Last Call For Hand Over The Cash

At least one Republican governor is publicly saying that they want the GOP to lose King v Burwell in front of the Supreme Court this June in order to preserve Obamacare subsidies for the people in his state who need affordable health care.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R) is no fan of the Affordable Care Act. He supported the first Supreme Court case seeking to repeal the law, and he claimed that the law is “unconstitutional.” And yet, at a news conference last week, Mead echoed many of the Justice Department’s warnings regarding what will happen if the justices side with a new case seeking to gut the law. Indeed, according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, Mead “hopes the court will reject the case and uphold the law.” 

The attorneys behind King v. Burwell asked the Supreme Court to cut off tax credits, which allow millions of Americans to afford their health insurance, in close to three dozen states. If the justices agree to do so, millions of people’s premiums will triple or worse, and an estimated 8 million people insured through the law’s exchanges will lose their coverage. Nearly 10,000 people will die every year who otherwise would have lived, according to one estimate. Meanwhile, the sudden, enormous spikes in the cost of insurance will destabilize many states’ individual insurance markets, potentially triggering a “death spiral” that will cause those markets to collapse. 

In his press conference, Mead worried about the chaos that would result from a decision that allowed all of this to happen. “If on June 30, if that’s when the case comes down, and they say no more subsidies for federal exchanges … it is going to cause a lot of turmoil,” he warned, adding that his home state of Wyoming “will be scrambling” if the King plaintiffs win their case.

During oral arguments on King, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli expressed similar concerns that the states will not be able to adapt to a decision cutting off tax credits.

The reason is simple math.  You can't argue that Obamacare is a giveaway to urban minority voters in states like Wyoming, and the state is the least populous in the nation. Gov. Mead is just running the numbers and he knows that his constituents are in trouble if federal subsidies go away.

Five years later Obamacare is a reality, and dealing with is the only solution.  You'll see more and more GOP governors throw in the towel and take the money.

Nate Runs The March Madness Numbers

Bottom line:  Kentucky has been so completely dominant this season that they have a better chance of winning the championship (41%) than 61 other teams do even making the Final Four.

The FiveThirtyEight crew will update the odds as the tournament continues, but UK starting out with a two in five chance before they ever take the court is just amazing.  The odds are still that somebody other than UK will win it all, but that's the odds of the Wildcats winning five straight road games compared to 63 other teams.

Even my Blue Devils have a 6% shot as a number one seed.  That hurts, because this is a pretty decent squad this year.  Nobody else in Kentucky's region (Midwest) has a more than 1% chance of winning the tournament.  Hell, the odds of them making the Final Four are 72% before they touch the damn ball.

It's a Big Blue world, rest of us just live there.

And Iran, Iran So Far Away

Got to get away.

Though several Democratic senators told POLITICO they were offended by the missive authored by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), none of them said it would cause them to drop their support for bills to impose new sanctions on Iran or give Congress review power over a nuclear deal.

That presents another complication for the administration ahead of a rough deadline of March 24 to reach a nuclear agreement with the country.

“The letter’s incredibly unfortunate and inappropriate,” said Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, a centrist Democrat who voted for the sanctions bill in committee and is a sponsor of the congressional approval legislation. “That doesn’t diminish my support for the legislation that we introduced.”

The president’s challenge in Congress on the issue isn’t limited to the 47 Republican senators who signed last week’s missive arguing that a nuclear agreement could be revoked by the next U.S. president. In a letter released Saturday, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough implored Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) not to push for a vote on his bill that would give Congress 60 days to reject or approve of any deal.

McDonough argued that Corker’s measure, which has nearly a dozen Democratic supporters, “goes well beyond ensuring that Congress has a role to play in any deal with Iran.” And he asked Corker, who’s sought to maintain a cordial relationship with the White House, to let the administration finish its negotiations with Iran, indicating it may take until the end of June. A framework is expected by the end of this month.

Corker shrugged off the request in response. And in an interview late last week, he said he hasn’t lost the support of any Democrats despite the turbulent atmosphere surrounding Iran politics.

“Let a couple days go by. We think there’s going to be really ignited momentum,” Corker, who did not sign the Cotton letter, said on Thursday. “Nobody’s dropping out. We’ve had reaffirmed commitment” from Democrats.

Indeed, a day after the controversy over Cotton’s letter erupted, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado co-sponsored Corker’s congressional review bill, the 11th Democrat to signal support.

Democrats in Congress still haven't figured out that running away from President Obama in 2010 and 2014 cost them the House and now Senate respectively.  Instead of using Cotton's letter to rally the party and show a united front, Democrats are actively boasting about how they will stab the President in the back, even the ones not up for re-election in 2016, like Heitkamp.

Whatever.  With Hillary, Jim Webb, Martin O'Malley, and even Liz Warren all pretending Obama was as hated in his last two years as Dubya, don't expect too much form the Dems in 2016 at this rate.

StupidiNews!

• Multimillionaire real estate mogul Robert Durst, the subject of an HBO documentary, has been arrested for the 2000 murder portrayed in the film.
• Gay rights activists made their debut in Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade over the weekend, the first time in the parade's 114-year history that LGBTQ groups have openly participated.
• A 20-year old black man has been charged with the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri on Sunday, suspect Jeffrey L. Williams has reportedly confessed to firing the shots.
• A new German poll on Greece remaining in the eurozone has found 52% want Greece out of the shared currency, 80% believe Greece is not "behaving seriously" towards the EU.
• Global carbon emissions did not increase last year as the 2014 numbers show that the global reduction in oil demand lowered carbon production worldwide.

Last Call For Obstruction Construction

Meanwhile, over in the GOP Senate...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday said he plans to hold up attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch's confirmation until the Senate passes a now-controversial human trafficking bill.

"This will have an impact on the timing of considering a new attorney general," McConnell told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union." "I had hoped to turn to her next week, but if we can't finish the trafficking bill, she will be put off again."

Democrats are now holding up the trafficking bill, which glided through the judiciary committee, after they noticed an abortion provision embedded in the bill that would prevent victims of human trafficking from using restitution funds to pay for an abortion.

"We have to finish the human trafficking bill," McConnell said. "The Loretta Lynch nomination comes next."

A vote on Lynch's nomination was slated to take place this coming week, more than two weeks after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Lynch's nomination.

Democrats have pointed out that Lynch's nomination has been held up in the Senate longer than any U.S. attorney general nominee in three decades.

To recap, Republicans are insisting that a woman raped by her captors while held as a slave cannot use US government money to get an abortion, because that is apparently worse than being raped a victim of human trafficking and to make this point, they're going to stop the nomination of an AG until they make this an actual frigging law.

Because this, America, is what you voted for in November.

The New Benghazi

After completely losing his tantrum fight on shutting down the Department of Homeland Security, House Speaker John Boehner needs to get the Tea Party back on his side by going after somebody they hate more then himself, namely Hillary Clinton.

House Speaker John Boehner is expected to announce this week a new investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices as Secretary of State, including her admission that more than 31,000 emails were destroyed because she determined them to be personal, top House Republicans told ABC News today.

During a news conference last week, Clinton did not go into the details of how the review of her email was conducted, but said it was “thorough” and that she went “above and beyond” what she was required to do in turning over many of her emails to the State Department.

"We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related emails and deliver them to the State Department," she said, adding that all other emails were personal and pertained to matters such as "yoga routines," "family vacations," and "planning Chelsea's wedding."

So for the next year and a half, expect this to be on FOX News daily.  Except the part where House Republicans admit they were unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing after wasting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.  You'll never see that on Roger Ailes' network.

Sadly, Orange Julius is going to find out that this won't be enough red meat for the 2016 campaign.  Voters will start to tune this out long before November of next year.  But it sure gets him off the hook for caving on immigration, huh?

Sunday Long Read: Down And Out in Beattyville

When most people think of "poverty in America" images of boarded up inner city schools and black families on welfare immediately come to mind.  The reality of poverty is that one of the poorest counties in America is just 2 hours from my apartment, in Lee County, southeast of Lexington.  Lee County is 97% white, and the county's per capita income is under $14,000 a year.  But the idea here is that everything is the federal government's fault, and more specifically President Obama's problem, for structural issues that have been around for decades.

Bob Smith, editor of the local Three Forks Tradition newspaper, looked out the window of his Main Street office, resting one hand on his prodigious paunch and twisting his handlebar mustache with the other. 

“The reason this town is struggling,” he said, “rests squarely on the current administration in Washington. The potential for this town is here. There’s opportunity for tourism, and a population that’s ready to work—but there aren’t any jobs.” Smith doesn’t buy the official job growth numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “If there were all these jobs they say are being created, you wouldn’t see all these stores closed down. This town has potential, but the liberal media up in Lexington [Kentucky] won’t credit us ‘mountain folk’ with being able to chew gum and walk down the sidewalk at the same time.” 

On his desk sat a mountain of paper, books, and office supplies. A large dictionary was bookmarked with an array of objects—pens, flyers, a pair of scissors—and a decorative wooden box at the corner of the desk read, “All a man really needs out of life is three squares a day, a roof over his head, a reasonably good woman, and a damn good shotgun.” 

“In 1964, when I left Beattyville for a short while, there wasn’t a soul that didn’t have work in this town,” he recalled. “There was no welfare, no unemployment. Whoever thinks this War on Poverty hasn’t cost us is out of their mind. Do you know what the national debt is? Seventeen and a half trillion. And do you think it’s any coincidence that the cost for the War on Poverty has totaled seventeen and a half trillion? I don’t think so. It’s the same exact figure.”

This is the prevailing attitude in a lot of small town flyover country, the kind of place I grew up in back in North Carolina, you'll meet a dozen Bob Smiths just walking down the street. Most importantly, these are the folks who honestly believe all the "real" money being used to fight poverty is a massive giveaway going to inner city black kids and not poor Appalachian towns like Beattyville.

Never mind that Beattyville has a major drug problem, and people find the money to pay for their habits around here.

In the middle of Kooper’s General Store is a large wooden table where people come to chain smoke and talk over bologna sandwiches. The owner of the store, Karl, sat across from a soft-spoken logger named James who was on his lunch break. 

“I hate the drugs in this damn country,” Karl said. “That’s the cause of most the problems we have around here—not all, but most. They spend millions of dollars to fix it, but that’s all for show—they let this county go wild. Kids get hooked on this shit and you see it generation after generation. The parents pass it along to the kids.” 

James nodded in agreement as he chewed his sandwich. He spoke up only every once in a while, usually to agree with Karl. 

“You see the same people running around with this shit,” Karl continued. “Same families year after year, and nobody ever fusses. The sheriff has his hands tied, he can’t do anything about it. The FBI, the government—they don’t wanna deal with it. Too much money in drugs. Judges make money off of it, lawyers make money off of it, state police make money off of it.” 

“Pharmaceutical companies make plenty off it,” James added. 

“Exactly,” Karl said.

The war on drugs has certainly been bad in Appalachia.  And in many ways these are the same problems that you would find in inner-city Detroit or Cleveland or Phoenix or a host of other major cities.  What these places need is investment, real investment, but of course, that would be a handout.

And we can't have that.

Last Call For Endless War

You'll always be able to find people paid ridiculous amounts of money to advocate the invasion and regime change of some Middle Eastern country, but this time around it's Iran.

The logical flaw in the indictment of a looming “very bad” nuclear deal with Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered before Congress this month was his claim that we could secure a “good deal” by calling Iran’s bluff and imposing tougher sanctions. The Iranian regime that Netanyahu described so vividly — violent, rapacious, devious and redolent with hatred for Israel and the United States — is bound to continue its quest for nuclear weapons by refusing any “good deal” or by cheating.

This gives force to the Obama administration’s taunting rejoinder: What is Netanyahu’s alternative? War? But the administration’s position also contains a glaring contradiction. National security adviser Susan Rice declared at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference before Netanyahu’s speech that “a bad deal is worse than no deal.” So if Iran will accept only a “bad deal,” what is President Obama’s alternative? War?

Obama’s stance implies that we have no choice but to accept Iran’s best offer — whatever is, to use Rice’s term, “achievable” — because the alternative is unthinkable.

But should it be? What if force is the only way to block Iran from gaining nuclear weapons? That, in fact, is probably the reality. Ideology is the raison d’etre of Iran’s regime, legitimating its rule and inspiring its leaders and their supporters. In this sense, it is akin to communist, fascist and Nazi regimes that set out to transform the world. Iran aims to carry its Islamic revolution across the Middle East and beyond. A nuclear arsenal, even if it is only brandished, would vastly enhance Iran’s power to achieve that goal.

After Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, we're still talking about a dangerous, stupid, and bloody war that will cost us trillions and another lost economic decade.  And they learn nothing from the absolute, total, and complete failures of the past.

And finally, wouldn’t Iran retaliate by using its own forces or proxies to attack Americans — as it has done in Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia — with new ferocity? Probably. We could attempt to deter this by warning that we would respond by targeting other military and infrastructure facilities.

Nonetheless, we might absorb some strikes. Wrenchingly, that might be the price of averting the heavier losses that we and others would suffer in the larger Middle Eastern conflagration that is the likely outcome of Iran’s drive to the bomb. Were Iran, which is already embroiled in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza, further emboldened by becoming a “nuclear threshold state,” it would probably overreach, kindling bigger wars — with Israel, Arab states or both. The United States would probably be drawn in, just as we have been in many other wars from which we had hoped to remain aloof.

Yes, there are risks to military action. But Iran’s nuclear program and vaunting ambitions have made the world a more dangerous place. Its achievement of a bomb would magnify that danger manyfold. Alas, sanctions and deals will not prevent this.

"War's going to happen anyway, thousands will die anyway, might as well be on our terms". 

We've learned nothing.

The Oversharing Economy

Finally, a smartphone app that works as intended.




(It's fake but it's still brilliant.)

America's Default Mode Is Broken

Our 2014 elections have assured me that our Republican leaders in Congress will learn to govern any time now. I mean, what could possibly go wr...OH WAIT.

The Hill reports this morning that another “tense standoff,” one similar to the chaos that erupted around Department of Homeland Security funding, is likely to unfold around the need to replenish the Highway Trust Fund, which is set to run low on funding this spring. Business groups — and the Obama administration — are warning of disaster if funding for ongoing infrastructure projects evaporates, while conservative groups are insisting Republicans agree to devolve infrastructure back to the states. Yet John Boehner is already on record saying he wants to replenish infrastructure funding. He just hasn’t said how it should be paid for. Sound familiar? 

In the case of infrastructure, it should be noted that the failure is bipartisan: Democrats have also been far too reluctant to support the obvious solution, i.e., a hike in the gas tax. 

But then there’s the debt ceiling, where the culpability for any crisis will be a lot clearer: It will lie with Republicans who oppose a clean debt limit hike. The Treasury Department is warning that we are close to hitting the debt limit, and is asking Congress rather laughably to “address this mater without controversy or brinksmanship.” Mitch McConnell recently pledged that Republicans will not allow us to “default on the national debt, but in the very next breath, he added that he hoped a debt ceiling hike “might carry some other important legislation that we can agree on in connection with it,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. 

GOP leaders may fully intend to fund infrastructure and avoid default. But the battle over Homeland Security funding is a reminder: Even when they know exactly how these standoffs will end — with the stiff-arming of conservatives and the moving of must-pass legislation with the help of Democrats — they will postpone the inevitable for as long as possible, in an always-futile effort to persuade conservatives that they fought the good fight to the bitter end. Which suggests that the best case scenario is that ultimately, further crises will be avoided, but only after more bouts of messy, protracted, and (in the case of the debt ceiling in particular) destructive drama.

We are all thralls to the 18% of America who voted to keep the GOP in charge of Congress. The default mode of our country is hopelessly, stupidly broken, because MURICA.

Last Call For The Barbaric Yawp Of The Defeated

I'm not at all surprised to learn that opposition to same-sex marriage is growing in Kentucky as opponents are faced with the very real prospect that we're only a few months away from a Supreme Court decision that would nationalize it.

Showing a possible backlash to judicial decisions favoring gay marriage, the percentage of registered voters in Kentucky opposing it has increased to 57 percent this month compared to 50 percent in July. 

A Bluegrass Poll conducted March 3-8 shows that support for gay marriage also has dropped, from 37 percent to 33 percent. 

Chris Hartman, director of the Fairness Campaign, said the uptick in opposition probably reflects the fears of opponents that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to declare same-sex marriage a constitutional right. 

"Opponents are grasping for ground as it is removed under them," Hartman said. 

The high court will hear oral arguments April 28 on gay marriage bans in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Michigan. Thirty-seven states now allow gay nuptials, 26 of them by judicial decision.

That's a pretty significant spike, but I'm betting similar polls in other red states would show similar results, and a 5-10 point jump seems about right to me.  The prospect of actually having same-sex marriage as a reality where you live is starting to shake the bigots.  It's no longer a rhetorical exercise that will be reality "somewhere else", but imminent.

And judging from Alabama's legal tantrums over the subject, I think it's going to be a long, messy summer.

Even More Schock And Flaw

GOP Rep. Aaron Schock's pattern of abusing the power of his office for monetary gain is rapidly becoming a real problem for him and the Republican Party.

Schock traveled to India on official business in August 2014, a trip during which he met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Global Poverty Project, an advocacy organization that seeks to alleviate extreme poverty internationally, footed the bill, according to a spokesman for the group. 

But Schock's photographer and videographer, Jonathon Link, traveled with him on the trip, which was well-documented on Schock's Instagram account. The organization offered to pay for the costs of one staffer to accompany Schock as long as the staffer flew economy class, according to the spokesman. Another aide was originally going to come, but the organization noted they were looking for a photographer, and Schock suggested Link, with whom he has worked in the past, the spokesman said. The photos Link took were made available to both Schock and the Global Poverty Project. 

The problem is House rules allow a member to accept private money for a companion's travel expenses only if the companion is a staffer, spouse or child. Link was none of those; he didn't appear on Schock's official or campaign payroll until September 2014.

Furthermore, Schock never disclosed that Link accompanied him on the trip, according to a review of public records. Members are allowed to accept money from private sources for some travel as long as they disclose it, and they also are required by law to disclose in writing when someone accompanies them on a trip paid for by an outside organization. Members have to seek a waiver from the Ethics Committee to bring someone other than a staffer or family member. Otherwise, they must pay for the companion's trip out of pocket. 

Instead, a disclosure form filed by Schock after his return gives no indication that he was accompanied by Link. The Global Poverty Project paid $5,000 for travel, $525 for lodging, $300 for meals, $289 for travel insurance and $100 for ground transportation for Schock's travel. The trip took place August 24-29, with a round trip flight from Chicago to New Delhi and a visit to Mumbai, as well. 

The Global Poverty Project separately paid some $4,000 to fly Link from Dallas to New Delhi, and lodge and feed him, according to the group's spokesman.

At this point, Schock's starting to look like a sack of broken goods, and if the Dems can't put him down in 2016, they don't deserve to take the House back anytime soon.  We're not quite up to resignation status yet, but the campaign ads against him have written themselves.

Secret? Agent, Man...

The US Secret Service is at this point bravely straddling the border between phenomenal incompetence and having people openly question that they want to protect this President and his family.  That Washington Post report on two USSS agents driving drunk into a barricade was much, much worse than originally thought.

Two Secret Service agents suspected of driving under the influence andstriking a White House security barricade disrupted an active bomb investigation and may have driven over the suspicious package itself, according to current and former government officials familiar with the incident. 

These and other new details about the March 4 incident emerged Thursday from interviews and police records obtained by The Washington Post. 

The episode has prompted questions from lawmakers about whether the newly appointed leaders of the Secret Service are capable of turning around the troubled agency. Among the lawmakers’ questions: Whether a Secret Service supervisor, as witnesses have alleged, ordered officers to let the agents go home without facing sobriety testing. 

An investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is centering on the possible misconduct of two senior agents, including a top supervisor on President Obama’s protective detail.

These idiots got drunk and drove through a crime scene, driving over a possible explosive device in the process and then hitting a temporary barrier set up to protect people in case the device exploded. If the agency's leadership hadn't already been largely fired for gross incompetence, I'd demand that they were all rehired and fired over this massive screw-up.

The Obamas repeatedly get more threats than any First Family in US history, and the people who are supposed to protect them are drunken fratboy assholes.

Awesome.

StupidiNews!

• Another chapter of embattled fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon is accused of racist comments on campus, this time at the University of Washington in Seattle.
• A BYU study finds that loneliness and social isolation can be as physically bad for you as obesity as far as predicting a shortened lifespan.
• Police in Ferguson, Missouri are continuing to search for suspects in the shooting of two police officers near the Ferguson Police Department late Wednesday night.
• A record surplus in US crude oil could soon push oil prices down ever further as storage capacity is running out to store oil.
• The FCC's new rules on net neutrality may soon be put to the test as AT&T is resisting plans to stop its throttling of unlimited data plans.

Last Call For The Right To Hate

Alabama Republicans are fighting the federal courts striking down the state's same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional with as much additional unconstitutional garbage as they can.  This time around it's a "religious exemption" bill in the state House.

HB 56, sponsored by Republican Rep. Jim Hill, would amend state law so that anyone performing marriages in Alabama is "not required to solemnize a marriage for any person or persons.” The bill would also prevent "any civil claim or cause of action, or any criminal prosecution, based on a refusal to solemnize or recognize any marriage.” During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on HB 56, Rep. Hill said the legislation is meant to prevent clergy and probate judges from being "coerced into conducting marriage ceremonies."

Opponents of the bill argued that the language of the legislation is so broad it would allow judges to refuse to marry couples if they object to the couple’s religious beliefs and it would allow religiously affiliated hospitals to refuse visitation rights to same-sex couples. A number of amendments were offered to try to limit the number of people who would be covered by the exemption, but they were successfully beaten back by Rep. Hill and the Republicans.

The issue here is what "solemnize" means.  It could be interpreted to mean as critics say that anyone with an objection to any marriage based on religious beliefs wouldn't have to recognize it as legal. The language of the bill itself:

“A religious organization shall be immune from any civil claim or cause of action, or any criminal prosecution, based on a refusal to solemnize or recognize any marriage under this section or any other provision of Alabama law.” 

“No religious organization is required to provide accommodations, facilities, advantages, privileges, services, or goods related to the recognition, solemnization, or celebration of a marriage.”

What constitutes a "religious organization" here?  The bill seems to enshrine the right to refuse to recognize a marriage because of religious beliefs.  That's a terribly messy situation, and I absolutely see this bill being challenged in court.

After Hobby Lobby though, I'm not sure if the Supreme Court won't turn around and say the First Amendment guarantees the right to discriminate.

The reality is that Alabama Republicans are homophobic, gay-hating bigots that want to pass a law making it legal for the state to continue to be homophobic gay-hating bigots.  Period.  This is not about religious freedom.  It is about homophobic bigotry.  End of argument.