The Word Of God

Eagerly awaiting the free speech mavens on the right, screaming about how "safe spaces" and "political correctness" are destroying America when this nonsense is the actual real problem. 

A UC Berkeley student whose family fled Iraq in 2002 after his diplomat father was killed under Saddam Hussein’s regime, was booted from a Southwest Airlines flight and questioned by the FBI after another passenger heard him speaking Arabic, NBC Bay Area reports.

In a story originally reported in the Daily Californian, student Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, 26, states he was flying home from attending a dinner at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council with Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon when he stopped to make a call to an uncle.

Makhzoomi explained that conversation was conducted in Arabic and, as he said goodbye, he used the phrase “inshallah,” which translates as “if God is willing.”

The student said that after hung up, he noticed a female passenger looking at him who then got up and left her seat.

“She kept staring at me and I didn’t know what was wrong,” he explained. “Then I realized what was happening and I just was thinking ‘I hope she’s not reporting me.’”

Moments later an airport employee asked Makhzoomi to step off the plane and onto the passenger boarding bridge where he was greeted by three security officers.

Makhzoomi was told the woman thought he said “Shahid,” meaning martyr — a term linked to Islamic terrorists

After pointing out the incident was rooted in Islamophobia, the student was told he would not be allowed to get back on the plane as he heard one of the security officers speaking with the FBI.

“At that moment I couldn’t feel anything,” he said. “I was so afraid. I was so scared.”

If Islamophobia has reached this point in 2016, imagine what it'll be like after Trump wins.  I'm tired of hearing about how "liberal fascism" is preventing people from saying things when the real fascism is -- surprise! -- coming from the usual assholes on the "libertarian" right.

And I Miss You Already

GQ columnist Jim Nelson feels much the same way that I do, that America is going to desperately miss Barack Obama when he's no longer President of the United States, and that he'll go down as one of the greats.

Wait. One of the Greatest? you ask, your thumb emoticon poised to turn up or down on me. The guy haters love to hate with their very best hate game? Like 20-Dollar Bill great? Like Mount Rushmore great?

Yep. (We just won’t build Mount Rushmores anymore.) In so many ways, Obama was better than we imagined, better than the body politic deserved, and far, far better than his enemies will ever concede, but the great thing about being great is that the verdict of enemies doesn’t matter.

In fact, and I say this as a Bill Clinton fan, I now feel certain that, in the coming decades, Obama’s star will rise higher than Clinton’s, and he’ll replace Bill in the public mind as the Greatest Democrat since FDR.

This has to do with the nature of Obama’s leadership, which is to play to legacy (and Clinton’s impulse, which is to play to the room). Bill Clinton will long be revered because he’s charismatic, presided over an economic revival, and changed and elevated the view of the Democratic Party. Barack Obama will long be revered because he’s charismatic, presided over an economic revival, and changed and elevated the view of the presidency. He’s simply bigger than Bill.

More to the point, Obama’s legacy is the sort that gets canonized. Because the first rule of Hall of Fame-dom: The times have to suck for the president not to. Civil wars, World Wars, depressions and recessions. You got to have ’em if you wanna be great. That’s why we rate the Washingtons, Lincolns, and Roosevelts over That Fat Guy with the Walrus Mustache. Like Obama, these Great Men were dealt sucky hands, won big, and left the country better off than it was before.

But it’s also why we downgrade the Jimmy Carters and Herbert Hoovers. Were they as bad in real time as we remember them in history? Probably not. But they were dealt sucky hands, only played one round, and left the country feeling worse off. Legacy Game over. (Hoover reminds me more and more of Donald Trump! Elected with little political experience, Hoover was a rich bastard whose central theme was that government was wasteful. His answer to the Great Depression was to start a trade war and build a massive project called the Hoover Dam. The dam turned out to be a giant wall that did not stop or solve larger problems. Déjà vu, thy name is Trump Wall!)

Obama has a few other edges in the long haul of history, beyond specific hurrah moments like Obamacare, rescuing the economy, and making America way more bi-curious. Being the first black president of course secures a certain legacy. But what now feels distinctly possible is that, just as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, over time he may be judged less for the color of his skin than for the content of his character. That character came across every time haters or Trumpers or birthers tried to pull him down into the mud or question his American-ness. He just flew above it all. And, luckily, he took most of us with him. He was the Leader not only of our country but of our mood and disposition, which is harder to rule. At a time when we became more polarized, our discourse pettier and more poisoned, Obama always came across as the Adult in the Room, the one we wanted to be and follow.

The "adult in the room that we wanted to be and to follow" characteristic is the one that made me appreciate Barack Obama.  Yes, he's far from perfect and he's made mistakes and outright awful decisions that I've detailed numerous times here over the last seven years and change.

But Barack Obama was the person who got me involved in local and state politics, and made me want to make my country better than it was.

Reagan and Poppy Bush made me think of the presidency as something to be angry at as a kid.  They sent people to wars and those people were hurt and killed.  Clinton didn't make me care either way. Bush 43 certainly didn't make me believe the presidency would ever be used by anyone other than for personal gain.

Obama?  Yeah.  I'll miss the guy, and that's putting it mildly.

Wage Slaves, Con't

With Hillary Clinton joining Bernie Sanders in the national "Fight for $15" minimum wage movement in this week's final scheduled Democratic primary debate in New York, Ezra Klein sounds very large alarm bells that a $15 federal minimum wage would wreck the economy.

He's probably right, and he explains why.

A $15 per hour minimum wage is so high that we don't have any real idea how it would affect the American economy. The all-time high for the national minimum wage, after adjusting for inflation, was about $11 per hour in 1968. Since the 1980s, the national, inflation-adjusted minimum wage hasn't been higher than $8 per hour. 

Economists disagree about whether these more modest minimum wages have produced significant job losses. One recent study, for example, found that the most recent national minimum wage hike — between 2006 and 2009 — "reduced employment among individuals ages 16 to 30 with less than a high school education by 5.6 percentage points." 

Other economists dispute that. A comprehensive study of state-level minimum wage hikes between 1990 and 2006 by economist Arindrajit Dube and two co-authors found "no detectable employment losses from the kind of minimum wage increases we have seen in the United States." 

But when I asked the lead authors of both studies about California's recent move to boost the minimum wage to $15, I found they were on the same page: the increase was so large that the effects are unpredictable. Neither man could rule out the possibility that a $15 per hour minimum wage would cause dramatic job losses. 

One of the most prominent left-leaning economists in the minimum wage debate is Alan Krueger, co-author of a widely-cited 1993 paper finding that a modest minimum wage hike in Pennsylvania didn't cost jobs. Krueger has served in the Obama administration and supports raising the national minimum wage to $12 per hour. But in a New York Times piece last fall, he warned that "a $15-an-hour national minimum wage would put us in uncharted waters, and risk undesirable and unintended consequences." 

There a two realities right now:  One, California and New York make up more than 56 million Americans, or easily one-sixth of the country.  With cities like Seattle moving towards $15, that number is pushing 60 million, or one fifth of America.  I understand the wage increases are designed to be incremental, but there's still a limit.

The other reality is that the rest of the country can't support a $15 minimum wage.

A big concern with California's minimum wage hike was that California is a large and diverse state. Some parts of the state — like the city of San Francisco — have high wages and a high cost of living; in these areas, a large majority of workers are already making more than $15 per hour, and employers paying less than that may not have much trouble finding the money to comply with the new wage. 

But other parts of California aren't so affluent, and in these areas, the higher minimum wage could cost a lot of jobs. Small businesses in cities like Fresno could be forced to shut down, as customers just aren't willing to pay the higher prices needed to cover the higher wage costs. 

In March I asked Dube — generally seen as a supporter of a higher minimum wage — if it was a mistake for a state as large as California to try such a big increase. Would it be better to let $15-an-hour experiments in San Francisco and Los Angeles play out? 

"If you're risk-averse, this would not be the scale at which to try things," Dube told me.
Of course, that point applies with even greater force to the nation as a whole. Themedian wage in Fresno was $15.48 per hour in 2015, meaning that almost half of Fresno workers will be affected by California's new minimum wage law — either getting a raise or losing their job. 

But as the Washington Post's Catherine Rampell points out, there are four states where the median wage is less than $15 per hour.

Yes, the federal minimum wage needs to go up.  $10.25, which Democrats pushed recently, was a good start.  States like California and New York are acting where Republicans in Congress continue to block any wage increase.  It's been $7.25 for a decade now and is still the minimum wage in 18 states, with another dozen less than $9.

But $15 will cause chaos in places like Alabama or Pennsylvania (yes, $7.25 is minimum wage is a union Rust Belt state like Pennsylvania, folks) or as much as I loathe to say it, here in Kentucky. Kentucky's economy isn't California's or New York's.

A $15 federal minimum wage is going to be ruthlessly painful, and I don't see Clinton or Sanders saying that they have plans to help the millions of people who would lose their jobs.  I don't even hear them admitting there's going to be serious pain in California and New York as a result.

Ezra's right, it's time for Dems to say "OK, but $15 an hour is going to require a lot of other things to make it work, so let's talk about what needs to be done."

Last Call For Out Like Flint, Con't

It's official, Republicans have killed federal funding to fix Flint, Michigan's water crisis again, and again the bad guy here is Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee.

Bipartisan Senate leaders reached an agreement Wednesday on a long-stalled energy modernization bill that some had hoped would include money to address the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan. 

But because the Flint provision is still the subject of a hold by Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee -- who objects to the way it is funded -- the energy bill will now move on without it. 

The setback is significant, because even if Lee's concerns are resolved eventually, it will likely be time-consuming and complicated to find a new legislative vehicle to pass the money for Flint. 

Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow quickly issued a statement knocking Lee for holding up the funds, which she argues are desperately needed. 

"It's totally unacceptable that Sen. Lee continues to block a vote on our fully paid for, bipartisan agreement to help Flint and other communities across the nation who have serious lead and water problems," the Democrat said. "This is about something as basic as making sure families have clean water to drink and children with lead poisoning get the help they need." 

"We will not give up until this gets done using whatever legislative vehicle it takes," she added. 

The Flint measure would provide $250 million for repairs to its lead-leaching water lines as well as deal with the health effects on the city's residents. The money would also be available to other communities with drinking water problems.

You think Lee is going to suffer an ounce of political fallout over this in a state like Utah?  He won in 2010 by nearly 30 points, and the Democrats are running Jon Swinton, a marriage therapist, against him.  The one poll I can find was from a year ago and Lee would win by six.  Now?  Who knows, nobody in Utah seems to care about removing Lee from office. 

Utah's Senate primary isn't until the end of June, so if the one remotely popular Democrat in the state, Rep. Jim Matheson is going to step in, he has plenty of time, except for the fact Matheson now has a comfy job as an energy company and payday lender lobbyist after getting clobbered by GOP Rep. Mia Love in 2014. Odds are real good Matheson isn't going anywhere.

So Sen. Lee makes the perfect bad guy here. Utahns aren't going to punish him, and Flint will continue to suffer.

And so it goes. America really doesn't seem too interested in helping Flint when "everybody needs help with my tax money" in the age of Austerity.

A House Afire, Con't

Larry Sabato's crew at Crystal Ball see the Dems picking up a significant number of seats in the House in 2016 at this point, and should the GOP really screw it up with a Trump or Cruz disaster at the top of the ticket, Dems winning back the House isn't totally out of the question.

Before this update, we rated 229 House seats as either Safe, Likely, or Leaning to the Republicans, 188 Safe/Likely/Leaning to the Democrats, and 18 Toss-ups. If one splits the Toss-ups 9 to 9, it would leave the House with 238 Republicans and 197 Democrats, or a net gain of nine seats for the Democrats. The new ratings are as follows: 227 Safe/Likely/Leaning Republican, 188 Safe/Likely/Leaning Democratic, and 20 Toss-ups. Split the Toss-ups, and Democrats net 10 seats, or only a third of what they need.

That is roughly what our outlook is right now — a small Democratic gain of about 5-10 seats — but as we showed earlier, the presidential math could change that calculation, swelling Democratic gains. On the flip side, Republicans still have a chance to hold Democrats to single-digits gains. A Republican net gain seems exceedingly unlikely at this point, but in this crazy cycle one cannot completely rule it out with seven months to go.

It's interesting to see that 5-10 seats is a middle point in a year where the Democrats have controlled the White House for two terms.  You would normally expect the non-incumbent party to make gains, but that's how bad the GOP has it right now, even with the significant structural advantages through redistricting in 2010 and gerrymandering after that gave them a huge win in 2014.

Not only are there a significant number of toss-ups on the Republican side, but several very likely Dem pickups too.  Getting enough to take back the House isn't likely, but they could gain 20 seats or so at this point.

We'll see.

A Mess Of Carolina BBQ, Con't

The most liberal part of North Carolina is definitely Asheville, where I went to college back in the 90's, and it's places like this that do give me hope that something can be done about NC's awful Republican problem.  The state's being boycotted by a number of groups over HB2, the recent "bathroom bill" legislation passed in less than a day by Republicans in a special session of the state legislature, and not everyone in the state thinks a boycott is fair or even helpful, like Linda-Marie Barrett, of the city's legendary Malaprop's Bookstore and Cafe.

We’ve just entered a particularly rough patch, though, as we endure the repercussions of a new law that bars transgender people from the bathrooms of their choice and permits discrimination based on sexual orientation. This horrible legislation goes against what we stand for: human rights, tolerance and inclusiveness. We’ve held meetings about how to respond. We’ve helped write a letter from North Carolina independent bookstores to the State Legislature demanding a repeal of the law, and we’ve signed onto a letter from children’s book authors in the state speaking out against it. We are heartened that Asheville’s City Council just passed a resolution calling for the law’s repeal.

But now we’re being made to pay a price for a law we vehemently oppose, as artists, businesses and government officials have begun to boycott North Carolina. Our store, too, is being boycotted. Customers from other states tell us they won’t visit until the law is no more. More threatening to us financially and to our community culturally is the cancellation of events by authors.

The National Book Award-winning author Sherman Alexie canceled an event in May that included a talk in a large ticketed venue and two school visits. Although we deeply respect the author’s reason for boycotting, we lost out on much needed revenue through book sales tied to his appearance. We also lost an opportunity to connect a beloved, charismatic author with fans in a city who would have been empowered by his outrage over the law.

After he canceled, other writers and booksellers let us know they stood with us. But this shows how precarious social protest can be, especially when it involves boycotting bookstores, which are financially vulnerable, and often the best place in a community to discuss controversial ideas.

As justified as a boycott can be, we ask authors to consider a way of protesting other than boycotting bookstores. We need your voices, your presence, your art. When you cancel events with us, you deprive readers of a voice that can buoy them up, enlighten them, and demonstrate the fellowship of being there for each other, in community.

For 34 years we’ve had authors’ backs when their books were challenged or their events protested. We need authors to have our backs, too.

And yeah, like every other UNC-Asheville student, I went to Malaprop's several times.  It's a great place and if you're ever in Asheville, PLEASE go there.  I hate to see it suffer like this.  Boycotts do have unintended consequences and are not always the best solution to a problem.  Small businesses, especially bookstores, are very vulnerable to economic pressure.

Voting out the lawmakers who caused the problem, well, that's entirely different.

StupidiNews!

• South Korea's military says a North Korean missile test has failed on the holiday for North Korea's founding dictator Kim Il Sung, the missile apparently never achieving flight.
• Tennessee GOP Gov. Bill Haslam has vetoed a bill that would make the Holy Bible the "state book" saying it would be unconstitutional, but GOP lawmakers vow to override the veto.
• British police say they have arrested five in connection with possible terrorist attacks as European Union governments step up security in the wake of attacks in Paris and Brussels.
• In Brazil President Dilma Rouseff is asking the country's top court to block impeachment proceedings ahead of Sunday's vote by lawmakers to bring formal charges.
• Apple has confirmed that it is no longer issuing security updates to fix its Quicktime player for Windows despite experts saying the software has known, active vulnerabilities.

Last Call For It's Not Just White Men

The opioid epidemic hitting white rural communities is not just killing men, but killing women as well.  New statistics show a major spike in the death rates of white women, particularly in the Midwest and among the lower middle class, people like Anna Marrie Jones of Tecumseh, Oklahoma.

Fifty-four years old. Raised on three rural acres. High school-educated. A mother of three. Loyal employee of Kmart, Walls Bargain Center and Dollar Store. These were the facts of her life as printed in the funeral program, and now they had also become clues in an American crisis with implications far beyond the burnt grass and red dirt of central Oklahoma.

White women between 25 and 55 have been dying at accelerating rates over the past decade, a spike in mortality not seen since the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. According to recent studies of death certificates, the trend is worse for women in the center of the United States, worse still in rural areas, and worst of all for those in the lower middle class. Drug and alcohol overdose rates for working-age white women have quadrupled. Suicides are up by as much as 50 percent.

What killed Jones was cirrhosis of the liver brought on by heavy drinking. The exact culprit was vodka, whatever brand was on sale, poured into a pint glass eight ounces at a time. But, as Anna’s family gathered at the gravesite for a final memorial, they wondered instead about the root causes, which were harder to diagnose and more difficult to solve.

“Life didn’t always break her way. She dealt with that sadness,” said Candy Payne, the funeral officiant. “She tried her best. She loved her family. But she dabbled in the drinking, and when things got tough the drinking made it harder.”

There were plots nearby marked for Jones’s friends and relatives who had died in the past decade at ages 46, 52 and 37. Jones had buried her fiance at 55. She had eulogized her best friend, dead at 50 from alcohol-induced cirrhosis.

Other parts of the adjacent land were intended for her children: Davey, 38, her oldest son and most loyal caretaker, who was making it through the day with some of his mother’s vodka; Maryann, 33, the middle daughter, who had hitched a ride to the service because she couldn’t afford a working car; and Tiffany, 31, who had two daughters of her own, a job at the discount grocery and enough accumulated stress to make her feel, “at least a decade or two older,” she said.

Candy, who in addition to being the officiant was also a close family friend, motioned for Tiffany and Maryann to bring over the container holding their mother’s cremated remains. They opened the lid and the ashes blew back into their dresses and out into the pasture.

“No more hurt. No more loneliness,” Candy said.

“No more suffering,” Tiffany said.

They shook out the last ashes and circled the grave as Candy bowed her head to pray.

“We don’t know why it came to this,” she said. “We trust You know the reasons. We trust You have the answers.”

The answers are that the economic conditions that have crushed a generation of black and Hispanic working class Americans, once confined to the inner cities, have now become commonplace across all of 2016 America.  White, rural America is just now catching up in the misery department, accelerated by red state austerity and voting constantly against their own self-interests.

But now that it's affecting white women, well, now the austerity regime is maybe a problem in a country where the richest 1% now account for close to two-thirds of the total wealth.  Hell, just the wealthiest twenty Americans alone now own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the country.

And that's just the money we know about.

Hillary's Lead Pipe Cinch

Greg Sargent breaks down Hillary Clinton's proposal to replace America's lead pipes and lead paint in five years, a plan that even I think is borderline Bernie Sanders unicorn territory.

The details are here: The proposal on lead in particular includes a promise to establish a Presidential Commission on Childhood Lead Exposure, which would be charged with “writing a national plan to eliminate the risk of lead exposure from paint, pipes, and soil within five years.” It also includes a vow to push for $5 billion to implement the commission’s recommendations, to “replace lead paint, windows, and doors in homes, schools, and child care centers and remediate lead-contaminated soil.” It also references a separate $275 billion plan for infrastructure modernization that includes “drinking and wastewater infrastructure.”

Public health problems such as this one historically attract widespread notice when there are glaringly awful outbreaks of it that command media and public attention, such as the one in Flint, Michigan. But in fact, a national effort along the lines of the one Clinton is suggesting has long been sought by advocates for reform — because this remains a national problem that afflicts other cities and localities, too. As the New York Times recently put it:

By the most recent estimate, about 37 million homes and apartments still have some lead paint on walls and woodwork, 23 million with potentially hazardous levels of lead in soil, paint chips or household dust.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that four million of those most dangerous households have children. A half-million children — in Atlantic City, Philadelphia and Allentown, Pa., where a remarkable 23.1 percent of children tested had excessive lead — are believed to have enough lead in their blood to merit a doctor’s attention.

“We know that there are many kids across the country that have high lead levels in their bodies — testing kids identifies exposure that you can’t do anything about,” Jerome Paulson, an emeritus professor of public health and pediatrics at George Washington University and a longtime advocate for cleaning up the lead threat, tells me. The goal, he says, should be to “proactively identify the old housing and lead pipes and take care of them.”

“There will never be no kids in the U.S. with some adverse lead exposure, but we can certainly make it a much smaller problem than we have to date,” Paulson continues.

Successful national efforts have been made, such as the elimination of lead in gasoline, which was “extremely successful in reducing child lead exposure,” but “there’s never been a proactive federal approach to lead based paint poisoning or lead poisoning from the use of lead pipes for water,” Paulson says.

It wouldn’t be easy, to put it mildly, and Clinton’s proposal raises a host of questions. Among them would be how this commission would go about identifying the lead threat throughout the country and assembling all that knowledge in one place, Paulson says. Another would be how such policies would be implemented — Clinton stops short of proposing a legislative solution, though she doesn’t rule one out.

Considering national infrastructure spending would again have to get through a Republican House, the same Republican House that went down to the wire just to pay for the roads we already have and had to be dragged kicking and screaming by President Obama to pass, and only then after the GOP cut $170 billion from the original proposal, fixing lead pipes seems almost impossible.

Hell, this is the same GOP Congress that won't authorize any funding for fighting the Zika virus, something that could drastically affect unborn children that Republicans are always screaming about. You think Clinton could get funding to help places like Flint fix their lead pipes with taxpayer money?

Not going to happen.  I appreciate Clinton actually trying to fix the problem, it's more than you'll ever see from Republicans, but you'd better believe the howling tea party austerity nutjobs won't authorize a dime for a Democratic president to fix infrastructure.

Tumblr Down House

ZVTS is on Tumblr now, should you want to entertain a more visual medium for my random thoughts on politics, pop culture, sports and what have you.  If you're there, give me a follow and I'll follow back.

As always, I'm on the Twitter machine as well: @ZandarVTS.

StupidiNews!

• Florida officials will not press charges against Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski over alleged battery against former Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields.
• Former reporter Matthew Keys has been sentenced to two years in prison for helping hacker group Anonymous access the LA Times' website.
• The CDC is officially classifying the Zika virus as a threat to newborns, saying that there is now "no doubt" that virus does cause microcephaly in babies born to infected pregnant women.
• McDonald's has officially given up its chicken wraps after several years of low sales and the success of its all-day breakfast menu.
• Two new telescopes could finally help NASA hunt down killer asteroids that might threaten the earth.

Last Call For Can't Get Work Done

It turns out that Paul Ryan is an even worse Speaker of the House than John Boehner was, if you can imagine that.  Ryan is so bad that he can't get House Republicans, with the largest margin of control they've had since Herbert Hoover, to even pass their own budget on time.

Under the government's arcane budget law, the House is supposed to produce a budget by this Friday, April 15. But a tea party revolt over Ryan's embrace of last year's bipartisan deal with President Barack Obama to increase spending has left him well short of the votes he needs.

"It would appear that we're not going to have a budget," the No. 2 House Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, told reporters Tuesday. "They made it a big deal. Hypocrisy is part of it," he added. "They're in deep disarray."

House Republicans met the budget deadline each of the five years they controlled the House under the leadership of John Boehner, who was ousted as speaker last fall under conservative pressure. Ryan himself, his party's 2012 vice presidential nominee, chaired the House Budget Committee for much of that time and guided the "Ryan Budget" that slashed entitlement spending. But he also cut a deal with Senate Democrats and the White House that enhanced his profile as a charismatic, policy-focused conservative.

The Wisconsin Republican has repeatedly lambasted Democrats when they didn't get budgets done while in congressional control, even backing a law that would have cut off the paychecks of lawmakers if they failed to pass a budget.

Ryan's own inability to deliver now that he's speaker raises questions about his stewardship of the House, and whether his repeated promises to return power to rank-and-file lawmakers can produce results, given how unwilling some of them are to compromise. And amid an angry GOP presidential campaign that's exposed deep divisions in the party, Ryan's honeymoon in the House may be coming to an end if he's unable to bridge the same divide between hard-core conservatives and more pragmatic-minded lawmakers that defeated his predecessor.

"There was a lot of excitement last fall when newly elected Speaker Ryan was talking about 2016 being a year of policy and passing a robust policy agenda," said Dan Holler, spokesman at Heritage Action for America. "It's been pretty underwhelming."

If I were a betting man, I'd say that Ryan is dragging his feet for a reason.  The "Ryan Budgets" with their trillions in austerity cuts absolutely helped to sink Mitt Romney four years ago.  Now Paul Ryan would have to take total ownership of a House Republican austerity budget as a presidential candidate.  That's a recipe for a loss nearly as bad as what a Trump candidacy would bring and he knows it, and he's looking past 2016.

So no, don't look for a budget from Republicans anytime soon, especially in an election year.  Actually putting down on paper what they would cut for Democrats to run against is the last thing the GOP wants to do.

A Mess Of Carolina BBQ, Con't

North Carolina's awful omnibus bad bill continues to have serious financial repercussions for the state as Republicans find out that enshrining bigotry into law is really a bad idea if you want to sell the state as a destination to people everywhere else.  First, Wake County where state capital Raleigh is could lose millions in tourism dollars and that's just the beginning.

A report released by Wake County’s leading tourism agency on Monday says that the county has lost more than $700,000 in response to the controversial House Bill 2 – and could lose millions more.

The Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau reported that four groups have canceled plans to hold events in Wake because of HB2, which some say discriminates against the transgender community, gays and lesbians.

The International Association of Security and Investigative Regulators, Johnstone Supply, the Matria Tech Leadership Conference and the N.C. State Library Conference cited HB2 in canceling their events, which were mostly scheduled at hotels in downtown Raleigh. In addition, the GIS-T Symposium, a gathering of state transportation officials, cut the number of attendees expected at its conference because of HB2. Combined, the bureau reports that Wake has lost out on an estimated $732,000 in economic benefits.

“We just felt that it’s not in the best interest of our membership to go someplace that’s not inclusive,” said Janet Tipton, spokeswoman for Oregon-based Johnstone Supply, which considered bringing 300 people.

The visitors bureau reported that 16 other groups, the names of which it didn’t disclose, also are reconsidering plans to hold events in Wake County. The groups would bring a combined 73,500 people to the area and infuse an estimated $24 million into the local economy, the report says.

Oh well.  But hey, bathroom cops, so.  And speaking of events that will bring in tens of millions...

A team of bipartisan senators on Tuesday urged the NBA to take their All Star game business out of North Carolina in a stand against the state's sweeping anti-LGBT law.

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Pat Leahy (D-VT), Cory Booker, (D-N.J.), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Patty Murray (D-WA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) all signed onto the letter by asking NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to "take a stand against this latest form discrimination and move the 2017 NBA All Star Game away from Charlotte, N.C."

Kirk was the only Republican who signed onto the letter and is running for re-election in 2016 in Illinois.

The letter, which was first reported by Politico, is the latest in an effort to force North Carolina to reconsider its law, which forces individuals to use restrooms that may violate their gender identity and bars local communities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances.

"We hold no ill-will toward the people of Charlotte, who passed an anti-discrimination measure that HB2 overturned or towards the people of North Carolina," Senators wrote. "However, we cannot condone nor stand idly by as North Carolina moves to legalize and institutionalize discrimination against the LGBT community."

Actions have consequences, NC GOP.  Gov. Pat McCrory, sensing he just lose re-election in November over this, is trying to put a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.

Here comes the damage control. On Tuesday, McCrory announced a new executive order that makes some very small tweaks to the law. Here is what the order does, according to McCrory's office:

Maintains common sense gender-specific restroom and locker room facilities in government buildings and schools

Affirms the private sector's right to establish its own restroom and locker room policies

Affirms the private sector and local governments' right to establish non-discrimination employment policies for its own employees

Expands the state's employment policy for state employees to cover sexual orientation and gender identity

Seeks legislation to reinstate the right to sue in state court for discrimination

There are some very modest advancements for LGBTQ rights here, particularly the move to protect LGBTQ state government employees from discrimination. But LGBTQ workers who don't work for the state government remain unprotected from workplace discrimination under state law.

But these changes don't really address the main concerns with North Carolina's law. The law still prohibits — and, in fact, McCrory affirmed that it prohibits — trans people from using the bathroom in schools and government buildings that matches their gender identity. And the law still blocks cities and counties from legally banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace, housing, and public accommodations. These provisions remain untouched, regardless of any new protections for state government employees.

It's still a bad law, and hey, in November, North Carolina might want to do something about the Republican lawmakers who created it and stuffed it through the General Assembly, Senate, and McCrory's desk in less than a day.  But if these poll results are correct, that's not going to happen.

Although McCrory's approval rating is down to 43% and half of voters disapprove of the bill, a majority also believe trans people using the bathroom of their choice are a "security risk to women and children".  That's a consistent majority across all age groups and both men and women and includes 42% of Democrats and a third of people who say LGBT rights should be protected.

So no, don't expect HB2 to be repealed without continued devastating pressure from businesses.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article71223992.html#storylink=cpy

Trump Cards, Con't

Yet another "meet your local racist misogynist Islamophobic passionate Trump supporter" piece, this time focusing on Trump's younger proponents, who are -- surprise! -- male, white, and generally obnoxious.

Jack Rowe, an 18-year-old high school student from St. Paul, Minnesota, sat in the front row of a Donald Trump rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin last weekend, sandwiched between two friends.

He had caucused for Trump in Minnesota for the very first time a few weeks earlier. Freckled and grinning, he sported a red "Make America Great Again" hat and a gray Trump t-shirt.

Rowe had some thoughts on Trump's rhetorical treatment of women, which had been dominating the news lately thanks to the Republican front-runner's comments about punishing women who have abortions. Mainly, Rowe said, it's a non-issue.

"Misogyny was an issue about maybe 60, 80 years ago," said Rowe. "That's not an issue today. There are a lot bigger fish to fry...You know, ISIS is chopping off heads. We've got 19 trillion dollars in debt."

And he's got all kinds of bros eager to vote for the guy who will continue to make sure that nobody will make him or his bros think about their misogyny or racism or Islamophobia and never bother them again over it.  They're white guys, the natural alpha males of America.  Why should they have to share? They want to take the country back for themselves and put the rest of us in our respective places.  You know, like 60, 80 years ago.

David Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports -- the frat-focused sports website where the "Smokeshow of the Day" serves as the ultimate clickbait -- said Trump's appeal to young men speaks to anxiety over a creeping political correctness throughout American society.

"There is a sentiment among frat guys, lacrosse players and middle class affluent white kids that they are kind of getting persecuted lately," Portnoy told CBS News.

"You tell a joke it gets blown out of proportion. You gotta walk on eggshells. There's kind of that feeling, and Trump, he tells a joke and doesn't back down. He says things that would normally been frowned upon. At a school, a kid would get expelled. Not that it's right or wrong, but he's sort of defending a lot of the things they've been attacked for in the last five years or so."

"It's an F-U to society, who is telling us we are a bad guy because we like hooking up with girls on spring break," he added. "And they see Trump sticking up for that."

J. Camm, the managing editor of Bro Bible, another bro-focused site, said Trump's lack of policy details means little to his young supporters.

"Part of the allure of Trump is that people find him to be someone who tells it like it is and honest, although he has no specific policies to back up anything that he's actually saying," Camm said.

Trump's rich, he's famous, he's orange white, and he can do and say pretty much everything he wants to.  Of course he's the Bro Candidate.  And should he not get the nomination that his Bros believe he's entitled to?  It's not the Democrats that are the immediate problem right now.

After expressing reservations about Donald Trump, some of Indiana's delegates to the Republican national convention say they've received threatening messages from a few of the GOP front-runner's supporters.

The emails warn that the delegates are being watched and imply they could be targeted. Some send ominous wishes to delegates' families.

Trump's Indiana campaign called the threats "deplorable."

Craig Dunn, a delegate and Republican chairman of Indiana's 4th Congressional District, was among the Trump critics who received the threatening messages.

"You sorry (expletive)!" one email said. "I hope the worst for you and yours!"

Dunn was stunned by the response.

"Little did I know that in expressing your 1st Amendment rights, that they’d come after you so hard," he said. "It's very disappointing. I probably received 25 to 30 hate emails, phone calls and voice mails, posts on Facebook that I deleted. Now they're hunting down friends of mine and posting that kind of stuff on their Facebook pages."

That kind of treatment is usually reserved for "libtards" and "social justice warriors" who must be purged by the Bros from America.  But the only thing worse are the insufficiently American anti-Trump "cuckservatives" who supposedly enable them.  Trump's violent, racist hatemongers will come for Democrats soon enough.

But first they have to burn their own house down.  Try not to get too gleeful.  We're definitely next.

Make America For Rough Beasts Again.

StupidiNews!

• Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport is again operating normally after parts of terminals were evacuated due to a possible bomb threat, with two arrests made.
• A white former police officer in South Carolina has received probation and community service as part of a plea deal after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black motorist in 2014.
• Turkish forces have attacked Islamic State targets in northern Syria for a third day in response to rocket attacks on refugee border settlements.
• Nearly 40,000 Verizon union employees have gone on strike in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states after talks broke down this week.
• Space exploration startup Breakthrough Starshot plans a $100 million program to push a nano-scale "spacecraft on a chip" to Alpha Centauri using focused lasers.