Last Call

And Ohio's Gov. Kasich does a complete 180 on federal tornado aid:

Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Monday reconsidered his rejection of federal help in tornado-stricken communities and asked federal inspectors to assess the damage as soon as possible.

A team from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to arrive Tuesday in Clermont County to survey the storm damage and determine whether the region qualifies for financial or logistical assistance.


“Hopefully we can get a quick answer from the federal inspectors on what additional resources might be available to help people begin recovering,” Kasich said.


The decision to invite the inspectors came two days after Kasich said he would not seek immediate federal disaster relief because he was confident Ohio could handle the crisis.


Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the governor, said the decision to invite FEMA was made after Kasich reviewed the findings of state emergency management officials and developed “a firm understanding of the problem.” Nichols said Kasich had never ruled out asking for federal help but wanted to wait until state inspectors had done their own assessment.

I'm sure the public outcry had nothing to do with it, either.   Time to total reversal:  less than 48 hours.  his spokesman went from "We're thrilled we don't need federal help" to "we never ruled it out."  Ohio, Gov. Kasich thinks you're just plain stupid.

It's great that Clermont County is getting help.  It should have never been in doubt.

That's A Mighty Cool Glitch You Have There

Thought it is likely a glitch caused by a flash of lightning, a guy on tour took a really neat picture that shows what looks like a light beam coming from the sky to the top of a Mayan pyramid, or that the pyramid is sending a beam into the sky.

Those who enjoy the Mayan conspiracy will get a kick out of these, otherwise it's just a cool picture that was worth sharing.

Mercy, Merci

A Frenchman is pissed at Google.  And pissed at his flowers.

Oh, that's on his flowers.

The man's name hasn't been released, but he is suing for damages after a human-operated street view car captured him peeing outside.  He has been recognized, and feels he is the laughingstock of his hometown.  He is asking for 10,000 euros (a little over $13,000 in US dollars) for his pain and suffering.

Sorry, pal.  If you pee outside, you give up any expectation of privacy.  Any jogger, driver or passerby could have seen that image, and if he did it in sight of a car that is his problem.  The person and equipment that caught him wasn't aiming for him, he was a background in a nature shot.  It just turned out to be a lot more "natural" than intended.

Better luck, try again next time.

Oops! In New Capsule Form

A CVS pharmacy in New Jersey made a little mistake and sent out a dangerous cancer drug in place of flouride.  They were pretty glib in their response, so much so that I almost wonder if their publicist doesn't work weekends.

The drug's side effects include blood clots and stroke, and the dosage would be devastating to a young child.  The official statement mentions human error and processes,  but doesn't indicate a lot of remorse or mention how many families may have been affected.

What will be interesting to know is how this happened so many times.  There are many safeguards to prevent just this type of mistake, what allowed this to occur over an extended period of time will likely be devastating to one of the largest pharmacy chains in the country.

May I Offer You A Cool, Refreshing Glass Of Get Over Yourself?

A New York woman has filed a lawsuit against her former Roman Catholic college in Boston, claiming administrators didn't do enough to help her when she complained that her roommate was having too much sex in their dorm room.

Lindsay Blankmeyer said in a federal lawsuit that she suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder before she enrolled at Stonehill College, but was driven into a suicidal depression after school officials wouldn't give her reasonable housing alternatives to get her away from her roommate at the school in Easton, Mass.

In the lawsuit, Blankmeyer says the college offered her two options, one was moving to another dorm where she would live in a room that was previously used as a study lounge and was a "small cubicle-like space." The other option was to move to a dorm with a reputation as a "party dorm" to live with a girl Blankmeyer did not know.

In other words, typical college behavior and two options offered to an unhappy roommate. Instead of learning a little flexibility and tolerance, Blankmeyer said she was driven to suicidal depression over her exposure to a young woman's sex life with her boyfriend. Please note, not multiple boyfriends, or girls, or combination. Yeah, that's why you went crazy, sweetheart. It's not you, it's everybody else in the world who needs to adjust.

A party dorm? Heaven forbid! Why couldn't they just change others to conform to what Blankmeyer wanted? Would that be so hard?

America never promised youth a life without discomfort or compromise. It promises liberty and choice. Perhaps someone so uptight that they were driven to suicidal depression over a little sex belongs in a private dwelling. However, I don't believe the school or anyone else is obligated to pay for that.

Pyrrhic Vic--Erm, Defeat

Republicans are fighting the battle for primary votes and losing the general election even as we speak.

As another round of voting takes place this week in the Republican presidential race – with 11 states holding Super Tuesday contests – a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that the combative and heavily scrutinized primary season so far has damaged the party and its candidates.

Four in 10 of all adults say the GOP nominating process has given them a less favorable impression of the Republican Party, versus just slightly more than one in 10 with a more favorable opinion.

Additionally, when asked to describe the GOP nominating battle in a word or phrase, nearly 70 percent of respondents – including six in 10 independents and even more than half of Republicans – answered with a negative comment.

Some examples of these negative comments from Republicans: "Unenthusiastic," "discouraged," "lesser of two evils," "painful," "disappointed," "poor choices," "concerned," "underwhelmed,” “uninspiring” and “depressed.”

And perhaps most significantly, the GOP primary process has taken a toll on the Republican presidential candidates, including front-runner Mitt Romney, who is seen more unfavorably and whose standing with independents remains underwater.

And yes, I'm aware that a complete Romney Super Tuesday victory in Ohio and the other states that forces Santorum and Gingrich out of the race would give him an eternity to polish his turd of an image ahead of November.  Hell, even a brokered convention in August would still leave Romney 90 days or so to go full Sensible Centrist.  He will have to.

But that's also operating in a vacuum and assuming that Team Obama won't do anything with their war chest either.  Mitt Romney has already pulled the pin on several gaffe grenades and you can bet his tone-deaf stupidity will be served up on a daily basis once we get to this fall.

The longer the primary season goes, the deeper the hole Romney will be in (and yes, this means I think he eventually prevails as the nominee for now.)  Let the chaos continue.

The Play's The Thing, And All The World's A-Staged

Via Tbogg, we find that the WORLD-DESTROYING EXCLUSIVE that Andrew Breitbart's Big Whatever site was working on before Breitbart's death last week was...Barack Obama went to a play.

In 1998, a small Chicago theater company staged a play titled The Love Song of Saul Alinsky, dedicated to the life and politics of the radical community organizer whose methods Obama had practiced and taught on Chicago’s South Side.

Obama was not only in the audience, but also took the stage after one performance, participating in a panel discussion that was advertised in the poster for the play.

No really, that's it.   That's the whole bloody thing.  A play about Saul Alinsky some 24 years ago.  This is the way Breitbart's world ends, not with a story, but a clown horn.  Honk honk awooga.

By the way, if you'd like to know more about Saul Alinsky and what he really said, the ABLC crew has been discussing his work on a book chat over the last several weeks, and PDFs of his work are available there.

StupidiNews!

• Syrian rebels are in disarray and retreat after their defeat in Homs as the al-Assad regime's crackdown has turned into a deadly nationwide rout.
• Russia's Vladimir Putin won 64% of the national vote to win re-election as President Sunday, despite calls of widespread voting corruption by rivals.
• Mitt Romney's quest for the White House has cost him and his backers some $200 million over seven years, including nearly $45 million of Romney's own fortune.
• British grocery giant Tesco, the country's largest private employer, says it will create 20,000 new jobs in the UK as it struggles to win back customers.
• PC developer Valve could be working on a game console along with its partners in its Steam game distribution platform.

Last Call

And with folks around here in the Ohio/Kentucky/Indiana tri-state area still cleaning up from Friday's tornadoes, Ron Paul tells each and every one of the victims to go to hell and rot.

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, stood by his libertarian beliefs on Sunday, saying that victims of the violent storms and tornadoes that have battered a band of states in the South and Midwest in recent days should not be given emergency financial aid from the federal government.

"There is no such thing as federal money," Paul said, on CNN’s State of the Union. "Federal money is just what they steal from the states and steal from you and me."

"The people who live in tornado alley, just as I live in hurricane alley, they should have insurance," Paul said.

Ron Paul isn't running to be President of the United States.  He's running to replace it with the Hunger Games.  Let the districts fight among themselves and may the odds ever be in your favor.  Isn't it nice to know that if a tornado rips through where you live, Ron Paul won't lift a finger because the other 305,000,000 of us shouldn't have to help?  It's your fault you happened to be where the tornado was, so screw you and your family and your neighborhood.  Move to a better state.

But you see, Ron Paul isn't the only one.  Gov. John Kasich feels the exact same way about his state.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said thanks but no thanks to immediate federal disaster relief Saturday, even as governors in Indiana and Kentucky welcomed the help.

Kasich did not rule out asking for assistance later, but his decision means tornado-ravaged towns in Ohio will not get federal aid now and are not eligible at this time for potentially millions of dollars in payments and loans.

The governor said Ohio can respond to the crisis without federal help and he would not ask federal authorities to declare the region a disaster area.

“I believe that we can handle this,” Kasich said while visiting a shelter for storm victims at New Richmond High School. “We’ll have down here all the assets of the state.”

Can anyone ever recall a governor turning down disaster aid for multiple tornadoes?  That would be a first.  Of course, there's another first in the White House right now, which most likely explains this first too.

Needless to say, donating to the Cincy Red Cross is much more necessary now.  Donate here.

The American way, indeed.

Stupor Tuesday

Romney and Santorum are effectively tied going into Tuesday's Ohio primary.  Both men need a win here, plain and simple.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has surged into a dead heat with Rick Santorum in the Ohio primary, setting up a cliffhanger race on Tuesday, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday.

The former Massachusetts governor and former senator from Pennsylvania are tied with 32 percent support from likely voters in the Ohio Republican primary, the most important of the 10 state nominating contests on "Super Tuesday" this week.

After his victory in Saturday's Washington state caucuses, Romney is gaining momentum going into Tuesday after trailing Santorum in recent polls in Ohio.

"This race could really go either way between now and Tuesday," said Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson.

"If Mitt Romney is able to close this out and win this race, that gives him a leg up in going all the way to the convention and winning the Republican nomination."

And if he doesn't win? Then things get real interesting. The most important thing that happens after Super Tuesday of course is that I firmly believe people will start asking Newt Gingrich to quit. That would help Santorum more than Romney, and pretty much everyone knows it. Things would be much different now if Gingrich had dropped out of the race back when Jon Huntsman did.

Likewise, Gingrich staying in the race helps Romney, at least for now.  We'll see where things fall out on Wednesday morning.

Of course, the real news is that President Obama would beat Mitt Romney by 12 points in Ohio and Santorum by 14.  Keep in mind Republicans have never won the White House without winning Ohio.

StupidiLeak

All those programs for the elderly that are failing are affecting an ever-growing number of citizens.  There are dozens of examples of programs from little local aid to Medicaid that are dying or working at lower capcacity.  While the "corporations are people too" bullshit is the GOP's best defense for their priorities, real people are going without.

People like Fannie Wilson.

Fannie is 69-year-old Texan who got sick and had a hard streak of luck.  Her finances were so tight that when she sprung a leak and could not afford to fix it, she turned her own water off and lived that way for six long years.  She didn't stay at home often, and her house was full of jugs that of water she collected from other places.  She took the occasional bath at a friend or relative's house.  Six years she went without running water.  Millions of people live in that "one small disaster away from bankruptcy" state, and when the inevitable small disaster happens this is the result.

Wilson got help and now has running water.  She can enjoy a drink in the middle of the night, and flush her toilet with wild abandon.  She was nearly evicted from her home because it is illegal to live in a residence without running water (that whole necessary for life thing being the primary reason).  Thank goodness a small charity was able to help her fix the leak and restore the service.

I hope we all think of Fannie when we hear arguments that we have to slash services for citizens at the expense of big business.  Most of us will likely find ourselves there someday.

Bumping Uglies

Yeah, I knew you'd look.

Pamela Haag reminds us that this whole war on women isn't completely about health care.  It's also about sex, plain and simple.  We have several good examples of cysts and hormonal conditions that the Pill helps with, but there is also the fact that as adults, women and men alike should be able to conduct their sex lives as they see fit, and enjoy protection from unwanted babies.  Haag reminds us that there are healthy couples in committed relationships who want to enjoy sex without introducing a child into the world.  She's completely right, and while I see the issue as a combination of sexual freedom and medical need, she addresses a valid and relatively quiet point: we enjoy sex and we should be able to enjoy it on our terms.

Sex.

Why that gets those old righteous farts whipped into a frenzy isn't hard to understand.  What is scary is that with a teeny bit of encouragement how far it went, and how fast.  As Zandar pointed out, states are removing choices for women without apology.  This has been going on for a while, but the recent snowball of stupidity is alarming.

It's women who ultimately pay the price for this ego and hypocrisy.  The fathers may or may not have to pay child support, but they won't have to raise a child they never asked for.  They won't have near the social stigma associated with not wanting a child.  They won't have to know what it feels like to have their rights to their body decided by a panel of strangers.  Many women wouldn't put a child up for adoption or have an abortion if they became pregnant, which is why they use birth control in the first place.  Imagine having to give up your child because you know it would likely give them a better life.  How many mothers who couldn't afford simple contraception are going to find themselves in that situation?

The only reason the GOP is giving are their "values" and implying that the "other" people don't deserve equal treatment.  They vote against fair pay for women, but expect women to support babies or live a sexless life to satisfy the moral values of someone they will never meet.  It's not just about discounts on birth control. It's about medical rights, fair treatment and recognition under law, and ending a double standard that women can work as hard as men but are not worthy of the same freedoms and choices.  Just quoting their beliefs and holding us hostage to their ideals isn't enough.  Where is the discussion about the legality and the ethics as applied to all of the citizens?  While we are discussing religion and throwing insults, the real argument is being neglected.  The underlying concept of equality and silly notions like Constitutional checks and balances are ignored while Rush calls women sluts.

What would happen if a female candidate called them on their stupidity?  Can you imagine a woman saying she opposed Viagra, that if God wanted you to have a boner you would have a boner, and that it is offensive for us to see your trouser mouse jump every time there's a breeze?  To have such dirty thoughts that led to an erection is an offense to our religious freedom, and we want you to explain to our satisfaction why you think you should have condoms, otherwise they triple in price.  Any child you had a role in creating will be yours to raise, and how you plan to work full-time and raise a child is your problem, not ours.  We have no plans to help you once you have the child, because you were a slut and brought this on yourself.  Now go make me a sammich.

Walla Walla Ding Dong

Mitt Romney has taken the Washington State caucuses from last night, 38%-25%...over Ron Paul.  Santorum came in a close third at 24%.

Mitt Romney won the Republican caucuses in Washington state, according to unofficial results early Sunday, giving the former Massachusetts governor a shot in the arm heading into Super Tuesday contests.

With 99% of the vote in, Romney had 38%. Texas Rep. Ron Paul had 25% and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had 24%. They were trailed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 10%.

At stake in the contest are 40 delegates.

"We're in a good second place, but the good news is we're doing very, very well in getting delegates," Paul told supporters in Seattle, when about half of the vote had been counted. "The enthusiasm for the cause of liberty continues to grow exponentially."

It's certainly a blow to Santorum to come in third, making Ohio all that much more important for all four candidates.  Gingrich, Santorum and Romney were in Cincinnati yesterday rather than Seattle or Walla Walla.

With 72 hours to go before Ohio voters go to the polls, the Republican White House hopefuls made a mad dash across the state Saturday – with the three leading contenders targeting Greater Cincinnati.

They revved up fervent supporters, sought converts and threw jabs at each other in the home stretch of this pivotal primary contest.

Rick Santorum rallied hundreds of his supporters with a passionate speech about “liberty” and “American exceptionalism” in an overheated hotel conference room in Blue Ash. Newt Gingrich talked about gas prices and energy issues at the Back Porch Saloon in West Chester. And Mitt Romney wrapped up a three-stop tour of the state at a “Ribs With Mitt” gathering at Cincinnati’s Montgomery Inn Boathouse.

I can tell you about the venues.  Any hotel in business park laden Blue Ash says "I'm a grown up, why won't you listen,"  The Back Porch in IKEA country of tony West Chester says "I'm pretending to working class but so is everyone else here" and the Montgomery Inn boathouse location down by the levee says "I'm pretending to be working class and failing miserably."  He probably ruined a lot of people's evenings who were planning to go eat ribs, it's pretty much the busiest restaurant in Cincy and he and his Secret Service detail probably put a whole bunch of hungry people out.

In other words, completely a Mitt thing to do.  Douchebag.

Last Call

Rush Limbaugh wants credit for apologizing, after reaping a week of free publicity. For a troll like him, negative is as good as (if not better) than positive attention.

Though I'm sure everyone has read about it, I'm going to include a quick summary of what he said. He called Sandra Fluke a "slut" and "prostitute" for insisting women have access to birth control. He said he would like to see her put some sex tapes online, and said her costs would be higher because of all the sex she was having.

If he worked for a real corporation, he'd have been fired in a hot second and the victim of this blatant harassment would have a legitimate lawsuit. But because he's a coward he hides behind his own "absurdity" and entertainer job as permission to take cheap shots at a young woman, who took it in stride and showed him what the high road looks like.  By the way, this is exactly what Zandar was saying, even down to the use of the word absurd in his defense.

"For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke."

Really?  So you'd call your own mom a slut or a prostitute because those words aren't a personal attack? How else should she have interpreted the use of those words?  How about apologizing for implying that she was having so much sex she was going broke?  That seems pretty personal to me, and no accident.  This apology is an even more insulting pile of bullshit than the comments that started this entire episode.  His original comments exposed the ignorance that is so common among his intended audience.

When sponsors began to drop, Limbaugh had found the perfect time to try to play it both ways.  He rolled his eyes and "gave in" to the liberals.  He had gotten his publicity out of it and milked it to death anyway.  He'll try to claim it as sincere when it is convenient.  He calls it an attempt at humor in his apology statement.

As soon as it affected the money, he chose to play martyr and let himself be coerced into an apology.  But don't kid yourself for a second, he didn't mean it.  He doesn't give a damn, and would sell all women out in a heartbeat for a little ratings spike.  Oh look, he just did.

Going Back To The Oil Well

Ahead of a trial that was to begin on Monday, oil giant BP has reached a $7.8 billion settlement with Gulf Coast claimants suing the company.  BP is claiming the settlement means these folks will get the money they deserve sooner rather than later...or never.

The estimated $7.8 billion deal struck by BP Plc with businesses and individuals suing over the massive 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill could speed up payments to thousands of claimants and offers lawyers a potential windfall in legal fees.

London-based BP announced the deal on Friday with the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee (PSC), which represents condominium owners, fishermen, hoteliers, restaurateurs and others who say their livelihoods were damaged by the April 20, 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and subsequent oil spill.

The settlement, which delayed a giant trial that had been set to get underway in a New Orleans federal court on Monday, is a step by BP toward resolving its liability in the case, which stretches into the billions of dollars. However, the deal does nothing to settle charges brought by the biggest player in the trial: the U.S. government.

And that's the big problem for BP.   The federal trial is still going forward.

Well, unless the GOP gains control of the Justice Department.  You have a say in that as a voter.  If you think President Obama's been soft on BP, the GOP will not exactly bring them to justice.