Last Call

We leave tonight with an interesting and disturbing point from Steve M. on "crisis pregnancy centers" and the right's virtual nullification of abortion in a growing number of states spreading to other things they don't like:

It makes me wonder what will happen if, someday, the Supreme Court decides that there's a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Will couples seeking marriage licenses (straight and gay, or maybe just gay) be required to undergo counseling that warns of the evils of homosexuality and the describes heterosexual marriage as the bedrock of civilization? Will some state actually try to compel gay couples seeking marriage licenses to at least undergo one session of gay-conversion therapy? And will conservative federal judges conclude that these are "reasonable" hoops to jump through in order to get married? 

Conservatives are doing this with voting laws that make voting as difficult and as time-consuming as they can to lower the number of people voting,  laws to make programs to help the poor as shameful and as onerous to qualify as possible, and everything having to do with women's health as awful as possible. Why wouldn't they make gay marriage as difficult as possible too?

Like A Five Alarm Fire(arm)

President Obama and the Democrats see an opportunity here with the GOP still reeling from the fiscal cliff foolishness and the new 113th Congress just seated to pivot to new gun control laws.

While the fiscal cliff has dominated Washington’s attention in recent weeks, lawmakers and activists are laying the groundwork for their big push. Vice President Joe Biden, tasked with heading a commission to investigate gun violence, has been quietly meeting with experts, interest groups, and public officials and is expected to release a set of recommendations within weeks. Boston mayor Thomas Menino, co-chair of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told the Boston Herald this week that an optimistic Biden had assured him that Obama would sign legislation “by the end of January.”

“We had been led to believe their report would come by end of January, but we’re hearing they may want to have something out by January 15, even quicker than expected,” Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told TPM.

House Democrats are moving ahead with their own plans as well. On Friday, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), chair of the newly created Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, announced the appointment of 12 vice chairs, including Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), the body’s leading voice on gun control. According to a Democratic aide, the group plans to release its recommendations in early February and is already organizing public hearings on the issue.

Obama has personally identified an assault weapons ban and limits on ammunition magazine size as top priorities. Other possible reforms could include background check requirements for purchases at gun shows, a loophole that’s helped create a huge market of off-record arms purchases. 

In addition to public hearings and new legislation, Vice President Biden's task force and a big push from gun control groups, the United States Conference of Mayors in DC later this month is expected to be a pretty big platform for the country's mayors to have a say in the matter.

We'll see what becomes of this blitz, but I'm betting this will dominate the news starting next week, especially given today's latest shooting tragedy in Aurora, Colorado.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• A magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck off the southern coast of Alaska, but tsunami warnings have been canceled as the quake only created swells of less than a foot.
• Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords met with several families of victims of the Newtown massacre on Friday.
• Idaho GOP Sen. Mike Crapo has plead guilty to a DUI charge in Virginia from December, earning a $250 fine, a suspended license for a year, and a 180-day suspended jail sentence.
• Hulu TV service CEO Jason Pilar is stepping down only months after receiving a multimillion dollar payout from the company.
• A California teenager and her friend have been arrested for drugging her parents' drinks in order to stop a wi-fi curfew.

Last Call

Well now America, I think I've found your problem here.  It's called "Republicans in Congress".  Here's GOP Texas Sen. John Cornyn's op-ed today in the Houston Chronicle:

Over the next few months, we will reach deadlines related to the debt ceiling, the sequester and the continuing appropriations resolution that has funded federal operations since October. If history is any guide, President Obama won't see fit to engage congressional Republicans until the 11th hour. In fact, he has already signaled an unwillingness to negotiate over the debt ceiling. This is unacceptable. The president should immediately put forward a plan that addresses these deadlines, and he should launch serious, transparent budget negotiations.

The biggest fiscal problem in Washington is excessive spending, not insufficient taxation. Tax cuts didn't cause this problem, so tax increases won't solve it. If we don't reduce spending and reform our three biggest entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - then we will strangle economic growth, destroy jobs and reduce our standard of living. With the national debt above $16 trillion, and with more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities hanging over us, our toughest fiscal decisions cannot be postponed any longer.

Republicans are more determined than ever to implement the spending cuts and structural entitlement reforms that are needed to secure the long-term fiscal integrity of our country.

The coming deadlines will be the next flashpoints in our ongoing fight to bring fiscal sanity to Washington. It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal well being of our country, rather than plod along the path of Greece, Italy and Spain. President Obama needs to take note of this reality and put forward a plan to avoid it immediately.

Republicans in the Senate at least are signalling three things:  One, Republicans expect to get trillions in SS/Medicare/Medicaid cuts, period.  Two, they are willing to shut down the government and crash the economy to get these cuts.  Three, they want president Obama to provide the specific cuts, so the cuts become his fault.

Such expectations are ridiculous, and Cornyn should be drummed out of the Senate along with the rest of these idiot for trying to accomplish this nonsense.   But he's treated as a Serious Beltway Player for this notion.

Lunacy.

The Kroog Versus The Grand Bargain

Paul Krugman reminds us that the notion of any sort of major compromise with the Republican party is impossible, because the only legacy they want to see is President Obama burn for "destroying" Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and that the plan is for the GOP to then step in and "save" these programs.

According to the normal rules of politics, Republicans should have very little bargaining power at this point. With Democrats holding the White House and the Senate, the G.O.P. can’t pass legislation; and since the biggest progressive policy priority of recent years, health reform, is already law, Republicans wouldn’t seem to have many bargaining chips. 

But the G.O.P. retains the power to destroy, in particular by refusing to raise the debt limit — which could cause a financial crisis. And Republicans have made it clear that they plan to use their destructive power to extract major policy concessions. 

Now, the president has said that he won’t negotiate on that basis, and rightly so. Threatening to hurt tens of millions of innocent victims unless you get your way — which is what the G.O.P. strategy boils down to — shouldn’t be treated as a legitimate political tactic. 

But will Mr. Obama stick to his anti-blackmail position as the moment of truth approaches? He blinked during the 2011 debt limit confrontation. And the last few days of the fiscal cliff negotiations were also marked by a clear unwillingness on his part to let the deadline expire. Since the consequences of a missed deadline on the debt limit would potentially be much worse, this bodes ill for administration resolve in the clinch. 

So, as I said, in a tactical sense the fiscal cliff ended in a modest victory for the White House. But that victory could all too easily turn into defeat in just a few weeks. 

And it was Obama's "blinking" that set up this victory in the first place, of course, but Krugman won't say that.  We'll see where the debt fight goes, but with Republicans saying "We'll wreck the economy unless we get to wreck X and blame Obama for it" and President Obama replying with "the hell you will" I'm betting on the guy with the winning streak for the last 4 years.

Stunned In Steubenville

The big news in Ohio this morning is a pretty disturbing case involving two Steubenville, Ohio high school football players and a video with the two of them having a frankly awful discussion about sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl.  WKYC in Cleveland:

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Department is being flooded with calls from concerned citizens about an alleged rape case back in August.

Two Steubenville football players are accused of raping an unconscious 16-year-old girl at a party.

Evidence is now coming forward, like this picture that was posted on social media, showing two students carrying the alleged victim.

And now, another video is leaked, showing a former Steubenville athlete, not charged in the crime, but talking about the incident as if it did happen.  He keeps referring to the unconscious victim as being dead.

The words from this former student are very disturbing.

The sheriff has seen the video and called it disgusting.

Police say they have interviewed the former student seen and heard on this latest videotape, but would not comment any further.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine says the case is moving forward and the two students arrested on rape charges have a hearing in February.

This is a pretty terrible case, and the way these boys are talking about this young woman is just completely unacceptable.  I'm not sure what other evidence is there that may prove one way or another what happened, but this video alone is enough to remind us that American rape culture is very much alive and a real problem for all of us.

StupidNews!

• Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is fighting respiratory failure due to a lung infection brought on as a complication from his cancer treatment, according to the country's Information Minister.
• New documents confirm the National Security Agency is conducting a program to protect the nation's power grid from cyberattack.
• Starbucks is rolling out its recyclable cup initiative nationally in an effort to reduce paper cup waste and to save customers money.
• Wall Street's top titans got a lot of calls about 2012's economic situation wrong, according to Bloomberg News analysis.
• France's second largest ISP, Free, has updated router firmware to include ad blocking for internet access.

Last Call

Joe Biden being Joe Biden at today's swearing in ceremony for the Senate of the new 113th Congress.  Which is also being awesome.



ALL OF THE BIDEN.

Turtle Talks Tough On Taxes

My senator, Mitch "Turtle Boy" McConnell, takes to Yahoo News today in an op-ed designed to...I think, at least...assure the American people that they're going to suffer nasty spending cuts pretty soon, so they might as well get used to the pain of austerity, declaring another hostage situation on the debt ceiling is imminent.

Yeah, that's what I said when I read it, too.

Predictably, the President is already claiming that his tax hike on the “rich” isn’t enough. I have news for him: the moment that he and virtually every elected Democrat in Washington signed off on the terms of the current arrangement, it was the last word on taxes. That debate is over. Now the conversation turns to cutting spending on the government programs that are the real source of the nation’s fiscal imbalance. And the upcoming debate on the debt limit is the perfect time to have that discussion. 

We simply cannot increase the nation’s borrowing limit without committing to long overdue reforms to spending programs that are the very cause of our debt. 

The only way to achieve the balance the President claims to want is by cutting spending. As he himself has admitted, no amount of tax hikes or revenue could possibly keep up with the amount of money Washington is projected to spend in the coming years. At some point, high taxes become such a drag on the economy that the revenue stalls. 

While most Washington Democrats may want to deny it, the truth is, the only thing we can do to solve the nation’s fiscal problem is to tackle government spending head on — and particularly, spending on health care programs, which appear to take off like a fighter jet on every chart available that details current trends in federal spending. 

The President may not want to have a fight about government spending over the next few months, but it’s the fight he is going to have, because it’s a debate the country needs. For the sake of our future, the President must show up to this debate early and convince his party to do something that neither he nor they have been willing to do until now. Over the next two months they need to deliver the same kind of bipartisan resolution to the spending problem we have now achieved on revenue — before the 11th hour. 

In other words, Mitch is all but promising massive Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid cuts, and once again is threatening no new revenue.  Should be just about as effective as the last time the GOP tried this, leading directly to the spanking they got at the polls in November.  It's a pretty clear signal that Republicans expect to cut trillions from these programs and get away with it.

They've got another thing coming.

Equality In Illinois

Will the Second City become the next hot spot for same-sex marriage?  Illinois lawmakers in both parties seem to want to go in that direction, after a little pushing from the President.  And yes, that means Illinois Republicans are getting behind something they see passing as inevitable.  Leading that contingent is state GOP chair Pat Brady.

Brady emphasized the calls were being made to express his personal views only. The Illinois Republican Party platform (PDF) still endorses only the “traditional family,” which is “based on the principle of marriage between one man and one woman.”

Brady told the conservative publication Illinois Review that the “true conservative position is in favor” of allowing same sex marriage.

Illinois state Rep. Greg Harris (D) and state Sen. Heather Steans (D) hope to pass the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act during the lame-duck session, which ends next week. The bill would provide married same sex couples with all the protections and benefits granted to married opposite sex couples, while allowing churches to decide whether or not they will perform same sex marriages.

So it looks like Illinois could have a same sex marriage law on the books in a matter of days, joining New York, nearly all of New England (I'm looking at you, Rhode Island), Washington and Iowa.  Change marches on.

StupidiNews!

• Pakistani officials say a US drone strike has killed 15, including Pakistani Taliban leader Mullah Nazir.
• Some 10 states raise their minimum wages this month, affecting more than one million workers who will see a bigger paycheck.
• A disbarred Miami lawyer has been charged with trying to sell guns belonging to Saddam Hussein's son, Qusay, to a New Jersey sporting goods store.
• Arabic news network Al Jazeera has sealed a deal to buy Current TV from Al Gore for some $500 million.
• The Apple/Google map wars continue as Apple is considering reloading with social navigation startup Waze.

Last Call

And Podcast Versus The Stupid is back from holiday break with Episode 20, Fiscal Cliffmess, Happy New Year!

Listen to internet radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on Blog Talk Radio

Bon and I tackle the Fiscal Cliff, the epic fail of the House's unfinished business, the Newtown shooting tragedy, why being near Justin Beiber is bad for your heath, Hillary Clinton being awesome, and more!

Download the episode here, or subscribe in iTunes!

The Twenty-Seven Percent's Solution

"Principled" conservative Conor Friedersdorf doesn't understand why the "Obama's coming for your guns!" section of the country is openly talking about armed insurrection and a Second Civil War.

It's one thing to argue that gun control legislation is a nonstarter, despite tens of thousands of deaths by gunshot per year, because the safeguards articulated in the Bill of Rights are sacrosanct. I can respect that... but not from people who simultaneously insist that 3,000 dead in a terrorist attack justifies departing from the plain text of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth amendments, and giving the president de-facto power to declare war without Congressional approval.

The conservative movement has a broad, textualist reading of the 2nd Amendment... and nothing else.  

I don't understand a subset of the rank-and-file either.

If you're a gun owner who worries that gun control today could make tyranny easier to impose tomorrow, I get that, and if you worry about federal excesses generally, I have no argument with you.

I think law-abiding Americans should always be allowed to own guns.

But if you're a conservative gun owner who worries that gun control today could make tyranny easier to impose tomorrow, and you support warrantless spying, indefinite detention, and secret drone strikes on Americans accused of terrorism, what explains your seeming schizophrenia? 

It's called "cognitive dissonance" Conor, and it's the hallmark of the modern GOP.    Where the hell have you been for the last five plus years, man?

Thanks.

Orange Julius Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Politico rounds up TEAM WIN THE MORNING(tm) to bring us this microcosm of Fiscal Cliffmas:

House Speaker John Boehner couldn’t hold back when he spotted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the White House lobby last Friday.

It was only a few days before the nation would go over the fiscal cliff, no bipartisan agreement was in sight, and Reid had just publicly accused Boehner of running a “dictatorship” in the House and caring more about holding onto his gavel than striking a deal.

“Go f— yourself,” Boehner sniped as he pointed his finger at Reid, according to multiple sources present.

Reid, a bit startled, replied: “What are you talking about?”

Boehner repeated: “Go f— yourself."

The harsh exchange just a few steps from the Oval Office — which Boehner later bragged about to fellow Republicans — was only one episode in nearly two months of high-stakes negotiations laced with distrust, miscommunication, false starts and yelling matches as Washington struggled to ward off $500 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts.

So yeah, that happened just a few days ago.   But both sides do it, right?  Get to open up with Tools of 2013 tag right off the bat.

StupidiNews!

• By a 257-167 vote, the House has passed the Senate's fiscal cliff deal, but the debt ceiling fight still looms just weeks away.
• The House however did not act on Hurricane Sandy relief legislation, leaving the package to the next Congress.
• Additional taxes on the wealthy involving Obamacare also go into effect this week, which will raise $258 billion over the next decade.
• In Europe, plunging 2012 power prices will continue into 2013 as the Eurozone recession takes a big bite out of power demands.
• Scientists now say they have a reversible molecular rotor engine sitting on a "ball bearing" made of a single ruthenium atom.