Last Call

Cory Booker is running for Senate in 2014, probably eliciting a sigh of relief from Gov. Chris Christie.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker will not challenge New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in next year's gubernatorial race and will instead run for U.S. Senate in 2014, political sources familiar with his decision tell NBC 4 New York.

 

Booker will seek the seat held by fellow Democrat Frank Lautenberg when his term is up in 2014, those sources tell NBC 4 New York. Lautenberg, 88, is the oldest current senator. He first served in the U.S. Senate from 1982 to 2001 and has served since his re-election in 2003.

Booker's decision not to challenge Christie comes as the Republican incumbent enjoys record-high approval ratings in polls taken since Sandy hit the Garden State.

Considering Lautenberg will be 90 in 2014, I think it's a pretty safe bet he'll be retiring.   Can Booker win the primary?

Well...I guess.  But nothing in New Jersey politics is a safe bet.  We'll see.

Asked And Answered On Gun Control

Having slept on it and looking again at yesterday's POTUS presser on gun control, Jake Tapper's question (as Emily Hauser says) was a fair one when the subject is announced to be gun control legislation:  Where's the President been on gun control up until now?  President Obama's answer, as James Joyner correctly assesses, is a worthy one:

The tone of the question borders on the smug but the substance is absolutely fair. And White House reporters, in particular, have tended to shy away from such pointed questions in recent years. But Obama’s answer struck me as pretty powerful, too:

“Well, here’s where I’ve been, Jake,” Obama replied. “I’ve been president of the United States dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, an auto industry on the verge of collapse, two wars. I don’t think I’ve been on vacation. And so, you know, I think all of us have to do some reflection on how we prioritize what we do here in Washington.”

Obama added that there was more involved in keeping children safe beyond dealing only with guns and reiterated his confidence in Biden and his task force.

“And as I said on Sunday, you know, this should be a wake-up call for all of us to say that if we are not getting right the need to keep our children safe, then nothing else matters,” he continued. “It’s my commitment to make sure we do everything we can to keep our children safe. A lot of things are involved in that, Jake. So making sure they have decent health care, making sure they got a good education, making sure that their parents have jobs — those are all relevant as well. Those aren’t just sort of side issues. But there’s no doubt that this has to be a central issue. And that’s exactly why I’m confident that Joe [Biden] is going to take this so seriously over the next couple months.”

Presumably, the president was expecting the question and was well prepared; otherwise, this is some world class thinking on his feet on display.

Once again I'm glad the guy in the White House is not Mitt Romney, because his answer would have been completely self-serving gobbledegook.    But the current President got this one right.

The B Stands For "Blown Up In His Face"

House Speaker John Boehner has boxed himself into a corner on the fiscal slope, trying to checkmate the President with a "plan B" bill that his own party will most likely walk away from.

In response to President Obama’s extensive comments about the fiscal cliff at the White House Wednesday afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner left himself little if any room to continue negotiations.

Here’s the key piece of Boehner’s brief comments from his appearance before reporters in the Capitol:

“Tomorrow the House will pass legislation to make permanent tax relief for nearly every American — 99.81 percent of the American people,” he said, referring to his own so-called Plan B. “Then the President will have a decision to make. He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill, or he can be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history.”

That sounds like he’s giving Obama a choice between Plan B or the fiscal cliff. No more negotiations over a broader deficit reduction plan. 

I agree.  It very much sounds like Boehner is telling the President to accept his Plan B or else.   The stock market certainly thought that's what Boehner's message was as stocks dropped 75 points directly after Orange Julius opened his yap.

The problem for Boehner is that even if he can get enough votes to pass his scheme, President Obama has already promised to veto it, because he knows he wins in January.

He can then make the Republicans an offer they can't and won't refuse.  And Obama wins again.

StupidiNews!

• A new snag in the fiscal cliff slope talks:  without a deal to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax, some 100 million Americans could see their tax returns delayed for months.
• House Republicans are vowing that despite the President's call for a new assault weapons ban that new gun control legislation will not pass the House.
• The US Army is seeking the death penalty for the soldier charged with the deaths of 16 Afghan civilians, including 9 children.
• The Justice Department wants UBS trader Tom Hayes extradited, calling him the "kingpin" of the Swiss bank's three year campaign to manipulate the key global Libor interest rate.
• Scientists say a habitable planet may be only 12 light years away in the Tau Ceti system.

Low Prices, High Body Count, Every Day

As if you needed yet another reason to despise Wal-Mart, it turns out they're the country's largest semi-automatic rifle and ammunition dealer too, capitalizing on the NRA's anti-Obama paranoia and riding it to big profits.

In April 2011, Walmart began stocking guns in more and more stores, expanding the sales to 1,750 outlets nationwide. By the end of that year, the FBI received 16.4 million background check requests; the number is 16.8 million this year. Overall Walmart sales figures are back on track after the 2011 slump, and executive vice president Duncan Mac Naughton told shareholders at a meeting in October 2012 that gun sales in particular are a staple of the chain’s strategy to continue boosting its numbers. He said that over the past twenty-six months, gun sales at Walmart stores open for a year or more were up an astonishing 76 percent, while ammunition sales were up 30 percent. Walmart is now the biggest seller of firearms and ammunition in America.

“This gun thing, it’s really just a nightmare,” says Bertha Lewis, president of the Black Institute, which has been organizing Walmart workers this year to protest wages and working conditions. Given its aggressive gun sales, Walmart’s logo “shouldn’t be a smiley face; it should be an automatic weapon,” she adds.

Nearly 400 guns are available in Walmart’s catalog. And even if your local store doesn’t sell a particular model, you can special-order it (assuming you pay half the cost ahead of time). With the exception of its stores in Alaska, Walmart doesn’t sell handguns, though it does sell ammunition for them, along with a wide variety of semiautomatic long-barrel weapons. For example, at half the Walmarts in America, you can buy a semiautomatic Colt M4 OPS .22 rifle; it carries a thirty-round magazine, which you can also purchase in the store. Or perhaps a Sig Sauer M400 semiautomatic assault rifle, advertised on Walmart’s website as “designed for use in law enforcement, military operations…as well as competitive shooting,” which is just one of several AR-15 assault rifles for sale.

In keeping with the store’s pitch as a one-stop destination for shoppers, with everything from gas to groceries, gun enthusiasts can also obtain a wide range of gun accessories—including the 360 types of ammunition listed on Walmart’s website. You can buy a 555-pack of Winchester hollow-point bullets, which the website advertises as “great for plinking and varmints,” but which would cause extensive damage should they enter a human body and expand, as they are designed to do. There are full clips of ammunition for assault rifles, including “quiet ammo” that makes only a quarter of the noise of regular bullets. Laser-pointing sights for handguns are also available, as are belts for holding shotgun shells (only $4.97 at select stores).

So, you can't get a handgun in Wal-Mart (except in Alaska, natch.)  But you can get a semi-automatic rifle "for hunting" and all the ammo you can buy.  In a Wal-Mart.  Need to methodically plot out your mass murder suicide rampage?  Head to Wallyworld!

Or you could choose not to buy anything from there ever again, which seems like a really, really good idea right now.

Not Everybody's Doing The Michi-Gun Rag

The country's reaction to the horrific killings of 20 first-graders among others in Newtown, Connecticut is different this time.  There's action involved.  And normally staunch advocates of the expansion of guns and concealed carry are backing off in the wake of the massacre.  Michigan Republicans are in enough trouble as it is after passing a right-to-work bill to crush unions and a raft of massive and intrusive abortion regulations designed to close clinics in the state:

The approval rating of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is in the gutter, according to a poll released Tuesday, the strongest evidence yet of the political perils associated with the right-to-work legislation he signed into law last week.

According to the latest automated survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling, only 38 percent of Michigan voters approve of the job Snyder is doing, compared with 56 percent who disapprove. In PPP's previous survey of Michigan in November, Snyder's approval rating was 10 points above water: 47 percent of voters approved of his performance as governor, while 37 percent disapproved.

Gov. Snyder's popularity has cratered.  So when the third leg of the wingnut trifecta arrived on his desk yesterday, a law expanding concealed carry in places like schools, Snyder quickly vetoed it.

In his veto letter to the state legislature Snyder said the legislation included a key loophole. The buildings in question, Snyder wrote, should be allowed to opt out of allowing concealed weapons.

"I believe that it is important that these public institutions have clear legal authority to ban weapons from their premises," Snyder wrote according to The Detroit Free Press. "Each is entrusted with the care of a vulnerable population and should have the authority to determine whether its mission would be enhanced by the addition of concealed weapons."

Snyder was mulling the bill over before and almost certainly would have been pressured into it, but seeing a nearly 30 point drop in his approval ratings (from plus 10 to minus 18) in the course of one month tends to change a guy's mind, especially since he's up for re-election in 2014.   Even he has his limits, it seems.

Of course, I fully expect the bill to be revised and put back on Snyder's desk in the future with the loophole he wants, and signed into law.  We'll see.

More on this, as always with Michigan politics, at Eclectablog.

StupidiNews!

• An independent review board cited the State Department's "systemic failures" and security lapses in Benghazi and made a number of recommendations the White House will adopt.
• Mexico's new President Enrique Nieto is promising a drastically different approach to Mexico's ongoing drug war than the military crackdown of predecessor Felipe Calderon.
• The new year will cost 2 million Americans their federal extended jobless benefits unless Congress can find a way to make a deal.
• Both Yum Brands and McDonald's are moving quickly to deal with Chinese chicken suppliers after a China state report showing indiscriminate use of unapproved antibiotics and growth hormones.
• Google's new cloud-based music service is taking on Amazon and Apple, with the big advantage of being free.

Off The Chain(ed CPI)

Even the Kroog thinks the President's latest deal sucks.  I'm going to have to say that like Paul Krugman, I'm not sure if going over the cliff is going to yield a better deal or not, so maybe we should wait and see what the final deal actually is before ordering the pitchforks and torches.

It sounds as if Ezra Klein is hearing more or less the same things I’m hearing: Republicans willing to give up a lot more on tax rates, although not fully undoing the Bush tax cuts in the 250-400 range; additional tax hikes via deduction limits in a form that hits the wealthy, not the upper middle class (28 percent and all that); unemployment extension and infrastructure spending; but “chained CPI” for Social Security, which is a benefit cut.

Unlike what we’d heard from Republicans before, this contains stuff that Obama can’t get just by letting us go over the cliff: more revenue than he could get just from tax-cut expiration, unemployment and infrastructure too. But it has a cost, those benefit cuts.

Those cuts are a very bad thing, although there will supposedly be some protection for low-income seniors. But the cuts are not nearly as bad as raising the Medicare age, for two reasons: the structure of the program remains intact, and unlike the Medicare age thing, they wouldn’t be totally devastating for hundreds of thousands of people, just somewhat painful for a much larger group. Oh, and raising the Medicare age would kill people; this benefit cut, not so much.

By recalculating benefits through chained CPI, it's lower income seniors who are going to get hurt here, they're looking at a 5% cut or more in SS benefits.  It would also constitute a tax increase of a couple hundred bucks a year on most American households. I'm sure the President thinks it's a partial giveback on the payroll tax cuts, and it is, and it does sound reasonable...but reasonable gets punished later.

In other words this doesn't look like an awesome way to start a second term.  We'll see what the final deal is.  If this is the final deal, I'm thinking it's not a good one.

At all.  I'm trusting the President to get a better one, and that better part I'm suspecting is in the details that we don't know about yet.

Catch And Release

NBC News's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, on assignment in Syria, has been released unharmed after five days of captivity by an "unknown" group operating in the war-torn country.

Engel, 39, has been reporting on the Syrian civil war, which has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011.

"After being kidnapped and held for five days inside Syria by an unknown group, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and his production crew members have been freed unharmed," NBC said in a statement. "We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country."

The Syrian government has made it difficult for foreign journalists and citizens to report on what is happening in Syria.

Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Other foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers.

Engel is lucky, too.  Syria has been one of the deadliest assignments for journalists in the world in the last 18 months or so.

Several journalists have been killed covering the conflict. Among them are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain's Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after a severe asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

I'm glad Engel is safe, and I'm sure there's a hell of a story there that we'll here in due time.

StupidiNews!

• Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management is selling Freedom Group, the parent of gun manufacturer Bushmaster, whose AR-15 was used in last Friday's Newtown massacre.
• Iraqi President Jalal Talibani is in a Baghdad hospital after supposedly suffering from a stroke.
• 50-year Senate veteran and WWII hero Daniel Inouye of Hawaii died yesterday at Walter Reed Medical Center, after being hospitalized for several weeks due to respiratory illness.
• A new counter-offer with taxes only going up on those making over $400,000 in exchange for a two-year debt ceiling deal is the latest fiscal deal from the President.
• A federal judge has sided with Samsung that while the phone maker did copy Apple's design elements, that Samsung's phones have not violated patent laws enough to warrant an injunction.

Last Call

If 2008 was all about the GOP ending gay marriage at the state level, and 2012 was all about Voter ID laws designed to disenfranchise Democrats, 2016 is about the electoral college, and splitting electoral college votes in order to disenfranchise even more Democrats, permanently. The push to turn Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (and possible Ohio) into split electoral states to screw the Democrats is on.

All three states have given the Democratic nominee their electoral votes in each of the last six presidential elections. Now, senior Republicans in Washington are overseeing legislation in all three states to end the winner-take-all system.

Obama won all three states in 2008, handing him 46 electoral votes because of the winner-take-all system. Had electoral votes been awarded by district, Republican nominee Mitt Romney would have cut into that lead. Final election results show that Romney won nine of Michigan's 14 districts, five of eight in Wisconsin, and at least 12 of 18 in Pennsylvania. Allocate the two statewide votes in each state to Obama and that means Romney would have emerged from those three Democratic states with 26 electoral votes, compared with just 19 for Obama (and one district where votes are still being counted).

In other words, the electoral vote would have been much closer under this scheme, but the popular vote would have been the same.  Throw Ohio into that mix, and Romney would have picked up 38 electoral votes, enough to have narrowed the President's win to 295 to 244.  If Virginia and Florida tried the same scheme, it could very well have made Romney President...or worse, Florida remains winner take all, and that winner in 2016 is someone like Jeb Bush. 

That's the GOP goal by 2016.   Another Bush in the White House.

Republicans are able to contemplate such a bold plan because of their electoral success in 2010, when the party won control of state legislative chambers and the governorships in all three states, giving them total control over the levers of state government.

"If you did the calculation, you'd see a massive shift of electoral votes in states that are blue and fully [in] red control," said one senior Republican taking an active role in pushing the proposal. "There's no kind of autopsy and outreach that can grab us those electoral votes that quickly."

The proposals, the senior GOP official said, are likely to come up in each state's legislative session in 2013. Bills have been drafted, and legislators are talking to party bosses to craft strategy. Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, has briefed Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Chief of Staff Jeff Larson on his state's proposal. The proposal "is not being met with the 'We can't do that' answer. It's being met with 'I've already got a bill started,' " the official said.

Republican state legislators are motivated to act after Romney's loss. And the party lost legislative seats in all three states, adding urgency to pass the measures before voters head to the polls in 2014.

So yeah, Democrats are going to have to put up a fight.  If they don't, the plan to steal the 2016 election could put a Republican in the White House despite a Democrat winning by 4 or 5% in the popular vote.

That's where the GOP is now.  If you can't win it, steal it.

Spread the word.

Meanwhile, Newtowns Can Be Prevented

And in Indiana at least, one potential shooting massacre was averted without firing a shot.

A man in northern Indiana was arrested Saturday after threatening an elementary school near his home.

Cedar Lake police officers found 47 guns and ammunition in the home of 60-year-old Von Meyer following his arrest, according to the Associated Press. Police were called after he allegedly threatened to set his wife on fire and “kill as many people as he could” at the Jane Ball Elementary School less than 1,000 feet from his home.

He was a “known member of the Invaders Motorcycle Gang,” according to police.

Meyer is currently being held in the Lake County Jail without bond. He faces charges of intimidation, domestic battery and resisting law enforcement.

So yeah, what we're seeing is conservatives screaming that the problem is people are crazy and our mental health system is irreparable, or that in the ultimate case of "she was dressed provocatively and she had it coming" victim blaming, gun-free zones cause people to get mowed down.  You know, anything but admitting having 47 guns and thousands of bullets might be the actual issue.

Meanwhile, we find out that the country's second largest gun lobbyist and gun dealer trade group the National Shooting Sports Foundation has its headquarters in...guess where.

Just across the highway from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in a stately white building with an American flag flying out front, is the headquarters of the United States’ premiere industry association for gun retailers.

It’s not the consumer-focused National Rifle Association. The National Shooting Sports Foundation has kept a lower profile over the years, but is likely the second-most-powerful force for firearms use in the country. 

Take its lobbying activities. While the gun lobby in general has spent less in 2012 than it has in recent years, the NSSF’s spending has exploded, spiking from about $100,000 in 2008 to $500,000 so far this year (in comparison to the NRA’s $2.2 million). The lion’s share of that went to Patrick Rothwell, the group’s director of government relations, who served for three years as chief of staff to the House Republican Policy Committee. He spent a lot of time this year working on legislation that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating chemicals in gun ammunition and fishing equipment, and the organization has backed a slew of concealed-carry bills.

The NSSF's offical web site statement mentions that their "hearts go out" to the families of the victims of the Newtown tragedy, and that "it would be inappropriate to comment or participate in media requests at this time."

I'm sure those guys are real popular in town these days.

Words Spoken, Will Deeds Follow?

President Obama gave a moving and truly heartfelt speech last night at an interfaith vigil for the victims of Friday's school shooting massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

“We gather here in memory of 20 beautiful children and six remarkable adults,” he said, “They lost their lives in a school that could have been any school in a quiet town full of good and decent people that could be any town in America.”

He continued, “Here in Newtown, I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation. I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts.”

Obama assured the people suffering in Newtown that the nation grieves with them.

“And you must know that whatever measure of comfort we can provide, we will provide,” he said. “Whatever portion of sadness that we can share with you to ease this heavy load, we will gladly bear it. Newtown, you are not alone.”

But the speech will be far more memorable than just for his all too tragically familiar role of the nation's Comforter-In-Chief.  President Obama took a turn towards calling for action to prevent another Newtown from happening again.

We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this.

If there’s even one step we can take to save another child or another parent or another town from the grief that’s visited Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that, then surely we have an obligation to try.

In the coming weeks, I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement, to mental health professionals, to parents and educators, in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this, because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine.

Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?

Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

This is a President clearly willing to use the power of the Executive in order to get things done.  It looks like POTUS has put down a clear goal for his second term legacy here.

And I say, good for him.

StupidiNews!

• A manhunt is under way in Topeka, Kansas for a man who shot and killed two police officers and escaped a robbery scene at a grocery store.
• A Swedish company plans to offer commercial space flights from the small Arctic Swedish city of Kiruna within a decade.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is recovering after a bout with a stomach virus left her dehydrated and resulted in a fainting spell and mild concussion.
• The EPA's first action since the President reelection:  to tighten soot rules and reduce diesel carbon emissions by 20%.
• Hacker group Anonymous has targeted the Westboro Baptist Church over plans for the church to protest funerals in Friday's Newtown school massacre.

Last Call

Meanwhile, Orange Julius's position on the fiscal cliff slope is crumbling more and more on a now daily basis.

President Barack Obama is not ready to accept a new offer from the Republican leader of the U.S. the House of Representatives to raise taxes on top earners in exchange for major cuts in entitlement programs, a source said late Saturday.

The shape and details of Boehner's offer were uncertain Saturday night, as was the exact reason the president was prepared to reject it.

The source said Obama sees the offer made on Friday by U.S. House Speaker John Boehner as a sign of progress, but simply believes it is not enough and there is much more to be worked out before Obama can reciprocate.

Boehner has cracked on raising tax rates now.  The question is now "on whom?"

Republicans have privately spoken of coming back at Obama with a threshold of $1 million. Obama has previously called that unacceptable because it would not raise enough money on its own to cut the deficit significantly or provide enough money to avert across-the-board spending cuts.

It's the Republicans who are being forced to move, because President Obama knew exactly what he was doing when he walked the GOP into this last year...a deal the GOP could never win, but took anyway.   The President has outsmarted the GOP again, period.

And there's nothing the GOP can do but lose, gracefully or in their case, otherwise.