Last Call

PJ Media's Roger L Simon becomes the first to call for President Obama's immediate impeachment after the election.

If Barack Obama is reelected, will he face impeachment over Benghazi — a yet more unpleasant and far more wrenching result than to lose an election?

It could happen — and in my estimation should happen — the way revelations are playing out over the bloody terror attack that took four American lives and has led to weeks of prevarication and obfuscation.

The scandal thus far has at least tarnished and quite possibly implicated everyone from the CIA director, to the secretaries of State and Defense, to the UN ambassador and, of course, the president himself — with no end in sight, because Obama, normally loath to expose himself and even less so in an election season, refuses to answer questions on the subject.

It’s not the crime, but the cover-up, we learned in an earlier impeachment, only in this case the crime may be just as bad or worse.

If you think the insanity is over just because the President will most likely win and keep a Dem Senate and GOP House status quo, you have anything thing coming.

The insanity is just beginning.  Ask Clinton.

All Knotted Up In Ohio

Supposedly.  The paper of record here in Cincy has a poll showing a 49%-49% tie with one percent undecided and one percent third party candidate.

The race for the White House continues to be too close to call in Ohio, according to a new Enquirer/Ohio News Organization Poll that shows President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each with 49 percent support from likely voters.

That’s a slip for the president, who took 51 percent of likely voters in the newspaper group’s September poll.

Romney’s support grew among males, among high school and college graduates and among respondents in every age category except 18 to 29.

The two candidates also tied in scaring voters – 29 percent of poll respondents said they’d be scared if Obama won, and the same amount said they’d be scared if Romney won. Half said they were very enthusiastic about voting, 21 percent said they were not so enthusiastic or not enthusiastic at all.

Your mileage may vary on the poll's accuracy, but they do get the next part right strategically:

“In the final days before the election, both campaigns will focus on turning out their bases, appealing to independents and attracting the few undecided voters that remain,” said Eric Rademacher, co-director of the University of Cincinnati’s Institute for Policy Research, which conducted the poll. “Absent any more twists and turns, a remarkable presidential campaign may end with the campaign that executes the best  ‘ground game’ narrowly delivering Ohio for the next president of the United States.”

Needless to say, Josh Romney's involvement in voting machines here in Ohio is even more important, as is continued early voting.

Christina Aguilera Embraces Her New Body

Levine, 33, even goes so far as to stand up for Aguilera, 31, who has been the object of criticism for her weight. He says the naysayers should "grow up." 

"The one thing about the culture right now, celebrity culture particularly, is people feel like they can just say nasty things about other people whether it's Christina or whether it's me," he says. "She gets a lot and it pisses me off. Of course I have her back and of course I defend her."

Aguilera herself recently spoke out about her body, telling PEOPLE, "I've always been one to make it very clear, love me or hate me, take it or leave it, this is who I am. I embrace my body, and I embrace everything about myself."

Good for her.  First, for showing what it means to own yourself, and secondly for refusing to apologize.  She has gained weight, but not so much that she's a health risk or unsafe.  She doesn't owe the world a perfect ass forever.  Why would anyone feel she has to explain this phase of her life?  I say she's worked out her entire life, if she wants to laze a bit and enjoy carbs with her new motherhood, so be it.

1,000 Pound Pig Saves Gumbo

Three days after a fire blazed through a New Hampshire farm on Sept. 6, the only thing more devastating than the physical damage was the presumed death toll: 14 horses and three cats. 

But if there was someone who hadn't lost hope, it was Colby, the farm's 1,000-lb. pig. 

After breakfast, the Bedford, N.H., Perry Hill Farm mascot, characteristically slow and sluggish, started wandering into the woods nearby. 

"She was on a mission," her caregiver and farm owner Harriet Finks, who followed the pig, tells ABCnews.com. "For her, it was quite a distance." 

The 9-year-old pig, sniffing around the woods, led her caregivers to Gumbo, one of the cats they never found after the fire.

Gumbo survived and is doing well.  He has been reunited with a sibling and other survivors.  Losing so many animals would be devastating, any good news is better than expected.

Prof. Stoller, In The Salon, With The Self-Inflicted Gunshot

Matt Stoller erupts into feigned relevance again like the political emoprog herpes he is as he takes to Salon to convince people to abdicate voting.  He officially veers off into unintentional comedy in paragraph three with a chart on corporate profits:

So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered? And the chart below answers the question. This chart reflects the progressive case against Obama.

Yeah, Obama has in fact crafted an entire society in just 45 months.  Let's give a pass to the Republican's effect on the Body Politic, causing a heart attack and an collapsed lung of an economy and two broken legs.  We get all that fixed, and Dr. Obama is a terrible President because we're doing 5Ks on the slow end and not running full marathons.

But then Stoller veers into Privileged White Guy territory towards the bottom of his screed:

Now, it would not be fair to address this matter purely on economic grounds, and ignore women’s rights. In that debate with Ellsberg, advocate Emily Hauser insistently made the case that choice will be safe under Obama, and ended under Romney, that this is the only issue that matters to women, and that anyone who doesn’t agree is, as she put it, delusional. Falguni Sheth argued that this is a typical perspective from a privileged white woman, who ignores much of the impact that Barack Obama’s policies have on women, and specifically women of color. And even on the issue of choice, you could make a good case, as she does, that there’s less of a difference between Obama and Romney than meets the eye.

Yeah, you have the white guy going after a personal friend of mine because supporting the black president is actually damaging to women of color.

Falguni Sheth's argument, by the way, is complete tripe.  It assumes that there's no stated functional difference between Romney and Obama because Congress has Republicans in it, and since Obama has yet to declare himself dictator for life (which is hypocrisy because DROOOOONES) then there's no difference.  Which means Sheth is as full of emoprog crap as Stoller is.  Surprise!

It really is tiring to see any/every emorprog "case against Obama" boil down to the paragraph above, but it still apparently must be pointed out because they keep doing it constantly.  But for Stoller to say what he did is such massive assumption of privilege that it borders on the tragic.  It's based on the assumption (there's that word again Matt, pay attention here) that persons of color AND women are too stupid to see how "awful" Obama is for them, when the opposite is actually true.

Stoller's cool because the "marginal" difference on policies that actually affect him where he is allows him the privilege of it not mattering to him regardless of whom is elected.  For a great many of the rest of us, we live on that margin.  We don't have the luxury of "Oh well, it doesn't matter."  We don't have the luxury of the 40 year progressive plan for a new society.  We need to get things fixed now, and I'm going with the guy fixing them as opposed to the guy going back to the same things we did in 2001-2008.

Yes, the macro-level stuff is horrible.  Inequality?  Unacceptable.  Climate change?  Being ignored.  it's awful.  But I know for a fact Romney won't make any of that better, and Obama will at least try to correct the micro-level stuff so that the macro-level stuff can be fixed later.

Those are my two choices.  And I live in Kentucky where my vote for President is utterly, utterly meaningless.  Doing it anyway out of patriotism and to honor those before me who fought and died for my right to vote.

Period.

Get over yourself, Stoller.

Last Call

Hurricane Sandy's transformation into the Nor'easter From Hell over the next few days really could cause serious problems for anyone north or east of where I am in Cincy.  Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, up through the mid-Atlantic and into New York, Boston and New England could be hit by inches of rain and/or several feet of snow before it's all over, and if there are still sections of Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania especially that still don't have power by Election Day, we could have chaos on our hands.

Hurricane Sandy, currently on a direct course for the East Coast, is sending residents across multiple states scrambling to prepare for heavy wind, rain, and snow. The Obama and Romney campaigns are surely taking stock of its effects as well.

The implications for the election are uncertain, as is the path and extent of the storm’s damage. But given that it’s projected to directly impact such states as North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, there’s plenty of potential for disruption.


In Virginia, the storm is already poised to wreck a scheduled joint rally with President Clinton and president Obama on Monday. Romney has already cancelled a Virginia Beach event for Sunday. Early voting is less widespread in the state than others like Ohio, since Virginia only accepts absentee votes, so the impact could be minimized at the ballot box if things are back to normal by election day.
That said, if there’s major flooding or snow, where it hits could have an influence. While the coast is evenly divided between swing counties, other regions are more polarized.

“It depends on where it hits and how much, it’s just impossible to say in advance,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told TPM. “If Obama were directing the snowstorm it would be in the Shenandoah valley and Southwest Virginia as they want as low a turnout as possible in those rural areas. If Romney were directing the snowstorm, it would go right down the corridor from Northern Virginia into Richmond, which is where Obama’s votes come from.”

The Dems' lead in early voting in Ohio now looks even more important should the storm shift to the west and hit the eastern half of Ohio up into Cleveland.  Sandy could play just as important a role in the swing states as early voting does.

We'll see.

The Return Of Making Work Pay

The White House is kicking around the return of the working-class tax cut for Americans used as part of the stimulus:  Making Work Pay, a $400 tax cut ($800 for couples) off the top.

The White House is weighing the idea of a tax cut that it believes would lift Americans’ take-home pay and boost a still-struggling economy, according to people familiar with the administration’s thinking, as the presidential candidates continue battling over whose tax policies would do more for the country.

Obama administration officials have concluded that the economy, while improved, is still fragile enough that it may need another bout of stimulus. The tax cut could replace the payroll tax cut championed by President Obama in 2011 and 2012, which was designed as a buffer against economic shocks such as the financial crisis in Europe and high oil prices. It expires at year’s end.

As David Dayen points out, the flat $400 tax cut would be far more progressive than the current 2% payroll tax cut, andfor more effective for lower-income Americans.

Making Work Pay, the name of the stimulus-era tax cut, was actually a better deal for the working poor. The flat $400 tax credit provided a bigger boost at the low end to anyone making under $20,000 a year than the payroll tax cut, which gave back 2% of income to everyone on the portion of their income affected by the payroll tax, around $110,000. This made it a more stimulative tax cut, since it provided more money to those with a higher marginal propensity to spend. Employers accomplished the tax cut by taking less out of withholding, making it kind of a hidden tax cut that workers didn’t know about. But it did raise their take-home pay.

Gonna have to agree with D-Day here.  This is a solid idea, it was a solid idea when it was used before, and makes a concrete pledge to cut taxes for working-class Americans with real numbers and a real world benefit that people will see and use.

Which means House Republicans will kill it, of course.

Well, after the election.

Great Scott, It's Your Kids, Marty!

As Scott Lemieux points out, this is the Mitt Romney who was Governor of Massachusetts:

Romney hadn’t even previously fathomed that gay people had children. Boston Spirit magazine reported last month that when gay activists met with him in his office in 2004, as Romney was backing a failed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, Romney remarked, “I didn’t know you had families.” Julie Goodridge, lead plaintiff in the landmark case that won marriage rights for gays and lesbians before the Supreme Judicial Court, asked what she should tell her 8-year-old daughter about why the governor would block the marriage of her parents. According to Goodridge, Romney responded,”I don’t really care what you tell your adopted daughter. Why don’t you just tell her the same thing you’ve been telling her the last eight years.”

Severely conservative.  

But there's nothing Mitt can do or say for the 27% who will always vote GOP, and the 20%+ who will vote against Obama for whatever reason, enough to make him competitive (and depending on red state turnout, more than competitive in the national vote totals.)

Great guy, huh?

Yahoo Chooses To Ignore "Do Not Track" On IE

Yahoo! has been working with our partners in the Internet industry to come up with a standard that allows users to opt out of certain website analytics and ad targeting. In principle, we support “Do Not Track” (DNT). Unfortunately, because discussions have not yet resulted in a final standard for how to implement DNT, the current DNT signal can easily be abused. Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction. In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them. It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn’t express user intent.

Microsoft finally got one right and decided to help users protect their privacy.  It's not rocket science to disable or change security settings, so there is no reason for Yahoo to ignore the default setting.  The reality is, if someone isn't computer savvy enough to change their browser settings, they should be cautious by default.  The crap about this setting being abused is absurd.

You can read the entire policy statement here.  It isn't very long, and after a ridiculous plug for their proprietary solutions and expecting us to be grateful for being told why certain ads were selected, they make no valid point as to why they are ignoring the privacy setting, just informing us that they are.

Nice move, asshats.  Because you really needed another public black eye, right?

Arizona Jail Stupidity

PHOENIX — The family of a prisoner who died in one of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jails filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging officers beat the mentally ill man and shot him with a stun gun in an unprovoked attack that marked another example of the "culture of cruelty" in the lockups.

The suit states the 44-year-old Atencio had an altercation with Phoenix police and jail officers while he was being booked on an assault charge on Dec. 15. He was found unresponsive and died five days later, after his family took him off life support.

The sheriff's office said last year that Atencio was combative when police brought him into the downtown jail, and he was placed in a "safe cell" to calm down after fighting with deputies.

The agency said Atencio was found unresponsive 15 minutes later, even though he was being monitored by medical staff.

The lawsuit, however, painted a picture of teasing and abuse at the hands of officers who made fun of Atencio's inability to follow directions and encouraged him to make funny faces while his mug shot was taken.

One officer allegedly said authorities should make it the "Mug Shot of the Week," referring to the sheriff's online contest in which people can vote on their favorite booking photo.

Atencio was attacked later by two Phoenix police officers after he refused to take off one of his shoes in a holding tank, the lawsuit states, adding that some of Arpaio's jail officers joined in and formed a "dog pile" atop the prisoner.

He was mentally ill and they dog piled him.  I had no idea refusing to take off a shoe was a murder-worthy offense.  I now understand the gravity of such an order.  Too bad Atencio was unable to understand the trouble he was in.  Or perhaps he did, and simply couldn't do anything about it.

By the way, since 1993 the county has paid over $24 million has been paid out in claims.   Imagine how many claims fell through the cracks over the years, especially before the full extent of their barbaric treatment was known.  But nah, just another person dying for no reason.  There's nothing to see here, Citizen.  Please move along in an orderly fashion.

The De-Legitimization Of An Obama Win Now Starts In Earnest

Jim Garaghty at NRO spells out a scenario where President Obama gets to 270+ in the electoral vote, but loses the popular vote by several million.

We can debate whether those remaining undecideds, ranging from 3 to 8 percent in most of these polls, will break heavily for the challenger. In 2004, George W. Bush and John Kerry split the remaining undecideds roughly evenly. But the one scenario that political scientists deem virtually impossible is one where undecideds who have declined to support the incumbent all year suddenly break heavily in favor of him. For most of the remaining undecideds, the choice is between voting for the challenger and staying home.

The polling currently suggests President Obama has a hard ceiling of about 47 percent, perhaps 48 percent. Let’s take the 50–47 split found currently in the Rasmussen, Washington Post, and Gallup tracking polls. Presume that most of the remaining undecideds stay home, and that the vote for third-party candidates amounts to about a percentage point. Under that scenario, we would see a 51 percent to 47.9 percent popular-vote win for Romney.

Steve M. predicts the result:

I think Obama will win the Electoral College. I can spell out a scenario in which the right then steals the election (by persuading us that 2000 is irrelevant to now, by hypocritically demanding that "the will of the people" be obeyed, by digging into the pasts of obscure electors). But it's not clear that will happen, and maybe it's the kind of thing that even the right-wing noise machine can't pull off.

Nevertheless, if Obama wins a second term in a split election, the media will treat him as a loser who backed into office and doesn't really deserve to be there. That wouldn't be true for Romney if he won the presidency this way, because the press has now decided it likes him more than Obama, and because, well, he's Republican Daddy -- just like George W. Bush twelve years ago. Oh, sure, if Romney somehow wins this way, the press will ask him, very politely, to live up to the tone of his debate appearances and govern from the center -- but if he then charges hard to the right, the press will just sit back and speak with awe of his "bold" moves.

The press, treating a split Obama victory as a loss, will demand that he tack right in response to the circumstances of his win. This is what Obama will face going into his second term.

I'll go further:  a scenario like this guarantees President Obama will be impeached.  And with the Senate including outright anti-Obama Democrats like WV's Joe Manchin and either Republicans or very conservative Democrats who quietly ran "Obama who?" campaigns this year like Montana's Jon Tester and North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp, not to mention independent Angus King in Maine, and it's not entirely impossible to come up with a scenario where there are 51 67 votes in the Senate to convict without having to wait until after the 2014 election.  Extremely unlikely, but not impossible.

VP Biden would be asked to resign as a result.  President Boehner rises from Speaker of the House.  Harry Reid, in a bone to Dems, is named VP.  They would guarantee the country that tey wouldn't seek re-election.  2016 becomes wide open...after, of course, "serious bipartisan electoral college reforms" join "serious bipartisan tax, entitlement and health care reforms" and the GOP gets everything they want to maintain power for the next generation, changing demographics or no.

That's where the logical endpoint of this crazy little scenario goes.

So, no, I'm not "relaxed" and "confident".  Not with the GOP around.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi is facing a four-year prison term for tax fraud, but he is expected to appeal.
• A new article in Science Daily suggests amphibians are already adapting to global climate change through evolution.
• Hurricane Sandy has left 21 dead in the Caribbean as it churns towards the US East Coast as what could be another "perfect storm" Nor'easter.
• US 3rd quarter GDP numbers have come in at 2.0% growth, above forecasts, as the economy is slowly picking up steam.
• Germany's Pirate Party is falling out of favor as the country's voters see much larger economic issues in Europe than intellectual property freedom.

Last Call

Girls creator Lena Dunham is too clever by half (as she usually is) with her latest little slice of obnoxiousness, but at least she's trying to get out the vote.

President Obama teamed up with the most divisive 26-year-old in the world to make a suggestive ad encouraging young people to vote, but it seems to have upset some old conservative men on Twitter. Lena Dunham, famous for her HBO show Girls and her movie Tiny Furniture before that (don't ask me to find any other reasons she's famous), stars in the Obama campaign's latest ad talking about her "first time."

Your first time, "shouldn't be with just anybody." It should be with, "someone who really cares about and understands women." The consequences are, "huge," she warns. You want to do it with someone who, "cares whether or not you have health insurance, and more importantly birth control," she advises. Remembering the wondrous night of her first time, she says "before I was a girl, now I was a woman." Oh! You thought she was talking about SEX! Your pearls, let go of your pearls. You do not need to clutch them so tightly. She's talking about voting. Her other lines like, "you want to do it with the guy who got the troops out of Iraq," and "you don't want to do it with a guy who says 'oh hey I'm at the library studying' when really he's out not signing the Lilly Ledbetter Act," should have given that away? Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Yes, it's snarky to the point of me wishing it had been done by Sarah Silverman or Lizz Winstead or Martha Plimpton or any other of a host of actually funny women, but her heart (and her vote) is in the right place.  Besides, it's the first actually worthwhile thing she's done in her career, so there's that.

Another One For The (Future) Fire

Newt Gingrich is weighing in with his 2012 election predictions, and they're about as plausible as the rest of his 2012 statements.

Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich predicts that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney will receive “more than 300 electoral votes” to defeat President Barack Obama on Nov. 6.

Speaking to Fox News host Greta Van Susteren on Thursday, the former House Speaker offered to “end the anxiety” for Fox News viewers.

“I believe the minimum result will be 53-47 Romney, over 300 electoral votes, and the Republicans will pick up the Senate,” Gingrich said. “I base that on just years and years of experience.”

Let's keep in mind that in order to win 300 electoral votes, Romney would have to win every toss-up state (OH, NC, VA, FL, CO, NV, and NH) but he'd have to win at least one or two states well into Obama's hands right now, like Wisconsin, Michigan, New Mexico or Pennsylvania.

On top of that, he's predicting that the GOP will win all 7 Senate close races, too.

There's no evidence of either other than Newt saying it's so.

Into the Future Files you go, Newtie.

Deep In The Heartless Of Texas, Again

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals has given Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry his wish:  the end of Planned Parenthood in the state and the beginning of over 100,000 women without affordable health care.

As a result of Thursday’s decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Gov. Rick Perry (R) said that state officials will “immediately” begin defunding clinics operated by Planned Parenthood, which does not actually perform any abortions in the state.

Perry announced earlier this year that he’d made defunding Planned Parenthood a priority for his administration, triggering months of legal wrangling with the clinics and the federal government. Federal law requires that states not discriminate against health providers in distributing federal funds, but a court ultimately ruled that Texas could forgo federal assistance entirely and set up its own health program.

That’s precisely what Perry is doing, passing on more than $40 million in federal assistance and directing the state to exclude Planned Parenthood, which provides health care services to more than 130,000 low-income women in Texas. Planned Parenthood has 49 health centers across Texas, many of which will be forced to close due to Perry’s decision.

As an experiment, pro-choice activist Andrea Grimes said in September that she spent six hours trying to locate a women’s health clinic in Austin that isn’t Planned Parenthood but does accept Medicaid. Despite a list of 181 clinics on the state’s website, Grimes said she found just 13 actual doctors in the whole state who perform the necessary procedures and accept Medicaid, explaining that the other listings were repeats, radiology centers, labs and doctors who didn’t take Medicaid at all.

To make matters worse for many low-income women, the Kaiser Family Foundation says that Texas has one of the most restrictive Medicaid programs in the country, requiring that a family of three earn less than $188 a month to qualify for assistance. Under the president’s Affordable Care Act, however, Medicaid was slated to expand dramatically to cover nearly all low-income Americans, but Perry also said he will turn down more than $164 billion in federal money that would have been used to provide health care to 1.2 million Texans through 2023.

So as a result, 130,000 working poor women will lose their health care just to punish them for the crime of being poor in Texas.  But of course, that was the entire point.

There's no GOP War on Women though.  That's just preposterous.