StupidiNews!

• All 150 people aboard Germanwings Flight 9525 are presumed dead after the plane took off from Barcelona and crashed in the French Alps on the way to Dusseldorf.
• Three people have been arrested in Chicago as protesters continue to demand police reforms from Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is locked in a tight re-election race.
• Saudi Arabia is building up military forces near its border with Yemen as Houthi Shi'ite rebels continue to advance southwards towards the city of Aden.
• Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway will partner up for a deal to merge Kraft and Heinz into one of the US's largest food companies.
• Gen Con, the country's largest gaming expo, is threatening to leave Indianapolis over a state bill allowing the religious freedom to discriminate against the LGBTQ community.

Last Call For A Kasich Of Reading Too Much Into Things

Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich is field testing his ridiculous federal balanced budget amendment 2016 presidential hopeful platform with New Hampshire voters and people love it!

According to John Kasich, that is. The Cincy Enquirer's Chrissie Thompson and Meg Vogel are following the governor on the campaign trail in the Granite State.

Already, it's clear: These voters like John Kasich. 

The New Hampshire Republicans I met this morning said they wanted a presidential candidate who prioritized fiscal conservatism and foreign policy, with social issues as a side note. Contrast that with early-primary South Carolina, whose politicos welcomed Kasich politely last month, but worried he was too moderate on issues such as Common Core and immigration. 

The GOP governor focused his New Hampshire speech accordingly. He talked of balancing the federal budget and boasted of his involvement in strengthening coordination in the U.S. military via the Goldwater-Nichols Act. (The latter brought the "most dramatic change in the way the military operated, frankly, in modern history," Kasich said, although his claim to have been a senior congressman at the time might be a stretch -- he was in the second of his nine terms in Congress.) 

Kasich lacked much of the careful deference from his visit to South Carolina. Visibly more comfortable in this state, Kasich spoke of his efforts to force county welfare services to coordinate, boasting about his threat to take away counties money if they don't comply. It's all in the name of "welfare reform," he said. 

"You wanted to clap at that? Go ahead; you can clap," Kasich said.

Yeah go ahead and clap for massive, massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and every federal department, all to make room for tax cuts for the one percent.  More than any other candidate out there, Kasich is the GOP point man on supply-side idiocy.

Yes, Clinton balanced the budget.  And he did it by raising taxes on the rich.

Does anyone think Kasich will do the same?

P.S, That "heartbeat" bill that would ban abortion in Ohio that Kasich is trying to avoid having to sign?  It's baaaaaaaaaaaack!

Bobby Who? Whatsit Jindal? Never Heard Of Him.

NY Times columnist Charles Blow laments the black hole that is Bobby Jindal's presidential hopes (and the Louisiana state budget gap).

In the latest CNN/ORC poll of Republicans and independents who lean Republican, only 1 percent said that he was the candidate they would most likely support for the Republican nomination. Even “none/no one” got 6 percent. 

And in a desperate attempt at relevancy — and press — he has lately been sliding further into Islamic hysteria. 

In January, he caused a controversy by claiming that parts of Europe were “no-go zones” because of Muslim extremists. Jindal said that there were cities “where non-Muslims simply don’t go in,” like Birmingham in Britain. Prime Minister David Cameron said in response: “When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April Fools’ Day. This guy is clearly a complete idiot.” 

That hasn’t stopped Jindal. Last week on Fox News, he set about defending his statement that America “shouldn’t tolerate those who want to come and try to impose some variant, or some version, of Shariah law.” But he went so far as to say of prospective immigrants:
“In America we want people who want to be Americans. We want people who want to come here. We don’t say, ‘You have to adopt our creed, or any particular creed,’ but we do say, ‘If you come here, you need to believe in American exceptionalism.’ ” 

What? Where is that written? I can’t find this “need to believe in American exceptionalism” anywhere in the Immigration and Nationality Act. Isn’t American exceptionalism itself a creed? 

The smart-on-paper Jindal increasingly comes across as nuttier than a piece of praline.

On the contrary, Jindal has all but glowingly accomplished his job: driving Democrats out of what was a reliably blue state.  Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu and friends are ancient history, and the state's vaunted Democratic machinery is in utter ruin.  The state's race to the bottom has been breathtaking.

Now it faces a more than $1.6 billion budget hole, and it's going to be filled with the bones of the state's universities, libraries, and public schools. And when Bobby Jindal leaves office, the state will be a shell of itself, hollowed out in order to give the wealthiest even more money to hoard.

By that criteria, Bobby Jindal has always been the man that he promised to be.

Israeli Getting Messy Out There, Folks

Colonel Mustard's Law And Stuff Emporium:

Now it’s all making sense. The Israelis saw Obama acting deceptively, hiding negotiations that would affect Israel’s existence, and giving away the store to the Iranians.

Netanyahu saw no choice but to go to Congress both through the Israeli ambassador and the speech to Congress, knowing that it would harm Israel with the administration.

This was not something done for election purposes.

Jackass, Son Of Jackass:

How dare Israel undermine American talks with a country that wants to annihilate both Israel and the United States. Our petulant, thin-skinned, mom jeans wearing President is angry because he got exposed. Boo freaking hoo.

 Carl Of Team Israel All Day Every Day:

One final comment. Obama is lucky this story didn't come out last Sunday or Monday. If it had, the Likud might have won 80 seats in last Tuesday's elections. This story doesn't make Obama into a victim (although I am sure that was the administration's intent in leaking it). This story makes Obama look petty, vindictive, and more than willing to abandon an ally that just happens to be the only democracy in a part of the world that is of critical interest to the United States.

Obama has won the title. He will go down in history as the worst President the United States has ever had.

The excuse from the right is that the deal with Iran is soooooooo awful that it has driven Israel to spy on us with, again, the express intent of undermining our foreign policy and involving other US elected officials in the effort. Israel had no other choice, you see to stop Iran from being months away from a nookular weapon, they way they've been for well over a decade now.

 It does explain why the Obama administration has been less than cordial to Bibi over the last couple years. They knew the Israelis were spying on us and going to Congress over it and apparently President Obama has gotten sick of it. Puts that whole "Bibi endorsing Romney in 2012" thing in perspective, doesn't it. Apparently that particular bad bet has continued for the last couple years.

U.S. officials said Israel has long topped the list of countries that aggressively spy on the U.S., along with China, Russia and France. The U.S. expends more counterintelligence resources fending off Israeli spy operations than any other close ally, U.S. officials said. 

A senior official in the prime minister’s office said Monday: “These allegations are utterly false. The state of Israel does not conduct espionage against the United States or Israel’s other allies. The false allegations are clearly intended to undermine the strong ties between the United States and Israel and the security and intelligence relationship we share.”

And Israel doesn't have any nuclear weapons, either, while we're apparently making up stories that nobody actually believes. So yes, this very much explains Israel's actions over the last several months.  An "ally" spying on us, and then using its connections with Congress to get what it wanted, directly.  To see this dirty laundry in the news is a brushback pitch at about 120 MPH.

Israel's response is rather petty:

The White House was directly involved in an attempt to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last week’s general election, during a nadir in ties between the Israeli leader and US President Barack Obama, a senior Jerusalem official said Tuesday. 

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Times of Israel that “it’s no secret” that the Obama administration had attempted to influence the outcome of the election, having been partially motivated by a desire for revenge over Netanyahu’s polarizing speech before Congress earlier this month, which sought to undermine the president’s key foreign policy initiative – a nuclear deal with Iran. 

“The White House is driven by three main motives,” the official said. “The first is revenge [over the Congress speech]. The second is frustration: It’s no secret that they were involved in an attempt to bring down the Netanyahu government – something that we have clear knowledge of – and failed. The third [motive] is the administration’s attempt to divert attention from the negotiations with Iran to the Palestinian issue.”

Well alrighty then.

Enjoy your ride, Bibi.  You signed up for it.  And Obama is fresh out of damns to give about you.

StupidiNews!

• Utah will become the first state to bring back the firing squad as a potential method of executing death row prisoners in cases where drugs for lethal injections cannot be obtained.
• Upgrading LA's aging water and sewer systems to survive the next major California earthquake will cost upwards of $15 billion over the next 20 years according to city engineers.
• The Obama administration is assuring Afghanistan's leaders that US foreign aid to fund Afghan security forces will continue through 2017 at the minimum.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that Greece should stay in the eurozone nations and that she wants a deal that will make the country's economy to succeed.
• Cloud computing networks could be the key to providing the artificial brain power needed to run the next generation of robots.

Last Call For Indiana Acting Like Kentucky

I know most of the time when it comes to politics here in the Tri-State I talk about Kentucky and Ohio, but every now and then Indiana catches some attention for doing something blockheaded, and today's Indiana House vote on a bill to enshrine discrimination into state law qualifies for sure.

The Indiana House of Representatives voted in favor of a controversial religious freedom bill Monday.

It’s a bill that opponents believe will lead to discrimination, but it’s also a bill that is supported by the governor and one that is now certain to become law.

That didn’t stop opponents from battling to the end.

Freedom Indiana, the organization that led the fight for gay marriage in this state, delivered thousands of letters to the office of House Speaker Brian Bosma in a final protest to the bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

“We don’t want this bill,” said Katie Blair of Freedom Indiana. “It’s not necessary. It’s discriminatory and it makes our state look bad.”

And when the bill was called down for debate most of the discussion came from opponents who see it as a consolation prize for conservative organizations who lost the gay marriage fight.

Rep. Sue Errington (D-Muncie) said she heard from clergymen who are opposed.

“They see it as state sanctioned discrimination,” she said, “particularly against gays and lesbians.”

“This is a made up issue,” said Minority Leader Scott Pelath. “It’s an issue made up for the purpose of being able to go in front of a few Indiana citizens and thump your chests that you stood up for certain social causes.”

Supporters insist that the bill would merely guide judges when the rights of two or more people come into conflict.

“Nobody in this General Assembly is advocating a bill that would allow people to discriminate,” said Majority Leader Jud McMillin. “Everybody wants the opportunity for people to practice the rights that they’re supposed to have in this country. This bill does that.”

So if a person says "I refuse to serve you because you are gay and that's against my firmly held beliefs" (or black, or Jewish, or a Bengals fan) and tosses you out of their establishment, that's 100% OK according to Indiana Republicans.

But in a post-Hobby Lobby decision America, that passes for serious legal thinking.

Voter Suppression Now Official In Wisconsin

It's now tougher to register to vote and to vote in the Badger State after the Supreme Court passed on dealing with Wisconsin's Voter ID law, meaning permanently lower turnout, which is exactly what Republicans want.

The Supreme Court refused Monday to hear a major challenge to Wisconsin's voter ID law, delivering a victory to Republicans who favor tougher election laws. 

The decision is a setback for civil rights groups that contend the law could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of residents who lack proper ID — particularly racial minorities, seniors, students and people with disabilities. 

And it turns both sides' sights on Texas, where a similar statute is pending before a federal appeals court. Eventually, the justices are considered likely to resolve the festering issue. 

New election laws in both states, along with Ohio and North Carolina, forced the high court to settle last-minute disputes before the 2014 elections. The justices generally tried not to change procedures just as voters were set to go to the polls, but they did not rule on the broader issue: what types of state restrictions are constitutional. 

Wisconsin's law was passed in 2011 and used in low-turnout primaries before being blocked from further use by a state court. Last year, a federal district judge declared it unconstitutional because it disproportionately affected black and Hispanic residents. 

A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in September, in part because of last-minute changes made by state officials to ease the burden on those lacking proper ID. The full appeals court deadlocked 5-5 on the issue, leaving the panel's decision in place. But the Supreme Court blocked the law from taking effect in November. 

All four cases are part of a broader national challenge by groups aligned with Democrats and minorities against laws tightening voting procedures passed by Republican legislatures to combat alleged voter fraud.

If the Supremes punt on all four states, 2016 is going to be a lot harder for Democrats to prevail in. Republicans know it, because that's the goal: the fewer people vote, the better the GOP does. 2014 proved that beyond a doubt.

We're losing more and more rights to vote, and if the Supreme Court won't act on such blatant and obvious voter suppression against Democrats, then we're in a lot of trouble.

WaPo's Paul Waldman says the Supreme Court punt means it's time to change tactics:

It may be time for liberals to admit that, barring a significant change in the makeup of the Supreme Court, this just isn’t a battle they’re ever going to win. 

That doesn’t mean every challenge to a voter ID law should be dropped. Many of these cases are still important to pursue because the details vary from one state to another. Some laws are more restrictive than others, and it’s important for liberals to press the Court to clearly define what’s permissible and what isn’t. For instance, the Texas law (which is still working its way up to the Court) said that hunting licenses could be used as valid identification, but IDs issued by state universities couldn’t. Everyone understood why the Texas legislature wrote the law that way: hunters are more likely to be Republicans, while students are more likely to be Democrats. 

Even one or two of the conservative justices might find that requirement ridiculous and strike it down. There’s also the question of what states need to do to accommodate people who don’t drive and want to get whatever substitute ID is being provided. How much can the state charge? What about people who would need to travel long distances to get to a state office? What about older people who don’t have (or never had) a birth certificate? These are questions the Court will have to decide, and liberals should be there to make their case, in order to mitigate the harm done by these laws. 

But no one should fool themselves into thinking that this Court is ever going to rule that the basic requirement to present photo ID at the polls is unconstitutional.

That ship has officially sailed.  But the fight to make sure that all Americans have equal access to voter IDs is just getting started.

Race Together Comes Apart

Well this brand disaster of a plan lasted all of a week.

According to a recently released internal memo, Starbucks baristas will no longer write “Race Together” on customers’ cups starting Sunday.

Starbucks spokesman Jim Olson says the campaign to create discussion on diversity and racial inequality will continue without the handwritten messages, which are phasing out as originally planned.

The memo from CEO Howard Schultz says the cups were always “just the catalyst” for a broader conversation and the company will still hold forum discussions, co-produce special sections in USA TODAY and put more stores in minority communities as part of the Race Together initiative.

The initiative has been criticized as opportunistic and inappropriate, coming in the wake of racially charged events such as protests over police killings of black males.

Olson says the change is not a reaction to that pushback.

Sure it's not.  And I'm really Boudica, Queen of the Celts.

Look, this was a horrible idea to begin with, because the only thing worse than people refusing to have a real conversation on race is people having a forced, non-serious conversation about it generated by a coffee company.  It's great that Starbucks wants to be a good corporate citizen, but it was putting all the pressure on its baristas to do the work with little or no guidance, particularly when you sell a product in places where your customer base is mostly white.

There are some real things Starbucks could do, and it looks like according to the statement they plan to at least start on doing them, but #RaceTogether was a road paved with good intentions with only one possible destination.

StupidiNews!

• The US National Counterterrorism Center estimates more than 3,400 Westerners have gone to Syria to join the fight for ISIS.
• Climate change, rising sea levels, and the aftermath of US nuclear testing is prompting the residents of Bikini atoll to ask for residence in the States.
• The US will not speak at today's UN human rights forum on Palestine to defend Israel, a move widely seen as part of President Obama's reassessment of relations between the two countries.
• Greek PM Alexis Tsipras is set to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the second time in five days as the fate of a $259 billion Greek bailout may be decided this week.
• Tesla Motors may have a new competitor in billionaire Richard Branson who hinted his company Virgin may be working on building electric cars rather than just racing them.

Last Call For Cruz, In (For A Brusin')

Sen. Ted Cruz officially opens the GOP 2016 clown car for business, and that business is wrecking America.

Sen. Ted Cruz plans to announce Monday that he will run for president of the United States, accelerating his already rapid three-year rise from a tea party insurgent in Texas into a divisive political force in Washington.

Cruz will launch a presidential bid outright rather than form an exploratory committee, said senior advisers with direct knowledge of his plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made yet. They say he is done exploring and is now ready to become the first Republican presidential candidate.

The senator is scheduled to speak Monday at a convocation ceremony at Liberty University in Virginia, where he is expected to declare his campaign for the presidency.

Over the course of the primary campaign, Cruz will aim to raise between $40 million and $50 million, according to advisers, and dominate with the same tea party voters who supported his underdog Senate campaign in 2012. But the key to victory, Cruz advisers believe, is to be the second choice of enough voters in the party's libertarian and social conservative wings to cobble together a coalition to defeat the chosen candidate of the Republican establishment.

In other words, he's jumping in now to try to bury Sen. Rand Paul early so he can come at Jeb Bush.  Will it work? Who knows?

But it'll be damn amusing to watch with Cruz's record, and I'm sure Republicans across the country want to be reminded of how Cruz shut down the same government as a Senator that he now apparently wants to lead as President.

This should be fun, especially with 19 other people possibly running.

Also, Monday's date is no accident: it's the 5th anniversary of the day the Affordable Care Act was signed into law by President Obama, and Cruz is still lying to everyone when he says the bill has somehow cost millions of American jobs and cost millions their health care.  Expect his announcement (and his campaign) to be full of blatant falsehoods, lies, and stupidity.

A Teachable Moment For State Legislatures

A fourth-grade class in New Hampshire went to the State Capitol in Concord to learn about the process of state government by proposing a bill.  Normally I'd say this was a great idea to see how laws are made, and how ordinary Americans can participate in the process.  But New Hampshire's House is overwhelmingly controlled by the GOP (something close to a 60-40% margin), and what these kids learned is a hard lesson on how politics at the state level work in the age of the Tea Party Maniac.

In the spirit of learning by doing, students drafted a bill to learn the process of how a bill becomes law. They proposed House Bill 373, an act establishing the Red Tail Hawk as the New Hampshire State Raptor. Even though it passed through the Environment and Agriculture committee with a majority vote, some representatives were far from receptive.

Rep. Warren Groen, a Republican from Rochester said, "It grasps them with its talons then uses its razor sharp beak to basically tear it apart limb by limb, and I guess the shame about making this a state bird is it would serve as a much better mascot for Planned Parenthood."

NH1 spoke with Groen over the phone on Thursday afternoon. Click here to listen to the interview with Groen.

That comment, considered offensive by many, was made while the fourth graders sat, watched and listened. The tough lesson didn't end there.

Rep. John Burt, a Republican from Goffstown said, "Bottom line, if we keep bringing more of these bills, and bills, and bills forward that really I think we shouldn't have in front of us, we'll be picking a state hot dog next."

In a 133-to-160 vote lawmakers killed the bill and perhaps the civic enthusiasm of some 9-and-10-year-olds.

You think?  By the way, New Hampshire's House has 400 members, it's one of the largest state Houses in the country by number of members.  Less than 75% of them even bothered to vote on the bill.   The bill died screaming, the kids found out they were going to be used as pawns to rail against abortion, and the best part was Rep. Burt telling these kids that they basically wasted the House's time with a stupid piece of legislation that had no chance.

What, did you think any story involving a GOP legislature in 2015 would have a happy ending?  You clearly haven't been paying attention.

Israeli Serious, You Guys

President Obama all but calls Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu a liar, which is actually true.

President Barack Obama is operating under the assumption that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not support the creation of a Palestinian state, despite the Israeli leader's post-election efforts to recast himself as amenable to a two-state solution.

"We take him at his word when he said that it wouldn't happen during his prime ministership, and so that's why we've got to evaluate what other options are available to make sure that we don't see a chaotic situation in the region," the president said in an interview with The Huffington Post on Friday.

Though he pledged to keep working with the Israeli government on military and intelligence operations, Obama declined to say whether the United States would continue to block Palestinian efforts to secure statehood through the United Nations. In a phone conversation the two had on Thursday, he said he indicated to Netanyahu that "it is going to be hard to find a path where people are seriously believing that negotiations are possible."

In his first public comments on Tuesday's elections in Israel, Obama's deepest discomfort was saved for Netanyahu's Election Day warning about Arab Israeli voters going to the polls "in droves."

"We indicated that that kind of rhetoric was contrary to what is the best of Israel's traditions. That although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland and the need to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly," said Obama. "And I think that that is what's best about Israeli democracy. If that is lost, then I think that not only does it give ammunition to folks who don't believe in a Jewish state, but it also I think starts to erode the meaning of democracy in the country."

I understand the relationship between Israel and the US is complex and messy at times, but nobody can seriously call this an equal partnership (because it's not, as much as the AIPAC hard liners want it to be.)  Israel is a client state of the US, taking military aid from us, and Israel needs the US far more than the US needs them.

Bibi knows this, hence the moderation of his comments.  But President Obama has clearly run out of patience with the man, and if possible the relation between our two countries is only going to get worse.  And a lot of that is on Bibi's head, if not all of it.

The entire transcript of Sam Stein's interview with President Obama is here.

Last Call For We Sold Our Country Cheaply

Here's a depressing statistic from Washington Post political reporter Chris Cillizza:

With reports of Jeb Bush telling donors not to give more than $1 million to his presidential campaign in waiting and Hillary Clinton aiming at a floor of $1 billion raised for her 2016 bid, the hand-wringing over the influence of money in politics has begun (again).

And, yes, lots and lots of money gets spent on elections -- money that, arguably, might be better spent elsewhere. But, it's also important to add a bit of context to the big numbers that get thrown around in terms of campaign spending. Republican pollsters Gene Ulm and Brian O'Bannon do just that in a blog post where they note that the estimated $7 billion spent on the entire two-year 2012 election pales in comparison to the amount of money gambled on the NCAA Tournament bracket from just Monday through Thursday of this past week. 

The duo write: "Significantly more money will be spent on tolerated, but illegal bracket gambling than spent on a legal, but not tolerated presidential election. Begging the question: Is there McCain-Feingold bracket reform in the future?"

What that means of course is that if you want to buy a national election, you only need a couple billion dollars.  That's pretty cheap compared to the trillions that compose our GDP.  You can effectively buy a country's politics for less than one-tenth of one percent of what America produces in a year.

We sell ourselves cheaply, do we not?

360 Degrees Of Separation

Slate's Eric Holthaus reminds us that America has passed a very real climate threshold this winter and that we need to stop talking about how climate change is off in the future, or discussing if it's a nebulous concept that may or may not exist.

The numbers say it's officially here now.

On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that Earth’s global temperature for February was among the hottest ever measured. So far, 2015 is tracking above record-warm 2014—which, when combined with the newly resurgent El Niño, means we’re on pace for another hottest year in history.

In addition to the just-completed warmest winter on record globally (despite the brutal cold and record snow in the eastern U.S.), new data on Thursday from the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that this year’s peak Arctic sea ice reached its lowest ever maximum extent, thanks to “an unusual configuration of the jet stream” that greatly warmed the Pacific Ocean near Alaska.

But here’s the most upsetting news. It’s been exactly 30 years since the last time the world was briefly cooler than its 20th-century average. Every single month since February 1985 has been hotter than the long-term average—that’s 360 consecutive months.

More than just being a round number, the 30-year streak has deeper significance. In climatology, a continuous 30-year stretch of data is traditionally what’s used to define what’s “normal” for a given location. In a very real way, we can now say that for our given location—the planet Earth—global warming is now “normal.” Forget debating—our climate has officially changed.

So yes, the debate on climate change is now over. What happens now is how we choose to deal with it: do nothing if not make the situation even worse, or try to limit the damage.

Imagine another 30 years, 360 consecutive months, all warmer than the average of the planet over the last 100 years.  And then another.  California's drought is the new normal.  New England record snows are the new normal.  Florida hurricanes and Kansas F5 tornadoes and Arizona wildfires and Louisiana flooding?  All the new normal.

If you're 30 or younger, climate change has been the norm for your entire life. Storms of the Century ever couple of years has been what you have always known, from Hugo to Andrew to Katrina to Sandy. And the next 30 years?  Most likely much worse.

We're only just beginning to feel the effects.

America, In One Chart

The reason why we can't have a conversation on race is the fact that one side simply doesn't want to have that conversation, period.

Any questions?