Re-Birther Of The Uncool, Part 4

The racist, jackass Birthers are back, this time trying to get President Obama thrown off the ballot in Ohio over his Social Security number.

If Barack Obama has an immediate eligibility problem, it is more likely to derive from the Social Security Number he has been using for the last 35 years than from his birth certificate. Ohio private investigator Susan Daniels has seen to that. On Monday, July 2, she filed suit in Geauga County (Ohio) Common Pleas Court demanding that Jon Husted, Ohio secretary of state, remove Obama’s name from the ballot until Obama can prove the validity of his Social Security Number.

Daniels, who has vetted thousands of Social Security Numbers for numerous other clients, has done her homework. In her filing, she thoroughly documents her contention “that Barack Obama has repeatedly, consistently, and with intent misrepresented himself by using a fraudulently obtained Social Security Number.” To acquire appropriate standing in court, Daniels has gone to the trouble of establishing herself as a valid write-in candidate for president. Before she is through, this 70-something mother of seven, who has been a licensed Ohio PI since 1995, may cause Obama more trouble than the Romney campaign.

Only one problem.  Like everything else that Drudge pushes, it's not true.

Prior to 1972, cards were issued in local Social Security offices around the country and the Area Number represented the State in which the card was issued. This did not necessarily have to be the State where the applicant lived, since a person could apply for their card in any Social Security office. Since 1972, when SSA began assigning SSNs and issuing cards centrally from Baltimore, the area number assigned has been based on the ZIP code in the mailing address provided on the application for the original Social Security card. The applicant's mailing address does not have to be the same as their place of residence. Thus, the Area Number does not necessarily represent the State of residence of the applicant, either prior to 1972 or since.

This nonsense was shot down years ago.  But racist assholes who will never accept a black President will do anything to keep him off the ballot in states, including clogging up the courts with frivolous lawsuits again and again and again.   It's embarrassing, and the number one source of news for the right pushes it as if it's fact.

So of course ignorant Republicans believe what they are force-fed.  That's why we have to counter with the truth.

Man Draws Attention For Impersonating Meat Loaf

A man has bought the web address www.meatloaf.org and has been impersonating the singer.  Michael Aday, the man most of us know would do anything for love, has been trying to free up the name or at least stop the man from taking advantage of fans.

Meat Loaf claims Torkington -- who's based in the UK -- has no right to own or use the domain name, and is currently breaking the law by cybersquatting ... in violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.

Meat Loaf wants Torkington to shut down his website and hand over the domain. He also wants $100,000 in damages.

Calls to Torkington were not returned.

There's a law on his side, but I don't know what it allows for damages or the boundaries it sets for wording and disclosure, but taking advantage of people is a no-no regardless.

Whew! Pilot Wasn't Criminal, Just Crazy

I feel relieved, how about you?

(Reuters) - A Texas judge on Tuesday found a JetBlue pilot insane and not guilty of interfering with a flight after his bizarre behavior forced an emergency landing in March.

Clayton Osbon, 49, had been charged with interference with a flight crew and could have faced up to 20 years in prison.

Court documents show U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson in Amarillo, Texas, received a report from a psychological examination that concluded, "at the time of the commission of the offense, the defendant appeared to suffer from a severe mental disease or defect that impaired his ability to appreciate the nature, quality, or wrongfulness of his behavior."

All parties, including the prosecutors, agreed to the report.

Last month, Judge Robinson declared Osbon fit to stand trial, saying he was "not now suffering from a mental disease or defect" that would make it impossible for him to assist in his own defense.

Well, isn't that bloody convenient.  It's amazing how dodging a 20 year prison sentence can make one feel better about themselves.

I'm calling bullshit.  You don't flip crazy to sane like a switch.  He's either guilty or still insane.  I find it hard to believe he could try to have it both ways, but here you see it.

And The Wind Cried Ashleigh

Apparently Joe Walsh likes addressing media figures by their first name.  A lot.

Tea Party favorite freshman Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) took to CNN today to do damage control over his critical remarks about his congressional challenger’s military record. But the appearance quickly went awry, with a frustrated Walsh repeating host Ashleigh Banfield’s name dozens of times as he tried to cut in and speak his mind.

When Banfield asked Walsh if he’d verbally slipped up in saying that opponent Tammy Duckworth—who lost both legs as a result of injuries sustained when an RPG struck her helicopter in Iraq—is not a “true hero” because she talks too much about her military service, Walsh offered no apology but a slight clarification.

“No, Ashleigh, this wasn’t a slip-up. I don’t regret anything I said,” Walsh said. “Understand me. Every man and woman who’s worn the uniform is a hero in my book.”

Walsh blamed the Duckworth campaign for “manufacturing” the story because they’d caught it on tape, though Banfield wouldn’t bite, saying that the comment would have been equally controversial no matter who caught it. As the conversation wound aimlessly around this back and forth, Walsh began repeating, “Ashleigh,” over and over in an attempt to silence the host and return to his talking points in an instance reminiscent of when Michele Bachmann raised her hand and repeatedly called CNN Host Anderson Cooper’s name during a presidential debate last year.

A Huffington Post supercut of the interview shows Walsh saying, “Ashleigh” around 90 times.

By the way, if you think Joe Walsh is kind of a dirtbag for going after double amputee and war heroine Tammy Duckworth like that, clearly you forget how Republicans called Georgia triple amputee and war hero Max Cleland a terrorist sympathizer and Saxby Chambliss won Cleland's Senate seat in 2002.

Joe Walsh is still a deadbeat dad, by the way.  But he's betting he can play the race, gender, and amputee card to win in Congress.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Post-racial America in 2012 is awesome, is it not?

All loving Christians are invited to celebrate the word of God at Rev. William Collier’s annual conference — that is, as long and they are white. Collier’s Alabama town is outraged over the flyer for his pastors’ conference, which specifies “All White Christians Invited.”

The town’s mayor is renouncing the Reverend, saying that such hate speech is unwelcome in the town. But Collier defended the flyer this week, saying that he isn’t a racist — just that “the white race is God’s chosen people”.

Sure, that's okay.  If you think the NAACP or Jewish groups are racist, but White Christians need their own conference that isn't racist because you think it's a fact they are God's chosen, then it's okay.

So, is he voting for the Mormon or the black guy for President, one has to wonder.

StupidiNews!

• Information site WikiLeaks is releasing over 2 million emails from Syria's al-Assad regime since 2006, showing interesting dealings with Western nations.
• Two former Argentine dictators were given lengthy jail sentences for ordering police forces to take babies from leftist opponents in the late 70's and early 80's.
• Facing united world opposition, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says he is now willing to step aside as leader.
• Embattled Netflix is gaining in market value now that one analyst has determined the company's subscribers watch more online per month than TV and cable networks combined.
• A new report from Japan has determined that the country's nuclear regulators and TEPCO power concern both failed miserably in preventing the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

Last Call

Josh Marshall thinks the Romney offshore account story is a backbreaker.

I’ll just say it: I don’t think the political pundit class understands just how toxic the Swiss/Caymans/Bermuda accounts issue is for Romney. Not that they don’t know it’s a liability at all. But I don’t think they realize the extent of it. 

On the contrary, Josh, I believe they do.

Fair or not, it just rolls off the tongue. Immediately understandable. And assuming you’re not talking to the deeply ideological committed or hyper-partisans, how exactly do you understand that a man running for president has parked a lot of his money in offshore tax havens?

You get Democrats like Cory Booker to come on Meet the Press and explain to us how companies like Bain Capital are awesome, and that Democrats should quit attacking people like Mitt Romney for his economic success.   This story isn't going away, but neither will the Dems get any traction out of it.  Pretty soon we'll have Glenn Kessler attacking Dem ads based on this story as "Four Pinocchio" lies even though it's the truth, it then becomes "both sides do it" to the people in the swing states and they'll tune it out altogether.

It's a nice fantasy, but one that will be drowned out by Romney's team and a compliant media.

Stamp Of Disapproval

So what's ahead in the next phase of battles in Congress? House Republicans are champing at the bit in order to kick nearly 2 million people off of food stamps (because only "those" people need food stamps) and give the money saved to more government farm subsidies.  The plan won't save a dime of money as the Republicans are immediately giving every bit of the savings to Big Agriculture.  But it'll sure teach those young bucks selling food stamps for drugs (which is every minority on the program of course) a lesson.

House Republicans have spent the years since the Great Recession clamoring for “reform” of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, cutting funding from the program in budget after budget. But now that a top House Republican has drafted a deal that would make the program’s basic requirements even more stringent than Texas — a state with notoriously strict eligibility standards — conservative Republicans are balking at the deal in favor of a requirement even they admit is “out of date.”

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK), in an effort to push food stamp reform that would have a fighting chance in the Senate, made sizable changes to SNAP in the House version of the farm bill. Lucas’ draft reins in state eligibility requirements by ending what is known as “categorical eligibility” for all non-cash-assistance food programs. The Lucas version of the bill would save billions but kick nearly two million people out of the program, following the footsteps of Republican efforts over the last two years. But that isn’t enough for his fellow Republicans, who want to make deeper, “symbolic” cuts that have no chance of passing the Senate...

But that doesn't matter.  Punishing those who choose to vote for Democrats matter.  There are no poor people in America, no hungry people, no people who go without food in this country, only lazy people who aren't working 80 hours a week at minimum wage.  America is the greatest country in the history of everything!

Come to think of it, why do you need a minimum wage, anyway?  Just work more hours, you lazy bums!

AMERCIA, FCUK YEAH!

Drowning In BS

As lifeguards are paid and trained to do, Tomas Lopez rushed down the beach to rescue a drowning man — and then got fired for it.

The problem: Lopez stepped out of the beach zone his company is paid to patrol, a supervisor said Tuesday.

Topics Companies and Corporations Hallandale Beach Aventura "I ran out to do the job I was trained to do," said Lopez, 21, of Davie. "I didn't think about it at all."

At least two other lifeguards have quit in protest. "What was he supposed to do? Watch a man drown?" asked one, Szilard Janko.

Company officials on Tuesday said Lopez broke a rule that could've put beachgoers in his designated area in jeopardy. The firm could ultimately have been sued, officials said.

"We have liability issues and can't go out of the protected area," said supervisor Susan Ellis. "What he did was his own decision. He knew the company rules and did what he thought he needed to do."

The company doesn't say they had to fire him, so it must still be a choice, right?  This guy barely makes over minimum wage and saved a dying man, only to lose his job.  That makes no sense whatsoever, and the fake tone of regret doesn't help a bit.

What a crock. No company worth a damn fires a man for saving a man drowning right in front of him, because someone else may have chosen that minute to drown.

Life After Independence Day

This is just a freebie, the normal 3:30 will be following.

I'm sure just about everyone has seen Independence Day with Will Smith.  It was a great movie, and the battle speech still gives me chills when I'm in the mood.

TMZ tracked down the adorable little boy who played Vivica A Fox's son (Will's soon to be stepson) and gave us a little "where is he now."  Hint: he's still adorable.  He also makes me acutely aware that I have aged too much since I watched Independence Day in the at the movies.

TomKat's Divorce Will Get Interesting

Katie Holmes has been very smart.  According to sources, she had planned this for a long time.  When Tom Cruise had to leave the country, it was her chance to act.  She had a place to live lined up, physical custody of Suri, and a plan.  She is acting like a concerned parent, and the independent woman that many claimed was lost when she married Tom Cruise.  She is also acting like a terrified woman, which is a bit alarming.  She went to the press, that's breaking the first rule of Celebrity Divorce Club.  She contacted the press before just about anyone, my only assumption is that it was to protect her from any abuse from Cruise or the church.  She surely knows better than we do, and for her actions to be so methodical and thorough, it makes sense she may know something that put her in fear for her life, or safety.

TMZ is running new info, this is what they live for.  Harvey must have taken my advice, the typos have been better.  Anyway, here is the most recent nugget of terror about Scientology, courtesy of the TMZ website:

Ex-Scientologists call the process "sec checking."  Here's the way it works.  The subject holds electrode handles on a device called an e-meter and is then asked a series of personal questions that help the Church locate "areas of spiritual distress."

Some ex-Scientologists claim the questions include:
-- What has somebody told you not to tell?-- Have you ever decided you did not like some member of your family?-- Have you ever bullied a smaller child?-- Have you ever lied to a teacher?-- Have you ever done something you were very much ashamed of?-- Have you ever refused to obey an order from someone you should obey?-- Have you ever gotten yourself dirty on purpose?

During the process, a person called an "auditor" collects e-meter readings. 

They interrogate children, to get them to betray their parents and any family secrets that may be lurking.  They interrogate children.

This could be the death of Scientology, and maybe the one last card Holmes has to play.  "Leave me alone or I blow the lid off everything" is a mighty weapon for an organization that has so much to lose.

Romney's Offshore Shell Games

Nick Shaxson's devastatingly brutal Vanity Fair piece on Mitt Romney's offshore bank account shell games is your must-read holiday assignment for this evening, and you'll want to tackle the piece sober.

Then you'll want to share it with your friends.  It's that important.

To give but one example, there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates. While the Romneys’ spokespeople insist that the couple has paid all the taxes required by law, investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in “jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,” as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.
 
That’s not the only money Romney has in tax havens. Because of his retirement deal with Bain Capital, his finances are still deeply entangled with the private-equity firm that he founded and spun off from Bain and Co. in 1984. Though he left the firm in 1999, Romney has continued to receive large payments from it—in early June he revealed more than $2 million in new Bain income. The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers. Again, the Romney campaign insists he saves no tax by using them, but there is no way to check this.

Trust Mitt.  He and Ann have paid all the taxes on his offshore millions, according the blind trusts set up by his own personal lawyer, and with zero accountability or oversight.  You'll just have to take his word for it.  Oh, but it gets worse.

Mysteries also arise when one looks at Romney’s individual retirement account at Bain Capital. When Romney was there, from 1984 to 1999, taxpayers were allowed to put just $2,000 per year into an I.R.A., and $30,000 annually into a different kind of plan he may have used. Given these annual contribution ceilings, how can his I.R.A. possibly contain up to $102 million, as his financial disclosures now suggest?

The Romneys won’t say, but Mark Maremont, writing in The Wall Street Journal, uncovered a likely explanation. When Bain Capital bought companies, it would create two classes of shares, named A and L. The A shares were risky common shares, to which they would assign a very low value. The L shares were preferred shares, paying a high dividend but with the payoff frozen, and most of the value was assigned to them. Bain employees would then put the exciting A shares in their I.R.A. accounts, where they grew tax-free. With all the risk of the deal, the A shares stood to gain a lot or collapse. But if the deal succeeded, the springing value could be stunning: Bain employees saw their A shares from one particularly fruitful deal grow 583-fold, 16 times faster than the underlying stock.

So when Mitt bankrupted companies like Kay-Bee Toys to make his millions, he didn't just clean up, he made sure he would have tens of millions in retirement cash, tax free, while the employees in the companies he shredded for profit saw their jobs and retirement accounts and their savings completely wiped out.  He didn't just make a mint, he made a mint and paid zero taxes on it.  Zero.

And now this asshole is running for President.  Even worse, people who make jack squat for wages will vote for this guy "because he's good for business."

Do you see why now you need to share this article with your friends?

The Fight Ahead On Medicaid Expansion

There's two schools of thought on how to approach the notion of red states opting out of Medicaid expansion in the ACA.  The first, championed by wonks like Ezra "Charts" Klein and Kevin Drum, basically says that there's so much in health care industry cost savings (and in new customers for insurance giants) that lobbyists and economic reality will drive states like Texas, Louisiana and Florida to take the money and run.  In other words, economics trumps politics.

But given the Republican Party's behavior over the last four years, I question that.  Not only do I question that, I outright laugh at the notion.  I may not agree with FDL's Marcy Wheeler and David Dayen on Obama, but they are both absolutely right about how the GOP will play the race card on this for as long as it's politically expedient, no matter what the economics say.  Politics trumps economics.  First, Wheeler:

Already, my anecdotal experience is that a proportion of voters in the states in question claim that the first black President has spent his first term making sure that people of color get more than their fair share of benefits (I think they make this argument based on expanded food stamp usage, though of course the argument is not coherent). The GOP frame for the Medicaid argument will not focus at all on insuring the uninsured. It will not breathe a word of how insured people subsidize uninsured people who use emergency rooms for care. Rather, it will extend and enlarge on this argument about a black President giving free stuff to black people (or Latinos in states like Texas). And I believe that will remain true even if Obama loses in November.

Dayen also agrees with this assessment:

But that’s arguing with logic. I don’t know why, given shared history, anyone would believe that logic will rule the day, and red state governors will go against their entire ideological worldview and spend taxpayer dollars – however small – to cover poor people, in many states largely people of color. And if you rely on this numbers game, if you never make a moral argument for WHY poor people shouldn’t have to choose between food or medical care, you have a whole bunch more problems than just this Medicaid expansion.

Democrats, Dayen argues, must now be prepared to go full out and assault GOP governors and say "Here's your death panels, boys. We know that being uninsured leads to people dying earlier, and the Republicans are sentencing millions of the poor to die rather than lift a finger to help just to spite President Obama.  It's the same thing they did with jobs and fixing the economy.  They'd rather score political points than fix anything.  They don't care about saving their states money.  They'd rather kill or drive off all the poor to make them somebody else's problem."

This is where I'm in complete agreement with the FDL guys. Now, the expansion of this logic over at Digby's place inevitably leads to OBAMA FAILED US ON SINGLE PAYER because Medicaid will be seen as unpopular welfare rather than a universal program like SS/Medicare, and I argue that single payer never had a chance here anyway...at least not until next time.

But it has more of a chance than it did before Obama.  Then again, as Yellow Dog points out, the red state that will benefit the most from Obamacare?

Kentucky.  And you better believe Dinosaur Steve will take the money here.

StupidiNews!

• A copy of a 500-year old map showing America as "The New World" has been located at a German university.
• Iran has threatened to destroy all US bases in the Middle East in retaliation for any attack, in response to reports of increased US military activity in the region.
• Federal officials are apparently vehemently denying that mermaids exist in a new report out in response to a recent Animal Planet special.
• Apple plans to debut a smaller, less-expensive iPad to compete directly with Samsung's Galaxy tablets and Amazon's Kindle Fire.
• Verizon is suing the FCC over net neutrality laws, saying the evening of the playing field is a violation of the company's First Amendment rights.

Last Call

Dear Wall Street Journal:

While you're busy this Independence Day telling us how great America was economically in 1776 with low taxes and high per capital income compared to the rest of the world (and waxing nostalgic for that time again, apparently):

Almost every American knows the traditional story of July Fourth—the soaring idealism of the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress's grim pledge to defy the world's most powerful nation with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. But what else about revolutionary America might help us feel closer to those founders in their tricornered hats, fancy waistcoats and tight knee-breeches?

Those Americans, it turns out, had the highest per capita income in the civilized world of their time. They also paid the lowest taxes—and they were determined to keep it that way.

By 1776, the 13 American colonies had been in existence for over 150 years—more than enough time for the talented and ambitious to acquire money and land. At the top of the South's earners were large planters such as George Washington. In the North their incomes were more than matched by merchants such as John Hancock and Robert Morris. Next came lawyers such as John Adams, followed by tavern keepers, who often cleared 1,000 pounds a year, or about $100,000 in modern money. Doctors were paid comparatively little. Ditto for dentists, who were almost nonexistent.

Let's recall that a good part of out national GDP was built on one rather large omission from your article there:  SLAVERY, YOU ASSHOLES.  Frederick Douglass said it best 160 years ago:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.... 

Or as the Wall Street Journal seems to think, "We miss the good old days."  See, there's a mild problem with all this tricorner hat and drum and fife bullshit, because my ancestors at the time sure as hell didn't have much to celebrate on the 4th of July for the first 175 or so years of this country's existence other than "Well, at least we're not slaves and we can finally vote, so that's pretty good, right?"


Sure.  Happy 4th and all.