Last Call For Free Nerdland

I admit it's been a while since I've groused about MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry having GOP talking heads on her show to take potshots at President Obama, but that's in part due to the fact Harris's weekend morning news show has been MIA for weeks now, pre-empted by political primary coverage...without her on-air at all.

Melissa Harris-Perry said she was refusing to go on the MSNBC show she hosts this Saturday, following several weeks of pre-emptions and what she described as a loss of editorial control. 

In an email sent to people she works with this week, which was obtained by The New York Times, Ms. Harris-Perry said that her show had effectively been taken away from her and that she felt “worthless” in the eyes of NBC News executives. 

“Here is the reality: Our show was taken — without comment or discussion or notice — in the midst of an election season,” she wrote. “After four years of building an audience, developing a brand and developing trust with our viewers, we were effectively and utterly silenced.” 

In a phone interview, Ms. Harris-Perry confirmed she would not appear on the show this weekend. She said she had received no word about whether her show, which runs from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays and Sundays, had been canceled, but said she was frustrated that her time slot had faced pre-emptions for coverage of the presidential election. She said she had not appeared on the network at all “for weeks” and that she was mostly sidelined during recent election coverage in South Carolina and New Hampshire. (She was asked to return this weekend.) 

In her email, Ms. Harris-Perry wrote that she was not sure if the NBC News chairman, Andrew Lack, or Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, were involved in the way her show was handled recently, but she directed blame toward both. 

“I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,” she wrote. “I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by Lack, Griffin or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back.” 

Ms. Harris-Perry is black, and Mr. Lack and Mr. Griffin are white. In the phone interview on Friday, Ms. Harris-Perry clarified her remarks and said she did not think race played a role in her recent absence from the air. 

“I don’t know if there is a personal racial component,” she said. “I don’t think anyone is doing something mean to me because I’m a black person.” 

An NBC News spokesman said in a statement, “In this exciting and unpredictable presidential primary season, many of our daytime programs have been temporarily upended by breaking political coverage, including M.H.P. This reaction is really surprising, confusing and disappointing.”

I'm going to say that given the way MSNBC has gone down an ugly path since scrapping basically Everyone Who Wasn't Maddow Or Hayes in the name of political expediency with their new corporate masters at Comcast, that I think MSNBC deliberately provoked a response from Harris-Perry and boy, did they ever get one.

I'm not sure what's going to happen to the show now, but I have to admit that like Maddow, I haven't watched it in months, if not a year or two, other than the occasional clip.  I really don't have any interest in watching soft-pedaled both-sider nonsense on other news channels, so why would I go looking for it actively on MSNBC?

I do wish her luck, however.  Seeing how badly the network treated Joy-Ann Reid was bad enough. But you know what makes me think MSNBC just tried to get her fired by pre-empting her show until she got fed up and left?

MSNBC hiring Rick Tyler, Ted Cruz's recently fired spokesman.  You know, the one Cruz fired this week for telling lies that even Ted Cruz was ashamed of.

The Fetid Whiff Of Desperation

Realizing that Trump rolling to victory on Super Tuesday next week means the nomination is effectively his, both Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz launched broadsides against The Donald, resulting in a GOP debate even uglier than the usual garbage fire proceedings have been.

Rubio in particular came out hot, seemingly dumping his opposition research on Trump as he attacked the billionaire on his eponymous university, his business record and his core political beliefs.

Trump, for his part, mostly kept his cool through the two-hour debate in Houston even as he was the focus of relentless attacks from Cruz and Rubio. 

Both Cuban-American senators are trailing Trump badly in the delegate race, and need to do something fast to turn around the race. 

A dozen states and U.S. territories will hold contests on Tuesday in the biggest day of the primary yet. Trump is leading polls in a majority of states, and has dominated the last three contests, in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. 

As a result, Cruz and Rubio were desperate on Thursday to take Trump down a peg. The front-runner, for his part, dished out a series of counter-attacks while repeatedly returning to a singular theme: that he was the one non-politician on the stage who could provide answers for the nation. 

He also largely dialed back his stage presence, seemingly content to run out the clock and protect his lead. 

Rubio had the best attack line of the night while badgering Trump about his plan is to replace ObamaCare. 

Trump responded by repeatedly saying the centerpiece of his plan would be to allow insurers to cross state lines. 

“Now he's the one repeating himself,” the Florida senator said, cracking a big smile as the crowd erupted in cheers and laughter.

Like most bullies, Trump showed that he can dish out the insults, but that he can't take them at all (which is why I'm not too worried about him taking on Hillary or Bernie, they'll smash his mouth a few times and he'll fall apart like he did last night.)  But it was an abysmal affair even by GOP debate standards, with Wolf Blitzer and Hugh Hewitt losing any semblance of control roughly three seconds into the proceedings.

But the line of the night? Sleepy Dr. Godwin!

“Can somebody attack me, please,” Carson pleaded at one point.

These guys don't have a chance in hell.

Reach Out And Sue Someone

Here in Bevinstan, if you thought Kentucky was somehow friendly to competition and technology just because our Governor is a "small government libertarian" type, well, you haven't been paying attention.  Because when Louisville got serious about looking into Google fiber to help make the city more attractive as a tech hub, AT&T has now promptly sued the city to keep its stranglehold on the state's internet.

AT&T filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday alleging Louisville lacks jurisdiction to allow high-speed Internet service providers such as Google Fiber to install equipment on its utility poles. 

The telecommunications giant says it welcomes competition in providing Louisville residents with faster online access but that the so-called "One Touch Make Ready" ordinance passed this month is unlike any other in the U.S. and violates state and federal rules. 

"AT&T pursued this course of action because the Metro Council has no jurisdiction to regulate pole attachments," spokesman Joe Burgan said in an interview Thursday. "Because of this, the ordinance is invalid." 

High-speed Internet providers are now allowed to install their new equipment on utility poles owned by AT&T and possibly move other companies' installations thanks to the measure, which Mayor Greg Fischer's office supported as a way to lay the groundwork for Louisville's fiber-optics network. The council approved that measure unanimously over objections from AT&T and Time Warner Cable, which lobbied heavily against the proposal. 

In the 11-page suit, AT&T asks for a federal judge to clarify that the authority to regulate poles are reserved to the Kentucky Public Service Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. 

Fischer's office declined to discuss the suit when reached by a reporter, saying it does not comment on pending litigation. Claims made in a lawsuit represent only one side of a case.

Neither AT&T nor Time Warner Cable will stand for Google Fiber coming into Kentucky, and locking down utility infrastructure is how AT&T can effectively make it impossible for Google or any other fiber optic provider to ever do business in an area.  Louisville's OTMR ordinance goes right around that, and AT&T has figured out that unless the law dies screaming in lawsuits, Google fiber will move right on in and put overpriced internet out of business.

Ted Smith, the city's innovation chief, told The Courier-Journal this month that Google Fiber was making "very good progress" in assessing whether it can install a fiber-optics network. If installed, city officials have said it could mean Internet speeds around 20 times faster than conventional broadband that tech entrepreneurs and others have said would bring faster times for downloading material, streaming movies, gaming and other activities.

20 times better for the same price?  You'd better believe AT&T will do everything they can to crush that utility pole ordinance.  There's a reason why America has the most overpriced, least competitive and outright oligarchical internet system in the industrialized world, folks, and it's because big companies like AT&T own so much utility infrastructure.

If this ordinance stays on the books, they are done, and they know it.

StupidiNews!

• Kansas police say a gunman opened fire at a factory near the town of Newton, killing three people and wounding 14 others before police killed him Thursday afternoon.
• Environmental researchers in California say that the state's recent months-long methane leak at Aliso Canyon equaled the yearly greenhouse gas output of more than 600,000 cars.
• The Pentagon has test-fired its second ICBM in less than a week in response to North Korea's recent missile tests and Russian airstrikes in Syria and the Crimea.
• The European Central Bank says it will consider the phase out of the 500-euro note as a source of terrorism funding and money laundering.
• Disney CEO Bob Iger is asking employees to consider contributing to the company's lobbyist PAC as the entertainment giant has had an excellent year in defending its intellectual property.

Last Call For Your Chart Of The Week

Tonight's chart of the week comes from the new Washington Post/Univision poll of Hispanic voters on the 2016 presidential race, and shows the net favorability each candidate has among Hispanic voters:

Yeah, that's GOP frontrunner The Donald over there with a net minus 64, when the GOP candidate is going to need at least 40% of the Hispanic vote to have a real shot at winning in November.

Considering 51% of those polled say they would definitely support the Democrat in November, that's going to be nearly impossible for even Rubio to get.  McCain got 31%, Romney 27%.  I'm betting that while Rubio could match McCain's numbers in the general, that's not going to be enough to win the election for him.  Cruz would be close to Romney, and Trump?  Trump might actually get a negative number of Hispanic votes, frankly.

Trump Cards, Con't

Trump's new campaign slogan

Donald Trump remains the preferred candidate of the Confederacy by folks who really are sad that the South lost the war and all.

David Duke, a white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, is urging the listeners of his radio program to volunteer and vote for Donald Trump. 

“Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage,” Duke said on the David Duke Radio Program Wednesday, referring to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. “I’m not saying I endorse everything about Trump, in fact I haven’t formally endorsed him. But I do support his candidacy, and I support voting for him as a strategic action. I hope he does everything we hope he will do.” 

Duke then urged his followers to call Trump’s campaign headquarters to volunteer. 

“And I am telling you that it is your job now to get active. Get off your duff. Get off your rear end that’s getting fatter and fatter for many of you everyday on your chairs. When this show’s over, go out, call the Republican Party, but call Donald Trump’s headquarters, volunteer. They’re screaming for volunteers. Go in there, you’re gonna meet people who are going to have the same kind of mindset that you have.”

At some point this stops being funny, and that point was roughly 1789 when out first President who owned slaves was elected.  Kinda like to think America has seen numerous advances since then (the internet, string cheese, indoor plumbing) but in a lot of ways we're the same Puritan screwups from 250 years ago.

When actual, avowed racists "support your candidacy" you go well past dog whistle territory and into the "bullhorns with tower stacks" area.  I have no sympathy for Republicans who enabled every step of Trump's journey so far and who are in a state of total panic as a result, but at least they are vowing to "save the country" from Trump by voting for Hillary.

We'll see what actually happens soon enough.

A Master Class In Supreme Trolling

President Obama is obviously yanking the GOP's chain with this trial balloon about his SCOTUS pick being Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada.

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, a Republican and a former federal judge, is being considered by President Barack Obama for a possible appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a source close to the process said on Wednesday.

The source, who asked not to be identified, said Sandoval met on Monday in the U.S. Capitol with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, at which time Reid asked the governor whether he would be interested in being considered for the high court job.

"He said he was interested," the source said, adding that "a number of people are being checked out" for the job.

Sandoval is certainly qualified, but so was Scalia from a technical standpoint. Sandoval is clearly not going to be named because he's a Republican, and as Governor of Nevada he has fundamental differences from the President.

The fact that Obama would consider naming Sandoval is surprising, given the governor’s past statements on the Affordable Care Act. In his first State of the State Address in 2011, Sandoval said that “many aspects of the law are unconstitutional” and he pledged to “continue to fight to have them overturned.” He later personally signed briefs filed in the Supreme Court arguing against the law’s constitutionality and claiming that the Supreme Court “should hold the ACA invalid in its entirety.”

It’s worth noting that, after losing this case, Sandoval did agree to implement provisions of the law, such as its Medicaid expansion. Nevertheless, if Sandoval’s position had prevailed in the Supreme Court, Obamacare would have completely ceased to exist.

Sandoval’s record also creates a fair amount of uncertainty regarding how he would rule on several landmark issues currently before the Supreme Court, including whether to defund public sector unions, and the fate of President Obama’s plans to fight climate change and temporarily permit undocumented immigrants to remain in the country.

The bottom line is that this is all a gigantic, obvious trap for the Republicans currently in the Senate.

They fell for it anyway.

However, if Obama's intent in floating Sandoval's name was to box Republicans in to looking even more unreasonable than they already have, then it seems his ploy is already working. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellinstantly said his boss won't consider Sandoval, explaining, "The Leader didn't say the Senate would act 'if' it was a certain type of nominee." Presumably, that means McConnell wouldn't take action even if Obama nominated the ghost of William Rehnquist.

Sen. John Cornyn, the second highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, likewise immediately told Politico that his position on not allowing a nomination to proceed was unchanged. And anti-tax radical Grover Norquist opined, "Obama might nominate the guy who taxed Burning Man. Ugh." Not Burning Man! (Norquist did notoriously attend the counter-cultural desert festival a couple of years ago.) Freshman Sen. Deb Fischer may have summed it up best, though, when she declared, "It's not about the person."

So we have multiple Republican senators now, on record, saying that there is no nominee whatsoever that would be acceptable under any reason, because the nation's first black President no longer has the Constitutional right to name a successor to Scala.

Not even a Republican is acceptable.

Please proceed, GOP Senate.

StupidiNews!

• Both the US and China have agreed to a UN Security Council draft resolution detailing new sanctions on North Korea after Pyongyang's nuclear test earlier this year.
• President Obama has named Baltimore library system head Carla Hayden to the post of Librarian of Congress, the first woman and African-American appointed to the position.
• UN peace talks in Syria will resume after negotiations broke down February 3rd, a new date for talks will be announced on Friday.
• New York City's requirement to have restaurants post high-sodium warnings on menu items has survived its first major legal challenge from the restaurant industry.
• Facebook's like button will now allow you to finally display a range of reactions from love to anger on posts.

Last Call For Flagging Support

And in the end, after all the attention and embarrassment to Southern states still choosing to fly the flags of traitors, they still choose to fly the flag of traitors.

Mississippi’s state flag will include the Confederate battle emblem for the foreseeable future, after state lawmakers on Tuesday said they didn’t have enough support to remove the controversial symbol. 

There were 12 different bills in the Mississippi Legislature to either redesign, change, or remove the Confederate symbol from the state’s 122-year-old flag. But they all died on Tuesday, which was the deadline for lawmakers to act on bills that were stuck in legislative committees. 

The bills offered numerous different options for Mississippi’s flag. One bill would have changed it to include a magnolia tree, just like the state’s flag did from 1861 until 1865. A few bills would have provided for new design submissions, either from state universities or from a newly-created commission to find new design options. One would have even changed the flag back to the Bonnie Blue Flag, which is also a Confederate-related banner, but less recognizable. 

But none of those bills had majority support from lawmakers in either the state House or Senate, Republican Rep. Jason White told the Associated Press. “I’m not saying that all of them are necessarily bad ideas, but we don’t have a consensus on any of them,” he said. 

The speaker of Mississippi’s House of Representatives, Republican Rep. Philip Gunn, had previously expressed support for removing the Confederate symbol from the state flag. On Tuesday, he said in a statement that he had “not wavered” on that viewpoint, and has been trying to convince other lawmakers “to adopt my view.” 

“I have explored every option from taking legislative action to change the flag to adopting two official flags, but we cannot get a consensus on how to address the issue,” he said. “I will continue to stand by my view that changing the flag is the right thing to do. The flag is going to change.”

No, it's not.  You've had 150 years to do it.  You've yet to actually do it.  There's no reason for us to believe you on this.  You're racist trash, your fathers were racist trash, grandfathers, right on up the line, Phil.

Change the goddamn flag.

Flipping The Script On SCOTUS, Con't

President Obama took to the excellent SCOTUSBlog today to make his case as both president and as a constitutional law scholar as to why he will nominate a successor to the late Justice Scalia.

The Constitution vests in the President the power to appoint judges to the Supreme Court. It’s a duty that I take seriously, and one that I will fulfill in the weeks ahead. 

It’s also one of the most important decisions that a President will make. Rulings handed down by the Supreme Court directly affect our economy, our security, our rights, and our daily lives. 

Needless to say, this isn’t something I take lightly. It’s a decision to which I devote considerable time, deep reflection, careful deliberation, and serious consultation with legal experts, members of both political parties, and people across the political spectrum. And with thanks to SCOTUSblog for allowing me to guest post today, I thought I’d share some spoiler-free insights into what I think about before appointing the person who will be our next Supreme Court Justice. 

First and foremost, the person I appoint will be eminently qualified. He or she will have an independent mind, rigorous intellect, impeccable credentials, and a record of excellence and integrity. I’m looking for a mastery of the law, with an ability to hone in on the key issues before the Court, and provide clear answers to complex legal questions. 

Second, the person I appoint will be someone who recognizes the limits of the judiciary’s role; who understands that a judge’s job is to interpret the law, not make the law. I seek judges who approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice, a respect for precedent, and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand. 

But I’m also mindful that there will be cases that reach the Supreme Court in which the law is not clear. There will be cases in which a judge’s analysis necessarily will be shaped by his or her own perspective, ethics, and judgment. That’s why the third quality I seek in a judge is a keen understanding that justice is not about abstract legal theory, nor some footnote in a dusty casebook. It’s the kind of life experience earned outside the classroom and the courtroom; experience that suggests he or she views the law not only as an intellectual exercise, but also grasps the way it affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times. That, I believe, is an essential element for arriving at just decisions and fair outcomes. 

A sterling record. A deep respect for the judiciary’s role. An understanding of the way the world really works. That’s what I’m considering as I fulfill my constitutional duty to appoint a judge to our highest court. And as Senators prepare to fulfill their constitutional responsibility to consider the person I appoint, I hope they’ll move quickly to debate and then confirm this nominee so that the Court can continue to serve the American people at full strength.

It's a relatively short argument and a very strong one.  It's also an example of the President going around the usual media channels to make his case to the people directly, and no president has been as effective at this as our current one. I certainly don't blame him for not depending on our awful media to get his message out, the same media tacitly enabling the unprecedented blockade now before him.

President Obama, the law professor, is definitely a subscriber to the legal theory of a "living Constitution" and is letting the largest community of Supreme Court aficionados and legal minds know that his nominee will also be such a person.

How that affects this battle with the GOP Senate remains to be seen.

The Rough Beast '16 US Tour

Donald Trump has metastasized the body politic's lingering infection of racism and bigotry into a force that's giving him the GOP nomination...and possibly the country.

Mr. Trump’s support among those who say they support a temporary ban on Muslim entry into the United States — a notion Mr. Trump first advanced in early December — is significant. He won more than twice as many supporters of the ban in South Carolina as any other candidate. Voters often echo the things candidates say on the campaign trail, so that level may not be revelatory.

Possibly more surprising are the attitudes of Mr. Trump’s supporters on things that he has not talked very much about on the campaign trail. He has said nothing about a ban on gays in the United States, the outcome of the Civil War or white supremacy. Yet on all of these topics, Mr. Trump’s supporters appear to stand out from the rest of Republican primary voters.

Data from Public Policy Polling show that a third of Mr. Trump’s backers in South Carolina support barring gays and lesbians from entering the country. This is nearly twice the support for this idea (17 percent) among Ted Cruz’s and Marco Rubio’s voters and nearly five times the support of John Kasich’s and Ben Carson’s supporters (7 percent).

Similarly, YouGov data reveal that a third of Mr. Trump’s (and Mr. Cruz’s) backers believe that Japanese internment during World War II was a good idea, while roughly 10 percent of Mr. Rubio’s and Mr. Kasich’s supporters do. Mr. Trump’s coalition is also more likely to disagree with the desegregation of the military (which was ordered in 1948 by Harry Truman) than other candidates’ supporters are.

The P.P.P. poll asked voters if they thought whites were a superior race. Most Republican primary voters in South Carolina — 78 percent — disagreed with this idea (10 percent agreed and 11 percent weren’t sure). But among Mr. Trump’s supporters, only 69 percent disagreed. Mr. Carson’s voters were the most opposed to the notion (99 percent), followed by Mr. Kasich and Mr. Cruz’s supporters at 92 and 89 percent. Mr. Rubio’s backers were close to the average level of disagreement (76 percent).

According to P.P.P., 70 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters in South Carolina wish the Confederate battle flag were still flying on their statehouse grounds. (It was removed last summer less than a month after a mass shooting at a black church in Charleston.) The polling firm says that 38 percent of them wish the South had won the Civil War. Only a quarter of Mr. Rubio’s supporters share that wish, and even fewer of Mr. Kasich’s and Mr. Carson’s do.

Nationally, the YouGov data show a similar trend: Nearly 20 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters disagreed with the freeing of slaves in Southern states after the Civil War. Only 5 percent of Mr. Rubio’s voters share this view.

Mr. Trump’s popularity with white, working-class voters who are more likely than other Republicans to believe that whites are a supreme race and who long for the Confederacy may make him unpopular among leaders in his party. But it’s worth noting that he isn’t persuading voters to hold these beliefs. The beliefs were there — and have been for some time.

Mr. Trump has reinvigorated explicit appeals to ethnocentrism, and some voters are responding.

After eight years of a media that has relentless demonized the nation's first black president as everything from a traitor to the actual Antichrist, the racist backlash of Trump was absolutely inevitable. It's now on full grisly display for all to see, and there's nothing that the Republican party can do at this point to stop him. The big money learned their lesson after foisting Romney on the party four years ago and would rather have Trump than any Democrat.  There will be no help from the Koch or Rove machines to stop The Donald.

As Donald Trump picks up momentum, the chances of a well-funded assault to block him from the Republican presidential nomination are dramatically dwindling, according to interviews with about a dozen donors and operatives who are appalled by the billionaire real estate showman's campaign.

The party’s elite donor class has mostly closed its checkbooks to groups dedicated to stopping Trump, while the outfits that have built massive reserves are increasingly deciding to forgo anti-Trump campaigns, despite widespread fears that he is making a mockery of conservatism and could undermine Republicans up and down the ballot.

The deepest-pocketed operation on the right, the network helmed by the billionaires Charles and David Koch, had seriously debated launching an aggressive assault on Trump, but sources familiar with the network's planning tell POLITICO that’s now highly unlikely. And the Karl Rove-conceived Crossroads outfits also are sitting out the party’s bitter primary, instead spending their cash attacking Democrats.

Republican operatives have told major donors it would require an eight-figure advertising campaign or campaigns to make any kind of dent in Trump’s surprisingly durable popularity. While many of the donors have privately voiced support for the cause, most have begged off writing big checks.

Nevada had Trump at 46%, and after a slate of Super Tuesday wins next week, including in Ted Cruz's home state of Texas, and Marco Rubio's Florida on March 15th, the game will all be over.

The rough beast is slouching its way to Cleveland, folks...its hour come 'round at last.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump easily won last night's Nevada GOP caucuses, taking 46% of the vote to Marco Rubio's 24% and Ted Cruz at 21%.
• A new World Health Organization report finds one in five African children are unvaccinated, a substantial decrease from just 15 years ago, but still lagging behind the rest of the world.
• The CDC says it is tracking 14 cases of the Zika virus in the US transmitted sexually, enough to cause US health officials to reevaluate how the disease spreads.
• US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says that the Group of 20 nations are not yet in crisis mode ahead of this week's global finance meeting on China and volatile markets.
• Researchers are working with an enzyme that may cut HIV infections out of cells as a method to completely treat the 37 million current HIV patients who have not yet developed AIDS.

Last Call For League Of Their Own (Hell)

Just a reminder that the National Football League management and ownership are all repugnant, hyper-rich assholes who destroy lives on a daily basis.

The National Football League has been ordered to return what its union calculates is more than $100 million to the pool of revenue that it shares with its players.

The ruling, handed down last week by arbitrator Stephen Burbank, found that the NFL owners had mischaracterized what Players Association officials say is roughly $120 million of ticket revenue during the past three years by creating an exemption that had the effect of keeping about $50 million in salary out of players’ pockets. The NFL Players Association, which discovered the discrepancy during an ongoing audit of league finances, filed a grievance on the matter in January.

“They created an exemption out of a fiction and they got caught,” saidDeMaurice Smith,executive director of the NFLPA.

NFL officials would not confirm the figure. In an email, Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the NFL, referred to the ruling as the resolution of a “technical accounting issue under the CBA involving the funding of stadium construction and renovation projects.” He stated that the main effect was one of timing.

The ruling is the latest in a series of legal victories for the NFLPA over the league, including last year’s U.S. District Court ruling that overturned Tom Brady’s four-game suspension in the controversy known as “Deflate-gate.”

This dispute stemmed from provisions of the collective bargaining agreement that allow NFL teams to exclude certain money from the pool that determines its players’ share of revenues. Players receive 40% of local revenues, which mainly come from tickets sales, 45% of sponsorship money, revenues from the post-season and NFL Ventures, such as NFL.com and the NFL Network, and 55% of the revenues from media deals.

Teams can exclude money from the sale of personal seat licenses, premium seating, and from mega-deals with corporations to put their names on stadiums. The NFLPA agreed to these exclusions because teams often use these funds to help finance renovations and the construction of new stadiums, which significantly increase revenue and the amount of money that gets shared with the players.

Say what you will about the NFL players all being millionaire scumbags, and for the most part they are spoiled, rich hyperbros who wreck everything in their paths in the name of fleeting glory and fame.

But they will never hold a candle next to the burning sun that is the hell of billionaire NFL owners, arguably among the most rancid human excrement on earth.  Not content with their own billions, they sought to steal even more from their employees, tens of millions of dollars.

And in the end we pay them all to light up our televisions and tablets with glorified violence at the costs of cities, bodies, and souls.

They can all burn in hell, frankly.

Flipping The Script On SCOTUS, Con't

Well, ol' Mitch the Turtle is certainly playing to form as the villain of our little show.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday morning reiterated that Senate Republicans will block President Obama's nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, regardless of who the president puts forward. 

"Presidents have a right to nominate just as the Senate has its constitutional right to provide or withhold consent. In this case, the Senate will withhold it," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "The Senate will appropriately revisit the matter after the American people finish making in November the decision they've already started making today."

In his speech on the Senate floor, McConnell said that the confirmation process for the next Supreme Court justice should wait until after the 2016 election. He argued that voters should be able to select the next president to nominate a justice to the Supreme Court. He said that senators have a choice. 

"Will we allow the people to continue deciding who will nominate the next justice or will we empower a lame duck president to make that decision on his way out the door instead?" he asked.

Your move, Mr. President.

Seriously, this is unprecedented obstruction...but is there anything President Obama can honestly do until voters decide to punish the GOP?

Post-Racial America Update

It's a good thing overt racism is a thing of the past, as Chief Justice Roberts keeps telling us. Things like "getting lynched after a country music concert in Pittsburgh" are relics of America's barbarous past and in no way represent the America of 2016.

Right?

Outside, people were streaming into the nearby subway station. Among them was Kevin Lockett, an African American man who walked along the platform pulling a cooler in one hand. 

That’s the last thing he can remember with absolute certainty. The rest, according to court testimony reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, only comes back to him in bits, pieces and violent flashes. 

He thought he heard a racial slur from a group of men, and the next thing he knew, he was being thrown onto the train tracks. 

After Lockett lifted himself back onto the platform, surveillance footage shows, 21-year-old Ryan Kyle started beating him. Another 21-year-old, Matthew Laplace, pulled his cooler away. 

“I knew we’d find this [n-word],” he recalled someone saying. Then an onlooker called the police. 

The attack was brief, but its impact has stayed with Lockett. According toWTAE Pittsburgh, he has undergone four costly reconstructive surgeries since the assault, but still suffers from impaired vision. More therapy awaits. 

Four men involved in the incident — Laplace, 22, Kenneth Gault, 22, David Depretis, 21, and Christopher Laplace, 23 — were variously charged with aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation, theft, reckless endangerment and criminal conspiracy. 

All four are white, as is Kyle. He is the only one who touched Lockett and the only one who could face prison time, as a result of plea deals. 

Gault and Depretis pleaded no contest and were sentenced to six months probation, WTAE reported; Matthew LaPlace pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 months probation. All are required to perform 100 hours of community service to benefit a minority community. 

Christopher LaPlace, Matthew’s brother, will be sentenced on Thursday. 

“There’s no punishment,” Lockett told WTAE with a shake of the head, calling the sentences “slaps on the wrist.”

Surely this is all President Obama's fault, we all know that black people can't be anywhere near Kenny Chesney concerts.  It's in the same place in the Constitution as "Black presidents can't nominate Supreme Court justices in their final year of office."