Last Call For The Nadering Nabobs Of Negativity

Ralph Nader can't quit trying to win it for the GOP.

“I’m going to find at least ten enlightened billionaires or multibillionaires and I’m going to have a criteria. Have they spoken out about where they think the country is going? And are they worried about it? And have they done things reflecting some sort of civic enlightenment and courage? And are they able to communicate? Obviously, they have the money. And I’m going to encourage them to run.”

His target is to make sure Hillary doesn't get into the White House.

“We really need a dynasty now? We’ve had twelve years of the Bushes, what — do you want eight more years of the Clintons? Do we really want a redux here or do we want fresh energy and refresh redirection?” Of his specific criticisms of Clinton, Nader says the former Secretary of State “never saw a weapons system she didn’t like, never challenged the Pentagon when she was on the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

Nader would like to see Sen. Barbara Boxer run, but assumes “she’s not willing to take the next step.”

“They’re all deferring to Hillary and, let me tell you, anyone who thinks Hillary will have cakewalk three and a half years from the next presidential election better look back at 2008 and see if that was a cakewalk. She’s going to have competitors.”

Barbara Boxer?  Sure, she's pretty anti-Pentagon, but there needs to be more.  Which is why Nader keeps screwing things up.  He ran against Al Gore and we got Dubya as a result, remember?  And he sure prevented useless, bloody, expensive wars, didn't he?

Nope.  I'll never forgive the guy for Florida 2000.  Ever.  Show yourself out, Ralph.  Don't come back.

Prefacing A Pre-Failure

WIN THE MORNING decided last night that President Obama's climate change initiative being announced today has already failed and won't get any support from anyone, so he might as well quit now.

President Barack Obama’s new climate change agenda may be ambitious, but experts warn it won’t be enough to avoid the worst effects of a warming planet.

The climate threat is so severe, they say, that the administration must quickly pivot from the steps it’s announcing Tuesday — including greenhouse gas regulations for power plants — to tackle other parts of the economy.

Le sigh, le groan.

Even the most unprecedented strides toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions pale next to the scope of the problem facing the planet. Still, environmental activists say Tuesday’s announcements will be a big deal. They’re thrilled Obama is finally refocusing on climate change in his second term.

“Really, this is a moment that has been 20 years in the making, and most of the last 20 years unfortunately has not been well spent,” said David Hawkins, director of climate programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

While climate change activists and long-time observers of the ebbs and flows of environmental policy are elated, they are also quietly reminding the president that more work needs to be done.

Yes, so quietly that Politico is shooting down the initiative in advance, along with Coal State Dems.

You can’t do something that is unattainable,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who famously fired a bullet through the cap-and-trade bill in a 2010 campaign ad. “It’s unreasonable. What they’re doing has never been done.”

So yes, if this seems familiar, where the President is being dumped on by the purist left for an insufficient effort and attacked by moderates in his own party before he's actually made the announcement, welcome to the last four years of this administration.

When President Obama chooses to user the executive branch to get things done, it's either "not enough" or "unprecedented tyranny".  When he doesn't, it's "failure to act" and "another broken promise".

The guy can't win, and not a single person it seems is grateful for the effort.  Ever.

The Day The Voting Died

As expected, the Roberts Court has struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by cleverly striking down Section FOUR instead, saying that the formula that Congress uses to determine which states are under Section 5 pre-clearance is no longer Constitutional.  And of course is was a 5-4 vote to throw out 49 years of voting protections for minorities.

A deeply divided Supreme Court has limited use of a key provision in the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, in effect invalidating federal enforcement over all or parts of 15 states with past history of voter discrimination.

The court said it is now up to congressional lawmakers to revise the law to meet constitutional scrutiny.

"Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to the current conditions," said Chief Justice John Roberts for the 5-4 conservative majority.

Section 4 of the law was struck down, the coverage formula used by the federal government to determine which states and counties are subject to continued oversight. Roberts said that formula from 1972 was outdated and unworkable.

Sure.  Republicans will get right on that new formula thing.  Count out the South from here on out, folks.  It's open season on massive gerrymandering because now, no states, districts, or localities are subject to Section 5 rules.  Chief Justice Roberts' opinion is here:

Held: Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional; its formula can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdictions to pre-clearance.

Justice Ginsburg's epic dissent should be in America's history books:

In the Court’s view, the very success of §5 of the Voting
Rights Act demands its dormancy. Congress was of
another mind. Recognizing that large progress has been
made, Congress determined, based on a voluminous rec­
ord, that the scourge of discrimination was not yet extir­
pated. The question this case presents is who decides
whether, as currently operative, §5 remains justifiable,
this Court, or a Congress charged with the obligation to
enforce the post-Civil War Amendments “by appropriate
legislation.” With overwhelming support in both Houses,
Congress concluded that, for two prime reasons, §5 should
continue in force, unabated. First, continuance would
facilitate completion of the impressive gains thus far
made; and second, continuance would guard against back­
sliding. Those assessments were well within Congress’
province to make and should elicit this Court’s unstinting
approbation.

The only thing that's history now?  The rights of millions of Americans to vote.

StupidiNews!

• Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has been sentenced to 7 years in prison for having sex with an underage pole dancer and then covering it up with the power of his office.
• Russian cosmonauts will take the Olympic Torch to the International Space Station ahead of February's 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
• New IRS interim chief Danny Werfel revealed the agency had targeted liberal organizations as well as conservative ones for extra scrutiny as non-profits.
• Former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine may be facing a lawsuit from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over his role at the now defunct MF Global financial firm.
• California is taking on Bitcoin over wire transfer licenses which the state says the online currency trader needs and doesn't have.

Last Call For Snowden's Motives

If this story from the South China Morning Post is true, young Edward Snowden is in a crapload of trouble (wherever he is).

Edward Snowden secured a job with a US government contractor for one reason alone – to obtain evidence on Washington’s cyberspying networks, the South China Morning Post can reveal.

For the first time, Snowden has admitted he sought a position at Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the US National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programmes ahead of planned leaks to the media.

“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told the Post on June 12. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”

During a global online chat last week, Snowden also stated he took pay cuts “in the course of pursuing specific work”.

In other words, Snowden specifically took the job so he could leak.  That was always his intent.

He's done.  The only question is who else he brings down with him.  Yes, Mr. Greenwald, I'm looking at you.  Greendwald supposedly has been in contact with Snowden for months.  If Snowden's sole purpose was to get at classified material with the intent to leak it, what Greenwald knew and when suddenly becomes very germane.  He's not a journalist at this point.  He's a possible accomplice and possible co-conspirator.

Things just got real interesting.

SCOTUS-Palooza

The Supreme Court handed down a number of big rulings today, including Fisher vs. Texas.  In the case of Fisher however it was a non-ruling, the summary judgment of the 5th Circuit sent back down for further ruling.  Kevin Drum:

Well, the Supreme Court has finally handed down a ruling in one of this year's high-profile cases, and.....it punted. In a case challenging affirmative action at the University of Texas, the Supremes ruled that the Fifth Circuit court failed to apply strict scrutiny when it upheld the university's claim that affirmative action was necessary as way of promoting diversity. Key quote: "The reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity."

So now it goes back to the Fifth Court, and then most likely back up to the Supreme Court someday. For now, nothing has changed.

Clarence Thomas made it clear though that if the court had ruled, he would have eliminated all affirmative action nationally:

While it does not, for constitutional purposes, matter whether the University’s racial discrimination is benign, I note that racial engineering does in fact have insidious consequences. There can be no doubt that the University’s discrimination injures white and Asian applicants who are denied admission because of their race. But I believe the injury to those admitted under the University’s discriminatory admissions program is even more harmful.

He goes on to basically say that affirmative action now is as legally indefensible as Jim Crow laws, segregation, slavery, and the Confederacy were in America's past.

It was the other decisions that made things worse, particularly for those seeking a course of action to fight workplace discrimination.  Two decisions, Vance v. Ball State University and UT Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, made it much harder to bring workplace discrimination (Vance) and retaliation (Nassar) cases. Both were 5-4 rulings written by Justice Kennedy (natch.) Vance addressed this question: who's liable for harassment in a company, supervisors or co-workers?

Under Title VII, an employer’s liability for workplace harassment may depend on the status of the harasser. If the harassing employee is the victim’s co-worker, the employer is liable only if it was negligent in controlling working conditions. In cases in which the harasser is a  “supervisor,” however, different rules apply.

Kennedy's ruling:

An employee is a “supervisor” for purposes of vicarious liability under Title VII only if he or she is empowered by the employer to take tangible employment actions against the victim.

In other words, co-workers aren't company liable for harassment claims.

Nassar had a similar ruling that retaliation claims were held to a strict standard.  Not a good day to be an employee, but for now, affirmative action lives.

For now.  More SCOTUS fun tomorrow in a rare Tuesday session.  Still to go:  rulings on DOMA, California's Prop 8, and the big one, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Gang Of Eight Head Fake

Senate Democrats say they're very close to 70 votes for immigration reform, which is going to make things all the more tragic when the GOP-led House kills the bill.

Immigration reform has gotten a new burst of life as a growing number of Senate Republicans have embraced the 1,000-page-plus legislation, setting up President Obama for a big victory this week.

The sudden surge in Republican support has been a pleasant surprise for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who urged the bill’s authors to focus on winning 60 votes — the minimum for passing it.

Instead, Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), the leaders of the Gang of Eight, are marching toward 70 votes, a target intended to put maximum pressure on the House to act.

The House is the X factor. The lower chamber is expected to pass narrow immigration bills that do not include a path to citizenship, which is a staple of the Senate legislation. Conservatives in the House, including Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), strongly oppose the Senate bill.

Still, an overwhelming bipartisan vote would be a strong boost for a Senate bill that just days ago was teetering.

What's going on here is there's more than a few Republicans who see the opportunity to sign on to the long game and say "Hey, I supported immigration reform."  They also know that Republicans in the House will never pass anything even remotely like the Senate bill, if they end up passing anything at all.

If John Boehner were even mildly competent, he would have already passed a massive border security and visa expansion bill with no path to citizenship measures and told the Senate to suck it.  Democrats would have choked on it and the GOP could say "Well, we actually passed a bill, unlike the Democrats."  It would have gotten them through 2014 easily, and handed another setback to President Obama.

However, because Boehner is herding cats and Eric Cantor is hanging around like Iago going "Hey bro, that's an awful bad break for ya" every 35 minutes, that hasn't happened yet.  It's still possible that Boehner, a handful of Republicans, and a pile of Democrats could pass the Senate bill, but I'm thinking that's not going to happen.

Rather, the most likely outcome is that Boehner tries to pass the border security and visa bill, fails miserably, and the Senate version of the bill dies without a vote.

We'll see, but the practical upshot is it doesn't matter if the Senate immigration bill gets 99 votes:  it will die in the House, if not from political reality, then from Republican voter apathy.  Only 37% of GOP voters in a new Pew/USA Today poll think passing immigration reform with a path to citizenship will help the Republican party.  There's no penalty from the base for failing to pass this bill, and that's all that will matter to the GOP in the House.

Count on it.  And I'm not the only one who feels this way.

StupidiNews!

• The Obama administration is asking Russia to send NSA leaker Edward Snowden back to the states to face charges rather than allow him to seek asylum in Ecuador.
• With days of protests and legislative maneuvering, Texas Democrats are trying to prevent TRAP legislation that would close nearly 90% of the state's abortion clinics.
• Egypt's Defense Minister says that ahead of the anniversary of President Mohammad Morsi's inauguration that Egypt's military is ready to head off planned protests.
• Nelson Mandela's health condition has become critical in a Praetorian hospital in South Africa as the 94-year-old world civil rights icon battles a recurring lung infection.
• The EPA is now backing away from a fracking investigation in Wyoming, turning over data and control to GOP Governor Matt Mead.

Last Call For The Douthat Bubble

Here's a free piece of advice:  if you're a professional Beltway columnist, and you write a story about how any politician is disconnected from the reality of average Americans, you're destined for mockery for the precise reason that professional Beltway columnists are quite literally the least-qualified people in America to have any actual idea what Americans are thinking outside the Beltway.

Hence today's contestant, Ross Douthat.

After all, gun control, immigration reform and climate change aren’t just random targets of opportunity. They’re pillars of Acela Corridor ideology, core elements of Bloombergism, places where Obama-era liberalism overlaps with the views of Davos-goers and the Wall Street 1 percent. If you move in those circles, the political circumstances don’t necessarily matter: these ideas always look like uncontroversial common sense. 

Step outside those circles, though, and the timing of their elevation looks at best peculiar, at worst perverse. The president decided to make gun control legislation a major second-term priority ... with firearm homicides at a 30-year low. Congress is pursuing a sharp increase in low-skilled immigration ... when the foreign-born share of the American population is already headed for historical highs. The administration is drawing up major new carbon regulations ... when actual existing global warming has been well below projections for 15 years and counting.

If Ross had been paying attention, he'd realize that gun control really is an actual priority with a vast majority of Americans, along with a vast majority of non-Beltway scientists on climate change and yes, ordinary Americans are backing immigration reform.  

But Bubble Boy here seems to think that climate change is a myth, along with gun control and immigration reform...and he's so deluded that he thinks Americans don't care about that either.  He goes on to bleat about jobs, but fails to mention Republicans have blocked job legislation at every opportunity.

And in the end, Douthat has to admit his team are losers.

But so far, Republicans have mostly used liberalism’s relative weakness as an excuse for not moving much at all, and sticking with an agenda that’s even more disconnected from the anxieties of the average voter than the White House’s second-term priorities. 

Their assumption seems to be that eventually the public will simply have to turn to them. But their obligation should be to address both parties’ most conspicuous failure, and actually meet the voters where they are.

That's funny, Ross.  Every time the Democrats try to do that, the Republicans block them.  Pay attention.

A Strictly Poison Ivy League School

Zandar's Summer Movie Series continues with a reminder that great teams in animated history are forged by adversity, tempered by will, and then apparently quenched in the water barrel of slapstick physical comedy.



Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James P. Sullivan (John Goodman) weren't always the beasts of the Monsters, Inc. Scare Floor, and in fact they started out in this prequel to the 2001 Pixar hit as a couple of college freshmen newly accepted as scaring majors to prestigious Monsters University.  It's been Mike's dream since a childhood field trip to MI, and Sully's destiny as he's a legacy admission and trading on the Sullivan family name.

But as the Pixar G-rated equivalent of a couple of dipstick dudebros, Sully's constant coasting and Mike's nerdy know-it-all act quickly results in a bitter rivalry that get the both of them tossed out of the MU Scaring School by Dean Abigail Hardscrabble (the delightfully perfect Helen Mirren) and headed for ignominious defeat...until fate gives them a second chance at the program by proving they can work together and win the MU Greek Scare Games.  All they have to do is beat the the rest of the fraternities and sororities, including the top dogs on campus, Roar Omega Roar and team captain Johnny Worthington (Nathan Filion, hamming it up brilliantly), with arguably the lamest movie fraternity in history:  the brothers of Oozma Kappa.

What follows is a predictable but charming tale for the kids while remaining smart enough to engage the parents as well.  It's still a good time and worth several laughs, and as far as Pixar second stanzas go a much better film that Cars 2 (not a high bar) but comes out close enough to Toy Story 2 to make the grade (not that anything's going to touch Toy Story 3 for a while.)

All in all a good time for everyone, with some solid lessons on teamwork and a few truly laugh-out-loud moments.

Edward's Midnight Runners

NSA leaker Edward Snowden has fled Hong Kong for Moscow, where he'll be shuffled off to Cuba and possibly Venezuela.

The Hong Kong government announced on Sunday afternoon that it had allowed the departure from its territory of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has acknowledged disclosing classified documents about United States government surveillance of Internet and telephone communications around the world.

The government statement said that Hong Kong had informed the United States of Mr. Snowden’s departure.

A Moscow-based reservations agent at Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline, said that Mr. Snowden was aboard flight SU213 to Moscow, with a scheduled arrival there a little after 5 p.m. Moscow time. The reservations agent said that Mr. Snowden was traveling on a one-way ticket to Moscow. 

Mr. Snowden’s final destination was unclear, but there were signs that it might be beyond Moscow. The Russian foreign ministry said that Mr. Snowden appeared to be making a connection in Moscow to another destination, but did not say where. 

Russia’s Interfax news service, citing a “person familiar with the situation,” reported that Mr. Snowden would remain in transit at an airport in Moscow for “several hours” pending an onward flight to Cuba, and would therefore not formally cross the Russian border or be subject to detention. Someone close to Mr. Snowden later told Interfax that he planned to continue on to Caracas, Venezuela. 

So at this point, China, Russia, possibly Cuba and Venezuela are having a good, long, laugh at the Obama administration.  Whether or not you think this is deserved, the damage Edward Snowden has done to the US by leaking classified info to foreign countries is pretty high, and he's a fugitive from justice.

The guy doesn't seem like a patriot to me.  It seems like everyone in the "We're not cool with the US" camp is getting in on the Snowden info gold mine.

I can't say I'm surprised.  Certainly this makes Snowden just like Dr. Martin Luther King, right?

Last Call For Scalia

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wants people to know he's not interested in making momentous decisions about rights and freedoms and social issues, because A) it's hard and B) it's hard, dammit.

With a potentially ground-breaking decision on gay marriage expected next week, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Friday morning that he and other judges should stop setting moral standards concerning homosexuality and other issues.

Why?

We aren’t qualified, Scalia said.

In a speech titled “Mullahs of the West: Judges as Moral Arbiters,” the outspoken and conservative jurist told the N.C. Bar Association that constitutional law is threatened by a growing belief in the “judge moralist.” In that role, judges are bestowed with special expertise to determine right and wrong in such matters as abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, the death penalty and same-sex marriage.

Scalia said that approach presents two problems: Judges are not moral experts, and many of the moral issues now coming before the courts have no “scientifically demonstrable right answer.”

As such, he said, it’s a community’s job to decide what it finds morally acceptable, not the courts’.

Shorter Scalia:  TYRANNY OF THE MOB FOREVAH.

So yeah, that whole Constitutional fundamental rights thing?  Naah, those aren't guarantees, those are "what the community finds morally acceptable" and stuff.  So yeah, it's totally cool to hate gay people or brown people or immigrant people because as long as 50% +1 find it morally acceptable to do so, it's cool to discriminate.

Besides, not discriminating is hard, people.  Just take it from Justice Wario here.

Perhaps he should, you know, resign if it's just too hard to adjudicate stuff.  That's just me talking.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06/21/4121621/nc-lawyers-listen-as-justice-scalia.html#storylink=cpy

The Netroots Of The Issue

This morning House minority leader Nancy Pelosi spoke at this year's Netroots Nation conference in San Jose (And Imani Gandy and Elon White are there, the lucky bastards.)  She faced some tough questions from the audience about NSA leaker Edward Snowden, but faced them and answer them she did.  Here's what I predicted when the event happened:

Pelosi actually engaging the #NN13 crowd on NSA stuff, too bad headline will be LIBERALS BOO PELOSI OVER SNOWDEN REMARKS
— Zandar (@ZandarVTS) June 22, 2013

And of course, Politico's coverage from Emily Schultheis didn't disappoint with the headline "Nancy Pelosi booed, heckled at Netroots Nation 2013".

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was booed by progressive activists Saturday for defending President Obama on the NSA’s surveillance programs and suggesting that alleged leaker Edward Snowden broke the law. 

Speaking in a wide-ranging Q&A session at this year’s Netroots Nation conference, Pelosi said it’s unfair to equate Obama and former President George W. Bush on the issue of surveillance. 

“People on the far right are saying oh, this is the fourth term of President Bush,” the California Democrat said. “Absolutely, positively not so.” 

As Pelosi was saying the country needs a “balance” between security and privacy, Marc Perkel, a 57-year-old activist from Gilroy, Calif., started shouting at Pelosi during her answer and was escorted out of the room. 

“It’s not a balance. It’s not constitutional!” he yelled. “No secret laws!” 

Others in the room began shouting as well, saying things like “Leave him alone!” or “That’s what a police state looks like right there!”

It's boring how predictable Politico's hatred of the Democrats is, it really is. It's always "DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY" when the real story is "Nancy Pelosi engages critics, leads discussion on NSA policy at Netroots Nations".  Which is frankly exactly what we should be seeing from our elected leaders.

But no, that's not the headline with our "liberal" media.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• As Brazilian protests over state spending on the World Cup and Summer Games grows into the millions, President Dilma Rousseff warned against further violence.
• Charging him with theft, unauthorized communication, and willful communication of classified information, the US wants Hong Kong to arrest and extradite Edward Snowden to face trial. 
• In the wake of growing US involvement with Syria's civil war, the US is leaving 700 combat troops in neighboring Jordan following combat exercises this week.
• Ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling has gotten 10 years knocked off his sentence and could be out of prison in 2017.
• Facebook has come clean about a bug that exposed 6 million customer emails in its system for nearly a year, but assures users that the problem has now been fixed.

Last Call For More Butter

Paula Deen just got chopped by Food Network for comments she made in a court deposition about race and gender.

Celebrity chef Paula Deen's contract with The Food Network will not be renewed, the network said Friday, the latest fallout over revelations this week that she admitted to using a racial epithet in the past.

Deen's contract with The Food Network, which airs three shows featuring the chef, expires at the end of the month, the network said.

The Food Network's announcement followed reports earlier this week that Deen acknowledged in a lawsuit deposition to using the "N word," but denied telling racial jokes.

It also came the same day that Deen apologized in video statements posted online for "the wrong that I've done."

Needless to say, if you're shocked by a older Southern white woman being casually racists and talking about reenacting a plantation formal dinner with black men in white jackets as waiters, you're not from the South.

The wingers are of course furious that reenacting Jim Crow is a fireable offense in 2013.

A Fox News correspondent is attacking "the liberal, anti-South media" for unfairly "trying to crucify Paula Deen" over her admission in a court deposition that she's used racial epithets.

Todd Starnes, who also hosts a Fox News Radio segment, wrote on his Facebook page that the "liberal, anti-South media is trying to crucify Paula Deen. They accuse her of using a derogatory word to describe a black person. Paula admitted she used the word -- back in the 1980s - when a black guy walked into the bank, stuck a gun in her face and ordered her to hand over the cash. The national media failed to mention that part of the story. I'll give credit to the Associated Press for telling the full story."

Starnes also defended Deen via Twitter, writing: "The mainstream media hates Paula Deen [...] I think it's because most of them don't eat meat."

Sure, that's it, Todd.

Oh, and I'm not even kidding about the PLANTATION DINNER THING.

Bye, Paula.