Taking Their Country Back

This is the kind of thing we're fighting against in 2015, and things simply have not changed from 1965 in places like Georgia.

Effingham County High School’s mascot was the focus of a heated school board meeting held in Springfield Tuesday night.

A small group of people, led by the NAACP, want the mascot changed from the “Rebels”, usually pictured as a Confederate soldier holding a Confederate Flag.

"We have come to make a petition to right the wrong that should have been corrected 60 years ago,” said Leroy Lloyd, president of the Effingham NAACP.

The petition - made by the local NAACP - is for the school board to remove the use of all confederate symbols used by the school. This includes the Rebel mascot, the use of the Confederate flag, and the school's "Dixie" fight song.

Some say the history and hate associated with these symbols cannot be severed.

Pastor Franklin Blanks, Jr., First Union Baptist Church, said, "We should do better. We cannot ignore this practice any longer. We ask you to do the respect of representing all citizens. Do what is fair and honest concerning this practice."

But the overwhelming majority of people who attended Tuesday’s meeting disagreed.

Stanley Carter, resident, said, "You try to erase my heritage, you try to erase anything you think is racist. But the whole time you were up here, sir. I apologize, but everything you said was racist."

Cheers and boos rose from the crowd of hundreds throughout the meeting, some people were nearly escorted out by law enforcement for speaking out of turn.

"Everything you said is racist" says the angry white man to the black man who dares ask why the symbols of racism are being used in a public, taxpayer-funded high school. And these guys will go to the polls and vote Republican every damn time.

Rand Paul Buys An Election

If there's any doubt as to whether or not Rand Paul is scared of losing both the GOP 2016 nomination and his Senate seat, what he's doing in here in Kentucky to literally buy a caucus system for the state GOP proves it.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul has transferred $250,000 to the Republican Party of Kentucky as a down payment on the presidential caucuses he has asked the party to conduct in March, he told members of the state party's central committee in an email Monday. 

Paul is seeking the party's help in bypassing a state law that prohibits him from running for president and for re-election to his Senate seat on the same ballot next year. He wrote to the party's state central committee, which has nearly 350 members, in an effort to quell concern about the cost of a caucus. 

In his email, Paul repeated his promise that he "will fully fund this caucus." 

"I wanted to formally ask you once again to vote for this plan," he wrote. "Before you do, I wanted you to hear straight from me about the plan to fund it." 

Paul said "numbers aren't 100 percent final," but estimates put the cost of a caucus at $400,000 to $500,000. 

In addition to the $250,000 payment, Paul said he would "raise or transfer" $200,000 more "at a date agreed upon by my team and RPK, roughly midfall after all the budgets and rules are finalized, the RNC (Republican National Committee) accepts our plan, the caucus is an absolute legal certainty and the funds are shown to be needed." 

Additionally, Paul said he expected that $150,000 to $225,000 would be raised by charging every presidential candidate who wants to participate in the caucus a $15,000 filing fee. 

"As you can see, this requires a lot of funds and effort by my team and myself," Paul wrote. "We are ready to do it right now, and with your vote on Aug. 22, we will all move forward, together."

So yeah, the guy is literally buying a caucus system win, so he can win at least one state and then run on the ballot for his Senate seat when he loses the GOP nomination next July.  It's a complete joke.

And yet in this state, who's going to run against him?  Grimes?  Jack Conway?  Hell, me?

C'mon.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/08/17/3992690_rand-paul-makes-250000-down-payment.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

StupidiNews!

• In an Atlantic hurricane season dampened by El Nino effects in the Pacific, Danny is the first hurricane to form this year as a Category 1 storm heading for the Caribbean.
• As record wildfires continue to torch five Western US states, disaster officials are calling in firefighting crews from Canada and the US Army to assist.
• Tensions between North and South Korea are rapidly growing as North Korea is calling on Seoul to halt propaganda loudpseaker broadcasts or face military action.
• US stocks took their biggest dive in years on Thursday as all the major indices lost more than 2% on continued Chinese volatility and economic concerns of a global slowdown.
• A second data dump from the hackers behind last month's Ashley Madison hack was published online yesterday, including what appears to be sensitive email from the company's CEO.

Last Call For Trumping Your Logic

How Donald Trump's mind works:

1. "Illegal" immigrants are criminals.
2. Inner-city black people are criminals.
3. Therefore, black people are "illegal" immigrants.

“You know, a lot of the gangs that you see — this doesn’t hopefully pertain to you guys so much — when you look at Baltimore, when you look at Chicago, and Ferguson a lot of these areas,” Trump said on FM Talk 1065AM on Thursday. “You know, a lot of these gang members are illegal immigrants. They’re gonna be gone. We’re gonna get them out so fast, out of this country. So fast.”

Trump was appearing to discuss his recent immigration plan ahead of an appearance Friday at Ladd Peebles Stadium, which has a maximum capacity of 50,000.

He's saying this in Alabama, of course.  Really not sure what's worse, his rampant xenophobic spew or his complete lack of knowldge of how people of African descent arrived in America. (PS, our ancestors weren't "immigrants".)

Good luck with that, Donny.

Greek Fire: Tsipras Steps Aside

With Germany voting to approve the first payment in the Third Great Greek Bailout, PM Alexis Tsipras was allowed to stay until the check cleared today before his Syriza party made it clear that his time was over.

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is set to call a snap election for 20 September, according to Greek media. 

Mr Tsipras has faced a rebellion within his ruling hard-left Syriza party over a new bailout deal which has been agreed with international creditors. 

Greece received the first €13bn ($14.5bn) tranche on Thursday, allowing it to repay a debt to the European Central Bank and avoid a messy default. 

But the austerity measures needed for the deal angered many in his party. 

Mr Tsipras had to agree to further painful state sector cuts, including far-reaching pension reforms, in exchange for the bailout - and keeping Greece in the eurozone. 

The overall bailout package is worth about €86bn over three years. The payment of the first tranche was made on Thursday after the bailout deal - Greece's third in five years - was approved by relevant European parliaments. 

Mr Tsipras is to make a televised state address later on Thursday. 

He is set to submit his resignation to the president to clear the way for the elections, the media reports said. 

Energy and Environment Minister Panos Skourletis said on state TV: "The certainty is that the need for elections has arisen."

It was a done deal and apparent ever since that Tsipras convinced enough in the Greek parliament to vote for the bailout package that he would in exchange fall on his sword, and tonight he does just that.   The alternative was a vote of no confidence that he clearly would have lost, and so after 8 months the tale of the man elected to stand up to the Troika ends with his complete defeat.

We'll see where Greece goes from here, but the idea that things will be better after a month from now is silly.

Leading The Way

The Army is expected to graduate the first two women from Ranger School in Fort Benning, Georgia this week, as the Pentagon is set to open a variety of combat jobs to women across the US military.

For more than 120 days, Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver have ground it out at Ranger School, the Army’s famously difficult school designed to build elite leaders capable of withstanding the rigors of combat. They’ve withstood fearsome weather, exhausting hikes, sleepless nights and simulated combat patrols designed to test their reaction time, teamwork and tenacity under fire. 

On Friday, the two women will become the first female soldiers ever to graduate from the course at Fort Benning, Ga., receiving the coveted black and yellow Ranger Tab alongside 94 male counterparts. Griest, a military police officer from Orange, Conn., and Haver, an Apache helicopter pilot fromCopperas Cove, Tex., are among a group of 20 women who qualified to attend the first gender-integrated Ranger School beginning April 20, and the only two female soldiers to complete it to date. 

The graduation of Haver and Griest, both in their 20s and alumnae of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., increases pressure on the Army to integrate women into more combat jobs. They have not previously been identified by the Army, but The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in Georgia were able to do so after observing Ranger School training several times this year. 

Ranger School was opened to women for the first time in April as the Army assesses how to integrate women into more jobs in combat units across the service. That followed a January 2013 decision by senior Pentagon leaders to open all jobs to women, with the services granted until this fall to make recommendations on whether anything should remain closed. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter is expected to rule on each request by Jan. 1.

Don't care who you are, getting through this training is an achievement for the ages.  I freely admit that I wouldn't last 30 minutes and these soldiers survived for months and didn't break.  Rangers Lead The Way is their motto, and these two soldiers are certainly proving that.

Well done.

StupidiNews!

• South Korea has exchanged artillery fire with North Korea as tensions have remained high after two South Korean soldiers were injured by landmines earlier this month.
• Infections of Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, have spiked in Saudi Arabia as an outbreak in a Riyadh hospital has infected 46 and killed three.
• US military researchers are working with law enforcement to neutralize commercial drones and track down their operators based on the number of incidents involving drones.
• Islamic State's Egyptian affiliate is claiming responsibility for a car bombing of a security building in Cairo that has injured 29.
• Retailer Target has reached a $67 million settlement with Visa for the 2013 security breach that compromised 40 million credit cards compromised.

Last Call For Minding The Gap

One of the biggest criticisms that people have when saying systemic racism somehow doesn't exist is that America is the land of boundless opportunity, and that higher education is key to being able to take advantage of that opportunity.  If poor black kids choose to not learn to read or write or do math correctly, then no wonder they remain in poverty.

If that's true, then what explains the massive and continual wealth gap for black and Hispanic folks who do graduate college and still make far less money?

From 1992 to 2013, the median net worth of blacks who finished college dropped nearly 56 percent (adjusted for inflation). By comparison, the median net worth of whites with college degrees rose about 86 percent over the same period, which included three recessions — including the severe downturn of 2007 through 2009, with its devastating effect on home prices in many parts of the country. Asian graduates did even better, gaining nearly 90 percent.

This statistic actually makes me physically ill.  It's gut-wrenching.

To understand just how disappointing these results are, look at the impact during this period on comparable groups without college degrees. Blacks without degrees, in large part because they had much less to lose, experienced a 3.8 percent drop in wealth. Whites who didn’t graduate from college lost nearly 11 percent. The wealth of Asian nongrads fell more than 44 percent. 

There is not a simple answer to explain why a college degree has failed to help safeguard the assets of many minority families. Persistent discrimination and the types of training and jobs minorities get have played a role. Another central factor is the heavy debt many blacks and Hispanics accumulate to achieve middle-class status. 

The collapse of the housing bubble played havoc with college-educated black and Hispanic families, who on average accumulated a huge amount of debt relative to the size of their paychecks. They borrowed a lot to buy homes, only to see them plunge in value during the mortgage crisis. While the average value of a home owned by a white college graduate declined 25 percent, homes owned by black and Hispanic grads fell by about twice that. 

This loss was made more devastating by the fact that blacks and Hispanics tended to have more of their wealth concentrated in their homes than whites and Asians, who, on average, accumulated more assets in the stock and bond markets, primarily through retirement accounts. 

The housing boom and bust particularly whipsawed college-educated Hispanics: From 2007 to 2013, their net worth fell a whopping 72 percent. 

One lesson, according to economists at the St. Louis Fed, is that borrowing too much to get a piece of the American dream often undermines any hope of sustaining it.

This is why college affordability should be of primary importance to black and Hispanic families, and why I'm very glad to see such plans come from Democratic candidates.

It also explains very much why Republicans want to slash university funding and refuse to do anything about student loan debt.  If you have to literally mortgage a home in order to afford college, in the long run you're breaking even at best.

This is why Republicans want to limit college to those who already have the wealth to be able to afford it.

The GOP War On Women Continues

Republican governors in the South aren't bothering to wait for investigations or the truth.  The doctored videos "exposing" Planned Parenthood are just a cover to defund Medicaid at the state level and take health care services away from poor women, who in these particular red states are overwhelmingly black.

Following in the footsteps of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has directed his state's Department of Human Services to terminate its Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood. The termination will be effective in 30 days. 

In a statement, Hutchinson said, "It is apparent that after the recent revelations on the actions of Planned Parenthood, that this organization does not represent the values of the people of our state and Arkansas is better served by terminating any and all existing contracts with them. This includes their affiliated organization, Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma." 

The announcement comes in the wake of outrage over heavily-edited sting videosreleased by anti-abortion activists alleging a litany of offenses by Planned Parenthood. The Obama administration contends that cutting Planned Parenthood off from Medicaid funds breaks federal law.

Again, this is something that Republican governors have been wanting to do for a while now, but they needed a convenient excuse for cover, and boy, did they ever get one.  This isn't about preventing abortions (they're going after the major source of contraceptive care for poor women).  It's not about providing an alternative either (all of these governors are on record rejecting Medicaid funding, and want to repeal Obamacare and its funding increases for community health centers).

No, this is about punishing the people that put Obama in office, in particular women, and especially women of color.

Ay, Carly!

There's been more than a little talk about how Carly Fiorina "won" the FOX News second-stringer debate and has established herself in the Pack Of People Only Somewhat Behind Trump, based on her intelligence and business record. But as NYT Dealbook reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin reminds us, Fiorina's business record is her main reason for disqualification.

For much of this early campaign season, in the crowded field of Republican candidates, Mrs. Fiorina didn’t look as if she had much of a chance at the White House. But recently, in the afterglow of her impressive performance in the first Republican debate, Mrs. Fiorina has begun to make significant gains in the polls that have made her a more formidable candidate. She has attracted attention for her sharply articulated pro-market policies and broadsides against both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump. 

And so it is curious to those of us who have reported on her business career that there has not been a greater focus in recent days on her “track records and accomplishments,” as she suggested she should be measured by. 

Even more striking, Mrs. Fiorina, the only former female chief executive among the candidates, continues to promote her business experience on the trail, yet she was fired by Hewlett-Packard after the company’s stock dropped by half in 2005. She has long blamed her failings at running the technology giant on the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the deepening recession in Silicon Valley after the Sept. 11 attacks. 

In an essay published late last week, Mrs. Fiorina also said she lost her job because of her maverick management style. “When you lead and when you challenge the status quo, you make enemies,” she wrote in the essay published on CNN’s website. “It’s why Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney and Mike Bloomberg have all been fired.” 

While those four business icons all received pink slips at some point in their careers (as a young man, Mr. Disney was fired from a Missouri newspaper for lacking imagination), none presided over such a sharp decline in one of America’s great companies. 

“Experience can be a badge of honor or a badge of shame,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, who wrote a recent essay about Mrs. Fiorina’s travails. In an interview, he compared Mrs. Fiorina to the captain who caused the shipwreck of Carnival’s Costa Concordia in 2012. “He will never be trusted with a public leadership role. Captains of industry must also be accountable.” 

In September of 2001, I remember sitting in a theater in midtown Manhattan, listening raptly as Mrs. Fiorina announced Hewlett-Packard’s merger with Compaq and boasted about the combined company’s prospects. 

“Hang with us,” she said on that same day in a conference call with reporters. “It’s going to be a great party.” 

The party never happened, but the hangover was brutal. Hewlett-Packard is still recovering from the ill-conceived merger nearly 15 years later, and recently decided to split the company up. There were some 30,000 layoffs. Its stock price plunged and badly lagged its competition.

There's a reason why Fiorina got her clock cleaned by Barbara Boxer by ten points in 2010's California Senate race in a year where Republicans made record gains elsewhere.  She's a terrible candidate across the board, and I frankly have no idea why she's running,  She basically destroyed Hewlett-Packard and her record as CEO alone should have even Republicans recall the antics of the last terrible CEO in the Oval Office, one George W. Bush.

Fiorina's an also-ran and isn't going anywhere.  Besides, Republicans have a MUCH bigger problem in Donald Trump right now.  A new CNN poll this morning still shows Hillary Clinton easily beating all contenders. Oh, and the Republican candidate that she would have the largest margin of victory against?

Carly Fiorina, by ten points.  Fiorina's faring even worse in the general election than Trump is against Clinton.

But please, keep banging that drum, kids.

StupidiNews!

• Ex-Subway pitchman Jared Fogle is expected to plead guilty today to possession of child pornography after an FBI raid on his home last month.
• Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan says that his cancer is "95% gone" after two months of treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and that his prognosis is good.
• The FDA has approved the first prescription drug for use in treating low sexual desire in women, but warns about side effects like dangerously low blood pressure.
• German lawmakers have approved an 86 billion euro bailout package for Greece after intense lobbying from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
• Hackers have published more than 10 GB of data taken from cheating website Ashley Madison, containing detailed information on 33 million users as well as internal company info.

Last Call For The Sound Of Trump Pets

The Donald continues to dominate the GOP field, and if a new CNN poll is any indication, the nomination is now his to lose as he's up to 24% and pulling away from the field on key issues.

Trump is the biggest gainer in the poll, up 6 points since July according to the first nationwide CNN/ORC poll since the top candidates debated in Cleveland on Aug. 6. Carson gained 5 points and Fiorina 4 points. Trump has also boosted his favorability numbers among Republicans, 58% have a favorable view of Trump now, that figure stood at 50% in the July survey. 

These nationwide findings follow recent polling in Iowa and New Hampshire showing Trump also leads the Republican field in those two key early states.

And what of Jeb Bush's fortunes?

Bush, who held the top spot in the field in most CNN/ORC polls on the race between last fall and Trump's entry into the race in June, has seen his favorability ratings drop alongside his standing in the contest. Overall, 56% hold an unfavorable view of the former Florida governor and 42% of Republican voters have a negative impression. That's an increase in negative views among all adults (up from 43% since July) and among Republican voters (up from 34% unfavorable).

But it's on the issues where Trump is winning in his role as the GOP's unrestrained id.

Still, Trump has quickly won the trust of Republican voters on several top issues. According to the poll, 45% say they trust Trump more than any other Republican candidate on the economy -- up 25 points since June, 44% say they trust Trump over the others on illegal immigration -- up 30 points since June -- and 32% trust him most to handle ISIS, no other candidate comes close on any of these issues.

Oh but it gets better.

On the economy and illegal immigration, Trump is far and away the top choice even among those Republicans who support someone else for the nomination (33% who say they will most likely vote for someone else say Trump is their most trusted on the economy, 29% say so on illegal immigration). Trump is also most trusted on social issues, 19% say he's their top choice to handle that. Bush follows at 15%. 

On two of these issues, Trump is more trusted among conservative Republicans than among moderate Republicans: When it comes to both the economy and illegal immigration, 50% of conservatives say they trust Trump, compared with 35% among moderates on each of those issues.

And what about his rampant sexism?  It only makes the GOP ladies love him even more.

But there is no gender gap among Republicans on favorable views of Trump: 60% of Republican women voters have a positive impression as do 57% of GOP men. Outside the Republican Party, women are less apt to hold a favorable view of Trump, just 17% of women voters who are independents or Democratic leaners see him favorably, compared with 29% of non-Republican male voters.

What can the RNC do, cut off Trump's donors?  He's a billionaire.  He's the archetype of the GOP candidate, a guy so rich he can't be bought by special interests.  They love him, and the rest of the GOP is in 100% panic mode.  Think about this: 3 out of 5 Republican women are perfectly OK with Trump's special brand of misogyny.  It's capitalism meets Dominionism.

And for very good reason.  Trump shows no signs of crashing and burning.  The longer he stays on top, the more likely he'll be the nominee.  Vox's Lee Drutman attempts an explanation:

The data on this is pretty clear. Put simply: While most elite-funded and elite-supported Republicans want to increase immigration and decrease Social Security, a significant number of voters (across both parties) want precisely the opposite — to increase Social Security and decrease immigration. So when Trump speaks out both against immigration and against fellow Republicans who want to cut Social Security, he's speaking out for a lot people. 

By my count of National Election Studies (NES) data, 24 percent of the US population holds this position (increase Social Security, decrease immigration). If we add in the folks who want to maintain (not cut) Social Security and decrease immigration, we are now at 40 percent of the total electorate, which I'll call "populist." No wonder folks are flocking to Trump — and to Bernie Sanders, who holds similar positions, though with more emphasis on the expanding Social Security part and less aggression on immigration.

Math seems pretty solid to me.  Both Trump and Sanders are holding at about 24% nationally among their respective primary polls right now and both are on the upswing.

Of course, in a MUCH more likely scenario, 24% is awfully close to 27%, too, and Trump people are just racist assholes.

Go figure.

Yes, Black Lives Do Matter

Bernie Sanders has taken a lot of heat from BLM activists for his answers and for seemingly shrugging off meetings with people in the movement.  Hillary Clinton on the other hand has met with activists, but some of her answers aren't exactly making her seem all that much better than Sanders.

Clinton's exchange with the activists was respectful, but there were some tense moments. The first video starts with Jones spending three minutes going over America's history of violence toward black people, ending with Clinton's role in perpetuating mass incarceration. He concluded with a thoughtful question on what that means to Clinton personally — "Now, they may have been unintended consequences, but now that you understand the consequences, what in your heart has changed that's going to change the direction of the country?" he asked — and a Clinton aide interrupted before she could answer. 

Clinton started off with a standard politician answer, recapping her lifelong advocacy for minority children, then offered some insight into how she wants to frame the issue on the campaign trail. "Once you say that this country has still not recovered from its original sin, which is true, the next question by people who are on the sidelines, which is the vast majority of Americans, is 'So, what do you want me to do about it?'" she said. "I'm trying to put together in a way that I can explain it and I can sell it, because in politics if you can't explain it and you can't sell it, it stays on the shelf."

She added that a specific agenda is crucial because "you can get lip service from as many white people you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it who are going to say, 'We get it, we get it. We are going to be nicer.' That’s not enough, at least in my book." 

Now, she's 100% right about this. Changing the minds and the actions of white America is the key to stopping racism in this country, and Clinton is going to have to sell that change to people.

Things got more tense in the second clip, as Jones objected to Clinton suggesting that Black Lives Matter needs to have clearer policy goals to get the rest of the country onboard. "I say this as respectfully as I can: If you don’t tell black people what we need to do, then we won’t tell you all what you need to do," Jones said, adding that "this is and has always been a white problem of violence" and there isn't much black people can do to stop it. 

"Respectfully, if that is your position, then I will talk only to white people about how we are going to deal with the very real problems," Clinton snapped. Jones said it's a "form of victim blaming" for Clinton to tell Black Lives Matter what it "needs to do to change white hearts." While Clinton avoided opening up about her personal culpability in America's race problem, that provoked a passionate explanation of how she sees politics: 

Look, I don't believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You're not gonna change every heart. You're not. But at the end of the day we can do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them to live up to their own God-given potential ... You can keep the movement going, which you have started, and through it you may actually change some hearts. But if that's all that happens, we'll be back here in ten years having the same conversation.

She's right about some things, but wildly off-base on others.  Blaming white people who perpetrate violence against black lives isn't victim blaming when it's been happening for 400 goddamn years.

However, Clinton is right when she says unless laws and more importantly entire systems change in this country, the situation will not improve.  The issue has always been how to best go about catalyzing that change.  It's a revolutionary change that will require a revolutionary act.  My question is how BLM plans to get that done with a Republican Congress.  It's not going to happen until that ends. What policies can a Democratic president enact further that a Republican Congress won't destroy?  We've had seven years of that.  How do we win back Congress and the state legislatures and governor's mansions?

Yes, it's  important to ask if Clinton the best person to help bring that change about of the candidates available. Jury's still out on both her and Sanders.  I'm hearing a lot of why, but nowhere near enough on how, from anyone involved.  That goes for the Democrats as well as BLM.

Re-Birther Of The Fool

So what do you get when you combine rabid GOP nationalism with "I'm not a racist but..." mentality and throw in a healthy dollop of paranoia heading into 2016?  The revenge of the Birther movement as it finds some Republican candidates unacceptable.

In a column published last week on the conspiracy theory website WND, author Jack Cashill noted that questions had been raised about whether four of the 17 candidates in the GOP field were really "natural born citizens" and therefore eligible to run for President. 

Ted Cruz has already dealt with those questions publicly -- the Canadian-born senator from Texas renounced his citizenship with that country last summer in anticipation of a 2016 bid -- but Cashill also listed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) among those who were suspect. 

He even mentioned that Jindal's preferring to go by the name Bobby -- inspired by "The Brady Bunch" -- instead of his given name, Piyush, would make for interesting evidence in a court case focused on his eligibility to run for commander-in-chief. 

But who, exactly, was suspicious of these candidates? On what grounds could these four politicians' eligibility to be President be challenged? And why was Santorum, whose background as an Italian-American doesn't get mentioned nearly as frequently as Rubio's Cuban heritage or Jindal's Indian heritage, suspect? 

TPM called up Cashill to find out. Cashill notably co-wrote the 2012 book "Officer's Oath" with former Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, who was dismissed from the U.S. Army in 2010 and sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan amid his questions about President Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as commander-in-chief.

And the interview is a goddman classic.

When the challenge was made against Barack Obama, people said “how dare you question he’s a natural born citizen because he was born in Hawaii." Even if he was born in Hawaii, that does not make him a natural born citizen. It’s a very strict term. I won’t say very strict -- there’s a real meaning to the term, it’s not that it’s perfectly defined but the understanding is well understood. The understanding is that you be born of American parents with unquestioned loyalty to the United States. So for instance, had Obama been born [somewhere] other than Hawaii he would not have been eligible to run for President. Even though his mother was an American, just like Ted Cruz’s mother was American, the difference is that according to the law you’d have to be an American citizen for five years after the age of 14. She simply wasn’t old enough to confer that status on Obama. If his mother had been a non-American citizen and his father had been a Kenyan, and neither had any allegiance to the United States, which in fact neither of them really did, he would not have been eligible no matter where he was born.

So the question comes up about Bobby Jindal’s parents. Both of them were in the United States on student visas. To me the real question is does the candidate have any divided allegiance. So if Jindal’s parents remained steadfastly identifying as Indians and he steadfastly identified as an Indian, even though he was born in the United States and was a citizen, he would not be eligible. Legitimately, he would not be eligible to be President. But given the fact that he changed his name after a character in “The Brady Bunch" -- as American as it gets -- I don’t think there’s any question in any of those candidates that there’s any dual allegiance. That’s what the law was designed to prevent, was people with dual allegiance. Especially in the early Republic when you had people who were from England or from France and who really reported back to the motherland first. Even if they were born here they might be children of a diplomat or something like that. The fact that you are a citizen doesn’t make you a natural born citizen.

These people are completely, certifiably bonkers. and now they are turning on each other.  It would be funny other than the fact that their votes count too, and they are much more likely to vote than your average Democratic voter.

StupidiNews!

• Thailand's military government is hunting for suspects in Monday's deadly bombing of a crowded shrine popular with tourists, with at least 14 dead so far and dozens injured.
• The NLRB has summarily dismissed a bid by Northwestern University college football players to unionize, no reason has been given so far for the decision.
• Indonesian investigators have confirmed no survivors were found at the crash site of Sunday's Trigana Air Service flight, all 54 people on board have been confirmed killed.
• Calls for the resignation of Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff are increasing as investigation into a kickback scheme from state-run energy giant Petrobras has engulfed her administration.
• The IRS now says that identity thieves may have lifted more than 300,000 taxpayer transcripts online, three times initial estimates, and warns that number may still yet increase.