Last Call For Bravely Rand Away

Sen. Rand Paul had a bit of a problem yesterday when a pair of immigration activists found him eating lunch in Iowa along with GOP Rep Steve King Of The Melonheads.  Steve King stuck around to argue (badly) with Erika Andiola and Cesar Vargas, but about five seconds after meeting the pair, Rand Paul apparently got up and fled in abject terror.

Today, Rand Paul made his excuses as to why he fled the scene at approximately MACH 9.

"About two minutes before that, the video doesn't show that another reporter came up and said 'will you do an interview,'" Paul explained on Fox News' "On The Record." "And I said, 'I need to take a couple more bites and we'll do an interview.' And then I was told we had to leave and I had to do the interview. So actually, I stand about ten feet from those people, who were doing sort of a kamikaze interview, and I stood ten feet from them and did another interview." 

The aide who whisked Paul away from the immigration activists, Sergio Gor, previously told the National Journal that Paul "had a media avail after the event and that's where we had to be." 

The Kentucky Republican said he doesn't shy away from debate on immigration. 

"I've always been open to discussing immigration. I'm very open to discussing that I think there should be some kind of immigration reform," Paul told host Greta Van Susteren. "But I don't think you can do it without first securing the border, and that's the problem with the President doing this unlawfully."

Uh-huh.  "I wasn't running away from this interview.  I was running towards another interview, because I'm really important and I'm here in Iowa campaigning for 2016 and besides, I trust Steve King's judgment on immigration."

The old political adage "If you're explaining, you're losing" is apropos here.  Trust me, Rand Paul is losing.

Dear America

"I don't understand why you people are so upset about Rep. Mo Brooks's statement about the 'War on Whites'.  Sure it was a poor choice of words but he was right and besides, it's nowhere near as awful as what racist, racist liberals do to black people every day with affirmative action or what racist, racist Democrats did to minorities with the Great Society, or why racist, racist black people won't vote for Ben Carson or Herman Cain."

--W. James Antle, Daily Caller

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

Even the real unfairness and injustice of some race-conscious affirmative action programs is far less brutal and systematic than Jim Crow.

Ahh, but we black people are too stupid to see the truth about how systematically being disenfranchised was a whole lot better than being admitted to college, so we probably deserve it.  If only we were smart enough to rise up against the liberals treating us as human beings and would side with the conservatives who see us as an unfortunate social plague of subhuman vermin, everything would be awesome.

The Marriage Equality Fight Comes To Cincy

Cincinnati is ground zero this week in the battle for same-sex marriage as a three-judge panel from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear challenges to state constitution same-sex marriage bans in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Michigan.

A same-sex marriage showdown happens in Cincinnati on Wednesday as three federal appeals judges, including two Ohioans, hear marriage cases from Ohio and three neighboring states.

It will be the single-largest legal event in the same-sex marriage debate since June 26, 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional. Since then, every major federal and state court ruling nationwide has gone in favor of gay-marriage proponents.

The Cincinnati hearings are expected to draw such large crowds of journalists and spectators to the Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse that the clerk of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has set up two overflow courtrooms equipped with piped-in audio of the proceedings.

The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law determined that about 18,300 children of same-sex couples, and nearly 52,400 same-sex couples, could be affected by the outcome of the five cases. The group said Ohio has about 19,684 same-sex couples — 54 percent of whom are female — and more than 3,760 same-sex-couple households raising nearly 6,800 children.

If there is a Circuit Court where the decision will go in favor of "traditional values" (you know, like bigotry), it's the conservative 6th.  Two judges on the three-judge panel were appointed by good ol' Dubya, one by Bill Clinton.  I don't expect this to go well for the forces of justice here.

It's a moot point in the long run, however.  Utah has already appealed the 10th Circuit's decision in favor of same-sex marriage to the Supreme Court this week.  A group appealing the 4th Circuit's decision in favor of marriage equality in Virginia last week will file quickly as well.

Should the 6th Circuit embarrass itself as much as I expect it to, a Supreme Court hearing would then be inevitable with differing Circuit Court opinions.

We'll see what happens.

StupidiNews!

• US Army Maj. Gen. Harold Greene was killed in Afghanistan by a man dressed in an Afghan army uniform, the highest ranking officer killed in Afghanistan so far.
• Hurricane Iselle is expected to hit Hawaii as a tropical storm later this week, but Hurricane Julio is following close behind.
• Kansas GOP Sen. Pat Roberts has successfully fought off a primary challenge from Tea Partier Milton Wolf, 48-41%, in Tuesday primary action.
• FOX Chairman Rupert Murdoch has dropped his bid to take over Time Warner as stock prices for the news company had fallen sharply since the deal was announced.
• Russian hackers have collected some 1.2 billion passwords across hundreds of sites ranging from local web merchants to Fortune 500 companies.

Last Call For Kynect The Dots Again

Gallup's new numbers on the uninsured show that Kentucky cut its percentage of uninsured from 20.4% to 11.9, an 8.5% drop and second only to Arkansas, which saw a 10.1% drop to 12.4%.

Arkansas and Kentucky lead all other states in the sharpest reductions in their uninsured rate among adult residents since the healthcare law's requirement to have insurance took effect at the beginning of the year. Delaware, Washington, and Colorado round out the top five. All 10 states that report the largest declines in uninsured rates expanded Medicaid and established a state-based marketplace exchange or state-federal partnership.

Imagine that.  In states where Obamacare was allowed to work, it's working.  In states controlled by Republicans, who want people to be uninsured because they hate Obama, it's not working as well.

As Gallup previously reported, the states that chose to expand Medicaid and set up their own health exchanges had a lower uninsured rate to begin with: 16.1% compared with 18.7% for the remaining states -- a difference of 2.6 percentage points. The already notable gap between the two groups of states widened through the first quarter to 4.3 points, as states that have implemented these core mechanisms of the Affordable Care Act reduced their uninsured rates three times more than states that did not implement these core mechanisms.

"But here in Kentucky, we hate that there Obama fella.  Even though he got us affordable health coverage for the first time in years."

At some point people will recognize what the Affordable Care Act did for them.  By then President Obama will be long out of office, I fear.

I Believe I May Have Located The Source Of Your Problem, America

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that 51% of Americans disapprove of the job their current Representative in the House is doing, with just 41% approving.  That's the lowest approval rating Americans have given their own member of Congress in decades.

Even if it's a "throw the bums out and clean house" election, at absolute minimum 85% of those members will be re-elected in November anyway, and more than likely that number will top 90%.  97% + of House seats will remain in the same party that they are represented by now.

In the immortal words of Sean Connery in The Untouchables, "Here endeth the lesson."

GOP Minority Outreach, Part Infinity

Gotta hand it to Alabama GOP Rep. Mo Brooks, who finally said out loud what pretty much all of the FOX crowd has been thinking for the last six years:  President Obama and the Democrats hate white people or something.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) doesn't think that the hardline stance Republicans have taken on immigration could hurt the party’s standing with Hispanic voters. Instead, he thinks Democrats are hurting their prospects with white voters. 

“This is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party. And the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else,” he said during an interview Monday with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. "It's part of the strategy that Barack Obama implemented in 2008, continued in 2012, where he divides us all on race, on sex, greed, envy, class warfare, all those kinds of things. Well that’s not true.”

Well now, I guess it's okay to say this now, huh?  I mean, you want to talk about ridiculous levels of projection, there you are, but that's what millions of Republican voters actually believe.  Of course Obama and the Democrats are leading a "war on whites".  The Southern Strategy has never been more alive. Nothing has changed for these lowlifes since the 60's.

The 1860's.

"It doesn't make any difference if you're a white American, a black American, a Hispanic American, an Asian American or if you're a woman or a man. Every single demographic group is hurt by falling wages and lost jobs,” he said. 

“Democrats, they have to demagogue on this and try and turn it into a racial issue, which is an emotional issue, rather than a thoughtful issue," he added. "If it becomes a thoughtful issue, then we win and we win big. And they lose and they lose big. ”

Race only matters to those people, you know.  But you're not one of them.  You're thoughtful and smart and not emotional and weak.  And immigrants, well, they're gonna TAKE YER JOBS.

Brooks then later "clarified" his views, which apparently meant doubling down on them.

"They're attacking, by the Democrats' opening soliciting votes of people based on skin color, they in turn are attacking whites based on skin color and that's wrong. Nobody should be attacked based on skin color," he continued.

Brooks then accused Democrats of injecting race into every issue they can, not just immigration issues.

"The Democrats do it on a regular basis and you can see it in the campaign appeals that they make based on skin color. I don't know of a single Republican who has made an appeal for votes based on skin color. I don't know of one," he said. "The Democrats routinely make appeals based on race and they get away with it. It's repugnant to ever make an appeal based on race."

"I'm not a racist appealing to people based on skin color", says the racist appealing to people based on skin color.

Here's my real question:  I know Congress is on its five-week vacation from actually having to do any work, but where are the "moderate Republicans" who oppose this guy's idiocy?  Where are his fellow Alabama Republicans to say "no, this is wrong"?  Where are those folks who understand how important immigration and outreach are to the future of the GOP?

Whereever they are, they had nothing to say yesterday or today.  It's like there are no moderate Republicans left.  That's because they don't exist, because it's clear that the Southern Strategy is now 100% the GOP Strategy.  White resentment is literally all they have left.

StupidiNews!

• A second Ebola patient is heading to Atlanta's Emory University Hospital to receive an experimental treatment to stave off the deadly disease.
• The UK's first Muslim minister has quit PM David Cameron's Cabinet in protest over the government's policy towards Palestinians in Gaza.
• A tentative 72-hour cease fire in Gaza is holding as Israel continues to remove troops from the area, the IDF calling the destruction of tunnels used by Hamas "mission accomplished".
• News giant Gannett Corp will complete its buyout of Cars.com as the company spins off its newspaper business into a second company.
• The military junta that currently runs Thailand feels that PC game and "dictator simulator" Tropico 5 hits too close to home and is banning sales of the game in the country.

Last Call For Benghazi, For Good

So lost in all the chatter of House Republicans now being the party of maximum deportations is the fact the House Intelligence Committee's report on Benghazi has been declassified, and the main finding after 23 exhaustive months of Republican screaming is the fact that Republicans found zero wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the deaths of four Americans.

The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee. […] 

Thompson said the report “confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given.”

So Republicans themselves were not able to find anything wrong.  After nearly two years of ridiculous accusations, endless moronic preening by Darrell Issa, and fake outrage driven by the FOX noise machine, the game is now over.

Of course until the next manufactured outrage arises, and we play the game all over again.

GOP Playing The Dozens

I had somehow manged to miss this last week: National Republican Senate Committee head Jerry Moran is now talking about Republicans gaining 12-14 seats in November, because he's completely high on his own supply at this point.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Jerry Moran said Tuesday the GOP’s pickup opportunities have expanded to around a dozen states — twice as many as needed to take control of the Senate. 

“I think we have a good map in the sense that we have good candidates and good states,” Moran told CQ Roll Call’s Niels Lesniewski. “The map has expanded over time. In my view, [it] started out with six or seven — now 10 or 12.” 

Republicans have clear advantages in South Dakota, West Virginia and Montana. About three months before the elections, the party is also in a better position in Iowa and Colorado than it was at the beginning of the year, and the GOP is giving Democratic incumbents strong challenges in states including Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina and Alaska. 

Beyond that, Republicans are hopeful in Michigan, New Hampshire, Minnesota and a couple others, though Democrats remain favored in each of those. 

“Again, all — all circumstances are positive for having good candidates in states that they can win,” Moran said.

Moran later told the Daily Caller that number could be as high as 14.

Look, I expect Moran to say stuff like this, for the same reason DCCC char Steve Israel says he thinks the Dems can take back the House.  But 14 seats?  Al Franken and Jeanne Shaheen losing, along with Jeff Merkeley in blue, blue Oregon?  He's bonkers.

Yes, it's going to be a rough fight in NC, Louisiana, and Alaska (and SD, WV and Montana are pretty much lost causes.)  But the Dems can win those races because they've won them before.  Most people are talking 5 or 6 seats, not fourteen.

At any rate, the trick on our part is to get out and vote in November, and get other people to vote too. Registration deadlines are coming up in a number of states in the next few weeks.  It's time to make sure our game faces are on.

A Complete And Total Walsh-Out

The editorial board of Montana's Billings Gazette paper is pulling no punches, calling on Sen. John Walsh to surrender the race, stop campaigning, and to finish out his appointed term to follow up Max Baucus after his retirement and to leave without a fuss.

Gov. Steve Bullock, who chose Walsh as his lieutenant governor running mate in 2012, endorsed his Senate bid and appointed him to the U.S. Senate earlier this year, bears significant responsibility for sending Montanans a weak Senate candidate.

Other Montana Democrats, including Bullock, should put pressure on Walsh to do the right thing. They need to distance the party from this, as well as demonstrate they can make a stand beyond politics. Instead of closing ranks around Walsh, Democrats should call on him to do the right thing.

Having repeatedly said that he wants to do the honorable thing, Walsh should stop campaigning and do his utmost to serve Montanans well in the remainder of his brief Senate appointment. That is the honorable course.

We call on Walsh to devote all his time to serving as U.S. senator and bag the campaigning. Montana needs full representation as the Senate reauthorizes the surface transportation bill, finalizes the budget, deals with public land issues, veterans services and numerous other issues important to our state.

Haunted by a serious lapse in academic honesty, Walsh is finished as a U.S. Senate candidate. But he should work even more diligently to finish the Senate job he already accepted.

That's a pretty rough assessment and an even rougher solution.   The Gazette freely admits that if there was more time between now and November Walsh should resign, but that would leave Montana with only one senator, and the board complains very loudly that it would just put the now-suspect Gov. Steve Bullock in the same situation he was in before of having to appoint someone.

Still, calling on Walsh to abandon his campaign and for the rest of the state's Democrats to turn their backs on him is a major and telling blow.  The cold reality is that there's little the Dems can do to keep this seat in November at this point.

StupidiNews!

• A magnitude 6.1 earthquake in China's Yunnan province has left at least 390 dead and nearly 1,900 injured as the city of Zhaotong and surrounding areas saw thousands of building destroyed.
• As the situation in Libya continues to worsen, a British navy ship is helping to evacuate British nationals from the country's capital of Tripoli to the nearby island of Malta.
• Palestinians are already accusing Israel of breaking its own unilateral cease fire as the IDF pulls troops out of Gaza after destroying the bulk of Hamas tunnels into Israel.
• London Mayor Boris Johnson wants Britain out of the EU unless trade policies are reformed over the next three years.
• The LAPD wants people to stop flying camera drones over its police stations after confronting a man operating one over a station in Hollywood.

Last Call For The Racoon And The Tree

Saw Guardians of the Galaxy this afternoon, and brother, this movie certainly does not disappoint.



Based on the Marvel comics series, the movie opens in 1988 with young Peter Quill visiting his sick mother in the hospital and realizing he has to say goodbye, as her cancer is terminal and she doesn't have long.  After the inevitable happens, he runs out into the night only to have the hand of fate scoop him up and put him squarely on the path to destiny among the stars.

Cut to 2014, and grown-up (physically, but surely not emotionally) Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is a space-hopping thief and con man whose latest score brings the promise of untold riches, not to mention a very big bounty on his head.  Galactic-level bad guy Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) wants the artifact Quill has stolen, and it becomes a mad dash for the cash when bounty hunters Rocket (voiced brilliantly by Bradley Cooper) and his partner Groot (Vin Diesel in full emotive Iron Giant mode) give chase, and Ronan sends his own trump card Gamora (a verdant Zoe Saldana) to grab the loot.

Only Quill isn't as stupid as he seems, and the four of them get rounded up by Nova Corps, the galactic equivalent of Interpol (headed by Glenn Close, no less!) and tossed in the nearest space prison, where they meet Drax the Destroyer (who knew WWE wrestler Dave Bautista could act?) The five of them escape from Ronan and his sidekick Nebula (Karen Gilliam) and the adventure truly begins as the real villain pulling Ronan's strings is the same person responsible for that pesky invasion of Earth in The Avengers: Thanos, the Mad Titan (Josh Brolin), who has his own plans for the artifact.  It's up to Quill and his new "partners" to stop him and save the galaxy.

I personally had a blast at this film.  Cooper and Bautista provide some laugh out loud moments, and Pratt's charm is evident as he smirks his way from one disastrous situation to the next.  The film is well-written and doesn't get bogged down, and like The Avengers you're definitely pulling for this team of ragtag destruction by the end of the film. The movie is well-written and doesn't get bogged down with too much exposition, and Marvel aficionados will see a lot to like here as we get our first real taste of Marvel's cosmic-level players.

I highly recommend this film.  But don't take my word for it, odds are you've probably seen it this weekend as the movie blew up with the highest August weekend opening ever.

Republicans Keep Talking Impeachment

Ross Douthat:

Over the last month, the Obama political apparatus — a close aide to the president, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the “independent” voices at MSNBC — has been talking nonstop about an alleged Republican plan to impeach the president. John Boehner’s symbolic lawsuit against the White House has been dubbed “impeachment lite,” Sarah Palin’s pleas for attention have been creatively reinterpreted as G.O.P. marching orders, and an entire apocalyptic fund-raising campaign has been built around the specter of a House impeachment vote.

Anyone paying attention knows that no such impeachment plan is currently afoot. So taken on its own, the impeachment chatter would simply be an unseemly, un-presidential attempt to raise money and get out the 2014 vote.

But it isn’t happening in a vacuum, because even as his team plays the impeachment card with gusto, the president is contemplating — indeed, all but promising — an extraordinary abuse of office: the granting of temporary legal status, by executive fiat, to up to half the country’s population of illegal immigrants.

We're up to the point where we're not talking about impeaching the President for something he did, but for something he might do, and could, legally.

Rep. Steve King:

Host Chris Wallace asked King what he would do if Obama decides to delay deportations, and Rep. King answered, “None of us want to do the thing that’s left for us as an alternative, but if the president has decided that he is simply not going to enforce any immigration law, or at least not against anybody except the felons, which essentially he has done already this is a broader group of people. I think Congress has to sit down and have a serious look at the rest of this Constitution, and that includes that i-word that we don’t want to say, and I only say now on this program, because I want to encourage the president, please don’t put America into a constitutional crisis, please don’t do that. There’s too much at stake in this country to be deciding that you can take over the Constitution and write it at will.”

Wallace asked if he was saying that impeachment was on the table. King answered, “I think that we have to sit down and take a look at that. Where we would we draw the line otherwise? If that’s not enough to bring that about, then I don’t know what would be.”

So now we have Republicans openly threatening the President with impeachment if he acts.  But it's all a Democratic party ploy, right?   Steve King is blatant:  if you act on immigration, we will impeach.

But yes, it's all Democrats talking it up.

What The Frack Is Going On In Toledo

Remember, Republicans like those in Gov. John Kasich's party want to do away with the Environmental Protection Agency.  I can't see why that would be an issue at all.

A toxin discovered in a northwestern Ohio treatment plant left 500,000 people without drinkable tap water for a second day Sunday.

Toledo Mayor D. Michael Collins said the level of toxins in the water has decreased, but that more tests are needed to ensure that the city's water is safe to drink.

"This is not over yet," Collins said Sunday.

Residents of Toledo, its suburbs and small areas of southeastern Michigan began lining up for water Saturday after news of the contamination surfaced. Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared a state of emergency for Lucas, Wood and Fulton counties and deployed the National Guard to get water and meals ready to eat, or MREs, to the area.

"What's more important than water? Water's about life," Kasich said. "We know it's difficult. We know it's frustrating."

In a news release, the city of Toledo said the toxins likely came from harmful algae blooms in nearby Lake Erie.

"These organisms are capable of producing a number of toxins that may pose a risk to human and animal health," the release said.

Samples of water were flown to the federal and state Environmental Protection Agency offices in Cincinnati and Columbus and a university in Michigan for testing, officials said.

Toxic algae in Lake Erie?  Can't imagine where that could have come from.   Maybe, I dunno, Kasich's fracking program?  Now thousands in Toledo can't drink the water, but let's trash the EPA and expand drilling in the Great Lakes.  Remember, Kasich said the Great Lakes would be protected.

What could go wrong?