Last Call

In the end, Sen. John Kerry was confirmed Tuesday as the next Secretary of State in an overwhelming manner, 94-3.

The Senate on Tuesday easily confirmed Democratic Sen. John Kerry by a vote of 94 to 3 as the next secretary of state, ending a largely non-controversial confirmation process and kicking off what is expected to be a hotly contested race in Massachusetts for his seat in the Senate.

At a time when bipartisanship is often on display in Washington, all but three Republican senators voted to confirm Kerry as secretary of state: Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe.

Kerry voted "present" on his confirmation. He is set to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is stepping down after four years of service.

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and the 2004 Democratic nominee for president, has served on the Foreign Relations Committee since his arrival in the Senate in 1985. He began the hearing process with public backing from Democrats as well as Republicans who came together Tuesday to publicly laud both Kerry's personal background as well as his extensive experience and relationships with dignitaries around the world.

"Sen. Kerry is uniquely qualified to serve as the next secretary of state," Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said on the Senate floor prior to the vote, noting that Kerry's father served as a diplomat, Kerry's deep knowledge of international affairs as well as his relationships with diplomats.

Ted Cruz making an early claim as "most reactionary GOP Senate freshman" with this vote.  

Also, the special election for Kerry's seat will be June 25, so that should be one to watch, certainly.  It'll also mean Elizabeth Warren is senior Senator from Massachusetts.

Forward, then.

Turtle Soup Special

Mitch McConnell isn't that popular here in Kentucky.  The Tea Party hates him because as Senate leader, he's sold them out time and time again.  Democrats hate him because he's Mitch Freakin' McConnell.  The end result is he has a lot more enemies than friends.

With his re-election bid just a year away, those opposed to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell outnumber his supporters 2-1 among Kentucky voters, according to the latest Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll.

In the poll of 609 registered voters, 34 percent said they plan to vote against McConnell — while just 17 percent say they will vote to give him six more years. Forty-four percent said they will wait to see who is running against him before deciding, and 6 percent said they are not sure.

The poll, conducted by SurveyUSA, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. It comes as groups on both McConnell’s right and left seek candidates to challenge him in the primary and general elections in 2014. McConnell, the most powerful Republican in the Senate as minority leader, is seeking his sixth term.

Jesse Benton, McConnell’s campaign manager, dismissed the poll as “nothing more than an irresponsible way to stir up cheap headlines.”

“Anyone with a kindergarten level of education in polling knows that asking voters to support an incumbent ‘no matter who runs against him’ is guaranteed to produce the most skewed number possible,” Benton said.

Sure, the polls are skewed guys. Just like back in November.  Here's what McConnell's people are really scared of:

Meanwhile, the United Kentucky Tea Party, a group of 17 tea parties from across the state, says it is recruiting someone to challenge McConnell in the primary. The group charges that McConnell has supported debt-ridden budgets and profligate spending throughout his career.

Which is true, and Mitch knows it.  Turtle soup is back on the menu, boys.

The Wages Of Moose Lady Are About $16 A Word

FOX has dropped Sarah Palin like a bad habit, meaning Governor Half-Term's wingnut welfare ride is officially at an end.  Don't feel bad for her however, she certainly cleaned out Rupert Murdoch's network.

With the three-year contract now expired between FOX News and Sarah Palin, there is a wealth of commentary made by the former Alaska Governor and GOP Vice-Presidential nominee to dissect.

Palin, who was paid a reported $1 million per year as a contributor to FOX since mid-January 2010 when FOX announced her signing, may not have made quite the splash her employers had hoped during this three-year period, and would, on occasion go weeks between appearances.

So, did the network get their money's worth?

A Smart Politics review of the more than 150 FOX broadcasts in which Sarah Palin appeared as a paid commentator from 2010 through 2012 finds that she spoke 189,221 words on air during this span, for an average pay rate of $15.85 per word. 

Palin appeared on the network in studio, by satellite, by telephone, or in a pre-taped interview an average of once every 7.2 days during this three-year period, with the vast majority of those coming on two particular programs.

Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren both interviewed Palin 55 times, combining for nearly three-quarters of her appearances on the network over the last 36 months. (Note: the latter total includes interviews by Griff Jenkins and guest host Martha McCallum on Van Susteren's On the Record program).

So laugh all you want to at her, she still made three million bucks being a moron on TV.   Hell of a lot more than you or I made last year for our political opinions, right?

Grifters gotta grift, and nobody grifts like the Moose Lady.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama will lay out his own plans for comprehensive immigration reform in a speech in Las Vegas on Tuesday afternoon.
• Drug legalization proponents are targeting Maine, California, and Oregon for recreational marijuana use laws after victories last November in Colorado and Washington State.
• On the second anniversary of Egypt's uprising that led to the end of the Mubarak regime, President Morsi faces his own uprising as citizens take to the streets.
• The European Union may relax budget requirements for Spain as austerity measures are triggering extended recessions across the Eurozone.
• A new transparency report from Twitter shows law enforcement dramatically increased requests for information from the social application in the second half of 2012.

Last Call

Republicans have to punish those awful poor people so they'll choose to stop being poor, you know.  The latest iteration of Shame The Poors:  Tennessee GOP's latest scheme to send kids to bed without any pudding.

State Sen. Stacey Campfield has proposed legislation that would cut welfare benefits to parents whose children fail to make "satisfactory academic progress" in school, a move he says should inspire parents to take a more active role in helping students learn.

While the Knoxville Republican says SB132 is a step toward "breaking the cycle of poverty," Linda O'Neal, executive director of the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, says it could make life more difficult for parents and children who are already struggling.

Campfield said in an interview that the best way to "break the cycle of poverty" is through education and a child's success in schooling rests on a "three-legged stool" - teachers, schools and parents.(Note: His blog post on the bill is HERE.)

He said Tennessee has already embarked on education reforms designed to improve the quality of teachers and the quality of schools. There should also be a focus on the "third leg," parents, he said.

"We've set the tone (through legislation) to push and improve teachers and schools," Campfield said. "Now is the time to push those parents. This bill is giving them motivation to do more to help their children learn in school."

"If the family doesn't care if the child goes to school or does well in school, the odds of that child getting out of poverty are pretty low," the senator said. 

See, if we just cut benefits to the stupid poor families, the parents (who must be poor because they choose to be poor and lazy) will simply stop being poor and lazy because otherwise they'll starve.  Problem solved! Hey, the problem is clearly poor parents on welfare don't work anyway, so they have all the time in the world to tutor their kids and make them get better grades.

So your kids are having problems learning because they are hungry all time time from being poor?  Better make sure Junior aces that test or the family gets cut off and goes hungry.  No pressure there, son.  Just choose to succeed, that's all!  After all, why should Tennessee taxpayers have to worry about schoolkids eating and stuff anyway.  Just punish them until they are motivated to stop being poor, and the problem resolves itself.  If the difference between the family having enough to get by and the family crashing and burning is the little guy's next math test, well by gosh you'd better make sure you poor people care enough about your kids to make them into honor students.

It's so simple, even a child can do it.

Johnny Volcano And The Lost City Of Voters

Sen. John McCain thinks he can be the reasonable voice of centrist Republicanism in America, and while he has the Village fooled, his own party has at this point all but thrown him out.  Exhibit A:  Immigration reform.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said Sunday that losing the Hispanic vote in the last election will encourage Republicans to get on board with a comprehensive immigration bill that will provide a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States.

"I'll give you a little straight talk," McCain said on ABC's "This Week" when asked how Republicans could be convinced to include a path to citizenship in a reform package. "Look at the last election.  Look at the last election.  We are losing dramatically the Hispanic vote, which we think should be ours, for a variety of reasons, and we've got to understand that."

If you think immigration reform is going to pass the House GOP and John Boehner will be able to deliver, I have some beachfront property in McCain's state of Arizona for sale to you.

In a speech that was closed to the press, Boehner told the Ripon Society, a Republican public policy organization, on Tuesday that it is “time to deal” with immigration changes. He said the House group, whose members he did not name, have been holding quiet conversations for three or four years and would be coming forward soon with proposals.

The Ripon Society released some excerpts on Wednesday but Boehner’s comments came in a question-and-answer period that has received less notice. They were first reported Saturday by the Hill newspaper.

The comments were significant because advocates of immigration changes have long assumed legislative action on the issue would need to begin in the Democratic-majority Senate.

Oh House Republicans want to get out in front of immigration reform, but it doesn't mean they'll pass it.  They want to come up with a bill on their terms, but frankly anything they will come up with will get trashed by their own side, and will be torpedoed.   If you thought there was a civil war in the GOP before, wait until any of the GOP proposals including the words "path to citizenship" come up for a vote in the House.

A bipartisan group of senators has agreed on a set of principles for a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system, including a pathway to American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants that would hinge on progress in securing the borders and ensuring that foreigners leave the country when their visas expire. 

The senators were able to reach a deal by incorporating the Democrats’ insistence on a single comprehensive bill that would not deny eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants, with Republican demands that strong border and interior enforcement had to be clearly in place before Congress could consider legal status for illegal immigrants. 

House Republicans are already steeling themselves for battle over this, and the split is going to be ugly.  90% of GOP districts may be blood red and safe, but primary challengers are always just around the corner, and these guys know it.  By the time it's over, even Johnny Volcano will find himself having to filibuster the bill or his political career will be over.  I guarantee it.

Immigration isn't going anywhere.  It'll be killed by the far right just like in 2007.   I'd like to be wrong, but betting on the GOP to take the sane, reasonable approach on something is for suckers.

Israel Getting Up In Syria's Business

And just when your thought it couldn't get too much worse in the Middle East, along comes Israeli hardliners to make me regret thinking we've reached a logical nadir.

Any sign that Syria's grip on its chemical weapons is slipping as it battles an armed uprising could trigger Israeli military strikes, Israel's vice premier said on Sunday.

Silvan Shalom confirmed a media report that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had last week convened a meeting of security chiefs to discuss the civil war in Syria and the state of its suspected chemical arsenal.

So yes, this was going on as the votes were being counted in Israeli election last week.  Charming, huh?

Should Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas or rebels battling forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad obtain Syria's chemical weapons, Shalom told Israel's Army Radio: "It would dramatically change the capabilities of those organizations."

Such a development would be "a crossing of all red lines that would require a different approach, including even preventive operations," he said, alluding to military intervention for which Israeli generals have said plans have been readied.

"The concept, in principle, is that this (chemical weapons transfer) must not happen," Shalom said. "The moment we begin to understand that such a thing is liable to happen, we will have to make decisions."

So yeah, in the chaos that is Syria right now,  if it looks like anybody's going for Syria's chemical arsenal, the Israelis are going to start a war, which of course will draw in the United States, Iran, and well...things get really bad from there.

Here's hoping cooler heads prevail.  I personally think this is a play to force the US hand to intervene in Syria before Israel "feels it has to."  Which of course, could lead to Iran following up.  All this is pretty awful, frankly.

Happy Monday, right?

StupidiNews!

• The death toll from a night club fire in the Brazilian city of Santa Maria has reached 233 people, as some 2,000 people packed into a building meant for 1,000.
• At the Davos World Economic Forum last week in Switzerland, British climate skeptic Lord Nick Stern admitted that he was wrong about climate change being "very real".
• Cuba confirms that fiber optic cable from Venezuela completed last year is now operational, but access to the internet on the island is still restricted.
• Japanese carmaker Toyota has retaken the global sales lead from GM and Volkswagen after recovering from 2011's Fukushima earthquake and tsunami.
• Online tech retailer Newegg has won its case in the "mother of all patent battles" over who owns the rights to the e-commerce "shopping cart", a fight that could have shut down shopping online.

Last Call

The biggest problem with the GOP remains that in a majority of states, they run the show.  At the local, county, and state level Republicans are politicizing every possible state government function and stacking the deck with like-minded Teabaggers with the goal of using "small government" to control as much as they can.

One big area where the GOP is causing lasting damage is in public education.  In Texas for example, the war over the state's school textbooks has been hard-fought and ugly.  That battle is the subject of a new PBS documentary, The Revisionaries:

The movie follows the testimony and actions of the board as it tears through—and in some cases, tears up—the science and history standards that were forwarded to them. It uses footage of hearings and votes, along with interviews of many of the participants, including a professor involved in writing the science standards, and Kathy Miller of the Texas Freedom Network, an organization dedicated to limiting the impact of the board's more ideological members.

And they are seriously ideological. McLeroy is quoted as saying, "education is too important to not be politicized," while fellow board member Cynthia Dunbar claims that "education is inherently religious." And she apparently treats the board meetings the same way, as she's shown giving an opening prayer in which she calls for Jesus to help everyone recognize that the US is "a Christian land, governed by Christian principles."

The existing Texas science standards had language that called for the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution to be taught. That language has opened the door to the sorts of spurious criticisms that McLeroy is fond of (and apparently, subjects some of his dental patients to). So when the proposed new standards came to the board without any mention of strengths and weaknesses, McLeroy and others fought hard to put them back in. As a compromise, the board simply renamed them to "analyze and evaluate," creating awkward results like instructing students to "analyze all sides of scientific information" about evolution.

If anything, the history standards were worse. Dunbar claims she's a "big fan" of Thomas Jefferson, but thinks a "secular humanistic ideology" has clouded current interpretations of his work. So she cuts him out of the standards on the Enlightenment and its influence on the US' founding documents, instead substituting in pre-enlightenment figures like Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. Further revisions to history come rapid fire, as others try to add the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, and NRA to a section on the '80s, and another person tries to make sure Barack Obama's middle name (Hussein) is added to the text where his name appears.

One board member, looking at the results, is seen saying, "I feel that I have let down the students in our state because all those kids in our schools right now, when they get to college, they're going to learn the real history."

The movie ends with McLeroy losing his reelection bid by a few hundred votes, but already thinking about running again at his next opportunity. But some of his many opponents note that the changes he helped make to the standards will be influencing entire generations of students before they're next revised in 2020.

And they will never give up until Americans are as stupid and as ignorant as they are.  A generation of talk radio and FOX News has given the reactionary right unprecedented power to eliminate critical thinking and turn us all into "Christians" who have only faith and no desire to learn anything but what they are told.

So get involved with your own school board, your own state textbook committee, your own city council, your own county commission.  The other side sure as hell is.

Priorities: Code Orange

It's nice to know that Republicans have America's top priorities in mind:  jobs, the economy, gun violence, the environm...what's that you say, House Speaker John Boehner?

In a special message to the annual anti-abortion protest March for Life, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) vowed that ending abortion would be one of the top priorities of Republicans this year.

“Defending life, of course, is about much more than voting the right way or saying the right things,” he said. “It’s about promoting a culture of life. It’s about understanding that abortion is a defining human rights issue of our time. Because human life is not an economic or political commodity, and no government on Earth has the right to treat it as such.”

“With all that’s at stake, it is becoming more and more important for us to share this truth with our young people, to encourage them to lock arms, speak out for life, and help make abortion a relic of the past,” Boehner continued. “Let that be one of our most fundamental goals this year.”

Boehner said the Republican-led House would again seek to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which sparked controversy in 2011 because of how it defined rape. The bill was approved by the House but died in the Senate.

Yay, we're back to the War on Women as their top goal: ending safe, legal abortions and forcing women to resort to unsafe, illegal abortion! Woohoo!

Let's just criminalize the vagina, shall we?

Out Of Ammo And Shooting Blanks

Anyone surprised at this turn of events on the assault weapons ban 2.0 in the Senate hasn't been paying any attention at all.  Bloomberg's analysis:

At least six of the 55 senators in the Democratic caucus have expressed skepticism or outright opposition to a ban, the review found. That means Democrats wouldn’t have a 51-vote majority to pass the measure, let alone the 60 needed to break a Republican filibuster to bring it to a floor vote. 

Gosh, HOOCUDDANODE?  And guess what, they're all red state Dems:  Tester and Baucus of Montana, Begich of Alaska, Heitkamp of North Dakota, and of course, Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

In other words, if you thought for a second that Blue Dogs like Heitkamp and Manchin were going to actually risk their pristine A ratings from the NRA over silly nonsense like "What the people want", you really are nuts.

This is why the Dems don't even have a majority in the Senate, frankly.

[UPDATE]  Greg Sargent makes the point that the AWB 2.0 was always doomed, but universal background checks may actually pass.

Last Call

The GOP plan to steal the electoral college is getting some backlash, which means Republicans are both denying the plan at the state level...

What are the chances that this plan gets passed? It doesn’t look great for Republicans in favor of the bill. The proposal will likely make it out of the full Republican-controlled Committee on Privileges and Elections, but will face hurdles in front of the full Senate. The Virginia Senate is split between 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans. One Republican, State Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, abstained from voting in favor of the proposal in subcommittee and has said it is unlikely she will vote in favor of it on the Senate floor. Without her vote, the proposal is a no-go.

...And admitting they want to take to plan nationally to all of the GOP-controlled swing states that voted for Obama.

Jordan Gehrke, a D.C.-based strategist who's worked on presidential and Senate campaigns, is teaming up with Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio Republican secretary of state, to raise money for an effort to propose similar electoral reforms in states across the country, he told me this week.

Gehrke and Blackwell have been talking to major donors and plan to send a fundraising email to grassroots conservatives early next week. The money would go toward promoting similar plans to apportion electoral votes by congressional district in states across the country, potentially even hiring lobbyists in state capitals. 

Gehrke isn't saying which states the project might initially target. He says he'd like to see the plan implemented in every state, not just the ones where clever redistricting has given Republicans an edge, and he justifies it in policy, not political terms.

A presidential voting system where the electoral college was apportioned by congressional district might not be perfectly fair, he says, but it would be better than what we have now. It would bring democracy closer to the people, force presidential candidates to address the concerns of a more varied swath of the American populace, and give more clout to rural areas that are too often ignored. And while it might help Republicans in states like Virginia, it could give Democrats a boost in states like Texas. Ideally, this new system, implemented nationally, would strengthen both parties, he claims. 

Sure, and let's remember that if this plan had been in effect, Mitt Romney would be President now.

In fact, if every state awarded its electoral votes by congressional district, it's likely that Mitt Romney would have won the 2012 presidential election despite losing the popular vote by nearly four percentage points. (According to Fix projections and data from Daily Kos Elections, Romney won at least 227 congressional districts and 24 states, giving him 275 electoral votes -- more than the 270 he needed.)

In addition, if just the five states mentioned above changed their systems, Obama's 126-electoral-vote win would have shrunk to a 34-vote win -- close enough where a different result in Florida (which Obama won by less than one point) would have tipped the 2012 race in Romney's favor.

Republicans know exactly what and why they are doing this, they are trying to steal an election where just like gerrymandered Democratic votes are stuffed into urban and minority district.  If the entire nation had implemented the Virginia plan where the 2 Senatorial electoral college votes are doled out by the winner of the most districts, Romney's victory in the above scenario would have been even larger despite losing the popular vote by 5 million.

The vote under this plan would have been exactly the same.  The difference is the winner would be whoever can steal the most House districts, which thanks to 2010 gerrymandering, would mean the GOP would be a clear favorite in 2016 and 2020.  And what would the GOP do with that power?

What do you think?

I Believe I Have Found Your Activist Judges, GOP

If this ridiculous ruling from the three Republican-appointed judges on the DC Appeals Court is allowed to stand, the Republicans can shut down the executive branch, period.  Adam Serwer at Mojo:

On Friday, a federal appeals court ruled that President Barack Obama's appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, which regulates and oversees labor disputes, were unconstitutional. The Constitution allows the president to make temporary appointments, called recess appointments, while the Senate is on break—or recess, in DC terms. Obama did make the NRLB appointments while the Senate was on vacation. But Senate Republicans claimed that the Senate was technically still in session over their vacation because they were holding brief, minutes-long meetings over the course of the break. The three judges on the panel—all of whom were appointed by Republican presidents—agreed with the challengers. Now all the decisions Obama's NLRB appointees made since they joined the board are at risk of being invalidated.

The court's decision doesn't just affect labor law: it could also have an impact on the White House's broader economic agenda. The sweeping ruling throws into question the future of regulatory decisions made by one of the administration's most aggressive agencies, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

So two executive agencies that Republicans despise are now effectively out of business as of Friday: the people that keep corporations from screwing over workers, and the people that keep banks from screwing over everybody.  That's not allowed in the Republican worldview:  people are simply resources that must be exploited for maximum profit.

Also out of business:  The President can basically no longer make recess appointments.

Friday's ruling takes the sweeping view that recess appointments made during Senate breaks, like vacations, are unconstitutional. The court found that the recess appointment power can only be used during breaks between Senate sessions—and those only happen once a year, usually over the Christmas and New Year's holidays. It also holds that the president can only make recess appointments for positions that become open during a recess—as opposed to ones that already were open. The court's position would invalidate the vast majority of recess appointments made by Republican and Democratic presidents over the course of the last century, including that of John Bolton, George W. Bush's ambassador to the United Nations.

In other words, recess appointments were fine until the black guy made a couple.  Somebody please come up with an argument that says otherwise, because right now as it stands, Republican judges are really just putting a black man "in his place".

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Hackers from Anonymous are planning to release "sensitive information" about the Obama Justice Department in retaliation for the suicide of Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz.
• US Internet providers are voluntarily implementing a "six strikes" program to combat online copyright infringement and piracy.
• Georgia GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss announced he won't run for re-election in 2014, giving Democrats a possible shot at his seat.
• Exxon Mobil has passed Apple as the world's most valuable company as the tech giant's disappointing 4th quarter earnings have dropped its stock by more than 10%.
• UC Irvine is preparing a new lab to research frozen methane hydrate found on the ocean's floor, which could be a vast new source of natural gas.

Last Call

And the nullification nonsense continues as Republicans keep trying to pick a fight with 235 years of US history.

A pair of Republican lawmakers in Mississippi have proposed a bill to keep the federal government in its place, and laying out a plan to create a Joint Legislative Committee on the Neutralization of Federal Law, which would — well maybe you can already start to guess what the committee would do.

The bill, known as the Mississippi Balance of Powers Act, was authored by state Rep. Gary Chism (R), chairman of the House Insurance Committee, and Rep. Jeff Smith (R), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Earlier this week, the bill was referred to the House Constitution Committee. 

This is pretty much a direct, open challenge to the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution, something wingers have been trying to get rid of for generations.

The neutralization committee called for in the bill would enforce “a constitutional balance of powers,” and would be made up of the lieutenant governor, six members of the state Senate appointed by the lieutenant governor, the speaker of the state House of Representatives or his designee and six members of the House of Representatives appointed by the speaker. The committee will be allowed to review “any and all existing federal statutes, mandates and executive orders for the purpose of determining their constitutionality.” Any measure that is found to be “beyond the scope and power assigned to the federal government under Article 1 of the United States Constitution or in direct violation of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890” may be recommended for neutralization by the simple majority vote of each house of the Mississippi State Legislature.

“If the Mississippi State Legislature votes by simple majority to neutralize any federal statute, mandate or executive order on the grounds of its lack of proper constitutionality, then the state and its citizens shall not recognize or be obligated to live under the statute, mandate or executive order,” the bill reads.

"Nope, we don't want to follow the rules of your federal government, and we've decided that we're just not going to enforce the bits we don't like.  Do something about it.  We dare you."

Like I keep saying, South Carolina tried this about 175 years ago.  Didn't work out so great for them or the country, either.

Please proceed, Mississippi.