Last Call For Courting Disaster

The Supreme Court's fall term begins this week, and after several big victories for Team Liberal last June, WaPo's Paul Waldman reminds us that this conservative SCOTUS could turn around within nine months all but put an end to affirmative action, the availability of abortion, voting rights, public sector unions, and oh yeah, Obamacare as the courts get back their normal actions of siding with Republicans.

And while they’ve had a couple of recent high-profile defeats at the Court, conservatives have enjoyed a conservative majority for a couple of decades now. Yes, Anthony Kennedy sometimes joins with liberals, as he did in the case legalizing same-sex marriage. But just in the last few years, they’ve seen the doors of campaign finance thrown open to unlimited spending by corporations and billionaires; the Voting Rights Act gutted; affirmative action all but outlawed; an individual right to own guns created for the first time in American history; corporations granted religious rights to exempt themselves from laws they don’t like and sectarian prayer allowed at government meetings; unions undermined and employment discrimination suits made more difficult; and a whole series of less well-known decisions that enhance the power of the powerful, whether it’s the government or corporations. 

Nevertheless, when you hear conservatives talk about the Court, they don’t say, “We need to make sure we get more conservative justices to keep winning.” Instead, they say, “We’ve been betrayed!” So what’s going on? 

There are a couple of answers. The first is that they’re demanding not just a record of wins, but absolute perfection. They want not justices who will bring a conservative philosophy to the Court, but justices who will never stray from whatever it is the Republican Party wants at a particular time. The recent decision in King v. Burwell is a perfect example: the lawsuit itself was a joke, based on a series of claims about the Affordable Care Act that ran from the clearly false to the laughably ridiculous. When John Roberts sided with the majority to dismiss it — despite a long record of being on the “right” side of all the cases I mentioned above, plus many more — they declared him to be an irredeemable traitor. 

The second reason is that narratives of betrayal are central to how conservatives understand history. Whenever events don’t turn out as they would like, whether it’s a foreign war or a lost election or a societal evolution, the story is always the same: We were betrayed, either by our opponents or by the people we thought were our allies. Was the Iraq War a terrible idea? No, we had it won — until Barack Obama betrayed us by pulling out. Why was George W. Bush so unpopular? Because he betrayed conservative principles by not cutting spending more, just like his father betrayed us by raising taxes (while the younger Bush was still president, longtime conservative activist Richard Viguerie wrote a book entitled “Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big-Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause).” As Digby memorably wrote, “Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal.)” And it goes back as far as you want. Why did the Soviet Union come to dominate Eastern Europe? Because FDR betrayed us at Yalta. 

It isn’t that there’s never any truth in this story, particularly when it comes to the Court. David Souter, for instance, turned out to be a genuine liberal, not at all what Republicans expected when he was appointed by George H. W. Bush. But they’ve gotten so used to the betrayal narrative that they place even a single setback into it. Which may explain why conservative opinions of the Court have changed so dramatically in recent years. According to Pew polls, in 2008, 80 percent of Republicans approved of the Supreme Court, compared to 64 percent of Democrats. By 2015, the views of Democrats hadn’t changed — their approval was at 62 percent. But Republican approval had fallen to 33 percent, despite all they had won at the Court over that time. A full 68 percent of conservative Republicans call the Court “liberal,” an idea that is absurd by any objective measure, but one that is regularly fed by conservative media and Republican politicians.

We'll see what happens, but let's be honest that the Roberts Court has been an utter disaster for the country, and there's little reason to think that the 2015-2016 term will be any different.

Obama's Marine Scene

Dubya certainly didn't bother with any, but President Obama has named two new federal marine sanctuaries to protect America's waters as the world's attention turns to the Our Ocean Conference in Chile this week.

In a video message to conference attendees, President Obama announced plans for two new marine sanctuaries, one off the coast of Maryland, and the other in Lake Michigan. They’ll be the first new national marine sanctuaries designated by the federal government in the past 15 years. 

One of these sanctuaries will be an 875-square mile section of Lake Michigan off the shore of Wisconsin, which is recognized for its collection of nearly 40 known shipwrecks, some of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The other sanctuary is a 14-square mile area of the Potomac River, which includes Maryland’s Mallows Bay — an area known for its ecological significance, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and home to bald eagles, herons, beavers, river otters and numerous species of fish. 

“The United States is committed to working with our international partners to protect our oceans and protect our planet,” says Obama in the video. “Because I refuse to leave our children a planet that’s beyond their capacity to repair.” 

The two areas were nominated for sanctuary status last year after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reopened the public nomination process for the first time in 20 years. Since the process was opened, seven nominations were submitted from around the country, and the two announced today were the ones so far approved by NOAA for consideration as national marine sanctuaries. At least one other nomination is still currently under review by NOAA. 

These plans come on the heels of other recent action by the Obama administration to expand protection for marine areas in the United States. Last year, President Obama made Alaska’s Bristol Bay off limits to oil and gas development, while still allowing for commercial fishing in the area. He also expanded the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, which was originally established in 2009. 

Marine national monuments differ from marine sanctuaries in that they can be established by presidential proclamation, whereas sanctuaries are designated by NOAA and require extensive public input — however, they can offer similar protections and human use restrictions over marine ecosystems. 

The United States is also announcing several other plans aimed at protecting marine resources. In Chile for the conference, Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced the launch of Sea Scout, a global initiative targeting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by uniting world leaders, expanding technology and information-sharing and identifying illegal fishing hot spots. NOAA also has plans to expand the development of a technology known as the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, which detects boats and may help alert nations to illegal fishing activities. The technology will be implemented in several nations in 2016, including Indonesia and the Philippines.

Raise your hand if you think any additional marine sanctuaries would be approved or even reviewed by NOAA under a Republican president.  Hell, if the GOP keeps control of Congress and gets the White House, I'd expect a law preventing marine sanctuaries from being created, if not reversing the sanctuary status of existing parks for drilling and coastal land development for new McMansions for rick bankers.

Maybe after seven years people will start realizing that President Obama has been serious about the environment since day one.

Slow Bern In A Red State

WaPo's Dave Weigel discovers that Nobama Country in the Appalachians isn't interested in Hillary Clinton either, but is somehow mysteriously fertile ground for Feeling The Bern.

Shelley Brannon, 62, can sum up the Obama presidency with three words. Well, three words and an exclamation. 

“He screwed us,” said Brannon, a coal miner from Wise County, Va., as he sat outside a rally for the United Mine Workers of America. “Man, he screwed us.” 

He shook his head under a camouflage hat that matched his camouflage UMWA T-shirt, and he described his fantasy of dumping nuclear waste in the yards of environmentalists, “if they think coal’s so bad.” He mulled over the mistake UMWA had made in 2008, when it endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Then he explained why he would probably be voting for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the next Democratic primary. 

“For one thing, he knows what union is, and he respects it,” said Brannon. “That’s all we need is respect. He’s just a likeable fella, trustworthy. I don’t think she has the same respect for the union, and she really shot herself in the foot over, you know, all that secretive stuff.” 

West Virginia has rejected the Obama-era Democratic Party more dramatically than any state outside the South, with Appalachian counties that voted for Mike Dukakis and Walter Mondale turning blood red over the past eight years. But if you think it’s in places like this that the insurgent Sanders campaign faces its most formidable test, here’s what he thinks: It is also one of his greatest opportunities. 

The Vermont socialist thinks that white, working-class voters, the sort of people Obama once self-defeatingly said “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them,” are just one honest argument away from coming back. 

“We have millions of working-class people who are voting for Republican candidates whose views are diametrically opposite to what voters want,” said Sanders in an interview. “How many think it’s a great idea that we have trade policies that lead to plants in West Virginia being shut down? How many think there should be massive cuts in Pell grants, or in Social Security? In my opinion, not too many people.”

Now this is truly weird, given Bernie's position on climate change in Coal Country is essentially the same as President Obama's and Hillary Clinton's.

The United States must lead the world in tackling climate change, if we are to make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from polluting fossil fuels, and towards energy efficiency and sustainability. Millions of homes and buildings need to be weatherized, and we need to greatly accelerate technological progress in wind and solar power generation. 

Unless we take bold action to address climate change, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are going to look back on this period in history and ask a very simple question: Where were they? Why didn’t the United States of America, the most powerful nation on earth, lead the international community in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and preventing the devastating damage that the scientific community told us would surely come?

So yeah, Bernie Sanders straight up says on his website that he wants to continue to take America away from fossil fuels, but coal miners are suddenly lining up to say how awesome Bernie Sanders is going to be.

Why, it's almost like these coal miners oppose Barack Obama over something other than his environmental policy.  Weigel:

Sanders’ campaign theory of 2016 may be that there’s a larger electorate hiding in plain sight. Over the summer, as he gained in polls, Sanders was criticized for bringing seemingly every issue back to the sediment of economics and class. Black Lives Matter activist Marissa Johnson dubbed it “class reductionism.” Clinton allies had trouble seeing how Sanders’s support could grow beyond white liberals.

But they may be missing the weight of Sanders’s cardinal argument — for greater economic fairness — and the willingness of voters to look past other issues, notably the environment and gay marriage, where they disagree. 

Sanders won elections in Vermont, a white, rural and gun-owning state, as a socialist. The social issue “distractions” bemoaned by red state Democrats seemed to bounce right off his armor. (He also has taken mixed positions on gun control, supporting a ban on assault rifles, for instance, but opposing the Brady Bill). In the end, is the white guy who voted for him in Vermont any different than the white guy in West Virginia or Kentucky or Ohio who was told to blame liberals for his problems?

In my experience, the answer is not really.  A lot of working-class white voters left the Democrats when 2008 came down to Hillary versus Obama.  Now that Bernie is in this (and possibly Biden) hey, all of a sudden it's about working-class white values again.

I've got some bad news for folks though.  Bernie's got about as much chance of winning West Virginia or Kentucky as I do, and from an electoral standpoint, why does it matter?  Sure. Bernie will help with Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, etc. but how much nationally?

Do we want white voters who abandoned the Dems over a black president to come back to the party at all?

StupidiNews!

• Flooding rivers and breached dams in South Carolina have raised the death toll from last weekend's record rains to 12, and more rain could be on the way.
• President Obama will meet Friday with families of victims of last week's deadly shooting in Roseburg, Oregon.
• This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has gone to two scientists for discovering that neutrinos have mass, and can change type while moving.
• The world's largest brewery merger may get skunked as SABMiller is initially rejecting rival AB InBev's bid for the company as too low.
• California Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a package of bills designed to regulate commercial and hobbyist drone flights, saying he didn't want to create a new class of crimes.

Last Call For Taking It For Granite

Although rumored for months now as the state fought over the budget, New Hampshire Dem Gov. Maggie Hassan is going after GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte's seat in 2016.

Senate Democrats got the candidate they wanted in New Hampshire. 

Gov. Maggie Hassan announced Monday she is challenging GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte for Senate in the Granite State, rather than seek a third term as governor. It’s a move Democrats say gives the party its best shot at picking up a seat that will prove critical to Senate control.

The two-term governor had been mum on her plans as she sparred with the Republican-controlled state legislature over the budget — saying she needed to focus on the job she had rather than make plans for her political future. Republicans in the state were happy to keep Hassan’s focus on the budget for as long as possible, preventing her from publicly deciding whether to run for re-election or challenge Ayotte for Senate. 

But Hassan and the legislature came to a budget agreement, finally freeing Hassan to decide.

This is good news as Ayotte (and her "Third Amigo" to McCain/Graham shtick) is vulnerable as the GOP brand is badly damaged. If the Democrats are going to take back the Senate in 2016, this is one of the seats they'll need to pick up, and Hassan, the state's popular governor, is by far the best candidate to do so.

I've got a good feeling about this race for the Dems about getting rid of nasty corporate Republicans like Ayotte.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Sen. Shelley Moore (R-WV) introduced the Student Loan Relief Act of 2015 on Thursday, which would let borrowers refinance their federal student loans in the private market. The senators argue that if their legislation passed, students would be able to benefit from lower interest rates.

Sounds great, right?  Republicans like Ayotte are moderates who care about student loan and debt relief, see?

Although many large banks left the private student loan market after the financial crisis, plenty of politically connected organizations such as state agency lenders and nonprofits have fought to stay in the market. One example is Granite State Management, a New Hampshire nonprofit organization that does student loan servicing. GSM’s primary income is through its student loan servicing, but they would make much more through issuing loans. GSM’s status as a charitable organization was challenged by the City of Concord in 2013 but the court ultimately held up its status, saying that “servicing and administration of loans is not GSMR’s charitable purpose, but a means to achieve” the purpose of its mission to “providing low cost or alternative financial assistance to eligible students and to parents . . . and of supporting the development of higher education and educational opportunities.”

I bet you can see where this is going.

“What they’re trying to do is go back to the bad old days of a bank-based loan system. They want private banks to take over the loan and take none of the risk. So what they’re saying is, ‘Oh, it will be good for students because they will get a lower rate from the private market,'” said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress. “But really what’s going to happen is that the private market is going to get a giant windfall and pass along a tiny slice of it to the students in the form of a lower interest rate … You would hope to do a lot more by spending the exact same amount of money and just cutting their interest rates. There is no value add from the private market.”

That's right, Ayotte's student loan bill is really a way to get Wall Street back into the student loan business.  Shocking, I know.

Can't wait for Hassan to kick her ass.

The Big Trade-Off

After years of negotiations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal has reached its final leg and just needs approval from individual member countries, just in time to become a major issue in the 2016 presidential race in both parties.

The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations on Monday agreed to the largest regional trade accord in history, a potentially precedent-setting model for global commerce and worker standards that would tie together 40 percent of the world’s economy, from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia. 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership still faces months of debate in Congress and will inject a new flash point into both parties’ presidential contests. 

But the accord — a product of nearly eight years of negotiations, including five days of round-the-clock sessions here — is a potentially legacy-making achievement for President Obama, and the capstone for his foreign policy “pivot” toward closer relations with fast-growing eastern Asia, after years of American preoccupation with the Middle East and North Africa. 

Mr. Obama spent recent days contacting world leaders to seal the deal. Administration officials have repeatedly pressed their contention that the partnership would build a bulwark against China’s economic influence, and allow the United States and its allies — not Beijing — to set the standards for Pacific commerce. 

The Pacific accord would phase out thousands of import tariffs as well as other barriers to international trade. It also would establish uniform rules on corporations’ intellectual property, open the Internet even in communist Vietnam and crack down on wildlife trafficking and environmental abuses. 

Several potentially deal-breaking disputes kept the ministers talking through the weekend and forced them repeatedly to reschedule the promised Sunday announcement of the deal into the evening and beyond. Final compromises covered commercial protections for drug makers’ advanced medicines, more open markets for dairy products and sugar, and a slow phaseout — over two to three decades — of the tariffs on Japan’s autos sold in North America. 

Yet the trade agreement almost certainly will encounter stiff opposition. 

Its full 30-chapter text will not be available for perhaps a month, but labor unions, environmentalists and liberal activists are poised to argue that the agreement favors big business over workers and environmental protection. Donald Trump has repeatedly castigated the Pacific trade accord as “a bad deal,” injecting conservative populism into the debate and emboldening some congressional Republicans who fear for local interests like sugar and rice, and many conservatives who oppose Mr. Obama at every turn. 

Long before an accord was reached, it was being condemned by both Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is challenging Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democrats’ nomination. Other candidates also have been critical. Mrs. Clinton, who as secretary of state promoted the trade talks, has expressed enough wariness as she has campaigned among unions and other audiences on the left that her support is now in doubt.

We'll see where the TPP goes, but as with so many other things that this President has accomplished, those who bet against the guy end up losing big when he gets the job done.  I think the TPP will pass and move on.  How good that will be for US workers?

That's far more debatable.

Doing Something About Gunmerica

If Bernie Sanders has a weakness on policy, it's his abysmal record regarding backing the NRA and gun manufacturers in his rural state of Vermont.  Both Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley are running hard to the left on Sanders on the issue of gun safety measures.  O'Malley in particular has led on this issue, calling for an outright ban on assault rifles for months now. That pressure has led to Hillary Clinton now calling for a much tougher stance against the NRA.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Monday will detail new proposals aimed at closing gun sale loopholes and holding accountable those who sell guns for violence committed with those weapons.

Seizing the moment following last week’s mass shooting in Oregon, Clinton will call for the repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which gives legal protection to gun manufacturers and dealers whose guns are used for criminal activity, said a campaign official, who asked not to be named, previewing the announcement Clinton plans to make on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

As a senator from New York, Clinton voted against the law in 2005 and, the official said, would lead an effort to repeal it if elected president. Her closest competitor in the Democratic primary, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who served in the U.S. House at the time, voted in favor of it.

Clinton appeared viscerally frustrated as she spoke after Thursday’s shooting at Umpqua Community College, in which authorities say a student killed nine people before turning one of several guns he had with him on himself. “What is wrong with us, that we cannot stand up to the NRA and the gun lobby, and the gun manufacturers they represent?” Clinton said Friday at Broward College in Davie, Florida. “We don’t just need to pray for these people. We need to act.”

In staking out a hardline position on guns, Clinton is capitalizing on an issue where she stands to the left of Sanders. He has a mixed record on gun control—he voted against the Brady Bill in 1993 and for the liability protection law, but also in favor of restrictions on the size of gun magazines—that he attributes to the gun culture of his rural state. He responded to the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, and in Oregon with promises to implement “sensible gun-control legislation” and to improve mental health services, but has not yet offered specific proposals.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who is trailing Clinton and Sanders in polls, on Sunday in New Hampshire called on his rivals to “join me in building a new consensus” on gun control by supporting his four-point plan, his campaign said.

On Monday, the details Clinton will put behind her pitch include support for closing two sets of loopholes that allow gun purchases without background checks, according to the official.

If Congress does not pass legislation that would deem those who sell significant numbers of guns at gun shows and online to be required to operate under the same laws that apply to gun stores, Clinton would take executive action to do that under her plan. She supports congressional efforts to eliminate what’s being called the “Charleston loophole” after the June shooting at a black church there, which allows gun purchases to go forward if a background check isn’t completed within three days.

Clinton will also say she supports legislation to prohibit all people with histories of domestic abuse from buying or possessing guns, since current laws don’t apply to people in dating relationships or convicted stalkers.

I'm glad to see Clinton's proposals here, and she's definitely ahead of Sanders on this issue.  The ball's in Bernie's court now on gun safety.  We'll see if hes going to bother with specific proposals or just assume he can take a pass on this.

New long overdue tag: Gunmerica.

StupidiNews!

• Parts of South Carolina are still dealing with more than 20 inches of rain over the last several days as catastrophic flooding of rivers and streams will continue for days.
• Embattled New Mexico GOP Secretary of State Dianna Duran now faces dozens of new corruption charges including forged campaign finance reports and identity theft.
• The Nobel Prize for medicine has gone this year to three scientists for work on discovering new treatments for parasitic diseases.
• Clothing retailer American Apparel has filed for bankruptcy protection after firing founder and CEO Dov Charney last year and posting five straight years of losses.
• China is rapidly finishing construction of a second aircraft carrier as Beijing is expected to build two more carriers over the next few years.

Last Call For Podcast Versus The Stupid

This week's episode (and we're going to try to go to a weekly schedule on Sunday evenings for now) is These Disunited States Of Gunmerica.

Check Out Blogs Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on BlogTalkRadio

Having both grown up in red states and living in them now, Zandar and Bon talk about gun control and American gun culture in the wake of yet another mass shooting in America and find that the US is pretty disunited about the whole thing. Plus more on Springfield's Slut Walk, creepy-ass city councilmen, and more.

Good Ol' Rocket Top, Rocket Top, Gunnessee!

When a tragic, preventable massacre like the mass shooting in Oregon last week happens, as a politician you can choose to respond by asking the American people to do what's necessary in order to prevent another such incident from happening.

For Democrats like President Obama, that means asking the American people to do their duty to push lawmakers to implement real gun safety laws to protect them.  For Republicans like Tennessee Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey, that means asking the American people to do their duty as Christians to start packing heat 24/7.

Responding to a mass shooting at an Oregon community college that left 10 people dead, Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey on Friday encouraged fellow Christians who are serious about their faith to consider getting a gun.

Ramsey, R-Blountville, made those remarks in a Facebook post Friday, one day after a shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., left 10 people dead. The suspect, 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer, reportedly asked victims to name their religious affiliation during the massacre.

In his Facebook post, Ramsey links to a New York Post article with the headline "Oregon gunman singled out Christians during rampage." Ramsey groups the Oregon shooting with other recent mass shootings in the nation. "Whether the perpetrators are motivated by aggressive secularism, jihadist extremism or racial supremacy, their targets remain the same: Christians and defenders of the West," Ramsey said.

"While this is not the time for widespread panic, it is a time to prepare," he later adds. "I would encourage my fellow Christians who are serious about their faith to think about getting a handgun carry permit. I have always believed that it is better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.

"Our enemies are armed. We must do likewise."

Mind you, this is an elected official, the Lieutenant Governor of a state, who sees some of his fellow Americans as "our enemies" and that he is openly encouraging citizens to be willing to use deadly force.

His comments elicited a written statement from Tennessee Rep. John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, who said Ramsey's comments "reek of fear-mongering and religious crusading."

"Rather than lead the General Assembly’s bipartisan efforts to improve public safety by removing guns from the hands of criminals and addressing the serious mental health issues confronting many in our state, Senator Ramsey unfortunately chose the road most traveled by the radical right," said Clemmons, who introduced a bill earlier this year that sought to amend the state's "guns-in parks" legislation.

"Senator Ramsey’s inciting statements in the face of a national tragedy are all the more alarming when you consider them in their historical context," he added. "Things have never ended well when any leader has asked people to take up arms in the name of their religious faith. This type of rhetoric is counter-productive to our efforts on so many levels."

I'm glad that Democrats in the state were willing to call Ramsey out, but this "armed Christian militia fantasy" that the right wing has is dangerous as hell. Always more guns, until everyone has a dozen and then, well, why do we need laws anyway when we all have guns, right?

Sunday Long Read: The Odd Couple

They were on the opposite sides of just about every one of Washington's policy debates, he was the rising star of a White House tech advisor and she was the established Hot Air conservative columnist, but of course they were married and had a daughter and were deeply in love.

And then Jake Brewer was killed last month during a charity bike ride for cancer.

In a superficial sense, Jake Brewer and Mary Katharine Ham were a true D.C. anomaly. Bipartisan relationships have always been fairly rare in Washington, where politics are felt so strongly, and Jake and Mary Katharine were far more than Election Day partisans: Their disparate ideologies shaped their increasingly high-profile careers.

But they didn’t see it that way, Mary Katharine recalled at their home in Alexandria recently. Just because politics defined their jobs didn’t mean it defined their lives.

Mary Katharine, 35, leaned back into their sagging brown couch, tucking her feet to support her pregnant belly — their second child, due in December. She was wearing Jake’s cowboy boots, with his wedding band on a chain around her neck.

It was here on this couch that they had their last fight, where she apologized for starting a political spat — she can’t remember now what it was about — when he was just trying to tell her about his day at the office. She scrolled through her phone, looking for that initial e-mail she had ignored back in 2008. “Would be great to have you there,” he had written. “Not only to have a bit of both sides, but mostly just ’cause I think you’d be great to have regardless.”

She laughed: That was so Jake, always eager to hear the other side even while committed to his own. He seemed like a success at anything he tried — triathlons, photography, singing — and found the same ease in the advocacy work that brought him to the District: first environmentalism, and later government transparency and technology, rising to a top job at the petition Web site Change.org. On the side, he co-founded an immigration advocacy organization, Define American.

Mary Katharine came to Washington a few years earlier in 2004, frustrated with a small-town newspaper job that gave her little outlet for expressing the conservative arguments she was craving. She had grown up in the struggling public schools in Durham, N.C., which convinced her that bigger doesn’t mean more efficient in government. A job at the Heritage Foundation led to opinion-writing gigs; her gift for fast-talking rants and punchy comebacks earned her regular TV appearances opposite Bill O’Reilly and the ladies of “The View.”

Their lives, like their careers, could have existed in these two worlds apart, surrounded mostly by people who agree with them. Washington makes that very easy.

Instead, they went on a date to an Indian restaurant, which led to a ping-pong bar and staying up until 4 a.m. talking about the annual Mule Day festival in Jake’s home town of Columbia, Tenn.

They were both almost 30, and it just worked. They had the same level of energy and talent. As one friend would later say, they were magnetized from the start.

But the elephant in the room wasn’t the silent type. Commenters on liberal e-mail groups fretted that the relationship was a bad idea, that she would snoop through his e-mails, do something to hurt the cause.

When Jake called his mother, Lori, to tell her he’d met someone beautiful and smart and funny, he paused to say, “But there’s something you should know. She’s uh . . . she’s . . . uhm . . .”

Lori screeched: “Oh, my God, she’s Republican !”

And yeah, I know.  I find Ham to be depressingly banal, even for a Heritage Foundation flunkie, but these two really did love each other and they had a second child on the way, and sometimes we forget that there are real people behind these pundits and politicians, who are human, flawed, and scared just like us schlubs out here in the cheap seats.

Doctors Without Borders, Hospitals Without Walls

Well, we really screwed up in Afghanistan this time, folks.

A U.S. gunship bombed a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF), early Saturday morning, killing at least 16 people. The Americans had been flying close air support as Afghan government troops continue their effort to re-take the city of Kunduz, which fell to the Taliban last week almost without a shot.

Muhammad Ajami, 35, tells The Daily Beast that he was talking to his 17-year-old brother Jamil on the phone at the time of the airstrike. Earlier in the evening Jamil had been injured during the fighting and admitted to the MSF clinic, the only operational hospital-type facility in the city.

“This was about 2:00 a.m.,” said Muhammad. “Jamil was telling me he wanted me to get him and take him home, there was a lot of bombing and shelling in the city. Then there was a big bang, and my brother dropped his phone. The last words I heard were ‘Move to the basement! Move to the basement! And crying and crying.”

MSF issued a statement “condemning in the strongest possible terms the horrific bombing of its hospital in Kunduz, which was full of staff and patients.” Three MSF staff were confirmed dead and more than 30 unaccounted for after the trauma center “was hit several time during sustained bombing and was every badly damaged.”

MSF has decades of experience working in war zones and had notified “all parties to the conflict, including in Kabul and Washington,” of the precise GPS coordinates of its facilities, including the hospital, guest house, office and an outreach unit in a village northwest of Kunduz. Those coordinates had been communicated repeatedly most recently on September 29, after the Taliban took the city, according to another MSF statement.

A U.S. senior defense official told The Daily Beast in Washington that a U.S.-manned AC-130 gunship “was called in to return fire against a Taliban position that was firing on U.S. Special Forces advising Afghan Special Forces” when the attack began somewhere near the hospital.

But the official could not say how close that fighting position was to the hospital or whether the United States did indeed know the hospital coordinates beforehand. Defense officials also could not say how long the attack took place.  

Let's go over the fact that bombing a hospital is in fact a war crime, not to mention that 14 years after 9/11 we're still bombing goddamn Afghanistan.

Ya'll aren't going to want to hear this, but Obama is responsible for this mess.  We need to get out of Afghanistan fully, no more "support", no more "advisory capacity" no more Special Forces, just out.  Period.

Fourteen friggin years, guys.

And Obama, you screwed this up big time.  You need to answer for it.  Now.

Stuff And Things About Jeb

Jeb Bush really is making a total mess of this campaign, isn't he?

Jeb Bush invited a firestorm on Friday by saying that “stuff happens” in reference to renewed calls for legislative action after tragedies like the mass shooting in Oregon.

“I had this challenge as governor because we had — look, stuff happens,” he said at a forum in South Carolina. “There’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

The inelegant phrase immediately set off a wave of criticism from observers suggesting he was playing down the scourge of gun violence and the tragedy on Thursday, in which a gunman killed nine people at a community college in Roseburg, Ore.

Mr Bush, taking questions from the state’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, was speaking about a pattern of proposing legislative responses that he said did not halt the tragedies they were meant to stop.

Asked afterward about the “stuff happens” comment, Mr. Bush said, “it wasn’t a mistake,” and requested that a reporter point out “what I said wrong.”

“Things happen all the time,” Mr. Bush said. “Things. Is that better?”

There are three issue here.

First problem is the GOP notion, widely held, that there is nothing that government can do or even should do in order to prevent the mass slaughter of citizens like this.  More than 30,000 people die yearly to firearms in the US and somehow Republicans have not only counseled that the government shouldn't prevents it, but that it can't: it's the blood that waters the tree of liberty, the necessary cost of a free society where firearms "preserve" the Constitution. Indeed, 300 million firearms in the hands of American citizens is good and necessary and there's nothing that we should do in order to curtail that number. By far, this is the biggest issue and the largest debate we need to have, but cannot.

Problem number two is the fact that Jeb Bush, like most Republicans, are running for President (you know, Chief Executive of the Federal Government) in order to specifically not do anything.  Vote for me, I won't solve you problems!  Republicans of course don't think government is the answer (gun deaths, the economy, the environment) unless they do (Sharia law, women's reproductive systems, repealing health insurance).

Finally, Jeb's mealy-mouthed "What's the big deal?" reaction to this just makes him look even more like a privileged creep with all the empathy of Mitt Romney.  It's truly amazing how out of touch the guy is, and incapable of hiding problems one and two from "moderate" voters.

Anyway, add another gaffe to the pile for Jeb, who is self-destructing at the cost of hundreds of millions in donor and super-PAC dollars before our very eyes.

Last Call For Small Ball Rand Paul

You know what, I'm beginning to think Rand Paul might not even make it to the Kentucky GOP caucus he bought.

Struggling to gain traction in the Republican presidential race, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) this week will turn his attention to fundraising for his Senate reelection efforts.

Paul, who is running for president and reelection to the Senate simultaneously, will attend fundraisers for his Senate campaign on Wednesday and Thursday in Washington, D.C., according to invitations for the events obtained by The Hill. 

One Republican operative with close ties to Kentucky politics warned against reading too much into Paul’s Senate fundraisers, saying it’s not a sign that Paul is giving up on running for president, but rather a necessity of running for two offices at once. 

The operative said it’s a good use of time for Paul to fundraise for the Senate while he’s in Washington. Paul can tap groups that may be friendly to his Senate bid but aren’t inclined to commit to him, or any candidate, while the GOP presidential field remains this large.

Paul, he noted, isn’t going all in yet on fundraising for Senate – he’s not on the ground in Kentucky fighting for resources with the candidates running for statewide office, where elections for governor on down will be held this November.
A spokesperson for Paul’s Senate campaign did not return a request for comment.

Still, one Kentucky Republican operative said the fundraisers will inevitably be viewed through the prism of Paul’s fledgling presidential campaign. 

“Some of this is self-evident,” the Kentucky Republican operative said. “If he thought he’d be the nominee, he wouldn’t spend time hedging his bets and raising money for the Senate race. I think that tells you everything you need to know.”

Nobody at this point believes Rand Paul has a serious shot.  He's been stuck in the single digits nationally and isn't in the running for Iowa or New Hampshire at this point.  I don't know how long he can pretend like he's still a viable candidate, but I hear there's a lot of that going around in the GOP currently.  Right now Rand is trying to win South Carolina, for instance.  I guess that's a plan.

Everyone's waiting on the other guy to drop out so that they can stay in and pick up staffers and donors to live to fight another day, but if even Jeb Bush's donors are demanding that their paid and bough for candidate start producing bu Halloween, the half-dozen other Republicans floating around the 2% mark like Rand here don't have long in this race at all.

Game On In The Queen City

Cincinnati is hosting the area's first major college eSports tourney this weekend, and I'm all for it.

Games at UC's Fifth Third Arena usually involve basketballs or volleyballs. This weekend, however, the play will be with magic spells, swords, and guns, on computers.

The All Midwest Collegiate Invitational is expected to draw about 500 competitors and spectators for games like League of Legends, Super Smash Brothers, and Hearthstone.
Tournaments like this are common on the East and West coasts, but Stelanie Tsirlis says that's inconvenient for game players in the Midwest. 

“They have to travel out there. They have to buy the plane ticket, the ticket to get into the event itself.” 

Tsirlis is a senior at Miami University and a gamer herself. She's also the chief marketing officer for AllMid, which is a collection of game players from her school, UC, Xavier, Ohio State, and others.

Together, they're out to play and to earn some respect for their sport. 

There will be prizes, both cash and game credits. Tsirlis says some of the games pit individuals head-to-head, and others are for teams.

“What I like the most about the invitational this weekend is that our League of Legends tournament on the competitive side has the actual collegiate teams from all the colleges that are participating.” 

Tsirlis says there are even some colleges in the U.S. that are offering scholarships for gamers. 

“There aren’t many,” she admits.

“I know that there are some universities that support eSports as club sports. But to have an actual varsity team is kind of rare.” 

Tsirlis says she hopes this weekend's invitational will show universities that eSports are legitimate and a big deal. 

“People are invested. People are interested. And the eSports industry itself is about to explode. It’s a baby industry. I think it would be smart for any university to hop on that bandwagon and start recognizing any eSport as an actual sport and start supporting those students who play.”

Laugh all you want, but I find eSports to be a better deal to students than exploiting college football or basketball athletes for multi-million dollar programs that they'll never see a dime from, and risking career-ending and even life-threatening injuries to play.  Nobody gets concussions from playing a couple Hearthstone matches.   Nobody buys kids hookers, blow, tattoos and cars to play League of Legends.  Coaches don't get five million a year to scream at kids playing Super Smash Bros. Melee.

It's a hell of a lot less corrupt and more morally acceptable than any major traditional college sports program out there in 2015.  If the point is to let college kids play games, I'm 100% behind the AllMid an other eSports tournaments.

For now, at least.  Once colleges figure out how to market this, they'll start exploiting kids for free labor I'm sure.  But it still won't be as bad as college football.