John Brennan's actions by correctly pointing out that he was the one who asked the Inspector General to investigate this matter, and it's true that he did that and that he is allowing the investigation to go forward. But he also obstructed the investigation, leveled false charges at the Senate Intelligence Committee staff, filed those charges with Department of Justice, and oversees a process that has overly redacted their report.

By any normal standard, John Brennan would be prosecuted for his actions. But he is being protected by the administration. I don't think this is best explained by the idea that Brennan is doing a good job in other respects. He's a major embarrassment to the administration and protecting him makes them look extremely bad. From the very beginning of his administration, I think President Obama has simply been afraid to take on the Intelligence Community. And his official rationale is morally bankrupt:

Even before I came into office, I was very clear that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values. I understand why it happened. I think it's important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the twin towers fell and the Pentagon had been hit and the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. And, you know, it's important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots, but having said all that, we did some things that were wrong. And that's what that report reflects.

This is how the president rebukes these unnamed CIA officers for acting contrary to our values without daring to hold them accountable despite what the law and our treaties say. It would be overly "sanctimonious" to hold them accountable. In actuality, it would be dangerous to hold them accountable. If anything is "sanctimonious," it is the failure to recognize that danger.

Even I have to call horseshit on President Obama's logic there.  9/11 happened 13 years ago.  It was hard on a lot of people, especially all the families who lost loved ones because our intelligence agencies screwed up.  It also has nothing to do whatsoever with spying on Senate Intelligence Committee computers in 2013, and he's lied multiple times about what the CIA has done.

The problem is Brennan's ouster would prove Rand Paul correct.  And getting a new CIA head right now would be impossible.  And given America's many foreign policy problems, slagging the CIA, even if they deserve it, has to take a back seat.  There are bigger problems out there, Putin, Netanyahu, Assad, and we need the CIA to keep us in the loop there.

I hate it and I want to see Brennan go.  It's not going to happen.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• House Republicans have passed the border bill many Tea Party members wanted, that would deport all immigrants here under President Obama's deferment.
• WHO officials say West Africa's Ebola outbreak is outpacing efforts to contain it, as at least 729 are dead from the disease.
• A factory explosion in China's Jiangsu province has killed at least 68 and injured 120 as officials say a flame ignited a dust-filled room.
• A Florida judge has ordered the state's legislature into special session to redraw unconstitutional congressional districts by August 15, possibly delaying elections.
• Facebook is facing a European class-action privacy lawsuit that is being opened to US and Canadian residents, alleging privacy violations under EU law.

Last Call For Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

We've finally reached the point where Israeli hard-liners have made American hard-liners look like complete wimps, as Times of Israel contributor Yochanan Gordon ponders whether or not Israel has the justification to exterminate every Palestinian in Gaza. (Hint: his answer is "yes.")

The Times of Israel scrubbed an inflammatory blog post on Friday after the writer was widely ridiculed and condemned for making a case for genocide.

In the post titled "When Genocide is Permissible," Yochanan Gordon framed his premise as "a question for all the humanitarians out there."

It's the most lunatic thing I've read in some time.  It makes our crazy warmongers look like Mother Teresa. And it gets a whole lot worse:

I wasn't aware of this, but it seems that the nature of warfare has undergone a major shift over the years. Where wars were usually waged to defeat the opposing side, today it seems - and judging by the number of foul calls it would indicate - that today's wars are fought to a draw. I mean, whoever heard of a timeout in war? An NBA Basketball game allows six timeouts for each team during the course of a game, but last I checked this is a war! We are at war with an enemy whose charter calls for the annihilation of our people. Nothing, then, can be considered disproportionate when we are fighting for our very right to live. 

The sad reality is that Israel gets it, but its hands are being tied by world leaders who over the past six years have insisted they are such good friends with the Jewish state, that they know more regarding its interests than even they do. But there's going to have to come a time where Israel feels threatened enough where it has no other choice but to defy international warnings - because this is life or death.

It's amazing.  His reasoning is exceedingly simple:  we have to exterminate all Palestinians in order to save Israel.  The irony of this is enough to power entire separate realities.

Hamas has stated forthrightly that it idealizes death as much as Israel celebrates life. What other way then is there to deal with an enemy of this nature other than obliterate them completely?

So at this point, I fully expect tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties in the coming days and weeks.   The news of a captured Israeli soldier just hours into what was the start of a 3-day cease fire has all but assured that thousands of Palestinians will now have to die as a result of Hamas and Israel.

The war will continue unabated now.  Regardless of what you think about Yochanan Gordon's idiocy, a lot of people are going to be slaughtered and very, very soon.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Steve M. observes the chaos in the House GOP and its laughable border vote fiasco, the bill pulled by Boehner rather than he have it be defeated, and asks an excellent question:

I know I'm supposed to regard this as a tremendous black eye for Republicans, and for John Boehner in particular -- and obviously it is in the eyes of political insiders and mavens. But are any Republicans actually going to be punished for this in a way that's going to sting?

Not by Republican voters, that's for sure.

But here's my question: Which Republican is going to lose an election in November because of this? I assume the answer is "None of them." This makes House Republicans look like terrible public servants who accomplish nothing on behalf of the American people. But Americaalready regarded House Republicans that way before today, and they were poised to hold pretty much every seat they hold now, largely because of gerrymandering, while their party was -- and still is -- certain to gain seats in the Senate, quite possibly enough to gain control.

Does anyone seriously think any of that has changed?

In fact, these clowns have probably increased their appeal to the Fox-addled voting base of their party. And even if a handful of swing voters now have a blinding flash of insight and realize that Republican legislators are outright frauds, in what district is the race close enough to matter? Name me one.

I can't.  And that's a gigantic problem.  The irony is however if we don't vote and try to change it, it will never ever get any better, so I choose to go down swinging and hope that maybe I can get the word out to enough people for them to try to go down swinging too.  I can vote while I still can, and try to get others to vote too.

Eventually either enough of us will give a damn and we'll scrub the stables clean of filth, or we'll drown in the flood of crap.

Of Course They're Going After Birth Control

The forced birth loonies will never stop only outlawing abortion as a health care procedure.  Their true goal is to turn birth control into a luxury for the few, and the rest of those people need to close their legs, the sluts.

An anti-Abortion group in Minnesota has been campaigning against a new Planned Parenthood in Richfield, Minn., even though the clinic doesn't actually perform abortions, Cosmopolitan reported.

The clinic opened at the end of June, and since then Pro-Life Action Ministries (PLAM) has been vigorously objecting to it. The group has started a petition, held meetings and are now distributing flyers around town. 

They protested the grand opening and have kept a constant presence outside of the clinic to offer "sidewalk counseling," according to Cosmo. PLAM activists blasted the city's Chamber of Commerce for "advocating for abortion" by putting together a ribbon cutting for the building in which no abortions are performed.

Brian Gibson, executive director of Pro-Life Action Ministries, told Cosmo that the group only take issue with the clinic's role in providing abortions. The group argues that certain forms of birth control "can cause early abortions" and that emergency contraception drugs "function most often as abortion-inducing drugs."

The new Planned Parenthood opened up after the Centro de Salud clinic in South Minneapolis closed, potentially leaving a gap in services for the Hispanic community.

The group claims they have gotten a largely positive response to their efforts to protest the clinic and refer individuals to a Catholic crisis pregnancy center.

Believe me when I say the wealthy will always be able to afford abortions.  But this idiocy involving birth control equating to abortion is both stupid and very, very savvy.  The last couple of years especially, the push to make birth control as "bad" as abortion has worked, and a population of woman with unaffordable birth control will be less independent, less healthy, and less well-off.

That of course is the goal and has been for some time.

StupidiNews!

• Despite a 72 hour cease fire that went into effect this morning, fighting continues in Gaza and the agreement has fallen apart with both Israelis and Hamas blaming each other.
• The Senate has passed a $16.3 billion measure to overhaul the Department of Veterans Affairs in a 91-3 vote, sending the measure to President Obama's desk to be signed.
• A US aid worker infected with Ebola while working in West Africa will be flown to a special ward at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
• Portugal's Esperito Santo family, one of the country's wealthiest banking families, is now reeling from a tax fraud scandal that could see the family's patriarch in prison for money laundering.
• The newest threat to catch your credit card number from stores is a program called "Backoff" that grabs information through legitimate remote services.

Last Call For Rescue 9/11

Meanwhile, my local member of Congress (and Junior Rand Paul Fan Club President) GOP Rep. Thomas Massie has been using his powers of "I'm a Congressman, dammit!" to look over classified documents pertaining to the 9/11 attacks, and apparently he really wants to share.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. on the Glenn Beck Program Tuesday said there will be "anger, frustration and embarrassment" if a classified 28-pages of an intelligence report on the 9/11 terrorist attacks are released to the public.

Massie, however, thinks the American public should be allowed to read the redacted 28-pages of the "Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001." 

Massie has co-sponsored a bill authored by Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., that would declassify the redacted pages. 

Massie has read the documents but can't reveal what's in them, he said in a press conference earlier this month. He said he was shepherded in a soundproof room to read the material and couldn't take notes. 

"It is sort of shocking when you read it," Massie said in the press conference. "As I read it, we all had our own experience, I had to stop every couple of pages and absorb and try to re-arrange my understanding of history for the past 13 years and the years leading up to that. It challenges you to re-think everything."

Well, or you could have paid attention to America's foreign policy before 9/11, and to the ridiculous failures of the Bush administration that preceded the attack.  It sounds like those 28 pages would deal primarily with the latter.

Amazingly enough, this is the least damaging thing Massie has done so far in representing myself and my fellow northern Kentuckians in Congress, and I'd like to see this legislation pass.  Challenging Americans to re-think everything since 9/11 seems like a very good plan.

Having said that, I'm supporting Massie's Democratic opponent in November, Peter Newberry.  Even though Newberry is pretty much a Tea Party Democrat, he's still a D, especially if he's willing to term limit himself out of a job so a real Democrat can run.

Border Line Sociopaths

Republicans have managed to get themselves trapped in their own "clever trap" for President Obama. America overwhelmingly wants the flood of kids from Central America coming over the border with Mexico to be treated as refugees and not as criminals, and as Greg Sargent points out, the GOP can't help but look like a pack of cartoon villains with their proposed House border fix bill, which would drastically cut the President's $3.7 billion request to help these kids into a mere $700 million.

Yet it’s unclear whether even this bill can pass the House, because conservatives such as Ted Cruz, Steve King, and Jeff Sessions are demanding that the measure include language blocking Obama’s program to defer deportation of the DREAMers. The Heritage Foundation has come out against the GOP proposal for the same reason, further dimming chances of passage. 

GOP leaders are resisting the inclusion of such language. But it needs to be stated once again that Cruz, King, and Sessions are not outliers in this debate. Broadly speaking, their position on this crisis — and on immigration in general – is the GOP position writ large. 

So there's a very good chance that the GOP will once again wreck their own bill, and sure enough Boehner wasn't able to pass it.

Republican leaders don’t want to include any measure against Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in the current border plan because the politics are terrible. That would entail responding to a crisis involving migrating minors not just by expediting deportations (which the current GOP bill would do), but also by calling for still more deportations from the interior. But the GOP leadership’s position is only that they don’t want any anti-DACA language in their current response to the crisis. The GOP position writ large is still that we should deport all the DREAMers, block Obama from any further executive action to ease deportations, and not act in any way to legalize the 11 million. 

Remember: The House GOP already voted last year to end DACA. Meanwhile, Republicans are preparing to cast any future Obama action to ease deportations, no matter what it is, as out-of-control lawlessness and executive overreach, which is functionally equivalent to calling for maximum deportations from the interior. And they are heaping outright derision on the mere suggestion by Democrats that perhaps this crisis should be an occasion to revisit broader reform — yet another reminder that they won’t act to legalize the 11 million under any circumstances. So how, exactly, is this collection of positions, broadly speaking, any different from those of Cruz, King, Sessions, et. al.?

It's not.  If they pass the bill, they look like total scumbags.  If they don't pass the bill, they look like ineffective buffoons.  (Hint: they're both.)  We'll see how they get stuck in their own rhetoric this time, but no matter what the GOP does at this point, they've already lost the fight.

The GOP Has Already Lost The Lawsuit Battle

Wednesday, House Republicans voted along party lines to allow House Speaker John Boehner to sue President Obama.  Now they have to explain why they took this unprecedented step to stop a "runaway" President, while maintaining that impeachment is somehow a step too far.

The lawsuit gives Republicans the chance to go on offense and gin up their base by highlighting what they see as executive overreach. But that strategy is becoming more complicated as Democrats and White House officials argue the lawsuit is merely the first step in a broader battle against Obama that could result in impeachment proceedings.

“Republicans have a history of doing this. They shut down the government under [former Speaker Newt] Gingrich and then impeached the president. Now they’ve already done half of that,” Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the minority whip, said this week. “The speaker has said things weren’t going to happen, and then days later they did happen and he changed his position.”

Republicans dismiss the impeachment talk, but the party is now in the awkward position of arguing that Obama is improperly exerting executive authority — but not in such a dramatic way that would warrant his removal from office.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on Wednesday that Obama’s executive orders do “not rise to the high crimes and misdemeanor level” to warrant impeachment proceedings. Boehner (R-Ohio) has dismissed the impeachment talk as a “scam” by Democrats to gin up their base ahead of the midterm elections.

So President Obama is somehow overstepping his Constitutional authority (which of course never happened during Bush's term, and would be the definition of a high crime in the Constitution as the President's oath of office is to swear to uphold it) but the Constitutional remedy that already exists for the legislative branch, impeachment, is not applicable.

This means the House has to in fact make up a brand new check/balance system by leaving the President open to a lawsuit, one authorized solely by one half of Congress, without giving the Senate any say in the matter.

Sure.  That sounds totally legit.

At what point does the Supreme Court realize that if this is allowed to continue, Presidents will be sued over every bill that passes that the opposition party dislikes?

Who knows.  But the GOP has seriously lost this entire battle.

StupidiNews!

• House Republicans have voted along party lines, 225-201, to authorize a lawsuit against President Obama for "abusing his powers".
• Talks between the US and Japanese and Canadian trade negotiators have reached an impasse as the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is now in trouble.
• Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says the country will not accept any cease fire deal with Hamas that prevents Israel from destroying all tunnels used to enter or exit Gaza.
• Argentina's deal to prevent bond default has collapsed, possibly triggering demands for immediate repayment of $29 billion, which would consume the country's entire foreign reserve account.
• A new NOAA study finds climate change and rising sea levels have led to more coastal communities suffering from floods over the last 50 years.