Last Call

Turns out yesterday's bizarre escaped animal incident in Zanesville, Ohio (east of Columbus) where dozens of exotic animals were put down after they were released into the Ohio countryside before their owner apparently committed suicide?  Yeah, you can hang that one on Gov. John Kasich's neck too.

The tragedy exposes the dangers of wildlife trafficking, in which private collectors actively trade in exotic animals all over the states “in a vibrant and poorly regulated market.” According to the Humane Society, Ohio has long been “the center of the exotic-auction industry.” Ohio’s former Gov. Ted Strickland (D) attempted to “crack down” on the market by issuing an executive order that banned new private ownership of exotic animals. Issued on Jan. 6, 2011, it was one of his last acts as governor and lasted 90 days. His replacement, GOP Gov. John Kasich let it expire. Only now, after the bloodbath, does Kasich see it as “a problem.”

Kasich's team called the measure "unenforceable."  Only one problem:  parts of that executive order were very much enforceable, including the provision that could have prevented this awful event.

If Kasich had extended the emergency ban, “the state would have had the authority to remove [the owner's] animals” as the owner, 62-year old Tommy Thompson, had been convicted of animal cruelty. Thompson shot himself after releasing the animals yesterday.

So yeah, way to go, Republicans.  You could have done the right thing, you could have stopped this mess, instead Kasich said "NO BIGGIE LOL" and let the order and the power the state had that could have prevented this from happening expire.  If he wasn't the most hated Governor in the land, this one pretty much seals it.

Asshole.

Your Political Cartoon Of The Moment

David Fitzsimmons of the Arizona (Tuscon) Daily Star:





It would be funnier if it wasn't so true.

Blame Game Remains The Same, Part 2

Lots of sturm und drang over the latest Gallup/USA Today poll apportioning blame for the economy to former President Bush and President Obama.  It's true that for the first time more than 50% (some 53%) now say President Obama deserves a moderate or great deal of the blame, but 69% say the same about President Bush.  The real story is in the crosstabs:

 

The real difference here is that half of Republicans blame Bush for the economy.  That hasn't changed much.  Independents still blame the former President but there's increasing blame for the current one.  Considering most of the GOP is running on Bush's economic plan of tax cuts, deregulation, and adding cuts to Social Security and Medicare, if the question is which economic plan they dislike more, the GOP is not winning hearts and minds here.

Still a lot can change in a year before the election, however.

Elementary Lesson

I recently wrote about this in a fiction piece, so I was surprised to find it so clearly portrayed in a real situation.  We teach our kids about stranger danger (I hope!) so that they temper their childlike innocent and tendency to trust with a little skepticism and understanding that some people are not nice.  What we often fail to teach kids is that danger can come from the Trusted Adults that we tell them are okay.  In this case, it was a teacher.

SILVER SPRING, Md. (WUSA) -- A stunning abuse trial is underway in Montgomery County, Maryland, involving a teacher allegedly punching, kicking and choking her first grade students.

Susan Lee Burke faces two counts of second degree child abuse and 10 counts of second degree assault. She was a first grade teacher at Greencastle Elementary School in Silver Spring until her arrest.

Here's how it happened: the parents of a 7-year-old boy allegedly witnessed their happy child become so anxious, he bit his nails until they bled and started wetting his bed. They repeatedly asked if he was bullied. All he did share, according to prosecutors, was that he wanted to switch to a different class. He finally confided in a school counselor and an administrator that he'd been physically assaulted by Burke.

The defense is saying the stories from students are inconsistent, which makes sense because they are little kids.  Seven-year-olds are not known for being consistent, and process events through a filter that only a child expert can examine.  Kids who made it up would probably not think it through enough to say "I need to bite my nails so I can make this look good," so I tend to give them some credibility.  There is also the fact that those who abuse children tend to work in child-related fields such as teaching.  However, the article does not include and defense material for the teacher, including an explanation that would bring this into a coherent and regrettable misunderstanding.

In honor of this, I'll be talking to the young'uns and reminding them that danger lurks everywhere, even from sources you believe you can trust.  It's so easy to think of a strange fellow in a raincoat that we forget the danger right in front of us.

Equal Opportunity Violence

When Topeka enraged thousands by decrminalizing domestic violence, one of our readers pointed out (rightfully) that female-on-male violence is on the rise.  In honor of that comment, we have the following:

EVERETT, Wash. — A woman has appeared in court accused of cutting her sleeping husband's neck and shoulder with a power saw.

Officers who arrived at the home in Everett, Wash., say they could hear the victim shouting: "You tried to cut my head off. You're going to jail."

The Daily Herald reported the 43-year-old woman appeared in court Monday on a charge of domestic violence assault and a judge kept her bail at $250,000. The newspaper did not identify her.

Police say the woman told officers she grabbed the saw Friday night because an intruder escaped out her daughter's window.

Police say there is no evidence of an intruder, and how that translates into cutting her husband with a saw. Methinks there is more to the story, but that is all we have so far.

Taking Your Right To Vote: The Return Of Jim Crow

I've been banging this drum for months now folks, and I'm not giving up on it.  GOP voter suppression efforts at the state level are the largest single threat we face to our democracy today, and the effort to sugarcoat these foul efforts as "Voter ID laws" has to be called what it is:  the new Jim Crow.  Take South Carolina, for instance.  The AP runs the numbers on the GOP effort in the state to limit traditionally Democratic voters, and finds out that's exactly what the law does.

The analysis shows that among the state’s 2,134 precincts there are 10 precincts where nearly all of the law’s affect falls on nonwhite voters who don’t have a state-issued driver’s license or ID card, a total of 1,977 voters.

The same holds true for white voters in a number of precincts, but the overall effect is much more spread out and involves fewer total voters: There are 44 precincts where only white voters are affected, or 1,831 people in all.

The precinct that votes at Benedict College’s campus center has 2,790 voters, including nine white voters. In that precinct, 1,343 of the precinct’s nonwhite voters lack state identification but only five white voters. They account for 48 percent of the precinct’s voters.

Benedict is not alone.

A precinct at South Carolina State University has 2,305 active voters, including 33 white voters. There, 800 nonwhite voters and 17 white voters there lack state IDs. More than third of the voters in the precinct lack state photo identification.

Mission accomplished, I'd say.  Once again, a major political party in the United States is running on a platform of making it more difficult for people to vote, specifically for the poor, the elderly, minority voters, and college students.  Once again, the kind of "voter fraud" that these laws supposedly stop, a "national crisis" has never been documented.  These laws exist for one reason: to tilt the electorate in favor of the Republican party.  Period.

No matter what you think about the Democrats, they're not the ones trying to take the right to vote away from people in order to try to maintain political power.

Breaking: Libyan NTC Official Reports Qaddafi Dead

Reuters:

Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi died of wounds suffered in his capture near his hometown of Sirte on Thursday, a senior NTC military official said.

National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters earlier that Gaddafi was captured and wounded in both legs at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked.

"He was also hit in his head," the official said. "There was a lot of firing against his group and he died."

There was no independent confirmation of his remarks.

Again, unconfirmed at this hour, Al Jazeera reporting that Qaddafi may have been captured instead, a lot going on.  More on this later today.

[UPDATE 1:30 PM]  Multiple sources confirm that Qaddafi was indeed killed trying to escape from Sirte and Libya is cheering.

Take Two On The Jobs Bill

Harry Reid may hold a test vote as early as Friday on legislation that would authorize arguably the most widely approved part of the American Jobs Act:  putting firefighters and teachers laid off across the country by cash-strapped schools and local governments back to work.

"We are going to make sure there is a vote on our bill this week," Reid told a crowd of fire fighters and teachers at a rally on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

The $35 billion legislation would be paid for with a 0.5 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year -- a tiny new marginal bump that Republicans unanimously oppose. Some analyses suggest the legislation would save or create 400,000 jobs.

"The Republicans who work in the Senate suit up every day and come down and play their game in the Senate by following the lead of their leader -- and that is, whatever they do, to make sure they do everything they can to make Barack Obama [lose]," Reid said.

That's the good news.  The bad news?  It might get even fewer votes than the entire bill did as not only will Republicans unanimously oppose it, but more Blue Dogs in the Senate will turn and bite the President's hand once again and pull Reid's pants down.

[Reid will] face some resistance from his own caucus as well. Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) bucked Reid last week and opposed debate on Obama's entire jobs bill and have signaled they'll do the same this time around. They may be joined by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) who took to Twitter during Reid's speech to oppose the legislation.

"Spending on new programs will add to the amount of money the Special Cmte. on debt cuts has to find," Lieberman tweeted. They already have a very hard job."

Yeah, see, this is a problem, guys.  You're supposed to be backing the President on this.  Does Blanche Lincoln ring a bell with you morons or not?

StupidiNews!

• Libyan NTC forces say they have entered the last pro-Qaddafi stronghold in Sirte and that the city has fallen, unconfirmed at this hour is that Qaddafi himself may have been captured.
• Greece faces another day of paralyzing strikes as lawmakers vote on the latest round of austerity cuts.
• Citigroup will pay $285 million in fines for misleading investors leading up to the financial crisis, but no arrests will follow.
• European banks say they will sell as much as $1 trillion in assets over the next two years in order to meet capitalization requirements set by the EU.
• Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University are working on a project to turn just about any surface into a touchpad.

Last Call

Your assignment this evening:  ABL's post today at The Grio on "Obamabots".

Professional Left bloggers tend to hail from the first-responder blogs, those that gained popularity and readership during the Bush years, a period of liberal togetherness, and which have maintained their status despite the proliferation of "independent or "New Left" blogs such as mine, The People's View, PoliticusUSA, Addicting Info, Pragmatic Obots Unite, POV, and others.

The Nation, Salon, Daily Kos, and Firedoglake are no longer the go-to blogs for liberals. Indeed, these blogs have become destinations of last-resort, due to the anti-Obama sentiment that permeates these blog communities, sentiment which is, in my view, at least partially based on race. And, although the notion that criticism of Obama might be race-based is a notion with which white liberals are apparently not ready to wrestle, that notion is widely discussed among New Left bloggers of all races.

She's getting the long overdue attention she deserves, folks...and she's absolutely right throughout this article.  Check it out.

Turtle Boy Blows A Gasket

If you were still wondering whether or not the GOP is in neck deep in flop sweat right now, listen to two minutes of Mitch McConnell.

It must be the fault of those Republicans in Congress. It must be the fault of those rich people. It must be the fault of those people on Wall Street. I don't think the American people are going to fall for it. He's been president now for three years -- for three years. We've run the national debt up 35 percent as he's tried to prime the pump and borrow and spend our way into prosperity. I think complaints about Congress fall on deaf ears. He owned the Congress for the first two years. They did everything he wanted. Everything. The only thing they forgot to do -- I don't know why they overlooked this -- they forgot to raise taxes. But they did everything else.

Yep.  Mitch is selling the GOP doing nothing right now.  He thinks this is going to win his party full control of Washington, and that you will reward him for stopping Congress from passing a jobs bill when more than half of Americans say that jobs and the economy are the single most important issue.  Funny how that works, huh.

Barney, Frankly On Occupy Wall Street

Rep. Barney Frank had some tough love for Occupy Wall Street protesters on Rachel Maddow's show on Monday night:  Where were you guys in November 2010 when we needed you in the voting booth?

[S]imply being in a public place and voicing your opinion in and of itself doesn't do anything politically. It is the prerequisite, I hope, for people getting together and voting and engaging things.

And I understand some of the people on Occupy Wall Street are kind of critical of that. They think that's conventional politics.

Well, you know, the most successful organization in America in getting its views adopted is the National Rifle Association. They are in many cases a minority. But in addition to everything else they do, they very effectively identify who the members of the Congress are, the legislatures and vote for them.

So, as I said, I welcome the Wall Street energy. I don't agree with everything some of the people say. I agree with the general thrust of it. But it's not self-executing. It has to be translated into political activity if it's going to have the impact. And -- you know, I would just say, the last thing, we had an election last year in which people who disagree with them, and disagree with me and with you, got elected.

I want to be honest again here. I don't know what the voting behavior is of all these people, but I'm a little bit unhappy when people didn't vote last time blame me for the consequences of their not voting.

And he has a very salient point.  If you agree with the Occupy Together movement and you choose not to vote, then the Republicans win.  Really is that simple.

Lawsuit Stupidity

According to online court records, Gil Harrington and the estate of Morgan Harrington have filed a lawsuit against Regional Marketing Concepts Inc., which operates under the name RMC Events. RMC provides security at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville.

Morgan Harrington was attending a Metallica concert at John Paul Jones Arena the night she disappeared. Police have said at some point, Harrington left the arena. When she tried to reenter, security guards refused to let her back in, citing a no-reentry policy.

According to The Roanoke Times, the lawsuit is for $3.5 million. It was filed on October 11.

I would like to know just what parents think they are responsible for, and how they blame a public venue for enforcing a well known policy.  Everyone who attends events of this nature knows there is a one-way-door policy.   You go out, you stay out.  The fact that a young woman decided to leave, wander outside and hitchhike is far more problematic than a guard doing their job. 

I feel for the parents, this loss must be devastating.  Also the fact that this bears on them would be painful, but no less factual.  The reality is, just because you drop your child off does not mean the adults around them are responsible for them.  In this case, the victim was a young but legal adult.  It reminds me of a local lawsuit several years ago that came from a woman who dropped her eight-year-old son off at a bookstore at the mall and left him unattended for at least four hours.  The boy was kidnapped and assaulted, and the woman tried to sue the bookstore for failure to prevent him from leaving.  This is the same principle.  Nobody could have forced Morgan Harrington to stay on the premises.  The unfortunate reality is that when a person puts themselves at risk, sometimes the risk leads to injury or death.  Morgan was 20 years old, a legal adult and responsible for herself.  I am not saying in any way that she deserved to be a victim, but I am saying she is the only one responsible for the decision to leave and put herself in harm's way.  We should be able to walk around at night and not fear for our safety, but reality is quite different.

Anger is the first reaction for most people who find themselves grieving.  It's been long enough now that the parents should advocate smarter choices, speak out to young adults who don't realize the possibilities that come from their actions... and in turn teach responsibility by demonstrating an understanding of their liability, Morgan's liability, and the lack of liability of the arena who had no legal options in allowing her to walk away.

In Which Bon Thinks The CDC Is Full Of Beans

The CDC has calculated the cost of "binge" drinking, and defined binge drinking as four to five drinks. On top of a lot of theoretical math, including work productivity and "other alcohol-associated medical problems" this seems like a study in wasting science and manpower.

How does this knowledge help, exactly?

The study looked at costs that included _ among other things _ lost work productivity, property damage from car crashes, expenditures for liver cirrhosis and other alcohol-associated medical problems, and money spent on incarceration of drunk drivers and criminals using alcohol.

The CDC estimated excessive drinking cost society nearly $224 billion in 2006, the most recent year for which all necessary statistics were available. That worked out to about $1.90 per drink, 80 cents of which was spent by federal, state or local governments, the researchers estimated. The rest came from drinkers, their families, private health insurers, employers, crime victims and others.

Most of that was related to binge drinking, in which four or five alcoholic beverages are consumed on one occasion.

"Binge drinking results in binge spending," said CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden.

CDC officials noted that while some health benefits have been associated with, say, a glass of wine each day, there are no health benefits linked to excessive drinking. They also said the new study likely represents an underestimate of the total cost.

In the end, it all comes down to an estimate, and one that could have been made clearer. On our yearly trip to Tunica, MS I enjoy four or five drinks through the course of an evening, and I am pretty sure I have not gone on a bender.  I disagree with their definition of binge drinking and I have to wonder how they accounted for the responsible drinkers as well.  I see no plus or minus, just vague hints at the figures and how they were determined.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to diminish the issue we have with binge drinking or the cost to the victims and the innocent. I just happen to disagree with this entire article, and would love to hear what you guys think. Am I wrong? Does this feel like a trumped up "we had nothing to do so let's study this" release to you as well?

The 4-1-1 On The 9-9-9 Plan, Con't

Matt Yglesias sums up what Herman Cain's awful 9-9-9 Plan means for the middle class in this pair of charts showing the change in the average American's yearly tax burden:




And yes, this means for working class Americans earning between $10k and $40k a year, you can expect to pay 10% of your entire yearly income more in taxes under the plan, while your average millionaire will save about $450,000 a year.  Oh, and it'll add trillions to the national debt too because of lost revenue, to the point of needing to go well beyond the draconian cuts Paul Ryan and friends demanded in the House earlier this year in order to "balance" the budget.

But maybe that's the point.  Hey "Tea Party Real Americans who work for a living" what part of "massive middle class tax hike" do you still not get about Cain?