Last Call For Wage Slaves

As expected, Senate Republicans who are "for the working class" and "helping American families" blocked an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10.

Democratic legislation to raise the federal minimum wage hit a road block Wednesday when Republicans blocked the bill in the Senate, setting up an election-year battle over which party can best grow the economy and help struggling Americans.

The bill was six votes shy of the 60 needed to advance the legislation that would gradually up the minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10 over the span of 30 months. The bill also included increases based on inflation that, if fully implemented, would allow a family of three to earn an annual income above the poverty line.

Republicans argue the bill will hurt small business owners, which may need to cut jobs to account for the higher wages. They cite a study released by the Congressional Budget Office released in February that found, while helping to alleviate poverty, raising minimum wage would cost the country about 500,000 jobs.

In other words, every single Republican in the Senate thinks $10.10 an hour, or the massive yearly wage of $21,000 a year is too much money, because only teenagers make minimum wage (only 24% are in reality and half are white women.)  Seems to me that Republicans would want to see that young women, especially mothers, would be paid more to keep them off food stamps, but apparently that's okay with them.

By the way, there's no state in the nation where $21,000 a year can get you an apartment and it still be affordable.  In most states you'd need twice that.

Meanwhile, slimebag Sen. Ted Cruz pitched the GOP blocking minimum wage as, get this, a victory for black teenagers.

“Every senator who votes ‘yes’ is voting with an absolute certainty that hundreds of thousands of workers, including a great many African-American teenagers and a great many Hispanic teenagers, will be laid off as a consequence of their vote,” Cruz said. “I would challenge any of the senators in this chamber to look in the eyes of those African-American teenagers, those Hispanic teenagers who are looking for a better opportunity.”

Only one problem.  Cruz is full of crap, as usual.  In states where minimum wage is higher than the federal minimum, the evidence is clear.

Raising the minimum wage is neither as wonderful as its advocates claim nor as dangerous as its detractors warn. On the upside, it would increase pay for millions of Americans, not only those earning the minimum but also those at fixed increments above it. These are people who could really use a raise. Contrary to what generations of students were taught in freshman econ, new research finds that minimum-wage increases at the state level have caused little, if any, harm to employment. “Outside of the simple Econ 101-type environment, increasing workers’ pay can improve the functioning of the low-wage labor market,” Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts economist, testified before Congress in March.

Washington State has the highest minimum wage in the nation, indexed to inflation.  If raising the minimum wage is so disastrous for employment, then it should have one of the highest unemployment numbers in the nation.

It's 6.3% as of April, below the national average.

Raise the wage, guys.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Meanwhile, the notion that the issue at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada is over just because it's suddenly inconvenient to back an avowed racist asshole like Cliven Bundy is sadly not the case.  The heavily armed militia types are still out there "defending" Bundy and are doing a pretty good job of threatening anybody in the area who doesn't back the guy.

The locals are getting understandably nervous.

A growing number of Bunkerville residents want to see the armed militiamen guarding rancher Cliven Bundy leave Nevada, according to a letter from Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., to Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie.

Horsford, whose congressional district includes Bunkerville, wrote that his constituents are concerned about Bundy supporters carrying weapons near local churches, schools and elsewhere.

But gosh, guns equal safety and freedom.  Why would anyone be scared of gun-toting vigilate justice mobs armed to the teeth near churches and schools?  Maybe because of this?

The letter also says militiamen have a presence on state and local roads as well as federal highways. In some areas, according to the letter, militiamen have set up checkpoints where drivers are stopped and asked to provide a proof of residency.

They’ve been seen carrying high-caliber weapons and keep a round-the-clock security detail on Bundy.

Setting up armed checkpoints on public roads.  You know, like the Taliban does in Afghanistan.  But don't you dare call them domestic terrorists, right?

The Ghost Of Losers Past

Guess which former presidential candidate thinks America needs a Rand Paul versus Elizabeth Warren race in 2016 that could potentially unite the left and right towards a new era of libertarian utopia and that President Obama needs to be impeached immediately?

That’s the premise of the new book “Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State” by longtime political activist and five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who contends that such a left-right alliance is not just the stuff of imagination but is actually emerging.

“On Capitol Hill, I'm seeing more and more in Congress, left and right,” Nader told “The Fine Print.” “It was a vote in the House over a year ago over the NSA snooping, it almost broke through … so we're beginning to see formulations that once they click together, they're unstoppable.”
  

Oh goody.  And Rand Paul?

But Nader qualified that the success of his envisioned left-right alliance is dependent on strong leaders. He said Sen. Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, has the potential to be a leader for the alliance, but added that he thinks the Kentucky Republican has certain shortcomings as a leader.

“He’s a mixed bag, you know, he's evolving. He's broadening his issues that he's talking about and they’re beginning to resonate,” Nader said. “On the other hand … he has problems dealing with people.”

Paul’s “problems” aside, Nader predicted that he will be “the one to beat” in 2016 in a Republican contest that is also likely to also include Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. He also made it clear what he does not want to see in 2016: A Jeb Bush - Hillary Clinton matchup.

In fact he says he will actively try to sabotage Hillary Clinton in 2016, and wants President Obama impeached immediately.

When it comes to the current president, Nader said that Obama has violated the Constitution on several occasions and should be impeached.

"Oh, most definitely," Nader said when asked if Congress should bring forward articles of impeachment against Obama. "The reason why Congress doesn't want to do it is because it's advocated its own responsibility under the Constitution."

Nader said the president's use of military force in Libya has been his most "egregious violation of the Constitution."

So, you ready for President Rand Paul?  Ralph Nader is.  And the last time he meddled we got Dubya instead of Al Gore.  How'd that work out for you 14 years later?

StupidiNews!

• Oklahoma has put death row executions on hold after a scheduled lethal injection, the first to use a new drug, failed to render an inmate unconscious during the process.
• Georgia becomes the latest state to require drug testing of welfare beneficiaries, despite similar laws being struck down in other states as unconstitutional.
• Pro-Russian militants have taken control of government buildings in Ukraine's easternmost province, giving them a second provincial base of operations and a direct path to Ukraine's coal fields.
• A strike by London tube workers continues into a third day, but commuters are now able to travel as normal across 90% of London's Underground.
• Disney has announced the cast for Star Wars Episode VII, with stars of the original trilogy confirming their roles in the planned December 2015 sequel.

Last Call For The WInning Strategy

New Republic reporter Sasha Issenberg takes us through the Democratic Party's strategy for winning in 2014, the so-called "Bannock Street Project".   It's predicated on two ideas, first, there are only two kids of voters in America: Reflex voters who vote in midterms, and Unreliable voters who don't.

Add it all up, and the Democrats’ midterm conundrum comes to look like an actuarial one. “If twenty years ago, you said the midterm electorate is older, I would have said, ‘Yahoo! Glad to hear it,’ ” says Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “But now the Roosevelt seniors are dead and the Reagan seniors are voting.” Increasingly, those older voters are backing the same side: In 2000, Al Gore won the youngest and eldest bands of the electorate by slight margins; in 2012, the over-50 vote broke for Mitt Romney by 12 points.

There are also simply more of those older voters overall. Since Obama’s first appearance on a presidential ballot, the population of Americans over the age of 55 has increased by nearly 13 million. By 2022, it will have increased by another nine million. People tend to grow more conservative as they age, but as a cohort, Generation X—whose oldest members will soon reach their fifties—is appreciably more conservative than the Millennials who follow them. “When the Millennials are fifty-five, they’re going to vote more Democratic,” Lake says, not exactly cautioning patience. “That’s thirty years away.”

The Reflex voters are more conservative than ever, and over half identify as Republicans.  Getting the Unreliables out matters, but so does winning over the Reflex voters.

Second, mobilizing the Unreliables is far more expensive.  But going after the Reflex voters isn't as bad.

The real reason Democrats have embraced a progressive agenda has not been to energize their own base but to lure Reflex voters from the other side. Obama and his party’s candidates talk about the minimum wage in the hope that working-class whites skeptical of Democrats on other matters will become more ambivalent about voting Republican. Democrats’ renewed interest in women’s issues—including a defense of Planned Parenthood and embrace of equal-pay standards—is also designed with defections in mind. In 2012, the Obama campaign’s entire direct-mail program on women’s issues was targeted at reliable voters who leaned Republican: Field experiments in the first half of that year had showed that the messages were most persuasive among voters whose likelihood of voting for Obama previously sat between 20 and 40 percent.

So yes, the Democrats are going after the Reflex voters first and then worrying about the Unreliables.

The question is, will it work?  The latest ABC/Washington Post poll seems to indicate that the Democrats have their work cut out for them at best on this front.

Weary of waiting for an economic recovery worth its name, a frustrated American public has sent Barack Obama’s job approval rating to a career low – with a majority in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll favoring a Republican Congress to act as a check on his policies.

Registered voters by 53-39 percent in the national survey say they’d rather see the Republicans in control of Congress as a counterbalance to Obama’s policies than a Democratic-led Congress to help support him. It was similar in fall 2010, when the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and gained six Senate seats.

Obama’s job approval rating, after a slight winter rebound, has lost 5 points among all adults since March, to 41 percent, the lowest of his presidency by a single point. Fifty-two percent disapprove, with “strong” disapproval exceeding strong approval by 17 percentage points. He’s lost ground in particular among some of his core support groups. 

The big problem is the perception of Obamacare.

One reason is that the law seems to have opened an avenue for public ire about health care costs to be directed at the administration. Six in 10 blame the ACA for increasing costs nationally, and 47 percent think it’s caused their own health care expenses to rise. Regardless of whether or how much those costs would have risen otherwise, Obamacare is taking a heavy dose of the blame.

There's good news:

None of this means the GOP is home free. A robust improvement in the economy could change the equation. (As many, at least, say it’s currently holding steady, 35 percent, as think it’s getting worse, 36 percent.) And even as the brunt of economic unhappiness falls on the president, the public divides essentially evenly on which party they trust more to handle the economy – suggesting that the Republicans have yet to present a broadly appealing alternative.

In another example, for all of Obamacare’s controversies, the Democrats hold a slight 8-point edge in trust to handle health care, again indicating that the Republicans have yet to seize the opportunity to present a compelling solution of their own. Indeed, the Democrats have a 6-point lead in trust to handle “the main problems the nation faces” – although, as with all others, that narrows among likely voters, in this case to 37-40 percent, a numerical (but not significant) GOP edge. 

But that motivation factor, as much as the Democrats running the show are loathe to admit it, is starting to become a real problem.

Preferences on which party controls Congress may reflect a general inclination in favor of divided government – and don’t always predict outcomes, as in 2002, when more registered voters preferred Democratic control yet the GOP held its ground. It’s striking, nonetheless, that this poll finds Republican control favored not only in the 2012 red states, by 56-36 percent, but also by 51-41 percent in the blue states that backed Obama fewer than two years ago. 

If that's truly the case, then getting out the vote may be a matter of sheer survival for the Democrats at this point.  A GOP controlled Congress would be a disaster for the next two years, but people want to put Obama "in his place" including it seems Democrats.

That's a problem.

Of Sterling Character, Con't

Today NBA Commissioner Adam Silver didn't just throw the book at professional racist and LA Clippers owner Don Sterling, he dropped several libraries on him and then set them on fire.

Clippers owners Donald Sterling has been banned for life from associating with the Clippers and the NBA, and fined the maximum of $2.5 million. In addition, commissioner Adam Silver said he has asked the Board of Governors to force a sale of the Clippers.

Silver said the NBA's investigation included an interview with Sterling, who confirmed that the voice on the tape was his. "Deeply offensive and harmful," Silver called Sterling's words. To the game's long history of black players, Silver said simply: "I apologize."

Forcing Sterling to sell the team will require a three-fourths vote, but Silver added that he has "the full support" of the league's other owners.

Silver said Sterling's sordid history was not taken into account when handing down the ban and suspension, that that it will be considered when owners decide whether to compel Sterling to sell the franchise. Silver notably dodged a reporter's question over why the NBA did not act until now.

When asked if Sterling ever displayed remorse for his comments, Silver merely said "Mr. Sterling did not express those views to me."

Yes, Sterling is going to make hundreds of millions if not a billion plus from the sale of the Clippers.  It's still forward progress and the Clippers organization is now moving on without him.

The Los Angeles Clippers supports NBA commissioner Adam Silver's decision to ban Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the league for life following his racist comments.

"We wholeheartedly support and embrace the decision by the NBA and Commissioner Adam Silver today. Now the healing process begins," the team said in a statement.

The turd in the punchbowl?  FOX News, of course.

Jo Ling Kent, a reporter for Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show, was the first and possibly only voice offering a defense for Donald Sterling at Tuesday’s NBA press conference by asking the commissioner if it was a “slippery slope” to punish him for racist comments.

We're not racists, just #1 with racists.

 But Kent became the first to offer what sounded like a defense of the accused racist.

“Should someone lose their team for remarks shared in private?” she asked. “Is this a slippery slope?”

“Whether or not these remarks were initially shared in private, they are now public,” Silver explained. “And they represent his views.”

BOOM.  Bye Don.

Lost Little Lamb Named Paul

BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins gives us this long read on Rep. Paul Ryan's trips into the inner city to learn about poverty.  At best it's black comedy, at worst it's self-serving tripe. About a third of the way in he talks about his "unfortunate" use of "inner-city" to suggest that black families were doing badly because black men were lazy and bad fathers.  It's about this point of the article that I call bull:

“Dog whistle… I’d never even heard the phrase before, to be honest with you,” he says. The admission isn’t meant as a dodge, or an excuse. He hails from a state where “diversity” means white people swapping genealogical trivia about their Polish and Norwegian ancestry — his hometown of Janesville, Wis., is 91.7% Caucasian, according to the 2010 census — and he is coming to terms with the fact that he is not equipped with the vocabulary of a liberal arts professor. The fallout from his gaffe has been a “learning experience,” he says, one that he predicts conservatives will have to go through many more times if they are serious about building inroads to the urban poor. 

“We have to be cognizant of how people hear things,” he says. “For instance, when I think of ‘inner city,’ I think of everyone. I don’t just think of one race. It doesn’t even occur to me that it could come across as a racial statement, but that’s not the case, apparently… What I learned is that there’s a whole language and history that people are very sensitive to, understandably so. We just have to better understand. You know, we’ll be a little clumsy, but it’s with the right intentions behind it.” 

If the episode has brought Ryan a heightened degree of self-awareness, it has also infected his rhetoric with a persistent strain of insecurity. He is like a singer who has suddenly discovered his lack of relative pitch while on stage, and now worries that every note he’s belting out is off-key. As we talk, he chooses his words with extreme care, and is prone to halting self-censorship. 

At one point, as he tells me about his efforts during the presidential race to get the Romney campaign to spend more time in urban areas, he says, “I wanted to do these inner-city tours—” then he stops abruptly and corrects himself. “I guess we’re not supposed to use that.”

Ryan's only problem is political correctness, you see.  It's not like his processions of budget cuts would obliterate programs that serve the very impoverished Americans he's trying to help, right?

When Ryan released his annual budget in the beginning of April, it lacked the poverty-related proposals he had supposedly been honing for the past year. Instead, it was largely a rehash of his past budgets, focused on shrinking the deficit by scaling back federal welfare and entitlement programs. One study by the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that two-thirds of his proposed cuts came from expenditures that benefit low-income Americans.

Oops.  But Ryan ambles out there among the people, trying desperately to understand poverty in America, and he's confused most of all as to why people "choose" to remain poor.

Sarah Palin would have been a comically disastrous Vice President, but Paul Ryan would have been devastating.  And no amount of "Well, he's really trying hard, you guys!" reporting from BuzzFeed is going to fix the tens of billions he wants to take away from the poorest people in the country.

StupidiNews!

• Two days of tornadoes in the Midwest and South have claimed at least 18 lives from Oklahoma east to Alabama as the third day of storms is shaping up for the Appalachians today.
• A group of clergymen from several different denominations are suing North Carolina over the state's constitution banning same-sex marriage, citing the religious freedom to be able to perform them.
• At least 50 are dead in a wave of suicide bombings at a political rally in Iraq ahead of this week's national elections.
• Disney is betting big on China's new middle class visiting its Shanghai theme park as the company is raising investment in the property by $800 million to nearly $5.5 billion total.
• The ACLU is taking on the next frontier in police car chases as they are exploring the legal angles of "GPS bullet" technologies that can fire a tracking device to tag a speeding car.

Last Call For Egg On Your Face

Orange Julius's primary challenger up in Butler Couty, JD "Electile Dysfunction" Winteregg, has apparently lost his job teaching at a Christian college over the awful ad.

Winteregg had been an adjunct professor at Cedarville University in Ohio over the past three years. He finished teaching his last class and, according to the university, is not scheduled to teach any future classes.

"Cedarville University does not engage in partisan politics and holds a high regard for displaying Christian values in the community," the statement from Cedarville University said. "When faculty or staff members participate in political conversations, interviews, advertisements, or endorsements, they are doing so as individual citizens. Mr. Winteregg in his recent political campaign video did not represent the views or values of Cedarville University."

The statement from Cedarville follows Winteregg's campaign releasing an ad modeled after commercials for Cialis. But instead of erectile dysfunction the campaign said Boehner had "electile dysfunction."

"Sometimes when a politician has been in D.C. too long, it goes to his head and he just can't seem to get the job done," the narrator in the ad said.

In an interview with The Washington Post on Monday Winteregg said that the ad was what caused Cedarville to end its ties with him.

"They said because of the ad that my relationship with them will be done. It's over," Winteregg said on Monday. "The ad obviously touched a nerve."

Yeah those Christian colleges, hotbeds of liberal fascism, I'll tell ya.  Or maybe those religious conduct measures are kinda crappy after all, and that Winteregg got exactly what he deserved.

Or maybe he's just an obnoxious clown who got fired for being a douchebag.  Maybe Jesus should be less politically correct, huh boys?

Dear America

"Liberals are all race-baiters anyway, and the whole Donald Sterling case is less about racism (which makes no financial sense for an NBA owner) and all about his gold-digging whore mistress.  At best it's a domestic dispute, and at worst he's being set up by Obama and the NAACP.  It's Reverse Racism Othello, with a poor old doddering man.  I don't see what the fuss is about."

--John Hinderaker, Power Line

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

This sad domestic drama has become the best evidence the Left can come up with of the ongoing legacy of slavery and discrimination. It merits denunciation by the President of the United States, who locates the old man’s sad story in the grand sweep of history.

On the tape, Donald Sterling says, “I love the black people.” I can’t vouch for his sincerity, but there is nothing in the DMZ/Deadspin tapes that belies that sentiment. It is telling that this domestic upheaval between an aging billionaire and his gold-digging, disloyal mistress represents the best the Left can come up with to support its claim that racism and the “legacy of race and slavery and segregation” is alive and well. As for Sterling, he is merely collateral damage. That Lifetime Achievement award was almost in his grasp, when he became more useful to the Left as a villain. Something tells me, however, that Stiviano will land on her feet.

So because it doesn't make financial sense to be a racist sports franchise owner, it ergo cannot be racism, because certainly the NBA wouldn't look the other way with a billionaire owner or anything for 30 years.

What Hinderaker doesn't understand about racism and discrimination could fill the Library of Congress, but the bottom line is that there's a power component to racism.  Being a billionaire NBA owner, a club of 30 such billionaires, definitely fits the "power" definition to me.  The NBA doesn't want an ugly mess on its hands or to damage its multi-billion dollar brand, so old man Sterling gets a pass and has for three decades.  He gets to keep owning the team until such point as he craps the bed and hurts the league and all the other owners.  He gets to employ black players who make him a lot of money, and a black head coach in Doc Rivers who has gotten his team into the playoffs.  Staples built him a new stadium.  Power and privilege is awesome.

And Hinderaker dismisses it, because for him to admit that racism still exists would blow a hole in all of his high horse nonsense.  To him it's just his "gold-digging, disloyal mistress" getting revenge.

But it's never racism when a white person with billions does it.  Can't be.

Making A Moose Of Things

I can't think of anything more banal and bone-tiring than the thought of Sarah Palin speaking at the annual NRA convention but here we are.

During a speech at the National Rifle Association's annual convention on Saturday, Palin, also the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, criticized President Obama's administration for treating suspected terrorists too gingerly.

Discussing "enemies who would utterly annihilate America - they who'd obviously have information on plots," she said, "Oh, but you can't offend them, can't make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen."

"Well, if I were in charge," she continued, as the audience erupted in applause at the prospect, "they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."

She criticized the administration for pursuing a national security strategy that, in her estimation, pokes "our allies in the eye, calling them adversaries, instead of putting the fear of God in our enemies."

Palin also rallied the pro-gun audience to continue protecting their right to bear arms, saying their efforts are "needed now more than ever because every day, we are seeing more and more efforts to strip away our Second Amendment rights."

She warned that the president and his administration were trying to enact gun control to keep a firmer grip on the American people, and she urged the roughly 13,000 NRA faithful in the crowd to fight back.

"If you control oil, you control an economy. If you control money, you control commerce," she said. "But if you control arms, you control the people, and that is what they're trying to do."

So awesome, in a Palin administration we'd be shooting our rifles all day and torturing all the bad guys all night.  Big American party time! Yeah, President Obama was really a softy when he had Seal Team Six put a bullet in Osama's brain.  Oh well.

Glad she'll never be president.

StupidiNews!

• On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called the Holocaust "the most heinous crime in modern human history".
• Two members of Paris's elite anti-gang police task force have been charged with raping a Canadian tourist inside the unit's police headquarters.
• Macedonia's conservative ruling party has scored a victory as PM Nikola Gruevski remains in office for a third term, despite opposition protests and calls to not recognize the election as fair.
• Toyota will move its US headquarters from California to Texas as the automaker looks to take advantage of lower taxes and fewer regulations.
• The White House is expected to announce the results of a study on big data and discrimination and recommend changes to civil rights laws as part of reforms to the NSA.

Last Call For The Post Windows XP Era

The first major Microsoft Internet Explorer bug since the company announced the end of support for Windows XP was discovered, and no, if you still have Windows XP, Microsoft isn't going to fix it.

Microsoft Corp is rushing to fix a bug in its widely used Internet Explorer web browser after a computer security firm disclosed the flaw over the weekend, saying hackers have already exploited it in attacks on some U.S. companies.

PCs running Windows XP will not receive any updates fixing that bug when they are released, however, because Microsoft stopped supporting the 13-year-old operating system earlier this month. Security firms estimate that between 15 and 25 percent of the world's PCs still run Windows XP.

Microsoft disclosed on Saturday its plans to fix the bug in an advisory to its customers posted on its security website, which it said is present in Internet Explorer versions 6 to 11. Those versions dominate desktop browsing, accounting for 55 percent of the PC browser market, according to tech research firm NetMarketShare.

So cool, back of the napkin math (55% of users still use IE times 20% of users have XP still) is a little over 10% of the entire PCs in the world that will remain vulnerable to this major IE bug, ballpark.  Probably more than that as if you're still using XP, you're probably not using another browser besides IE, so let's call it 15%, or about one in six PC's on earth are going to remain vulnerable right now.  Vulnerable to what?

Microsoft said in the advisory that the vulnerability could allow a hacker to take complete control of an affected system, then do things such as viewing changing, or deleting data, installing malicious programs, or creating accounts that would give hackers full user rights.

And remember, this is a vulnerability that goes all the way back to IE version 6.  It's been around for several years, and it gives the keys to your PC to hackers.  If you're still using an XP PC, the time to upgrade is now.

It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Be This Scared

The NRA wants you to never forget that they have millions of members with millions of firearms.

Who's going to crush whom, indeed?  Take the NRA's "greatest victory", Georgia's new "guns everywhere" law.

Parents at a Forysth County park abruptly stopped a children's baseball game after growing suspicions of the behavior of a man carrying a gun in a waist holster Tuesday night.

"He's just walking around [saying] 'See my gun? Look, I got a gun and there's nothing you can do about it.' He knew he was frightening people. He knew exactly what he was doing," said parent Karen Rabb.

Rabb told Channel 2’s Tom Regan the parents grew so alarmed that they brought the game to a halt when the man declined a request that he leave a parking lot overlooking the baseball field.

“He scared people to the point where we stopped the game, took the kids out of the dugout and behind the dugout, and kind of hunkered down,” Rabb said.

Park users flooded 911 with 22 calls about the man. Forysth County deputies questioned the man, and found that he had a permit for the handgun. Authorities said since the man made no verbal threats or gestures, they could neither arrest him nor ask him to leave the park.

Congratulations again on your new Wild West laws, Georgia.  The millions of NRA members and the Republicans that serve them got this law passed to give that fellow the right to do exactly what he did.  Not anything you can do about it, because you demanded that be legal.

Another parent questioned what point the man was trying to prove.

"Why would anyone be walking around a public park, with a lot of children and parents and people here playing baseball, and he's walking around with a gun? I don't think the parents would have been nervous had he just had the gun in his holster and was just watching the game," said parent Paris Horton.

Rabb's 6-year-old son Ethan was playing at the time and later expressed concern to his mother.

"When I was reading my son's story last night, he turned to me and said 'Mommy, did that man want to kill me?'" said Rabb.

Feel safer yet, parents?  The solution of course is next time for all these scared parents to bring their guns to the park, right?  So they can feel safe.  And soon, everybody will have guns, and everybody will feel safe, because Second Amendment.  And the kids will learn that to be safe, you have to have a gun. 

And then they will learn that guns "solve problems".  Original intent of the founders, because FREEDOM.

Of Sterling Character

Just another reminder that racism still exists in 2014, this time from long-time troublemaker and dirty old man Donald Sterling, owner of the NBA's LA Clippers.  Deadspin is all over this story:

We all knew that Donald Sterling was a racist and an overall horrible human being. So TMZ's lurid audio of the Los Angeles Clippers owner enraged about his girlfriend taking photos with black people shouldn't really surprise you if you've been paying any attention. And yet, the audio is shocking—maybe because it's 2014, and this man is still allowed to own an NBA team. 

Still allowed.  Sterling has owned the Clippers since 1981 and has been a cancer in the NBA ever since.

According to then-GM Paul Phipps, during an airport meeting with Rollie Massimino—a potential candidate to replace the fired Paul Silas as head coach—Donald Sterling asked the Villanova coach: "I wanna know why you think you can coach these niggers."

Our latest chapter in Donald Sterling Is a Racist comes courtesy of Jeff Pearlman. In interviews with Phipps for a book about the NBA in the 80s, Pearlman learned that Massimino later told Phipps he would be passing on the job in an angry early-morning phone call.

Phipps, half asleep, sat up on his bed and asked what went wrong. “Here’s this guy,” Massimino said, “and he has this blonde bimbo with him, they have a bottle of champagne, they’re tanked. And Don looks at me and he says, ‘I wanna know why you think you can coach these niggers.’”

Massimino told Phipps he began screaming at Sterling and swore he’d rather die than become coach of the Clippers. “That,” said Phipps, “was life with Donald Sterling.”

Things worked out just fine for Massimino, though.

 Now it seems a fight with his girlfriend (Sterling is married, btw) has prompted the release of this 15 minute highlight reel of Sterling's most awesome, racist rants after the jump.