Last Call For We Don't Need No Education

Seems Ohio Republican State Rep. Andrew Brenner has decided that public education needs to go in America, because it's socialism.

In the post, titled "Public education in America is socialism, what is the solution?," Brenner laid out his argument. He noted that the Tea Party, which "will attack Obama-care relentlessly as a socialist system," rarely brings up "the fact that our public education system is already a socialist system[…] and has been a socialist system since the founding of our country." He addressed teachers unions -- "an outgrowth of our socialistic education system" -- which he granted originally improved things "temporarily" before they ultimately "became bureaucratic and they started to take the place of school boards and school management."

"I’m not blaming the teachers unions or the local school boards who are bound to the contracts, because if they don’t they will end up with strikes and an arbitrator will rule against them," Brenner wrote. "These issues all stemmed from the fact that we have a socialist education system in the first place."

Brenner's solution: more privatization.

"In a free market system parents and students are free to go where the product and results are better," he wrote. "Common core and standardized tests under such a system will not be necessary, because the schools that fail will go out of business. Government will not be there to prop them up with more tax dollars and increased regulations. Successful schools will thrive. The free-market system works for cars, furniture, housing, restaurants, and to a lesser degree higher education, so why can’t it work for our primary education system?"

It can, if you've decided that the goal of primary education is "Only those with money get educated."   Everyone else?  Well, I guess you don't need to be educated to greet people at Wallyworld or flip burgers at Mickey D's.  After all, if the parents really cared, they'd either work those extra jobs in order to afford to send their kids to school, or they'd stay home and teach the kids themselves, right?

I bet this guy hates the Interstate Highway System.

Oh, did I mention Brenner is the number two Republican on the Ohio House Education Committee?

Paul Ryan, Master Of GOP Minority Outreach

Apparently the entire thrust of GOP Rep. Paul Ryan's interest in poverty statistics is to once again blame it all on black men for being lazy.

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) previewed his upcoming legislative proposals for reforming America’s poverty programs during an appearance on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America Wednesday, hinting that he would focus on creating work requirements for men “in our inner cities” and dealing with the “real culture problem” in these communities. “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with,” he said.

I guess he thinks we black men are too stupid to see through that nonsense, but that's kind of his point, isn't it?  It's black culture that doesn't value hard work, cause we're all thugs and drug dealers and...well wait a minute, drug dealers and thugs actually do know the value of hard work, now that I think about it.  So I guess he sees someone like me as subhuman maybe?

Ryan also cited Charles Murray, a conservative social scientist who believes African-Americans are, as a population, less intelligent than whites due to genetic differences and that poverty remains a national problem because “a lot of poor people are born lazy.”

And yet this lovely pile of racist garbage was the Republican choice for Vice-President in 2012.  Sure does make me want to vote Republican.  You know, if I wasn't so lazy and/or stupid.

Today, Ryan apologized.  Sort of.

After some reflection, Ryan said Thursday "it is clear that I was inarticulate about the point I was trying to make." 

"I was not implicating the culture of one community - but of society as a whole."

Sure he was.  Especially when he cited Murray and his Bell Curve nonsense.  He must think we're pretty stupid.

Oh wait, he does, and he said so.  On multiple occasions.  Look, even if you somehow can make the argument that Ryan isn't a racist asshole citing other avowed racist assholes in his policy work, at the very least his entire budget is based on the fact he thinks poor people only exist because they are all  one hundred percent of them lazy to a person.

And again, this guy was going to be Vice-President of the United States if the GOP had their way.

The Derpy Carson Show

By all means Republicans, do everything you can to put Dr. Ben Carson in the hotseat for 2016.

Ben Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon and a popular figure among conservatives, compared the United States to the Third Reich in an interview.

Asked to elaborate on his previous comments about the U.S. living in "a Gestapo age," the conservative firebrand argued the country has become "very much like Nazi Germany."

"I know you're not supposed to say Nazi Germany, but I don't care about political correctness," he said in an interview Monday with the conservative news outlet Breitbart.

His comments came at the New York Meeting, a gathering of conservative politicians, journalists and business leaders.

Carson, who came in third in the GOP presidential nomination straw poll at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, has been a fierce critic of the administration on the IRS controversy. The tax agency admitted last year to scrutinizing conservative political groups, though it maintains the error was not done out of political bias.

"You had the government using its tools to intimidate the population," Carson said. "We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe."

And yet, here's Ben Carson, complaining that imaginary tyrants are preventing him from saying what he believes, and he's getting to say exactly what he believes.  He sure looks intimidated, huh.

In all seriousness, with FOX, the news shows, and endless coverage of everything they say, who actually believes that these clowns don't get to freely say what they want 24/7?

StupidiNews!

• Chinese government officials say a surveillance satellite may have picked up what is believed to be the crash site of missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.
• The death toll is up to three, with at least 36 people injured in a suspected gas explosion in the middle of a block of Manhattan apartment buildings.
• European Union officials have outlined a framework for imposing financial sanctions on Russia in the wake of the invasion of Crimea.
• Australia's economy posted its biggest monthly job creation gain in 22 years as gains in housing and low interest rates are fueling growth.
• On the 25th anniversary of the invention of the World Wide Web, inventor Tim Berners-Lee is calling for a new "digital Magna Carta" agreement to secure internet freedom globally.

Last Call For Not Everything In The Cosmos

Of course you knew some red state Fox affiliate was going to cut any mention of evolution out of the new Cosmos series.  Accidentally, of course.

In what appeared to be an editing error, a Fox affiliate in Oklahoma managed to remove the only mention of evolution from Sunday night's Cosmos science documentary by cutting only 15 seconds from the broadcast.

The much-anticipated reboot of Carl Sagan's legendary Cosmos premiered on Sunday with an overview of the history of the Universe, from the Big Bang to the advent of humans.

It wasn't until the last 10 minutes of the show that host Neil deGrasse Tyson hinted at human evolution.

"We are newcomers to the Cosmos," he explained. "Our own story only begins on the last night of the cosmic year."

"Three and a half million years ago, our ancestors -- your and mine left these traces," Tyson said, pointing to footprints. "We stood up and parted ways from them. Once we were standing on two feet, our eyes were no longer fixated on the ground. Now, we were free to look up and wonder."

But for viewers of KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City, that 15 second paragraph was replaced by an awkwardly-inserted commercial for the evening news. The edit was caught on video and uploaded to YouTube by Adam Bates.

Yep, totally a mistake.   Pretending evolution doesn't exist, well, have to keep those Oklahomans happy.  Hell, they might have learned something, and we can't have that.

Time For More Time And A Half

In the age of record corporate profits, President Obama will use power given to him by Congress through the Fair Standards Labor Act to classify more salaried professional workers as eligible for overtime.

On Thursday, the president will direct the Labor Department to revamp its regulations to require overtime pay for several million additional fast-food managers, loan officers, computer technicians and others whom many businesses currently classify as “executive or professional” employees to avoid paying them overtime, according to White House officials briefed on the announcement.

Mr. Obama’s decision to use his executive authority to change the nation’s overtime rules is likely to be seen as a challenge to Republicans in Congress, who have already blocked most of the president’s economic agenda and have said they intend to fight his proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour from $7.25.

Bush used the FSLA to push the number down to its current threshold, $455 a week, or about $11.38 an hour, back in 2004. 

Keep in mind that comes out to under $24,000 a year.  If you make the equivalent of more than that, and your job is management or  technical in nature where your workload isn't directly determined by others (like help desk or customer service), the dirty secret of the business world is that you're salaried and get worked however many hours over 40 you can be worked, no OT.  This is especially the case in management and in IT/clerical positions.  Pretty fun to work a job making two grand a month and have to put in 60-70 hours a week, every week, right?  Why, that works out to making less than minimum wage...

In addition, Mr. Obama will try to change rules that allow employers to define which workers are exempt from receiving overtime based on the kind of work they perform. Under current rules, if an employer declares that an employee’s primary responsibility is executive, such as overseeing a cleanup crew, then that worker can be exempted from overtime.

White House officials said those rules were sometimes abused by employers in an attempt to avoid paying overtime. The new rules could require that employees perform a minimum percentage of “executive” work before they can be exempted from qualifying for overtime pay.

“Under current rules, it literally means that you can spend 95 percent of the time sweeping floors and stocking shelves, and if you’re responsible for supervising people 5 percent of the time, you can then be considered executive and be exempt,” said Ross Eisenbrey, a vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization in Washington.

Needless to say, Republicans are howling.  After all, Bush got businesses the power to classify millions of workers as "executive" and leave them stuck working nights and weekends for free.  They loved him for it.  Obama is about to piss some people off.

And I say good.

My Old (Hatred) Kentucky Home

Once again my state manages to distinguish itself in the field of awfulness over equality.

Sunrise Children’s Services is working to recover from a massive budget shortfall after Kentucky churches withheld $7 million because the children’s home had proposed ending its policy of discrimination against LGBT employees.

Bill Smithwick, the then-director of Sunrise Children’s Services, proposed last year that the home allow employees who were openly gay and lesbian over fears that government funding would dry up.

After churches in Kentucky began withholding their donations, Smithwick was forced to resign, and the children’s home did not change its policy.

But the damage was done, and Sunrise Children’s Services was already facing a $7 million budget shortfall, according to WDRB.

So the Kentucky Baptists Convention instructed churches to withhold donating money to kids in need because of gay people.  And the whole reason Smithwick decided not to discriminate?  It's federal goddamn law to not discriminate, that's why.

Smithwick was in his 16th year at the helm of Sunrise when he floated the proposal to open employment to gays. He had said he feared the agency's ban would eventually lead to a loss of millions in government funding, meaning the agency would have to drastically scale back its budget, since most of its funding — Smithwick said 85 percent of about $27 million — comes from government sources.

So yes, these "good Christians" are more than willing to let these kids rot because gay people are so awful.  You want our money to keep these kids in food and shelter?  You have to hate fags.

That's a hell of a lesson to teach these kids.

StupidiNews!

• A major fire at a construction site in San Francisco has prompted several hundred evacuations as over 150 firefighters took on the blaze for hours.
• Peruvian officials are asking tourist to stop taking nude photos and leaving graffiti at world heritage sites like Machu Picchu.
• Federal investigators are looking into whether General Motors is criminally liable for failing to disclose 13 deaths related to last month's ignition switch recall.
• Russia has declared US loan aid to Ukraine as illegal under US laws preventing aid to any regime that uses force to take power, as it considers Ukraine's new government to be a violent coup.
• A federal judge has ordered all assets frozen in the case of bankrupt Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, allowing a class action suit against the CEO and company to continue.

Last Call For Alex, Sunk

In the special election for Florida's 13th district to replace the late career GOP Rep. Bill Young, Democrat Alex Sink couldn't flip the seat as Republican David Jolly won 48.5% to 46.6%, with independent Lucas Overby serving as spoiler and taking 4.8% of the vote, enough to split the opposition to Jolly and allow the GOP to keep the seat.

The outcome does not change anything for Democrats in their calculus for retaking the House in next November's midterms. They still need to pick up 17 seats.

Political handicappers consider that a tall order, considering the shrinking number of competitive congressional districts nationwide.

Jolly served as a former general counsel for Young and also worked as a lobbyist.

"Tonight brings an end to this election," a victorious Jolly told supporters. "Tomorrow provides the opportunity for us to embark together on a new journey of representation here in Pinellas County."

Sink, the former Florida Chief Financial Officer, narrowly lost the 2010 gubernatorial election to Rick Scott.

She conceded the contest more than an hour after the polls closed, expressing pride in her campaign and thanking volunteers and supporters.

"I have congratulated David Jolly and wish him the best success in representing the voices of Pinellas in Congress," she said.

Florida-13 is a swing district in a swing state. It covers most of Pinellas County between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, including parts of St. Petersburg. 

This is a district that voted Young pretty handily in 2012, but also helped President Obama win the state in his re-election.  Republicans are already saying this portends absolute doom for the Dems in 2014, but unless the GOP plans to help run glibertarian douchebags like 27-year old Overby in all the competitive districts to split the youth vote, it's not indicative of the country as a whole.

On the other hand, Jolly has to now immediately defend the seat in November, and I'm betting 8 months of doing nothing by voting against Obamacare isn't going to get him the win when turnout should be higher than the 39% this special election brought around.

We'll see.

Meanwhile, In Ukraine...

The saber-rattling is getting pretty, well, rattling if you ask me.

Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY.

The United States, Great Britain and Russia agreed in a pact "to assure Ukraine's territorial integrity" in return for Ukraine giving up a nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union after declaring independence in 1991, said Pavlo Rizanenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

"We gave up nuclear weapons because of this agreement," said Rizanenko, a member of the Udar Party headed by Vitali Klitschko, a candidate for president. "Now there's a strong sentiment in Ukraine that we made a big mistake."

His statements come as Russia raised the possibility it may send its troops beyond the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea into the eastern half of Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said lawlessness "now rules in eastern regions of Ukraine as a result of the actions of fighters of the so-called 'right sector' with the full connivance" of Ukraine's authorities.

Rizanenko and others in Ukraine say the pact it made with the United States under President Bill Clinton was supposed to prevent such Russian invasions.

The pact was made after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 and became Russia, leaving the newly independent nation of Ukraine as the world's third largest nuclear weapons power.

I'm hoping this is the opinion of a grumpy Soviet-era hardliner who's still kicking around Kiev's parliament some 25 years later.  But former heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko and the Udar party have been arguably the highest profile players in Ukraine's revolution.  But it shows that the situation in Ukraine is getting increasingly perilous, and that Putin has raised the stakes considerably with his actions.

Good thing we have President Obama at the helm, and not McCain or Romney.

Fish With Martyr Sauce

CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson has apparently had enough of the network not running her Benghazigate pieces and is, I assume, leaving for someplace where she can happily smear the President more often over in Winger Welfare land.

Sources at CBS told the Washington Post's Erik Wemple that Atkisson was upset that the network hadn't used more of her reporting on the Sept, 11 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, and she's currently working on a book that details her struggles with the Obama administration (title: "Stonewalled: One Reporter's Fight for Truth in Obama's Washington").

But Atkisson had long ago carved out a special place in the hearts of conservatives.

Not only did she earn a reputation for relentlessly hounding the Obama administration over Benghazi, she also doggedly reported on the federal government's gun-walking operation known as "Fast and Furious," another conservative obsession.

The right showed its appreciation for her "Fast and Furious" coverage in 2012, when Atkisson received the Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Her reporting was also regularly picked up by the aforementioned conservative news sites. Peruse through the archives at Breitbart, The Blaze and Townhall, and you'll find Atkisson's work cited frequently.

Of course, maybe it was because Attkisson is basically working for the GOP and helping to launder leaks to damage the Obama administration as recently as November.

On November 11, a CBS News report cited selectively leaked partial transcripts from Affordable Care Act (ACA) opponent Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to claim that "the project manager in charge of building the federal health care website was apparently kept in the dark about serious failures in the website's security." The network was criticized by Maddow producer Steve Benen when he found that the warnings referenced a function of the health care website that won't be active until early 2014 and has nothing to do with the parts of the website that are currently in use. A Democratic staffer Benen talked to also said that this part of the website "will not submit or share personally identifiable information."

CBS' faulty report aired just days after the network faced widespread criticism and was forced to apologize for failing properly vet an unreliable source that was prominently featured in the network's October 27 60 Minutes report on the Benghazi attack. But CBS wasn't the only outlet to promote misleading claims from the leaked Oversight Committee transcript.

On November 11, The New York Times reported that The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Henry Chao, "[t]he chief digital architect for the federal health insurance marketplace," was "not aware of tests that indicated potential security flaws in the system, which opened to the public on Oct. 1," citing excerpts released by Issa. The same day, FoxNews.com claimed that Obamacare security concerns had been "withheld," but never mentioned that its story was based on a partial transcript. CNN's New Day, and Fox News' America's Newsroom and On The Record with Greta Van Susteren all ran the story on November 12. The Associated Press repeated the claim "Chao was unaware of a memo earlier that month detailing unresolved security issues" as late as November 13 -- after contradictory reports had surfaced.

The media's failure to confirm the suggestions made by partial transcripts from the House Oversight Committee is a significant oversight, considering the committee chairman Darrell Issa's history of releasing misleading material the press.

So yes, she gladly wants to run false and misleading pieces to hurt Democrats, and is upset that maybe, in the wake of Lara Logan's 60 Minutes Benghazi fiasco that had to be publicly retracted, that the network is actually being more critical of GOP propaganda pieces.

That's enough to make you a "victim of liberal bias" when you quit your job.

StupidiNews!

• A new report from the American Society of Clinical Oncology finds that cancer will surpass heart disease as the number one killer of Americans by 2030.
• The use of public transit is growing in the US, as Americans took a record 10.7 billion trips on public transportation systems in 2013.
• Maoist rebels are claiming responsibility for 16 deaths during an ambush of police in eastern India ahead of next month's general elections.
• Malaysian officials say the two individuals that boarded missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 with stolen passports do not have any terrorist ties, as the search for the plane continues into day 4.
• Cable giant Comcast has cut a deal with Sony to stream the first season of Netflix's House of Cards and a number of other TV shows on its Xfinity on-demand streaming service.

Last Call For Whom The Bridge Tolls

The Brent Spence Bridge connecting northern Kentucky with Cincinnati is reaching the end of its structural lifespan.  It's one of the busiest bridges in the country, carrying twice its intended traffic daily, and replacing it isn't going to happen anytime soon, or at all, it looks like.

The Kentucky legislative session is more than halfway over, and Northern Kentucky state lawmakers show no signs of embracing tolls — despite support for them from the Ohio and Kentucky governors, business leaders and lawmakers elsewhere, who think tolls are the only way to finance the $2.6 billion project.

Kentucky owns the bridge, and the Northern Kentucky delegation holds almost all the power on whether the project gets done. But no one has come up with another money source besides tolls to pay for the bridge replacement and highway corridor overhaul.

“I don’t think it’s ever gonna be dead until it’s addressed, but it’s probably not going to move forward right now,” said Kentucky House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg. “Over time, they’re going to have to replace that bridge.”

It's pretty simple:  if northern Kentucky lawmakers vote to stick voters like me with the bill through tolls, they'll be unemployed.  Everyone else in Kentucky and Ohio wants to do just that.  But Democrat or Republican, liberal blogger or Tea Party patriot, you will see any state lawmaker around here who votes to pay for the new Brent Spence through $2-$5 tolls each way get launched out of office at near relativistic speeds.  And they know it.

Ohio and Kentucky have spent or committed $104.9 million to the project since 2005. Top regional businesses, meanwhile, have invested more than $2 million since 2012 to advocate for a new bridge on Interstates 71 and 75 — fearing that nightmarish rush-hour congestion on the 50-year-old Brent Spence will eventually hinder the region’s ability to retain and add jobs.

Northern Kentucky lawmakers’ inability to move the project along could become a real problem for Ohio, which has no power to get the project done despite paying for almost half of it. Ohio is in the midst of a massive overhaul of I-75, a plan that calls for remaking several interchanges and adding a lane each direction along a 17-mile section.

The Brent Spence Bridge is scheduled to be replaced in 2035. It is “functionally obsolete” because of its narrow lanes, lack of emergency shoulders and limited visibility on the lower deck. The bridge carries double its intended traffic each day, but is structurally sound and in no danger of falling, engineers say.

Everyone acknowledges we need a new bridge.  Nobody wants to pay for it, especially not through a regressive toll that would cost commuters a couple thousand a year.

GOP Still On Cruz Controlled

Here's your cause:  Ted Cruz says Republicans will repeal "every word of Obamacare" in January.

"If there's one things that unifies politicians of both parties, you know, their top priority is preserving their own hide," Cruz said on ABC's "This Week" when asked if the GOP could repeal the health care law while President Obama remains in office. "And if enough Congressional Democrats realize they either stand with ObamaCare and lose, or they listen to the American people and have a chance at staying in office, that's the one scenario we could do it in 2015. If not, we'll do it in 2017."

Cruz reiterated that he can repeal "every single word" of the law.

When host Jonathan Karl asked if Cruz was positive a repeal was possible with Obama in the White House, the senator indicated it wasn't a large factor.

"You know, what's funny, Jon, is the media treats that as a bizarre proposition," Cruz said.

"Well, it is," Karl responded. "It is a bizarre proposition."

Cruz then said that pushing for a full repeal was the best way for the GOP to win elections in 2014.

Here's your effect:  House Republicans are now holding the Medicare "doc fix" hostage over Obamacare.

House Republicans have a bold new strategy to attack Obamacare, which involves huge pay cuts for physicians unless Democrats agree to delay the law's individual mandate to buy insurance.

GOP leaders intend to vote on legislation this week, aides say, to delay the individual mandate in order to fund a "doc fix" that avoids a 24 percent pay cut to physicians under Medicare -- which will automatically take effect on April 1 unless Congress acts. Inaction would disrupt the health care system, in part by causing many doctors to stop accepting Medicare patients.

Break the system so it can't work, then blame Democrats for it not working.  The Ted Cruz Shutdown wing of the GOP still calls the shots...because every Republican is a member.

Repeat after me:  there are no moderate Republicans.

About That Rand Paul CPAC Straw Poll...

So Rand Paul easily won this year's CPAC straw poll, but as to why, well...

Rand Paul handily won the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday, one gauge of the Republican base’s mood less than two years before the 2016 primary season kicks off.

The Kentucky senator received 31 percent, far ahead of second place Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who received 11 percent. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson finished third with 9 percent, ahead of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who received 8 percent.

The announcement came at the end of the group’s annual three-day confab. Organizers said that 2,459 attendees voted on computer kiosks.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum tied for fifth place, with 7 percent.

Certainly seems like there's an overwhelming favorite in the 2016 race for the GOP, right?

GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, who has run the straw poll since 1986, said that nearly half of the straw poll voters were between the ages of 18 to 25.

“This is a sampling of people from all 50 states who are at the forefront of the conservative moment,” he said. “They’re the people who go knock on doors.”

Oh sure, that seems like a fully representative sample of the GOP and America as a whole.  So, if you think that the makeup of the GOP primaries and the 2016 general election will be 50% white dudebro frat boys who worship Bitcoin, hate the government, but are happy to live on their parents' health insurance because they're under 26, then sure, Rand Paul has a real chance to be your next President.

Of course the flip side of this is "these guys will definitely vote."  Will you?