StupidiNews!

• After talks have reportedly fallen apart, the Department of Justice is reportedly ready to sue Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio over violating the civil rights of Latinos.
• Minnesota becomes the latest state to put GOP-sponsored Voter ID laws on the ballot this fall with a measure that would require all voters to show a state ID.
• A new study shows that non-education public sector jobs have been slashed to their lowest number since 1986.
• German luxury firearms manufacturer Merkel is having a banner year selling rifles to Russian and especially US buyers, with hand-crafted pieces going for as much as a quarter of a million.
• Google's "Project Glass" augmented reality glasses are far from reality, but the search engine giant does admit the project is on the drawing board.

Last Call

How much do the wingers hate this President?  This much, via Kevin Drum:

This is beyond bizarre. A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court is hearing a challenge to Obamacare, but when a Justice Department lawyer began arguments this morning she was stopped short:

Appeals Court Judge Jerry Smith immediately interrupted, asking if DOJ agreed that the judiciary could strike down an unconstitutional law. The DOJ lawyer, Dana Lydia Kaersvang, answered yes — and mentioned Marbury v. Madison, the landmark case that firmly established the principle of judicial review more than 200 years ago, according to the lawyer in the courtroom. 

Smith then became "very stern," the source said, telling the lawyers arguing the case it was not clear to "many of us" whether the president believes such a right exists....Smith, a Reagan appointee, went on to say that comments from the president and others in the Executive Branch indicate they believe judges don't have the power to review laws and strike those that are unconstitutional, specifically referencing Mr. Obama's comments yesterday about judges being an "unelected group of people."

Despite the fact that Kaersvang immediately acknowledged that courts can indeed strike down laws, the panel ordered her to "submit a three-page, single-spaced letter by noon Thursday addressing whether the Executive Branch believes courts have such power."

To recap, a federal judge is handing out a book report on judicial overreach and why overturning Congress and the President happens all the damn time apparently in order to put "that one" in his place in a petty display of tyranny on the bench.  Because Jerry Smith here will be damned if that uppity sumbitch is gonna run his mouth on his watch.

And yes, at this point we have Federal Appeals Court Judges acting like GOP House backbenchers.

We are so screwed if these guys get back in power.  They will goddamn go to war with us.

Saving Ryan's Privatizing

Ezra Klein makes the convincing argument that President Obama's Tuesday speech strongly suggests he plans on running against the Paul Ryan/House GOP budget in 2012, no matter who the actual Republican nominee is.

The message of President Obama’s budget speech today was this: In 2012, the Republican nominee for president is going to be Paul Ryan. And that’s true even if Mitt Romney wins the nomination.

That’s because Ryan is doing what Romney will not: Saying what, specifically, Republicans intend to do if they take power.

Mittens of course knows better.  President Obama is absolutely right to toss the House GOP budget chain around Romney's neck and pull as tight as he can.

Throughout the Republican primary, Romney’s great weakness has been his chameleon-like nature. Conservatives never really believed Romney was one of them. But that is, arguably, a strength for Romney in the general election: Independent voters might also believe that Romney’s conservatism is an election-year show, and he would govern as the reasonable moderate from Massachusetts.

Romney’s studied vagueness is an effort to make it easier for voters to take this leap: The less specific he is about what he would actually do, the more voters can project their own preferences onto him.

There's a lot of this going around the village, that Romney will be able to magically shift to the center.  He only gets away with that if the Village, the GOP, and President Obama let him do that.  The Village will do everything they can to see that happens.  The GOP will be torn in two over this, and that help the President.  And President Obama made it clear today he's going to be throwing the Ryan plan at Romney for the rest of the campaign.

By lashing Romney to Ryan’s budget, Obama intends to lash him to the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Where Romney has purposefully refrained from filling in the details on his agenda, the Obama campaign intends to use Ryan’s blueprint to fill them in on Romney’s behalf.

This can only work because Romney can’t actually walk away from Ryan’s budget: He’s already called it “an excellent piece of work” and campaigned alongside Ryan. Worse, Romney knows full well that conservatives would shriek if he began publicly distancing himself from the policy framework that the Republican Party has coalesced around.

So fight on, Mr. President.  Let's have the battle over the GOP Austerity plan once and for all.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Is it irresponsible to speculate if President Obama threatened Chelsea Clinton’s life in order to win the 2008 primary, like FOX News anchor Heather Childers does?





It’s irresponsible not to, of course.  But the whole “Bush fee-fees were impugned” happened, so all’s fair cause politics ain’t beanbag.

Intentional Blindness, Indeed

This is appalling.  Soldiers are risking their lives to defend us and our country.  Is it asking too much that reasonable protection from rape come with the benefits package?

While it is estimated that over 19,000 sexual assaults occurred in the military in 2010, a rate far higher than among civilians, the government has failed systematically to investigate complaints, appropriately punish perpetrators, and treat trauma and other health conditions suffered by survivors. The profound personal and social consequences that arise from the government's systemic failures are powerfully profiled in the new film, The Invisible War. Turning a blind eye to these crimes has allowed them to continue, imperiling the lives of victims and degrading their service.

Well said.  Ms. Park has plenty more to say, but the paragraph above nailed it for me.  Granted, statistically most rape victims are female, but sexual assault can mean many things, and surely men have suffered their fair share as well.

The first step towards a solution is admitting you have a problem.  Or, you could take a shortcut and listen to the people telling you they were assaulted.  Either way, it's time to start looking at this and figuring out the best way to protect and treat victims and deter and punish offenders.

Quickies: Live Long And Prosper

President Obama wins all of the things.




(via Nichelle Nichols)

Bless You!

And here we have a minute of adorable, thanks to YouTube. This kid would love me. I tend to hit double digits when I sneeze.

He Yam What He Yam

It's good to see the Gates Foundation making a real difference in people's lives.  Long before there were microloans, there were microfarms.  Or, what the rest of us would call "growing your own crops to eat."  It may be the newest wave in hipster urban sustainability, but for African nations like Ghana, it's life and death.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave a $12-million (nine-million-euro) grant Monday to a project aimed at boosting yam production and doubling the income of west African farmers of the crop.

It is the foundation’s largest grant for yam production anywhere in the world, said a spokesman of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria’s southwest city of Ibadan.


The project’s initial focus is on 200,000 smallholder farm families in Ghana and Nigeria, 90 percent of whom cultivate less than two acres, the institute said in a statement.

Basic pest and disease control in situations like this can dramatically improve crop yields, and where people need to eat what they grow in order to live, it's the best $12 million spent.  Considering how much the US spends on agriculture in a year, it's refreshing to see something like this done to help tens of thousands.

Good on them.

The Big GOP Primary Thread: Farmer In The Dells

Looks like Mittens has all but ended this thing with a clean sweep of Tuesday's contests in Maryland, DC, and Wisconsin.

Mitt Romney rode a wave of high-profile endorsements to victories over Rick Santorum in Wisconsin, Maryland, and Washington, DC on Tuesday.

Only Wisconsin, where Santorum led polls just weeks ago, was considered competitive. The GOP there is currently preoccupied with Governor Scott Walker’s (R) impending recall election, making the presidential race a sideshow, but Romney’s usual spending dominance and a growing sense of inevitability helped hand him a win.

“We’ve now reached the point where it’s halftime,” Santorum declared to supporters Tuesday night. “Who’s ready to charge out of the locker room in Pennsylvania for a strong second half?’

Romney’s nowhere near the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the nomination and Santorum’s campaign is pledging to go all the way to convention, talking up far-off states like Texas at the end of May. Santorum’s next shot at a winnable race will be his home state of Pennsylvania on April 24, a date that also includes several Northeastern states where Romney is expected to dominate.

I personally think it will take a Santorum loss in Pennsylvania to seal the deal, but frankly the next 3 weeks of pressure on him to quit is going to be brutal.  We'll see what happens, but despite Santorum vowing he can win Texas in May, it won't matter.

But by all means, continue to drain Mitt of his precious resources as you fight on, as Mitt still can't get more than 50% in a competitive primary...

StupidiNews!

• The military junta that seized control of the government of Mali says there will be a national convention to decide the country's political fate.
• Keith Olbermann tells David Letterman that the former Current TV anchor "screwed up" in trying to make the small network succeed.
• Several months after the end of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays in the military, the Pentagon says the impact of ending it has been "minimal".
• The Baylor Lady Bears completed their unprecedented 40-win perfect season by blowing out Notre Dame 80-61 to win the NCAA Women's basketball title.
• Facebook is counter-suing Yahoo over alleged patent violations as the battle between the two heats up.

Last Call

Republicans are just weird.  They decry that government interference in family life and important decisions are expensive and intrusive, bankrupting the country and bordering on dictatorship.  Then they proceed to send troops in to occupy tens of millions of uteri at taxpayer expense, particularly at the state level.

As restrictions on abortion and contraception have become the subject of state legislative action and Republican presidential candidates’ pitches to voters, arguments have focused on the issue’s moral and religious dimensions.

Less attention has been paid to the financial implications to states, businesses and women if governments impose policies that lead to increases in unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. The economic ramifications of such policies are important as the nation recovers from the worst recession since the Great Depression and governments work to reduce debts and deficits.

“There’s a simple math in place: more unintended pregnancies mean more public costs,” said Bill Albert, chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “Especially for the deficit hawks, it is a penny-wise-pound-foolish strategy.”

Now Uteroccupiers(tm) know full well that it's not about saving taxpayers money, it's about using the power of the government to go after any group that sides with the Democrats as punishment.  It's also about wasting money on slut-shaming in order to say "Well, we can't afford your schools and roads.  maybe you should have thought of that before having sex."  They can't openly say this, of course, so the Orwellian logic they do employ is quite illuminating.

Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for Americans United for Life, a Washington-based legal organization that seeks to overturn abortion rights, rejected that conclusion, saying the value of life can’t be reduced to dollars and cents.

“The unknown and absolute value of life is clear in what a person brings to society,” Hamrick said. “Let’s look, for example, at a girl who gets pregnant in college, does marry the father of her child, works to raise this child, and he becomes president. That’s Barack Obama,” she said, in a reference to the life experiences of the president’s mother.

Now let's pause for a minute on the fact that we have a conservative making the argument that at some point, even the hated Kenyan Colonialist was somebody's baby, and that he was loved.  I too am sensitive to that argument, having been adopted myself.  Second chances and all that.  But the thing is that she had a choice at the time, and it wasn't the state's job to tell her what to do, or to advocate for one choice over another when both choices are legal.  An actual conservative would understand that, but then again we're not dealing with actual conservatives, but Uteroccupiers(tm).

To them, it's all about the exercise of power of the state over these women in a cynical effort to trap the ones who deviate socially from their prescribed plan of Dominionist theory.  Nearly everything else that social conservatives do makes actual sense once put in the context of building a theocratic society where the wealthy are the favored people of the Divine Right of Cash, and they are morally superior to the rest of us.  Basic birth control is vital to women being able to control their own bodies, and if you're wondering why the GOP War on Women is so pervasive, it's because it's a keystone to women being independent members of society.  To have that choice available for the unwashed masses is of course an affront.

Bringing in the portrait of the President as a young man is just too much for them to resist, too.  They say that kids have to be brought into the world...and then they're on their own, apparently.

New tag, of course: Uteroccupiers.  Always up in your vajayjay.

Scott Walker Gets That Poll-Axed Look

Ed Kilgore over at Political Animal flags down this poll showing GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is in danger of losing his recall election by 5 points.  What's the catch?  It's a Rasmussen poll.

A majority of Wisconsin voters now support the effort to recall Republican Governor Scott Walker.

A new Rasmussen Reports statewide survey shows that, if the recall election was held today, 52% of Likely Voters would vote to recall Governor Walker and remove him from office. Forty-seven percent (47%) would vote against the recall and let him continue to serve as governor.

That's Walker losing by double digits in reality.  And that's got to frighten the hell out of Team Scott.

Ann Romney Is Mitt's ACME Secret Weapon

Yeah, I call shenanigans on this Politico article this morning:

Ann Romney is the Romney Democrats fear most

No, seriously.  When the hell did Ann Romney even become a factor in this race, let alone become a source of "fear" for the Obama campaign and Democrats in general?

Ann Romney’s unexpected rock star status has the political arena buzzing about how her husband’s campaign will leverage her popularity in an election in which Michelle Obama — one of the most admired first ladies in history — will have an outsized and substantive portfolio.

Indeed, this 62-year-old grandmother’s contribution to Mitt Romney’s campaign could amount to the most relevant role a wife has ever played in a presidential effort — softening the edges of a flawed and awkward candidate who struggles to connect with voters.

Alright, look.  Ann Romney would burst into flames like an exposed block of lithium in a bathtub of water if she ever made physical contact with any human being who made less than six figures last year.  She has been completely irrelevant in this campaign, period...other than maybe the fact she has multiple Cadillacs and that she doesn't consider herself wealthy.  I mean it's not like the bar of "more likeable than Mitt Romney" is some Everest-class feat of unfathomable difficulty.  It means you can keep yourself from saying obnoxious things about how rich you are less than 50% of the time you open your damn mouth.  This does not make you a "rock star", it makes you roughly 99 out of 100 Americans.  The only reason she's the Romney with all the charisma is that she's kept her mouth shut so far, so she's at roughly zero instead of Mitt's negative billion.

And now she's a "rock star" who is even more important and more "relevant" to the Romney campaign than Hillary was to candidate Bill or Michelle was to candidate Barack Obama?  Man, you guys are just absolutely pulling things out of your ass now over there.  And no, the date on the article is April 2, not April 1, which is what I originally thought when I read this.

Naah, this is just egregious ass-kissing on the part of Roger Simon's folks.  This is wholesale fan fiction to try to cover up the fact that Romney is augering into the ground like Don Draper's liver.  Ann Romney certainly hasn't been an asset the other times Mitt has run for President, now has she?

Jesus, Politico, at least pretend like you guys aren't trying to create a horse-race out of bullshit.

Breaking News: Tornadoes Can Kill You

I understand why they are changing tornado alerts.  In a lot of ways, it's a good idea.  Reminding people that they can die from a tornado could save lives if they really listen to the warnings.  The tornado that devastated Joplin had nearly twenty minutes warning.  But tornado warnings are a dime a dozen, and by July any self-respecting Missourian will snort, roll over and know the odds are against waking up in Oz.  If we stopped and took cover every time the skies threatened to kill us, we'd starve and turn ghastly pale from lack of sunlight.

Zandar was visiting me the week that Joplin was demolished.  I don't know if he remembers, but there was a tornado watch every single day he was here, and warnings more often than not.  Of course people are desensitized to the sirens and the map on the corner of the television.

I do have a concern with ranking the severity of the tornado.  It implies that there may be survivable tornadoes. The reality is, even a small tornado has the potential to do huge damage, and it's hard to predict whether it will grow or fade.

The obvious issue is that we have seen little growth in resources given to predicting and monitoring tornadoes.  When technology advances, a little cooperation between Google Maps and The Weather Channel could save lives.  Sometimes you can only warn a wide swath and pray for the best.  There are several times that more specific information can be given, and let people know when the threat affects their neighborhood instead of the "somewhere in the county there may be a funnel cloud" message we see today.

Every improvement is a step in the right direction, but a Suri voice won't change people's reaction to a generalized and unimpressive warning system.

By the way, here's a picture of the tornado system I snapped from work, a full sixty miles after the tornado broke up.  If the sky ever looks like this in broad daylight... TAKE COVER.

Roundup: Good Reads

Please go here and read the Immoral Minority article about the Godless Vagina.

It's short and sweet, and totally worth the time.  Besides his obvious love for the female body, the graphic makes one of the best points I've seen so far in the women vs. government debate about health care.

Meanwhile, Obama stresses yet again the importance of healthcare and that it be available to everyone. While he surely has his own beliefs and morals, he realizes it is his job to take care of all Americans, and he is giving it his best shot.

Last but not least, Nancy Kaufman cuts through the crap and says what's really going on:

The whole environment surrounding a woman's right to access a safe, legal abortion -- the waiting periods, the ultrasounds, the lectures, the so-called informed consent -- is premised on the assumption that women are not capable of making their own moral, religious, and ethical decisions without the intrusion and supervision of the government. These requirements demean women as independent actors, particularly when it comes to making decisions about their own bodies and their own health care. They are intended to dissuade women from making a decision that is legally theirs to make by applying social pressure channeled by a legislative body.

That pretty much sums it up.