StupidiNews!

• The US Navy is expressing its regrets after a military supply ship fired upon a small boat in the Persian Gulf that repeatedly ignored warnings to leave the naval ship's proximity, killing several.
• The military court case against WikiLeaks informant Bradley Manning now includes evidence that he knowingly gave classified information to "aid the enemy" according to the government.
• A new McClatchy poll finds that Americans would like to see the Bush tax cuts extended for the wealthy as well as the middle-class.
• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg has reportedly financed his $6 million home at a rate of just 1%, less than inflation.
• Valve is finally bringing the Steam gaming platform and several games to Ubuntu as more gaming companies are porting products to Linux.

Last Call

Nothing's going to pass Republicans in the House before they go on semi-permanent vacation to campaign next month, and that includes any House version of the Senate Dem bill passed in April designed to rescue the Post Office and save tens of thousands of jobs.

Republicans signaled last week that the House would likely not vote before the August recess on a postal bill from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the Oversight Committee chairman, and Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.).

Senators and outside industry observers decried that holdup, saying that any delay reduces the chances of lawmakers coming together on a broad postal reform package. The Senate passed its own postal reform bill in April, and key senators are waiting to negotiate a compromise bill with the House.

“The longer the House delays reforming the Postal Service, the more likely it is that nothing happens,” said Art Sackler of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, a group that represents the private-sector mailing industry.

The postponement of work on the postal bill also comes as House GOP leaders have shown little to no interest in advancing the chamber’s farm bill, another piece of legislation that could be a tough vote for some in the Republican rank-and-file.

At the same time, with the November elections less than four months away, GOP leaders in the House have scheduled a series of messaging votes meant to highlight the differences between the parties on issues like healthcare repeal and extending current tax rates.

That has left some observers concerned that, even if the House can pass its bill after it returns in September, final negotiations on a postal revamp could spill over into the lame-duck session after the election.

Republicans are increasingly expecting to hold the House in November, so they figure they can delay all they want to.  They figure the country won't punish them for continually trying to sink the economy under President Obama by wasting everyone's time with meaningless message votes and job-destroying cuts.

They're probably right.  Of course, the fact that a large percentage of Postal Service employees are minority means that House Republicans can let the USPS fall apart, call for tens of thousands more job cuts, and then blame President Obama for the loss of middle-class jobs for African-American and Latino families.

It's worked so far.  There's no reason to believe it won't work again.

Best Work Perk Ever

Happy Monday!  While most of us trudge back to work, reflect on this:

Bart Lorang may be the best boss ever.

The CEO of Denver-based internet start-up FullContact API said in a market that is competitive for top talent, he wants to keep his employees happy and refreshed.

The flip-flop wearing founder offers his employees $7,500 for what he calls "paid, paid vacation," however there are rules.

"One, you actually have to take a vacation to get the money," Lorang said. "Two, you have to disconnect from work, so that means no calls, no emails, no tweets, no work of any kind."

Even Lorang admitted he has trouble following his rules.

"I suck at it," he said.

Good sir, I would be willing to give it a try.  Read the whole article for more awesomeness, including how he feels workers should be able to let go to do a better job in the long run.

Trial For Woman Who Killed Husband With Boiling Water

A judge has ordered trial for 39-year-old Jesusa Tatad, who, in a jealous rage, went into her sleeping ex-husband's room and allegedly poured a pot of boiling water over him. 

Tatad, a Daly City woman, was allegedly upset because she believed her ex-husband was seeing another woman; the couple had divorced, but were still living together at the time she doused him with hot water, according to press reports. 

Her fiery rage left him with second- and third-degree burns across 60 percent of his body, which eventually killed him, prosecutors say.

As if boiling water wasn't enough, as the man jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom, Tatad allegedly then hit him on the head with a baseball bat, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office.

He had such a will to live that he still managed to flee and get the attention of a guard, who got him prompt medical attention.  It just wasn't enough.

Expect follow up when available.

Godzilla Teaser Gets Some Attention

SAN DIEGO — In an afternoon packed with new footage from films like The Hobbit, Man of Steel andPacific Rim, Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull sneaked in one more little surprise for the Comic-Con faithful: A sneak peek at his studio’s upcoming Godzilla remake.

Showing scenes of a dusty metropolis crushed into a pile of rubble complete with hollowed-out buildings, the less-than-a-minute clip’s voiceover — by J. Robert Oppenheimer — intoned, “We knew the world would not be the same…. A few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture…. Vishnu takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now, I am become death, destroyer of worlds.’” Once the line was completed, the screen flashed to a brief look at a terrifying-looking Godzilla in profile.Without even saying what he was about to show, Tull told the Hall H diehards Saturday that he had something he wanted to share. What played was a short-but-oh-so-mouthwatering tease of the apocalyptic-looking Godzilla film.

“I’ve loved Godzilla since I was a kid, and frankly we just wanted to see a kickass Godzilla movie,” Tull said following the clip.

I've always wanted to see a kickass Godzilla movie, too.  The one with Matthew Broderick wasn't bad, but it wasn't what I wanted.  I wanted to see something more epic and show the full destruction of Godzilla's wrath.

I can't wait for them to release it for public viewing.  

President Obama In Cincy Today

President Obama chose Cincy’s Brent Spence Bridge as the backdrop to introducing the American Jobs Act last year, and the Queen City is once again in the spotlight today as he returns for another major visit to talk up his economic record here and what it means to the tri-state.  He’ll be at Music Hall around 2 PM this afternoon.  I’m hoping you have tickets, I’m stuck up here in Mason for the day.

Obama is holding a town hall event in Cincinnati, one of the state’s most heavily Republican areas. Ohio and Florida again are shaping up as the most intensely competitive states in the presidential race. 

White House aides said Obama will cite news reports suggesting that Romney’s plans for limited taxing of overseas profits by U.S. companies would encourage foreign job growth. The two candidates have repeatedly accused each other of outsourcing American jobs.

The White House said Obama will renew his call for extending the Bush-era tax cuts on all households except those earning more than $250,000 a year. Romney says the wealthiest Americans also should keep their tax breaks because they are the most likely people to create jobs.

And no, Cincinnati isn’t as Republican as you think.  Ask Mayor Mark Mallory, who is thrilled to see the President and is one of his strongest supporters in Ohio in his Enquirer op-ed this morning.

During the week of the Fourth of July, President Obama visited Ohio to talk about a great American comeback story made possible because of a bet on the American worker. 

He visits Cincinnati today with the same message, reminding residents of the choice between two very different economic visions, placed on two very different kinds of bets. Where President Barack Obama bets on America’s middle class, Mitt Romney bets against them. Where Obama is moving us forward, Romney would hold us back.

And as a mayor, I believe there are two areas where that contrast is most clear: economic security and public safety. Cincinnati is moving forward with the president’s policies that invest in the soul of our economy – our small businesses and manufacturers, teachers and safety forces. We have more work to do, but our city has a partner in the White House who understands how we leverage federal investments to promote local growth.

The Enquirer of course is immediately complaining about the expected traffic snarl.  That’s the Enquirer for you.  Still, I expect the President to continue kicking ass on the trail like he did this weekend in Eric Cantor’s neck of the woods.  There’s a reason he’s following that up with a visit to Orange Julius’s backyard today.

Guess who just got back today, driving all the orange men crazy.

Also, the Enquirer’s Amanda Van Benschoten is liveblogging the President’s arrival and visit here.

Boehner Crying Foul

It's funny, I remember Orange Julius screaming earlier this spring that President Obama was "campaigner-in-chief" and spending too much time fundraising and not "doing his job" in Washington.  Of course, we now find out that John Boehner has been fundraising himself and not doing his job in Washington and that he's bragging about it.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) raked in nearly $8.5 million in the second quarter of fundraising this year to protect his hard-fought GOP majority in the House.

According to a memo released by his political office on Sunday afternoon, the highest-ranking House Republican has raised close to $80 million dollars for GOP candidates – through his political committees, appearances at member events and contributions solicited from Boehner-signed National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) fundraising letters – since taking the gavel in 2011.

Cory Fritz , spokesman for Boehner’s leadership political action committee, The Freedom Project, attributed the hearty fundraising for House GOP races during a presidential election year, to the current policies of President Obama.

If you're wondering why the American Jobs Act died, why the House GOP has done nothing to help the American people and instead chosen to waste $50 million in 30+ votes to try to take affordable health care away from ten of millions of Americans, it's because they were too busy using the time to raise unlimited money from the fat cats who want to buy our government lock, stock and barrel.

The Obama/Romney race is certainly important, but we have to remember legislation comes from Congress, and we need to win there even more badly.  Should the GOP get control of the Senate and keep the House, we'll see nothing but another 2 years of useless votes...including ones on impeachment no doubt.

Should Romney win as well, you can kiss the last 80 years of legislation goodbye.

Retroactive Activity

And Mitt Romney's awful week, which started with the Vanity Fair piece about his offshore accounts and $100 million tax-deferred IRA account, has now turned into Mitt Romney's awful month.

Ed Gillespie, a senior campaign advisor for Mitt Romney, appeared on Meet the Press this morning to answer questions about Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, and unveiled a new excuse for why Romney should not be held responsible for the company’s actions during a time in which he remained CEO and president:

GREGORY: He was still financially linked to Bain. And of course, a lot his fortune is due to his time with Bain. Even when he was on leave, does he stand by the business decisions that were made by the firm he created?

GILLESPIE: He actually retired retroactively at that point. He ended up not going back to the firm after his time in Salt Lake City. So he was actually retired from Bain.

"Retired retroactively" and got $100,000 a year for it.  And he's still hiding his tax returns from those years.  That's the most ridiculous thing I think I've heard so far this campaign season, and it included Perry, Bachmann, and Cain.



Mitt's campaign is openly bleeding now, and multiple Republicans are now calling for Romney's full disclosure, like William "The Bloody" Kristol.



It's coming apart for Team Romney now.  Completely.

StupidiNews!

• North Korean army chief Ri Yong Ho has been dismissed from his post due to "illness" according to state TV, stirring speculation a military power struggle may be underway.
• Angry Egyptian protesters greeted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade with thrown vegetables and chants of "Monica!" in Alexandria.
• Republicans have blocked legislation to give small businesses at 10% tax break as the Senate GOP was unable to force a permanent extension of all Bush tax cuts onto the measure.
• With Ohio pension funds losing $27.5 million as part of JP Morgan Chase's $5.8 billion in losses in May, Ohio AG Mike DeWine is filing the first state class-action lawsuit against the bank.
• A California judge has rung up flailing Blackberry maker RIM for $147 million in patent infringement fines for violating a patent with its enterprise server software.

Last Call

The Justice Department is apparently moving on a criminal investigation into the Libor rate fixing scandal by the world's top banks, and since all of them do business in the US, it could get ugly, fast.

As regulators ramp up their global investigation into the manipulation of interest rates, the Justice Department has identified potential criminal wrongdoing by big banks and individuals at the center of the scandal.

The department’s criminal division is building cases against several financial institutions and their employees, including traders at Barclays, the British bank, according to government officials close to the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. The authorities expect to file charges against at least one bank later this year, one of the officials said.

The prospect of criminal cases is expected to rattle the banking world and provide a new impetus for financial institutions to settle with the authorities. The Justice Department investigation comes on top of private investor lawsuits and a sweeping regulatory inquiry led by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Collectively, the civil and criminal actions could cost the banking industry tens of billions of dollars.

Hope those charges come before November.  Would be really nice to see some bankster heads roll before the election.  Sadly, if it does happen it will come after November 7.  Obama needs the money too much.  I like the President, but the fact that Jamie Dimon isn't in jail yet doesn't make me think these criminal investigations will go anywhere fast.

We'll see.

Glenn Kessler's Really Done For Now

John Cole catches Glenn Kessler not only digging the hole he lives in deeper on Mitt Romney's taxes, but then Cole finds Kessler stabbed himself through the heart with the shovel.

First, Kessler's frantic digging:

In 2011, Romney, as a presidential candidate, filed a public financial disclosure form, under pain of perjury, that stated: “Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.”

You can see Romney’s signature, on the first page. If Romney lied on this form, that would be a felony.

Oops.  You see, Cole points out the problem with this admission:

Well, yes, Glenn. That would be a felony, and it’s exactly what the Obama campaign said when they stated that he either lied on his disclosure forms and filings to the SEC then, or he is lying to the American public now. If I remember correctly, when the Obama campaign said the exact same thing, you awarded them… wait for it… wait for it…

THREE PINNOCHIOS. When will we see the column where he awards himself three pinnochios for using the same exact rhetoric as Stephanie Cutter?

How does this clown have a job?

I have no clue, but that needs to change.  Not only has Kessler abandoned any pretense of impartiality and objectivity, he's now admitting that it's all arbitrary, and that Glenn Kessler gets to award the Obama campaign whatever he feels like awarding then that day.  He's also stupid enough to think that nobody checks his own column for possible factual errors.

If he had any reputation left, it just died.

A Special Place In Hell: The Trade

A Laurel County couple faced a judge Friday morning, a day after sheriff's deputies arrested the two for human trafficking. Jeremy and Jamie Brown both entered a not guilty plea for the charge.

The arrest citation released Friday indicates the Browns, along with the child's mother, Heather Kaminskey, not only made the trade, but even obtained legal documents to change the child's name in hopes of hiding his identity. Investigators say Kaminskey later sold the truck for $800 and meth.

Court documents say the baby was four days old when Kaminskey traded him for a 1999 Dodge truck in January of 2012. The sheriff's office says it was alerted about the human trafficking of the newborn through a confidential source.

Eight hundred bucks and meth was what they netted after trading a four day old infant.  The good news is, the baby is safe.  The bad news is, how many of these have slipped through the cracks?

Dentist Drilled Over Practice

DENVER -- A suspended Colorado dentist reused syringes and needles in his now-shuttered practice, potentially exposing thousands of patients to HIV and hepatitis infection, health officials warned on Friday.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment sent letters to 8,000 patients of dentist Stephen Stein, urging them to seek tests for the diseases after learning of "unsafe injection practices" at two Denver-area clinics he owned between September 1999 and June 2011.

Investigators found that Stein reused needles and syringes in several patients' intravenous lines at his oral surgery and dental implant clinics, in violation of standard medical protocol, the department said in a statement.

The kicker is patients won't have any recourse if they find they have contracted HIV or hepatitis.  They have no way to prove that their condition resulted from this and not other contact.  It's not fair, but any lawyer could cast enough doubt to reduce claims to nothing.

A high tech clinic that impressed patients because it was so modern, put thousands of lives at risk over equipment valued at less than a dollar.  What a waste.

There have always been businesses and professionals who cut corners,  Consumers and patients must be more vigilant to protect themselves.  I dare say this type of stuff will only get worse.

Saying It So About Joe

ESPN's Rick Reilly pens a devastating piece on Joe Paterno, the Freeh report on Jerry Sandusky and Penn State, and how sports journalism worship of "heroes" like JoePa enabled the story of Sandusky's vile pedophilia to remain silent for years.  To his credit, Reilly is hardest of all on himself.

What a stooge I was.


I talked about Paterno's "true legacy" in all of this. Here's his true legacy: Paterno let a child molester go when he could've stopped him. He let him go and then lied to cover his sinister tracks. He let a rapist go to save his own recruiting successes and fundraising pitches and big-fish-small-pond hide.


Here's a legacy for you. Paterno's cowardice and ego and fears allowed Sandusky to molest at least eight more boys in the years after that 1998 incident -- Victims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. Just to recap: By not acting, a grown man failed to protect eight boys from years of molestation, abuse and self-loathing, all to save his program the embarrassment. The mother of Victim 1 is "filled with hatred toward Joe Paterno," the victim's lawyer says. "She just hates him, and reviles him." Can you blame her?


What a sap I was.


I hope Penn State loses civil suits until the walls of the accounting office cave in. I hope that Spanier, Schultz and Curley go to prison for perjury. I hope the NCAA gives Penn State the death penalty it most richly deserves. The worst scandal in college football history deserves the worst penalty the NCAA can give. They gave it to SMU for winning without regard for morals. They should give it to Penn State for the same thing. The only difference is, at Penn State they didn't pay for it with Corvettes. They paid for it with lives.


What a chump I was.

A lot of us were.  Certainly I never suspected Paterno was sitting on this volcano, trapped in a hell of his own making, and deciding that the only option, the noble option, was to support the "greater good" of Penn State while these victims were abused sexually by his monster of an assistant.  Nobody did.  And the worship of JoePa continued because the sports journalism world never thought to give any credence to the claims that Sandusky was a blight on humanity itself.  It went on for years because all the people involved didn't want to be trapped under the rubble when the pyramid of lies holding up Joe Paterno's program finally collapsed.

Collapse it did.  We have to seriously re-evaluate college sports in America, and even more so, journalism in America.  And the football team?  Scrap it, take the millions in money the program is worth, and build a center dedicated to the prevention of sexual abuse in America.  Hold fundraisers and booster dinners and gladhandle to raise eight figures for that each year.

There's your legacy.

Last Call

Erick Erickson and Rick Moran now give us the one two punch in Stupid Wingnut Denial, and knock themselves out.  First, Dipstick Dipstickson over at Red State decides that the people who want to see Mitt's tax returns aren't like the people who want to see President Obama's "real" birth certificate at all.  They are infinitely worse!

The Bainers will not take any answer that does not show Romney to be a liar or felon in the same way Birthers will take no answer other than one that shows Barack Obama is not an American citizen. In fact, pointing this out on twitter today I was barraged from both sides that Obama has still never shown his real birth certificate and Mitt Romney has still not shown his tax returns.

That, in fact, is what this is all about. It’s just another attempt to get Mitt Romney to release his tax returns. Guy Benson has a pretty exhaustive look at this nonsense.

The Bainers will become as insufferable as the Birthers. The only difference is that the Bainers’ insufferable stupidity is at the heart of the Obama campaign while the Romney campaign has worked hard to not be tied to Birthers.

If you can stop laughing for a while...okay, I'll give you a bit.

Calm down already.

Okay, yeah, the notion that demands to see Mitt Romney's tax returns (not released) and the demands to see President's birth certificate (released) are equivalent in any way is brutally hysterical.  One is something that presidential candidates in both parties have done for decades now, as well as politicians including Mitt Romney's own father, George.  The other is a cover for racism and denial so pervasive and complete that it's bordering on mental illness, and I don't use the term lightly.

But then Rick Moran over at PJ Tatler decides that the "Bainers" are now fact, and that the story proves liberals are even more ridiculous than the Birthers on the right.

One of the remaining questions about the Bainers is, will they prove to be as resilient as the Birthers? A year from now will they be insisting that President Romney should be indicted for filing false papers with the SEC? Will they be demanding that Romney “come clean” on his foreign holdings?

The nuts are always the most entertaining part of politics. The Bainers are proving to be no exception.

You're "nuts" if you do something Reagan, Bush Senior and Junior, Bob Dole, and John McCain all did, along with Carter, Dukakis, Mondale, Clinton, Gore, Kerry and Obama as well as George Romney.   Amazing.

And remember, these are are the same gorram people complaining that Barack Obama was the "least vetted" Presidential candidate in history, whom we "know virtually nothing about" still.  But Mitt's tax returns, something that even the "unknown cypher" Barack Obama released to the public and did again this year and every year prior for the last twelve years, Mitt says you can only see the last two years and that's all you need to see, gosh darnit.

Oh, and as for the claim that the Romney campaign doesn't associate with Birthers?  Two words.

Donald.  Trump.

The funny part is Erickson and Moran now firmly believe that the notion that calling for Mitt's tax returns will be treated by the voters as even worse than Birtherism, because they're simply used to having the wingers define all aspects of our news cycle.  They expect this to take root and that by repeating "Bainers" enough, it will simply become the conventional wisdom.  It's certainly what they've come to expect.

And I'm sure they have a raft of excuses and strwmen to burn when it turns out the voters think this "Bainers" nonsense is complete horseshit too.

Night, fellas.