StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• The FBI is calling the death of Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie a friendly fire incident, stating that there is no evidence of other weapons other than the agents' involved.
• A federal appeals court in Cincinnati has ordered the State of Ohio to reinstate early voting for all voters on the three days prior to this November's election.
• A British court has finally cleared the way for extradition of five terror suspects to the US, including the suspects accused of the 1998 East African embassy bombings.
• Workers on Chinese electronics contractor Foxconn's iPhone 5 parts lines have gone on strike in Zhengzhou, halting production, after being forced to work through a holiday week.
• The Mars Curiosity rover will make its first soil sample chemistry test this weekend at a formation called the Rocknest.

Last Call

Things continue to be different in 2012.  An active, championship boxer, arguably the single most masculine sport out there short of engine block tossing, coming out as gay?

Hell of a thing.  Meet featherweight belt contender Orlando Cruz.

The Puerto Rican native, 31, told USA Today: "I've been fighting for more than 24 years and as I continue my ascendant career, I want to be true to myself. I want to try to be the best role model I can be for kids who might look into boxing as a sport and a professional career."

He then went on to note, "I have and will always be a proud Puerto Rican. I have always been and always will be a proud gay man."

A former Olympian who competed for Puerto Rico at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Cruz has been fighting professionally since December 2000. His next fight is scheduled for Oct. 19 in Kissimmee, Fla., but he will reportedly sit down for an exclusive Telemundo interview before that.

A number of publications have noted that while Cruz is not the first gay man to fight professional, his revelation makes him the first to speak openly about it while being active in the sport. As USA Today noted, Emile Griffith, a welterweight and middleweight champion who fought in the '50s and '60s, told Sports Illustrated he was bisexual years after his athletic career had ended. 

Gay Latino boxer for the win.  Welcome to 2012, folks.  Looking forward to the day when news like this...isn't news.

The Rubin Con Lacks Self-Awareness

Jennifer Rubin, professional shill for Mitt Romney, gloats that the media was unable to save President Obama in Wednesday's debate.  Irony, now in the convenient crapton size.

The liberal media, and MSNBC specifically, have no one to blame but themselves, however. They have never given President Obama the sort of scrutiny he got last night. They have mouthed the president’s false talking points (“a $5 trillion tax cut for the rich”), egging the president on. When Mitt Romney debunked these easily, Obama had nowhere to go. He looked lost without the protective blanket of compliant media and over-eager left-wing bloggers.

This of course is coming from the woman who said this last week:

The presidential contest is a race to 270 electoral votes. The national vote is irrelevant. The solid blue and red states are irrelevant. If we look at RealClearPolitics (RCP), Mitt Romney comfortably has 191 electoral votes on his side. He needs 79 more electoral votes to win outright, 78 to send it to the House. The RCP toss-up states are Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Florida (29), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15) and Virginia (13). Are there polls showing Romney ahead or within the margin of error in all these? Yes. Are Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan longer shots but still within reach? Yes. This is why this race remains highly competitive.

That's going to be fun when Jennifer Rubin's magical thinking refuses to save Mittens, eh?  Will she resign, or fail upwards to WaPo Editor-in-Chief?

One Hell Of A Smokescreen

If this story is even close to being true, some heads have to roll, folks.

A college professor from St. Louis, Missouri has released research claiming that the U.S. Army conducted secret Cold War tests by spraying toxic radioactive chemicals on cities like St. Louis and Corpus Christi.

St. Louis Community College-Meramec sociology professor Lisa Martino-Taylor told The Associated Press that her research showed that the Army may have sprayed radioactive particles with zinc cadmium sulfide while claiming that it was testing a smoke screen that could prevent Russians from observing St. Louis from the air.

Those tests were concentrated in predominately-black areas of the city, which Army documents called “a densely populated slum district.”

In 1994, the Army confirmed to Congress that St. Louis was chosen because it resembled Russian cities that the U.S. might have to attack with biological weapons.

“The study was secretive for reason,” Martino-Taylor explained to KDSK last month. “They didn’t have volunteers stepping up and saying yeah, I’ll breathe zinc cadmium sulfide with radioactive particles.”

You know, considering African-Americans have been the subject of Army syphilis experiments and hey, the whole slavery thing and all, I'm surely not going to say this couldn't have happened.  I'd certainly like more information on the good professor's work here, but this is something that absolutely would need checking out at the very least.

I'm appalled at this, but I would like confirmation from the Pentagon that this kind of nonsense was really going on.

The depressing part is that this is completely plausible.

Skin Cancer Spikes

 At least 170,000 cases of skin cancer each year are linked to indoor tanning, according to an analysis published online Tuesday in the British medical journal BMJ.

Those cancers include basal-cell carcinomas and squamous-cell carcinomas, two common types of non-melanoma skin cancers that aren't usually life-threatening, the study says. People who have ever used indoor tanning are 29% more likely to develop basal-cell carcinomas than those who have never used tanning salons, it adds.

Indoor tanners are 67% more likely to develop the more serious squamous-cell carcinomas compared with those who have never tanned indoors, says Eleni Linos, an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of California-San Francisco and senior author of the study.

This has been predicted, and coming to pass.  A huge number of tanning salons have sprung up, and minors and adults alike have bronzed to the point of ruining their skin.  Tanning mom Patricia Krentcil is an extreme but not unheard of leatherfaced victim of tanning too much.  I see women a decade younger than me with wrinkles I don't have.  And as long as I use sunscreen and moisturizer, likely never will.

I am the color of biscuit dough.  My arms look pale until you see them across my stomach, and then they look like bronzed walnut.  I could use more sun, but I've seen enough skin cancer in my family to keep me indoors.  Native American on one side, Euro-mutt on the other.  Me British roots is showin' or something like that.

Anyway, it's time to protect minors and be realistic about the risks of tanning.  Or, if you're the executive director of the Indoor Tanning Association John Overstreet, you can just tell us how we're being wimps for noticing that cancer that keeps cropping up.

"UV exposure, whether from the sun or a sunbed, has many benefits," Overstreet says. "As with most human activities, there are also risks. It seems the risks continue to grab the headlines in the media, while the benefits remain unnoticed and unpromoted."

News Anchor Sets Record Straight

In a special four-minute comment that aired during this morning's news broadcast on La Crosse, Wisconsin's CBS affiliate WKBT, news anchor/reporter Jennifer Livingston responded to a viewer who wrote in to the station to chide Livingston for not providing "a suitable example for this community's young people, girls in particular," by appearing on television despite being overweight.

"The truth is, I am overweight," Livingston acknowledged. "You can call me fat - and yes, even obese on a doctor's chart. But to the person who wrote me that letter, do you think I don't know that? That your cruel words are pointing out something that I don't see?" Proving that she was most certainly "a suitable example for this community's young people," and "girls in particular," Livingston concluded her necessary rant with an appeal to bullied children everywhere.

"To all of the children out there who feel lost, who are struggling with your weight, with the color of your skin, your sexual preference, your disability, even the acne on your face, listen to me right now. Do not let your self-worth be defined by bullies. Learn from my experience - that the cruel words of one are nothing compared to the shouts of many."

This woman has class. Seriously, what poise and elegance she showed. I have never bought into the whole idea that because you are on camera you owe the world perfection as a role model. This woman's response to insensitivity is far more valuable to young women than her waistline. Girls in particular?  I'd love to hear them expand on what they meant by that.

I don't think the person who wrote the letter realized how shallow they would sound. I hope her answer gave them new insight into how thoughtless and silly we can be.

Click the link and you can watch her deliver the lines, and say a whole lot more.  Well done, madam.

All Hail The Job Creators

GOP mega-donor and billionaire casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson certainly has the money to be a job creator.  His next conquest in fact is a massive $35 billion casino project, practically a second Las Vegas by itself, that will create a whopping 250,000 jobs.  So which lucky state will get these badly needed American jobs from our job creating overlord?

Why, Spain, of course.

American billionaire, casino mogul and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson has a new project: a $35 billion gambling megacity in Europe. He has chosen debt-ridden Spain as the location for "EuroVegas," which is expected to bring up to 250,000 much-needed jobs.

But many Spaniards are divided over whether they want casinos in their backyard.

Adelson recently touched down in his private helicopter in the Madrid suburb of Alcorcon, where wind whips across empty lots and half-built apartment blocks. The area has been down on its luck since the housing collapse, and one-third of its residents are unemployed.

On this land, Adelson envisions a glittering gambling city, to rival Las Vegas — complete with 36,000 hotel rooms, 18,000 slot machines and three golf courses.

Unemployed residents like 28-year-old Ruben Alvarez say it's like a mirage in the desert — almost too good to be true.

"If it's true and they really bring 250,000 jobs here? Imagine that. Things would definitely improve here if people had work. It would let people breathe a sigh of relief," he says. "But we'll have to see if it's true."

Turning Madrid into Vegas?  Gosh, we should elect Republicans like Mitt Romney so we can make sure Adelson gets a nice fat tax cut as a reward so he can continue to create hundreds of thousands of jobs not in the United States.

And remember, with Mitt Romney warning us Wednesday that we'll end up like Spain if it's such an awful, bankrupt Socialist hellhole with no future and crushing taxes and a moribund economy (and America is super awesome and stuff) is anyone in the political press going to ask why Romney's biggest single donor about to invest in a $35 billion casino city smack in the middle of the capital of Madrid rather than in America?

Wouldn't hold your breath waiting on that particular answer.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Just in case you thought the Romney campaign had really rebooted and stopped being racist jackasses:

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu lit into President Obama's Wednesday debate performance, calling him "lazy" and "disengaged."

"What people saw last night, I think, was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, and how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are, and how he has failed to even begin to address them," Sununu — a top Romney surrogate — said on MSNBC Thursday.

"I think even the liberal press reacted with shock at this revelation, and I find it fascinating now this morning, after they've slept, to watch them all scrambling around to clean up the mess the president left on the floor last night," Sununu said.

Pressed by host Andrea Mitchell about whether Sununu really intended to call Obama "lazy," Sununu stood by his comments.

"Yes," Sununu said. "He didn't want to prepare for this debate. He's lazy and disengaged."

Lazy, not too bright, incompetent, Sununu went on the dog bullhorn rampage and has immediately turned the Romney debate win into the latest Romney campaign toxic explosion.

Pretty classy with the code-switching, guys.  In case you were wondering what changed post-debate?  Nothing, really.  Still undisciplined, still awful, still borderline ni-CLANG.  When they burn through whatever bump they get from the debate this week, the game ends.

StupidiNews!

• NYC officials are trying to subpoena footage of Ken Burns's documentary on the Central Park Five in order to defend the city from a bevy of wrongful imprisonment lawsuits.
• US officials are calling Turkish shelling of Syrian border positions "appropriate" but cautions against further escalation of violence.
• Campaign disclosures show that despite praising parts of the Affordable Care Act, the health insurance industry gave overwhelmingly to Republicans in 2012.
• Consensus predictions on today's jobs report is that 115,000 new jobs won't be enough to keep the unemployment rate from edging up another tenth of a percent to 8.2%.
• Game maker Zynga has taken a $90 million writeoff for the acquisition of Draw Something creator OMGPOP as the company's fall accelerates.

Last Call

Frowny Bee is generally disappointed in the liberal blogothingy debate analysis stuff today.

This has made Frowny Bee mildly annoyed.  Look upon your works, liberal blogothingy.  Look at that face. F-Bee, being kinda roly-poly and sober for a bee, suggests chillaxing is in order, folks.
He is cheering himself up with some pretty even-handed debate stuff here and is secure in the knowledge that this too will pass.  Good advice.  Keep roundy and carry on.

Of course, Frowny Bee gets even more frowny when he sees obvious voter intimidation like this in Cleveland:

 According to Cleveland City Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland, who took the photo, this sign is directly across from Arbor Park Village, a subsidized housing development of more than 600 units. It is also within a few blocks of three public housing estates and right down the street from Cuyahoga Community College Metro Campus. 

“This is blatant voter intimidation,” says Councilwoman Cleveland. “A direct attack in the heart of African American community meant to scare people and keep them from exercising their right to vote.”

Frowny Bee would therefore like to remind you of what the hell really matters, and liberal blogothingy self-pissing with your hair on fire is not in that gorram category, understand?  Perspective, you see?

Good.  Frowny Bee, outro.

Fact Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

The New York Times has an excellent interactive combination debate transcript and fact checking analysis of the first debate here, and it's very well-done and thoughtful if you're looking for hard facts.

A couple of good moments from the debate on specifics.  First, President Obama:

Over the last 30 months, we've seen 5 million jobs in the private sector created. The auto industry has come roaring back and housing has begun to rise. But we all know that we've still got a lot of work to do. And so the question here tonight is not where we've been but where we're going. Governor Romney has a perspective that says if we cut taxes, skewed towards the wealthy, and roll back regulations that we'll be better off.

I've got a different view. I think we've got to invest in education and training. I think it's important for us to develop new sources of energy here in America, that we change our tax code to make sure that we're helping small businesses and companies that are investing here in the United States, that we take some of the money that we're saving as we wind down two wars to rebuild America and that we reduce our deficit in a balanced way that allows us to make these critical investments. 

President Obama was correct on both the jobs created and the war savings issue according to the times.

But Mitt Romney did get some shots in on the economy too:

The people who are having the hard time right now are middle- income Americans. Under the president's policies, middle-income Americans have been buried. They're -- they're just being crushed. Middle-income Americans have seen their income come down by $4,300. This is a -- this is a tax in and of itself. I'll call it the economy tax. It's been crushing. The same time, gasoline prices have doubled under the president, electric rates are up, food prices are up, health care costs have gone up by $2,500 a family.

Middle-income families are being crushed. And so the question is how to get them going again, and I've described it. It's energy and trade, the right kind of training programs, balancing our budget and helping small business. Those are the -- the cornerstones of my plan.

The numbers, according to the Times, do add up here.  How much of that is President Obama's fault is up to the voters.

But the Times called Romney out for this lie on Medicare:

We also have 50 percent of doctors who say they won't take more Medicare patients. This -- we have 4 million people on Medicare Advantage that will lose Medicare Advantage because of those $716 billion in cuts. I can't understand how you can cut Medicare $716 billion for current recipients of Medicare.

Now, you point out, well, we're putting some back; we're going to give a better prescription program. That's one -- that's $1 for every 15 (dollars) you've cut. They're smart enough to know that's not a good trade.

The NY Times called that "debunked" and points out Paul Ryan's plan includes "identical savings."  Oops.  Romney also got busted on repealing Obamacare and, yes, once again, DEATH PANELS.

And unfortunately, when -- when you look at "Obamacare," the Congressional Budget Office has said it will cost $2,500 a year more than traditional insurance. So it's adding to cost. And as a matter of fact, when the president ran for office, he said that by this year he would have brought down the cost of insurance for each family by $2,500 a family. Instead, it's gone up by that amount. So it's expensive. Expensive things hurt families. So that's one reason I don't want it.

Second reason, it cuts $716 billion from Medicare to pay for it. I want to put that money back in Medicare for our seniors.

Number three, it puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people, ultimately, what kind of treatments they can have. I don't like that idea.

Which is of course, a complete fabrication.  The board makes recommendations for spending and savings, not for treatment.  Do you know who makes those decisions now?  Unelected insurance company officials.

Overall, the Times did a really good job here.  Do check out the entire transcript with video, as well as the fact checking highlights.

Shocked But Not Surprised In The Treasure State

A federal judge has struck down Montana's campaign finance limits, calling them unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

A federal judge on Wednesday struck down Montana’s limits on contributions to state political candidates, allowing politicians in the state to receive unlimited donations from individuals, party committees and PACs.

U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell ruled that Montana’s contribution limit to candidates was unconstitutionally low.

“Having reviewed and considered the entire record and the parties’ arguments and evidence, the Court concludes that Montana’s contribution limits in Montana Code Annotated § 13-37-216 are unconstitutional under the First Amendment,” he wrote in his decision. 

Nobody should be surprised by that given Citizens United, but the logic here is just as shocking as that awful decision:

Citing the U.S. Supreme Court case Randall v. Sorrell, which struck down Vermont’s strict limit on contributions to candidates, Lovell wrote that, “[t]he contribution limits prevent candidates from ‘amassing the resources necessary for effective campaign advocacy.’”

Montana law limited individual and political action committee contributions to $630 for the gubernatorial candidates, $310 to candidates for statewide office and $160 for candidates to other office.

Political party committees could contribute $22,600 to gubernatorial candidates, $8,150 to statewide candidates, and $800 to candidates for other offices.

In other words, that's just not enough money to buy a state office in Montana, dammit.  And the legal advocacy group that killed Montana's fight against Citizens United claimed victory here for unlimited corporate money in politics once again.

Montana really is the Treasure State if you're a corporate candidate running for office.

Cop Punches Woman - Not A Repeat. Sigh.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Police have launched an internal investigation after a video was posted online that shows an officer striking a woman twice in the face at a neighborhood party associated with Philadelphia's annual Puerto Rican Day parade. The 36-second video uploaded to YouTube and titled "Philadelphia Police Brutality" shows the woman crumpling to the ground after being struck Sunday in north Philadelphia. The woman appears to be bleeding from the mouth as she is led away in handcuffs.

Moments before the woman was hit, the video shows someone else throwing a liquid toward the officers. The woman was also seen spraying something from a can.

The woman, whose name was not released, was cited for disorderly conduct, said Officer Tanya Little, a police spokeswoman.

The officer in the video, identified as highway patrol supervisor Lt. Jonathan Josey, is eager to tell his side of the story to internal investigators because there is more to what happened than the video shows, said John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police.

"We're hoping that it's neither a whitewash nor a witch hunt," McNesby said at a news conference Monday. "At the end of the day, his actions will be questioned, but I believe they can be defended."

While I understand there may be things not captured on the video, and that perhaps the woman was guilty of some level of disorderly conduct, in what way is that grounds for punching a woman in the face?  Watch the video.  At the 40 second mark you can see him focus on her, step up behind her and swing around to hit her in the face while she walks away, watching him over her shoulder.

He wasn't defending himself.  From what I see, he engaged her.  She came in from an angle, he says something and she veers away, and he steps into her space and hits her.  I watched it over and over, noting my original response and what I saw as I studied what happened.  I am curious if our readers see it differently.

As people become more frustrated with government and conditions, there will be more marching and protesting than ever.  The Occupy movement will be one of many that will encourage people to speak out.  This must be tolerated, and police must learn how to manage crowds and do so within the boundaries of the law.  If she was guilty of a misdemeanor, it still doesn't give this cop the right to punch her while she is walking away from him.

This jackass had a choice.  He could have taken her arm, or even done a police tackle if one had been required.  Instead he hits her in the face in a sucker punch with way more force than necessary, and in a speech pretending to be neutral, we're told this sucker punch can be defended if we only knew the facts.  The facts I can watch with my own eyes says this is an act of avoidable aggression by a bully with power.

Machete Attack Unsuccessful (Thank Goodness)

A man arrested in a Friday machete attack in Springfield has been charged.

Darrall D. Tosh, 49, has been charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. The attack occurred in an apartment building at 504 E. Cherry. Paul E. Stacy suffered cuts to his wrist and neck area. His injuries were non-life threatening, police said.

According to a probable cause statement filed by police, Stacy said Tosh had been playing his stereo loudly and Stacy had asked his girlfriend’s daughter to go to Tosh’s apartment and ask him to turn down the volume. Stacy said Tosh screamed through his door that he was not going to turn down the volume. In a post-Miranda interview, Tosh said a woman had come to his door and he had turned down his music.

If you read the whole article, you learn his intent, and that he made connection with the man's neck, although he didn't think the force he used would do much harm.

With a machete.

I've seen too many horror movies.  If a dude comes at me with a machete, I am shooting until I'm out of bullets, and removing his head from his body for confirmation that there will be no sequel.

Both Sides Against The Middle

A new CNN poll on the role of government has some interesting findings, namely that the American people want the government to basically leave them the hell alone.

The survey, released Wednesday, indicates that there have been major changes on attitudes toward the government.

"The biggest: The number of Americans who say that the government should promote traditional values has fallen to an all-time low, a finding that might benefit many Democrats," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

According to the survey, just four in 10 registered voters believe the government should promote traditional values, down from 53% in 2010 and 57% in 2008.

"Between 1993, when CNN began asking that question, and last year, a majority of respondents have always said that the government should promote traditional values. Now, for the first time, more than half say the government should not favor any particular set of values," adds Holland.

But the poll also indicates the belief that the government is doing too much is also near historically high levels.

Six in 10 say the government is doing too much that should be left to individuals and businesses. That finding could favor Republicans.

So basically six in ten Americans want the government out economically, but about the same majority want the government to stop pushing moral judgements too.  Hey, that would be actual libertarian stuff, if the actual libertarians weren't closet Republicans.

Go figure.   Still, it explains why this race has been less than a blowout until now.